After an anti-trust lawsuit was launched by the European Union earlier this year to check whether or not Apple’s e-book pricing is anti-competitive, Apple and four publishers are ready to accept an offer from the EU to end the probe.

The acceptance of the offer hands Amazon a big victory in the battle for e-book pricing in Europe as it opens the door for Amazon to continue to sell online books cheaper than its rivals.

Ever wanted a quick-and-easy way to slap a watermark on a digital photo, so that no pesky bloggers can claim it as their own without permission? Ever wanted to slap a watermark on dozens of photos at a time? Image Agent might help.

With the launch of iOS 6, Apple debuted a new panorama mode built into the camera app that allows users to take stunning widescreen panorama photos with almost no effort. Unfortunately, these photos have made for little more than a cool demo until now, because there’s been no good way to share them.

Enter PanoPerfect, an app that’s designed specifically around sharing your panoramic photos. While it’s probably the first of its kind, its sure not short on features.

Simply Write for the iPad is just about the closest you’ll get to an electronic piece of paper. The app is designed for handwriting, and for getting out of the way. And its clever close-up writing method for text input makes sure it does both.

Our friend Roman Zavřel over at Letemsvetemapplem.eu emailed us to let us know that he’d spotted the first initial appearances of OS X 10.9 in his server logs. We checked ours, and what do you know: we’ve also gotten a handful of visitors reporting the next version of OS X as their operating system.

With OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion released just a few months ago, it would normally be too early to see the next version of OS X popping up in server logs, but with Mountain Lion, Apple has apparently moved to a yearly release schedule for their Mac operating system.

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what Apple will call OS X 10.9? I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Space Lion and an official Voltron partnership.

No matter which presidential candidate you’re voting for, today is a day to be proud for America. As Americans across the country come together to decide the direction of the country, we should relish the freedom we have to vote and elect a new president every four years. Democracy is one of the greatest aspects of the good ‘ole U.S.A.

Politics surrounding elections are always crazy, so we think the best way to celebrate Election Day is a bunch of wallpapers showing famous American presidents and historical figures doing crazy things as they fight for America’s freedom (literally). Check ’em out. Download them to your iPad or iPhone, and get out and vote. 

Think your new iPad mini’s the perfect tablet for gaming on the go? Well it may have some stiff competition ahead. Microsoft is said to be secretly planning a 7-inch “Xbox Surface” tablet that will be developed specifically for touch-based gaming. The slate is expected to make its debut before Microsoft announces the Xbox 720.

You’ve got yourself a new iPhone 5 and are looking for something that just won’t show it off – but will show it off with style. You also want to offer it some protection at the same time and have it stand out from the crowd.

If that’s what you’re looking for, then look no further because the latest Cult of Mac Deals offer will leave you and your iPhone 5, well…glowing. We’re offering a limited quantity of Glow Gel Combos to our continental US readers for only $24 – and they won’t last long at that price.

If you use Evernote, it’s possible that you store everything in there that you possibly can. Now, thanks to the MySMS service, you can also archive your text messages in your favorite everything-bucket.

Well, that was fast. The Apple online store has already caught up with the pre-order demand of the fourth-generation iPad, and it’s now saying the device is “in stock.” That means customers will no longer face a shipping delay when placing their order for the new device online.

Apple may be looking to bring iWork document editing to the cloud as it hunts for an iWork Software QA Engineer with a new job listing on its website. Based at Apple’s Cupertino campus, the successful candidate will work on “the next generation of Desktop, Mobile and Web application/services.”

It’s all come down to this. Today is Election Day, and your vote is going to help determine the United States’s destiny over the next four years. This is one of the most important elections in years, and that means it’s more important than ever for you to stay organized with supporters around you and live on the cutting edge to keep up-to-date with all the latest Election News.

Get out the vote, Blue States (and Blue People) with these useful iOS apps for Democratic Party Supporters. If you’re looking for Cult of Mac’s Election Day App Guide for Republicans, click here. 

Nikon keeps busting out the new SLRs with the D5200, an upgrade to the D5100 that is bigger than the mere 100 extra numbers in its name would suggest.

It’s all come down to this. Today is Election Day, and your vote is going to help determine the United States’s destiny over the next four years. This is one of the most important elections in years, and that means it’s more important than ever for you to stay organized with supporters around you and live on the cutting edge to keep up-to-date with all the latest Election News.

Here are Cult of Mac’s top picks for conservative readers who want to follow the 2012 elections with their iPhones and iPads… and influence them too. If you’re looking for Cult of Mac’s Election Day App Guide for Democrats, click here. 

With Mountain Lion came Messages, Apple’s new version of iChat. The killer feature, of course, is that you can talk to folks on iOS or OS X right from your Mac, over the internet, without incurring SMS fees for those using an iOS device. I like it because I can chat with friends who are “texting” me during the day, but I don’t have to type on the smaller iPhone keyboard to do so.

But what about all those other IM services out there? Well, Messages supports AIM, Jabber, Google Talk, and Yahoo! messaging services, so you can run all your messages through the one app. It’s super easy to do, too.

Readability has updated its iOS app to bring a new grid view to the Top Reads and Longform Picks curated reading lists on the iPad. Version 1.2.3 of the app also promises “even more sync speed improvements” which should make Readability even snappier than it was before.

I’ll never understand why the iPad doesn’t ship with the default iOS weather app, and that goes double for the iPad mini, which is even more portable than it’s bigger sibling. Consequently, I’m always on the look-out for good iPad-centric weather apps.

I’m delighted to see, then, that my favorite iPhone Weather app, Check The Weather, has now been updated to a universal version, keeping all of the swipe-friendly charm and navigation chops of the iPhone version, but elegantly blowing it up to the larger display.

It’s no secret that Apple often takes a puritanical view of art featuring human anatomy — the flapping genitalia, dewy folds and turgid protuberances that some of us find so arousing and others find a moral failing — at least when it comes to being submitted to the App Store or iBookstore.

So it’s no surprise that when Danish author Peter Øvig Knudsen submitted his latest work of non-fiction, Hippie 2, to the iBookstore, the e-book was rejected based upon the fact that it contained forty-seven photographs of hairy frolicking hippies with exposed breasts, buttocks and genitals.

What is more surprising is that they also rejected Knudsen’s resubmitted version of the text, which featured all of the photos censored with giant red apples.

Shortly after the iPhone 5 made its debut back in September, the team behind Sparrow announced that it would be updating its email client for the handset’s new 4-inch display — despite its decision to cease development of the app after joining forces with Google.

It seems we could be waiting some time for that update, however: Sparrow has revealed that Apple rejected its latest release for violating its App Store terms.

You can’t just get by with an average design, especially in a world where retina displays are becoming popular and the blogosphere is becoming more critical of things like how an app and website looks – all the way down to its icon. You need to make sure that anything you create doesn’t just perform well, but it looks even better. With all that is offered in The Awesome Design Bundle courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals, you’ll be able to design better than ever before.

This Awesome Design Bundle is a collection of excellent design resources that will help you achieve new graphical heights – and you can get it here for only $39!

No, it’s not Egon. HDR Express, the enthusiast-level high dynamic range Mac app from Unified Color Technologies, is now out in a new version with improved de-ghosting algorithms for images with moving subjects, among a handful of other interesting new features.

Middle Earthers, rejoice, as the popular massively multiplayer game based on one of the most enduring fantasy stories of the last century is now available for the Mac platform. Ever since the game went free to play in 2010, I’ve been wanting to hop in and see how it compares to the likes of World of Warcraft, Guild Wars (both with Mac clients), and Star Wars: The Old Republic, but it has only been available for the Windows platform. Until now.

Atari’s released a remake of its 1978 home console classic, Outlaw, which actually saw first life as a light gun game in arcades as early as 1976. Well, Flying Wisdom Studios has developed a new version for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad that looks a whole lot better than the original.

Released just last week, the new iOS version of Outlaw eschews the “pong-with-cowboys” style of gaming for a new art style that actually looks like, well, art. It’s still a 2D affair, with various denizens of the wild west sliding across the screen in a virtual shooting gallery.

GIGAOM ROADMAP, SAN FRANCISCO — Back in 2000, no one wanted to buy Apple’s products. Steve Jobs realized that potential customers needed to see and play with Apple’s offerings before they could be persuaded to buy them. So he launched a chain of retail stores in malls across the country. It was risky, but it paid off handsomely.

Now Tesla, the electric car maker run by Elon Musk, is trying to do the same thing. Instead of a traditional dealership, Tesla is building a chain of car showrooms right inside shopping malls.

To build out the chain, Tesla tapped George Blankenship, Apple’s former Vice President of Real Estate, who helped to roll out Steve Jobs’ mega-successful chain.

Sometimes it’s the little luxuries in life that make a difference. Don’t have a place to store your headphones at your desk? You may need Just Mobile’s new HeadStand. Well, you probably don’t need it, but you’ll want it.

Sculpted from polished aluminum in a way that would probably make Jony Ive shed a tear of joy, the HeadStand suspends your plush headphones gracefully in the air.