This last weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), I spent time with the developers at Wizards of the Coast, the creators of Magic: The Gathering, to talk about their latest Magic: The Gathering expansion, due out on iOS, PC, and console, Return To Ravnica. They sat me down in the nice room behind the Magic and Dungeons and Dragons booth for some hands-on time with the expansion, which takes players to a new plane in the Magic: The Gathering Universe, Ravnica.

The expansion comes with new single player opponents, each with their own deck and playstyle. As in the original iOS version of Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013, once you beat one of the computer enemies, you unlock their card deck to play in your own battles with the online multiplayer.

Let’s face it: we Apple fanatics have a certain stereotype. We all love our Apple devices, and it shows. Sometimes too much.

If there has ever been a video parody perfectly suited for the Cult of Mac, it’s this one. Behold part 1 and 2 of “Sh*#t Apple Fanatics Say:”

If you’ve been itching for an unlock on your iPhone, then you may be able to score a free factory unlock from AT&T. The way it typically works is that a U.S. carrier will unlock an iPhone after its two-year contract is up, but it looks like AT&T is offering unlocks for free to certain on-contract iPhones.

Requesting an unlock through AT&T’s web form has produced good results for multiple iPhone owners. If you’d like an unlock to use your iPhone on any GSM carrier worldwide, then it’s worth a shot.

Following this morning’s enigmatic shots of the inside of the lobby, news shots of what is happening outside the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts ahead of September 12th’s iPhone 5 event have emerged, showing the first stages of what will become the public-facing banners of what will undoubtedly prove to be Apple’s biggest event yet.

The banners are going up right now, but we’ve got our own photographer heading down, hopefully to capture more. In the past, the banners that hang outside of the Yerba Buena Center Of The Arts have tended to make some reference to an unannounced new product or service, so hopefully, we’ll soon have an inkling of what Apple’s set to announce.

More images at MacStories below.

Source: MacStories

For someone who uses their iPhone a lot (and I mean a LOT), it’s funny how many little things I just don’t know about. iOS is a brilliant and complex thing, and finding all the hidden features is pretty tricky. Take today’s tip, for example – I rarely use my iPhone as a phone, really, so it’s with that in mind that I want to point out how easy it actually is to create a conference call with Apple’s magical device.

iTunes is terrible. I do my best and try to never ever ever open it up, even though I got about 150GB of music crammed in there. A new report from the Wall Street Journal though says that Apple is looking to fix iTunes and build their very own streaming service that works kind of like Pandora.

Apple has the most extensive digital music library on the planet, so it might be really cool. At the same time, I already have Rdio that I use every day, and Pandora doesn’t even let me choose which songs I get to listen to. So even though an iTunes streaming service sounds like a dream, I don’t know if I’d actually use it. But what do you guys think? Would you actually use an iTunes streaming service? Or would you stick with Spotify and Rdio?

Click here to tell us what you think about the iTunes streaming service at the Cult of Mac forums

Most Bluetooth headphones are ugly. Most Bluetooth headphones are junk. Most Bluetooth headphones make you long for a cord. They are distorted, bass heavy, low-quality piece of junk.

For the most part, not so Harman / Kardon’s over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones. These are Bluetooth headphones worthy in both sound quality and design of the iconic company that not only helped create Hi-Fi, but is, in many non-trivial ways, the Apple of sound.

$9. Nine lousy dollars. With nine bucks, there’s no way you could make an iPhone stand this good, even buying parts from the cheapest of hardware stores. Hell, the only way to make a functional iPhone holder with $9 is to head to the bank, buy a roll of quarters and sit the iPhone up on top.

Which is hardly as elegant as this very practical-looking Pi Mount.

Have you ever had to say that you’re terrible at something just so you can get some preferential treatment, even though you’re really not as bad as you claim? It’s silly, but sometimes it works.

That’s what happened to Samsung today. In order to not get their products banned from the Netherlands, Samsung had to tell the court today that their multitouch software is really terrible in comparison to Apple’s.

Here are two things that are probably true: you don’t smoke, and you own an old, disused iPhone dock. Here are some things which are almost guaranteed to be true: You own a dock connector cable and a 3.5 mm jack cable

And if you live in the U.S, and you haven’t yet achieved enlightenment and switched to a bike, then you almost certainly have a car. Put these things together and what do you get? Jalopnik’s neat DIY in-car iPhone dock.

A web site called Australian Business Traveler reports that a reader checked in for a Virgin Australia flight today using the airline’s mobile web site on his iPhone, and Passbook popped up. He’s running iOS 6.

According to the site, iOS 6 noticed his mobile check-in, and offered to save his boarding pass into his Passbook account. He grabbed this screenshot.

Read the whole story.

Over the past few years we’ve seen hundreds of fake iPhone mockups, some have been bizarre, while others looked so good we wished they were real. What’s been most surprising is that some of the weirdest looking concepts are actually fairly similar to prototypes Apple was working on in their labs.

Thanks to the evidence in the Apple vs Samsung trial, we got to see the different iPhone prototypes Apple was working on, so we’ve gone back and found 7 artists mockups that look a lot like prototypes Apple was working on. 

Gadgets with handles are dorky as hell: just ask anyone who owned one of the original Toilet-Seat iBooks about the teasing they endured. But handles are also, well, dead handy – just ask those same iBook owners.

The folks at Native Union have tried to mitigate the inherent dorkiness of the Gripster iPad case by picturing it being held by hot, hot models in the product photos. The usefulness, though, needs no disguise or apologies.

There’s a fantastic episode of Pendleton Ward’s postapocalyptic candy land show Adventure Time in which Fin the last human and Jake, his magical dog companion, play a game called Card Wars which is like a futuristic version of Magic: The Gathering matched with the Holochess game in Star Wars.

I’ve always wished Magic was played like that — by placing real cards down on a sort of holographic desktop to see the creatures come alive and do battle right before my eyes — but it never occurred to me that my iPad could already do something like that. But here comes Nuko Cards to prove me wrong.

D&D players know the importance of a good character sheet. While dexterity, strength, charisma and alignment are key, it’s the scribbles you make between the boxes which will shape your character. And so it is with fiction, which is where Mariner’s new Mac app Persona comes in.

Persona is a character creation and tracking package for writers, and gives you simple tools to help with everything from naming your creations to tracking their every personality trait.

Ouch. Not that it’s much of a surprise, but a little over twelve hours after The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was going to create its own Pandora rival, prices of Pandora shares have tanked by over 18%.

It seems like the market is taking this as a very real threat, and no wonder: Apple has more to gain by entering the streaming music service space than you might think.

A new report suggests that Apple is gearing up to launch its latest lineup of iMacs very soon. It’s unclear whether they’ll get that much-anticipated Retina display, but if that’s not going to be a decider for you, it looks like you’ll have a new all-in-one in the coming weeks.

Over the course of the last few months, we’ve heard a lot of rumors that Apple intends on releasing an updated version of the third-generation iPad later in this year to improve the device in a number of ways: namely, to fit it with better efficiency Sharp IGZO panels and give it a new, smaller 9-pin Dock Connector.

Now a new report from research firm DisplaySearch claims that a new iPad is indeed scheduled to arrive alongside the iPad mini, which will be lighter and cooler. We’re starting to think this makes sense.

It used to be that if your phone ran out of juice, you could just pop into the nearest bar or cafe and ask “Do you have a Nokia charger?”, and the waitron would hand you one of the needle-tipped jacks from some cupboard or drawer.

Now, things have moved on. Battery life is measured in hours, not days, and Nokia is going the way of RIM and if a bar has an iPhone charger, it’s likely the bartender is using it to charge his own iPhone.

What you need is a charger that is always with you. What you need is the Case:Lynk.

The big story of yesterday evening was a somewhat cryptic report by The Wall Street Journal that Apple wants to build its own streaming music service, a la Pandora. Once you step back from the “hey, wouldn’t that be cool”-edness of it all, it’s a weird report. But it may not be totally bonkers. In fact, it probably makes a lot of sense.

FedEx has issued a memo to employees noting that all training classes will be canceled between September 21 and September 24 due to a “surge volume” event. Although the company does not specify a reason for this, it falls just 9 days after the iPhone 5 unveiling, and suggests this is when Apple’s sixth-generation device will launch in the United States — and possibly around the world.

We all—or should—password protect our Macs. Start up, login. Come out of sleep, login. Deactivate the screensaver, login (though technically that’s just unlocking). What about “fire up Chrome” or “start up Evernote”? We don’t usually think about entering a password to do those tasks. Maybe we should.

Mac App Blocker is, frankly, a new one on my. It’s an app that lets you set application passwords. Launch Mail, enter a password. Chrome…Evernote…Word… you get the idea. Interesting, huh?

“Plank of wood” might be a lame sounding iPhone accessory, but tell that to a kid whose favorite toy is a “cardboard box” or an iPad owner whose favorite computer is a slab of glass with a metal back.

And the plank in question actually packs some pretty great features, ready to be accessed while it floats up there in front of your wall. That’s right. I said “floats.”

If you’re in the market for a tablet, and you don’t mind adopting Google’s Android platform, then the choice available to you right now is incredible. Amazon alone announced a pair of new Kindle Fire HD tablets on Thursday that feature an impressive selection of specifications, with 7- and 8.9-inch displays, that are priced at $199 and $299 respectively.

But despite those tiny price tags, it’s unlikely Amazon’s tablets will prove to be a more attractive choice than the iPad for most. Analysts are confident that Apple’s device will remain the market leader, particularly with a rumored iPad mini on its way in October.

OK, so maybe I’m too impatient, but waiting for those otherwise-useful banner notifications in OS X Mountain Lion is rather annoying. I’ve long grown used to the Growl-style pop up badge, which has an actual close button on it. The new banner notifications in OS X 10.8 have no such thing, and when I want to click on something underneath them, my ire is quickly aroused. Where’s the Close button!? iMessages gets one, why not general notifications and alerts?

Well, there isn’t one, and that’s just the way it is. Luckily, there is also a way to close these 5-second tests of my patience, though.