I love my iPod Nano so much, it’s almost irrational. I know it doesn’t have bluetooth or wifi, or any other wireless connectivity, but the form factor is so perfect! I even have a Hex leather watchband for it, wearing it when I’m out on the town.

But it’s tiny. I lose it often. I’m actually on my second Nano due to accidental loss. The clip on the back sucks for anything but casual clipping on clothes when I’m working out, or attaching to my Hex watchband.

The iHook, then, aims to fix these problems, with a funky little bent metal mounting bracket that the manufacturer promises will change your Nano’s life. And yours, by association.

Apple updated iPhoto ’11 today to version 9.4.1, which includes several bug fixes, including an issue with downloading or viewing photos synched from Facebook albums, a new feature in OS X Mountain Lion. The update can be found in the Mac App Store directly, or pulled up in the Software Update item in the Apple Menu.

Apple announced their fourth quarter financial call for Q4 2012, scheduling it on October 25th, from 2 pm Pacific time (5 pm Eastern). The results should include the successful launch of the iPhone 5, which sold over 5 million units in the first three days it was on sale in the US. In addition, the iPhone 5 was launched in 22 other countries, with 100 more to come in the months ahead.

We learned this morning that the iPad Mini might be announced on October 17th after invites get sent to the press on October 10th. Everyone has a fairly good idea of what the iPad Mini will look like, but it can never hurt to see a few physical mock-ups for the sake of comparisson.

The latest mock-up photos to hit the Internet show what the iPad Mini will look like in comparison to the new Kindle Fire HD, Nexus 7, and the new iPad. The iPad’s design is noticeably more blocky as it’s missing the tapered edges of the iPad. Check out the photos after the jump.

Last week a number of people noticed that the lens flare on their iPhone 5 is really purple. When you have an off-screen light source the iPhone 5’s lens turns the light into a purplish hue, rather than the bright white color the light would be when it’s on-screen. All lenses have lens flare, and sometimes it’s purple, but the iPhone 5’s seemed to be more pronounced that others.

Apple support has officially responded to the purple lens flare issue and said that it’s totally normal, you’re just holding your iPhone wrong.

Tons of Apple accessory manufacturers make cute little palm rest covers for MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs so the metal of your cherished MacBook doesn’t get all scratched and nasty and damaged. They make your MacBook standout, but Apple thinks you need to stop freaking using them because you’re going to break your display if you keep it up.

In a note published on Apple’s support blog, Apple warned users that using palm rest covers might totally interfere with all of Apple’s fancy engineering that went into making the MacBook Pro with Retina display super thin. The added thickness might mess up your display and crack your screen when you shut your MacBook, leaving you super sad.

Here’s what Apple said about the palm rests –

I'm a sucker for bags, and — like TV's Dexter — I have come to be at peace with my darker side (I'm just starting season 4 though, so maybe he gets all crazy after becoming a father and everything). I realize that no matter how many sleeves, totes, backpacks or messenger bags I buy, it will never be enough.

I haven't yet started bagging up the old, discarded models and tossing them into the Gulf Stream to be carried off to a watery grave far away, but it can't be long. In the meantime, help talk me down from dropping almost $200 on this simple but gorgeous wool and leather sleeve.

Screen protectors aren’t sexy or glamorous. They’re like condoms: prophylactics for your smartphone screen that are difficult to put on correctly, feel worse than going bareback, and are just disgusting totems to the shame and filth of your lifestyle when greasily wadded up and hurled into the nearest waste basket.

The only thing I hate more than screen protectors is watching the inevitable patina of nicks and scratches milkily cloud up my iPhone screen. Over the years, I’ve tried a bunch of iPhone screen protectors, from the inevitable Invisible Shield to the PureTek Roll-On. Last year, though, I finally found my favorite screen protector for the iPhone 4S: the Spigen Glas.t, a sheet of 0.4mm tempered glass that not only is easy to apply, but feels just the same as riding your iPhone bareback.

Now the iPhone 5 is here, and Spigen has released a new, longer GLAS.t to match the new iPhone’s longer dimensions. For my money, just like its predecessor, this is the only screen protector you should even bother with.

With iOS 6, Siri gained some new super powers – like the ability to check on sports scores, make restaurant reservations, even find out info on movies. With  those new powers she also has some opinions about movies too.

For instance, ask Siri, “What’s Blade Runner about?” and she’ll shoot back by saying “It’s about intelligent assistants wanting to live beyond their termination dates. That doesn’t sound like too much to ask.” She does it for other robot movies too.

Remember when people used to say that the iPhone was useless for e-mail as it doesn't have a hardware keyboard? Think back: it was a while ago, around the same time that the iPhone was doomed for not supporting Flash.

Got it? Well, apparently some people somewhere still think that way, and this post is for them (if you know one of them, perhaps you could print out this article and fax it to them or something). Yes, you can now turn your state-of-the-art iPhone 5 into an also-ran BlackBerry.

Apple’s developer guidelines have always had weird caveats that Apple uses to protect the quality fo their own products first. Their newest strategy is to protect the App Store by putting in place a new guideline that might kill any app that promotes other apps. App recommendation apps, like FreeAppADay, and Daily App Dream might soon find themselves banned from the App Store if Apple begins to enforce the new guideline.

Having spent far too much time and money trying to mount an iPad onto the handlebars of my bike, I know all about fastenings both simple and complex. And I also know when to quit with the DIY and just drop some cash.

The Satechi Bikemate Slim 3 isn't big enough for the iPad, but it will fit iPhones both tall and fat, and its mounting is both simple and easy to use.

Apple is bound to make an iPad Mini someday soon, and for the last few months the rumors have been saying  they’ll be announcing it in October. According to Fortune, Apple is set to mail out iPad Mini invitations on October 10th, which might suggest the actual keynote will be held on October 17th.

SAN FRANCISCO, JailbreakCon 2012 — JailbreakCon, the convention dedicated solely to jailbreaking and all that it entails, took place this past Saturday, September 29th. Hackers and developers from around the world gathered together at the South San Francisco Center to network and share ideas.

New projects were announced, and the future of jailbreaking iOS 6, the iPhone 5, and Apple TV was discussed. Don’t worry if you weren’t able to attend the event or watch the live stream—Cult of Mac has you covered. Here’s everything you missed at JailbreakCon in a nutshell:

Apple’s retail stores bring in customers like no other retail outlet on the planet, and so it’s no surprise the Cupertino company is keen to build more of them. One possible market for expansion could be India, where Apple is currently forced to sell its products through distributors. However, one Indian retail rule, which states foreign companies must source 30% of the value of their sales from local firms, could stand in its way.

The iPhone 5 takes great pictures in low light. This is thanks to a “boost mode” which amps up the signal from the chip to grab back detail from the shadows. This comes at the expense of extra noise (it’s effectively upping the ISO of certain sections of the image), and presumably getting some extra noise-reduction to even things up.

However, right now you’ll only find it in the native camera app. But not for long.

We know pretty much nothing about these fancy slippers, other than the fact that they’d be the perfect gift for all your Apple Fanboy friends this Christmas. They’re made by Footsie 101 in London, and it looks like they come in more color varieties than the iPod nano. No word on pricing, but we can’t imagine these will be on sale much longer once Apple finds out.

Source: Instagram

Now that Apple has apologized for its decision to release a half-baked Maps app in iOS 6, the vast majority of us will carry on with our lives and use a third-party solution until Apple’s is fixed. Right now, it seems Apple is a company that can achieve anything. So it won’t be too long before Maps is as good as — if not better then — Google Maps. Right?

Maybe not. You see, Apple’s Maps problem could be much bigger than we think, and it could be a long time before we can say goodbye to third-party alternatives.

If you’re going to add retro-style filter effects to your photos, then you might as well use Instant, a new app for the iPad (and Mac) which goes the whole way: not only does it Instagrammatificate your images, but it forces you to watch the results pop out of a Polaroid camera, and then you have to wait for the pictures to “develop.”

Which is not to say that I don’t like the app. In fact, it turns out to be rather excellent.

Apple has a cash hoard that is worth more than one hundred and ten billion dollars, but that money doesn’t just sit in a bank collecting interest. Apple invests it, using a Nevada-based asset management corporation called Braeburn Capital. And it might just be the world’s largest hedge fund.

Have you ever looked at your iPad and wished it ran OS X, Apple’s desktop operating system? I have — like when I attempted to use WordPress in mobile Safari. But a Mac-powered tablet is no longer just a dream, thanks to the Modbook Pro. The Modbook Pro comes with all the benefits you get with an iPad, such as a touchscreen and excellent portability, but it runs Mountain Lion. And you can pre-order yours from October 3.

FastTrack Navigator is just about the simplest navigation app you could ever want: It’s a big arrow on the screen telling you the direction of your destination, along with a number telling you how far away it is. But that’s not to say that it isn’t beautifully designed.

In a post by Jeff Atwood over at the excellent Coding Horror, there’s this brilliant chart showing the “hyperbolic performance improvement” of the iPhone since it first debuted in 2008. As Jeff points out, in just five years, the iPhone has seen a factor of 20 performance improvement in Browsermark and a factor of four improvement in GeekBench, at least doubling performance every year.

Remember, way back in July, when we told you how to bring Save As… back to OS X Mountain Lion? Basically, we showed you how to add an Application shortcut to the Edit menu, and then create a keyboard shortcut to invoke it.

The problem with that helpful advice, though, is that it modified both the original file and the newly saved file if you’ve changed stuff before invoking the Save As function.

However, now with OS X 10.8.2, you can fix this behavior. It’s really quite easy–here’s how.

So, hey, guess what? You can now set up more than one signature in the new iOS 6 Mail app for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Each email account you have set up will allow you to have a specific signature attached to just that email address.

So, from now on, you can have “–Sent from my iPhone 5” for your personal email, and your professional information sent out whenever you use your email from work. You can create a signature for that secret Yahoo! email account you keep for special purposes, and your boss will ever see it.

Here’s how.