Given Twitter’s recent history of slowly locking down its service for developers and third-party apps, you may be looking for a way around using a special app to send out a Tweet from your Mac that doesn’t include logging into your web browser, logging in to Twitter, then adding your message. Maybe you want to just send out a quick tweet about something, but want to avoid the hassle of launching Tweetbot or the official Twitter app. Either way, you can send out tweets from Notification Center in OS X Mountain Lion.

You need to enable it, first, though. Here’s how.

Apple has reportedly placed an order for 10 million iPad mini units ahead of its much-anticipated launch this fall, according to component suppliers in Asia speaking to The Wall Street Journal. The figure indicates that Apple expects the device to be a big seller this holiday season, despite strong competition from the likes of Amazon and Google.

It seems impossible for a new Apple product to launch without the idiots and morons crawling out from their dark shells of ignorance, their subhuman bodies propelled only by the motion of a jerking knee as they regain consciousness for just long enough to write a blog post about some perceived “problem.”

Today’s example: purple fringing.

AT&T is once again hard at work trying to win that customer satisfaction award… said no AT&T board member ever. Those of you who have enjoyed having 30 days to decide whether or not your AT&T device or service is right for you, are going to have to cut your indecisiveness in half. Starting today, when you sign up for AT&T service or purchase a device on AT&T, you’ll have 14 days to return or cancel without being liable for an ETF (early termination fee).

We’ve got a first here folks. Today, we have a “Name Your Own Price” (NYOP) bundle of 9 awesome Mac apps like Forklift 2, Typinator, MacFlux 4, and a little twist. See, in addition to naming your own price (yes you can even buy it for a $1, though the suggested prices is $49), 10% of what you spend goes to either EFF, charity water, or Stand Up To Cancer.

See? Sure you might want to just name a cheepo price for the bundle…but that means a great charity gets less money too. Hmmm.

As a gadget reviewer, I go through a lot of shipped packages. Which means I have to deal with a logistical nightmare second only to the Allied supply lines following the D-Day landings (except my packages tend to be, for the most part, somewhat less liable to explode or cause diarrhea). But that’s OK — I have a secret weapon to help keep everything straight.

Junecloud‘s Deliveries Status ($5) tracks shipments in a wonderfully simple, easy-to-read, straightforward manner; and like many of Apple’s own products, it just works.

It’s beginning to look a lot like an iPad Mini Christmas. Credible reports say over-worked factory employees in China are already churning out small iTablets in large iQuantities, and that Apple will summon fawning journalists Wednesday to participate in an October 17 iPad Mini infomercial — I mean product launch.

I predict that the iPad Mini will dominate holiday sales, take over the education market and destroy three current products on the market. 

True, email is boring. However, it’s something we all use everyday to communicate for work, home, and pleasure. In iOS 6, Apple made a few changes to the way the Mail app works, tossing in new ways to sort, sign, and attach things to emails. Using the iOS 6 Mail app effectively takes a little bit of practice, a few tweaks, and the following five tips for using iOS 6 Mail the right way.

There are some rather prodigious — nay, daring — affirmations made about the gratuitous ($0.00) iPad / iPod app Finger Cut by its developer, Poland’s Jan Mazurczak: “It’s the most stupid app on the App Store!” he asseverates, appending, “downloaded three million times!” Well it’s certainly cutting edge….

Kyle Buckner has been inspired by Steve Jobs his whole life, ultimately choosing a career in design due to the Apple founder’s influence.

Today, he announced a new tribute piece in honor of the first anniversary of Jobs’ passing: a specially designed desk, available in two colors from his website. The desks are a labor of love from Buckner that include a special Steve Jobs logo, designed specifically for this project. The result is a piece of furniture that’s both functional and beautiful, much like the product designs Buckner’s hero was a lifelong advocate for.

The desks are selling fro $999.99 apiece, with a portion of the proceeds going to The American Cancer Society. We took a few minutes to chat with Buckner via email.

Cult of Mac received an email today with some exciting news: Apple is extending the special offer of extra iCloud storage for all MobileMe customers who haven’t made the transition, yet. The extra upgrade was supposed to expire on September 30th of this year, but will now expire in 2013 on the same date.

EA has released a new, nine minute strategy and gameplay video to YouTube, with a voiceover by producer Stone Librande. Watch as he discusses his strategy for creating a casino city from the ground up. He spends time showing off the incredible graphics and fine-grain control the series is known for.

The rocket scientist (yup, he kinda really is) behind last year’s dual-iPad Halloween trick is back at it again. Only this time, having the best Halloween costume in the neighborhood won’t require two iPads — just an iPhone (or Android phone), a special t-shirt and some duct tape. And the results are really, really cool.

Back in August, Square announced a huge partnership with Starbucks. The coffee chain giant will be integrating Square’s mobile payment system into many of its U.S. stores this fall, and Starbucks has also invested $25 million in Square.

While we knew that Square was coming to Starbucks sometime later this year, it’s now been revealed that the partnership is launching in early November. Instead of having to use your credit card or cash, you’ll be able to use the free Square app to pay for your skinny vanilla latte.

You’ve seen Microsoft’s famous Internet Explorer 9 commercial, right? You know, the one with that catchy dub-step song and all the crazy graphics of IE being like superhero fast? They play it on TV all the time and the at movies so you must have seen it by now. It’s not really that realistic though, so World Wide Interweb made an “honest version” of the commercial.

Bottom line: Switch to Mac and use Chrome.

If you’re reading this website on a new iPad or MacBook Pro with a Retina display, you may have noticed how crisp the logo is. Go on; take a good look. Zoom in with your fingers. Also check out the navigation bar, and the graphics for Reviews, Tips and How-Tos. See how clear and crisp they are?

That’s because we’ve upgraded the site to Retina — Apple’s marketing term for screens that are so dense with pixels, they’re practically invisible.

We think it looks really sharp. And next week, we’ll be giving the mobile site a complete overhaul to make it pretty for the iPhone 5.

Here’s what the site looks like on Retina and non-Retina devices.

Hit the jump for some of the geeky details:

There’s not a lot I need say about today’s Best Thing Ever, so I’ll keep it brief.

Manga Camera does exactly what its name suggests, and it’s no surprise that it’s a sudden huge hit on the iOS App Store.

The iPhone 5 is the most complex phone Apple’s ever made, which makes it extra hard for Foxconn’s employees to assemble. There’s so much pressure at Foxconn to produce an increased amount of iPhone 5s that some managers have been beat up by their workers after demanding too much.

According to a new report by China Labor Watch thousands of Foxconn workers have gone on strike due to the immense pressures involved with building the iPhone 5. The main problem is that unqualified workers are being asked to build intricate devices without proper training. They keep messing up and the quality control gets on to them and they get pissed.

We’ve seen enough Apple tattoos to last a lifetime. Most of them are terrible, and some are cool, but it’s Steve Jobs Day so why not show off another one?  Here’s one Apple fanboy’s memorial tattoo for Steve Jobs to help “keep him in mind,” which isn’t really our sort of thing, but if you want a permanent reminder about El Jobso, go do your thang.

So, until iOS 6, in order to email photos, you had to drop into the Photos app, open one photo at a time, and tap the Share via email button. You can still do this, or you can tap the Edit button in Photos and share multiple photos to email or other services like Facebook or Twitter.

In addition, however, you can insert pictures into an email right inside of Mail app, without ever having to leave the app to get your images, which is much more Mac-like, to be honest. I mean, if you’re sending an email, you want to be able to add photos right there. Right? Right.

Here’s how to do just that.

Bodymedia’s Fit fitness tracker is a hideously ugly, and is supported by one of the most willfully customer-hostile web services I have ever seen. Yet despite this, it actually does its job very well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4AXaFlIFQA&t=29s

Steve Jobs did plenty of great things in his time, but one thing would have surely shone through whatever path his life had taken: his cutting wit.

That Jobs was a perfectionist is undoubted. That he expected greatness of others is also clear. And — if you’ve read Walter Isaacson’s bio Steve Jobs —you’ll know that the great man was also something of a sociopath.

Add these traits together and you get some of the best, most barbed remarks ever uttered by a CEO in public.

Microsoft is gearing up to launch Windows 8 really soon along with Windows 8 Phone and the Microsoft Surface to compete with the iPad. The Surface might even be released around the same times as Apple’s iPad Mini, which could make the tablet wars pretty interesting.

Getting a jump start on their Surface ad campaigns, Microsoft has littered urban areas with guerrilla Surface ads and the lastest ones have been placed near a highly trafficked Apple Store in the Lincoln Park area of Chicago.

It’s $5 Friday and we’ve got our first game deal for you!

Tiny Bang Story is a complex, immersive puzzle game based on a little moon with a big problem. This Steam-powered game can be yours for just $5 today, and if you like puzzle games, that sounds like a deal to me—Your Game On With The Tiny Bang Story: Help Restore the Lost Beauty & Population of an Entire Planet](https://deals.cultofmac.com/sales/get-your-game-on-with-the-tiny-bang-story)

The advocacy group Consumer Reports wasn’t too friendly toward the iPhone 4, even after Apple offered free bumpers. They didn’t even like the iPhone 4S either. But with the iPhone 5 they’re changing their tune and saying that the iPhone is “among the best smartphones in our Ratings and the best iPhone yet.”

After conducting a series of tests on the iPhone 5, Consumer Reports concluded that the iPhone 5 doesn’t just surpass the iPhone 4S but also a number of other Android smartphones. They even said that despite the widespread criticism its received, Apple Maps is “competent enough.”