When a frail Steve Jobs announced it was time he leave Apple for good, it seemed an impossible task for anyone to fill his role as leader and CEO of one of the world’s best tech companies. But someone needed to take the reins, and so on our newest CultCast, we take a look into the first full year of Tim Cook as CEO, and ponder how the soft-spoken operations genius has imprinted Apple with his own unique DNA, and lead the company to heights many thought a post-Jobs Apple could never reach.

Scott Trattner, the executive creative director behind the “Genius” advertising campaign — which was quickly killed by Apple shortly after its debut — has left his role at TBWA/Media Arts Lab in favor of a new role with advertising agency 72andSunny.

U.K. retailer PC World has made some incredible reductions to Apple’s last-generation Macs, with prices starting at just £379 (about $670) for a refurbished Mac mini. It also has MacBook Airs starting at £499 (about $790), and MacBook Pros starting at £649 (about $1,028) — that’s £350 (about $554) off the original price tag.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a Seoul court ruled that Apple has infringed on two of Samsung’s patents. In addition, Apple must stop selling the  infringing products in South Korea. Apple isn’t the only one at fault here, as the court also ruled that Samsung had infringed upon Apple’s “bounceback” patent. According to the WSJ’s Evan Ramstad:

Looks like a split decision overall in South Korea court, but Samsung faring better than Apple with judges.

In addition, Reuters reports that Apple has been given a small fine of roughly $35,400.

Adobe updated their cloud-based photo management app, Revel, to version 1.5 across both Mac and iOS apps. The new version includes the ability to sort photos into albums, share private web albums on the Adobe Revel website, and add captions to photos. Along with an updated user interface and new photo themes, you can use your Facebook ID to sign up for a Revel account.

Real-time strategy never looked this good.

Today, Eufloria was released in an iPhone-only version for three dollars, while the five dollar universal version has been updated to include support for the iPhone 4S, Retina graphics for the new iPad, iCloud saves, and game session saving (for when you hit the Home button by accident).

For months rumors have been saying that Apple is getting ready to launch two major, new products this fall: the iPhone 5 and iPad mini. Both of these names are placeholders for what will be the sixth-generation iPhone and a 7-inch version of the current iPad. Everyone pretty much agrees that the new iPhone will be announced on September 12th, but opinions are split on the possibility of Apple also announcing the iPad mini during the same event. While it’s nearly 100% confirmed that a unibody iPhone 5 will be announced on the 12th and then ship on the 21st, specific dates have not surfaced for the elusive iPad mini—we haven’t even seen so much as an incriminating part leak.

While some think that Apple will announce both the new iPhone and iPad mini at its September event, it actually makes more sense for Apple to hold two separate media events this fall for each product. Here’s why.

Curious about who, exactly, is behind the growing number of TV ads for and against this or that political candidate, this or that political issue? Well, wonder no longer, as the developers behind Super PAC App bring Shazam-like audio recognition technology to the political advertisement space.

Small, wifi-enabled with the ability to print from tablets and smartphones, low-cost printing, equipped with a touchscreen, relatively inexpensive, fast…looks like a shopping list for the perfect printer, right? And that’s what Brother might have in their just-launched MFC-J4510DW, a sleek printer with Google Cloud Print connectivity and a price tag of $200 (though I’d love an explanation as to why Brother has stuck with alphabet-soup product names while its competitors have moved on to printers with names like “Artisan” and “Envy”).

The Electronic Frontier Foundation today issued a statement condemning the Apple-Samsung trial as the latest high-profile case to use patent laws to bludgeon innovation and consumer protection in the U.S.

Many fast food and restaurant chains now offer iPhone apps that facilitate ordering for delivery or pick up. A number of services, like Splick-it and Grubhub, also help facilitate such orders through an iOS app, offering independent restaurants to compete with the chains. Beyond apps, there are web-based services like Mealeo that offer the same functionality. Despite being a relatively new phenomenon, online and mobile ordering has become a serious business – over two-thirds of Americans use such services on a regular basis.

In fact, of those two-thirds of Americans, most say they tend to order more from a mobile or web service than they would over the phone or in person.

It’s been relatively quiet on the Apple TV jailbreak front since the untethered jailbreak was released for iOS 5.0.1. The only thing we really know about the third-gen Apple TV jailbreak is that it won’t be released for awhile. An untethered jailbreak is being worked on for new Apple TV owners behind the scenes, but no ETA has been given.

A lot is still happening in the Apple TV jailbreak community, however. FireCore today announced a huge update to the popular aTV Flash (black) software. Version 2.0 will supercharge a jailbroken Apple TV with even more features and improvements. A short beta period for aTV Flash (black) 2.0 will be offered before the final release, and there’s a limited number of spots available for those interested.

iPhone and iPad video recording is fast becoming a standard way of sharing the view of our world these days. With the new HD video options in the iPhone 4S and the new iPad, of course, the videos are getting even larger. What’s a budding videographer supposed to do with these huge files when sending them to our friends and family?

Turns out, you can trim the videos down right on your iOS device using the Trim feature. Here’s how.

Folks, this is a one-day deal that you would be an absolute fool to miss out on. The app is Focus, and it lets you mess with the focus and such of your pics. I was a skeptic at first. I have a gabillion photo apps on hand and thought, “do I really need another one?“.

Then I tried it.

I’m getting this app ASAP because at $3, it’s a steal and very, very cool. Even if the price doesn’t get you, the examples I did just now (in about 5 minutes) sure will.

We I first wrote about the R*Case, I remarked with typical hyperbolic overstatement that it “looks very useful.” Well, the kind folks at TouchNS sent one (or actually four, along with a bunch of really bad styluses) for review, and it turns out I was right. In fact, it is now my favorite iPad skin.

Three months ago, we first heard that Facebook — probably the slowest and lousiest app many people have on their smartphones — was going to get a blistering fast speed update. Now it’s finally here. And yep, it’s much faster… finally a Facebook app that isn’t absolutely crummy.

If you want to power your bike’s lights and charge your iPhone as you pedal, you should have specced a dynamo hub when you got the wheels built. But either you were too cheap (like me) or couldn’t see the point. Don’t worry! There’s hope for both of us in the form or the ECOXPOWER generator, an aftermarket power and lighting system for your bike.

The iPad became a big hit in the K-12 education market over the past year. Pioneering schools that brought Apple’s tablet into the classroom last school year proved that the iPad can be a excellent learning tool – one that has immense power to transform education.

As the new school year begins, and hundreds of thousands of students across the U.S. become iPad users thanks to one-to-one iPad deployments, there’s already talk that the iPad’s success in schools will be short-lived. The belief is that iPads will quickly be replaced by tablets running Microsoft’s Windows RT or Windows 8.

That assumption is absurd and delusional.

Big glass walls? Check. Wood product tables with open layout? Check. Minimalist design? Check. Retail staff wearing blue t-shirts? Check. This isn’t an Apple Store, though; it’s the newest Samsung Experience store that just opened in Sydney where visitors can play with all the greatest smartphones, tablets, and laptops on the planet made by Samsung.

The store looks a lot like the inside of the Apple Store that’s just a short walk away, but Samsung swears they didn’t copy Apple this time, or even look at what Apple was doing in the retail space. Right!

What if I told you there was a plugin for Lightroom which would mirror the latest edit of every photo in library in the cloud, and make it available in a neat, iPad optimized browser view right away?

You’d probably just call me a liar, skip to the next post and maybe take a sip of your coffee, muttering “That idiot Sorrel is doing it again. I’m writing to hi damn editor this time.”

Well, you’d be a fool. Instead, let that coffee cool a little and come take a look at Mosaic.

Apple just released OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion a month ago, and now it’s already got an update. If you click “Software Update…” from your Apple icon menu, 10.8.1 should be ready to download. The update weighs only 24.2MB, and  is mostly just a bunch of bug fixes, but you can read the full notes here:

Apple retail stores are now installing special dock connectors to prevent iOS devices from being stolen. They look just like the regular USB cable that ships with every iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, but they feature a nifty anti-left lock that prevents them from being removed from the device — essentially tethering the unit to the table.

An old-as-the-hills Easter Egg has been rediscovered by New York based hacker collective NYC Resistor: hidden pictures of the Macintosh team from 1986 hidden in the Mac SE’s system ROM. The Easter Egg has been known about forever — references to it on the Internet go back to at least 1999 — but more interesting than the Easter Egg itself is how NYC Resistor discovered for themselves how it was done: by good, old fashioned hacking.

The old one lasted a quarter of a century, but Microsoft has now unveiled a new logo ahead of the anticipated launch of Windows 8, the most radical revision of the world’s most popular desktop operating system to date. It’s boring, but in regards to embracing the minimalism of today’s design trends with a soft, non-stylized font, it does a good job.

Steve Jobs’s widow, Laurene Powell, has been named as the 49th most powerful woman. She features alongside billionaires, CEOs, entertainers, and heads of state in a list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women composed by Forbes.