Sprint is looking to entice families (or individuals with numerous lines) away from their current carriers by offering an instant $400 store credit towards the purchase of “qualifying devices.” While that $400 is sure to catch your attention, it’s the “fine print” that caught mine. In order to receive this promo, you have to activate three or more lines on an Everything Data Share or Simply Everything Data plan — one of which, must be ported over from a non-Sprint company (Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile, and Common Cents Mobile are subsidiaries of Sprint). The stipulations don’t end there.

We’ve seen plenty of iPhone 5 leaked parts in recent weeks, and Apple is expected to host a huge media event next month revolving around all things iOS. On the iPad mini front, certain parts have started surfacing more recently, although we have yet to see the device’s rumored 7.85-inch display in all of its glory.

New leaked parts for what would allegedly be a smaller iPad have been released today, and a high-res shot of the dock connector reveals the smaller 8-pin design that’s also rumored to appear in the next iPhone.

A handful of studies recently have looked at the impact of the iPhone, iPad, and other mobile devices used for both work and personal pursuits is having on the work/life balance for professionals across a range of industries. One recent study showed mobile devices have contributed to the average American working seven hours each week, the equivalent of a full work day, out of the office and after hours. Another pointed how that many of us will work while on vacation thanks to our mobile devices.

For one segment of the workforce, however, iPhones, iPads, and Android devices and their ubiquitous connectivity have actually improved the work/life balance. That group is salaried IT professionals.

Months ago, it was discovered that AT&T would likely charge for FaceTime over Cellular in iOS 6. You can’t actually use the feature in the iOS 6 beta on any carrier, and it was believed that AT&T would charge it as an additional service, like tethering.

Today AT&T has revealed that it will in fact not charge for FaceTime over Cellular, but customers will have to be on one of AT&T’s new Mobile Share data plans.

Today is the final day of witness testimony in the Apple-Samsung trial and attorneys from both sides are squeezing as many last-minute evidence into the record. Apple is seeking more than $2.5B in damages from the Korean giant due to charges of infringement of the former’s patents, which include designs for major parts of the iPhone and iPad.

Guys. Gals. We totally just landed on Mars. Again! Ok, that news is almost two weeks old, but my chest is still pumping with adrenaline after watching those NASA nerd geniuses dominate the red surface with their radioactive robot.

Images of space always make the best wallpapers, and your Mac deserves something better than the default space wallpaper Apple provides in OS X. Here are 10 breathtaking retina wallpaper alternatives that will launch your Mac into space.

The most striking point in a recent report commissioned by Trend Micro was that IT administrators are beginning to rank Apple’s iOS ahead of RIM’s BlackBerry and other mobile platforms, but there were some other significant details in that report.

The report focuses on mobile security and issues related to bring your own device (BYOD) programs. Such programs encourage employees to use their personal iPhones, iPads, Android devices and other mobile technologies to access business resources and perform work related tasks. Many IT professionals believe that BYOD programs introduce security risks – and it looks like they’re right believe that. Decisive Analytics, the company that prepared the report, notes that nearly half the IT professionals that they surveyed in the U.S., U.K., and Germany admitted that their companies had already experienced a mobile-related security breach.

The WWE is ready to bring the pain, with its up close and personal WWE app for Android and iOS. Get in the ring with your favorite WWE Superstars, with instant access to profiles, biographies, social media feeds and more. Relive thousands of face smacking matches thanks to a video library consisting of thousands of clips. Whether you’re a die-hard fan or just looking for a little nostalgia, the WWE app has it all.

Many folks add events to their Calendar app on their iOS device the same way they’ve added events on paper since the way back days before smartphones and personal information managers. They flip to the date they want to add an event to, tap on the day, and then add it there.

This works, yes, but it can get tedious, with all the arrow tapping. What if your event is a couple years out? Even in month mode, tapping through 24 months is bound to get tedious.

There is, of course, an easier way.

The developers at Tapbots, makers of popular third-party Twitter client Tweetbot, have reassured everyone that their Twitter app isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Twitter announced a new set of rules for developers yesterday that could be interpreted as the beginning of the end for third-party Twitter clients like Tweetbot, but Tapbots is confident that their app’s future is secure.

Twitter wants developers to focus on making apps that enhance Twitter’s own apps and web experience. Very little room is being left for traditional clients like Tweetbot. The good news is that the clients that already boast huge user bases shouldn’t be in danger of disappearing.

Yesterday, Instagram launched version 3.0 of their iOS and Android app. Along with some new UI improvements, the coolest thing about the update is the new Photo Maps feature which allows users to organize photos via geo-location data to provide more interesting narratives for their followers.

The new Photo Maps feature is great, but it comes with some privacy concerns. Private user photos that are added to a Photo Map are viewable to any Android Instagram user thanks to a bug in the 3.0 update.

I have no idea how many apps there are in the iTunes store that let you add filters to your photos. But I do know how many there are to remove those filters, and turn your picture into something that you can look back on in ten years’ time without cringing: One. It’s called Normalize, and it comes from Joe Macirowski.

When the burglar who robbed Steve Jobs’ house walked out with jewelry, computers, and Steve’s old wallet, I doubt he could have imagined one of his heisted Macs would call in the coppers. But he learned that you don’t mess with a Mountain Lion. We’ll tell you the tale on our all-new CultCast—and don’t worry—all mock turtlenecks have been returned to their proper place.

We talk rumor control, iPhone 5 design, the Olympics, and more. Then, by popular request, it’s a battle of the browsers! We’ll tell you which web-ware we love the most, and why Apple’s own app still has a big issue to fix.

Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new episodes right on your iPhone or iPad with Apple’s newly updated and freshly debugged Podcasts App.

Show notes ahead!

Apple has seeded yet another OS X 10.8.1 developer beta today (build 12B17). The update contains no known issues, and developers are still asked to focus on specific areas like Active Directory, iCal, and Microsoft Exchange in Mail.

The first 10.8.1 developer beta was released one week ago, and this second minor update indicates that the public release is right around the corner.

Apple released OS X Mountain Lion to the public on July 25th, 2012 for $20 in the Mac App Store. The first 10.x.x update to a major OS X release usually comes with many bug and compatibility fixes that were discovered in the first release. Expect it to drop soon.

Jonathan Zufi is the curator and owner of the Shrine of Apple, a web-based museum with a single, slightly obsessive goal: to obtain one of every single Apple product ever produced, and display them all online as beautifully as possible.

Zufi wants to do for all the retro Apple stuff what modern bloggers (not unlike our very selves) do for every newly announced product.

If ever a website earned membership of the Cult of Mac, this is it.

Cult of Mac got in touch with Zufi to ask him a few questions about the project. Here’s what he said.

Are you ready to have your mind blown? Then take a look at this 360-degree panorama of the surface of Mars, complete with cameo appearance by the Curiosity rover. And here’s the (literal) twist: the picture is gyroscope-friendly, so you can scan the surface of the Red Planet by sweeping your iOS device up and down, left and right.

When Apple makes a major investment in a community, it can be a contentious thing, sometimes leading to a lot of environmental controversy. For Apple’s latest data center in Crook County, Oregon, though, Apple is doing something for the local community that would seemingly be pretty hard to criticize: tapping an ancient, recently discovered underground stream to give the city clean water.

So Apple and Google were once friends. Then they were frenemies. Now they’re just straight up, cold-hearted enemies who would kill a cute little baby platypus if it meant the other company would suffer. Can’t they just get along and get over their “thermonuclear” squabbles? Maybe. For a minute.

Kodak’s auction of intellectual property has kind of brought the two companies onto the same team. They both want Kodak’s digital imaging patents, but rather paying for them all by itself, Apple is part of a consortium of bidders that want to nab the Kodak patents for super cheap. Even stranger, Google isn’t the only Apple rival in the group.

IPad 3. Hired: Retina screen, speedy 4G internet, lots of lovely RAM. Fired: Weight. Heat. Girth. Retired: That damn battery.

Yes, if the iPad 3 were to be leaping over a fence to escape its doom, and Paris were to fire an arrow to stop it, the arrow would hit the iPad 3 in its battery charger, not its heel (sorry about the extended and twisted Greek adventure story there). Sure, the battery lasts long enough, but it takes forever to charge the thing.

Happily, Exogear’s stackable battery packs are here to help.

The first week of college is filled with a bunch of crazy new things you have to adapt to if you want to make it out alive. Co-ed dorms. People with bad facial hair. Faux-Intellectuals. Scantly clad women. Demented professors. Weird cultish groups called fraternities. The absence of personal hygiene. And most importantly, the astronomical prices of textbooks.

Why have we had a congressional hearing on steroid use in baseball, but not a peep about college textbook prices? We thought that the iPad and eBooks were supposed to make education a whole lot cheaper, but most college students still buy physical textbooks. Here at Cult of Mac, for back to school season, we wanted to find out what’s cheaper: buying an iPad and only buying eTextbooks or going the traditional route and buying forty or fifty pounds worth of dead paper every semester.

Which is better for the penny-pinching student? The results are pretty surprising.

The perception of the BlackBerry as the most secure and manageable mobile platform seems to be faltering. According to a new report, senior IT administrators now consider Apple’s iOS to be the most secure and manageable platform – despite the fact that RIM offers ten times the number of security and device management policies that Apple provides in iOS.

We might be geeks, but we do, contrary to popular belief, like to go outside sometimes and do things. Now while I just got back from Chicago Comic Con, you might like to go to a concert or ball game (nothing beats a baseball game in the summer).

This is a short and sweet post because the deal speaks for itself: ScoreBig: Get $30 Worth of Sports, Concert & Theater Tickets for Only $7!. Head over, pick up the deal, and head out somewhere (I suggest a Red Sox game, but that’s just me). Done.

Back in February, I told you about an iPhone case from a company called cellhelmet that comes with one major advantage: If your iPhone breaks while it’s inside the case, cellhelmet will fix or replace it for free. Now the company is expanding, and it’s about to launch a new line of screen protectors that offer a similar guarantee. If your iOS device’s screen gets scratched while wearing one, cellhelmet will replace the display.

Apple has been named in a California lawsuit filed by EPL Holdings for allegedly infringing a patent that covers audio and video playback at varying speeds. The filing reports that EPL met with Apple back 2002 to discuss  licensing over the patents it had developed. But the Cupertino company is alleged to have used the technology anyway without reaching a licensing deal.

In a series of tweets summarizing a new (and still unpublished on the Internet) report by Jefferies, Apple’s forthcoming HDTV is said to already be in full production, and will be sold with a carrier subsidy from AT&T and Verizon. They estimate that two million will be sold in 2013.