Fearing the fury of your boss after a really crappy performance isn’t unique to any profession. No one wants to make the big kahuna angry, and see them go nuts. Samsung’s executives tried to take the “maybe the chairman won’t be so mad if we wait a few days to tell him the bad news” approach. It didn’t work.

Last Friday, Samsung received the verdict that Apple won the patent lawsuit in the U.S., but top executives at the company waited four days before telling the company chairman Lee Kun-hee the bad news because they were afraid how he might react. Apparently, he freaked out a bit.

Etchings is an iPhone photography app which takes your pictures and turns them into very realistic etchings. Or fake etchings, I guess. Whatever you call them, if you pick the right source pic then you’ll end up with something that looks as if you lacquered your own metal plate, etched it, dropped it into an acid bath, washed and dried it, inked it up and ran it through a printing press.

Only instead of taking a whole morning, it takes just seconds.

iOS developer Marco Arment has discovered two new iPads — believed to be two iterations of the upcoming iPad mini — in his Instapaper developer logs. The devices have the “iPad2,5” and “iPad2,6” model numbers, according to their operating system, which haven’t been seen before, and could point to Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + cellular versions of the device.

At this point, despite Tim Cook’s claim that Apple is “doubling down on secrecy”, we’ve seen pretty much everything there is to see when it comes to the new iPhone. If we Apple fans were peeping toms, the iPhone 5 would be like spying on a girl we have a date with Friday night and, instead of seeing her merely undress, witnessing her actually take off her skin and dance around her bedroom as a skeleton.

There’s not much more to see, but the boys over at Nowhereelse.fr — who have just been on fire this year when it comes to iPhone 5 parts — have posted some more shots of the next iPhone, including some very good comparison shots putting into perspective just how frickin’ thin this phone is compared to what came before. It’s a wafer!

Sources for Bloomberg have corroborated recent iPad mini rumors by confirming that the device will launch this October with a 7.85-inch display supplied by AU Optronics and LG Display. This will be the first time AUO, which supplies displays for Apple’s MacBooks, will supply a display for one of the Cupertino company’s iOS devices.

It’s a battle royal on our shiny new CultCast! Don’t miss our Apple Vs. Samsung trial breakdown, where Cult of Mac reporter Jose Fermoso tells us what it was like to be in the tension-filled courtroom, what the verdict means for consumers, and where Apple and Samsung go from here.

Then, a topic you suggested, dear CultCast listeners! We talk AppleCare, Apple’s extended warranty program, and tell you when it makes sense, when it doesn’t, and which gadgets you should always keep covered.

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.

Read on for the show notes!

When the Sparrow team announced that it had been acquired by Google back in July, the future of its popular email clients for Mac and iOS became unclear. We still don’t really know what will become of Sparrow, but its creators promised it would continue support its customers.

Staying true to that promise, the team has updated Sparrow for iPhone for the first time since its Google acquisition, adding support for Google Chrome, better IMAP compatibility, and more.

Why limit yourself to one designer when you can tap into the talent of HUNDREDS? Competition breads excellence which is exactly what this deal will bring to your needed designs. The idea behind 99designs is to essentially have designers compete for your business. Awesome right!?

As part of Apple’s App Store redesign in iOS 6, thanks in part to their acquisition of Chomp, a new search result interface has been rolling out tonight for both the iPad and iPhone. The redesign, which brings a new cards-style interface to searches, replaces the old list format of results. As you can see from below, the design is consistent across both the iPhone and iPad user interface.

If you haven’t had the chance to play Basion on the Xbox or your Mac, yet – heck, even if you have – you owe it to yourself to pick this game up for your iPad.

Bastion is available on Mac or the Xbox gaming console for around $15. The iPad version was released today at a fantastic $4.99, making this the best gaming deal you can get for a brand new out-of-the-gate game.

The world’s first cross-platform MMO is still alive and kicking. Whether you’re just getting into it or have been around since its iOS debut back in April 2012, you’ll be happy to hear that today marks the beginning of Pocket Legends’ Double XP weekend!

At VMWorld, this week VMWare showed of Horizon Mobile for iOS – an enterprise solution that separates business apps and content on an iOS device from a user’s personal apps, documents, and data. It’s an iOS version of a tool that VMWare previously demoed, but hasn’t yet shipped, for Android devices. While the name and the goal of Horizon mobile is essentially the same on both platforms, the company is taking a vastly different approach for iPhones and iPads.

Not only is the iOS approach different, it’s also nowhere near as revolutionary – other mobile enterprise companies have using similar approaches for a while and the one truly distinctive feature is one that Apple might not approve for distribution.

Adobe has just announced that Photoshop CS6 will be getting Retina support this fall. Lightroom 4 will also be updated with Retina graphic support in coming months, although a specific release date has not been given.

2012 MacBook Pro with Retina display owners will be able to use CS6 in full HiDPI mode when the update drops.

Unfortunately, the App Store has become home to thousands of poorly designed copycat apps that try to ride the coattails of other popular titles. Such apps use a similar name, look, description, and even icon to trick customers into downloading. While Apple is known for the stringent requirements it puts in place for third-party developers, many clear ripoffs still manage to slip through somehow.

It appears as though Apple is starting to crack down on copycat apps with more force. App Store submissions that uses icons similar to other popular apps are now getting banned.

Steve Jobs famously declared a thermonuclear war on Google’s alleged iPhone copycat Android OS, but the full-on battle between the companies may be prevented before more of their lawyers have broken out of the trenches. A Reuters report this morning revealed Google’s Larry Page and Apple’s Tim Cook are planning on conducting preliminary talks regarding the companies’ IP disputes, a series of talks which may lead to a truce deal in the upcoming months.

We all have that contact or three that just can’t seem to take a hint. They keep calling and calling, and we really just need to get our work done. If you use the audible ringer on your iPhone, there’s a way to ignore that caller (along with any other folks you’d like to selectively mute) with a silent ringtone.

I like the Apple Store as much as any Apple fan, but I wouldn’t want to live and work there.

You can’t say the same thing for David Wu, though. “Call me mad. Call me crazy. But I woke up one day around three months or more ago and decided to completely renovate my home study.”

So what’d he do? He made his home office a virtual recreation of an Apple Store, not only including a replica of Apple’s distinctive Fetzer Wooden Maple desks (with working drawers), a replica Apple Store sign with built-in, Apple TV-driven LED display and even a couple shelves full of boxed Apple products.

I’ll go ahead and call David Wu crazy. Here’s to the crazy ones. Read more about how he did it at his blog. More pictures of David’s sick set-up below, but make sure to go to Wu’s personal site for the rest.

Given the number of iPad cases that arrive at my door each week for review, you might be surprised that I still buy the things. And a couple of weeks ago when I picked up a natty little felt iPad bag in a local store, I couldn’t believe the price. At just €20 (around $25), it’s a steal.

Josh Begley had a great idea on how to get people talking about the U.S. Military’s controversial use of attack drones. He created an iOS app called Drones+ that sends users a push notification every time a US drone strikes a target.

All those notification will probably get you thinking about whether drones are good or bad. The aim of Drones+ was to create a conversation using barebones information. It doesn’t contain nasty images of corpses, or a death toll meter. All the data comes from publicly available sources. It’s family friendly. But for some reason, Apple really doesn’t want iPhone owners to use it, so they’ve rejected it three times.

With the release of iOS 6, Apple will offer business users a range of new features. A few of which are VIP email filtering (already in Mountain Lion) with custom notifications, more options when declining a phone call on the iPhone, much-needed privacy options, and Apple’s new Do Not Disturb feature – which should help some mobile professionals to “switch off” after work and maybe even get a good night’s sleep.

iOS updates are generally designed to be user-friendly and easy enough that anyone can manage to install them. As with any major OS or business critical software upgrade, however, there may be unforeseen issues with iOS 6 – particularly when it comes to internal iOS apps and iOS access to enterprise systems.

An iOS 6 upgrade policy and strategy is something that every IT department should have in place before Apple releases iOS 6. For businesses that actively support user devices in the workplace through a BYOD (bring your own device) program, that upgrade strategy is even more critical.

Concept is one of the nicest implementations of the virtual corkboard/scrapbook we’ve seen. You can add photos, post-its and index-cards to various “boards,” and rearrange them at will.

It’s a 1.0 release, and as such lacks a few basic niceties (like portrait orientation) but the polish and ease of use make up for it.

When rumors hit that Apple was going to make the display of the iPhone 5 taller, but not wider, people were kind of upset that their iPhone was going to be a lot longer. However, some new images of the iPhone 5 front panel show that even though the display will be larger, the device itself won’t be that much taller than the iPhone 4S because Apple is reducing the size of the bezel around the display.

Chinese parts distributor SINOCET published these images of the new display, as well as the video at the bottom of this post, that compare the size of the iPhone 5 display with that of an iPhone 4S. 

Samsung is still fuming that they got their trash handed to them in court last week. The legal beat down they received in court was just raw and powerful and awesome, and they totally deserved it.

Samsung is understandably mad, and probably a little embarrassed and majorly vindictive, so they went out this morning and declared that if Apple even thinks about releasing an iPhone 5 with LTE they will sue them immediately, and they may have the patents to win. Maybe.

Apple’s latest desktop operating system, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, launched just over a month ago, but its usage is spreading like a raging forest fire. 48 hours after its release the OS was already running on 3.2% of all Macs, but new data is showing that 10% of all Mac users are now running Mountain Lion on their machines.

Chitika has been tracking the adoption of Mountain Lion via their ad network, and says that the usage of Mountain Lion has been increasing steadily with no sign of letting up. The new OS is on track to outpace OS X Lion, which took three months to gain 14% use on all Macs.

The “bad piggies” have something diabolical planned, and whatever it is, it’s PIG, erm… BIG! They’ve started their social networking campaign and even “Haz a Facebook.” Now we’ve got a teaser video of what appears to be an incoming spin-off to the Angry Birds phenomenon. Perhaps it’s time for the pigs to finally have their day. We’re just going to have to wait and see, for now, here’s the teaser video.