You know those annoying friends that grab your iPhone at parties and then think it’s cool to explore all your pictures, texts, phone calls, and every other crevice of your iPhone? Some people don’t understand that there’s this thing called privacy, and that you have to get permission to look through all that stuff. It’s in the constitution. Look it up.

Apparently the privacy laws that some people thought we had with our iPhones actually don’t apply to police seizures, as two recent court rulings have shown that it is totally legal for police to seize an iPhone and impersonate the owner. If your iPhone ever falls into the clutches of the police and they want to sext with your ex-girlfriend, you’re just out of luck because that’s totally legal.

In putting together the various features of Mountain Lion, Apple may end up encouraging business and enterprise customers to actually make their Macs less secure instead of ratcheting up security as some key Mountain Lion capabilities are intended to do.

There are a handful of technologies involved, but they center around iCloud and Apple’s requirement that apps sold in the Mac App Store support Apple’s application sandboxing technique.

The most expensive app I’ve ever purchased is now on sale for half the price. The SlingPlayer app has been discounted by 50% across all mobile platforms and can now be had for $14.99. This deal applies to both the tablet and phone apps and is well worth the price to have your full home cable service in the palm of your hands.

When Ron Johnson left Target to become Apple’s Retail Chief in 2000, people thought he was absolutely nuts. Apple was in danger of going out of business, and other PC manufacturers like Gateway were closing their retail locations. Johnson ignored all the warning signs because he says he saw that Apple was about to be a huge part of the digital revolution. He also recognized that Apple offered consumers something other companies couldn’t – amazing products and an incredible retail experience.

In a recent interview at Fortune Conferences, Johnson explained why customers choose to come to the Apple store to buy their products when they could get them on Amazon or Best Buy for a lot cheaper:

Apple and Samsung have been tirelessly fighting each other over patent issues for years now. Things have gotten gosh darn ridiculous, and everyone wishes they would just kiss and make up already. In an attempt to put an end to their legal battle, Tim Cook met with top Samsung executives on Monday to see if a middle ground could be reached between the two sides. The meeting comes on the heels of a similar meeting between Tim Cook and Samsung CEO, Choi Gee-sung, back in May.

Readdle has today issued a major update to PDF Expert, its excellent PDF management app for iPad, to introduce a number of handy new features. In addition to faster PDF rendering, version 4.1 brings Dropbox AutoSync, Microsoft SkyDrive integration, and more.

iTunes Match has expanded its reach in Europe today as Apple brings the music matching service to Hungary and Poland more than 18 months after it made its debut in the United States. The Cupertino company is yet to add these countries to its iTunes Match availability page, but users report that the service is now appearing in iTunes.

The wireless spectrum crunch is forcing most mobile carriers to consider options to address a future in which there simply isn’t enough frequency available to easily meet the ever-growing demand for 3G and LTE connections. One idea that has been floated is developing systems that can offload mobile data onto Wi-Fi networks.

That idea isn’t new. In fact most iPhone and 3G/LTE iPad users tend to offload data service to home or public Wi-Fi networks. Doing so has clear advantages to consumers in that it helps avoid any overage fees and it can provide a faster connection in some circumstances.

Dealing with limited spectrum resources, however, carriers have been forced to consider ways of offloading data themselves rather than waiting and hoping that users to take action on their own.

Apple is finally preparing high resolution graphics for its online store to accommodate the Retina displays on the new iPad and the next-generation MacBook Pro. Although the Cupertino company has already overhauled most of its website, the online store still includes plenty of old graphics that appear fuzzy on its latest devices. But not for long.

If you want to watch a movie on your Apple TV, but you want the sound to play through a stereo or home theater system, rather than through your TV, the only way to do that right now is to install a bunch of messy cables that connect one device to the other — and they need to be relatively close together.

In iOS 6 beta 3, however, you can send audio from the Apple TV to an AirPlay-enabled speaker system at the other end of the room wirelessly.

Apple’s presentation software Keynote is, in my opinion, a fantastic application for making presentations on your Mac. It’s easy to use, presents a unified metaphor for designing slideshow presentations, and makes using rich media a very simple process. Unfortunately, not everyone who uses a Mac will have Keynote, as it seems that Office is the de-facto standard in many businesses and computers.

Fear not, however, as viewing Keynote files on a Mac is super easy, even if you don’t have the Keynote app itself, which is also an affordable and very worthwhile $10 in the Mac App Store. Here are three ways to do just that.

Back in June, Cult of Mac reported that Apple was set to introduce a new requirement for iOS apps that meant every single one had to ship with an icon measuring a whopping 1024×1024 pixels for Retina display devices. Developers are now reporting that the same requirement has been applied to Mac apps being sold through the Mac App Store, and that they cannot physically upload their apps without them.

Antivirus software specialist Bitdefender has found that nearly 19% of iOS apps access your address book without your knowledge — or your consent — when you’re using them, and 41% track your location. What’s most concerning is over 40% of them don’t encrypt your data once it has been collected.

That’s all going to change when iOS 6 makes its debut later this year, however.

Remember that early iPad prototype we showed you yesterday, built between 2002 and 2004, which looked like an old white iBook with a touchscreen? Now some new shots have surfaced that show a comparison between this and the iPad 2, and there are some interesting differences.

First of all, Apple originally built the iPad with a 12-inch display, and it was huge.

The day has finally come. Subatomic Studios has released Fieldrunners 2 for the iPhone and iPod touch in the App Store. In case you don’t remember, the original Fieldrunners pioneered tower defense games on the iPhone back when the App Store first launched in 2008.

Fieldrunners 2 has now gone live in the App Store, and it looks to be another smash hit.

It was recently discovered that AT&T will likely charge for FaceTime over 3G when iOS 6 launches for the public this fall. Users could previously only use Apple’s FaceTime when connected to a WiFi network, but iOS 6 (now in its third developer beta) will allow for FaceTime over both WiFi and a cellular connection.

Sprint, the nation’s third largest carrier, now says that it will not charge its customers for FaceTime over 3G in iOS 6. Both AT&T and Verizon still refuse to give any details.

Popular keyboard shortcut launcher Alfred has been updated with several new features and improvements. Version 1.3 of Alfred for Mac integrates with Apple’s Quick Look in OS X to let you see previews of files inside Alfred. A neat feature called file buffer gives you quick access to app and file placeholders above Alfred’s main search window.

The developers of Alfred have also added numerous other improvements and bug fixes in this 1.3 update. We’ve got the full change log.

The Dark Knight Rises is like the most anticipated movie of the year. People are going straight up loco for this movie. Is Batman going to die? Is Bane really just Ricky Martin’s alter-ego? Will Michael Keaton make a cameo? We don’t know, we haven’t seen it yet.

If you’re as excited we are though, then you’re probably trying to gorge on as much Batman stuff as humanly possible right now. Don’t worry, we got you covered and put together this little guide on all the ways you can use your iPad to get your Batman fix while waiting for the movie to finally hit theaters.

A recent Reynolds Journalism Institute study indicates that the iPad is becoming a primary vehicle for many users to consume (read, listen to, or watch) daily local, national, and world news and that it is leading a revolution in terms of how frequently people read news as well as how much news they read on a daily or weekly basis.

The survey noted that the iPad is the preferred large media tablet on the market with news consumers surveyed with an 88% share of that market. The Kindle Fire was the top pick among small media tablets with 68% of the news consumer market. The iPhone was the overall preferred smartphone with 39% of the news consumer market.

It also noted that the iPad (and other large tablet devices) seem to be encouraging news reading among all demographics including young adults. Among young adults (18 – 24 years old), 67% read news on one or more mobile devices and averaged five hours of news reading/consumption per week. Among young adults with iPads, 84% read news on their device(s) for an average of 7.3 hours per week.

Verizon’s 4G LTE coverage map continues to look like a teenager with a bad case of acne, however, they are lighting up more cities per month than other carriers have all year. The next batch of markets to receive the Verizon 4G LTE treatment is just as large, with 33 new markets and 32 expanding markets set to go live tomorrow. There’s a reason you pay Big Red all that cash, and this is one of them.

While Apple’s taking a wait and see approach to the nascent mobile payments and digital wallet industries, PayPal seems ready to launch an all-out offensive. In addition to its existing assortment of mobile, local, and online payment systems, PayPal announced this week that it is acquiring startup card.io.

card.io currently works with a range of iOS and Android developers to help them integrate mobile credit/debit card payment capabilities into their apps without the need of additional hardware like Square’s card reader or PayPal’s Here card reader. Instead, card.io’s partners use the built-in camera of an iPhone (or other iOS or Android device) to snap a photo of a credit card. The card number and related information is extracted and passed to a payment processor to complete the transaction (manual keying in a card number is also supported as a backup).

The National Cancer Institute estimates that there will be 2 million new diagnoses of skin cancer in the U.S. alone this year, including nearly 80,000 cases of melanoma. Besides the obvious practice of routine checkups, those known to be a bit more preemptive have taken to whole body photography as a means to spot cancerous activity before it’s too late.

An iPhone app called UMSkinCheck is meant to be an easy way to check for skin cancer without the need of a trained professional. All you need to do is have someone use your iPhone to take 23 pictures of yourself completely nude.

One of the limitations of the iPhone and iPod touch version of Safari has always been a lack of tabbed browsing. Granted, there’s only so much space on the smaller mobile screen, but all the same – tabbed browsing is great.

So is being able to open tabs in the background, so that you can continue reading, say, an article on Cult of Mac, but still save an interesting link in another tab, just like you can on the Mac with a Command-click. With a simple Settings tweak, you can.

If you use your MacBook with a Thunderbolt Display at home or at the office, and you don’t use your MacBook’s display as a secondary monitor, then a Henge Dock is a great way to keep your desk neat and tidy.

Available for all recent MacBooks, MacBook Airs, and MacBook Pros from 11 to 17 inches — with prices ranging from $55 to $75 — it provides you with a place to dock your MacBook in a vertical position so that it takes up as little space as possible. Its integrated ports mean you can still all of your notebook’s USB ports, its MagSafe connector, audio jack, and more.

The Henge Dock promises to be the “first truly comprehensive docking station solution for Apple’s line of notebook computers” There are some things it could do better, however.

Seeking to challenge the iPad’s ongoing success in the healthcare field, Panasonic has announced an updated version of Toughbook tablet for doctors offices and hospitals. The update is the latest for Toughbook product line that Panasonic introduced in 2008.

The 10-inch screen size is about the only thing in the new Toughbook CF-H2 Health tablet offers that is similar to the iPad. The Toughbook is a Windows 7 tablet powered by an Intel Core i5 processor that relies on a 320GB hard drive rather than flash memory for storage (though a 128 GB SSD is available as a custom build option). It weighs in at a whopping 1.58 kg (3.48 pounds) – more than double the weight of the new iPad.

The Toughbook, which will ship next month, will have an entry-level price of €1,898 (approximately $2,330). That’s more than four times the cost of an entry-level new iPad and just shy of six times the cost of the entry-level iPad 2.