Rumor has had it for the past few months that Apple was going to phase out its reliance upon Google’s Maps API in iOS 6 in favor of its own revolutionary new mapping system, which it has been working on off-and-on since 2009. Now Boy Genius Report has exclusive images of what they say is the new iOS 6 Maps app in action, and boy, if the composite mock-up they put together based on those images is anything to go by,  it looks like a total game changer.

You one of the lucky ones who managed to buy a ticket to this year’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference during the approximately two hours while tickets were on sale? Apple’s posted the schedule of events that you can expect, as well as the requisite app making finding and scheduling your itinerary for WWDC 2012 all the easier.

Source: developer.apple.com

The Halopad is — not surprisingly — an iPad stand in the shape of a halo. Not that you’ll find this halo floating over the heads of saintly prophets — instead it is simply a chunky, lightweight plastic ring which has slots cut into it for propping the iPad at various angles. It’s simple, it’s cheap, and it’s not ugly.

Sure would be great to listen to every day documents easily, say, on a long drive or airplane commute. There are a ton of ways to make this happen, including some third party apps, but this is a pretty slick, easy way to turn any text you can highlight into spoken text that can be put on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, ready to go along with you.

Shortly after the Chronic Dev-Team launched Absinthe 2.0 last Friday, Apple pushed out a revised iOS 5.1.1 (9B208) update for the iPhone 4. As yet, no other device has received the same update, and it’s unclear exactly what the software does. But if you installed it accidentally, you’ll be pleased to know that the Rocky Racoon untether now supports it.

WriteRoom, arguably one of the best distraction-free text editors for Mac and iOS, is on sale today for just $1.99 as part of TwoDollarTuesday. That’s 80% off its regular $9.99 price tag, but the offer is valid for today only, so you’ll need to grab it quick.

Have you ever been browsing through your iPhone’s camera roll and stumbled across a photo that you don’t remember taking? Or would you like to know how old that picture of your sister’s cat is? Then you need Dater, a new tweak for jailbroken iPhones that adds timestamps and dates to the pictures stored on your device.

If you happen to own a LUMIX DMC-FX90, you might be interested to know Panasonic has dropped an app into both the Play and App Store to allow users to view and control certain aspects of their camera remotely. The LUMIX remote allows your Live View screen to be displayed on your smartphone. As long as you perform a firmware update to your FX90, the LUMIX remote app will provide you with:

Storyful for iOS says it can help you “separate the news from the noise.” It plucks interesting news stories from social media networks, spotting the stuff that’s trending and turning it into a news feed. That all sounds great, until you start trying to use it – although it’s a great idea with great promise, it’s let down by too many performance problems.

Apple introduced Reminders alongside iOS 5 and Siri (for the iPhone 4S) this past October, and while the world wasn’t exactly stunned, the app made an impression. The trick with any app, of course, is finding ways to use it efficiently.

Below are five of the best tips we’ve found to help you use this simple app more effectively, all in one place for your viewing pleasure. We tried to make sure that we focused on features that all iPhone owners could use, so as not to leave out those who haven’t upgraded to the 4S just yet.

Say goodbye to brakes and gears and look forward to a motorbike racing experience like no other in what promises to be the “most exhilarating racing game on mobile devices.” Available today for Android and iOS, FIM Speedway GP 2012 from Vivid Games and BSI Speedway is the only official speedway game for smartphones, and it’s only $1.99.

The biggest challenge for many business when dealing with the consumerization of IT and BYOD trends is often cultural. IT needs to cede control of devices, app choices, and where/when employees and executives actually interact with corporate data. That’s a cultural shift for IT. There’s an equal cultural shift that needs to happen when it comes to users and executives who must take at least partial responsibility for keeping their iPhones, iPads, or other devices secure along with the business data on them.

This requires user education and solid communication between users and IT. To be truly effective, security policies need to be endorsed by senior management and adoption and understanding of them needs to follow from the top down through the organization.

Unfortunately, that isn’t what’s happening in many businesses. In fact, the people most likely to ignore or violate such policies are C-level executives, members of the board of directors, and even IT.

Apple’s massive orders for its next-generation MacBook Pros are causing havoc for its supply chain, with many facing labor shortages as they struggle to meet its demands. Others have been forced to outsource their business as a desperate attempt to complete orders before they start shipping.

One of the hallmarks of Google Docs (and now Google Drive) is that you can use it anywhere. Within reason, any device with a modern web browser can deliver some level of viewing, editing, and collaboration. On iOS devices, however, native Office-style apps like Quickoffice tend to deliver a somewhat better user experience and are capable of opening, editing, and syncing documents with your Google.

There’s a clear value for such capability on an iOS device in that most apps deliver a better experience than Google Docs running in mobile Safari. Is there a similar need on the desktop? Would a native app a better solution than using Chrome or Safari on your Mac? According to Mac/iOS developer Tricky Duck, the answer is yes.

Now that you’ve filled your device with bargain iOS games from those Memorial Day App Store sales, maybe it’s time to accessorize it, too. ZAGG, which makes some of the finest accessories for mobile devices, has discounted 20% off keyboards and cases, and 50% off almost everything else.

Struggling to get a decent signal on your iPhone? If you’ve jailbroken your handset with the latest Absinthe 2.0 release, then you may be in luck. SignalRefresh is a new, $0.99 iPhone tweak that promises to boost your signal strength to give you “the strongest possible voice/data signal at your current location.”

Okay, the headline may be a little exaggerated, but LG has finally given the iPhone’s Retina display a real competitor. Its new, 5-inch smartphone panel boasts a 1920 x 1080 resolution with a staggering 440 pixels per inch and promises to provide incredibly crisp images with full, high-definition video.

In comparison, the iPhone’s 3.5-inch Retina display boasts just 326 pixels per inch at a 960 x 640 resolution.

On Friday, May 25th hackers from the Chronic Dev Team released Absinthe 2.0, a tool that jailbreaks iOS 5.1.1 on nearly all iOS devices, including the third-gen iPad. The untethered jailbreak can be performed on an iOS device after downloading the free Absinthe app on any Mac, Windows or Linux computer.

Once again proving that jailbreaking is becoming more mainstream, impressive Absinthe download numbers have been announced from over the weekend.

We’re a big fan of awesome wallpapers here at Cult Of Mac, so we’re happy to announce to you today that you can now download our new, official Cult Of Mac wallpapers.

We’ve got two wallpaper designs for you, both featuring the Cult Of Mac logo, as seen above. There’s not only Mac versions available, but both iPhone and iPad optimized wallpapers as well, so you can use them on all of your devices.

You can download the zipped folder containing the wallpapers (22.4MB) here.

Rumors have been saying for the past two years that Facebook is working on its own smartphone. According to The New York Times today, Facebook has been hiring former Apple engineers who worked on the iPhone and iPad. The new talent will reportedly help Facebook try to build its own smartphone by next year, according to the report.

It’s the next big thing. It’s what makes all the great—and cool—websites, not to mention powerful mobile apps (like LinkedIn’s new app for iOS). What is it? HTML 5 and CSS. Demand for HTML5-powered sites is going through the roof. Everyone wants an amazing site that behaves just like an app. The question is, do you know HTML 5? No? Now you can learn.

For only $49 you get 60 lectures with over 7 hours of video content on learning HTML5 and CSS brought to you by Udemy, one of the leaders in online video education. These lessons are taught by experts at Infinite Skills and start you right off at the beginning. Start with “basic” and get all the way to “amazing” at your own pace. You can watch, and re-watch, all the lessons as many times as you need. In fact, you have lifetime access to these lessons from Udemy, so you can always go back an get a refresher when you need it. How’s that for a deal? Only $49 and you can become a web wizard and start making the next big thing.

You ready to learn?

Convergence. It’s all the rage, lately, and what better two items to converge than your Mac, running OS X, and your iPad (or iPhone, or iPod touch), running iOS? IT’s two great tastes that taste great together, to quote an old commercial that mostly no one has heard of any more.

With these five tips, you’ll amaze your friends with a Mac that looks more like your iPad than it does your Mac. So, read on, intrepid souls, and follow our steps to make that sweet Apple computer into something resembling the post-PC magical device we all love.

Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is a new web browser from Yahoo! called Axis, which hopes to redefine web searching on desktops and iOS devices. We’ve also got a terrific app for web editors, one that’ll help you monitor which apps are accessing your personal data, and two new apps from Facebook.

Not only does Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster see Apple’s and its investors’ financial outlook as essentially rosy for the foreseeable future, but he’s taking it one step further. He’s convinced that he has at least ten reasons to stay bullish on Apple stock over the next three years. He also thinks the stock price is going to hit $1000 per share.

Rich King Casting is looking for people to work on a “movie in Silicon Valley / Palo Alto based on Steven Jobs.” The casting company is looking for folks with that quintessential seventies look, with “longish hair, sideburns etc.”

In addition, if you have a car that was around in 1965 to 1973, the’d be interested in checking them out as well. The Craigslist ad also promises “Pay when working and meals included,” which sounds like a fantastic deal to me.