Jony Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, swapped sunny Cupertino for London today to receive his knighthood from Princess Royal at Buckingham Palace. The 45-year-old Brit, who is responsible for the iconic designs behind Apple’s computers and iOS devices, said he is “both humbled and sincerely grateful” for the “absolutely thrilling honor.”

While in the capital, Ive also gave what is likely his most revealing interview yet to British broadsheet The Telegraph, in which he talks about Apple’s design and its focus on simplicity, Steve Jobs, and the company’s current projects.

Let’s be honest, at some point we’ve all dreamt about dusting off our funeral suit and fighting aliens with Will Smith as a Men in Black agent. Thanks to Gameloft, that dream is now a reality… on your Android or iOS device.

Men in Black 3, the official game of one of this year’s biggest action blockbusters, is now available from the App Store and Google Play, giving you the opportunity to create and manage your own MiB agency and protect New York from the scum of the universe — for free.

Lightroom-using iPad owners, get ready for some good news: Photosmith 2 has just launched a few hours early, and is just as amazing an update as we hoped it would be.

Photosmith is a combination of iPad app and Lightroom plugin (Mac or PC) which will sync photos between the two machines, and let you edit metadata, add keywords and otherwise triage your photos on your iPad before sending them off to Lightroom for editing.

V2 adds batch tagging, two-way sync (for sending photos from your Mac to the iPad), smart groups, metadata presets and a lot more. A full review will follow, but our first impressions are below.

What!? Neither Cult publication has ever reviewed Monster’s famed Turbine earphones, even though the IEMs have been hanging on Best Buy end caps for the last several years? Well, that’s an injustice we won’t let stand another day — after all, these are among the best recognized, and most iconic IEMs on the market.

The Turbine is the base model in Monster’s Turbine lineup; though with an MSRP of $180, “base model” seems like a relative term (the two higher models, the Pro Gold and the Pro Copper, are $300 and $400 respectively and are apparently better at reproducing a wider range than the plain-wrapper Turbines reviewed here).

Check your App store updates people because Drafts was just updated to version 1.2 and includes new actions to post to Facebook, Evernote, create a calendar item, and add to OmniFocus.

Katy McCaffrey had her iPhone stolen on a cruise ship last month. She had lost hope in recovering her smartphone, but then photos started showing up in her Photo Stream. The handy iCloud service automatically uploads photos taken on an iOS device to a feed that can be viewed on other authenticated devices.

Thanks to Photo Stream, McCaffrey got a look into the world of the man who stole her iPhone.

Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference is right around the corner, and on our latest CultCast, we’ll tell you why you need to hold off on your Macbook or iMac purchase for just a little longer — it’s going to be worth the wait!

And then, we answer all our your queries on our brand new listener questions segment.

All that and more on The CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes and read on for our show notes.

In yesterday’s minor bugfix update, Instapaper developer Marco Arment posted this fantastic personal note, thanking users for allowing him to work from home and spend time with his wife and newborn baby. Could there be a better reason to subscribe to Instapaper, or for that matter, support your favorite app developers?

May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here  and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.

Zenprise focuses on the complete lifecycle management of mobile devices in enterprise environments. The company provides the core set of device and app management needs and offers integration with enterprise systems. Zenprise puts a particular emphasis mobile device inventory for both company-owned and BYOD devices.

The “most delicious social network app” DishPal, is celebrating this Memorial Day by giving away a $100 Crate and Barrel gift card to three lucky users who upload and share their favorite Memorial Day dish. To be entered for your chance to win, all you have to do is:

Today, independent video chat provider ooVoo, announced a significant update across multiple platforms as well as adding a new Facebook application. ooVoo allows users to HD video chat, text, or make phone calls with up to 12 friends across Android, iPhone, PC, Mac and now also on Facebook. According to Yuval Baharav, Chief Executive Officer, today’s release was a direct result of their over 46 million users:

We told you over the weekend that the untethered jailbreak for iOS devices running iOS 5.1.1 is dropping this week. The hacker who’s been spearheading the upcoming jailbreak, pod2g of the Chronic Dev Team, confirmed that the jailbreak was nearly done and arriving in a “matter of days.”

Coincidentally, the Chronic Dev Team will be presenting at the annual Hack in the Box (HITB) conference this week in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Since the 5.1.1. jailbreak is expected to drop this week, we’re placing bets on a release this Friday during the team’s keynote.

If you’re looking for another alternative to sharing media content and making free phone calls over WiFi, you might want to check out Sidecar for Android and iOS. The recently released app allows users a plethora of sharing options as long as all recepients have the app installed. If you try to make a call to someone who doesn’t yet have the app, it will send them a text message asking them to check out the app. Features of Sidecar include

Making a list of tasks is a great way to be sure you’re getting things done, right? Without being able to see those reminders across all the devices and computers you may use in a given week, though, that list is going to be fairly useless. That’s the reason services and apps like Evernote have become so ubiquitous: instant access to your notes across all the digital environments you frequent.

Apple’s Reminders system is the company’s foray into a task list, but figuring out how to sync the lists across devices is somewhat non-intuitive. Here’s how to do just that.

Apple has been a major force in the BYOD movement. You can even argue that Apple ignited the BYOD flame with the release of the iPhone and iPad. While there have a number of studies looking at how companies in the U.S. are reacting to the trend, numbers haven’t readily been available from other markets.

That changed today with a new study that looks at BYOD in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) business and institutions. The results show Apple devices as a clear preference in these markets, somewhat more limited BYOD adoption, and many of the same security concerns discussed by U.S. firms.

The Cygnett Alumni canvas iPad case ($50) may look pretty, but you should know by now that you can’t judge a case by its cover.

Apple’s retail stores are among the most profitable in the world, and their success is largely due to the former head of Apple retail, Ron Johnson. Steve Jobs hired Johnson a decade ago to help get the company’s retail division off the ground, and Johnson turned Apple retail into a wildly successful division before leaving to become CEO of JC Penny last year.

Many have heard stories of Johnson and his responsibility in creating the Apple Stores we know and love today. There was, however, another person at Apple who made a profound impact in the early days of the Apple Store.

Zipcar was one of the first companies to showcase the potential of iOS apps using location services. The company’s demo during Apple’s 2009 WWDC keynote was one of early harbingers of the ways that mobile devices and data have become integrated with our daily lives. Zipcar continues to have its finger on the pulse of what’s possible when local services are transformed by iOS and other mobile platforms.

Speaking today at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium, Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith spoke about how quickly smartphone apps revolutionized Zipcar and the ways it interacts with its customers and offered  insights into the company’s success.

Do you know how much sweat, blood, and tears went into making your beautiful aluminum iMac? Trust us, it wasn’t easy. Five tiny construction workers risked life and limb in some Foxconn factory far away to assemble your sweet little machine, just so you could watch cute cat videos on that gorgeous 27inch screen.

Ok, maybe that’s not how it really got assembled, but we love these images from Mathieu Schatzler, who imagines what it would be like if Liliputian men constructed each iMac individually. I wonder if they fight over who has to clean the display.

If you’re looknig to level up your design skills, then the latest Cult of Mac Deals offer is “designed” just for you!

With the Graphic Design Studio Combo you can quickly create professional-looking graphics – and have over 6,000 fonts at your disposal. You’ll get the ultimate collection of over 6,200 OpenType fonts with the FontPack Pro Collection and quickly create professional-looking graphics with this Graphic Design Studio. These two downloadable products will make any designers life easier by giving you the ability to have all your font needs in one place along with granting you the wizardry to create professional graphics in a fun and fast way. And you’ll get both products in this deal at far less than their usual $340 price tag. With Cult of Mac Deals you can get everything for just $69!

One of the first things about the iPad that caught people’s attention was the touch screen, and it goes without saying that some of the first apps to start taking advantage of that touch screen were handwriting/note taking apps. Apps that let you write, draw, sketch—-and sometimes type–notes on your iPad. Something that combined technology with the age-old practice of scribbling notes on paper.

Since there are so many apps to choose from, and I’ve tried virtually all of them over the past couple years, I thought I’d give you a jump start on switching to virtual paper with my top 5 favourite note taking apps.

Have you ever wondered how your iPhone knows up from down, or when you’re shaking it? It’s all because of the tiny accelerometer chip inside the device, but how does it work? It’s not like the iPhone’s got a metal ball bearing rolling between two points in there, so what gives?

As it turns out, there’s actually a lot of crazy cool tech in there.

BackUp Gmail does what you’d expect: it backs up your Gmail account to your desktop computer. It’s a simple Menu Bar app that works in the background. It’s only $2 in the Mac App Store, but does have a few problems.

Pentax new K30 SLR might be just the camera for you if you a) have a collection of K-mount lenses knocking around and b) you like to knock your camera around. The headlines: The K30 is a tough, weatherproof DSLR with a 16MP APS-C sensor, a top shutter speed of 1/6000sec, 1080p video (at 24p and 30p) and a maximum ISO of 25,600.

Recently, we’ve done a couple of features on the core tools and skills needed by IT professionals who support and manage Macs and iOS devices in business environments. Knowing what those tools and skills you need is a step in the direction to becoming a killer Mac tech or multi-platform sysadmin, but to really succeed, you need to acquire those skills and learn how to use the appropriate tools.

There are a range of training options available with price points ranging from free online resources to professional IT training companies and Apple-authorized training centers. Which options (or mix of options) are best for you will vary depending on your learning style, the skills and experience that you already possess, and your budget.

In this feature, we’re going to focus on some of the best low-cost (and no-cost) options out there.