Sparrow is possibly the best iPhone app I’ve purchased so far this year; it has completely replaced the built-in Mail client on my device. But it does have a couple things missing: It doesn’t yet support push notifications, and of course, it’s impossible to make it your iPhone’s default mail client.

However, a new tweak for jailbroken devices called Sparrow+ fixes both of these things.

Apple continues its rollout of the new iPad in nine additional countries today, making the sought-after tablet available in 57 markets worldwide. This is now the fourth phase of rollouts since the device made its debut on March 16, but one of Apple’s key territories is still without it.

Apple’s longtime head of industrial design has won yet another prestigious award. As part of its World Intellectual Property Day celebration, Britain’s Intellectual Property Office has given Jony Ive the title of British Visionary Innovator for 2012. The award is given ” to celebrate people who have achieved considerable success or developed innovative products, services or designs.”

JC Penny can’t get enough of Apple’s retail talent, as the American retailer has announced the hire of yet another Apple exec. Back in November, former Apple retail guru Ron Johnson left Apple to become the CEO of JC Penny. Now a high-level Apple retail exec has left to work under Johnson.

Ben Fay served for 8 years at Apple as the worldwide head of retail store design, and he will now be in charge of overseeing JC Penny’s own retail design strategy.

ZeptoLab recently updated their Cut The Rope app on both Android and iOS with a new DJ Box featuring 25 vinyl-scratching levels. Om Nom has been sitting idle long enough and he’s hungry and ready to party. These additional levels should keep you busy for about an hour and then it’s back to waiting. Other features included in the new update include:

Maybe for some odd reason you decided to buy an Android phone rather than the iPhone 4S. Maybe you wanted a phone with 3D video and 16 processing cores so you could dual-boot the same crappy games in both Android and Ubuntu at the same time. I do not know your reasons, but if you’re suffering from iPhone envy there’s a new app that can transform your ugly Android device into an iOS styled phone so you can be like the rest of us at Cult of Mac.

Looking to power up your Mac — and to do it for FREE? Well, Cult of Mac Deals has another great giveaway lined up for you — as in we’re giving 1 lucky winner The Mac SuperBundle!

The apps in this bundle can help you in a wide variety of activities, from digital media with Roxio Toast to searching for files more efficiently and effectively with Houdah Tembo to keeping track of your home inventory easily with Compartments.

All of these apps would normally retail for $453 on their own!

Last week, Microsoft pulled its Service Pack 2 update for Office for Mac 2011. As we reported earlier in the week, the update could result in the corruption of the Office database and issues with Office identity files could make resolving the problem difficult. After initially posting advice about the update and its potential problems, Microsoft pulled it from the company’s update servers.

Microsoft has now re-released the update. In addition to not creating the problems that plagued the original update, the new version will also correct problems for users that had downloaded the initial.

The entire situation illustrates why most tech companies, including Apple, advise business customers to wait before rolling out any new updates.

Attention dissidents, free-thinkers or just people who are plain on the run: now you can take your iPad with you and not get caught. Onion Browser is a Universal iOS web browser which will hook into the Tor network to provide you with anonymous browsing, wherever you are.

If you’re fed up with all the “who copied who,” “this one’s suing this one” nonsense currently consuming the mobile ecosystem, MIT has the solution for you. Raise your Switzerland flag with an affordable wooden DIY cellphone kit. No one will mistake your 9-volt powered laser-cut plywood for an iDevice or Android so you won’t have to worry about any impending patent litigation. All kidding aside, this little do-it-yourself kit is only in the prototype phase and is a far cry from the smartphones we’re used to using.

By all accounts, the Infinite Loop cafeteria has such great food that it’s pretty common for all sorts of Silicon Valley types to drop on by to visit a friend and catch some lunch.

The only problem? The constant influx of outsiders at Caffe Macs prevents Apple employees from actually talking about what’s going on and what they’re working on while they chow. That’s why Apple’s building an all new, off-campus restaurant, and only employees are allowed in.

File this one under “stuff I should have known but totally didn’t.” I’m guessing that a few of you didn’t know this either, or have forgotten if you once did. For the rest of you who might say, “meh. I know this one already,” I’m more than glad to point you in the direction of all our other iOS tips in search of something you didn’t know, smartypants.

Google maps rocks on my iPhone, and I’ve recently begun using my iPad to get around as well. Google Street View is fantastic on the computer, allowing me to virtually stalk my old home town and friends that still live there, the poor dears. I’ve never put two and two together, however, and realized that I could, in fact, engage in some Street View joy right on my iOS device of choice. Here’s how.

Until I took delivery of the Don’t Panic iPad case this week, this Custom Jacket from Skech has been my new favorite iPad case. It looks like leather, but is in fact artfully textured (and fully vegan) plastic, it holds the iPad tight and safe, and it weighs next to nothing. It also look pretty damn good.

Let’s take a closer look.

Mobile management and security vendor Good released its quarterly device activations report. The report covers January through March and showed that the iPhone 4S was the commonly activated mobile device among Good’s business and enterprise customers followed by the iPad 2. The iPad overall (original, iPad 2, and new iPad) accounted for virtually all tablet activations.

Good’s quarterly report focused on iOS and Android device activations. The data is based on a mix of both business-owned devices and employee personal devices used in the workplace as part of a BYOD strategy.

We’re nosey as anyone here at Cult of Mac. We are also complete nerds, which means that we’re always peeking into people’s bags at conferences, or checking out what gear people use.

And we figured that you all might be just as bad, so we figured we’d rip open our man bags, handbags and purses and show you what’s inside, and why we carry what we do.

We’ll be doing this periodically from time to time. This week, we’ll be checking out what’s usually in the three (!) separate gadget bags of Cult of Mac Deputy Editor John Brownlee, and he’ll be filling us in on what everything is and why he carries it.

Streamified is a social media client for iOS, giving you an all-in-one overview of all your networks, plus RSS and blog feeds from elsewhere. The aim is to simplify everything, but in testing it can become a bit overwhelming.

Oh, man. Today is totally turning into Kickstarter day here on Cult of Mac. The latest accessory from everybody’s favorite crowd-funded idea factory is the Brydge, another keyboard case which will turn your iPad into a miniature MacBook Air-a-like.

This case has a little twist, though. Instead of offering an entire laptop-shaped shell into which you can drop the tablet, it has a clever hinge which holds the iPad and uses it as the entire lid of the clamshell case.

Earlier this week, Boston’s commuter rail system announced plans for a program that will allow riders to purchase tickets right on their iPhones and display a scannable code as proof of purchase. The model follows the success that Starbucks has had in using its iPhone app as a virtual gift card.

Not to be outdone, drugstore and pharmacy chain CVS recently added similar functionality to its CVS Pharmacy app.

Thanks to Ken Segall’s new book about Apple, Insanely Simple, we have heard about how Steve Jobs was willing to dress up as Willy Wonka, and how he felt about the negative reaction to the infamous hockey puck mouse.

Here are three more great anecdotes about Jobs from the book. They include Jobs asking the President to help with Apple’s Think Different campaign, the untold story of how NeXT got its name, and how Jobs almost integrated advertising into Mac OS.

This entire week we’ve been showing you guys how to take your DVD movie collection, rip the movie files off your DVDs, and get those movies playing on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Thanks to the software gurus at Digiarty, the entire process is free this week to Cult of Mac readers because Digiarty is giving away their popular MacX DVD Ripper Pro Stream Edition software absolutely free to anyone who reads Cult of Mac and has a pretty smile.

Yesterday we showed you how to rip your DVDs onto your computer, but what if you don’t want to waste all your iPhone or iPad’s storage space on movie files you might not watch for a while? Well, Digiarty has an easy-to-use solution which solves that dilemma. Air Playit is part of the free giveaway package Digiarty is handing out, and it turns your Mac into a server that will stream your ripped DVD movie files straight to your iPad or iPhone. It’s so simple your grandma can do.

Follow these three steps to get your ripped DVDs streaming to your iPad or iPhone right now:

Many of us pass our Macs and some external devices on to others when we upgrade. Family and friends may get our hand-me-downs, but quite frequently we’ll sell an old Mac, printer, or external drive on eBay or some other venue. Regardless of where our computers and related technology end up when we outgrow them, it’s important to make sure we scrub any personal data from them.

The importance of securely erasing personal and/or business data from hardware that is being passed on, sold, or even recycled was highlighted in a recent study by Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which discovered that half of all used hard drives contained information from their previous owners.

I don’t hate the iPad’s speaker as much as I used to. The rear-firing grille on the iPads 2 and 3 doesn’t sound that bad if you lay the iPad face down and let it blast its vibrations straight at you. But as most of us use the iPad to watch movies, or to listen to music while reading, this adequate-sounding speaker simply sends its sound off into the nothingness, hoping that a nearby wall might reflect a little of it back to your ears.

My current answer is a battery-powered Bluetooth speaker, but that’s battery powered. And heavy. The Amplifiear, on the other hand, is lightweight and requires no power.

iOSLiveTV is a web-based TV service that allows you to watch premium TV channels on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch completely free of charge. It’s just like TV English Premium, the app we told you about last week, only it works… incredibly well. And it offers a lot more channels and AirPlay support.

Apple’s 2012 Worldwide Developer Conference sold out in just two hours yesterday morning, and most of the west coast got screwed because it all happened before many had even crawled out of bed. Now we’re here to tell you at the comfortable time of 8 A.M. PST about Indie Developer Lab, a conference for the devs who weren’t able to get into WWDC this year.

Helmed by developers Kyle Kinkade and Nate True with the help of Craig Fox, Indie Developer Lab 2012 will take place June 11-14th in San Francisco, California. As a response to the near-instantaneous sell-out of this year’s WWDC, the Indie Developer Lab is an alternative venue for iOS and Mac developers to meet, work, and share ideas.

Jibes at the iPhone and its users clearly aren’t enough to attract the attention of Apple’s customers, so Samsung is taking a more direct approach. Today the Korean company sent a screaming flashmob equipped with big “Wake Up” signs to protest outside of an Apple retail store in Sydney, Australia.