During last week’s earnings call Tim Cook was asked what he thought about Windows 8 being “optimized” for tablets. Cook humorously responded that, “anything can be forced to converge, but the problem is that products are about tradeoffs, and you begin to make tradeoffs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day does not please the user. You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not going to be pleasing to the user.

Well, guess what, Timmy? A couple of genius engineers over at The Brydge went out and combined two of the greatest kitchen appliances of our time — the toaster and the fridge —  and came up with the glory of The Froaster. Eat those words! Eat them!

Do you use Amazon’s Cloud Drive over any of the other cloud clients du jour like Dropbox, SkyDrive, SugarSync, Google Drive, and so on? Congratulations: you’ve somehow managed to be a die-hard user of the service despite the lack of a native Mac app. You had to upload and download files through the browser like some kind of sucker.

Now Amazon’s about to reward you for your patience with the native client they probably should have shipped in the first place. Yup, the wait is over: Amazon’s Cloud Drive Desktop App for Mac is now here, allowing you to easily upload your files to Cloud Drive by dragging them to an icon or simply right-clicking on a file or folder.

Just don’t expect Dropbox-style syncing. Cloud Drive’s a different kind of beast, and if you want to download your files, you’ll have to do so manually.

If you have been thinking about dipping a photographic toe into the contrasty, blurred waters of Lensbaby’s lenses, and you happen to have $750 (but not $805) lying around the house with nothing to spend it on, then perhaps you might consider the Pro Effects Kit, a bundle of some of Lensbaby’s funnest gear, all in its own special bag.

Back in March, Amazon offered up certified refurbished Amazon Kindle Fires for an amazing $139. It was only a 24-hour deal but sold out in half the time. Well, the deal is back, and yes, it’s another 24-hour deal. It’s already about half-way through the deal but they still appear in stock so you might want to take this opportunity to pick up a nice little tablet for cheap.

Deploying a large number of Macs with a full load of software can be a challenge for any organization. There are, of course, tools that help ease the process of both initial roll outs as well as software installation or updates.

If Mac users also need the ability to run Windows apps,however, there’s an extra layer of complexity. IT departments need to to get Windows onto each Mac, configured, and joined to enterprise systems in an efficient manner. Adding to the challenge Windows on Mac deployments add to the good  amount of additional data that needs to be deployed – more than doubling it in some situations.

The BYOD movement has transformed the relationship between IT staffers and other employees in a wide range of companies. While there are benefits to BYOD, there are also headaches – and securing data on personal devices and/or securing the devices themselves is one of the biggest. While there’s an ongoing discussion about whether to manage data, apps, or devices, right now most companies are developing a strategy that has a mix of approaches.

All that could change if the mobile management industry unfolds the way Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney expects. Dulaney is an advocate of creating what he calls “beneficial viruses” that companies can layer into apps and data itself – the idea being that the data could delete itself if it becomes compromised.

Amazon’s lineup of Kindle e-readers and tablets have been fairly successful devices for U.S. retailer Target, with the Kindle Fire becoming its best-selling tablet on Black Friday last year. However, a leaked memo has revealed that the company is about to cease carrying all Amazon devices due to a “conflict of interest.” Many believe it’s simply a ploy to boost its sales of Apple devices.

PopCap and Walls360 have teamed up to bring the the zombie apocalyptic hit Plants vs. Zombies to a bare wall near you. You’ve spent countless hours defending your virtual home from these hideous undead, now you can protect your real home with these re-positionable, self-adhesive wall graphics that will stick to almost any surface.

It’s been a long time coming, but Spotify has finally arrived fully optimized for iPad. But if you’re a newcomer to Spotify on iOS, be warned: you need a Premium account to really get the most out of this app.

Scott Forstall, Apple’s Senior Vice President of iOS Software, has sold 65,151 shares of his Apple stock — the equivalent of 95% of his stake in the company — for a staggering $38.7 million. He now owns just 2,988 Apple shares, worth around $1.8 million, but if he sticks around, there’s plenty more where they came from.

Just think of all that time you spend managing your monitor. There are Energy Saver preferences, Screen Savers, and the like to keep your energy usage lower and less costly. Today’s tip is the most easy and least time consuming way to do so that we’ve seen.

“Unopened! Still sealed in original retail box!” cry the Craigslist ads advertising “new” iPhones and iPads at lower-than-retail prices, but the truth is far more insidious: many of the “new” iPhones you see on Craigslist and eBay are actually old, used iPhones repackaged and sold as new using the hardware equivalent of meat glue.

Despite steady demand since the device made its debut back in March, Apple has still been able to maintain a speedy international rollout for its latest iPad. The new device is now available in 57 countries around the world, and what’s more, its shipping delay in the U.S. has now dropped to just 3-5 days.

Merely two years after the launch of the iPad, Spotify has finally released a big-screen edition of everybody’s favorite music-streaming app. In short, it works a lot like Twitter for the iPad, and it doesn’t have Spotify apps. The app is Universal, so when it hits the store (it’s still not showing up in some places), it will do so as an update, and while it is free, you’ll need to be a paid Spotify subscriber to use it.

Even with iCloud now up and running, Dropbox is still one of the best ways to sync documents between your Mac and iOS devices. It’s so great that all kinds of iOS apps — task managers, word processors, and even games — use Dropbox to send your data to the cloud so that you can access it on any of your devices.

However, Apple just turned up to the party swinging its banhammer. The Cupertino company has begun rejecting certain iOS apps that use the Dropbox SDK simply because they link to the Dropbox website.

Many of us are dreaming of a liquidmetal casing for the next iPhone which will sport a tapered, teardrop design that will help make the sixth-generation device thinner than its predecessor. However, a SIM tray that is believed to be destined for the new device suggests it could feature a box-like design similar to the iPhone 4S.

Apple released a slew of iOS app updates today in the App Store. iMovie, iPhoto, Garageband, Cards and iTunes U were all updated with various improvements and bug fixes.

All of the updates can be downloaded for free and are available now.

Apple has seeded an update to its third OS X Mountain Lion developer preview alongside Xcode 4.4. Preview 4. Registered developers can install the new software now in Software Update and the Mac Dev Center.

The update doesn’t seem to pack any major new features, but it looks like Apple is gearing up for the public release of Mountain Lion this summer.

Author of the new book, “Insanely Simple,” Ken Segall got to do something most can only dream about: work one-on-one with Steve Jobs, creating some of Apple’s most iconic products and ad campaigns.

From naming the iMac, to helping develop Apple’s famous Think Different ad campaign, Ken has 12 years of stories to tell about what it’s really like to work with the man most of us Apple fans revere: Steve Jobs. And on episode 10 of The CultCast, Ken opens up on who Steve was, what his creative process was like, and the best ways to not get yelled at.

To hear Ken’s fascinating insights and amazing first-hand accounts, subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes.

The jailbreak community has always been striving to improve the way iOS handles system settings. iOS 5 failed to introduce a quicker way of managing preferences like screen brightness and Bluetooth, and jailbreakers still use tweaks like SBSettings to toggle prefs without popping into the Settings app.

More elegant solutions for enhancing iOS have started coming out in Cydia over the last year or so, and a jailbreak tweak called Swipebright brings very useful functionality to the status bar.

The Instagram phenomenon continues to captivate mobile users across the globe and now generates over 5 million new users a week, according to its API. Those are absolutely amazing numbers for the once iOS exclusive photography sharing app that now boasts over 50 million total users thanks to its recent launch on Android. With numbers like this, it’s no wonder Facebook reached deep in their pockets to snatch them up.

Siri is already about as simple as it gets, but that hasn’t stopped freelance journalist and TV host Marc Saltzman from creating Siri For Dummies. The 192-page book “shows you all the cool things Siri can do for you, so you can get the most from your iPhone’s voice-activated personal assistant.”

Say hello to John Tambunan. This five-year-old resident of Indonesia published his first book on the iBookstore a few days ago – a cute tale about catching fish.

Are you curious about what it’s like to work for Apple? Here’s a chance for you to find out. Career advice site CareerBliss recently complied a list of the “Happiest Companies For Young Professionals” – a top ten list for which Apple didn’t make the cut. Even though Apple didn’t make that list, CareerBliss does offer a lot of insight into what life is like for Apple employees.

CareerBliss allows people to rank and describe their experiences in their current or past workplaces. Users researching potential jobs and companies can then see overall rankings (based on a one to five ranking scale) and browse through the individual reports. For Apple fans, that means a treasure trove of data about what it’s like to actually work for the company.

We here at Cult of Mac just can’t get enough of Instagram. It’s really hard to not love the little photo sharing app, even after it got bought by Facebook for $1 billion.

Have you ever wondered why images upload so quickly in Instagram? The whole app feels super snappy, and images can seem to upload instantly after you take a picture and apply a filter. What kind of magic is going on in the background?

As it turns out, the app’s design tricks you into believing its working faster than it really is.