The SmartGuard iPhone case might guard you, but it definitely isn’t smart. The iPhone 4/S compatible case will deliver a dose of pepper spray to U.C Davis students or violent attackers alike.

Apple’s iPad 2 may have the same performance in São Paulo as San Francisco, but Brazilians pay about 56 percent more for the same magical tablet.

After Cult of Mac discovered first hand just how pricey iPads are in Brazil – and why there’s a huge gray market there –  we wanted to see if the iPad stood up to the “McDonald’s Index.”

Cult of Mac’s Global iPad Index takes iPad 2 prices – the 32GB model, Wifi only – and compares them in Apple’s 37 online stores.

It’s hard to imagine a scenario where your SD cards would need to be “waterproof, shockproof and magnet proof,” but Samsung has gone and made some ruggedized cards anyway. Available in several speeds and sizes, the brushed metal cards will look as good out of your cameras as they will in it.

While investigations into the working conditions in its Chinese factories still underway, Apple has now commissioned an independent environmental group to review its supply chain and identify any environmental concerns. The reviews are set to begin next month, and will focus on the environmental impact of factories belonging to Foxconn and one other unnamed supplier.

Sometimes the morass of Mail windows on a Mac can just become too much. Various apps have tried to help manage this in various ways: Sparrow by bringing the streamlined Tweetie aesthetic to mail, Postbox by in-line quick replies, and so on.

Even so, more often than not, when I close Mail for the day, I’m closing about a dozen or two blank or half-written email windows that have been opened during the day, then forgotten. Why can’t sending an email be as painlessly fire-and-forget as sending an IM? Enter QuickMailer.

It looks like Microsoft will be brining Office to the iPad, something that’s been the subject of speculation for a while. Although a photo showing Office on the iPad has surfaced, there are a lot of big questions surrounding it. When will it ship? How much will it cost? Which features will Microsoft incorporate from the desktop version of Office? How will it compare to Office on Windows 8 or Windows on Arm (WOA) tablets?

Then there’s another big question – does it even matter that Microsoft is creating an iPad version of Office?

Apple’s iOS devices has suffered a number of passcode flaws in recent years, which have allowed anyone to circumvent their security and access features within the device. The company has always been fairly quick to address these issues, but they continue to crop up.

The latest allows anyone with knowledge of the exploit to access your contacts list, your recent calls, your voicemail, your text messages, and more.

If you went ahead and loaded the developer preview of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion onto your Mac, you likely already played around with the new Notification Center. Until you got bored and fired up Growl once again so you could enjoy notifications from all your apps, not just Mail and Calendar. Wouldn’t it be great, though, if all those Growl-capable apps could talk to Notification Center instead? With Hiss, they can.

Fluent is a web-based wrapper for your Gmail account that clearly takes cues from the much-loved (and sorely missed, by some) Tweetie Twitter client and the much-loved (and still very much alive) Sparrow mail app.

An official Microsoft Office suite for the iPad has long been the subject of hopeful rumors, but a leaked shot of the software in action on Apple’s tablet proves for the first time that it’s real, and that it is on its way to the App Store.

The first thing I disliked about Mac OS X Lion was the way it changed the Dashboard display. It’s nice to be able to see behind the widgets to the stuff I’m working on in the background. Especially if I’m using a widget like the Calculator, or the Weather, or the Conversion widget to see how much that import from Europe might cost me in US dollars.

Mac OS X Lion, however, puts the Dashboard into it’s own separate space, complete with opaque background that looks like an odd mix of linen theme and bubble wrap. Or maybe a non-skid floor tile from a spaceship? I dunno. Regardless, not being able to see through the background was an issue, until now. I no longer have to launch the stand alone Calculator app to do a quick sum, and can go back to enabling the Dashboard, using the Calculator widget, and dismissing it just as quickly.

With just weeks to go before the iPad 3 launch, the drip of hardware leaks is turning into a torrent. The latest — and probably best — photos of the new iPad’s case come from MIC Gadget, and show the new tablet to be a little thicker, and sporting a larger camera lens.

We’re huge fans of the MyAssistant tweak here at Cult of Mac, so much so that it recently featured in our guide to supercharging Siri on your iPhone. And its latest update makes it even more of a must-have for jailbreakers. In addition to some handy bug fixes, it also gets new features like ability to download content, open apps, turn on your flash, and more using Siri.

Bored of your iPhone’s default unlock animation? I was after about three minutes. But thanks to a new jailbreak tweak called iUnlock, you can customize your unlock animation yourself with awesome effects and sounds. 

Acorn describes itself as “an image editor for humans”, and that sums it up in a nutshell.

What you get inside Acorn are pretty much all the image editing features you’re ever going to need, for a fraction of the price of some of the competing apps.

Here’s another lovely short video from Matthew Pearce, the man behind the Matt’s Macintosh YouTube channel.

MacPaint doesn’t just explain what MacPaint was, but is more about why it was an important part of the software lineup back in those days. Things we take for granted today (like copying a graphic and pasting it into another document) were new and exciting back then.

As Matt points out, MacPaint in 1984 laid foundations for features you still see today in modern graphics applications.

(And one other thing: Matthew’s original Macintosh 128K looks pristine, and the screen as clean and bright as the day it was made. He even has an as-new copy of the original printed manual. Where does he find this stuff?)

Enjoy!

China Telecom and Apple have officially confirmed that the carrier will get the iPhone 4S on March 9th. China Telecom’s 130 million subscribers will have access to Apple’s latest handset for $0 RMB with select carrier contracts. The device will be sold in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB flavors.

Valentine’s Day may have come and gone, but you still have a few hours left to show your Mac how much you love what it does for you with The Mac Love Bundle.

You’ll get over $300 worth of stellar Mac apps for only $39 — and your Mac will love you for it!

Nestled in Maiden, North Carolina is a 500,000 square-foot data center for Apple’s iCloud services and Siri. The company published its 2012 Environmental Update today with new details about the upcoming solar farm and fuel cell facility that will power the billion dollar data center.

Today’s painfully obvious report comes from Japanese site Macotakara. Citing a “reliable source,” the report claims that Apple’s sixth-generation iPhone will be released in either September or October of this year.

Apple broke its typical 12-month release pattern with the iPhone 4S, and it looks like the trend will continue in 2012.

It’s never been easier (or as cheap) to translate words and phrases between over 60 languages than it is with the free Google Translate app for iOS. Simply select the language you require, type or speak your phrase, then wait while Google does the hard work. Here’s how to get started.

This morning we showed you the preview of ABC Nightline’s exclusive look inside Foxconn that’s set to air tomorrow night. Apple has granted anchor Bill Weir unprecedented access to its Chinese supply chain, and ABC News has already published a fascinating report and gallery of pictures from its recent trip.

If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone 4S, you have access to some great tweaks for adding functionality to Apple’s digital assistant, Siri. You can turn Siri into your personal translator, launch apps and toggle system settings, tweet, and and even change the look of the Siri UI.

We’ve collected the best tweaks in Cydia to help you supercharge Siri on your jailbroken iPhone 4S.

The VideoLAN organization has released VLC 2.0 “Twoflower” with a completely revamped interface, hundreds of bug fixes, performance enhancements, experimental BluRay support, and more. We told you that version 2.0 had hit the final design stage last week, and it’s finally ready to download!

Following its launch in the U.S. back in January, CloudOn has finally arrived in the U.K., allowing British users to access Microsoft Office applications on their iPad. The free app lets you view, edit, and create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on your tablet, which can then be saved directly to your Dropbox account.