All Macs come with a powerful word processor in the form of TextEdit. Here are five tips to let you get the most from it and maybe even avoid the need to splash out on Microsoft Word or iWork Pages.

Apple is slowly rolling out international support for iTunes Match today, with the service appearing in the U.K., Australia, and parts of Europe. The music matching service has been exclusive to the U.S. since its launch earlier this fall, but it made its way to Brazil earlier this week. If you can’t see it where you are, here’s a handy tip to get it working.

Pogoplug has been busy. For a company that focuses really intently on a single concept — namely, putting your stuff in the cloud — it has released a prolific number of products since the original Pogoplug first debuted in early 2009. Today brings their latest offering: The Pogoplug Series 4 ($100).

Cloud Engines, the outfit that makes the Pogoplug, sent us an Series 4 to check out, and we got a little hands-on time with it before the launch today.

As a photographer and podcaster, I’m a big Joby fan. Their tripods are generally high quality, incredibly flexible, and as functional as they are fun. The Joby GorillaMobile Tripod for the iPhone 4/4S ($40) is definitely worthy of much the same praise, but an issue I have with its build quality and price leave me with a raised eyebrow.

While most music apps focus on one or two instruments, Rockmate brings a while music studio to your iPad. Up to four people can play music at once, which may initially sound a little cramped on the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen.

If you’re interested in Rockmate, you’ll only need to part with $0.99 to get your hands on all of the musical goodness. As the app’s developers say, “Let’s rock together.”

Have you ever wondered what it was like behind the scenes of Apple’s famous ‘Think Different’ advertising campaign? The 1997 ad was mainly attributed to Steve Jobs in Walter Isaacson’s biography, but there’s more to how it all went down.

An advertising executive that helped create the campaign has taken to Forbes to set the record straight, and the truth is that Steve Jobs originally hated the very ad that brought Apple back from the brink of destruction.

As far as Kickstarter projects go, this one has definitely piqued our interests. Unlike the “cheap, lightweight afterthoughts” that comprise the vast majority of most iPhone docks, the Elevation Dock looks like it has the potential to be one of the highest quality docks we’ve ever seen.

Yesterday we reported that Apple was in the process of using its cash hoard to buy Anobit, an Israeli flash memory maker. But what’s so special about Anobit anyway, and why would Apple buy another maker of flash memory when they’ve already got deals in place with some of the world’s best flash manufacturers?

The answer: Anobit is making truly magical technology, and Apple wants that magic for itself.

From the cockpit to the squad car and everywhere in between, 2011 was the year the iPad became a part of business. Throughout the year, we’ve introduced a number of jobs that have adopted the iPad and we return to see how Apple’s tablet has reshaped industries big and small. In fact, the jet you take for your holiday travel may be co-piloted by the iPad 2.

Think you’re sick of Siri videos? Think again: here’s Siri rapping the Notorious B.I.G.’s song “Hypnotize” with an amazing amount of flow, thanks to a clever video made by Robert Boehnke for London’s Music Hack Day.

Now when can we get this feature natively, Apple? And better question yet: can Google’s Majel be programmed to rap some Tupac for a genuine East Coast vs. West Coast rapper showdown?

[via Gizmodo]

It’s not always easy to read the tiny text displayed on our iOS devices. But did you know that the iOS operating system features a handy “Speak Selection” feature that will read selected text out loud?

Once activated, the feature allows you to select a piece of text within any app, then have it read out loud. Here’s how to enable and use it!

Remember Netflix’s plan to radically redesign their iPad app’s UI that we were so crazy about? Well, it’s here now, and it looks fantastic.

That’s not all that’s new for Apple fans, though.

When Google first released their native Gmail app for iOS, it was just a total mess: an HTML5 web app that not only had less innate functionality than loading up Gmail in Mobile Safari, but couldn’t even do its one selling point — push notifications — right. Heck, it even gave error messages at boot. Iit was so bad Gmail pulled the app within hours of release.

A little while later, Google released an updated version that fixed everything wrong with the old Gmail app, but it was still a total snoozer of an app. But today’s update to Gmail for iOS actually brings some cool new features to the table that might persuade some folks to switch from Mail.app.

This year we’ve seen a slew of absolutely amazing accessories for Apple devices come to the market for both the iMac, MacBooks, iPhones, iPad and AppleTV. Many of them have been remarkable but we’re having a hard time distinguishing which Apple Accessories should be considered the absolute best of 2011, so we’re turning to our readers to help us out.

Still shopping around for last minute gifts for your friends or family? Consider these three books authored by Cult of Mac writers, which may be just what you’re looking for.

Steve Jobs has been mentioned as a possible contender for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year ever since he passed away in October, but in the end, Time has gone another direction: they have awarded their 2011 Person of the Year instead to “The Protester,” the abstract avatar for the political demonstrations in the Middle East, Europe and the United States this year.

Samsung appears to have its eyes on yet another segment of Apple revenue: iTunes. There is no ‘iTunes killer’ out, but the South Korean company today hired a new executive to create “a new presence in media.” Taking on iTunes has become a cottage industry that usually ends with disappointment — but will Samsung be different?

Shared Paper is a lovely iPad app for making and sharing presentations on a huge scrollable canvas.

Hipstamatic Disposable from Synthetic on Vimeo.

Hipstamatic has a new group photo sharing app that just might help you remember what happened last night.

With the Hipstamatic D-Series (as in “disposable”) app,

Here’s how it works: you invite Facebook friends to participate and everyone who agrees can either shoot the roll or just view all the photos when the roll is finished. And just like analog photo rolls, those blurry shots or accidental shots of the floor go in there, too. The basic app is free, but you’ll be able to buy $0.99 lenses to further awesomeize your shots.

Fittingly, the video demo shows a hungover guy trying to put together the pieces of a rollicking night spent with friends from high school.  Like the anonymizing Tweet app, originally designed to liven up boardrooms but popular with Occupy protesters, this could be co-opted to use on reporting events, protests and the like, an scenario Allen Buick says he didn’t plan on but can well imagine.

You would think Apple, which hails from the land of movies and make-believe, would understand the old Hollywood maxim that all publicity is good publicity. If not, courtroom sidekick Samsung can certainly teach a refresher course. Turns out, all the legal battles trying to stop Galaxy tablets instead have been good PR for the South Korean company — at least in Australia.

One of the first tweaks I make to any Mac I use is this neat little tweak that adds the currently playing album’s art to any song playing in Tunes.

Wouldn’t it be cool, though, if you could do the same thing on iOS, replacing the Music logo on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with the album art cover of the song you’re currently listening to? As usual, with a jailbreak and a simple Cydia download, you can.

Apple is relatively unscathed by the recent Thailand flooding which threw for a loop PC makers more dependent on hard drives. That’s the word from Wall Street analysts who say Apple’s move to flash memory saved the Cupertino, Calif tech giant from the fate of Intel.

Wow, Merry Christmas indeed. Dieter Bohn over at The Verge has put together the end-all-be-all guide to iOS, an overview of Apple’s plucky little mobile OS so well-illustrated, informative and complete, all we can do is stew in jealousy we didn’t do this ourselves.

Apple’s new Siri assistant has really revolutionized the way in which we interact with mobile devices using our voice. It’s no wonder, then, that rivals are scrambling to introduce their own alternatives. Google already has one for Android, according to some reports, called Majel, and it’ll debut during the first quarter of 2012.