Hauling my back end out of bed each morning is a horrible task, especially during the winter months. Even with the recommended eight hours sleep, I never wake up feeling refreshed. However, I was hoping all that was about to change, thanks to a little app-enhanced headband.

The WakeMate ($60) is an accessory and app for your iOS device that has two main objectives: to help you track and analyze your sleep pattern; and to wake you up at the optimal time in your sleep cycle so that you feel better about waking up early — which is just what I needed.

If you caught our canalphone roundup a few weeks back, you’ve by now come to the accurate realization that there’s no shortage of real alternatives to those awful white buds bundled with each iPhone. But these two are a little different.

Like the five we reviewed that week, these two pairs of IEMs — the MEElectronics CC51 ($90) and the Thinksound ts02+mic ($110)— are higher-end, designed with superior sound quality in mind and cost around $100. But unlike the others, these two are from small, boutique manufacturers; they also both have housings made from exotic materials (the CC51’s is ceramic, while the ts02’s is wood), and eschew the inline volume controls of the pairs of reviewed in the $100 IEM week, instead making do with a single control button on their inline microphones.

It’s that time of the year. The busiest shopping day in existence is nearly upon us: Black Friday.

As Apple and iOS fanatics, we naturally look to the App Store for useful apps when life’s obstacles are thrown our way. The topic of Black Friday is no exception, so we’ve collected some of the best, free iPhone apps available to help you make the most out of your shopping experience this year.

Just when you thought you could buy a totally free iPhone, AT&T raises the subsidized price of the iPhone 3GS to $0.99! What gives?

As spotted by MacRumors, one of the nation’s largest carriers is listing the iPhone 3GS as costing $0.99 on its online store. The carrier activation fee is waved with the purchase and AT&T is offering free overnight shipping. What’s really weird is that Apple still lists the iPhone 3GS as costing $0 on its own website.

Take this with a grain of salt, but a “reliable source” speaking to iLounge has three inside scoops on Apple’s 2012 product line-up. Their veracity? Offhand, we’d say one of them’s a certainty, one of them’s probable and the last one is nutty.

By now, every iPhone 4S user has to know about the raise to speak feature that activates Siri. You simply raise your iPhone 4S to your ear, wait for the two tones and start talking. Ask Siri a silly or serious question and it usually has an answer for you. Sometime it isn’t what you would expect.

Although it is fun to ask Siri questions, you can also use Siri for dictation purposes. You can activate dictation by pressing the microphone button on the iOS pop-up keyboard. But did you know there is another way to start dictation?

The iPad 2 has some impressive mobile silicon inside it. The A5 processor is a dual-core affair with a 1GHZ clock speed, capable of about 171 megaflops (or about 171 100 floating-point operations per second).

Not bad, right? But how does the iPad 2 stack up against the most powerful computer in the world, Fujitsu’s K Super Computer?

Not too well, according to the guys at Royal Pingdom. In fact, you would need about 61.5 million iPad 2s to match the 10 Billion megaflops of the K Computer.

That’s enough iPad 2s that if you stacked them on top of one another, the pile would be 540 kilometers high. That’s the equivalent of about 1,700 Eiffel Towers stacked end-to-end.

Well, sure. Fine. But can the K computer run Infinity Blade 2? Thought not.

Here’s a Hollywood marketing tactic we never thought of: Create an iTunes alternative so roundly despised that you’re forced to send angry consumers to iTunes. And you wonder why your DVD player is gathering dust?

A good friend of mine recently bought a new iPhone 4S from her local Apple Store. When presented with her new iPhone, the Apple Store salesperson tried to sell her on AppleCare+. It was a hard sell; in her opinion, the Apple Store salesperson went about it in all of the wrong ways. She’s a savvy consumer, reads Cult of Mac and other tech blogs, and has even read my new book. She did her own research before she bought the iPhone. She understood the differences between AppleCare and AppleCare+. She weighed risks of accidental damage against the price and limitations of AppleCare+, and decided the extra protection wasn’t for her.

She passed on AppleCare+, but believes that she might have been swayed if she hadn’t done her homework. She made a choice and, whether or not it turns out to be the right one, she was the one to make it. But not everyone is going to take the time to evaluate the pros and cons of AppleCare+ and will be confronted with this question at the time of purchase. Might you or someone you know fall victim to a hard sell on AppleCare+?

When Apple first announced the new $99 AppleCare+ program along with the iPhone 4S, there was a lot of confusion about it, largely because Apple required the coverage be purchased at the same time as the iPhone.

Luckily, Apple’s now cleared up its AppleCare+ policies. You now have 30 days to purchase AppleCare+ after you pick up a new iPhone.

What is AppleCare+? It replaces the previous $69 AppleCare for iPhone coverage that didn’t cover accidental coverage. With AppleCare+, you have coverage for up to two accidental breaks of your iPhone, each subject to a $49 service fee. For clumsy butterfingers like me, not a bad deal at all.

When Disney CEO Robert Iger joined Apple’s board of directors, the tech giant offered him a little gift — and it wasn’t a fruit basket. No, Iger received shares worth more than an estimated $84,000. Of course, the amount is Mickey Mouse compared to the $29 million he pulls in as Disney’s head exec.

Forget Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Oakland, Occupy Boston and all the rest of the 995 protests. The Occupy movement is now coming to your browser, but not how you’d expect: they want to eliminate Adobe Flash from all web browsers.

Today’s – probably this week’s – Best Thing Ever is the amazing, ear-exploding wonder that is Brian Blessed Alarm Clock.

A special education teacher from Lincoln High School in Stockton, California, is currently on paid leave after she set up a pornographic website business on a MacBook issued to her by the school. Heidi Kaeslin was suspended when school officials discovered her moneymaking scheme, and she is now under investigation.

Earlier this week we announced our newest Cult of Mac Deal – a $79 iOS App Development Course. To make things even better for our awesome readers, this weekend we’re having a giveaway for one free admission into the course so you can get started on turning your ideas into the next great app. This contest will run from today till Sunday, November 20th at 9PM PST. The rules for entering are incredibly simple; here’s what you got to do to enter.

High-profile PC makers such as HP and Dell may be preparing to “gradually phase out” of the tablet business, leaving the market to Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook tablets. The rumored sea change follows the realization that best-selling tablets make money from the content they pump out, not from selling the hardware.

If I told you that Pirates of Silicon Valley star Noah Wyle was set to return to the screen as Steve Jobs in the upcoming biopic based upon Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography, you’d probably say, “Great Choice!” After all, Wyle was great as Steve. The role fits him. It would be wonderful to see him settle back into it over a decade later, and finish the arc.

Now, what if I told you that Noah Wyle had some competition for the role of Steve, and that competition was his old ER co-star George Clooney? What would you say then? My guess is your response would be the same as mine: “What the fffffffff……”

The probability of you obnoxiously yelling “shooow meee the moneeeeyyyy!!!” into your cell phone will undoubtedly climb as you slide our new Cult of Mac tee over your torso. This fine garment is 100% Jerry Maguire-approved and 100% Apple-inspired.

Unisex Tees are finely crafted right here in the USA, are limited in quantity, and are just $22 each. Even better, they’re available to ship worldwide. You can pick up our new tee and other fruit-inspired graphic tees right now over at MightTees.com.

Philips has released a new iOS app for the iPad 2 that allows you to measure both your heart rate and breaking rate using only your device’s camera. Unlike similar apps that require additional accessories, this one claims to get its results from “the color of your face” and “the motion of your chest.”

I ran into someone the other day and he told me that he had over 700 contacts in the Address Book app on his Mac. He expressed concern about losing those contacts. I asked him, “are you performing backups on your Mac?” He wasn’t. We talked about the various ways he could backup his Mac (i.e. Time Machine, external drive, etc.), but I also shared a tip with him that focuses on his contacts.

Did Apple almost switch to AMD processors this generation in the MacBook Air? That’s the latest report, and while we’re really skeptical, if it’s true, it would have been quite the blow against Intel.

Want the iPhone 4S but still unsure which carrier to commit to? It was easier when there was just one, right? Well maybe this will help you decide: A test performed by Metrico Wireless highlights the strengths and weaknesses of all three iPhone 4S providers — AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon — with Verizon coming out on top when it comes to reliable calls, and AT&T beating the others to faster data.

Apple is back in court in an attempt to stop Amazon from using the term ‘Appstore,’ with the charge that advertising for the online retailer’s Kindle Fire tablet misleads consumers. The tech giant wants the ads to stop, claiming they mistakenly give the impression Apple endorses the Amazon device.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a nasty, totally broken little power grab of a bill that would effectively end the concept of ‘safe harbor’ that has allowed the internet to grow and thrive over the last ten years by allowing the government to add websites to a DNS blacklist for posting any kind of copyrighted material, fair use or not.

The bill’s so stupid and the outrage over it so deafening that it’s doubtless it will be never make it into law. Too many people are openly angry about it, including Mozilla, 4Chan, Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, AOL, Wikimedia, the ACLU, Twitter and Yahoo!

You know who supports SOPA, though? Apple. In fact, they are writing a check to support it, albeit indirectly. It’s a check iTunes Match might have to cash.

Mixel is a free digital art and social networking app for iPad. It works beautifully; you and your kids will love it. The only downer is its unfortunate requirement that you link it to Facebook. No Facebook means no Mixel.