Feeling a bit secret agent lately, and looking for the ultimate in protection for your Macbook Pro or Macbook Air? The folks over at ViVAX think they have the solution, with their completely sealed, impact-proof laptop case using a variety of cutting edge technologies. Made completely in Italy, the developers behind the project claim this is the first Italian-based Kickstarter project of its kind, and they’d like you to help fund their dream goal of producing and eventually selling this amazing case.

Want to know an easy way to predict a new Apple product release? Follow Digitimes‘s winning formula!

In the Western world, Santa Claus and Christmas rule the holiday season, but in Japan and other parts of Asia, it’s all about Fukubukuro or Lucky Bags, the annual New Year’s tradition where merchants distribute grab bags full of mystery contents at a huge discount to crazed shoppers.

This year, like every other year, Apple is taking part in the Lucky Bag phenomenon, allowing shoppers to spend about $400 for an Apple-certified Lucky Bag.

Usually, these bags have lower ticket items in them, like iPod touches and t-shirts, but every once in a while, some lucky S.O.B. gets a MacBook Air or a top-of-the-line iPad. There’s only a limited number of them, so you need to line up hours ahead of time. Anyone wish Apple did Lucky Bags over here?

Source: Apple

Believe it or not, Christmas is almost here, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.
Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.

From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts that cost less than $50. Yes, you can appear to be a big spender, but without actually spending that much.

Believe it or not, Black Friday has already come and gone. Pretty soon the Christmas season will begin, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.

Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.

From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts for Mac lovers (not Mac fighters).

The critically acclaimed RPG The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is now available on the Mac App Store. The development team promises that your choices really do matter, and will determine the fate of the people and kingdoms in the game. You’ll fight blood-thirsty monsters as protagonist Geralt of Rivia, as well as navigate politics, lies, and gorgeous environments.

I have quite a few email addresses, and almost all of them are Gmail based. I also use a ton of different devices to check my email, including my iPhone and iPad as well as a Macbook Air and a Mac mini. That’s not even mentioning the iMac I use from time to time at my office job. With all these devices, especially the Macs, it makes sense to me to use Gmail in the web browser, so I don’t have to keep setting up email client after email client, or make sure all my filters or rules are set up the way I want them on each of the Macs I use.

What doesn’t make sense to me is how my Mac opens up Mail app when I click a mail-to link on the web, in Twitter, or on Facebook. I want my Mac to open a web browser with the web version of Gmail in it every time I click one of those types of links. Here’s how to make that happen on the big three web browsers for Mac: Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.

If you’re a gamer, enjoy yourself this lazy December Friday afternoon through this wonderful, whimsical two-and-a-half minute video — in which Link, the elven, immortal hero of the Legend of Zelda series — travels across a series of Macs and iOS devices in a university computer land in order to rescue Princess Zelda from the evil wizard Gannon.

Just incredibly well done. Makes me want to load Majora’s Mask up in an emulator on my MacBook Air and while the afternoon away.

One of the better Yuletide traditions is the venerable holiday Advent Calendar, in which each day of December leading up to Christmas is marked off on a special calendar by opening its corresponding door to find a small gift, toy or chocolate squirreled away inside.

This year, we here at Cult of Mac decided we wanted to give our readers their very own Apple-themed advent calendar, filled with the year’s best apps, gadgets, stories and other curios. So each day in December, we’re going to lovingly peel back the door on the Cult of Mac 2012 Advent Calendar to reveal another delicious morsel, something really special that came out this year that we think every one of you should enjoy.

So what’s up with door number 6? It’s a handy little charging solution called the PlugBug that puts a spare 10 watt USB charger in your MacBook power brick.

Microsoft’s new tablet, the Surface, is supposed to make the iPad and MacBook Air irrelevant. It’s supposed to be the best of both worlds by being a tablet/laptop hybrid. Reviews of the Surface have been mixed, and initial sales reports are indicating that Surface RT might be in trouble, because no one is buying it.

According to new research by the Boston-based brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton, Microsoft is likely to sell fewer than 1 million Surface RT units in the December quarter. To put that number in perspective, Apple sold 300,000 original iPad units on its first day of availability.