When the burglar who robbed Steve Jobs’ house walked out with jewelry, computers, and Steve’s old wallet, I doubt he could have imagined one of his heisted Macs would call in the coppers. But he learned that you don’t mess with a Mountain Lion. We’ll tell you the tale on our all-new CultCast—and don’t worry—all mock turtlenecks have been returned to their proper place.

We talk rumor control, iPhone 5 design, the Olympics, and more. Then, by popular request, it’s a battle of the browsers! We’ll tell you which web-ware we love the most, and why Apple’s own app still has a big issue to fix.

Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new episodes right on your iPhone or iPad with Apple’s newly updated and freshly debugged Podcasts App.

Show notes ahead!

I generally don’t favor Apple-themed wallpapers on my Macs or iOS devices, but I just had to make an exception for these meticulously designed, beautifully rendered schematic wallpapers for the iPhone by Ethan Allen Smith. If anything could give you an appreciation of the majestic geometry and elegant ratios that define every visual aspect of iOS, right down to the badges on every icon or where the pips at the bottom of every homescreen are placed, a couple days with these wallpapers will have you thinking hard about them: in iOS, every little line means something.

Smith has provided two wallpapers: one for the standard homescreen and one for the iOS lockscreen. The lockscreen one is nice, but it’s the homescreen wallpaper that really shines.

Magnificent. I hope these get updated for the longer homescreen of the iPhone 5. You can download them at the link below.

Source: IMGUR
Via: Reddit

The iPhone 5 and iPad mini sections of the rumor mill have been churning nonstop as of late, but there hasn’t been any rumors surrounding the future of the Apple TV for quite some time.

Today a report sheds more light on the future of the Apple TV by noting that Apple is in talks with major cable providers to stream live television to a set-top box.

If the iPad mini is really coming later this year, then why haven’t we seen a bunch of leaked parts for it? Daring Fireball’s John Gruber speculated that it was because the iPhone 5 was further along in production than the iPad mini, but now the guys at nowherelese.fr have come forward with a pretty convincing argument that this dock connector component is for the iPad mini: it’s way too big to be for the iPhone 5. Even Kyle Wiens of iFixIt says it appears to be a legitimate Apple part.

Curiously, though, it appears to have 10 pins, not the 9 pins seen on iPhone 5 dock connectors. However, we’re judging that from the inside of the dock connector cable, not from the actual plug. What does it mean?

Source: Nowherelese.fr

Rumors surrounding Apple’s next iPhone have reached a fever pitch in the weeks leading up to the expected announcement date, September 12th. With pre-orders rumored to begin on the same day, Apple is expected to see record sales this holiday season. Anticipation for the next iPhone is higher than it’s ever been, and smartphone sales from the past quarter reflect that fact.

Gartner’s results for Q2 show slowed iPhone growth, with Apple sitting behind Samsung and Nokia in worldwide smartphone sales.

Rumors have been circulating recently that Apple will announce the new iPhone in mid-September, with the official launch set a few weeks after. A new report has given more weight to the rumors with claims that AT&T has cleared their calendars to prepare for the iPhone 5 launch during the third or fourth week in September.

It seems like Apple’s sixth-generation iPhone will be the first iOS device to boast a brand new, mini dock connector when it launches this fall. But there have been rumors that claim Apple will refresh all its iOS devices to make the new connector a standard across its entire lineup.

Not only does this seem highly unlikely, but there’s one reason why it’s an impossibility: Apple’s supply chain just couldn’t handle a refresh that big.

At this point, most of our readers are familiar with what the next iPhone is going to look like, including the fact that it will feature a unibody design with a two-tone metal backplate. But what’s the story with that metal backplate? Has it been designed that way just to look good and set itself apart from the design of the iPhone 4/4S, or is there a more cogent design philosophy behind the three alternating stripes of metal and glass?

We won’t know for sure what Apple is thinking until the iPhone 5 is officially announced, but one industrial designer has a great theory about why the back of the next iPhone looks the way it does. As is usually the case with Apple’s design, the new iPhone’s back plate doesn’t just look good… it’s incredibly functional and magnificently strong.

This is the next-gen iPhone’s new battery: a 3.8V 1440mAH lithium-ion pack with a watts-per-hour measurement of 5.45 wHR. Compared to the iPhone 4S’s 1430mAH battery — which runs at 3.7V and has a watts-per-hour measurement of 5.3 — this battery has at least 10% more capacity, making it perfectly possible (and very, very likely) that the iPhone 5 will finally get LTE. It’s also thinner, seemingly confirming that the next iPhone will be the thinnest one yet.

Source: 9to5Mac

You’re probably aware that tons of people wear their iPod Nano as a watch, even thought it’s really a great. But what if it were better? Would you actually want it?

The Pebble ePaper Watch was the most successful Kickstarter project of all time because it lets you get notifications from your phone on your cute little wristwatch. Do you think Apple might jump all over that idea and release a similar product of their own via the iPod Nano? Plus, iOS 6 Beta 4 has a new Bluetooth Sharing feature that might let you pair your iPhone 5 with a new iPod Nano (iWatch).

Is there a point in getting phone notifications and texts on your watch when you can just pull your slender iPhone out your pocket to do all that plus check the time and play Temple Run while walking down the street? I dunno, but I’m interested to hear what you guys think. Do you really really want Apple to release an iWatch style product?

Click here to tell us what you think over at the Cult of Mac forums