iPad mini shipping times have today been reduced to just 1-3 business days at the Apple online store, which is the shortest wait the device has seen since it made its debut back in November. The new timescale currently applies only to the U.S. and Canadian stores at the moment, but it’s expected to roll out into other territories soon.

If your iPad doodles are a little primitive, there are a few apps that can get you canvasing the art greats from Caravaggio to Picasso and creating some deft original strokes of your own.

So says Sumit Vishwakarma in a talk for Macworld/iWorld 2013, adding that if you’re willing to forgo one cinnamon latte at Starbuck’s, that money spent in apps will take your work to the next level.

Vishwakarma is an iPad art advocate whose work has been featured at the first Mobile Art Festival in Los Angeles, the Apple flagship store in San Francisco, and the Mobile Creativity & Innovation Symposium. He also teaches free workshops to promote iPad art and animation to kids, teens and adults.

Here are his top picks:

At the opening of this year’s NFL season, we looked at how the iPad has become a popular training tool among many NFL teams. With the season over and the Super Bowl just days away, many players, coaches, and fans are already looking ahead towards the NFL draft in the spring and next season.

Next season, Apple’s tablet will be an even bigger part io the NFL and it may even revolutionize parts of the organization and even the sport of football itself. Here’s how.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – Moscone West has been packed with exhibitors for the last three days as they peddle their latest wares to the Apple faithful. We combed through all the booths, and while there were a ton of underwhelming products, Macworld 2013 did feature some really cool stuff.

After some fierce debate among the Cult of Mac editors, we’ve settled on five things at Macworld 2013 that are truly deserving of a “Best of Macworld 2013” title. Without further adieu, here are our picks for the give best things at Macworld.

The Option key is a powerful ally in the transition from new, beginner user of OS X to the power user that you want to be. There are a ton of hidden features in the Finder alone that are hidden behind the underrated and unassuming Option key. There are Option key tricks for the OS X Menu Bar, for apps in the iWork suite, in Safari, and a few more random ones to boot.

So, sit back, relax, and get ready to hit that Option key a whole bunch of times in a row.

If you’ve ever played with a wooden puzzle in your local educational toys store, you’ll instantly understand Interlocked, a new iOS game from developer Armor Games (Kingdom Rush). It’s a fun little universal puzzle app for the low price of $0.99, and it should keep you gently entertained for some time to come.

The concept here is to rotate each group of interlocked wooden pieces, sliding each piece out in the right order to fully disassemble the puzzle. Once you’ve moved all the pieces off and away from each other, you get a new puzzle to rotate and solve. It’s very zen, and the whole thing reminds me a bit of Zen Bound, another rotating puzzle game with wooden sculptures and a gentle vibe.

The iHook is back, folks, and it’s even better than it was the last time we told you about it. Unfortunately, it won’t open a beer for you, so that’s, um, out.

Recently re-upped at Kickstarter, the iHook Dual Edition will not only connect to your iPod Nano, making it an ideal way to mount the little square of joy, but it now allows you to connect an iPod Shuffle, too.

Walk into any Starbucks and be cast by the glowing eye-con of a thousand MacBooks, staring at you, poor PC laptop user, with a piercing gaze of recrimination and scorn. “You are not one of us,” they murmur. “You are not of the seraphim.”

If you’re stuck with owning a Windows laptop but want to fit in with the Starbucks set, maybe consider an ASUS Taichi 21? It’s a cool piece of hardware in its own right, featuring a touchscreen display on the back, and you can make it do cool, obfuscating things… like, say, flash a glowing Apple symbol even bigger and brighter than the most expensive Mac.

Via: GigaOM

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – Witty, engaging, hilarious, beguiling — Saturday Night Live  and Portlandia actor Fred Armisen just gave a room of 2,000 people a Macworld experience they’ll never forget, and it had absolutely nothing to do with tech.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 – If you’ve ever watched an episode of Portlandia then you probably have the feeling that its two stars, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, are huge fans of Apple products.

A lot of Portlandia’s comedy sketches revolve around society’s obsession for technology. They’re brilliant. Many of the sketches feature Apple products, but it’s very rare to see a PC or Android phone on the show. At Macworld this morning, Armisen said that they only put PCs in the show at places where it’s appropriate – like the DMV.