The iPad became a big hit in the K-12 education market over the past year. Pioneering schools that brought Apple’s tablet into the classroom last school year proved that the iPad can be a excellent learning tool – one that has immense power to transform education.

As the new school year begins, and hundreds of thousands of students across the U.S. become iPad users thanks to one-to-one iPad deployments, there’s already talk that the iPad’s success in schools will be short-lived. The belief is that iPads will quickly be replaced by tablets running Microsoft’s Windows RT or Windows 8.

That assumption is absurd and delusional.

The old one lasted a quarter of a century, but Microsoft has now unveiled a new logo ahead of the anticipated launch of Windows 8, the most radical revision of the world’s most popular desktop operating system to date. It’s boring, but in regards to embracing the minimalism of today’s design trends with a soft, non-stylized font, it does a good job.

Steve Jobs’s widow, Laurene Powell, has been named as the 49th most powerful woman. She features alongside billionaires, CEOs, entertainers, and heads of state in a list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women composed by Forbes.

An Australian man who used the Find My iPad feature to locate his tablet after it was stolen is being accused of trespassing “via radio wave.” A court is now trying to decide whether he acted unlawfully when he used Apple’s service to track his iPad — and the thief who stole it — via GPS.

Gameloft’s Order & Chaos Online is widely believed to be the closest alternative to Warcraft on iOS. It’s a popular game, and there’s no doubt it would be even more popular if it weren’t for the monthly fee Gameloft charged to pay it. Thankfully, in the game’s latest update, Gameloft has finally scrapped the subscription fee and made the role-playing game free to play online after purchasing.

Wait, what? You haven’t played Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP? What’s wrong with you? It’s only one of the best games out there on the iPhone and iPad, garnering several awards from around the web.

The hit universal iOS game is now available for the Mac, and the latest update is Retina Enabled, for all you Macbook Pro owners. I can think of worse ways to spend eight bucks, as Sword and Sworcery is truly a masterpiece of indie design, complete with a brilliant soundtrack by Jim Guthrie, who seems to be involved in the new PSN game, Soundscapes, as well as the soundtrack for Indie Game: The Movie.

Sssssssssssss Boom!

If hearing that sound makes you break out in a cold sweat and go running for the nearest shelter, you may be a Minecraft addict.

Mojang, creator and continuing developer of Minecraft for Mac and PC, wrote a post today on their blog detailing the upcoming update to Minecraft Pocket Edition, the version of the indie runaway hit building, mining, and crafting game for iOS. Here’s a hint: it’s got creepers.

The 2012 U.S. presidential election is only months away. Leading up to election day, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will continue debating one another and fervently addressing the “issues’ in passionate speeches and ad spots.

Obama and Romney go head-to-head in a new iOS game developed by the makers of Infinity Blade, and well, you get the idea.

We’re nosey as anyone here at Cult of Mac and right now we’re having a big contest where readers can win a free bag from Waterfield Designs. All you gotta do is pour out the contents of your bag, snap a pic, upload it, and maybe you’ll win.

It’s probably not fair of us to demand you reveal all the goodies in your bags without showing you some of our own toys, so today we’re jumping inside the bag of Cult of Mac Social Media Editor, Buster Heine, to see everything he carries with him to have a good time.

Finding stuff on the web is pretty easy. Finding stuff you don’t already know about, surprising stuff, is hard. That’s what the developers behind Trapit are trying to fix.

Trapit for iPad allows you to discover things you’re already interested in as well as stuff you may not even know you’re looking for using algorithms that run in the app behind the scenes. What that means is that once you start using Trapit, it will learn what you’re into, and start finding stuff that might be of interest to you, based on what you’re already checking out as well as new stuff that might be cool for you to see.

The app also curates its own content into a Featured Traps section, which will help you discover even more content for that surprise factor.