When it comes to mobile, Microsoft has been caught with its pants down twice in the last four years.

The first time was when the original iPhone completely turned the smartphone industry upside down overnight back in 2007. Microsoft was so slow to respond that by the time they released their first true touch-based operating system, Windows Phone 7, in November of last year, they had gone from a dominant player in the smartphone market to losing almost all of their market share.

Before Microsoft could even get Windows Phone 7 out the door, though, it happened again. Apple released the iPad in 2010, and this time, iOS didn’t just revolutionize smartphones… it attacked the very foundations of Microsoft’s Windows empire itself, cannibalizing laptop sales and utterly destroying the netbook market.

Creating a new iOS app can be a daunting task. Keeping track of all the ideas, pricing schemes, graphics, and collaborations can leave a developer feel swamped. The guys behind App Cooker hope to solve all those problems by providing the most advanced iOS mockup tool made exclusively for the iPad.

Jam packed with incredible features, App Cooker aims to be a must-have tool for all app developers and designers. Here’s a quick video of some of the things App Cooker can do for you:

We’re going to take this one with a big ole’ grain of salt: a 17-year-old Chinese kid is said to have swapped a kidney for an iPad.

A young man known as  “Zheng” contacted an underground organ trafficking outfit via the internet to sell his right kidney for about 20,000 RMB, circa US$9,000 dollars.

We don’t know where this came from.

We don’t know who made it (J.G. Thirlwell, perhaps?).

We don’t even know if there’s an iPad or iPad 2 ensconced within this case’s leathery, plush-lined folds.

We’d love to find out (tell us if you know), but until we do, mere ignorance will not stop us from posting this exquisite iPad Case, because all we can see is that gorgeously medieval gold emblem, showing Isaac Newton lazing under an apple tree, waiting for the full weight of gravity to come crashing down on his head. That was Apple’s original logo back in 1976.

GarageBand and iMovie for iOS, and while iMovie’s update is just a bug fix patch, GarageBand has gotten some more meaty improvements.

Making rumors that Apple would be integrating Twitter support directly into iOS’s photo sharing functionality just a little more likely, Twitter has just announced that they are baking native photo sharing into the microblogging service. Is this just the laying of groundwork for a more unified iOS/Twitter experience?

Next week, Apple will finally confirm years of rumors of taking iTunes to the cloud and unveil iCloud, their media locker service that will automatically scan and match your existing iTunes library for streaming to any iOS device.

In some ways, though, iCloud’s taken too long to get here. The era of unlimited bandwidth is over. In the last year we’ve seen both mobile carriers and ISP broadband providers impose severe data caps on their users. The vast majority of iPhone and iPad customers only have 2GB of data per month to play with. How much media can you really stream with a 2GB data cap?

Let’s find out!

We start June with two deals on MacBooks and some iPad 2 cases deeply discounted. First up is a MacBook bundle, including a 2.3GHz Core i5 processor with 8GB of RAM for $1,449. Next is a number of MacBook Air machines, starting at $829 for a 1.4GHz machine with an 11.6-inch screen and 64GB of SSD memory. Finally, we wrap up today’s spotlight with 70 percent off on select iPad 2 cases, including a Snap On case in five colors.

Along the way, we also check out iPhone 4 cases, as well as software for your Mac. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

When we talk of cat-and-mouse within the context of Apple, we’re usually talking about Apple vs. jailbreakers, but it seems there’s a new mouse in town: Mac Defender.

Less than a day after Apple released a new security update nuking Mac Defender from orbit, a new variant has appeared that skirts around the protections of the update.

PC makers looking to ride the tablet wave and overcome Apple’s lead have had a rude awakening.