The news that IBM bans Siri for every employee that has an iPhone 4S and participates the company’s BYOD program unleashed a lot of discussion about whether the company was being paranoid or prudent. One of the bigger questions to come out of all that discussion was a reframing of the issue itself – does Siri have a place in the business world to begin with?

Setting aside the security and privacy issues that led IBM to ban Siri, are there compelling use cases for Siri in the workplace? If there are, do they outweigh the privacy and security concerns? Could Apple do more to make Siri business-friendly?

Apple is expected to unveil iOS 6, the next major iteration of its software platform for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, at WWDC in two weeks. Not much is known about iOS 6, other than the new Maps app and the possibility of a more metallic look. Many have been speculating about what Apple could introduce, and we at Cult of Mac have a few ideas we’d like to see come to fruition.

The iOS jailbreak community has been innovating at a quicker pace than Apple for years. Jailbreakers had multitasking first, tethering first, iTunes WiFi sync first, and so on. There are many jailbreak concepts currently available for iOS 5 that we’d love to see Apple implement in iOS 6. That’s not to say that Apple will adopt all of these concepts, but we expect at least a few to show up in a way that only Apple can make happen.

At every public appearance by Tim Cook — say, Wednesday’s on-stage interview at AllThingsD’s annual D10 conference, or at the next WWDC keynote — there is always a certain type of commentator who, with hushed voice, will see the spectre of Steve Jobs looming behind Apple’s new CEO.

It’s no wonder. Steve Jobs was a personality larger than life, so it’s no surprise that the force of that personality can still be felt nine months after his death. Likewise, it’s undeniable that the soft-spoken but forceful Cook is less charismatic than his predecessor. But the idea that Tim Cook is a haunted man, trying to live up to the legacy of Jobs, is absurd. He’s his own man, his own CEO, and Apple today is doing better than it ever was under Jobs’s leadership.

Read more at ReadWriteWeb.

Apple and Facebook have had a rocky relationship since the two failed to reach an agreement on Ping integration and implementing Facebook in iOS 5 last summer. Things are starting to look up for the two Silicon Valley giants under the new direction of Apple CEO Tim Cook.

At the D10 conference today Cook hinted that his company is working with Facebook to provide direct integration with iOS devices in the near future.

Talking with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher today at the D: All Things Digital conference, Tim Cook explained why the iPad wasn’t the same as the Mac.

“The tablet is different,” said Cook. “It can do things that aren’t encumbered by what the PC was. We didn’t invent the tablet market, we invented the modern tablet.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage tonight to sit opposite veteran journalists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg at the tenth D: All Things Digital (D10) conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. It is Cook’s first major interview since he became the official CEO of Apple last year.

Steve Jobs was known for the interviews he gave at D conferences throughout the years, including his famous face-off with Microsoft’s Bill Gates in 2007. Cook took the stage to talk about the state of Apple under his leadership.

After the insanely fast sellout of tickets for Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off in a couple of weeks, we profiled a range of other events for Mac and iOS developers and for IT professionals who support and/or manage Apple’s desktop and mobile platforms.

While these events are great for developers and IT pros, they focus on the underlying technologies of OS X and iOS more than on how companies and other organizations can implement and leverage Macs, iPhones, and iPads in various businesses and industries. For that, there’s the i.Business Expo, a series of events focused on using Apple technologies to both improve business workflows and for customer/client engagement.

Rumor has had it for the past few months that Apple was going to phase out its reliance upon Google’s Maps API in iOS 6 in favor of its own revolutionary new mapping system, which it has been working on off-and-on since 2009. Now Boy Genius Report has exclusive images of what they say is the new iOS 6 Maps app in action, and boy, if the composite mock-up they put together based on those images is anything to go by,  it looks like a total game changer.

Apple’s massive orders for its next-generation MacBook Pros are causing havoc for its supply chain, with many facing labor shortages as they struggle to meet its demands. Others have been forced to outsource their business as a desperate attempt to complete orders before they start shipping.

The Chronic Dev Team has pushed out a minor update to its Absinthe 2.0 untethered jailbreak. The tool was only released this morning, but this new update addresses issues where the software can freeze up during the process of jailbreaking. If you’re having trouble jailbreaking your iOS device on iOS 5.1.1 with Absinthe, grab this update now.