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Apple will announce its quarterly earnings for the 2012 holiday season tomorrow, and investors are nervous. The company’s stock has been on quite the roller coaster ride since its $700 high back in September 2012. AAPL is now trading right around $500, which is the lowest it has been in more than six months.

Recent reports have said that demand for products like the iPhone is faltering. That’s why it may come as a surprise that Wall Street expects Apple to have its best earnings report ever tomorrow. So is it a good time to sell AAPL? Now may actually be the best time to buy.

Apple has pulled the apps of popular photo-sharing site 500px over concerns that it is too easy to search for nude photographs within the app. This, despite the fact that 500px’s method of dealing with searches for nude images is even more prohibitive than that of the official Flickr iPhone app. Could Flickr be next?

The first Microsoft Surface RT tablets were supposed to be Redmond’s answer to the iPad. They have a cool design, with a fancy keyboard and an innovative new operating system to boot. Sales have been abysmal. The reviews were bad. And we weren’t too impressed either.

Microsoft swears that the Surface Pro is going to be way better though. It’s going to actually run a full version of Windows 8, meaning it will have access to a lot more apps than its Windows RT counterpart. It’s totally going to compete with the iPad 4 now, except the problem is the Surface Pro is going to cost nearly as much as a MacBook Air.

Apple hasn’t updated the Mac Pro significantly since 2010, much to the dismay of professional Mac users. That’s why there’s keen interest in the future Mac Pro: Apple has reiterated its committment to the beefy desktop powerhouse, yet it’s the only Mac to not undergo a major redesign in the last couple of years. Eager eyes look to the future of the Mac Pro line to see what’s next.

A new series of concept images by Peter Zigich have been doing the rounds today, and they are getting a lot of buzz. The images describe a Mac Pro that isn’t just significantly smaller and more power efficient than the existing Mac Pro, but that eschews Intel’s server-class CPUs in favor of custom-built A-series chips.

Darrell Etherington over at Techcrunch says that while “obviously a flight of pure fancy, ” Zigich’s concept is “one that takes serious the question of what comes next for the standalone desktop PC in a mobile-first world.”

It does nothing of the sort. Zigich’s concept isn’t just a flight of fancy, it’s nonsense. Here’s why.

Over the weekend, a rumor from overseas claimed that Apple will announce a 4.8-inch iPhone “Math” alongside a 4-inch iPhone 5S. But it didn’t stop there; the same sources also said that a third iPhone model with a 12-megapixel camera is set to debut “before Christmas” this year. Sounds farfetched, to say the least.

What seems like a good bet for Apple’s 2013 iPhone plans is the prospect of a less expensive model geared towards emerging markets like China. According to a new rumor today, Apple is readying two 4-inch iPhones for 2013 with in-cell display technology. But what about the iPhone Math?

You’ve probably seen stills of Ashton Kutcher dressed up in 1970s Steve Jobs attire, and that’s because he’s playing the former Apple CEO in a new biopic called jOBS. His co-star, Josh Gad, is playing co-founder Steve Wozniak. The film is premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and then hitting theaters in April.

The annual Macworld/iWorld conference kicks off later this month. Kutcher and Gad will be giving the opening talk, entitled “Playing Steve and Woz.”

A burglar who broke into Steve Jobs’s Palo Alto home last August and stole $60,000 worth of goods — including Jobs’s wallet and his computer — has been handed a seven-year prison sentence. Kariem McFarlin, 35, of Alameda, was sentenced at the Santa Clara Superior Court on Monday.

Apple is said to be preparing three new iPhone handsets for launch during 2013, two of which will appear in June, China Times reports. In addition to a slightly updated iPhone 5S, the Cupertino company is expected to unveil the “iPhone Math,” a larger device with a 4.8-inch display. Both devices are to offer improved internals and an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera.

Apple has “stumbled lately.” That’s the overwhelming consensus coming from the press, blogosphere and Wall Street recently.

Demand for the iPad and iPhone is dropping, we’re told, and Apple isn’t doing interesting or exciting things anymore.

Here’s what’s going on. 

Lala was the pioneer in online music streaming before services like Spotify and Pandora really took off. If you Googled a song pre-2009, a Lala link was the first result. Founded in 2005, Lala underwent some business model changes until it became a full-fledged music streaming site. A partnership with Google’s Music Beta and good connections with the record industry allowed Lala to grow and gain attention from bigger tech companies.

It made sense for Apple to buy Lala in December of 2009. Lala.com was shut down in May of 2010, and Apple has since introduced products like iTunes Match. When Lala was bought, we all knew that Apple had paid around $80 million for the small startup. Now the inside story of how the deal was reached over dinner at Steve Jobs’s house has surfaced.

Apple CEO Tim Cook must provide a deposition in a lawsuit that claims the Cupertino company, along with other major firms in Silicon Valley, violated antitrust rules by entering into an agreement not to recruit each other’s employees. Apple’s lawyer, George Riley, had objected to the order handed out by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, on Thursday.

Sharp has “nearly halted” its production of 9.7-inch iPad displays as consumers shift their demand towards the smaller iPad mini, Reuters reports. Sources familiar with Sharp’s plans have claimed that production of the larger panels at Sharp’s Kameyama plant in central Japan has fallen to the “minimal level” this month following a gradual slowdown that began at the end of 2012.

The news follows speculation that the iPad mini has been “cannibalizing” sales of the larger model since its debut last November.

Team Cult is back from Vegas, baby! Yes, we’re still a little, um, foggy minded, but with plenty of new Apple news to discuss, the show must go on.

On this episode of The CultCast, we discuss rumors of iPhone 5S, and ponder how some recent Apple acquisitions means the mystery phone could have some very radical new features.

Then, has Apple lost its mojo? And what about all those rampant rumors that iPhone 5 just isn’t selling? Bollocks! On our newest episode, we sort it all out for you.

Eager to listen but not sure how? Easy! Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

Click on through for the full show notes.

LOS ANGELES — It felt like a wrap party for a big-budget Hollywood flick at Disney’s El Capitan Theatre, complete with fancy food and big names like Pixar chief John Lasseter in attendance. But Disney’s Infinity announcement on Tuesday was a massive project in which Pixar, the Disney-owned digital animation studio that once belonged to Steve Jobs, played only one of the major roles.

As it was revealed, Infinity is an amazing, massive, cross-platform, multiplayer game system based on figurines from the Disney catalog of movies — right now most of them specifically from Pixar titles.

“It will be global, and it will live across all platforms: console, mobile and online,” Lasseter said on Tuesday.

All platforms? Unfortunately not. Perhaps Disney has forgotten that Steve helped build Pixar into the powerhouse it is today; because while a Windows version will be present along with versions for all the major console systems at Ininity’s June launch, there won’t be a Mac version — at least, not at first.

Hearst and Apple have partnered in Newsstand to bring 22 of Hearst’s magazines exclusively to the iPad before any other digital or retail channels. This means that new issues of magazines like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle, Popular Mechanics, Seventeen, and more will be available in Newsstand days before anywhere else.

For a game that’s been downloaded over 170 million times and spawned countless ripoffs, the sequel to Temple Run came as a complete shock. The smash-hit endless runner started sneaking into App Stores around the world yesterday, and it went live in the U.S. late last night. Imangi Studios, the small company behind Temple Run, had no promotional material or teasers leading up to the release.

But now that Temple Run 2 is here, fans of the original can sprint, jump, slide, and fall through a new and improved world. With zip lines, new power-ups, characters, and a mine cart, Temple Run is better than ever.

Steve Jobs used to like Larry Page and the guys at Google, until they went and made their own smartphone operating system by copying iOS. Steve Jobs was livid. He threatened “to go thermonuclear war” on Google over Android, and the relationship obviously soured.

Now that Larry Page is the CEO of Google, he’s got a lot to worry about, but Steve Jobs’ thermonuclear threats haven’t seemed to bother him. In an interview with Wired’s Steven Levy, Page was asked about competition, and Jobs’ threats of war, but rather than going on an anti-Apple rant, Page’s answer was pretty calm, cool, and collected.

Samsung looks to be preparing to take on the iPad mini with the Galaxy Note 8.0, a smaller version of the Galaxy Note 10.1, which is expected to be priced very aggressively. In addition to an 8-inch display, the device will reportedly offer a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera, and of course, Samsung’s S Pen stylus.

Amazon has today launched a new web app for the iPhone and iPod touch that allows users to purchase more than 22 million tracks directly from the retail giant’s MP3 store. Amazon says the HTML5 app has been optimized to work seamlessly inside Apple’s mobile Safari browser, and any music you purchase will be transferred instantly to your Cloud Player library.

We know that Apple’s product roadmap for 2013 will consist of new iPads, iPhones and Macs. That’s nothing new. Apple is always working on new stuff, and if 2012 is anything to go by, we’re about to see an onslaught of new products.

Martin Hajek is a successful designer, and his work has been featured multiple times here on Cult of Mac. His iPad mini and iPhone 5 concepts from last year were spot on, and Hajek has published renderings for the less-expensive ‘iPhone mini’ that Apple reportedly has planned for later in 2013. Some think the seventh-gen iPhone (‘iPhone 5S’) could come in multiple colors, and it will probably look a lot like the 5.

Hajek also has some great renderings of what the iPad 5 may look like should Apple tweak the design to look more like the iPad mini.

Facebook promised that their updated Facebook Messenger app would allow iPhone users to call one another for free thanks to the magic of VOIP calls. The feature has been rolled out to other countries, but Facebook just rolled it out to the U.S. today.

The Free Call feature allows you to call any of your Facebook friends who are also using the Facebook Messenger app. Rather than using the minutes on your cellular plan, the calls are made using your data connection so you’re not using up any minutes.

AT&T has been dancing around its FaceTime restrictions for several months now. Before iOS 6 even went public, it was discovered that the carrier would block FaceTime calls over a cellular connection at its own discretion. AT&T later confirmed that users would have to be on one of its new shared data plans.

Public outcry caused AT&T to then backtrack and extend the feature to anyone with a tiered, traditional data plan and a LTE device. That still didn’t cut it. Now AT&T has updated its policy again, and subscribers with grandfathered unlimited data plans are the only ones still left out in the cold.

The idea of a secret public transportation system that only a small, technocratic elite knows about has something of the Knight Bus about it, but it’s a reality here in San Francisco, where thousands of commuters go to their jobs thirty to fifty miles south in Silicon Valley on ultra-secret bus lines. And yes, Apple — of course! — runs one.

A Dutch court has today ruled that a number of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablets do not infringe Apple designs. The court cited a previous decision made by a High Court in the United Kingdom back in October 2012, which ruled Samsung’s devices are “not as cool” because they lacked the “extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design.”

If you lose a smartphone and you use a service that can track its location via GPS, ignore it when it tells you that your handset is a Wayne Dobson’s house. For the past two years, this 59-year-old retiree has had cellphone owners showing up at his Las Vegas home demanding their devices back. They turn up at all hours of the day, yelling and threatening to call the police.

But Dobson is no thief, and he doesn’t have their phones. It’s a strange glitch that appears to be affecting devices on Sprint, and its making this man’s life a misery.