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Believe it or not, Black Friday has already come and gone. Pretty soon the Christmas season will begin, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.

Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.

From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts for Mac lovers (not Mac fighters).

It’s almost 2013. High-quality web and blog design are no longer a luxury – they’re a necessity.

Picturesque is an awesome little app – and the latest Cult of Mac Deals offer. This app will improve any web design by adding some serious sizzle to your images. Drag and drop images onto Picturesque & choose from 5 tasteful effects. It’s that easy. And it’s only $5 for a limited time!

If you’re an AT&T subscriber and are having problems accessing your visual voicemail, it’s not just you. We’re hearing reports that a widescale problem is preventing AT&T subscribers from accessing their visual voicemail.

The Daily was the first bold publishing experiment on the iPad, the project that was supposed to be a shining light to show journalism the way through the murky path of the 21st Century.

Instead, it was sadly shut down earlier this month, with December 14th marked as the last day for the world’s first iPad-only newspaper.

Well, today’s December 14th, and the remaining staff of The Daily have opted to go out in style, sweetly releasing their own version of “So Long, Farewell” from The Sound of Music… with modified lyrics calling out various Apple products and the newspaper they’d worked for. Here’s the video.

Almost three months after making its debut in the United States, Apple’s iPhone 5 goes on sale in China and 32 addition countries today. As is often the case when Apple launches a new gadget, fans lined up in droves in an effort to get their hands on the Cupertino company’s latest smartphone before it’s all sold out. Some stores, however, were unusually quiet.

Ok, so we may not be rockstars (yet), but we just hit 1,000,000 downloads of The CultCast, our fun, quirky, totally off-base podcast covering everything in the wonderful world of Apple. That’s like earning a platinum record! Now we know what Led Zeppelin felt like… But we couldn’t have done it without our smart, good-looking, worldwide audience supporting us all the way. If you’ve ever listened to an episode of The CultCast, thank you, we love you, and we would like to hold your hand.

But enough self sycophancy! On our newest episode, we talk Google Maps reborn on iOS. We’ll tell you what we love, what we don’t, and if it scratches the itch we’ve all had since the demise of the last Google Maps.

Plus: why Twitter wants to be your next Instagram, and a new Flickr app rises from the ashes—but is it too little too late?

Join us on our newest CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

Yeah, this is one of the least surprising rumors you’ll hear all day. But it’s sure to delight those who are holding out for an iPad mini with a Retina display. According to industry sources in Taiwan, Apple will indeed be “enhancing” the display resolution of its second-generation iPad mini, introducing a 2058×1536 panel with 326 pixels-per-inch.

You know, computers aren’t just for getting things done. They’re also for getting your game on. With that in mind, the latest Cult of Mac Deals offer has packed 10 fun games that are compatible with both Mac and PC systems into one bundle known as The Entertainment Games Bundle.

And for a limited time we’re offering it to you for just $29!

I present a lot of talks these days, and wanting to make sure they sound right is of paramount importance. Having the ability to have your computer read your work talk back to you in a situation like that is a valuable thing. That’s why today’s offer from Cult of Mac Deals is such a winner in my books…and not just because it’s free!

Narrator is an awesome app that can help you make sure what you’ve written is what you want conveyed – and we’re offering it to you for free for a very limited time!

App making is competitive as ever and it’s only going to get more so. Apps are an awesome opportunity for entrepreneurs to turn an idea into a profitable product with little monetary investment. The problem is, everyone knows this and is trying to get their piece of the pie.

With that in mind, The Mobile App Design Starter Kit is exactly what any independent app creator needs to get ahead of the game.

There are a lot of great ideas hidden behind terribly designed apps. We all know the typical reasons for poor design – pricey professional designer prices, lack of themes, or mobile app design just being difficult in general – but what this Cult of Mac deal offers is a comprehensive kit that includes everything you need to give your app a snazzy design that will make it stick out among the competition for only $57.

A U.S. court has today ruled that Apple’s iPhone infringes three patents owned by MobileMedia Ideas, a so-called “patent troll” jointly owned by Nokia, Sony, and Denver-based MPEG LA.

Hey, thanks Apple! Order online right now from the U.S. official Apple Storeand you get free 2-3 day shipping. Usually, Apple only offers free shipping if you spend more $50. That will make it a little easier to get a last minute stocking stuffer for your loved ones, don’t you think? Source: Apple Store

We’re all busy people, but around this time of year that level of “busy-ness” seems to increase exponentially. We seem to have less hours in the day, and that means we need to make the most out of each and every minute. And your Mac can help you do that – with the right apps in place, that is.

There’s no better opportunity than now to start building your software stack than with today’s Cult of Mac Deals offer. The Mac Variety Bundle 2.0 from Macbundler includes 9 top Mac apps valued at $527 for the amazingly low price of just $45! That’s a savings of 91%!

After months of anticipation, Google just unleashed Google Maps for iPhone in Apple’s App Store. It was reported earlier tonight that the app was set to go live, and it’s now available.

After Apple abandoned Google Maps for its own mapping technology in iOS 6, Google has been working on a new, standalone app to submit. It’s finally here.

Believe it or not, Black Friday has already come and gone. Pretty soon the Christmas season will begin, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.

Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.

From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts for people who are like, totally into their iPads. Totally.

New York has reportedly been pitched a proposal that would see a 3.2 million square foot computer chip factory built in the state… and Government Andrew Cuomo is slyly hinting that the proposal might come from Apple as part of a big to start building their A-Series iPhone and iPad CPUs domestically.

When Apple decided to give Google Maps the boot and deliver its own Maps app for iOS 6, it teamed up with TomTom to provide users with turn-by-turn navigation on their iOS devices for the first time. Now it seems the Cupertino company may be looking to acquire its new navigation partner in an effort to fix Maps.

Hans Slob, an Utrecht, Netherlands-based analyst at Rabobank, believes there’s a 30% chance Apple will acquire TomTom. It is reportedly interested in the Dutch company’s capacity to make prompt changes to correct mapping errors.

Apple has begun testing high-resolution television set designs with manufacturing partners in Asia, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal that cites unnamed sources within Foxconn. Both Foxconn and display manufacturer Sharp are said to be involved in the process, which is still in its early stages.

Earlier today, it was revealed that Apple rejected an update to Microsoft’s SkyDrive iOS app in the App Store. The reason was rumored to be because Microsoft didn’t want to share a percentage of subscription revenues from inside the app, and Apple has a blanket policy about all App Store developers sharing a 30% cut.

While the two companies are indeed arguing about Apple’s App Store policies, the issue actually surrounds the upcoming Office for iOS suite that Microsoft plans to launch in early 2013.

Twitter might have been a bit previous announcing it ahead of its actual appearance in the App Store, but it’s here now: Twitter for iOS 5.2 is out, and comes with Twitter’s very own Instagrammish photo filters. Are they any good?

Today’s Cult of Mac Deal sounds great…literally!

The AFS1 Portable Bluetootk Speaker offers great sound – wherever and whenever you want it. You can easily sync this powerful little speaker to your tablet, phone, computer, or bluetooth compatible music player to enjoy stereo quality tunes anywhere. And for only $39 you’re gettinga deal that sounds great on a whole other level!

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS6 versions are now Retina display ready, and available for download via Adobe Software Update. You can also grab the update file directly from the Adobe website.

Apple’s Maps struck again this morning when it was reported that multiple drivers were being guided into the wilderness when searching for the city of Mildura. The local police deemed the glitch in Maps a “potentially life-threatnening issue” because the Australian wilderness is not exactly a safe place to get lost in. The temperature gets really hot and there’s no water.

Since the fiasco started circulating in the media this morning, Apple has quietly fixed the inaccuracy in Maps and started pointing users in the correct direction.

A big Instagram update is now available for Android and iOS devices. The camera interface of the app has been improved with a quick preview of the last picture you took on your device. Now there’s an optional grid guide for taking pictures and a permanent grid to help you with aligning when you’re scaling and cropping. For iPhone 5 users, Instagram has included an “improved Camera Roll image selector for quick access to your last photograph.”

Today’s update also includes a number of speed enhancements, Foursquare buttons, several design tweaks, and a new filter called “Willow.”

You’ve got just one more chance to get The iStack Mac Bundle 2.0. In this worthy sequel to the original bundle, we’ve got 10 killer apps (and a bonus e-course for the first 3000 buyers) lined up at a massive savings of 93% off the regular price you’d pay for them separately.

That’s right…you’ll get this Cult of Mac Deals offer for only $49!