Pre-oders for the iPad start at 5.30 AM PST on Friday March 12, Apple PR told TUAW. That’s 8.30 AM for East Coasters.
Better set your alarm clocks.
All models of the iPad will be available for pre-order, but only the Wi-Fi model will ship on April 3. The 3G model won’t be available until late April.
UPDATE: Seth at 9to5Mac is now backtracking. While he says he’s received multiple tips that Mac Pros will be updated, he thinks the MacBook Pros tip might have been fake. “Shame on us,” he says.
Our friend Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac thinks MacBooks and Mac Pros will be updated within a week. Seth received a tip [...]
Steve Jobs may be one of the most admired CEOs in the tech industry even if he’s not the richest.
Jobs ranked 136 — down from up 43 spots since last year — in the annual Forbes list of billionaires, far behind Bill Gates (no. 2), Larry Ellison (6), Google founder Sergey Brin (24), Steve [...]
With just a few weeks to go before the iPad hits stores, here’s the best way to ensure you’re at the head of the line to get one (or three).
If history is any indication, the iPad will be in short supply when it goes on sale April 3. Plus there are rumors of production delays [...]
Full category list for displayed posts: Apple, Apple Tablet, News, Top stories, iPad
7:28 pm, March 11th, 2010, Leander Kahney
Pre-oders for the iPad start at 5.30 AM PST on Friday March 12, Apple PR told TUAW. That’s 8.30 AM for East Coasters.
Better set your alarm clocks.
All models of the iPad will be available for pre-order, but only the Wi-Fi model will ship on April 3. The 3G model won’t be available until late April.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Apple Tablet, News, Top stories, iPad | No Comments »
4:06 pm, March 11th, 2010, Leander Kahney
UPDATE: Seth at 9to5Mac is now backtracking. While he says he’s received multiple tips that Mac Pros will be updated, he thinks the MacBook Pros tip might have been fake. “Shame on us,” he says.
Our friend Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac thinks MacBooks and Mac Pros will be updated within a week. Seth received a tip that Apple’s pro desktop and portable line are being refreshed in the next few days — maybe as early as tomorrow, but more likely next Tuesday.
A refresh of the Mac Pros is already widely-rumored. The desktops are expected to be refreshed next week with the Intel Core i7-980x, a six-core screamer. But maybe new MacBooks are in line also? The new MacBook Pros will get Intel i5 and i7 processors, just like the current line of higher-end iMacs. The basic 13-inch MacBook Pro will have an Intel i5 processor, while the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBooks will have quad-core i7 processors.
If true, these machines will be screamers.
In February, MacRumors readers claimed to have found a GeekBench benchmark from a Core-i7 M620 MacBook Pro running an unreleased version of Mac OS 10.6.2. Current MacBook Pros score in the 3700-4000 range. However, this result is to be taken with a very large pinch of salt: forum readers say they’ve been planting fakes.
Either way, DO NOT BUY A MacBook Pro or Mac Pro for a while: updates are imminent.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, News, Rumors, Top stories | 6 Comments »
8:02 am, March 11th, 2010, Nicole Martinelli
AP photo
Steve Jobs may be one of the most admired CEOs in the tech industry even if he’s not the richest.
Jobs ranked 136 — down from up 43 spots since last year — in the annual Forbes list of billionaires, far behind Bill Gates (no. 2), Larry Ellison (6), Google founder Sergey Brin (24), Steve Ballmer (33) and Michael Dell who came in at no. 37.
Here’s how they explained his ranking:
“Following months of rumor and speculation, cultish king of the iGeeks presented the highly anticipated iPad in January; ten-inch, multi-touch computer intended to fill gap between smartphone and laptop. Delighted: nerds everywhere. Scared to death: newspaper and magazine publishers. Also unveiled new iBookstore and iBooks application in direct challenge to Amazon’s Kindle; several book publishers have committed to content agreements. Apple shares up 100% in past 12 months. Reed College dropout founded Apple in 1976. Revolutionized music industry with iTunes, iPod. Best investment: bought Pixar from George Lucas in 1986 for $10 million. Created string of hits (Finding Nemo, Toy Story); sold to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion in stock. Today is Disney’s largest shareholder; stake worth $4.2 billion.”
Via Softpedia
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News, Steve Jobs, Top stories | 6 Comments »
5:00 am, March 11th, 2010, Leander Kahney
With just a few weeks to go before the iPad hits stores, here’s the best way to ensure you’re at the head of the line to get one (or three).
If history is any indication, the iPad will be in short supply when it goes on sale April 3. Plus there are rumors of production delays that may further constrain supply.
The best way to get one is to place an advance order on Apple’s online store the minute Apple starts accepting them on Friday March 12.
Trouble is, no one knows what time Apple will update its online store. But there’s a way to get alerted.
Thanks to a bunch of nerds in Berlin, you can be pinged the minute the store is taken offline and, more importantly, when it comes back up.
AppleStoreCheck.com constantly monitors Apple’s online store for changes. Sign up, and the service will alert you by email, RSS or Twitter the minute Apple starts taking iPad pre-orders.
As AppleStoreCheck says: “We’ll check the Apple Store for new products and changes – so you don’t have to.”
iPad pre-orders will initially be limited to US customers, but includes both iPad Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi+3G models, which will ship later. The iPad will be available to pick up from the Apple Retail stores on April 3, or delivery through the mail.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, Apple Tablet, How tos, News, Top stories, iPad | 10 Comments »
11:41 am, March 10th, 2010, Giles Turnbull
Digital Americana has just popped up out of nowhere, claiming to be “the first literary & culture magazine developed especially for the interactive tablet experience.”
Or to put it another way, it will be “a new interactive magazine made exclusively for the Apple iPad”. And anyone can contribute.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Media, News, Opinions, Top stories, iPad | 4 Comments »
11:41 am, March 9th, 2010, Giles Turnbull
Just days after we reported on the launch of Alfred for OS X, along comes yet another keyboard-centric file and application launcher: Launchy.
Launchy has a long history as an open source Windows application, doing much the same on that platform that Quicksilver did on OS X. It too supports plugins that greatly boost its usefulness.
Right now, though, you can download a Mac beta and see what you think.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in News, Reviews, Top stories | 9 Comments »
9:06 am, March 9th, 2010, Giles Turnbull
Here’s Homer Simpson’s iPhone. Pretty dull, actually. Only one page of apps, and most of them look like the defaults. No iFart? No iBeer? No iDoh?
Wait – what’s that app there? Third row down, third from left?
Ah! Couch Gag! Yeah, one of my favorite apps.
Funny, it never does that when I use it.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Humor, Quickies, Top stories, iPhone, video | 3 Comments »
9:04 am, March 5th, 2010, John Brownlee
It’s official! After a month and a half of eager anticipation, Apple has announced the U.S. launch date of the iPad.
You’ll be able to pick up the iPad WiFi on April 3rd, with the iPad 3G coming later in the month.
Pre-orders start next Friday on March 12th through Apple’s online store.
International roll-out in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK of both the iPad WiFi and iPad 3G will happen in late April.
Hurrah! The end is in sight! So much for those rumored delays: this puts the iPad launch exactly within the 60-90 day launch window Steve Jobs promised on January 27th.
Who else will be compulsively refreshing Apple.com on March 12th along with me?
Press release after the fold.
Posted by John Brownlee in News, Top stories, iPad | 8 Comments »
6:14 am, March 5th, 2010, Giles Turnbull
Oh. My. God.
Forget the iPad, kids, just forget it forever. You don’t need one anymore. Because the guys at E4 have created… ePad. It’s more than amazing. It’s amazinger.
Don’t just take my word for it. Watch this video for the full details.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Humor, News, Top stories, Vintage Tech | 6 Comments »
2:42 pm, March 4th, 2010, Craig Grannell
One of the greatest things about App Store games is that they’ve broken the seemingly relentless escalation of costs for developers and price-increases for end users. In a sense, many of the games on the store return us to the halcyon days of 8-bit games—playable, quickfire efforts that innovated and packed in plenty of personality.
Over at creature24.com, three guys are about to take this idea to the extreme, taking a skeleton idea for an iPhone game through to App Store submission—all in just 24 hours. Progress will be shown live on the website on March 6, starting at 9:00am EST, and the trio of devs say comments from visitors might even be integrated into the game. I caught up with one of the three crazy game creators, Binary Hammer’s Bob Koon, to find out more. Read the rest of this post »
Posted by Craig Grannell in Gaming, Interviews, News, Top stories, iPhone Apps | 1 Comment »
1:29 pm, March 4th, 2010, Nicole Martinelli
Pulling a stunt worthy of Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible,” thieves cut a hole in the roof of a Best Buy then dropped down 16-feet to snatch up 20 Apple laptops. Then they climbed back up, escaping with $26,000 of merchandise without ever touching the floor.
Touching ground would have set off the store’s burglar alarm. And the two or three person crew were too clever to get caught on tape: they cut the roof hole in a spot where security cameras are blocked by ad banners.
The cinematic caper took place in South Brunswick, New Jersey leaving police to marvel at their handiwork:
“(This was a) high level of sophistication,” said Detective James Ryan, a police department spokesman told NJ.com “They never set off any motion sensors. They never touched the floor. They rappelled in and rappelled out.”
Via NJ.com
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in Cult of Mac, News, Top stories | 20 Comments »
10:43 am, March 4th, 2010, John Brownlee
We’ve already got a good handle on how periodical publishers intend on using the iPad to revitalize their businesses, but what about book publishers? Outside of just having another e-book platform to publish for, how can the iPad’s incredible multimedia and interactive capabilities be leveraged to transform the way we experience literature?
On Tuesday, Penguin Books’ CEO John Makinson tried to answer just those questions, demonstrating some upcoming books that will be coming to the iPad. Perhaps the most impressive demo was for the iPad version of the beloved children’s book, Where’s Spot? which has been transformed into an adorable interactive learning app. Penguin’s not stopping there: their Vampire Academy e-book is “an online community for vampire lovers” that features live chat between readers (a nice touch, but parents might get their heckles up at the idea of a real-life Edward Cullen prowling for pre-teens in the pages of their cildren’s book) , while a Paris travel guide switches to street map view when it’s put on a table.
Posted by John Brownlee in News, Top stories, iPad | 2 Comments »
9:18 am, March 4th, 2010, John Brownlee
We already knew Valve was bringing its popular Steam games delivery service to OS X thanks to some Mac-specific files floating around the latest PC beta, but you can now pretty much take it as read: the Half-Life 2 developer has been releasing a slew of images slathering the Apple coating across their most popular gaming franchise.
So far, Valve has released images of Half-Life 2’s Gordon Freeman wearing an iMacified HEV suit, replete with Apple logo instead of the Black Mesa Lambda symbol; the Team Fortress 2 Heavy eating a sandwich in the style of the dancing silhouette iPod ads; turrets from both Team Fortress 2 and Portal (a game which boasts a very Mac-inspired visual design scheme) doing the “I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” dance; Left 4 Dead’s Francis mocking the iconic “Think Different” series of ads; a Steam-specific take-off of the first “Introducing Macintosh” advertisement (courtesy of RPS); and Half-Life 2’s Alyx transported into the famous “1984″ commercial (via Macworld).
We’ve got all the images after the jump, At the barest minimum, though, OS X is about to get a proper digital delivery platform for games, and native ports of Valve’s greatest games. Rare good news indeed for the dedicated Mac gamer.
Posted by John Brownlee in Gaming, News, Top stories | 2 Comments »
6:00 am, March 4th, 2010, Leander Kahney
Music Professor David Cope with Emily Howell, a music AI that runs on a Power Mac 7500. Photo courtesy of Catherine Karnow.
The world’s most advanced music AI runs on a rickety old Power Mac 7500.
Called Emily Howell by its creator, music professor David Cope, the program just released “her” first album, From Darkness, Light, in January.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Hardware, Macintosh, Music, News, Top stories, Vintage Tech | 7 Comments »
12:27 am, March 4th, 2010, Leander Kahney
The WiFi-Where App in action (before Apple removed it from the App Store).
Having purged the App Store of porn, it looks as though Apple is now clearing the App Store of Wi-Fi finders.
On Wednesday, it appears that Apple removed several popular Wi-Fi stumbers from the App Store, including WiFi-Where, WiFiFoFum and yFy Network Finder.
Apple sent a note to the developer of WiFi-Where on Wednesday saying their app has been removed because it uses “a private framework to access wifi information.” Read the rest of this post »
Posted by Leander Kahney in Apple, News, Top stories, iPhone, iPhone Apps, iPod Touch | 27 Comments »
6:46 pm, March 3rd, 2010, Giles Turnbull
The best ideas are always the simplest. This is a fantastic tip from one of the team at Massive Studios, who needed a stand to rest a MacBook on.
Why bother spending money on something made of metal or plastic, when everything you need came in the box, wrapped around the MacBook?
Some Instructables are complicated but this one’s dead simple. All you need provide is a couple of screws – yep, screw them right into the styrofoam, apparently it works just fine – and a blade to slice the foam in the first place, and that’s it.
And if you’re wondering whether someone’s thought of turning an iPhone box into an iPhone dock, the answer is most certainly yes.
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Hardware Hacks, Macbook, News, Quickies, Top stories | 4 Comments »
12:18 pm, March 3rd, 2010, John Brownlee
Yesterday, Cupertino surprised everyone by throwing a bonafide legal temper tantrum about rival handset maker HTC’s alleged infringement on up to 20 Apple patents.
Although Apple is targeting HTC, the takeaway here is clear: Apple’s going after Android, HTC’s bread-and-butter. Google recognizes this, and is standing in solidarity with HTC.
As Apple fans, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture here. Competition is good for the consumer, and Android becoming a credible threat to the iPhone’s dominance will only make the iPhone cheaper and better for consumers in the long run.
There’s other aspects that make this sort of patent battle bad news for consumers though. The New York Times Bits blog asked some IP experts on the possible ramifications of the Apple-HTC patent dispute, and according to Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain, if Apple wins, we could see the courts order HTC to hit the kill switch on their Android phones, just like what happened in the TiVo/EchoStar lawsuit of 2004.
Posted by John Brownlee in Hardware, News, Top stories, iPhone | 32 Comments »
11:17 am, March 3rd, 2010, John Brownlee
For hardcore users, the iPad’s WiFi-only SKUs may seem like “why bother” affairs… especially given the $30 month-by-month data plan AT&T is offering to customers who pick up the marginally more expensive 3G version.
But AT&T doesn’t see it that way at all: in fact, speaking in a financial conference call this week, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has flat-out warned Ma Bell investors that they shouldn’t expect a huge upswing in new subscribers when the iPad launches.
Posted by John Brownlee in News, Top stories, iPad | 6 Comments »
4:37 pm, March 2nd, 2010, Leander Kahney
This is absolutely great. Film critic Roger Ebert is premiering his new computer voice on Oprah this afternoon. Below is a sneak peek. His new voice — spoken by his MacBook — actually sounds like him. He looks really delighted with it.
“In first grade they said I talked too much, and now I still can,” he says, grinning.
Ebert lost his voice box after years of cancer treatments. He used to speak with “Alex,” the robotic voice built into OS X. His new voice was created by CereProc, a company in Scotland that recreated it from hours of Ebert’s TV shows and DVD commentaries.
Via Videogum and Daring Fireball.
Posted by Leander Kahney in Mac Pro, Media, News, Software, Top stories | 4 Comments »
2:45 pm, March 1st, 2010, Nicole Martinelli
Apple style on the high seas? @Image courtesy Celebrity Cruises
So the architecture isn’t spectacular like some bucket-list worthy Apple stores, but the iLounge looks like a good excuse to check your email or harass expert staff about flash cookies while on vacation.
This is a rendered first look at what will be rolling out on Celebrity Cruises fleet launching in April: funky retro carpet, comfy armchairs and workstations with bar stools and more comfortable-looking work benches.
This new seafaring iLounge is an Authorized Apple Reseller where cruisers can check out the latest MacBooks, iPods and accessories. (No word on whether it will also have iPad, yet). It also has a classroom plus an “enrichment center” where trained staff offers tips.
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in Cult of Mac, Retail Stores, Top stories | 5 Comments »
Drums are awesome; there’re few things as satisfying as making sounds by thumping something with a stick — even if that stick is virtual. Now, for a buck, the iPhone can be turned into a virtual museum of virtual drums, thanks to Vintage Drum by developer OutOfTheBit.
Awesome Note is a charming, flexible, free-form app that combines elements of both note-taking and todo apps. But like uncle Chuck at an all-you-can-eat Vegas-style buffet, trying to shoehorn too much good stuff into one thing can sometimes lead to messy results.
Just days after we reported on the launch of Alfred for OS X, along comes yet another keyboard-centric file and application launcher: Launchy.
Launchy has a long history as an open source Windows application, doing much the same on that platform that Quicksilver did on OS X. It too supports plugins that greatly boost its usefulness.
Right [...]
It’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.
This time, we review Angry Birds, Bloom, FallDown!, Icy Escort, RandomPlay, Sir Revs-a-Lot, SteamPunk Hockey, Vector Runner
The Menu Bar sits at the top of your screen at all times. Let’s take a moment to get to know it. It’s worth doing, because the Menu Bar is going to be one of your best friends.
When you used Windows, you were used to see menus inside each document window. File, Edit, all [...]
With just a few weeks to go before the iPad hits stores, here’s the best way to ensure you’re at the head of the line to get one (or three).
If history is any indication, the iPad will be in short supply when it goes on sale April 3. Plus there are rumors of production delays [...]
This first tip starts with the very basic basics. Lots of more advanced stuff is coming very soon.
The first time you start your new Mac, you’ll see a screen that looks similar to the one above. If all you’ve ever used before is Windows machines, it might seem a little weird and intimidating.
So, here’s [...]
In the few short hours since we announced our new series, 100 Essential Mac Tips and Tricks For Windows Switchers, we’ve been overwhelmed by the response from you gorgeous Cult readers.
We’ve been deluged with emails from brand new, recent, and soon-to-become switchers asking questions and looking for help. It’s clear that there’s plenty of people [...]
