Apple Inc. - page 75

While you all were picking the choicest dark and white turkey meats for your plates and piling high glistening mountains of mashed potatoes, we here at Cult of Mac were stuck in our broadcasting dungeons recording another brand new CultCast, cause guess what? We’re just. That. Professional.

Ok so we actually recorded Wednesday. But with so much great Apple news and topics to cover this week, we just had to hop on the mics before the holiday gorging commenced.

Apple’s Black Friday sales; Oprah’s love for the iPad; Tim Cook’s favorite Thanksgiving accoutrements—it’s all that and more on this gravy-smothered over-stuffed CultCast! Subscribe now to The CultCast on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.

Read on for the show notes and to learn how you could promote your product or service on one of our future episodes.

This kind of giveaway is just too good to ignore. In a nutshell, two lucky winners will walk away with an iPad Mini. That’s just…awesome.

So if you’ve ever hoped, wished, dreamed, or thought about getting an iPad Mini this iPad Mini Giveaway is right up your alley.

Samsung successfully had the iPhone 5 added to its patent infringement complaint against Apple earlier this month, but the Korean electronics giant hasn’t quite finished there. It’s now going after Apple’s latest iOS devices, and has requested that the iPad mini, the new fourth-generation iPad, and Apple’s latest iPod touch are also brought into the case.

Earlier this morning, we told you that construction on Apple’s new, futuristic campus had been pushed back a year to 2016. Apple had originally wanted to break ground on the 176-acre piece of Cupertino property this year.

While most of the plans for the spaceship-like headquarters (referred to by Apple as “Campus 2”) have remained intact, a revised proposal was submitted to the city of Cupertino, California.

Apple has now issued an official comment on the delay of its new headquarters saying the company is approaching the build “with the same care and attention to detail we pay when designing any Apple product.”

Look, it’s the day before Thanksgiving, it’s a slow news day, whatever. Here’s a baby squirrel eating a pair of Apple earbuds in the cutest way possible. You’re welcome.

Via: TUAW

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster is saying that Apple has basically solved their iPhone 5 supply issues in the United States, and that in a couple weeks, anyone who wants an iPhone will be able to just walk into a store and buy the one they want without any chance of leaving empty handed. Just in time for the holidays!

The new, ultra-thin iMacs may not be shipping yet, but they are at using cutting-edge manufacturing and fabricating techniques that are right out of the space program.

Case in point? The way the new iMacs achieve their remarkable thinness is because of something called friction-stir welding, and it’s a process that’s been used in spacecraft fuel tanks and airplane wings.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has been one of the most outspoken proponents of the idea that Apple will release their own television, having predicted it for at least the last years every three or four months Now he’s at it again, promising a sub-$2000 Apple HDTV before the end of 2013. That’s not the weirdest thing he’s predicting though: a retina iPad mini by March, and a third-gen by September 2013.

Just over a week ago, Apple and HTC decided to end their patent disputes with a 10-year cross-licensing agreement. The specifics of the agreement were not disclosed, and as with all things that aren’t disclosed, it lead to rampant rumor mongering.

Disappointed with iOS 6 Maps but sick of waiting Google to finally get its act together and release a native Maps app on the App Store. Good news: another big name in maps, Nokia, have launched their own native maps app for iOS today. Called Nokia HERE, the app leverages Nokia’s decade-long expertise in mapping and brings it to the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, while also offering cool new features like Facebook integration, turn-by-turn directions, the ability to save maps for later, transit directions, and more.

There’s another way to get refurbished Apple stuff, and it’s…eBay? Oddly enough, the online auction retail site has a dedicated page for Apple certified Macs, iPods, and iPads, each coming with their own one year warranty just like they do in the onlineApple Store.

All the devices on sale through this eBay page are refurbished to seem like new, and even given new batteries in the case of iOS devices. The original operating system is also installed, and the unit gets a full round of testing, just like it does on the Apple Store.

During a roundtable session at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, world-renowned entrepreneur Elon Musk gave his opinions and impressions on a number of topics. Issues ranging from sustainable energy to planet colonization were bounced off the brain of Mr. Musk. As the man behind multiple $50 billion companies shared his insight, the billion dollar question was asked: “Who will come out on top: Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Facebook?”

Think back to your life 10 years ago. Now think about this: if you would have invested $10,000 in Microsoft stock then, you would now have $13,000. If you would have invested the same amount into Apple, you would now be sitting on $700,000.

Really let that sink in.

Apple has posted a teaser page for its annual Black Friday sale on its Australian online store. “The one-day Apple shopping event is Friday, 23 November,” reads the graphic. “We’ll help you make the most of the day, no matter how you shop.”

If you’re a longtime Apple customer, you know that the company’s Black Friday deals are infamously weak. The biggest kind of discount you’ll typically see is $40-$60 off an iPad or $100 off a Mac. Still, it’s the only time of the year that Apple discounts anything, so the deals are worth noting. Nothing specific has leaked out yet about the deals that will be happening this Friday, but expect some modest price cuts on all of the new products Apple introduced over the past few months.

Apple’s online and actual retail store deals should be the same. Don’t expect to stop by your local Apple store in the wee hours of the morning this Friday though, because the majority of stores won’t be opening at abnormally early hours.

Android users got a bit of a surprise over the weekend when they opened up Google Play to find a number of popular Apple apps had been ported to their devices. Apps like Garageband, iMovie, iPhoto, and the iWork productivity suite were all available to download for a brief period before they were pulled again.

Those who managed to purchase them before they disappeared, however, quickly found out that they were not the real thing. Surprise, surprise.

Can you imagine being this poor Apple Store specialist, Mr. Sam Sung? The glowers of suspicion, the titters of ridicule he must have to endure? But he’ll show them. He’ll show them all as he conducts his job with ruthless efficiency, schooling Apple Store customer after Apple Store customer in his way of doing things. The Sam Sung Way.

Source: The Loop

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The thermonuclear patent war may have a silver lining under its mushroom cloud thanks to some recent talks between Apple and Google’s Motorola Mobility. It appears the two companies are seriously considering putting and end to their global patent disputes via arbitration.

What goes up must come down, in physics and in investment. Stock prices for Apple have hit a low recently, down about a fourth of it’s value. Analysts believe that upcoming taxes on capital gains and investment dividends have stock holders rushing to get rid of as much as they can to avoid record tax hikes.

“No individual investment can defy gravity,” said the deputy chief investment officer for Wells Fargo, Erik Davidson.

Nintendo, unlike many software developers, has chosen to ignore the goldmine that is Apple’s App Store by refusing to develop its titles for iOS. It’s almost guaranteed that the Japanese company would make an absolute killing if it just brought fan favorites like Super Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon to our iPhones and iPads. But president Satoru Iwata is adamant it will only develop titles for its own hardware.

There are signs, however, that Nintendo is cracking. It just released its first paid iOS app, a mobile version of the Nintendo 3DS’s Pokédex, to customers in Japan.

Today, both Apple and Samsung were given the go ahead to include newer devices in their continuing legal battle over mobile smartphone and tablet supremacy, raising the stakes between the two tech giants. Samsung was granted the ability to include the iPhone 5 in its lawsuit against Cupertino-based Apple.

According to the Wall Street Journal, US Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal accepted Samsung’s revised request, thus allowing the company to attempt to prove infringement against Apple’s newest iPhone, a course of action the Korea-based company announced soon after its own defeat in the case against Samsung by Apple last month.

The jude also accepted Apple’s request to amend its own infringement lawsuit against Samsung to include newer products, including the Galaxy Note 10.1, the Galaxy S III, and the Jelly Bean Android Operating System.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was at the Churchill Club in Santa Clara this week to be interviewed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. One of the most interesting subjects he talked about was Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, and how it compares to its two main rivals, Apple’s iOS, and Google’s Android.

As you might expect, he didn’t have many good things to say about his competitors. In fact, he called Android “wild” and “uncontrolled,” before saying the iPhone is too expensive and too controlled. Windows Phone, he feels, sits in a sweet spot between the two.

There are two fighters left in the battle for market share dominance in the mobile space: Apple and Google. Android powers Samsung’s flagship handsets, and the Korean company continues to crush Apple in terms of sheer volume of units sold. Without Android, Samsung wouldn’t be near as successful.

But Apple is showing incredible growth, especially in emerging markets like China and Brazil. Smartphone sales are cannibalizing ‘dumb phones’ rapidly, and Apple is leading the smartphone pack with Samsung and Android.

As Apple and Samsung try to purge themselves of dependency on one another things are bound to get even more ugly over the next 12-18months. A report came out earlier this week that Samsung was planning to raise the price on Apple’s processors by 20%.

The significant price increase would mean Apple’s cash cow – the iPhone – wouldn’t have as profitable margins which would negatively effect Apple’s bottom line. However, an official at Samsung has come out today to deny the changes and says that a 20% price hike isn’t coming.

Although the iPad mini is well-reviewed, a constant complaint that has been leveled against Apple’s smallest tablet is that the display isn’t Retina. In fact, in my review of the iPad mini, I could barely see past the terrible fuziness of the on-screen text, and considered it an otherwise perfect device’s Achilles’ Heel.

Over the last day or so, a lot of thinkers in the Apple space have piped up, saying that it would essentially be impossible for Apple to make the iPad mini with a Retina display.

Summarized, the argument is this: A Retina iPad mini would be too expensive for Apple to make right now, and it would come with other tradeoffs, like a significantly reduced battery life and a much thicker and heavier form factor.

I was curious if this was actually true, so I decided to try an experiment: I’d build an imaginary Retina iPad mini out of technology that Apple already has access to, add up how much it would cost, and then see what the design tradeoffs would be.

What I found out was that Apple could indeed have shipped an iPad mini with Retina this generation without significantly changing the form or battery life of the device, but it would have cost $379. Here’s why.