It hasn’t been a good year for Mac security so far, at least PR-wise, and it’s about to get a lot uglier: an Apple programmer forgot to turn off a debug switch in OS X 10.7.3’s security settings before the update was distributed to the public.
The result? If you’re running OS X 10.7.3, your login password might be stored in plain text on an unencrypted, easily accessed section of your hard drive.
Here’s an obvious fact: Steve Jobs loved computers. And since Steve also liked to make a fashion statement, it only makes sense that he would have ordered at least 50 of Cult of Mac’s new Lisa-inspired graphic tee.
Who’s Lisa? Why she was only one of Apple’s most iconic computing failures. Maybe her stratospheric 10k price tag was to blame. It obviously wasn’t her boxy good-looks that did her in.
But we loved her, and now you can too. We partnered with Seattle indie brand Might Tees to bring Lisa’s vintage appeal back to life on our new In Love With Lisa graphic tee.
Our new tee is finely crafted right here in the beautiful USA, ships worldwide, and is available right now over at MightTees.com.
Is Apple secretly plotting to become your next wireless carrier? It could happen sooner than you think. And will the iPhone 5 sport a widescreen 4-inch retina display? It’s a rumor rundown on our brand new CultCast!
And you asked for it, you got it — we’ve gathered a list of our most-loved apps of the week, and we’re ready to pick the best of the bunch.
Catch all that and more on this week’s CultCast.
In a mobile industry that’s simply booming, there’s only two phone vendors reaping the majority of the benefits: Samsung and Apple. In Q1 of 2012, Apple and Samsung combined for 99% of mobile phone vendor profits — the remaining 1% belonged to HTC. Independently, Apple holds the lion’s share of profits with an incredible 73% of operating profits thanks to carrier premiums for the iPhone 4S. Samsung, while leading in mobile phone shipments, only grabbed 26% operating profits — which isn’t really that bad considering every other carrier (other than HTC) managed to face significant losses.
When Apple first released iPhoto for iOS, it quickly became clear that the new app was Apple’s first app to distance itself from Google’s Maps API in favor of OpenStreetMap (OSM), a collaborative online project aimed at making a free and complete map of the world. When you checked in iPhoto where a photo had been taken, you were seeing maps built upon the foundation of OSM. The only problem? Apple wasn’t bothering to credit them.
Now with the latest update to iPhoto, Cupertino’s decided to do the right thing. OpenStreetMap is credited in the app’s acknowledgement section.
While Apple saw strong sales for all its iOS devices during its post-holiday quarter, Android tablet sales slumped, giving up any gains that Android had seen as a tablet platform during the holiday shopping season.
According to IDC, overall tablet shipments were down more than the analyst firm had expected. The decline to 17.4 million units represented a 38.4% drop off from the holiday quarter shipments of 28.2 million units – a notably steeper decline than IDC’s predicted 34% decline.
While overall tablet shipments were down, Android tablets slumped significantly more than Apple’s iPad, which gained an additional 13.3% of the tablet market.
Rumors have been flying about Apple’s next-gen iPhone featuring a liquidmetal alloy casing, unlike the glass backing that currently cradles the iPhone 4 and 4S’s precious internals. Liquidmetal would assumedly create a lighter iPhone that’s also more durable and scratch resistant. There’s also been rumors that the next-gen MacBooks will be made of liquidmetal, but no hard evidence has surfaced to support the speculation.
Two years ago Apple bought exclusive rights to use material from Liquidmetal Technologies in its products, but we have yet to see a liquidmetal iPhone. The only liquidmetal material to be incorporated was the pin used for ejecting the iPhone 3G SIM card. Will 2012 be the year Apple’s product line goes liquidmetal? Sadly, the odds don’t look good.
Are you curious about what it’s like to work for Apple? Here’s a chance for you to find out. Career advice site CareerBliss recently complied a list of the “Happiest Companies For Young Professionals” – a top ten list for which Apple didn’t make the cut. Even though Apple didn’t make that list, CareerBliss does offer a lot of insight into what life is like for Apple employees.
CareerBliss allows people to rank and describe their experiences in their current or past workplaces. Users researching potential jobs and companies can then see overall rankings (based on a one to five ranking scale) and browse through the individual reports. For Apple fans, that means a treasure trove of data about what it’s like to actually work for the company.
According to the latest report from the International Data Corporation, Samsung has ousted both Apple and Nokia to aquire the top spot in both smartphone and total mobile phone shipments for the first quarter of 2012. This marks the first time since the inception of IDC’s Mobile Phone Tracker that Nokia did not lead the global market in total mobile phone shipments. That’s quite a testament to Samsung’s tremendous growth over the past year, which according to the IDC, was nearly triple in the smartphone category.
When asked about Microsoft’s attempt to converge its mobile and desktop platforms into a single Windows 8 release, Tim Cook responded with an analogy of trying to converge a toaster and a refrigerator. If interest in Microsoft’s Consumer Preview release of Windows 8 is any guide, it seems that the public might agree with him.
According to Net Applications, a web analytics company, only a very small fraction of devices connecting to the Internet were running the preview – just 0.11% (or 11 out of every 10,000).
Cult of Mac Deals has what our readers have called “the best giveaway yet” — and it’s really hard to argue that.
It’s a giveaway that will level up your productivity…because we’re offering you a chance to win a bundle that contains all of The Omni Group’s top Mac apps!
This giveaway is valued at $580 — and it’s one that you definitely want to have in your Mac toolbox!
Earlier in this day, we reported on a New York Times piece in which the paper claimed that Apple was using a variety of measure to avoid paying U.S. income tax. It turns out that the Times based key pieces of its information on a study that had been discredited two weeks prior.
The data used by the Times included a report by the Greenlining Institute, which made errors in computing Apple’s supposed tax rate at 9.8% for the 2011. The data used by the report effectively compared Apple’s 2011 profit with taxes paid by the company for profits in 2010 and drew unfounded conclusions as a result.
Patent Armageddon is set to take place in less than a month thanks to dates set by Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero. The settlement talks were originally ordered by Judge Lucy Koh of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, in hopes that Samsung and Apple’s CEOs and their chief lawyers could reach an agreement to end the 50+ lawsuits filed by the two.
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran another in its series of exposes about Apple. This one focused on Apple’s complex mix of offices and subsidiaries located throughout the world and the U.S. that allow the company to keep large portions of its more than $100 billion in low-tax states and countries.
The report comes after the paper’s expose on working conditions within Foxconn, the contractor that Apple uses to assemble most of its products and calls by politicians and members of the media for Apple to move more of its manufacturing and money to American soil.
Microsoft has teamed up with Barnes & Noble with a $300 million investment that will create a new subsidiary focused on accelerating “the transition to e-reading.” Microsoft will take a 17.6% equity stake in a subsidiary, which is yet to be named, while Barnes & Noble will own the remaining 82.4%.
The move will provide Microsoft with its own answer to iBooks, with plans for a NOOK application that will run on Windows 8, and it’ll give users an alternative to the Kindle Store.
If you’re a fan of Steve Jobs, or if you’ve ever pondered what makes Apple so different from every other company out there, you’re not going to want to miss our fascinating CultCast interview with ex Apple Ad guy and long time Steve Jobs collaborator, Ken Segall.
In his 12 years as an advertising executive working with Apple, Ken Segall put that little “i” in front of the iMac, helped develop Apple’s famous Think Different ad campaign, and spent countless hours creating and working closely with one Mr. Steven P. Jobs — he even got yelled at a few times.
Now Mr. Segall has a new book out, titled, Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success. And in this episode of The CultCast, Ken regales us with stories of what it was really like working with Steve Jobs, and what makes Apple so different from every other company on earth.
How quickly WWDC sold out this week – less than two hours and before many developers on the west coast were even out of bed – raises some interesting questions for Apple. Could the company have handled the announcement better? Should Apple allow more than 5,000 developers to attend? Is the current model for WWDC, which was adopted years ago, still viable given the stratospheric success that Apple has experienced over the past few years?
Earlier in the year, Apple acquired app discovery engine Chomp in an effort to improve app discoverability in their App Store. As we all know, discovering apps among the hundreds of thousands that populate popular app stores can sometimes be a chore, so it would make sense for Apple to acquire such a company as Chomp. However, Chomp also improved app discoverability of Android apps and since Apple’s acquisition we’ve wondered if this would one day change. Well, guess what? That day has come and it looks like Apple has chomped out Android app discoverability completely.
It’s no secret that the iPad is Apple’s fastest selling product ever. That fact was made clear during the company’s recent financial call when Tim Cook compared how long it took for other Apple products to reach current iPad sales figures. What hasn’t been as clear is just how much the iPad is expanding Apple’s overall customer base.
A new NPD study, however, shows that the iPad is playing a significant role in helping Apple attract new customers. It turns out that one out of every four iPad buyers have never owned an Apple product before.
JC Penny can’t get enough of Apple’s retail talent, as the American retailer has announced the hire of yet another Apple exec. Back in November, former Apple retail guru Ron Johnson left Apple to become the CEO of JC Penny. Now a high-level Apple retail exec has left to work under Johnson.
Ben Fay served for 8 years at Apple as the worldwide head of retail store design, and he will now be in charge of overseeing JC Penny’s own retail design strategy.
This year’s WWDC track listing has a focus that seems evenly split between between OS X and iOS development. There’s also a fairly even amount of material for both experienced Mac and iOS developers as well as those new to developing for Apple’s platforms. One track that Apple appears to have axed from WWDC 2012, however, is the IT or enterprise technologies track.
An IT or enterprise technology track has not been a guaranteed WWDC staple, but Apple has offered several times over the past decade. The track, which typically comprises the only non-developer events at WWDC, has always offered large enterprises and IT professionals things that they rarely get from Apple – a roadmap or sense of where Apple is heading technologically as well as insights from Apple engineers and other Apple-focsed IT professionals.
Asking people what the best iPhone carrier is usually leads to a number of thoroughly unscientific and subjective responses. For example, one person might recommend AT&T simply because they’re locked into a two-year contract with Ma Bell and don’t want to admit they made a mistake. Someone on Sprint, on the other hand, might recommend their network for the “unlimited data” to someone for whom speed — not volume — is the most important criterion.
CarrierCompare is a new iOS app that aims to moderate the debate by allowing you to see what the best iPhone carrier is at any given location. But right now, Apple’s stamping down on a key feature that makes the app less useful than it could be.
Everyone knows that Research In Motion has been on a downward spiral into destruction over the last few years. Sales and profits are plummeting, and the company’s corporate structure is falling apart. The end may be near for the once-popular Blackberry maker.
Recent stats from online trade-in site Gazelle.com reveal that Blackberry trade-ins have increased by 80% over the last month.
Apple, Google, Intel and four other tech giants failed to convince a judge to dismiss an antitrust suit brought against them. The suit alleges that the companies conspired against hiring each other’s employees and District Judge Lucy Koh in her decision said:
“The fact that all six identical bilateral agreements were reached in secrecy among seven defendants in a span of two years suggests that these agreements resulted from collusion, and not from coincidence,”
While Apple, Google, and Intel are the three largest firms in the suit, other major companies, including Adobe, Lucasfilm, Pixar and Intuit are included.
A few years back Seattle Rex had gone all out on a 17” MacBook Pro – spending approximately $4,500 on the then top-of-the-line machine ($5,100 including AppleCare). The particular MacBook Pro he bought turned out to be defective. The laptop’s Nvidia graphics processor started displaying symptoms of the defect shortly after his AppleCare expired. A few days later the laptop died completely – it wouldn’t even start up. At the time Rex’s laptop broke down the defect was a known and well-documented issue. Apple had even issued a tech note and was replacing defective models as they failed.