John Brownlee - page 135

This seems like a no-brainer. For just fin, you can pick yourself up a temporary Steve Jobs tattoo.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5i1Dyj5k1A&feature=player_embedded

It’s September 1st, and that means that its time to head back to school. Small surprise, then, that Apple’s latest ad for the iPad 2 emphasizes what a fantastic learning tool their tablet is, highlighting everything from keeping up with TED to learning to draw Chinese characters to touring the solar system to playing a game of chess. “There’s never been a better time to learn,” the ad’s tagline asserts. With the iPad 2 around, we’d have to agree.

Remember that radically different iPhone 5 design that popped up by way of a miniscule, pixelated icon in the latest Photostream beta? The boys over at 9to5Mac have blown it up into a larger mockup, and they reckon it might be the smaller, cheaper iPhone we’ve been hearing scuttlebutt about.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sgtK63DALQ&feature=player_embedded

Apple must really not want iTunes Match to stream. Last night’s hasty release if iOS 5 Beta 7 seems to have been hastened to release specifically to change the way downloading songs from the iCloud takes place.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPDSThRG_n8&feature=youtu.be

Well, that was quick: just an hour or two after it broke that Apple lost an iPhone 5 prototype at a San Francisco tequila lounge, someone’s already given it the good old Downfall treatment.

This one starts slow, but it really gets good in the tantrum part of things. “What will they lose next, Tim Cook’s sex tape?”

Oh man, not again. In July, Apple lost yet another iPhone prototype in a San Francisco bar… this time, a testing prototype of the iPhone 5.

The latest version of Apple’s Photo Stream beta app has a new icon for “taking a photo with your iPhone”… one that appears to feature an iPhone 5 with a larger screen and elongated, capacitive home button. You know, just like all the rumors and cases have been suggesting.

Art gaffe, or can we just all take as read the look of the iPhone 5 now that icons for it are creeping into other products?

As part of the recent Newsweek cover story on Steve Jobs retirement and his legacy inside and outside of Apple, Cult of Mac was invited to contribute our own piece about how, more than anything else, Jobs’ true genius is in managing the creative process. Here’s what we came up with: the 10 Commandments of Steve,

Click the image above to see the full sized infographic, and then let us know what you think in the comments!

Spotify hasn’t even bothered with a native iPad app yet, but with their latest move, it looks like they might never have to: they are giving devs the tools to embed Spotify music streaming into their own apps.

If you’ve been waiting for Apple’s iPad 2 to be made available as discounted refurbished units through Apple’s online store, giddyup! They might not last long.

Hey, what do you know! A mere month before it is expected that Sprint will finally get an iPhone for its network to call its own, the nation’s fourth largest carrier is beefing up their early termination fees, thus guaranteeing that they will be able to milk the maximum amount of money possible from impatient switchers!

It’s hardly a surprise that Steve Jobs made the cover of Newsweek the week after he announced his retirement as Apple’s CEO. What is surprising, though, is what a fitting tribute to Steve’s legacy it is. “American Genius” indeed. What a fantastic cover.

AT&T is now selling its first tablet compatible with its blazing fast new LTE network. Sad news, though: it’s not an iPad, just a crummy Android tablet.

When the deadline finally came for apps to conform to Apple’s new rules governing in-app purchases, giving Apple a 30% cut from any in-app purchase or subscription and eliminating links to outside e-shops, most of the biggest names — like Amazon’s Kindle app — ultimately grin and bore up.

Conspicuously, though, the Financial Times never updated its app… and after two months of standing defiant, the App Store ban hammer has finally dropped. Apple’s serious about their cut!

The best mobile browser for Android has just hit iOS. Called Dolphin, the browser specializes in being a gesture-based way to navigate the web, but does Dolphin have what it takes to go head-to-head with the competiing alt-browsers… let alone Mobile Safari?

Remember the Japanese hand case? This iPhone case isn’t as creepy, but is just as misguided. Unless you’re a prop comic, you probably shouldn’t buy this.

If you think the man in the picture above looks familiar, there’s a good reason. His name is Abdulfattah John Jandali. He’s the biological father of Steve Jobs who put him up for adoption over fifty years ago, and to this day, he hasn’t spoken on the phone with his son to tell him he’s proud of him.

Well, there goes the neighborhood. Zite — the personalized magazine for iPad — just got gobbled up by CNN.

Sick of the (admittedly tweaked) clarity of the Andromeda Galaxy, Lion’s default wallpaper? Why not download this 8-bit pixel art recreation of the same in glorious 2560 x 1600.

Snow Leopard loyalist? There’s a version for you too.

[via OS X Daily]

How obsessive is Apple’s attention to detail? In their just opened 4th Street store in Berkley, California, everything is symmetrically aligned, from the squares on the sidewalk to the panes of glass to the stone floor tiles inside.

Go into the staff toilet and I’ll bet that even the toilet paper is hung just so that it could be unrolled and stretched in a straight line to align symmetrically with the sidewalk. Crazy… and totally awesome.

[via iFOApplestore]

Sprint has an utterly bizarre history of announcing media events around the same time as new iPhone announcements, which — of course — immediately overshadow whatever small thing they’re trying to get journalists jazzed about. Guess who’s up to their old tricks again?

If you’ve got a massive music library, better think twice about syncing it with iTunes Match: the maximum size of an iTunes library in the iTunes Match beta is 25,000 songs. Assuming a library in which song is an average of 4 minutes long and compressed in CD quality 320kbps, that basically means the upper limit on a library is a size of 250 gigabytes. That’s pretty generous for a $24.99 a year service.

Apple has temporarily closed down the iTunes Match beta to developers trying to access it for the first time after Apple launched their match-and-stream music service yesterday afternoon.

Now that Lion’s out, you’d be forgiven for expecting iCloud integration to require a minimum spec of OS X 10.7. It’d also be understandable if you thought Apple was done updating Snow Leopard.

You’d be wrong on both accounts, though. Apple is indeed updating Snow Leopard one more time with version OS X 10.6.9… and it’ll bring iCloud integration to Snow Leopard.

Want to clean up Lion’s Launchpad? Launchpad Cleaner 2 is the app for you: it’s a gorgeous front end for tweaking the nuts and bolts of Launchpad and make it work for you.

We love Launchpad Cleaner. Heck, we love it so much that we’re giving away fifty free promo codes for Launchpad Cleaner 2! Here’s how to get yours: