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Remember back in the day when Apple and Google were all chummy? Back when the original iPhone was released in 2007, and Google wasn’t in the smartphone business? That all changed once Google betrayed Apple’s trust and launched the Android operating system, and ever since then Google has held the stance that they never copied the iPhone. It’s hard to prove that a company wasn’t thinking about something, but newly released designs of Google’s original concept phone from 2006 show that Google wasn’t even considering the creation of a touchscreen smartphone back when the iPhone was unveiled, so they stole Apple’s designs instead once they saw them.

Gameloft released a teaser video for the upcoming N.O.V.A. 3 game which is rumored to be powered by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3. This is the third installment in the N.O.V.A. franchise, which stands for Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance, and picks up with Kal Wardin crash-landing towards Earth. Gameloft has been known for their console-quality mobile games and N.O.V.A. 3 doesn’t look to disappoint.

Tickets to Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference sold out in less than two hours this morning. WWDC is a great event for any developer to attend. The media focus around WWDC, however, always centers on the keynote that kicks of the conference Monday morning – and with good reason. That’s the only public event at the show and also the least technical part of the conference.

The keynote is always more Apple announcement and preview than it is developer content. Apple uses it to announce and preview new technologies in the next iterations of OS X and iOS. The company has also used its WWDC keynote to launch new products (like the iPhone 4 in 2010).

There appear to be a few ways to stop your earbuds from dropping to the floor when you unplug them from your waxy canals. One is to just run the cable from the iPhone/iPod in your front pants pocket up through your shirt/t-shirt/muscle-vest and out through the neck hole. Pop out the earbuds and there they dangle. This is so easy and well-known that even clueless teenagers can manage it.

The second method, I have just discovered, is to use the Props from Quirky.

Ken Segall, who named the iMac and worked on the “Think Different” campaign, has some choice takeaways from working with Steve Jobs that he’s finally sharing in book form with Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success.

The cleanly-designed cover in Apple’s signature Myriad typeface looks almost like it should be unboxed; inside you’ll find choice insider tales of the flops, false starts and history made with Apple over the 12 years he worked with the Cupertino company. (You can read an exclusive excerpt from Insanely Simple and our review of the book here.)

Segall tells Cult of Mac about the reasoning behind that lowercase “i,” winning Jobs over and what happened when ads flopped. You can catch up with him through his blog or Facebook page, where you’ll also find details about his upcoming book tour.

What do you do when you have a huge DVD collection that you’ve been building for years, and combine it with Apple’s resolutionary new iPad? Your favorite movies are stuck in a physical format and you can’t even totally enjoy the awesome new Apple gadget you just bought. Repurchasing all your movies on iTunes would cost more than new iMac, but fortunately there’s a simple answer that is totally free.

This week we’re going to teach you how to take your DVDs, rip the movie files off them, and stream them to your iPad or iPhone courtesy of the folks at Digiarty. For the next 7 days Cult of Mac readers can get a free copy of MacX DVD Ripper Pro Streamer Edition provided by Digiarty, which will help change the way you watch movies.

Once you’ve downloaded your free software you’re going to need to know how to rip your old DVDs. It’s super easy, but we’re here to help you out. To get rip your movies from DVD to your Mac follow these 4 simple steps using MacX DVD Ripper Pro.

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.

For the last few years, each Worldwide Developer’s Conference has sold out in successively less and less time. Three years ago, WWDC sold out in a month. Two years ago, it sold out in a week. Last year, it took twelve hours.

Everyone knew WWDC 2012 would sell out even faster than last year’s when it was eventually announced, but it’s obvious even Apple didn’t anticipate how fast that would be: less than two hours to sell out 5,000 tickets.

The problem? Cupertino-based Apple announced WWDC ticket sales before its own time zone even rolled out of bed and brushed its teeth. The result is that West Coast based app devs — the kind who can just climb in their cars and drive to the Moscone Center — have been totally boned, and tickets to WWDC were gone before they even knew they were available for sale.

The Ozaki iCoat Finger Case turns your iPhone 4/S into a see-saw, or teeter-totter. Kidding! While it *does* do that, it also protects your phone whilst storing a tiny, stubby stylus on its back. This design not only makes it awkward to hold the phone while in the case, it also stops it from fitting into pretty much any pants pocket or sleeve designed to accommodate even an iPhone already inside a case.

Here’s the most pared-down review I can manage of Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success by Ken Segall.

If you wonder what it was like to work with Steve Jobs: read it. You’ll enjoy it.

A new music service by Microsoft is expected to rear its face at E3 and should give us a better look into the “Spotify-like” Zune replacement code named “Woodstock.” While we generally wouldn’t be too interested in Microsoft news, the new service is reportedly going to be cross-platform and will indeed be available for Android and iOS.

Following the announcement of the already-sold-out WWDC 2012, Apple has officially begun accepting nominations for its 2012 Apple Design Awards. Mac and iOS apps can be nominated to win the most prestigious developer awards Apple gives each year, and past winners include apps like Infinity Blade and Things.

Registered iOS developers can nominate apps today and Apple will announce the winners at WWDC in June.

While the vast majority of the world’s tech press was focused on Apple’s record-breaking quarter yesterday, HTC quietly announced its own figures. Unlike Apple, the Taiwanese company reported a huge 70% drop in profits after raking in just $151.5 million during the three-month period. And it says the iPhone 4S is the main reason for its dismal quarter.

Tickets to Apple’s WorldWide Developers Conference (WWDC) always sell out quickly once Apple announces the event – this year the conference sold out even faster than ever. In what was likely an effort to streamline ticket-purchasing and encourage more independent developers to attend, Apple modified the rules governing ticket purchases this year.

Whoa. WWDC 2012 was announced just under two hours ago, and the conference has already sold out. Apple has confirmed the news, and devs who weren’t able to grab a ticket are out of luck.

Three years ago, WWDC sold out in a month. The next year took a week to sell out. 2011 took just 12 hours. This year took 2 hours. How fast will next year sell out?

Here’s an exclusive excerpt from a new book about Steve Jobs and Apple by ex-advertising Mad Man, Ken Segall. The book is called Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success, and it’s on sale tomorrow. In the excerpt, we learn about Steve Jobs’s great reaction to criticism of the infamous hockey puck mouse, how he responded quickly to mistakes, and his attitudes toward the “brand bank.”

Is IKEA getting into the camera market? After all, it already announced that it’s going to sell TVs. Or is this cardboard camera just another piece of set dressing, like the fake books, fake computers and fake meatballs found in the Swedish giant’s labyrinthine stores?

While Apple announced another record-breaking quarter yesterday, U.S. mobile carrier Sprint reported a significant net loss of $863 million – nearly twice the loss that it reported for the same quarter last year. iPhone sales, however, helped increase Sprint’s overall subscriber base – making this the eighth consecutive quarter where the company reported overall growth.

Forget stunning 3D graphics and fancy gesture-based gameplay; good, old-fashioned 2D arcade fighters are still some of the most entertaining games money can buy. And Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is the latest addition to that genre on iOS. It’s one of the most popular fighting games of all time, featuring 56 legendary characters and an insane, tag-team fighting experience.

At $1600 bucks each, WWDC tickets don’t come cheap, and that ticket shock can be especially acute if you’re a student, slaving away on the app you hope will make your fortune between classes and barista shifts.

Apple’s sympathetic. That’s why they are again offering 150 student scholarships to full-time or part-time students who want to go to WWDC.

Apple has announced this morning that this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference will kick off on June 11 at San Francisco’s Moscone West (just as we expected). The five-day event will run until June 15 and will share the latest news about Apple’s iOS and OS X Mountain Lion operating systems.

Angry Birds Space, the latest title in the hugely successful Angry Birds series, has received its first update today, bringing 10 new levels, a golden “eggteroid” and more to Android and iOS. Those playing on an iPhone or iPad will also receive 20 free Space Eagles, plus one extra Space Eagle every day they play.

Groove 2 is the music player that your iOS device’s built-in Music app should have been. It really is an incredible app, and if you haven’t already downloaded it, I urge you to go and do it now. It’s packed full of incredible features that music lovers shouldn’t be without, and with its latest update, it just gets better.

Yesterday, Google launched the near-mythical Google Drive, a 5GB Dropbox alternative with some impressive features: OCR and searching of the text in even scanned documents, (searchable) image recognition in photos, and integration with most of Google’s other services.

But there’s something else hidden in Google Drive which may make you think twice about using all these wonderful new toys: The rather scary terms of service (TOS), which gives Google a license to use all of your stored documents and photos for pretty much whatever it likes.

Breaking fake news site Scoopertino is reporting that Apple has decided to take a retro approach with their new product offering, a re-release of the venerable Apple II microcomputer. An Apple press release (apparently) notes:

The Apple II gave birth to the computer industry. Now it’s pregnant again — this time with unlimited possibilities.