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Sandwiched between two layers of Gorilla Glass, your iPhone’s innards are a thickly packed tissue of silicon, precious metals, plastic and Li-Ion power cells. Space is at such a premium inside an iPhone that literally every milimeter counts, which is why Apple is always at the forefront of technologies that will make a critical component just a little smaller, a little thinner.

Foremost among these is the venerable SIM card. Apple first managed to reduce the physical footprint of the SIM card with the iPhone 4 with the micro SIM, and now they want to do it again with the nanoSIM.

The only problem? The rest of the industry doesn’t like the nano SIM, and now Nokia is speaking out against it.

Lately, RIM has been losing major enterprise customers to Apple on a regular basis. U.S. federal agencies (including NOAA and ATF) have been some of the biggest enterprise switchers from BlackBerry devices to iPhones.

Today’s bad news must have a particularly nasty sting for the BlackBerry manufacturer. For the first time, iPhone sales in RIM’s native Canada have surpassed sales of BlackBerry devices – and by a pretty wide margin. Given the sense of loyalty that many Canadian businesses and consumers have shown to RIM, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, the new numbers highlight the extent of RIM’s challenges and shortcomings.

Apple’s plans to build a giant solar farm in Maiden, North Carolina, to power its new data center are well underway. The new building will require a 20 megawatt array of solar panels to create enough power, and that’s going to take up over 171 acres of land, or 107 NFL football fields. This aerial footage gives you a sense of just how huge the facility will be.

The world’s favorite music streaming service Spotify has just added a bunch of new music apps. Spotify apps are widgets that run inside Spotify and let you access the music in various ways. The first apps launched a few months ago on the Mac (they’re still not on the iPhone), and the second wave has just dropped. I have taken a quick look, and there are a few gems in there.

It’s a well known fact that the new iPad takes significantly longer to charge than the iPad 2. You can chalk that problem up to the fact that the new iPad has approximately 70% more battery in the same form factor than the iPad 2, requiring almost twice as long to charge. Consequently, the iPad has gone from being something you could charge up in just a few hours to a tablet that needs all night to charge to 100%.

But you shouldn’t stop charging your iPad at 100%. No sirree bob. If you want the most battery life from your new iPad, you should keep the device plugged in for at least an hour after it reports full. Why? The iPad battery gauge lies.

Prepare yourself for a another look at OS X Mountain Lion and a peak at iOS 6, because Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference looks set to begin in early June. San Francisco’s Moscone Center — the company’s favorite venue for WWDC — has been booked up for a mysterious “corporate meeting” for one week starting June 11.

This hilarious iPhone 4 case will guarantee that you win any dorkathon you choose to enter. The plastic case — which covers the back and sides of the phone — is shaped like a raw hard drive, complete with vendor sticker, fake screws and even SATA connectors.

Netflix has updated its popular iPad app with enhanced Retina graphics. Everything from the icon to the app’s text has been updated for the new iPad’s shiny display, and the update is available now in the App Store.

One of the biggest complaints about the Netflix iOS app has been the lack of HD video streaming, and according to Netflix, HD video is coming soon. We wouldn’t be surprised if the next app version included the upgrade. We can’t wait for that!

Remember that streaming HD video over 4G on the new iPad will use a lot of data, so be aware of how much video you stream on the go.

One of the immediate associations that most people have when they think about the iPad in business is the iPad as a sales tool. Not surprising given its form factor and the ease with which it can display presentations, offer up a portfolio, and generate quotes on the fly.

Do those abilities really add up to increased sales over binders of information, colorful brochures, and canned presentations on DVD? For home security giant ADT, the answer is an emphatic yes.

Some recent reports have suggested that the new iPad can use more data than its predecessor while on 4G LTE networks. This shouldn’t surprise anyone since faster download speeds on the new iPad will certainly lead to more online activity. It’s like saying an engine won’t get you somewhere faster after its been turbocharged.

One of the biggest features in the new iPad is its ability to use 4G data speeds on AT&T, Verizon, and select carriers in other countries. In most cases one can get faster speeds on the new iPad than a home DSL connection offers. It’s truly phenomenal.

Since you can’t get unlimited data on the iPad here in the states unless you’re grandfathered in, it’s important to be careful about how you use your iPad when you’re away from a WiFi network. It can be easy to blow through 1GB of data in a month if you don’t watch your activity. Here are some helpful tips and tricks for saving 4G data on your new iPad.

Since the new iPad made its debut in the U.S. and nine other countries last week, iOS developers have been working hard to optimize their titles for the device’s Retina display. There are already some fantastic games on offer that are Retina-ready, so we’ve compiled a list of the best so that you can get you game on in stunning high-definition, and compared them to their iPad 2 counterparts so you can see how nice the new graphics look.

Every once in a while a jailbreak tweak comes along that tires to reinvent multitasking on the iPhone. We’ve seen webOS-inspired tweaks like Multifl0w, multiasking-focused tweaks like Zephyr, and many others over the years.

A relatively new package called Imperium aims to change the way we jailbreakers multitask on the iPhone yet again. Is it worth the $1 price tag? Let’s take a closer look.

Apple announced iPhoto for iOS at its March 7th iPad event, and the app has already been downloaded by over 1 million unique customers in less than two weeks. Since the app is priced at a cool $5, that means Apple has made at least $5 million since launch day. Not too shabby.

This morning we reported that a number of new iPad owners are suffering from poor Wi-Fi performance on their new tablet. If you’re one of the unlucky few, then this simply fix might just solve the issue, and in turn save you a visit to the Genius Bar.

Rhombi, triangles, and rectangles probably don’t elicit a sexual response from you most times, but Apple thinks those beautiful shapes can be a little bit too orgasmic when combined in different configurations. Artist Luciano Foglia’s app of geometric shapes was recently rejected by Apple because they claimed it contained “excessively objectionable or crude content.” But it’s just a bunch of geometric shapes, so why did Apple label it as pornographic? Take a look and judge for yourself:

Instagram is undoubtedly the reigning champion of social photography apps, but there was once a time when Hipstamatic owned the spotlight. As the mobile app that took the trend of filtered photo sharing mainstream, Instagram owes a lot of its success to Hipstamatic. Apple awarded the iPhone app of the year award to Hipstamatic in 2010 and the torch was passed to Instagram in 2011.

As of today, Hipstamatic will now let you send photos you take in the app to Instagram. Not only does this move establish Instagram as the iPhone photography app victor, but it also establishes the app in its own right as a social network of the same caliber as Twitter for Facebook.

We’re nosey as anyone here at Cult of Mac. We are also complete nerds, which means that we’re always peeking into people’s bags at conferences, or checking out what gear people use.

And we figured that you all might be just as bad, so we figured we’d rip open our man bags, handbags and purses and show you what’s inside, and why we carry what we do. We’ll be doing this every Wednesday, and to start things off, I’ll be showing you the contents of my bag. What you see above is my everyday bag surrounded by its everyday contents. To see what’s in there, read on.

In the desktop and laptop world, computer chips tend to get smaller over time, but with the A5X, Apple has gone a different route: they’ve actually made the chip bigger than its predecessors.

How big is the A5X? Over 310 percent bigger than the A4 shipped in the iPhone 4 and original iPad.

There are multiple ways that companies can approach mobile management. The most common approach is device management where IT pre-configure a device and locks it down by not allowing users access to certain features and/or prevents the installation of apps. There’s also the approach of locking down data in which enterprise apps allow IT to create and manage an encrypted sandbox for business data on the device. There’s also the option of taking a lighter hand and issuing policies about acceptable use where IT can use device management tools to ensure that users are complying with those policies.

There are pros and cons to each approach but the truth is that there’s no need to pick one approach over the others. An effective management strategy can actually employ multiple styles of management. It’s also important to remember that mobile management doesn’t need to be one size fits all – it’s perfectly fine to use different levels of management and security based on the job functions of users, on the ownership of devices, or on the devices themselves (and their OS version).

The idea of mixing mobile management options as a best practices got a boost this week in a pari of announcements my some of the major players in the enterprise mobility space.

Here at Cult of Mac, we’re interested in building a data set which we can use to determine which networks offer the fastest and most reliable 3G & LTE coverage to new iPad owners. We’ll then use this data to report on which new iPad carrier is the best in each country or territory where it’s available.

Will LTE networks be crushed by demand, or will the upgrade to true 4G be as dramatic as the likes of AT&T and Verizon would like us to be. Finally, will most people who buy an iPad Wi-Fi + 4G even live within an LTE coverage area?

If you’ve got a new iPad Wi-Fi + 4G, could you take a couple minutes out of playing with your new, shiny tablet and help us out?

Do you use your iPad as a second monitor using Air Display to wirelessly extend your desktop? If so, bet you wish you could harness your new iPad’s retina display, don’t you? Unfortunately, the functionality currently isn’t baked into Air Display, but that’ll soon change… and for the first time let millions of OS X users experiment with the hidden HiDPI mode in Lion and Mountain Lion.

Despite being totally dedicated to Mac OS X right now, I can’t help but get excited about Windows 8. Having enjoyed the Metro UI experience with Windows Phone, I can’t wait to try it out on a tablet. And I know a lot of users feel the same way. But one thing that could put many of them off Windows 8 slates is the lack of iTunes.

Microsoft knows this, and it knows it’s a real problem that could kill Windows 8 tablets before they’ve even hit the market in the minds of many consumers.

Earlier this week, NetZero launched a new freemium mobile broadband service using Clearwire’s WiMax 4G network. Although NetZero is the first U.S. company to launch a “free” 4G service, it isn’t going to be the last. Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom has begun work on a similar service called FreedomPop that will launch this summer.

FreedomPop plans to offer more monthly data for free than NetZero’s paltry 200MB. It will also target iPhone owners as a major part of its user base.

For a good chunk of the last decade, Microsoft has had a hard time getting its employees to use its own products. During the iPod wars, Microsoft was hard pressed to get their employees to carry Zunes; when the iPhone came out, Microsoft employees wanted to trade in their Windows Phones… and one can only imagine the difficulties Microsoft will have getting employees to switch from their iPads to Windows 8 tablets.

So Microsoft, in their magnanimity, has decided to try to push employees along. A new report says that Microsoft’s Sales, Marketing, Services, IT & Operations Group has just sent out an email to employees, saying that they can no longer buy Apple products with company funds.

Forget the slight increase in temperature issue-that-shouldn’t-even-be-an-issue affecting the new iPad. According to some early adopters, the third-generation tablet has its own antennagate. Many users are taking to Apple’s Support Communities forum to complain that the Wi-Fi signal on their device is a lot weaker than that of their iPad 2, and even their iPhones and MacBooks.