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If you’ve ever taken part in a freshman biology class (or seen Pauly Shore’s Bio-Dome, you know what a terrarium is: an enclosed space for keeping animals and plants by simulating that species’ native ecosystem. For example, that heated tank full of sand and rocks you keep your iguana in, or the dark moist basement Leander keeps Cult of Mac’s writers imprisoned in.

The only problem with terrariums is that it can be difficult to keep the conditions inside of them just so for the plant or pet you’re trying to make feel at home. It’s too easy to get the temperature or humidity or light just slightly wrong. But what if your iPad could control all of the fiddly knobs for you?

In a twist that’s left many scratching their heads, Apple’s rival Samsung dropped plans to block iPhone 4S sales on its home turf of South Korea… the one place they could really hope for a reasonable chance at a court win. After a long-running debate, the Android-maker reportedly decided not to battle Apple in its home country because they do not need to “gain more market share in Korea,” a blustery position if there ever was one.

Remember Project Black Mirror, those hackers who claimed to have hooked up an some EEG suction cups, an Arduino and a MacBook Pro to an iPhone 4S and got Siri to read their minds? Lying bastards, the lot of them. And shame on us, we fell for it, at least in part.

Ron Johnson, Apple’s former Senior Vice President of Retail Operations, who changed the face of retail with the opening of the first Apple store in 2001, left the Cupertino company at the beginning of this month. Replacing him has become a mammoth task for Apple, according to a new report, with external candidates struggling to meet Johnson’s caliber, which may force the company to promote from within its ranks.

OS X already comes with a sizable library of some of nature photography’s most beautiful pictures, curated personally by Steve Jobs for use as wallpapers. But as breathtaking as OS X’s default wallpapers can be, if you have your Mac desktop set to randomize, you’re probably sick to death of them at this point.

The foremost name in beautiful nature photography is here to help you supplement them. Every year, National Geographic holds a photo contest, and this year, they have put up all of their entries in downloadable JPEGs suitable for the desktop, iPhone or iPad.

One of the advantages to jailbreaking the iPhone — at least for me — is the ability to add shortcuts to your home screen that will quickly adjust your device’s settings. There are a number of tweaks that allow you to change your brightness; and toggle 3G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Airplane mode, and more.

It’s not so easy if you’re device isn’t jailbroken, but a new app called IconProject changes that — for just $0.99.

A trademark feature at Apple retail stores all over the world is the Genius Bar. Operated by a group of Apple experts, the Genius Bar allows any Mac or iOS device owner to take their device to their nearest Apple store and get technical help, repairs, or replacements.

Along with Apple experts, the Genius Bar sports a line of MacBook Pros which Apple staff use to diagnose problems, order parts for repairs, check the status of your product’s warranty, and more. In this “post-PC” era, however, those MacBook Pros are set to be replaced by the iPad.

Apple has released iTunes Match beta 3 to developers following the scheduled library reset that took place yesterday, November 11th. The latest beta version of iTunes Match addresses a number of important performance and stability improvements.

Apple originally projected the public launch of iTunes Match for the end of October, but that deadline has passed. Apple is still ironing out the final bugs in its $24.99/year cloud music service.

Apple has initiated a replacement program for the first-generation iPod nano due to an overheating issue with the battery inside of the device. The problem was recognized by Apple several years ago and they offered replacements to customers on a case-by-case basis. A number of foreign government agencies in Europe and Asia investigated the defect and last year the Japan trade ministry forced Apple to tell customers about the replacement website on Apple’s Japanese website.

Timbuk2 says its new “aerodynamic” (their words, not mine) Mission Cycling Wallet was inspired by the gearheads over at San Francisco-based Mission Cycling Club — one imagines its inception resulting from a cacophony of complaints about sweaty iPhones and the absence of holes to stash a credit card for that post-ride latte.

First there were posts, then tweets. Now we’ve got a new word to use as a method for sharing bits of ourselves: the cling.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaQrr3rlNyk

Update: Unfortunately, the video has been pulled again.

An interesting music video by Apple Store employees was floating around the internet yesterday, but the video was eventually pulled. (It was that good.)

Now, the video has been re-uploaded to YouTube for all to see. The rap outlines Apple’s customer support steps of service that new retail employees have to learn.

A gold start to anyone that can sit through the whole song.

For the past hour or so it appears that iCloud has been undergoing widespread outages, with many users unable to log into their email accounts and iCloud.com.

Apple has acknowledged the problem, and is working to restore iCloud to its full glory once again.

Business Insider claims to have information on an iPhone 5 prototype from a source that “spent about two weeks” with the device. Citing several details about the alleged prototype, the source says that Apple ended up ditching the iPhone 5 at the last minute. Instead, the iPhone 4S was released as an incremental update to the product line.

While even Business Insider notes that its source has not been completely verified, the provided details do stack up nicely with the rumors we were all hearing leading up the iPhone 4S announcement.

Apple has given one of its executives a slight title change, as noted by The Next Web. Former Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller is now the SVP of Worldwide Marketing.

By dropping the “Product” from Schiller’s official title, Apple could be signaling a number of things. While the change may be for simple cosmetic reasons, it could also indicate the restructuring that’s been taking place in Apple’s executive cabinet during recent months.

Apple has sent out an email to developers saying that yet another iTunes Match reset is scheduled to take place tomorrow at 10 AM PST. Developers that are currently testing iTunes Match will have their libraries erased as Apple readies its servers for the public launch of its music streaming service.

Apple has issued a statement to AllThingsD saying that, while iOS 5.0.1 did addresses issues regarding poor battery performance for iOS devices, battery life bugs still need to be fixed.

After iPhone 4S owners started heavily complaining about poor battery life on iOS 5.0, Apple issued two developer betas before pushing iOS 5.0.1 to all devices yesterday.

One of the first handset makers to really embrace the microSIM format was Apple. By reducing a standard SIM card size to about half the size of a normal sized SIM, Apple was able to deliver the iPhone 4, its thinnest smartphone yet. Could an advance in SIM technology help Apple make the iPhone 5 even thinner? Enter the nano-SIM.

No matter how hard you concentrate and how far you extend your pineal gland, Siri can only understand what you say to it, not read your mind? But what if it could?

That question is no longer a hypothetical. The guys behind Project Black Mirror have just figured out a way to imbue Siri with telepathic abilities… kind of.

Oooh, this is pretty. MacThemes forum user SkyJohn has created a theme for Growl that emulates iOS 5 style notifications. It’s not a perfect fit, but it does exhibit the same cube animation you see when you get a notification under iOS 5 on your iPhone or iPad.

We’re a couple weeks from Black Friday yet, but it’s never too early to start Christmas shopping, which is why Apple’s online store has already launched their annual Holiday Gift Guide section, full of curated picks of the best Apple gear to get friends, loved ones or yourself this holiday season.

If you’re the type of person who spends a few hours a week searching for your car keys, wallet, dog, or other precious belongings, then the BiKN Smart Case and tags for iPhone could save you a whole lot of time.

Equipped with radios that talk to the accompanying tracking tags, the BiKN (pronounced “beacon”) case will ensure that that you’re always connected to the things most important to you — even when they’re down the side of the sofa.

With C-Spire Wireless getting the iPhone 4S, all bets are off when it comes to which carriers get the iPhone and which ones don’t. C-Spire only has about 750,000 customers, but it got the iPhone 4S, while the nation’s fourth largest carrier, T-Mobile, sees its profits shrink because it can’t come to an arrangement with Apple.

Today, the iPhone 4S has come to another US carrier. Puerto Rican wireless provider Claro Puerto Rico is offering the iPhone 4S for sale, and if you’re within Claro Puerto Rico’s coverage area, it’s the best deal on an iPhone 4S yet: just $99 for a 16GB iPhone 4S with a standard 2GB coverage.

Apple’s iPhone 4S has proven to be a huge hit in Hong Kong, with the city’s flagship Apple store selling all of its stock within a matter of hours. The fifth-generation device went on sale at 7 AM local time, but by lunchtime it was all gone.

In Sweden, international human rights and justice advocacy group Amnest International has launched a poignant advertising campaign called Slide to Unlock that uses custom iPhone and iPad wallpapers to try to raise awareness of the many innocent people wrongfully imprisoned around the world.

The campaign is as haunting as it is clever. Using free wallpapers, Amnesty International’s ads take advantage of the iPhone and iPad’s “slide to unlock” gesture and the ability to use different wallpapers on both your home and unlock screen to show the wrongfully imprisoned literally being freed by someone just opening their phone and sending a text.

The full series of ads below.