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As the fervor surrounding tomorrow’s big announcement builds, fanboys and fangirls are eagerly sitting around their computers gulping down all the latest iPad 2 rumors that the Internet has to offer. One of the popular rumors out there is that tomorrows iPad 2 unveiling will be a disappointing spec bump and that the real grand daddy of tablet computers, the iPad 3, will be unveiled later in the year (possibly in September if Gruber and others are correct).

Cult of Mac has published a number of articles supporting the idea that Apple will be releasing two iPads in 2011. While there have been a significant amount of doubters to this theory of two iPads being launched, one must take into account that such a move wouldn’t be completely unprecedented. I’m referring to the iPod Mini 2G vs. the iPod Nano in 2005.

This is the icon for a new section of the Finder in Lion (Apple’s latest update to OS X) called “All My Files.” It helps users find recently-used files, listing them by type, date and so on.

Look carefully. The file cards contain some of Steve Jobs’ best-known quotes, including the words to the famous “Think Different” commercial.

Do you recognize the quotes?

Via Tuaw: Mac OS X Lion features hidden tribute to Steve Jobs

In replacing the Mini DisplayPort in the latest revision of the venerable MacBook Pro line, you can bet that Apple’s going to start rolling out Thunderbolt to all Macs with each new iteration of the line-up… starting, it seems, with the venerable white unibody MacBook.

We’ve received some tidbits of information about the iPad 2 launch tomorrow from an Apple staffer:

• MobileMe is being revamped with cloud storage features.
• The iPad 2 is a ho-hum update. It’s more of a speed bump than a redesign.
• The iPad 3 is the one to get excited about, and it’s on track for release later this year.

Add another potential announcement to the already long list of items we are expected to hear from Apple Wednesday: iBooks. Random House, one of the largest publishers of physical books, is now ready to accept Apple’s “agency” pricing model for ebooks sold through the Cupertino, Calif. company’s iBookstore.

The publisher, the lone holdout, said starting today, it will change its pricing to meet Apple’s requirement that booksellers get a 30 percent cut of the e-books’ retail price. The shift toward Apple’s position is hoped to increase e-book sales from iPad owners. The Apple tablet is competing with Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook, among other e-readers.

Speaking to large crowd at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka spent several minutes gushing about Apple for building the App Store and allowing a game like Angry Birds to be bought and enjoyed by millions of people around the world.

Before the App Store, according to Vesterbacka, there was a “carrier-dominated Soviet model” when it came to making games for mobile devices. “Other people decided on our behalf what was a good game and what was a bad game,” Vesterbacka said.

The App Store changed all of that. “We really have Apple to thank [for our success].”

What of Angry Birds 2 though? Vesterbacka said it’s coming, and that Rovio plans on releasing new Angry Birds games (in the plural) this summer.

Chances are, we’re likely to get a sneak peek of those games at tomorrow’s iPad 2 event. Although it is likely just serendipity that both the annual Game Developers Conference and the iPad 2 launch event are taking place during the same week in San Francisco, it seems like the opportunity to get the developer of the App Store’s most popular game on stage and show off his new games would be an impossible impulse for Cupertino to ignore.

Actually, come to think of it, is it coincidence that GDC and the iPad 2 event are behind held in the same week, or will tomorrow’s announcement have a heavy gaming focus?

The second hacker charged outing an AT&T security breach that exposed over 120,000 iPad 3G customers’ personal data was released on bail yesterday.

Andrew Auernheimer, who left the New Jersey courthouse looking slightly disheveled but with signature beard intact after posting bail without commenting to the press, had been behind bars since mid-January.

He and Daniel Spitler, both in their mid-20s and members of the Goatse Security group, were each charged with a count of fraud and a count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization.

They were charged seven months after vulnerability was discovered by researchers at Goatse security, who wrote a script that harvested iPad 3G owners’ ICC-IDs (or integrated circuit card identifier, used to identify SIM cards to a network) and email addresses through exploiting a hole on AT&T’s website.

Auernheimer also goes by the alias Weev. The last two entries in his LiveJournal on January 14 featured a portrait from a friend (or fan?) looking haunted on what appears to be a cross and a bit about his interest in Jyotish, or Hindu astrology.

After reviewing his birth chart (“you may face a risk to your life and limbs during your 25th year”) he notes:

“It even knows the year of my peril. Just gotta make it through. Keep on truckin!”

Via AP

Wednesday’s Apple announcement, widely expected to include an updated version of the Cupertino, Calif. company’s wildly-popular iPad tablet, will be “crucial” for the tech giant to maintain its lead against rival products, one analyst said Tuesday.

“We believe Apple must make a convincing case for why the iPad 2 is better than the plethora of competitors coming to market, while at the same time persuading iPad 1 buyers to upgrade to iPad 2,” Ticonderoga Securities’ analyst Brian White told investors in a note. Why the importance? The tablet provided 17.2 percent of the company’s revenue during the first quarter of 2011 – and the figure is rising.

Most of us have been taking it as a matter read that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would not be attending Wednesday’s iPad 2 event: he’s on a medical leave of absence, and Tim Cook has proven to be a reliable — if unexciting — stand-in for Jobs in the past.

Italian Apple site SetteB it defying conventional wisdom with a new report, though: they claim that Jobs will at least attend tomorrow’s iPad 2 event at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, and depending on how he’s feeling, might even host.

You know what, Steve? As much as we don’t really feel like it’s an Apple event if you aren’t prancing onstage like some sort of crazed conductor to a music only you can hear, it’s seriously okay. You can just sit in the audience for a change. You’ve earned a bit of a rest, and the iPad 2 is going to be awesome even if you’re not the one to physically deliver it in your hands to the rest of the world.

[via 9to5Mac]

We’ve seen transparent iPhone 4s before. It’s a simple process, actually: just unscrew your iPhone 4 with a torx driver, then douse the back panel in acetone or naphtha until the black paint bubbles away. Screw the now transparent panels back on, and voila.

If you hate paint thinner fumes, though, and just want to avoid the part of the process that involves huffing dangerous chemicals, the lads over at M.I.C. Gadget are selling a transparent back panel for the iPhone 4 for just $23.90 each.

It certainly looks cool, seeing your iPhone’s silicon guts electronically pulsing beneath the handset’s translucent skin, but before you decide to do this mod yourself, just a warning: this mod is going to greatly downgrade the image quality of your iPhone 4’s camera. Apple has had a near impossible time preventing ambient light from leaking onto even the white iPhone 4s sensor. How do you think your camera’s going to do when it’s got an invisible skin?

There’s an old saying which allowed Mac computer users to sleep while Windows fans dealt with swarms of pesky malicious hackers : security through obscurity. However, now that you can’t go a day without hearing or reading about Apple, that maxim may be wearing thin. Security researchers now report hackers have a way to remotely send commands to your Mac OS X computer.

Although security research firm Sophos wants to call the Trojan the “OSX/Musminum-A”, hackers involved prefer “Blackhole” RAT, or Remote Access Trojan. Whatever the name, the security exploit could allow hackers to control your Mac, even displaying a fake “Administrator Password” window. However, before you hit the defcon-3 button, there are some details you might want to know.

One or Apple’s subtler masteries is price. Cupertino knows how to keep the prices of their products understandable, without gumming them up with multiple SKUs and convoluted pricing structures… and while past Apple products have often times been accused of being burdened with the dreaded Apple tax, in recent years, Apple’s managed to price their products so low as to undercut the competition (the iPad, for example, is still the only competitive sub-$500 tablet).

No surprise, then, that Apple’s new business-centric IT service, Joint Venture, flaunts an immediately grokkable price: $499 for five users annually, with each additional user costing just $99. All tax deductible.

Joint Venture hasn’t been formally announced, but it’s expected to get some talk time at tomorrow’s iPad 2 event. It’s not a show-stopper service, but if I were a small business owner trying to convince my partner to switch the office to the Mac, I’d be kissing a snapshot of Steve Jobs right now.

Steve Jobs almost joined such Neo-Arthurian luminaries as Sir Elton Hercules John, Sir Robert of Hope and Dame Kylie Minogue, according to a former Labour Party politician, who says that the Apple CEO was almost offered a knighthood back in 2009 for his services to technology.

According to the former senior British MP, although the argument for Jobs’ knighthood was compelling, the Apple boss’ impolitic inscrutability ultimately cut him out of getting the war.

Although the suggestions for knighthood reached the final stages of approval, at the end of the day, Steve Jobs was irrefutably blocked by Downing Street because Jobs had once refused to attend an annual Labour conference, which would have been seen as a big political win for then-current Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Why was Jobs considered?

Apple has been the only major global company to create stunning consumer products because it has always taken design as the key component of everything it has produced. No other CEO has consistently shown such a commitment.

If it hadn’t been blocked, Jobs still wouldn’t be the first American to be a British Knight, or even the first tech magnate: Bill Gates won in 2005. However, due to his lack of British citizenship, he still wouldn’t be allowed to go around, belligerently demanding strangers to refer to him as “Sir Steve,” a la Ben Kingsley.

So you want to know more about Mac OS X Lion, but you don’t have a developer account and can’t get your hands on a copy of it. What’s a Mac enthusiast to do?

Turn to Flickr, that’s what. There’s loads of interesting Lion photos and screenshots turning up there.

The New York Times‘ Bay Citizen website has published more remarks from Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak on the subject of Mike Daisey’s controversial one man show.

As previously reported, Woz was moved to tears by “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” a monologue about Apple and Foxconn, the company’s largest supplier in Asia that saw a rash of worker suicides last year.

Wozniak says he found the play deeply upsetting. He urges Tim Cook, Apple’s COO and current acting CEO, to go see the one-man show besucase the issues it discusses could hurt Apple financially in the future:

Tim should know about this very soon, so that he knows what’s in more and more people’s heads. The emotions and understanding and moral feelings that Mike brings out are very strong and could be a threat to Apple’s future, even though they are only simmering now.

The Bay Citizen: Apple Co-Founder Responds to ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs’

Former Apple manager Paul Devine pleaded guilty in federal court in San Jose on Monday to a massive kickback scheme involving Apple’s supply chain.

Devine will forfeit $2.25 million in proceeds and property, the U.S. Attorney said.

Devine provided suppliers with details of Apple’s product roadmap and pricing targets in exchange for hefty kickbacks. When he was busted, feds found about $150,000 in shoeboxes under his bed and more money in foreign accounts and safe deposit boxes.

Devine originally pleaded not-guilty but later agreed to protect Apple’s trade secrets if the case came to court. That move was seen as a way to get a favorable plea bargain. Devine had faced 23 counts of wire fraud and money laundering. He plead guilty to one count of each statutory violation.

He awaits sentencing on June 6. He could face up to 20 years in jail, the U.S Attorney said.

Full press release below:

Reddit user labuzan posted a nice story today, detailing how a family iPhone went through the laundry, and what happened when they took the dead device to an Apple Store and told their story.

The results were not what you might expect.

Instead of charging for a replacement phone, the Apple employee serving them handed one over free of charge, saying: “We made an exception.”

Needless to say, a family already loyal to Apple just got its loyalty quotient increased by several notches.

Go here for the full story.

Is this the Dock Connector for the iPhone 5 with its viscera hanging loose? Taiwanese site Apple.pro certainly thinks so, and as the guys who first posted pictures of the touchscreen to the new iPod Nano, they’ve got a decent history of getting their hands on parts of unannounced Apple products. So maybe!

The new Dock Connector is slightly narrower than the part found in the current iPhone, and is part number 821-1300-02, compared to 821-1281-A for the Verizon iPhone. It certainly looks legit, even if it doesn’t tell us much except that the next iPhone will be a smidge thinner.

As they are sometimes wont to do, Apple met with analysts last week to discuss — if not their plans — than at least the current state of corporate thinking and strategizing, giving an indirect glimpse into the future as Apple sees it.

One of those analysts, Toni Sacconaghi of Bernestein Research, has now issued a note about her meeting with COO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer and VP Eddy Cue… and according to Toni, Apple’s strongly hinting at a cheaper iPhone nano coming soon.

Last night, Apple held secret meetings with Apple Store retail staff around the world, most likely to brief employees on what to expect when the iPad 2 debuts on Wednesday. But what actually happens at those meetings? Silenced by NDAs, the employees can’t say… but that didn’t stop one of our readers from peeking through the keyhole.

His account of what he saw of the secret meeting at London’s Convent Garden Apple Store, after the jump.

No one doubts that Apple will announce the iPad 2 on Wednesday. The only question is whether or not they’ll just announce it and start taking preorders, or if iPad 2s will immediately be available for sale, as with last week’s MacBook Pro refresh.

For people looking to buy themselves an iPad 2, good news: evidence is mounting that Apple will start selling iPad 2s this week, as Apple has halted production and ceased shipments of all first-generation iPads.

Transferring the contents of one Mac to another is wonderfully elegant, like a lashing spermatoza slipping its way into a warm, virgin egg. All you do is connect your two Macs together, either through a FireWire or Ethernet cable, or by telling them to talk to each other over WiFi. Then you load up Migration Assistant. A couple of hours later, your new Mac will be imprinted with the last generation’s DNA. It’s as beautifully simple as the circle of life.

Unfortunately, for most PC users, switching to their first Mac isn’t anywhere near as elegant, and is largely a manual affair of backing up files higgledy-piggledy to an external drive, then manually copying them over.

That mess of a process will change with Lion, though: PC users will now be able to migrate their PC data to their Mac through Migration Assistant, just like Mac users, by simply booting up the MigrationAssistantSetup.exe program. Soon enough, the only real hurdle about switching from a PC to Mac will be the psychological one.

“Is this Apple’s next iPad?” Boy Genius Report asks, then supply their own answer in an update mere hours: no, it jolly well isn’t. At least not technically. But when March 2nd rolls around, it’ll probably end up being something pretty close.

This morning, Boy Genius Report was sent the image of the iPad 2 you see above, featuring a thinner design, flattened back, a visible rear speaker and a rear-mounted web cam. Unfortunately, they were punk’d: it was just a high-quality render of the iPad 2 by the Apple fan.

That said, we’d be willing to put money down that on Wednesday, you’re going to see an iPad 2 very like the above render. The case-manufacturers all agree upon the broad outlines of the iPad 2’s external redesigns. So we probably will see an iPad 2 that looks identical to this come Wednesday, with the only real question mark being that rear-mounted webcam. Everyone agrees the iPad 2 will come with FaceTime, but that only depends upon a forward-looking webcam.

In a day and age when every pair of headphones looks just as utilitarian as every other, I was surprised when I ran past the Urbanears booth at CES 2011 and was stopped by what I saw: understated; beautifully crafted; no-design-detail-missed; headphones. Surely they didn’t have the audacity to sound good too…

It’s a beautiful morning here in San Francisco to wake up and find your website has been effectively disappeared off the web by Google.

Cult of Mac has been downgraded by the changes Google has made to its algorithm to rerank content farms like Demand Media.

We’ve become a civilian casualty in the war against content farms.

You can read more about here in The Guardian, which highlighted us in a story about legit sites hit by the changes.

We’re not alone. Also affected is the British Medical Journal, PR Newswire, and one of the earliest online communities, The Well. According to an analysis by Sistrix, an independent search-engine analyst firm, hundreds of other legitimate, hardworking sites have also been hit.

Why us? We have no idea. The changes Google has made to its system are secret. What makes it worse is that Google’s tinkering seems to have actually improved Demand Media’s page rank, while killing ours.

We’re a blog, so we aggregate news stories like everyone else. But our posts are 100% original and we do a ton of original reporting, as The Guardian noted this morning.

Perhaps it was because we’re constantly ripped off by shitty clone blogs?

Or maybe because we ranked so highly for popular keywords like “Apple” and “iPhone.” In fact, we used to get a lot of love from Google, placing highly on Google News and Google’s general search pages. A lot of our traffic came from Google, which is why the changes are so serious. I’m already seeing a big drop-off in traffic. Over the weekend and today, the traffic is half what it normally would be.

I’m pissed because we’ve worked our asses off over the last two years to make this a successful site. Cult of Mac is an independently owned small business. We’re a startup. We have a small but talented team, and I’m the only full timer. We’re busting our chops to produce high-quality, original content on a shoestring budget.

We were just starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. After two years of uncertainty, the site finally looks like it will be able to stand on its two feet.

But this is a major setback. Anyone got Larry’s cell number?