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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?

As expectation builds that Apple will soon announce a new version of its original iPad, one financial house projects the overall tablet market will become a $35 billion business by 2012, with more than a third of the devices reducing demand for netbook and notebook PCs.

“We expect tablets to have an increasingly negative impact on PC shipments,” JPMorgan Securities analyst Mark Moskowitz told Reuters Monday. More than 35 percent of the tablets will cannibalize the market for low-cost netbooks and notebook computers.

The old joke about technology is that if you want to setup that new gizmo, go get yourself a 10-year-old. We saw electronics retailer Best Buy follow that bit of wisdom with its consumer-oriented Geek Squad, an army of white-shirt and clip-on bow tie experts that could install that wireless router or a flat-screen television for a price. Apple is doing something similar by exporting its retail Genius techs for small business. The Cupertino, Calif. company reportedly will unveil Wednesday Joint Venture, a $500 per year service with the motto: “Get Setup. Get Trained. Keep Running.”

Sunday retail employees reportedly received word of the new service, which could be launched along with Apple’s much-rumored next-generation Apple iPad 2 during a San Francisco, Calif. media event. The new service would be offered to businesses purchasing a Mac, covering five systems with more unit support costing an additional $99 per year.

This is awesome: an iPhone 5 front panel that its leakers swear confirms that the next generation of Apple’s handset will have a larger, 4-inch display. Of course, who could tell without any point of reference?

This is either the most inept leak ever, or one of the best gags of the week. They should do a whole series of these leaks: the large iPhone 5 display next to, say, an equally “large” radioactive ant, or the world’s longest index finger.

To be fair, it does seem to confirm the iPhone 5 might have a thinner bezel at the sides…. but with the iPhone 5 still months away, this might just be an idea Apple’s toying with.

Despite Apple’s struggle with the white iPhone 4, a new iPad digitizer discovered by the iFixYouri iPhone repair shop suggests the company’s second-generation tablet may also be available in white. The part comes from Shenzhen City in China, where many of Apple’s products are assembled.

Closer inspection of the white digitizer above shows a small circular cutout along the top bezel, for what we expect to be the iPad 2’s front-facing camera, and it’s a perfect match for 9to5 Mac’s recently discovered iPad 2 screen protectors from Asia.

Just like all of Apple’s unreleased products, details and specifications regarding the second-generation iPad are under lock and key at Apple HQ until the device is announced on March 2nd, however, reports have suggested the upcoming device will be thinner, lighter, and faster.

I’ve had my 13-inch MacBook Air since they were first released and although I encountered video problems initially after the plethora of updates that Apple has released the video problems haven’t returned.

The updates included an EFI firmware update, a specific software update for the MacBook Air 2010 model, and the Mac OS X 10.6.5 software update. I even offered not one, but two suggested solutions to try.

These updates and suggested fixes worked for some, but unfortunately they didn’t work for everyone. People are still complaining on Apple Discussion Forums about problems they are encountering when connecting their MacBook Airs to external displays.

Steve Jobs is on medical leave and now one of his key lieutenants reportedly wants to return to his native U.K.

Apple’s head designer Jonathan Ive wants to return England to live, reports the Sunday Times. Ive, of course, is one of the key geniuses behind Apple’s string of blockbuster hits and is perhaps the world’s most influential industrial designer.

British-born Ive has reportedly proposed a plan to “commute” to Cupertino, Calif., from his $4 million manor house in Somerset, but Apple’s board is none too thrilled with the idea. Ive is said to be at “loggerheads” with the board, reports the Sunday Times.

A friend of the family told the paper: “Unfortunately he is just too valuable to Apple and they told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them.”

According to The Times, Ive has just reaped about $30 million from a ‘golden handcuffs’ deal signed in 2008, which has now expired. He and his wife Heather want to educate their twins in their native country.

Apple refused to comment on Ive’s employment status and said it was “speculation” that he wanted to return to the U.K.

The Sunday Times: I created the iPad and iClaim my £18m (Story behind pay wall).

Via Daily Mail.

Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, was moved to tears by a play about the working conditions of Apple’s factories in China.

Woz went to see “The Agony and the Ecstacy of Steve Jobs” by Mike Daisey on Tuesday night at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. The one -man show, which describes the working conditions in the massive factories that make gadgets for Apple, Hewlett-Packard and others, made Wozniak cry.

The Apple cofounder told the New York Times’ Bay Citizen website:

“The shocking things that Mike said which brought me to tears were so because they came as a first-person story,” Wozniak said. “Mike was living the pain of what he was describing as he told it.”

The monologue describes Daisey’s trip to Shenzhen last year, where he met workers at Foxconn’s plant as young as 12 and 13, and heard tales of the long, repetitive work. As many as 17 workers have committed suicide at the Foxconn plant.

Wozniak also said: “I will never be the same after seeing that show.”

The Verizon iPhone 4 has the same antennagate issue as the GSM version, Consumer Reports says. And even though the iPhone 4 is one of the publication’s most highly-rated smartphones, it can’t recommend it.

The Verizon iPhone 4 has a problem that could cause the phone to drop calls, or be unable to place calls, in weak signal conditions, Consumer Reports engineers have found in lab tests.

That’s all weel and good, but in real life, Verizon’s customers aren’t complaining about dropped calls or signal degradation. On Verizon’s network, the antennagate issue is largely theoretical. Even though it’s possible to show signal degradation in the lab — as Consumer Reports claims it did — you can put as many fingers as you want across the gap and it still won’t drop a call.

Consumer Reports: Mind the gap, our tests show.

According to 9to5Mac MobileMe sales haven’t stopped instead they surmise that Apple is simply moving MobileMe subscriptions to online ordering only.

However, as they pointed out you can only join MobileMe under a 60-day trail. Paying for it isn’t currently possible and you cannot currently order the boxed version.

I think that starting March 2nd we will see MobileMe subscriptions that will be for sale in the Mac App Store.

What do you think?

[via 9to5Mac]

Apple’s new Mac OS X Lion adds support for a recovery partition as part of the OS installation and while this may not seem important to most users — it is.  Apple is making the tools and resources available to you that will allow you to perform disk repair and recoveries on your mobile Mac while on the road or on your desktop Mac at home. The utilities will be readily available and therefore you won’t have to go hunting for that always elusive DVD or USB stick.

This is because the new partition labeled Recovery HD acts just like the DVDs and USB sticks that Apple has traditionally shipped with its computers. You simply press and hold the Option key after starting your Mac. You are eventually presented with a list of the available boot partitions.

You use the arrow keys to select the boot drive and press Return. The system will then boot from the selected disk. In this instance you would choose the Recovery HD disk to access the Mac OS X Lion recovery partition.

It looks like Apple is going to have another blockbuster OS release later this year. I don’t know about you, but I cannot wait until Lion hits store shelves (virtual or otherwise).

Check out more photos after the read link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX928KC8jiA

Here’s a quick video tour of the new Mail client in OS X Lion. It’s got a three-pane view, nicely threaded “Conversations,” and a goes full screen. It’s very good. Mail alone is a good reason to upgrade to Lion.

Curious about the changes in OS X Lion? Starting at noon PST or 3pm EST, our own Jose Guitierrez will be doing a live screencast of OS X Lion, in which he’ll field questions, demonstrate features and even test software suggested to him by Cult of Mac’s readers.

If you’d like to take part, see Lion in action and ask Jose some questions, the screencast is embedded above, or you can go to the Livestream directly by clicking here.

According to Jose, the show will last at least an hour, but will probably last until he’s fielded all questions. Why not join us and see Lion in all its glory on this slow Friday afternoon?