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At the top of our must-have iOS apps list this week is the official Google Voice application that has finally made it in to the App Store. It’s a free download, and it’s claimed to be faster than the Google Voice HTML5 web app.

Also on our list this week is ComicStrip – an application that allows you to create your own comic book using the photos in your device’s camera roll. It’s a universal app so you can use it on your iPhone and your iPad, and it features a great collection of fun and unique layouts and caption bubbles to help you tell your story.

Other applications this week include AVPlayer – a great new media player that supports multiple file formats, and Notica – a beautiful visual memory companion that lets you add notes, photos and videos to beautiful postcards. Check them out after the break!

At San Diego State University’s College of Engineering, the rapid asexual mitosis of comp sci students has engendered a problem: there are more students than lab computers.

The iPad to the rescue! By rebuilding its web server infrastructure to support virtual computing through Mobile Safari, almost all of the students at SDSU are able to do most of their work on the go, whether through the iPad, iPhone or Android (boo).

Over the last few weeks we’ve covered Apple-centric gift ideas for men and women.  Now teens take center stage (like they don’t always anyway), as we lay down a humungous stack of sick, phat, gnarly, rad, neato, cool and completely sweater-free holiday gift ideas just for them.

Artsy Teens have no time for academics — they’re too busy creating. Art is their passion and they need the latest gadgets to keep up with them. Here are some gifts the Artsy Teen will treasure.

The Trendy Teen is all about the latest and greatest. Never mind how much it costs, if their friends have it, they want it. Here are some gifts the Trendy Teen will definitely want.

Brainy Teens take pride in their work, and they get great satisfaction from receiving all A’s on their report cards. Here are some gifts worthy of the Brainy Teen.

The Sporty Teen spends a lot of time outdoors; whether as part of a team or working out solo, they are active motivated to perform. Here are some gifts worthy of the Sporty Teen.

Apple released a support document yesterday titled MacBook Air (Late 2010): Video anomalies after waking from sleep, wherein Apple says that if you are experiencing these symptoms, “After waking from sleep, your MacBook Air display may flicker or fade from light to dark repeatedly.”

The solution is to: “Download and apply the Mac OS X v10.6.5 update to resolve this issue.”

Apple never mentioned this in the Mac OS X 10.6.5 release notes. I’m not surprised by that, but I’m happy that Apple has a solution to the problem that plagued early MacBook Air adopters – including myself and other staffers at Cult of Mac.

Have you seen any more video anomalies after applying the Mac OS X 10.6.5 update on your MacBook Air? Let us know if it worked for you or not by leaving a comment.

Apple has joined the list of closed systems, threatening to turn the web into another proprietary product from Cupertino, warns Tim Berners-Lee in an article published online Friday. Berners-Lee, who loosed the World Wide Web in 1990, blasted Apple’s iTunes for trapping consumers “in a single store, rather than being on the open marketplace.”

“For all the store’s wonderful features, its evolution is limited to what one company thinks up,” the Internet pioneer writes in Scientific American. Rather than using the standard HTTP protocol, Apple links iTunes material with the proprietary “itunes:” command.

When Steve Jobs said that Android was fragmented, here’s exactly what he meant: according to Rovio, who make the popular mobile game Angry Birds, they are struggling to support the game on all of the different Android hardware. In comparison, iOS development is easy as a dream.

What started off as an off-the-cuff joke by Steve Jobs at September’s iPod Event has become an actual sub-industry of the iPod accessory market as manufacturers churn out watchbands by the factory full for the new, touchscreen Nano. The only problem is the cheapness and unimaginativeness of most of these solutions: either they are cheap rubber shells to encase your Nano in or simple straps onto which you are meant to clip your Nano.

They don’t pass muster. MINIMAL’s latest, Kickstarter-funded line of iPod Nano watchbands are something different though. They’re not just functional… they’re gorgeous.

The rationale behind Apple’s unibody aluminum housings isn’t just aesthetic appeal: it’s also sturdiness. Unibody aluminum adds a bit of heft to an ultra-thin Apple portable, but it makes that device also harder to break despite its thinness.

There’s always room for improvement though, and if a new patent published by the USPTO is anything to go by, future iPads might trade in their aluminum shell for ultra-strong carbon fiber.

According to reports last month, Apple is working on a reprogrammable SIM module for future iPhones that would allow Cupertino to sell iPhones directly to customers without it being locked to a specific carrier.

Hey, guess who doesn’t like that idea? Hint: the carriers.

Deals on Apple products tend to be depressingly meager when you’re buying new, as I discovered yesterday when I did some price comparisons on the new 11.6-inch MacBook Air, only to discover the most aggressive deal I could find on the laptop was a whole five dollars off the retail price. Yet that’s all too typical: Apple products tend not to dip dramatically lower than their MSRP unless they are either refurbished or subsidized by a carrier.

Consider our jaws dropped, then, by the biggest deal on a current-gen Apple product we’ve ever seen. TJ Maxx — TJ Maxx, of all places! — is offering the iPad in at least some stores for a cool benjamin off the regular price.

Apple was on a roll yesterday: not only did their crackerjack team of programmers manage to release a new point update for Safari 4 and 5 resolving many existing issues, but they also pushed down the Software Update pipeline a new Boot Camp and MacBook EFI update.

Unscrew the salt shaker and empty it onto your uvula, because it’s Digitimes rumor time. According to the always questionable publication, Apple’s already got the parts suppliers for the iPad 2 lined up… and they’re ready to name names.

Apple is preparing a CDMA-GSM iPad that would overshadow the current 3G version, an analyst wrote Friday. The report also suggests the new iPad would follow the design of Apple’s recent unibody MacBooks.

Supplier checks “suggest Apple is going to be ratcheting down production of the existing 3G iPad over the next two months in anticipation of ramping up a new World iPad that is powered by Qualcomm and will run both GSM and CDMA based networks around the world,” according to Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair.

iTunes offers a ton of free podcasts in its educational section geared towards making you a little smarter. Or at least sound that way. The best part: most of them are short, weekly series so you can cram in some good water cooler ideas or conference coffee break chat material when you have time.

Here are some of our favorites – educate us with your picks in the comments.

1. Stuff You Should Know

These quirky podcasts run about half an hour each, and explain often topical questions like how rehab works or how to go about house swapping. One of the informative podcasts from the folks at How Stuff Works, this is probably our favorite, though Stuff from the B-Side and Stuff Mom Never Told You are also excellent.

There are a number of reasons I like writing for Cult of Mac, but one of the most important reasons is the great readers, like you, we have visiting our site. Granted every so often you can be pretty vocal about the tiniest detail, but when you come through with some good comments they should not be ignored. Therefore when I found two comments about shopping at Apple in my first post about Apple Technology Will Make You A Savvy Black Friday Shopper — I just had to share them.

Microsoft’s official Office for the Mac blog has announced a list of places where you can buy Office for Mac 2011 at discounted prices during Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. The prices are pretty good during the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend at various retailers, but Amazon has the best price of all.

• Best Buy and MacMall (US): $20 off Home & Student 1-pack for $99 (regularly $119 ERP) and $20 off Home & Student Family Pack for $129 (regularly $149 ERP).
• Amazon (US): $40 off the Home & Student 1-pack for $79 (regularly $119 ERP) and Home & Student Family Pack for $109 (regularly $149 ERP).
• OfficeforMac.com (US): $20 off Home & Student Family Pack for $129 (regularly $149 ERP).

Office for Mac 2011 has gotten favorable reviews and performs better than previous versions. If you are interested in upgrading from an older version Thanksgiving weekend will probably be your best opportunity to get a good deal.

Clarifying remarks attributed to him by a column in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf on Wednesday, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said today that, based on things he’s read, he does believe Android will eventually come to dominate the smartphone market — but not because it’s better than or has more features than Apple’s iOS platform.

“I [wasn’t] suggesting [Android is] better than iOS… it can get greater market share and still be crappy,” Wozniak said, pointing out that he merely told the De Telegraaf reporter that voice commands on Android were presently more sophisticated, but that Apple would catch up through its recent acquisitions. He went on to say that almost every app he has is better on the iPhone than it is on Android.

[Engadget]

Business valuations are almost always a tricky figure to pin down, but analysts at Trefis figure they have a pretty reliable one for the iPhone, in case Apple and Steve Jobs might be thinking of spinning it off as a separate company.

By Trefis’s numbers, which assume a 140%-of-market-cap valuation for Apple (AAPL) as a whole and iPhone as representing 53% of Apple’s business, then the iPhone business alone would be worth more than all but 10 companies in existence worldwide today.

Interestingly enough, at $209 billion, iPhone, Inc. would be worth just slightly less than the 10th largest company in the world, AT&T.

[CNNMoney]

C-Section Comics pretty much hit the nail on the head with this take on the big three brands of smartphone users, how they see themselves and how they see each other. Click the image for a full-size view.

Be sure to check out the artist’s archive for more witty, well-drawn takes on some of the great questions and topics of the day.

Apple iPads wowed the crowds at Tokyo Designers Week this year in a 5 X 5 configuration where 25 iPads gave onlookers an opportunity to watch video and music synced wirelessly on all the devices. Audience members were also invited to manipulate the sound and videos on the individual iPads, which got things quickly all out-of-sync and challenged participants to work together to return the display to a harmonious state.

The design was commissioned by the Environmental Ministry of Japan as part of a “Challenge 25″ event to mark the 25th anniversary of Tokyo Designers Week and draw attention to human impact on the environment.

See more about the work of the display’s DJ designers as well as a hands-on video that talks about how they got it to work here.

[Tokyo Tek]