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Everyone’s getting very excited by these Engadget pictures, which purport to show a prototype of Apple’s tablet. Says Engadget:

“It’s big — really big — and it’s running what clearly looks like an iPhone app, although we’ve never seen an iPhone app with that interface or at that resolution before. We also see a WiFi icon and a cell service indicator, although tragically there’s no carrier listed.”

But color us skeptical. The pictures appear to have been sent in anonymously (“Okay, we obviously can’t confirm this…” the post starts). And trying to explain the bolts around the edge, Engadget suggests it has been bolted to the table. Bolted to the table? WTF? Why would it be bolted to a table?

And what’s going on in the picture below, in the bottom left corner of the screen? It looks like the screen is transparent, and its showing a support of some kind underneath. Or is it a reflection? Perhaps it is an Apple prototype, but a tabletop system, like Microsoft’s Surface table?

In the picture below, at the bottom of the screen, is the reflection of what looks like a utility pole (with transmission wires running left to right) and the image of the photographer, who has been whited out.

So the picture was taken outside (in the U.S. Virgin Islands perhaps?), while the picture above looks like an indoor shot. The tablet seems to be sitting on a tabletop, with white wires running underneath — perhaps the AC charger and headphones. Note the Home button sitting right in the middle of the shortest edge, plus the recessed screen. It looks to be the same size and shape as a tea tray.

The bolts around the edge are reminiscent of the bolts used in the stairs at Apple’s stores, and the pivot arm of the old G4 iMac. However, it seems unlikely that Steve Jobs and Jonny Ive would leave bolts exposed in the final design.

Still, after being initially highly skeptical of these pictures, they’re now starting to look more real. What are the blacked out labels though?

Install0us is an iPhone app that is like the iPhone’s official App Store — except it’s connected to a treasure trove of pirated apps. Launched several months ago, Install0us is connected to a huge database of cracked iPhone apps, which are freely available for users to download.

Running on jailbroken iPhones and iPts, the Install0us application has so far been one of the easiest ways to install cracked applications. In a short time, it turned into a big community of pirates, and a headache for hardworking app developers.

But it is about to close, the app’s creator said on Monday, for legal reasons.

“What we do would be very hard to defend against in court,” wrote the anonymous “Admin” behind the app in a post on the Installous forums. “Call me a coward, but as I said, hiding under covers is not a life for me.”

As he explains in the post, the Install0us Admin was initially pretty confident the app was legal. “I thought we had something legal and legitimate to offer,” the Admin said. Install0us merely did what lots of other installer apps do: help users browse, download and install apps. Those apps had been cracked by other people, so Install0us was in the clear — or so the Admin thought. But he had nagging doubts, and for the last three months he’s been searching for a knowledgeable lawyer.

He found one, but their first conversation didn’t go well.

“Unfortunately our discussion left me sad and even feeling stupid to have invested so much effort into this, and involved people with me,” he wrote. “You see, after talking for more than an hour with him, I’m sorry but the conclusion is that what we do would be very hard to defend against in court.”

Duh!

Piracy rates for iPhone applications are very high, reportedly reaching 80% for some developers. Even though developers like Tapulous have devised ways of making money from pirates, many still haven’t and are suffering from significant lost revenues. With little help from Apple, the number of cracked applications have been increasing — thanks to sophisticated tools such as Install0us, which makes the whole process a breeze.

After taking advice from the lawyer, the anonymous creator of the app on Monday made the wise decision to avoid any future trouble by simply shutting down the whole thing.

The app’s forum is scheduled to be closed with all it’s repositories deleted in a few weeks. The Admin said he would be abandoning any future application releases. He was working on version 3, which promised several new features. Of course there will be other applications that will soon replace this one, but it is still somewhat relieving for the developers who put in all their hard work into the applications, just to make a living. Hopefully, Apple will soon realize the need to step in and bring these pirates down once and for all, but for now, they are not going anywhere.

Via Install0us.

Publishing mogul Terry MrGraw of McGraw-Hill says Apple’s tablet is based on the iPhone OS, not OS X as many fans are hoping.

In an interview with CNBC, McGraw-Hill’s CEO said his company has been working with Apple for “quite a while” and has prepped 95% of its textbooks for the tablet, which will be a hit in the higher education market.

When asked about by the anchor about the Apple tablet, McGraw said:

“Yeah, Very exciting. Yes, they’ll make their announcement tomorrow on this one. We have worked with Apple for quite a while, and the tablet is going to be based on the iPhone operating system and so it will be transferable… We have a consortium of e-books. And we have 95% of all our materials that are in e-book format. So now with the tablet you’re going to open up the higher education market, the professional market. The tablet is going to be just really terrific.”

Frrm his tone, it sounds like McGraw has seen the tablet — or a prototype. Watch the video above: he sounds very confident about the operating system. As previously reported, the iPhone OS is the logical choice for the tablet.

Via MacRumors.

1. Nick Merritt at TechRadar says the arrival of the tablet highlights the sad state of modern computing: “…This view sees the iSlate as the Omega to the Mac’s Alpha, the final delivery of the Holy Grail of computing, the fabled ‘information appliance’, completing the job the Macintosh started. How? By finally delivering on Jeff Raskin’s/Larry Ellison’s visions: something so flexible yet simple to operate a baby could use it.”

2. David Nuttycombe makes his views perfectly clear:

3. Photographer and self-confessed Apple fan Paul Inskip spells out his thoughts: “By my own admission I’m an Apple fan but this is another case where if Apple re-writes the rule book on tablets and creates something it helps to push everything forward. CES saw the same tired laptop-into-a-tablets computers thrown about hoping to ride the wave of the Apple device but they will end up looking like the chunky ‘smartphones’ of old before the iPhone came out.”

4. Finally, Jeff Harper at the Canadian Chronicle Herald has this to say about the tablet’s possible effect on the publishing industry: “Newspapers that were struggling to make money with their online product will now be able to harness the power of Apple’s iTunes store and sell monthly subscriptions there. It also allows papers to reach readers outside each business’s traditional boundaries of provinces and state lines. If your content is good, people will buy it.”

Elliot Hales, an intern at Avantar, who made the revamped Yellow Pages iPhone app (now with GPS-enabled local search) thought a contest might get people’s fingers doing the walking on their iPhones.

But what do people want? Well, sure, iPods are a sexy giveaway. But what if you gave away the new Apple tablet computer?

Awesome! Except that it hasn’t launched yet.

Still, with that unflagging internistic enthusiasm, Hales convinced his boss to set up and pay for a website for the contest — with the tablet, along with some iPod Touches, prizes for participating. The site redirects to a Facebook page he set up a to convince his elders that social media works.

Now, on the eve of the Apple event, it seems even the hale Hales may have cold feet:

“I really hope this product lives up to its hype. I even convinced my boss to launch a host site for an iPad giveaway. I hope it generates some interest otherwise he may have spent $800-1000 bucks for nothing and I could be out on the street looking for a new job! ” he commented on WSJ blog digits.

Hales, whose FB profile quote announces, “I got married a while back and am very happy with life,” may not stay that happy if the iPad turns out, well, not to turn up or not meet expectations despite an avalanche of advance hype.

At this writing, only 87 people have signed up for the iPad giveaway.

Which means that you have a decent chance of winning the iSlablet — should it materialize in all its Jesus Computer glory — but also that Elliot needs to stump at little harder — at least his 400 Facebook friends should sign up.

In a move seen as benefitting Apple’s goal of expanded markets for an upcoming tablet, music distributors reportedly have cleared the way for the Cupertino, Calif. based company to offer its iTunes service across Europe.

The agreement with PRS for Music should provide performing rights for all PRS members, as well as performing rights for content managed by Peer Music and Chrysalis Music. In October, Apple met with European regulators who had expressed concern. At the time, European officials said they hoped the meeting would improve online music sales. In 2009, Apple announced plans to extend the iTunes service into more European countries.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQhUEYvEl3c

It’s retro-future time again at Cult of Mac. These ads, circa 1993, for the ill-starred PDA the Newton sound a lot like the all-singing, all dancing expectations of portable computing expected at tomorrow’s tablet announcement.

Some of the salient claims from the  “Who is Newton?” ad:

“Newton talks to fax machines, laser printers to telephones  (NB – a landline) and computers!”

And remember, the Newton is for “All you mobile professionals who like cool stuff.”

While the “Where is Newton?” spot promised portability and connectivity on the go:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3ITn5LBU5A

“Newton can get you from the urban jungle to the nearest hamlet…You can send a letter or a memo and faxes from places where there are no fax machine. Newton is everywhere and that’s not a bad place to be.”

And when the Newton did not live up to expectations — handwriting recognition being one of the big flaws in attempting to send faxes from outpost gas stations as per the ad — here’s what one crystal-ball gazing analyst told the New York Times in 1995:

“In the long run there is no doubt people will carry around small computers much like pagers today,” said Amy Wohl, president of Wohl Associates, a Narberth, Pa., consulting group. “But it’s still not clear that Apple will be one of the major providers of these systems.”

On the eve of Apple’s suspected unveiling of a tablet computer comes word the Cupertino, Calif. firm may team up with Barnes & Noble. An unconfirmed report suggests Apple’s new device could include an ebook store from the Nook-maker.

Here’s a hilarious 5 minute talk by Eugene Lin, explaining how his career as an iPhone app developer started, shook unsteadily for a while, bumped into some rocks, lost altitude, gained altitude, and finally rocketed skywards when he had a certain ephiphany.

That epiphany: give people what they want. Which these days often involves scantily clad women. Better still, virtual ones. Better still, virtual ones in 3D. Well, sort of 3D, but you get the idea.

Now are you starting to see why the iSlabTabletSlateCanvasBookPadPod is going to sell so well?

Via Boing Boing.

On Friday, Pete called our attention to a lovely poem by Beat poet Gary Snyder called “Why I Take Good Care of My Macitosh,” which features lovely stanzas like:

And puts word-heaps in hoards for me, dozens of pockets of gold under boulders in streambeds, identical seedpods strong on a vine, or it stores bins of bolts;

And I lose them and find them,

Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly laid out and then highlighted and vanish in a flash at “delete,” so it teaches of impermanence and pain;

And because my computer and me are both brief in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates,

Based on Snyder’s poem, you might be tempted to conclude that the Apple experience is synonymous with the zen and jazz inspired wanderlust of the Beat Generation as a whole. You might be right.

Here in Germany, Media Markt is the Teutonic equivalent of American big box retailers like Best Buy. Considering Amazon.de usually manages to ship the same items overnight for free anywhere in Germany at vastly reduced prices, there’s not much reason to remember the existence of poor old Media Markt, which is what makes it so downright bizarre to me to discover their name plastered all over the gadget feeds in connection with the Apple Tablet.

Supposedly, Media Markt accidentally “leaked” the name, price and ship date of the Tablet on their Twitter account. According to the (swiftly deleted) Tweet, the Tablet is called the iPad, it’ll ship on March 1st, 2010 and will cost €499 with a €120/month T-Mobile contract or €899 without one.

Short of the name (I will eat an extremity if Apple is creatively bereft enough to brand the Tablet with the similar to iPod and — in some dialects — identically pronounced moniker, iPad) that all sounds plausible enough… but, uh, no. Media Markt doesn’t know when the Apple Tablet is coming out or what it’s going to cost. I’ve actually seen their employees hooting and hopping around the latest iMacs with all the insight and grace of Hansel and Derek Zoolander. I refuse to believe that whatever administrative assistant they’ve got hammering out updates in the company’s Twitter account knows more about the Apple Tablet than the New York Times.

The Magic Mouse has numerous power management issues, but Apple’s at last solved at least one of them: the latest update to hit Apple’s Support Site promises to fix the bug that caused the Magic Mouse in conjunction with a 2007 aluminum Bluetooth keyboard to bleed out power.

Apple’s traditionally terse release notes for the Aluminum Keyboard Firmware Update version 1.1 read:

Improves battery performance of the 2007 aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard when used in combination with other bluetooth devices and addresses an issue with the 2007 aluminum Apple Keyboard and the 2007 aluminum Apple Wireless Keyboard where a key may repeat unexpectedly while typing.

Any Magic Mouse owners out there able to confirm the update fixed their keyboard power problems? Let us know if you spot an improvement in the comments.

At least until Spotify lets me stream music in Germany again, I love iTunes as much as anybody, but as much music as I’ve slurped from its fiber-optical teat over the years, I still wouldn’t be caught dead buying television shows from Apple.

It’s just consumerism at work: most television shows on Apple cost $1.99 per episode, but if I wait for a DVD box set of a show, I’ll pay half that. More over, I can stream a lot of television shows for free over sites like Hulu. Apple’s prices simply aren’t competitive.

Apple seems to agree. According to The Financial Times, it is being reported that Apple is strongly pushing networks and media executives to halve the price of television shows from $1.99 to $1.

The timing of this report suggests a Tablet connection to me. The Tablet is likely to be a very media-oriented device, and there has been some theorizing that it may actually finally deliver on the promises of the Apple TV, but in a portable form factor. For that to work, though, Apple needs their video content to be a lot more appetizing… especially since the Tablet will presumably only support MP4 video files, like the iPhone or iPod. Cheaper video content and season subscriptions to shows would go a long way towards shoring up the iTunes Video Store’s current weaknesses.

The gadget blogosphere’s collective scuttlebutting navel-gazers peg it as a near certainty that Apple’s forthcoming tablet will, at the very least, come with a 3G option, opening the door to carrier subsidization. But if the Tablet does support 3G, which network will Apple choose to partner with? Their current domestic carrier partner AT&T, which has proven incapable of handling the traffic demands of just the iPhone, let alone the Apple Tablet? Or will it be another network, like Verizon?

Only Wednesday will tell, but Boy Genius Report was just told by one of their sources that Verizon Wireless has a “kick off” event at the beginning of every quarter to bring store managers up to speed with what to expect over the next couple of months.

That kick off event hasn’t happened yet, but can you guess the date when it’s scheduled to occur. Yup, January 27th, 2010… the same day Apple is slated to announce the Tablet. Even more incriminatingly, it will occur via a “live webcast” at the exact same time as Apple’s announcement, 1PM EST or 10AM PST.

Coincidence? Possibly. Rumor? Definitely. But the inference is obvious: Verizon wants to tell their store managers about a big, big product development at the first possible second when they can do so. I suppose it could be a CDMA iPhone, which is heavily rumored to hit Verizon sometime this year, but let’s face it: the Tablet is still the most likely contender, given the date.

Although Guy Day is, as pictured, about as far away from the har- boozing, womanizing, red-meat-eating Don Draper type as a 70s-style pompadour will get you, he was one of the country’s quintessential ad men for decades.

Everyone reading this blog knows his work: as the president of the acclaimed Chiat / Day advertising agency, Day was responsible for bringing together the team that created the hyper-Orwellian 1984 Super Bowl Macintosh ad.

Sadly, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Day on Saturday, died in his sleep of natural causes. The timing is particularly depressing: a self-described “life-long agency ad man” who revolutionized Apple’s advertising strategies, Day, of all people, would be delighted by the marketing possibilities of the forthcoming Tablet.

Rest in peace, Mr. Day. You’ll always be remembered by this Mac fan for your art and for your work.

Tablet? YES!

With its own App Store? MAYBE!

More hype than Avatar? CERTAINLY!

If you’ve spent the last week or so thinking about the new iTabletSlateBookCanvasPod and nothing else, you’ll probably want to grab David Weiss’s Prediction score card for tomorrow’s big announcement. Then you can check off the features as they come tumbling from the Jobsian lips.

Or, you could shell out a couple of bucks for Weiss’s freshly-approved iPhone app of the same name. This gives you the chance to drool slavishly over the whole gamut of upcoming tech events. (It’s true: other companies do sometimes hold events and announce things.)

The app connects you to an online community of predictions, predictors, and metadata thereof. You can add your own predictions to the mix, and feast on the glory of recognition by your peers when you are proved right. Alternatively, count how many blogs reported your predictions as damn-near-fact even though you ended up getting them all spectacularly wrong. Which is another kind of glory too.

Via John Gruber.

UI Designer Dustin Curtis has posted a pair of Apple Tablet pictures that he initially claimed were given to him by a friend in the know. The Tablet as depicted is basically an over-sized iPhone, but with the nicest proportions yet. Those pesky reflections and shadows are a near-dead giveaway even if Dustin said he was reasonably sure the reflections had been deliberately messed up to throw people off the trail.

Time will tell. What do you think?

One more photo after the jump.

If astronaut Leroy Chiao has anything to say about it, Apple’s iPhone may be the first smartphone in space.

The former NASA astronaut, who has four missions in space under his belt, including a six and a half month stint on the international space station, has been a Mac nut since 1985. Today he is the Executive Vice President of Excalibur Almaz, a commercial venture that hopes to be putting space tourists into true space journeys by sometime in the next few years.

Chiao was disappointed to have to abandon his preference for Macs during his time as a NASA employee (because NASA was a PC-only shop) but says his first purchase after leaving the US government space program was a new Mac.

He’s an iPhone user, too — although he relies mostly on his 3 year-old twins for app selection so far — but he’s confident Mac and iPhone both have roles in his company’s plans — as long as they “play well with the systems on board.”

Our old friend Farhad Manjoo has an insightful piece on Slate explaining why he hopes Apple’s tablet will be like a toaster.

Farhad hopes the tablet will have an iPhone-like operating system (as we’ve mentioned here before) that offers a somewhat restricted, locked down computing experience like the iPhone. That is, he hopes Apple has removed all the complexity of using and maintaining a traditional personal computer.

“The most revolutionary thing about Apple’s phone wasn’t its sleek case or the multitouch gestures, but the artful way in which it hid nearly every bit of complexity behind a display of easy-to-understand icons. The iPhone contains no visible “directory structure.” Your music is not in a particular place on your phone; it’s just on your phone, and you get to it by launching the music player. Other than charging it, the iPhone requires no maintenance. Backups and OS upgrades occur automatically, and because all programs are approved by Apple (and because even third-party programmers aren’t given deep access to the phone), you never have to worry about malware. And look how easy it is to install a program: Choose one from the store, press “Install,” and type in your password to authorize the purchase—and that’s it. The iPhone doesn’t ask you where you want to put the new program, or how you’d like to launch it, and whether you’d like it to be the default program for doing a particular kind of task. It just puts up a little icon on the screen. To run the program, click the icon. To do something else, hit the home button.”

I think Farhad has put his finger on the most important feature of the tablet. It’s not designed for nerds, like traditional PCs (even the Mac) but for ordinary consumers who have no interest whatsoever in learning how to use a computer.

If you can get your noodle around it, it’s an astonishing thought. Steve Jobs is attempting to reinvent computing again, but to do it right this time.

The tablet will usher in a new era of consumer-level computing that will be utterly different to computing in the past. Instead of mice and keyboards, there’ll be a new generation of software designed for fingers and voice. It’ll be a lot easier to use (see all those videos of toddlers using iPhones), and a lot easier to maintain. Thanks to Apple’s controls over app installation, it’ll be largely free of the viruses, driver issues and tech-support headaches of traditional PCs. Of course, we’ll sacrifice some freedom to tinker for all this — but who cares? (Our own Leigh McMullen for one. See his “My Tablet Won’t be Running any Silly Phone OS.”)

No wonder Steve Jobs is so excited about the tablet. All the way back to the Apple II in the late 1970s, his earliest ambition was always to make computers accessible to mere mortals — to make the computers “for the rest of us.” It’s the realization of his earliest dreams.

Here’s some pictures I snapped of Apple’s preparations for the iSlablet press event.

The event starts at 10AM on Wednesday January 27th at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The Yerba Buena Center is near the Moscone Center –the location for many years of the annual Macworld Expo — and is Steve Jobs’ preferred venue for major product launches.

When I went down there at about 4PM, crews were finishing hanging a large banner over the front of the Arts Center. The banner reflects the splattered paint motif of invites Apple sent out last week inviting journalists to check out the company’s “latest creation.”

The latest creation is, of course, expected to be a new multitouch tablet.

Fantastic interview by Doug Evans and Alan Pottasch with Steve Jobs from 1993 about Paul Rand, widely regarded as one of the greatest corporate identity designers ever (think IBM, UPS, ABC). Rand designed the logo for NeXT (below), which very quickly helped to build the company’s brand without a massive ad campaign.

Seeing Jobs talk about someone more self-driven and fanatical about excellence than himself is always fun. And it includes an amazing quote: “I’ll solve your problem. You pay me.”

Via Darren Geraghty

Don’t believe the negative hype. Apple’s much-maligned new iMac, which is supposedly suffering from screen issues and delays, was largely responsible for the company’s record hardware sales in Q1 2010.

Since their launch in October, the new machines have been dogged by reports of delays and problems, including cracked screens, inconsistent color and flashing video. Especially problematic was the 27-inch model, which Gizmodo dubbed the “Yellow iMac” for a reportedly widespread yellow screen tint.

However, Apple said Q1 desktop sales were up 70 percent year-over-year (a 60 percent increase in revenue), thanks largely to the new iMacs. During an analyst conference call, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer and Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said customers are “thrilled” with the new iMacs.

Apple saw record Mac sales of 3.36 million units during the quarter, beating the previous best quarter (September) by more than 300,000 machines (up 33% year-over-year).

Broken down, Mac sales were 2.128 million portables and 1.234 million desktops. Portable sales were also up, but by 18 percent year over year,

“We are extremely proud of this result and believe our Mac hardware and software are providing outstanding software and innovation that our customers really love,” Oppenheimer said.

Read our orgasmic review of the 27-inch iMac here.

With rumors swirling that Apple this week may announce the end of its exclusive contract with AT&T, Apple COO Tim Cook defended the much-vilified company.

During Apple’s Q1 financial conference call, Cook acknowledged AT&T had “issues” in some cities, but had worked out a plan to fix them. The plan was drawn with Apple’s approval and cooperation.

Said Cook:

“AT&T is a great partner. You know, we’ve been working with them since before the first iPhone. In the vast majority of locations, they provide a great experience. But there have been issues in some cities. They have acknowledged this and developed a plan to make things better and we have personally reviewed them.”

Cook said he has “very high confidence” that AT&T’s issues can be resolved.

Via Digital Daily.

Apple’s first quarter of 2010 was another blockbuster, and Steve Jobs is talking about a major new product this week that he’s “really excited about.”

In financial results reported Monday, Apple says it earned “all-time highest revenues and profits.” The company made revenues of $15.68 billion and profits of $3.38 billion on sales of 3.36 million Macs and 8.7 million iPhones.

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

Everything except sales of iPods (which are down 8%) is in record territory   — iPhone sales are up 100% and Macs up 33%.

Here are the highlights:

* 3.36 million Macs sold (33% unit increase over year-ago quarter).

* 8.7 million iPhones sold (100% unit growth).

* 21 million iPods sold (8% unit decline).

* $15.68 billion revenue ($11.88 billion in the year-ago quarter).

* $3.38 billion net quarterly profit, or $3.67 per diluted share. ($2.26 billion, or $2.50 per diluted share, last year).

* 40.9% gross margin was (37.9 percent in the year-ago quarter).

* International sales accounted for 58 percent of revenue.

Apple’s a money machine. The 41% gross margin is unbelievable, especially in a recession. Competitors atre lucky to make 5% margins.

It’s also worth noting that a big bump in revenue came from Apple’s adoption of new accounting practices. Revenue from sales of iPhones and Apple TVs are now recognized immediately, rather than being spread over two years. Apple used subscription accounting for iPhones and Apple TVs so that it could provide free software upgrades without running afoul of accounting rules.

UPDATE 2: We’re giving away 100 more codes!! Posting on Facebook and Twitter at 1:45 PST

Update: Sorry, but all the licenses have gone. It looks like they went before we even posted this story — maybe the URL was hacked. We’re looking into it and we’re going to ask BumpTop for more licenses. We’ll keep you posted.

Today at 12pm PST we’ll be giving away 100 licenses to BumpTop for Mac.

We’ll post a link on the official Cult of Mac Twitter and Facebook pages to a secret site where the first 100 to enter their emails get a shiny new license for BumpTop for Mac valued at $29.

So you could say we’re makin’ it rain with $2,900 worth of sweet mac software. Follow us or become a fan so you don’t miss out on freebies.