Apple and the U.S. carriers have always had a bittersweet relationship. Carriers love Apple because the iPhone brings people into their stores, but carriers are also pressured by Apple to pay high subsidies so that Apple can maintain its high profit margins.

Given that there’s way more competition for the iPhone these days, Apple’s chokehold on the industry is starting to loosen. Carriers are trying new business models for selling smartphones. T-Mobile recently announced that it would be doing away with subsidized two-year contracts altogether. Instead, customers will pay a cheaper price up front for a device like the iPhone and then pay monthly installments towards the full price of the phone.

Carriers want to drive retail prices down on smartphones so more people will buy, and Apple may have to adapt to that model in the near future.

For some reason, Apple released a 128GB iPad this morning. And a lot of people are scratching their heads over it.

It’s not that a 128GB iPad is an unwelcome thing, of course. More storage for apps, movies and music is always a good thing… except, if it’s just a matter of soldering in a couple of 64GB NAND modules instead of a couple of 32GB NAND modules, why the heck didn’t Apple release a 128GB iPad when they refreshed the iPad in October?

In other words, why now? Why announce it today, on a sleepy Tuesday morning at the tail-end of January? And who is this thing for, anyway?

I’ve got a theory.

Apple is all about the iCloud these days, and Microsoft is also betting on the cloud with its new Office productivity suite. Today Microsoft announced the availability of Office 365, its new paid subscription service for accessing and editing your content from any computer via the Office website. Office 365 also lets you install the Office suite on up to five PCs or Macs.

Office 2013 has also been released for Windows machines. Mac users are still stuck on Office 2011.

Writing Kit is one of the best text editors on the iPad (and iPhone), but it can be a little confusing at first. It’s made for people who write for a living, and specifically for those who write for the web. To this end, Writing Kit contains not only a world-class Markdown-friendly text editor, but a web browser, quick-research tools and connections to an embarrassment of other web services.

Once you get used to it, Writing Kit will quickly become your writing app of choice. With that in mind, here’s a guide to help you make the most of it.

I have a hate/hate relationship wireless SD cards. Hate because they never quite seem to work when I really need them to, and hate because they promise so much, and then they crash my damn camera. Again. Wait, I have another one: They also kill the battery.

The new ezSh@re from world-famous manufacturer ¹ LZeal mightn’t do anything about the first two, but it can fix that last one.

Fact: I was once taking some notes about an exhibit in a gallery/museum in Berlin and a guard told me to stop using my cellphone. It was in fact an iPod touch, but whatever – try explaining that to a German security guard when you can’t speak German.

If I’d been in Gabriele Meldaikyte’s art exhibit, though, I could have continued pinching, tapping, swiping (and giving the finger to the guard) without even touching my “phone.” How? Interactivity.

Apple has officially announced a 128GB version of the fourth-generation iPad, coming in both WiFi and WiFi+ Cellular models. They’ll be available next week on Tuesday, February 5th, in black or white, and cost $799 for the WiFi model and $929 for the WiFi + Cellular model.

In the official press release, Apple’s not trying too hard to emphasize this as anything more than what it is: a doubling of storage capacity on the high-end. The timing, though, is curious, coming just a couple months before a (presumed) March or April iPad event; this perhaps implies that a fifth-gen iPad isn’t incoming until later in the year.

It’s curious that Apple has taken so long to release an iOS device with 128GB of storage, when the flash modules Apple has needed to do it have existed for years. Is a 128GB iPhone on the table next?

The Option key is a powerful ally in your transition from new, beginner user of OS X to the power user that you want to be. There are a ton of features in the Menu Bar that are hidden behind this underrated and unassuming Option key.

Here are some of the more useful ones.

We all know dealing with PDF files can be a pain. We’ve all had a PDF file that we’ve wanted to modify in some form or another and found ourselves only to be left with no real way to do it. But thanks to iPhone Hacks and PDFPen, those days are over.

PDFpen is your simple solution to making all of your PDF dreams come true. It offers a powerful editing capability – one that is unmatched at this price! With this Cult of Mac Deals offer, you can get PDFpen for only $30 (50% off) you can get this stellar piece of software that will become an integral part of your document workflow.

Sweden-based DICE game studio, owned by EA and known for high-end console and PC games like Mirror’s Edge and BattleField, recently posted a job advertisement for a Mac OS X Engineer to work on the company’s Frostbite gaming engine.

Here’s hoping that as many EA games as use the Frostbite engine will come to Mac OS X in the coming years.

Did you sign the Change.org petition to get a Mac port of super-popular multiplayer online battle arena game (MOBA), League of Legends? Have you waited with bated breath since it was first announced, and then wept with frustration when it was cancelled? Have you downloaded the unofficial iLoL port and suffered through any beta glitches just to get you some League of Legends on your favorite computing platform?

Well, the wait is (almost) over, as developer Riot Games has finally admitted that it is indeed working on a Mac client, and it will be available within a month.

A mobile phone in the hands of your kid can be a liability. But it can also be guardian angel — it all depends on how it’s used. MobileKids is a free iPhone and Android app that enhances a phone’s guardian angel-like qualities while putting the liabilities on lockdown.

Perhaps you’ve been combing through iOS 6.1 on your iOS device looking for the little changes that Apple hasn’t mentioned. A couple of our readers certainly have. One little change is pretty easy to spot: the lockscreen music controls have been redesigned with an aluminum finish.

Now we’re well aware that this tweak came in the first iOS 6.1 developer beta back in November, but for the many of you who just got 6.1 today, this is something totally new.

It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s nice to see that Apple is still interested in making smaller aesthetic changes to iOS on a regular basis.

Thanks: @RazrMann

This is the Scandock, a $480 stand that turns your iPhone or Android handset into a better scanner. There are already some great scanner apps out there — here’s an iOS example, and here’s one for Android, both of which are around $5. The Scandock is almost a whopping 100 times more expensive, but claims improved results.

George Hotz is known to his legions of online fans as “geohot,” the infamous hacker who was the first to unlock the iPhone and crack the Sony PS3. Hotz has been flying under the radar lately, but he’s about to make his first foray into the App Store with a new iPhone app.

The app is called Reactions, and it’s currently being reviewed by Apple. The idea is relatively simple, and it has the potential to either be a massive flop or make it big. It’s photo sharing with a twist.

There are weather apps, and then there are weather apps; Nooly is, apparently, the latter. Nooly is so accurate, its press release claims, the app “is capable of predicting the exact minute it will rain or snow and can do so effectively, wherever you are, for every 0.4 square miles.” That’s pretty precise.

Are you the kind of person who jumps up at the end of a movie, skipping the credits to get to the parking lot (or restroom – thanks, giant soda tub) before everyone else? If so, you’ve probably missed some pretty neat after credit experiences, called stingers. These are extra little bits of movie, teasers, or even bloopers, that are shown after the credits roll to reward the die-hard movie goers for their patience. The recent run of Marvel movies, for example, all teased the eventual Avengers movie at the end of Captain America, The Hulk, and Iron Man. If you left early, you’d have missed it.

Luckily, now, there’s an app to make sure you never do, and, conversely, you don’t sit around for an entire credit roll for no reason.

You’ve probably seen quite a few headlines today about Twitter’s new Vine iPhone app displaying pornography. Vine went live in the App Store last week, and the video sharing service has garnered quite a bit of attention due to its parent company, Twitter.

Vine was made an Editors’ Choice by Apple in the App Store, but the app has been de-promoted following all the porn hubbub. Apple has yet to give an official comment on the issue or pull Vine from the App Store completely.

What does all this mean for Vine, and more importantly, the App Store’s policies on porn?

Last week Twitter released Vine, an iPhone app that’s kinda like the Instagram of video. You take a 6-second video and share it in your feed. It’s a pretty simple idea, and Facebook just coincidentally added the ability to shoot video in its official iOS app.

A new update to Facebook’s app also adds the ability to send audio messages to your friends. The app’s nearby tab has also been redesigned.

Many people thought that without Apple’s injecting blood directly into the arteries of Macworld, the expo would quickly shrivel and die.

They were wrong. Apple may not have participated in the event since 2009 but things are still going strong. Macworld has transformed itself from an Apple launch event where Cupertino  announced products like the original iPhone and taught customers how to use them, to an event where people celebrate the culture that permeates Apple fans and binds them together.

In three short days, thousands of iFans across the globe will converge on San Francisco’s Moscone Center to celebrate everything that is great about Apple. It’s going to be a great show. Already, Macworld/iWorld 2013 is set to be one of the most entertaining Macworld conferences in recent memories. It’s going to be packed with celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Will.i.am, while over 350 companies show off their new products to Apple fans who will love getting to hangout with each other and swap stories on everything Apple.

Here’s what to look forward to this week at MacWorld/iWorld 2013:

iOS 6.1 was suddenly unleashed on the world this afternoon, and the update includes some minor updates. There’s Fandango movie ticket purchasing through Siri, LTE support for a dozens of new carriers, individual song downloading with iTunes Match, and more.

A small but notable change in 6.1 is the re-promotion of Passbook-enabled App Store apps in Passbook itself.

iPhones and iPads aren’t the only products receiving some love from Apple today. Along with the surprise release of iOS 6.1, Apple just pushed out an update for the Apple TV as well.

The new Apple TV software version 5.2 can be downloaded right now. It includes a number of new features such as support for Bluetooth keyboards, iTunes’ Up Next feature, and iTunes in the Cloud.

By Andy Patrizio

ANAHEIM, Calif. – Rising from the ashes of XO Wave, a digital audio workstation for editing music WAV files, comes Xonami, a real-time Internet-based audio editing tool that allows two or more people to work on a music file from different locations while keeping their changes up to date.

As one person makes changes, they are rolled into the work of others. As changes come in, you see them updated on the screen. The connection between the users is secured and files are stored in the cloud. Producers or mixers can either work on existing sound files or they can capture a live recording and work on it in real time, and no one has to be in the same room.

Xonami is still in beta test but users can sign up with a mailing list to keep up to date.

We already knew that iOS 6.1 would likely result in a quick untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 5, iPad mini, iPad 3rd and 4th gen and pretty much every other device, but now jailbreak veteran MuscleNerd is pretty much confirming it, claiming that iOS 6.1 is “safe” for jailbreakers to update too and teasing that an official jailbreak for iOS 6.1 might be coming as soon as Super Bowl Sunday from his new hacking team, the Evad3rs.

Here’s hoping! If the jailbreak does come down the pipe on Sunday, stay tuned for our jailbreak superguide, walking you through the process.

Source: Twitter

By Andy Patrizio

Rhythmic parts of songs are often programmed, but this takes it to a whole other level. WaveDNA’s Liquid Loops lets you program your beats and rhythms at what has to be the most insane fine grain detail ever seen.

Liquid Loops is an intelligent synthesizer and drum machine that let you build beats as a group, such as four or eight bars at a time. The beats are built with every possible combination of notes and rests possible in a measure, such as the 64 possible configurations of eighth notes in a single 4/4 measure. You choose from a wheel that shows the beats and rests so you can customize the beats any way you want them.

It sorta takes the life out of a drum beat, killing the groove a human provides, but that’s been the knock on drum machines from the get go. A free trial version of the Mac OS X product is available now.