Cult of Mac

Echoing a report from last week, the The Daily has followed up its original scoop by saying that Microsoft will launch Office for iPad on November 10th, 2012. The Daily originally leaked images of the iPad app, but Microsoft denied the report by saying that it was “based on inaccurate rumors and speculation.”

Today The Daily gives a specific launch date for Office on the iPad. According to the report, the app is in the “hands of a usability team” at Microsoft and will be submitted to the App Store soon.

Today Leap Wireless, parent company to Cricket, announced that it has partnered with Apple to bring the iPhone to the U.S. prepaid market for the first time. Starting June 22nd, customers will be able to buy iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S models from Cricket on a prepaid wireless plan. The iPhones have been substantially subsidized by Cricket, indicating that the carrier is taking a financial hit to hop on the Apple bandwagon.

We all know that the best cable management system is a Thunderbolt-equipped cinema display, but it is also just about the most expensive way to wrangle all the wires you need to support the life of your MacBook. So Rockpool Designs’ CableStrip might be the next best thing, and it costs just $10.

Apple’s iPad Smart Cover is a wonderful product. Not only is it pretty much the most minimal yet versatile iPad case around, it’s fun, attractive aesthetic — inspired by Japanese bath covers — hides some serious engineering beneath the surface thanks to its 30+ odd magnets.

So it’s a great product. Did you know that for Apple, though, Smart Covers alone are a $2 billion a year business?

A pair of new job listings on Apple’s website confirm that the company is seeking two engineers to overhaul the existing 30-pin dock connector currently employed by its iOS devices. The listings strengthen rumors Apple will introduce a new dock connector with its sixth-generation iPhone later this year, that will be significantly smaller than its predecessor.

If William Blake was alive today, and was pitching an iPhone case on Kickstarter, he might have called it The Trygger. Alas, he dies in 1827, long before either the iPhone or Kickstarter were invented, leaving the fate of the Trygger in the hands of Scott Phillips and Joel Kamerman.

The Trygger is a bumper-style case with a very clever sliding back which houses a polarizing filter. And if you have a nagging feeling that polarizers are the new fisheyes in the world of iPhone accessories, you’d be right — we covered a clip-on polarizer just last week.

We’ve profiled a range of companies and products during our Mobile Management Month event. One of the things that seems to stand out to some readers is the number of companies that offer mobile management as part of a larger set of enterprise and IT solutions. Integrated solutions are nothing new to IT. The cultural shift of mobile devices and BYOD programs, however, have many organizations wondering whether to go with an integrated  or branch out into new territory and use a range of deployment, management, and monitoring tools for desktop systems as well as mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Lots of us like to listen to audiobooks, and lots of us buy ebooks across a variety of services and devices. If you own an iPad, for instance, you might download audio books from iTunes or iBooks from that particular app, and then read right on your iPad. If you want to listen to iBooks, or have a visual impairment that makes it tough to see the text on the iPad screen, you can turn on VoiceOver and have the iBook read to you.

What about the Mac, you might ask? Can’t you just turn on VoiceOver on the Mac and have it read ebooks to you? Not if you use an e-Reader software like Kindle or Nook, you can’t. There is a way to get your Mac to read Kindle books to you, out loud, with its built-in text to speech software, but it’s not as intuitive as you might think. Here’s how.

Mike Daisey, the author behind The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, who was forced to admit that he fabricated some of his claims about worker mistreatment in Apple’s supply chain, has criticized Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher for being too soft on Tim Cook during their interview at All Things D’s D10 conference earlier this week.

After offensively branding Swisher as lazy for her use of the word “fictional,” in a post on his blog, Daisey continues to blast the pair’s “weak” interview questions and suggests how they can “do [their] job better.”

Angry Birds Space is continuing to make its $0.99 price tag look like an absolute bargain with yet another update that brings a brand new, food-themed planet with ten brand new levels to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Paper, the hugely popular iPad drawing app by FiftyThree, just got a new update that finally allows you to export your sketches as PDF documents, and introduces an increased “Rewind” history.

During the last 8 or so years of his career at Apple, Steve Jobs gave his most famous interviews at the annual D: All Things Digital conference. Sitting opposite veteran journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Jobs was know for candidly answering questions and giving his honest opinion on hot topics.

Following the D10 interview with current Apple CEO Tim Cook yesterday, AllThingsD has made its entire collection of Steve Jobs interviews available as a free download in the iTunes Store.

Fantastical is one of my favorite Mac apps. The handy calendar app sits in my menubar and manages my schedule like a personal secretary. The beauty of Fantastical is that, unlike iCal on the Mac, you can quickly add complex events to your calendar using natural, everyday language. “Lunch with John at 12 on Thursday” translates to an event titled “Lunch with John” that’s automatically scheduled for Thursday at noon.

Flexibits, maker of Fantastical, announced a nice update to the app today. Version 1.3 adds Reminders integration, allowing you to add and edit reminders on your Mac and have them synced via iCloud to your iOS devices.

Remember a few years back when all the cool kids in Europe bragged about how they were enjoying this really cool new music service called Spotify, and you couldn’t even try it because Spotify wasn’t available in the USA? It took forever for Spotify to launch their awesome product in the U.S. Rumors floated that the hangup was caused by legal issues with the licensing of the music, but in an interview today at AllThingsD’s D10 conference, Sean Parker claimed Apple was trying to keep the music service from launching Stateside.

Hollywood screenwriter Aaron Sorkin was interviewed today by Walt Mossberg at the D10 conference in California. Sorkin has been hired by Sony to adapt Walter Isaacson’s official biography of Steve Jobs, and he has already tapped Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to help advise him during the production process.

Sorkin talked about writing his Jobs movie today onstage. He described his writing process and how he wants to approach the film. After affirming that the film is still in the earliest stages of production, Sorkin talked about how he wants the audience to relate to his script and the kind of actor he wants to play Jobs.

Packing for an upcoming vacation can be a last-minute affair in which all the important items are left behind at home. With our busy schedules and long to-do lists, it’s rare that we get time to think about all the things we’ll need while traveling to that exotic location, or even just heading home to see the folks. Either way, using a list to be sure we remember all that we need is a smart idea, but I’m guessing that many folks don’t get that far, or, like me, have a congenital aversion to tiny slips of paper.

However, using an iPhone app is ever so much cooler, and it actually helps us stay organized. With an app like Packing Pro – or it’s little brother, Packing – you’ll be able to save time AND stay organized. What a concept, right?

Triggers is a fascinating new idea for simple input-and-output programming on your iOS device. It gives you access to the system-level controls for various bits of hardware, and control what they do in a limited way. If you’ve ever used If This Then That, you’ll get the idea immediately.

Ever wondering if you’d be better off working for Apple than your current company? A job at Cupertino isn’t guaranteed to make you rich, but they do pay their talent fairly well, especially their engineers and designers. Here’s a list of some of the most common positions within Apple, along with their average salary, in ranking order.

The AC1 RythymVOX ($60) is more than a little guitar amp you can jam on. Built into its circuits are the drum beats of many popular musical genres, all at the ready to accompany you while you practice or play.

“If you see a stylus they failed.” That might be everybody’s favorite Steve Jobs quote about touch screens, but the fact is the finger is terrible at both drawing and writing — just look at your kid’s scrawlings up on the refrigerator door if you don’t believe me.

If you want to make pictures and words that the rest of the world can recognize as such, you need a little help. Luckily, iPad accessory makers also ignored Jobs’ complaints and set out to fill the world with wonderful iPad pens. Here are the best you can buy.

iStorage 2 in action

IStorage 2 is the coolest iPad file manager I have yet seen. It has a bunch of missing parts, and a few UI weirdnesses, but this DropBox-and-iCloud-connecting app uses the iPad’s touch interface and graphical horsepower to bring us the iPad file manager we always wanted.

MacKeeper is a strange piece of software. There may be no other app as controversial in the Apple world. The application, which performs various janitorial duties on your hard drive, is loathed by a large segment of the Mac community. Check out any blog, site or forum that mentions it, and you’ll find hundreds of furious comments condemning MacKeeper and Zeobit, the company behind it. We discovered this ourselves earlier this month, when we offered a 50%-off deal on MacKeeper. Look at all those furious comments on the post.

The complaints about MacKeeper are all over the shop: It’s a virus. It holds your machine hostage until you pay up. It can’t be completely removed if you decide to delete it. Instead of speeding up your computer, it slows it down. It erases your hard drive, deletes photos, and disappears documents. There are protests about MacKeeper’s annual subscription fees. Zeobit is slammed for seedy marketing tactics. It runs pop-under ads, plants sock-puppet reviews and encourages sleazy affiliate sites, critics say.

But what’s really strange is that MacKeeper has been almost universally praised by professional reviewers. All week I’ve been checking out reviews on the Web and I can’t find a bad one.

Apple has reportedly bought small Italian startup Redmatica, a company that specializes in making digita music-editing apps that all run on the Mac.

One of the challenges that the BYOD and consumerization trends are creating for IT departments is employee use of public and/or personal cloud services. We’ve covered some of the big challenges this presents in terms of data security and ownership as well as the potential business continuity problems stemming from multiple versions of documents stored across different cloud services by multiple employees.

IT concerns may be more common and well-known, but there are cloud-related issues that employees need to consider as well – particularly if they use a work email address to register for a service, access a service from work, or use a service to store or transfer work-related files.

This post is brought to you by Chase — a strong supporter of TRANS4M Boyle Heights, a program that provides multiple social services that address Boyle Heights’ particular needs. Learn more here.

Summer school has never been this cool: kids in a Los Angeles neighborhood will spend four weeks using iPads and MacBook Airs in a digital storytelling class.

The class is part of a three-subject curriculum — they’ll be boning up on English and math skills, too — to boost the chances of 65 ninth graders to get into college.

It’s the first offering of the Trans4m Boyle Heights Initiative, backed by a $7 million, three-year commitment from Chase and lead by will.i.am, who grew up in the neighborhood. His charity,  i.am angel foundation, and College Track, co-founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, are teaming up for the project.