Cult of Mac

Auction house Sothebys has just posted a memo written by Steve Jobs to his co-workers at Atari, where he worked before starting Apple. The memo was written to his then-supervisor Stephen Bristow, and suggested changes Jobs had for Atari’s World Cup Soccer arcade game to extend the shelf life for arcade owners.

Funnily enough, while the memo is typed on Atari letterhead, it includes a stamp with the name of Steve’s company, “All-One Farm Design” and the address of the garage in which he and friend Steve Wozniak would soon create history with Apple Computer. Imagine if he’d gone ahead with designing farms?

How many 7th Graders can say they best selling authors? Well this group of kids from Woodlawn Beach Middle School in Northern Florida can thanks to their teacher Andrea Santilli and iBooks Author.

Ms. Santilli, a self-professed “die-hard Mac girl”, was looking for a new way to not only challenge her Advanced Life Sciences class, but also leverage technology to make learning fun. Not to mention get some practical experience in the real world of writing, photography, video, and ebook publishing. Just a few minutes with this free ebook and you can see how much potential there is for iBooks Author and iPads in the classroom. Not to mention you’ll probably learn something interesting.

Now that you’ve successfully jailbroken your iPhone 4S running iOS 5, what do you install? Whether you’re new to Cydia or a jailbreak veteran, we’ve gathered a list of the best jailbreak apps available for Apple’s latest smartphone.

There are a handful of intrinsic beliefs that Apple has as company – most of which came from Steve Jobs. The constant focus on building experiences rather than just products is one of them. Another is that Apple looks forward and not backward when it comes to technology. The company simply acknowledges that to offer its users truly great new experiences (and products), it cannot hold onto (and be held back by) outdated technology.

Apple often gets criticized for pushing its technologies and its users forward, particularly in business and enterprise IT circles. Despite that criticism, Apple may be doing companies (and users) a big favor by not supporting older Macs and OS X releases indefinitely as Microsoft does with Windows XP – and that advantage isn’t just about better products.

An IDC study commissioned by Microsoft discovered that supporting XP now costs companies and schools five times what it would cost them to support Windows 7 – making Apple’s forward-looking policy not only technically advantageous but also significantly less expense in the long run.

Samuel L. Jackson may love Siri, but are every-day users as smitten? Find out what we think on our latest CultCast.

And someone call King Arthur, Jony Ive just got knighted. But is he ready to protect the realm?

All that and our thoughts on Facebook’s new Camera app on The CultCast! Subscribe now on iTunes and read on for our show notes.

Some people are never satisfied. They are always searching for the app that brings just the tiniest advantage to their daily workflow. People like this might not want to just stick with the Reminders app that’s bundled in with iOS 5, no. They might want to try an alternative. One such alternative is NotifyMe. Let us tell you a bit more about it.

The Chronic Dev Team has pushed out a minor update to its Absinthe 2.0 untethered jailbreak. The tool was only released this morning, but this new update addresses issues where the software can freeze up during the process of jailbreaking. If you’re having trouble jailbreaking your iOS device on iOS 5.1.1 with Absinthe, grab this update now.

With the release of the iPhone 4S and its super incredible camera, point-and-shoots were supposed to be dead. What’s the point of buying a compact digital camera if it only takes photos that are the same, or slightly better than the iPhone in your pocket? For the most part, I think we’re right in saying that the point-and-shoot is destined to become a relic. However, there are certain exceptions to that rule.

I love my iPhone 4S so much that I don’t want to endanger its gorgeous glass body. I also love hiking in the summer and water activities, and even if I buy a military grade case for my iPhone, I still get scared when taking it on outdoor adventures. That’s where the Olympus TG-820 point-and-shoot comes in. It’s waterproof and shockproof, and ready to go where you’re too scared to take your iPhone.

Another day, another neat, camera-like iPhone case. But I promise you that this one is different. First, it manages to be highly functional without doing very much at all. Secondly, it’s actually a case you will want to keep on your iPhone and carry around with you all day.

With Office 2011, Microsoft killed off Entourage—and I don’t think anyone shed tears over that—and brought in Outlook for Mac. Outlook 2011 for Mac brings a lot of the power of Outlook for Windows to the Mac for the first time, but the question is—can you master it?

In this special course you’ll learn Outlook for Mac 2011 for only $24! That’s over half off for three and a half hours of hands-on instruction on Outlook. This is an in-depth course that will make you an Outlook Jedi in no time.

Over the course of May, we’ve highlighted a number of different mobile management companies in our Mobile Management Month series. Profiling these companies made me realize how much the mobile management market has expanded to include cloud or SaaS options in addition to on-premise servers installed inside a company’s network.

That’s hardly surprising really – after all cloud models are being applied to almost every type of business computing need.

There are several significant and  attractive advantages to using a cloud service as your approach to mobile management, particularly for small businesses.

Vowels are dropped from names so commonly these days that it can only end with the leftover consonants becoming so jammed together that they will densify and densify into some kind of alphanumerical black hole, dragging in all words until us humans will be rendered mute, and I will be forced to shut up once and for all.

And if you thought that paragraph had nothing to do with the next gadget, you’re dead wrong. It’s called the Statc (missing vowel) and it’s a camera “tripod” consisting of nothing but a big lump of super-strong magnet (black-hole-like attraction).

Yesterday, Apple yanked Airfoil Speakers Touch for unspecified reasons. A little birdie told us it was because Airfoil Speakers Touch duplicated inherent functionality in iOS 6. It’s possible that that’s still true, but if it is, it’s not why Airfoil Speakers Touch was pulled, as Apple has now gone on record saying it was actually because Rogue Amoeba violated a developer guideline against non-public APIs.

In the latest iPhone 4S ads that debuted earlier this week starring actor John Malkovich, Siri tells a joke upon request… and let’s face it, it’s a pretty lame one. Not bad for a computer, but the kind of thing that would get you beaten up in the men’s room at the local Laugh Emporium if you pulled it out during your set at open mic night.

What if Siri told a real joke? What if she told a dirty joke? Heck, what if she told the dirtiest joke there is? Here’s a great video parody of the recent ad, with a very, very clever (and totally safe for work!) take on that old blue comedy classic, The Aristocrats.

If you’ve never heard The Artistocrats before, Bob Saget’s version (go figure!) is generally considered to be one of the filthiest. You can compare and contrast Siri’s version to it here (NSFW!)

Thanks: Gil!

Don’t Panic is one of the better names I’ve seen for a GPS navigation app. It’s not a cheap app, but neither is it any more expensive than some of the other premium on-road satnav apps. The UI is a little quirky, but generally speaking it does the job well.

It looks like somebody finally answered my prayers for an iPad 3 case which would let me take photos without dropping the thing or looking like a complete dork. Instead, I can look like I’m some kind of clipboard-wielding
corporate drone taking a photo with an iPad.

The case is called the SlateSHIELD (I think you’re supposed to shout the last part whilst punching the air with your free hand) and it has a rotating handle on the back, as well as a flip-out kickstand. And crucially, it isn;t huge and fat.

During today’s Jailbreak Live event at the Hack in the Box conference in Amsterdam, Pod2g and his “dream team” of iOS hackers took to the stage to unveil the long-awaited iOS 5.1.1 untethered jailbreak. The team also explained how the Absinthe 2.0 software works its magic and opens your device up to a world filled with apps and tweaks that Apple never wanted you to install on your device.

Here’s how it works.

Following the Absinthe 2.0 jailbreak for all iOS devices on 5.1.1, a new jailbreak has been released for the second-generation Apple TV running iOS 5.0.1. Firecore has released a big update to Seas0nPass, the tool used to jailbreak the Apple TV, with the latest unther. You can grab the updated tool for free to jailbreak your Apple TV.

The Chronic Dev Team released its Absinthe 2.0 jailbreak this morning for all iOS devices running iOS 5.1.1. This is the first jailbreak available for the newly-released third-gen iPad, and Absinthe 2.0 has already become the Chronic Dev Team’s most successful release to date.

Servers are getting slammed and folks are having a difficult time jailbreaking their devices. Cydia itself seems to be buckling under the weight of all the new jailbreakers today, as repos are failing to load. iDB has also noticed the Cydia errors, so don’t fret if you can’t immediately download jailbreak tweaks and apps.

Over the past several months, Box has reinvented itself. The company went from being a pretty basic cloud storage solution to true enterprise solution and a hub for storing, viewing, and editing all manner of documents on an iPad or other mobile device. Box’s journey continued this week as the company launched a series of new features for business and enterprise customers.

I scoffed whan I first saw the PR e-mail for this Bluetooth iOS remote. Literally: I made a weird, half-snoring, half LOL-ing noise into my coffee. If that doesn’t count as a “scoff,” I don’t know what does.

Anyhow, after my initial (and messy) reaction, I quickly changed my mind. This thing packs in so many useful funcions, and does it in such a (fairly) handsome package that now I’m considering buying one.

As you probably know by now, today is the day that iOS hackers released the untethered jailbreak for devices running the latest iOS 5.1.1 software.

However, you may have already jailbroken yours using the tethered solution that was released some time ago. If that’s the case, you don’t need go through the whole process again — simply install the Rocky Racoon tweak to turn your tethered jailbreak into an untethered one.

The popular puzzle game follow up Cut The Rope: Experiments has been keeping Om Nom fed for quite some time, but many of you have been running out of experiments to perform. Thankfully, ZeptoLab has pushed out an update to challenge our wits and feed our precious Om Nom. The latest update features:

With its e-textbook initiative, iTunes U, and a range of educational resources, Apple is pitching the iPad as critical element in 21st century schools. Many schools have already begun iPad tests or full-scale deployments. In other schools, however, there’s still a fight over where and how the iPad and other technologies fit into the classroom. A battle erupted between teachers and lawmakers in Idaho earlier this year over new technology requirements in the state’s schools.

So what makes some schools embrace iPads and other new technologies while others resist them? It turns out that the answer may lie in the personal technology preferences of school and district administrators.

Not only do Gizmon’s Clip-On Lenses offer a smart and speedy way to mount them on your iPhone, but they also break with the now-common fisheye-telephoto-wideangle triumvirate (mostly at least), instead coming in fisheye, polarizer and “3-image mirage filter” flavors. Better still, they will also play just fine with your iPad 2 or 3.