The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been challenging Apple to higher standards for quite some time. Carrying the slogan “defending your rights in the digital world,” the EFF frequently calls out tech companies and related policies when it thinks ramifications could be negative for consumers. The EFF challenged Apple to defend its third-party developers against the Lodsys patent troll, has repeatedly addressed the company’s “anti-competieve” strategies, and so on.

In a new post today, the EFF has proposed that Apple let users of its iOS platform break through the “beautiful crystal prison” and have more control over the OS. The EFF also argues that OS X is becoming more of a restricted platform on the Mac, and that Apple should pave the way for a more open culture leading into the future.

For many Apple fans, there’s a hypnotic allure to the idea of working for their favorite tech company, even if it’s just a job manning the Genius Bar at the local Apple Store. But what happens when you actually get called in for an interview? What’s it like to actually work at the Apple Store?

The truth is few applicants will ever know, as it’s almost impossible to get a job at an Apple Retail store at anything besides an entry-level, part-time sales position, no matter how qualified or educated you are. Once in, it’s almost impossible to move up the ladder, you will be poorly paid, you will probably never see a raise above basic inflation, you will be overworked and you will be abused day-in and day-out by customers. If you soldier through and rise up the ladder, the job can be rewarding, but more often than not, it’s not just retail hell… it’s worse than retail.

Microsoft is a company known for creating strict, labyrinthine, costly terms in its commercial and end-user licensing. With Windows 8 seen as a make-or-break product for Microsoft, the company has already been adding licensing terms intended to strengthen its hand in the mobile market. As we reported earlier this year, Microsoft’s enterprise licensing for Windows 8 has provisions to coerce businesses into buying ARM-based Windows RT tablets while punishing those that deploy iPads with more costly terms.

Ratcheting things up a notch, Microsoft’s general counsel Tim Fielden announced new details about the company’s end-user license agreements. Although not mentioning specific products or services, Fielden posted on a Microsoft blog that many new agreements will prohibit users from initiating a class action lawsuit against the company.

So, you may be thinking of traveling to far off places this summer, blithely jetting off to other countries, bringing your iPhone hither and yon to take pictures, check email, call your friends to brag about the nice weather, and play some Angry Birds while on the long plane rides. Unfortunately, using that beautiful iPhone in other countries could see you coming home with more that just a sunburn and jet lag.

If you use your iPhone and access its network capabilities, you could be seeing a bill of hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. Here’s how to avoid having to take out a second mortgage to pay your bill.

If you’ve ever seen an old color movie like The Wizard of Oz you’ve probably seen the “Filmed In Glorious Technicolor” crawl. In fact, for years, Technicolor was synonymous with seeing color on film and on your screens, and for good reasons: Technicolor was ingenious.

Despite the fact that no one had invented film stock that could actually capture color, the French company had figured out a way to make color movies by splitting the light being recorded with a prism into red, green and blue light, then recording those individual color spectrums onto separate strips of black-and-white film. Once these strips of film were colored and combined, the result was life-like color recorded on black-and-white film.

Pretty cool, huh? In the days of digital cinema, though, Technicolor has fallen on hard times. In fact, their entire company is unprofitable, with the exception of one department that keeps 220 staff on hand. It’s the patent licensing department, and their only job is to rip open new iPhones, iPads and Macs the second they come out and start looking for infringements.

Like its monitor-calibrating cousin, the Spyder4Pro, the Spyder4TV HD ($125) from Datacolor is used to fine-tune the color profiles in your life. But as the name implies, the Spyder4TV isn’t for your Mac’s monitor; this Spyder wants to correct the color on your HDTV.

This is an article about using BitTorrent with other OS X apps to automate the downloading and converting of TV shows, adding metadata and then transferring them to your iPad to be watched. Some of you will rage that this is immoral, illegal (in your country) or both. Others will say that BitTorrent is, like, totally legit and is used every day for, like, downloading Linux builds, man.

I don’t care. What I do care about is watching TV Shows on my iPad, complete with subtitles, metadata, cover art and converted into a format that won’t kill the battery whilst playing back. I would buy these from the iTunes Store if I could, but as I live in Spain, I can’t. Here’s how to do it yourself.

Last week a group of developers banded together to celebrate pricing freedom by launching the Because We May promotion. The promotion, which ends June 1, includes heavily discounted games across multiple platforms. Since its launch, Because We May has received great support and the list of games available has grown tremendously.

Today’s Best Thing Ever has to be InstaCRT, an iPhone photography app that turns all your ideas about iPhone photography upside-down.

RIM has made a lot of headlines lately. Most of them have involved an ongoing exodus of executives leaving the company for greener pastures and/or reports of massive layoffs as the company tried to restructure itself under the leadership of new CEO Thorsten Heins.

There’s one bright spot of publicity for RIM this week, however. J. Crew CEO and Apple board member Millard Drexler uses a BlackBerry Bold 9900 – a fact noted after a CNBC piece about operations at J. Crew.

Is this good news for RIM? Yes and no. It shows that not every major company has abandoned the BlackBerry and not every executive has demanded an iPhone (at least not yet). Of course, if Drexler wasn’t a member of Apple’s board of directors, it’s likely that no one would really care what type of smartphone he used.

Case manufacturers are finally realizing that we don’t want to smother our skinny iPads inside fat, padded cases. And now even high-end, “luxury” accessory makers are offering slimline covers which are not only lovely to look at but also practical enough not to tear off the iPad and toss away in a fit of rage.

Today we take a look at Pielframa’s Smart Case, a rather hot take on Apple’s own Smart Cover.

One of the hallmarks of great Apple software is that it makes you smile like a kid when it does something unexpected and undeniably cool. The first time you pinch-to-zoom, for example, or when you swipe over a picture in iPhoto for iOS and it automatically applies a correction depending on what’s under your finger.

The other hallmark of Apple’s apps is that they look great.

Scalado’s PhotoBeamer manages the first of these things, appearing to work as if by magic. On the second, though, it fails somewhat.

The core apps and features in Apple’s iOS operating system have looked largely the same since the original iPhone made its debut back in 2007. Put certain iOS 5 apps — Calendar, Contacts, Maps, YouTube — alongside those from the original iPhone OS and you’ll notice hardly any difference.

However, Apple could be gearing up to make some changes in iOS 6 that will introduce a fresh new look to the iPhone. This summer we could be waving goodbye to that traditional iPhone blue that has adorned iOS apps for the past five years and saying hello to sexy silver.

Mac and iOS business app developer Marketcircle announced the latest of version of Daylite, the company’s business and productivity management app. The new version, released today, is a major upgrade from previous versions. Daylite is an excellent business management tool for OS X and iOS. It focuses on aggregating all manner of company data, monitoring processes, and helping ensure that business users follow up on leads and opportunities. The new release focuses on increasing performance, workflow, and integration with iOS devices.

Did you ever wonder how Apple makes its unibody MacBooks and iMacs so tough, durable and so uniformly beautiful? Ever wonder how Apple manages to make their iPods so colorful? It’s all through the electrochemical magic of anodization. In other words? That brand new Apple gadget you’re so proud of is just as corroded as a piece of rusty iron.

Mobiles Republic, a well known developer of free news aggregate apps, is proud to announce their latest offering, Sports Republic, just in time for the 2012 Olympics. Stay on top of all the scores and highlights with access to over 1,000 sports articles daily from over 70 trusted news outlets and sports blogs. Users can create and customize their own personalized sports channels using the many features of Sports Republic:

Imagine the scene: You’re in the middle of a particularly intense iPhoneography session, and the photos you’re getting are gold. You snap one keeper after another and then shift over to SnapSeed or some such app to really spice things up. But you’re so engrossed in the process of editing that you don’t notice your iPhone’s battery is almost dead until you get the dreaded pop-up warning.

If you are equipped with Photojojo’s keychain backup charger, then you needn’t worry. Just flip the top, plug it in and continue working.

It could soon be a whole lot easier for Apple to compete with pay TV providers as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considers a change to the definition of “multichannel video programming distributor.” To date, the term has been applied only to cable companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, or DirecTV. But as similar services continue to grow online, the FCC is questioning whether it should also apply to the likes of Hulu, Netflix, and in the future, Apple.

A change would mean that Apple would be free to offer up a number of TV channels just like any cable provider, without having to negotiate with those cable providers over expensive programming deals.

After the insanely fast sellout of tickets for Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off in a couple of weeks, we profiled a range of other events for Mac and iOS developers and for IT professionals who support and/or manage Apple’s desktop and mobile platforms.

While these events are great for developers and IT pros, they focus on the underlying technologies of OS X and iOS more than on how companies and other organizations can implement and leverage Macs, iPhones, and iPads in various businesses and industries. For that, there’s the i.Business Expo, a series of events focused on using Apple technologies to both improve business workflows and for customer/client engagement.

Rumor has had it for the past few months that Apple was going to phase out its reliance upon Google’s Maps API in iOS 6 in favor of its own revolutionary new mapping system, which it has been working on off-and-on since 2009. Now Boy Genius Report has exclusive images of what they say is the new iOS 6 Maps app in action, and boy, if the composite mock-up they put together based on those images is anything to go by,  it looks like a total game changer.

You one of the lucky ones who managed to buy a ticket to this year’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference during the approximately two hours while tickets were on sale? Apple’s posted the schedule of events that you can expect, as well as the requisite app making finding and scheduling your itinerary for WWDC 2012 all the easier.

Source: developer.apple.com

The Halopad is — not surprisingly — an iPad stand in the shape of a halo. Not that you’ll find this halo floating over the heads of saintly prophets — instead it is simply a chunky, lightweight plastic ring which has slots cut into it for propping the iPad at various angles. It’s simple, it’s cheap, and it’s not ugly.

Sure would be great to listen to every day documents easily, say, on a long drive or airplane commute. There are a ton of ways to make this happen, including some third party apps, but this is a pretty slick, easy way to turn any text you can highlight into spoken text that can be put on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod, ready to go along with you.

Shortly after the Chronic Dev-Team launched Absinthe 2.0 last Friday, Apple pushed out a revised iOS 5.1.1 (9B208) update for the iPhone 4. As yet, no other device has received the same update, and it’s unclear exactly what the software does. But if you installed it accidentally, you’ll be pleased to know that the Rocky Racoon untether now supports it.