Cult of Mac

An unconfirmed report surfaced yesterday saying that Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted at Valve’s headquarters in Bellevue, Washington. Whenever Cook is spotted out and about, people take notice. The CEO of the world’s most valuable company doesn’t personally visit other tech companies to simply have a chat.

Many speculated as to why Cook would be visiting Valve, maker of popular game series like Half-Life, Team Fortress and Portal. Valve also boasts an incredibly robust online PC gaming platform called Steam that operates similarly to Apple’s App Store.

We’ve gotten word that Cook was indeed at Valve yesterday, and what’s more, Apple is planning a full-on assault to take over the living room. This assault won’t just be limited to the long-rumored Apple HDTV set, but will also include a revolutionary home console as well.

Verizon continues to blanket the US with 4G LTE while the rest of the carriers desperately play catch up. We’re quick to complain about Verizon’s high prices but at least they’re putting that money to work. Today, Verizon announced it will be expanding its 4G LTE reach in ten California markets as well as Reno, Nevada within the coming weeks. 3G will soon be a thing of the past for those living in the following California cities:

One of the traditional ways for IT professionals to highlight their knowledge of specific technologies and technical concepts is through the acquisition of certifications. There are a number of vendor-crafted certifications available as well as vendor-neutral certifications that illustrate competence in various technical disciplines like troubleshooting and repair, security, healthcare, and overall network management. Certifications have never guaranteed a job in and of themselves, but they do help candidates sell themselves to recruiters and IT managers.

One of the many challenges with the consumerization of IT, mobility, and cloud services trends is that they are dramatically shifting the skill sets required to succeed in the IT field. As a result, the perceived value of certifications has fluctuated as softer skills like business integration and project management have become more desirable. The need for professionals that have extremely specialized skills is being surpassed by the need for IT generalists.  

Episode 8 of The CultCast just hit iTunes, and this one is more action-packed than an Aw-nuld Schwarzenegger flick from the 1990s.

Join us and our pal, Ars Technica Writer Chris Foresman, as we divulge the secrets of the rumored new Air-like Macbook Pro; explain why Facebook just ate Instagram and what it means for you; and the scary new Flashback virus — is your Mac infected?

All that and lots more on this week’s CultCast — subscribe now on iTunes!

It seems that every week for the past few months, there’s been at least one or two announcements of app developers, cloud service providers, and mobile management vendors developing strategic partnerships to create or integrate their products into a single unified workflow.

Box’s OneCloud initiative, in which the storage provider teamed up with more than two dozen app developers to create seamless workflows for several different business and productivity tasks, is probably the biggest example of this trend. Others include Quickoffice launching its own cloud service as well as integrating with Accellion’s kitedrive, LogMeIn’s new Cubby service, and CloudOn’s virtualized version of Microsoft Office that integrates with Box and Dropbox for storage.

Apple has spoken out regarding the rumor that French designer Philippe Starck is working with the company on a “revolutionary” product to be released in the next 8 months. Starck and Apple are working on no such thing, according to a spokesperson from Cupertino. In the interview that caused the original rumor, Strack was instead referring to a yacht he was working on with the late Steve Jobs.

What a month it has been for Instagram. The lean and mean social photography app was just acquired by Facebook for a jaw-dropping $1 billion. Instagram for Android also launched at the beginning of April and has seen unprecedented growth.

Last we heard Instagram was wielding 30 million users, making it the biggest mobile-only social network in existence. According to new data, Instagram has now hit over 40 million users, and the app is averaging around one million new signups per day.

Jawbone’s Jambox is already one of the best loved miniature portable Bluetooth speakers out there, and we’re here to add to the praise: this is a great piece of kit for anyone who wants to take out the headphones and pump up the volume far more than what the iPhone or iPad’s dinky build-in speakers allow.

But it’s more than just a great speaker. It’s the very distillation of the great design that has sprung up in the accessory space in direct response to the way Apple has redefined the way we look at computers, from pieces of assembled technology to experiences. If you were looking for just one gadget to pick up and show a friend how Apple has revolutionized design outside of its, the Jambox would be a good contender.

A good pair of calipers can measure a small object much more accurately than a ruler or tape measure. Buying one, however, could cost around $100 or so, according to RealCaliper developer Pocketdemo e.u.r.l. Here’s how to use this $1.99 app to measure something small.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was reportedly spotted at the headquarters of PC gaming platform Valve this morning. The Washington-based company boasts the most robust and established desktop gaming network in existence. Think of Valve as the iTunes of PC gaming. Is a Valve/Apple partnership in the works?

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The Apple rumor mill got thrown into a tizzy this morning when an obscure interview with renowned French designer Philippe Starck surfaced. According to translations of a radio interview with France Info, Starck said he was working on a “revolutionary” new project with Apple to be unveiled in the next 8 months.

iTV? New iPhone? A yacht for the late Steve Jobs? A new Iron Man suit? Everyone immediately started speculating about what the mythical project could be. As it turns out, Starck was probably just referring to his design work for a new Apple Store.

We’ve long been in love with Italian design house Ciccarese Design’s incredible renders of upcoming Apple products, and the images they just sent us of what they envision a 7.85-inch iPad mini would look like in the flesh are no exception. No implausible whimsy here: these could just as well be product shots pushed up on Apple’s site the day after the iPad mini is officially announced by Tim Cook later this summer, and really puts the totally usable size of such a device in perspective. Check out some more after the jump.

Apple has been dreaming big since like forever. Even when they knew current technology couldn’t support their crazy dreams, they’d still throw wacky but brilliant ideas around. The iPhone didn’t change the world until it was launched in 2007, but Apple had been dreaming up “iPhone” concepts 24 years earlier.

This particular Apple Phone concept was created back in 1983 by Hartmut Esslinger from Apple’s design firm Frogdesigns. It features a touch-screen, apps, touch-screen keyboard, and even one of those pesky stylus things that Steve Jobs hated so much.

Maybe it couldn’t have mass produced these suckers back in 1983, but take a look at what could have been a phenomenal Apple product:

Over the last couple of months Sharp has been rumored to be Apple’s partner for producing the LCDs of the mysterious “iTV” the world is waiting for. While analysts, such as Peter Misek, have been linking Sharp to Apple for a while now, definitive proof of their connection has yet to surface. However, adding to the rumors, Sharp announced today that they have begun production on 32-inch Hi-DPI LCD’s displays this March that could be used in Apple’s new iMac line that is expected to be unveiled in June.

Ideas is an iOS app for managing, organising and sorting your ideas and thoughts. It stands out from the crowd thanks to a refreshingly different interface that does the job very well. It usually costs two bucks, but right now it’s on sale for one dollar.

There are a number of fields and professions in which mobile professionals share a pool of mobile devices. For companies with field agents, sales people, and marketing professionals, the need for each user to have a dedicated device may not be the most economical option and a better approach can be to simply configure a number of iPads with similar specs that users or teams can check out when they go on the road.

This shared iPad model can be  a way to implement the iPad while reducing overall expense. One challenge, however, is that a business typically needs to provide mobile Internet access for individuals or small teams – something that can be a pricey proposition.

Meet the world’s newest super-yacht, Adastra. It’s like looking at the embodiment of sex on water. She’s like the hottest chick from your high school that knows she’s fine and there ain’t nothing you can do to attain her as she floats by laughing at your pitiful life that will never glimpse her interior.

Not only is Adastra fine as hell, but she’s smart too, and ultra high-tech. She’s so high-tech that the entire yacht can be controlled remotely by an iPad, while the crew is frolicking on the shores of some fantasy island. After drooling over Adastra’s gorgeous metal and glass hull I can’t help but think this yacht would have been perfect for Steve Jobs.

I’ve always liked the idea of Bump: instead of trading contact details with someone by typing it all in, why not just pull out your iPhone and bump them together and have all the relevant details automagically traded between devices?

In reality, Bump’s main problem is that Apple hasn’t bought them and baked them into the core of iOS. I have Bump on my iPhone, but it’s not often I meet anyone else with it, which means I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been able to trade contact info with someone with a totally awesome fist bump.

Still, if you hang out with more Bump-centric circles than I, you may well want to know that the latest update added the ability to add a Bumpee as a social network contact on Twitter or Facebook.

The HandiZoom is an add-on camera grip that makes your SLR handle more like a camcorder. A really big, heavy camcorder. It is currently at the prototype stage, but looks like it could prove popular with one-man crews shooting documentary footage.

This is just totally sick. The guys over at Germany’s Hardwrk have taken 16GB of DDR3 RAM and a 1TB Samsung 830 SATA III SSD bundled up in an SSD-RAID-0, slapped it into a 13-inch MacBook Pr running an Intel Core i7-2640M 2.8GHz chip.

The result? A three-thousand euro behemoth of a machine — custom-engraved and covered in a beautiful matte black covering — that they say is the world’s fastest MacBook Pro, and with a 1.7 second PhotoShop boot-up time, we’re inclined to believe them.

Best of all? They’re giving this bad boy away to one lucky winner. All you have to do is leave a comment on their post.

Apple’s Q2 2012 financial earnings call is on April 24th, and if history is any guide, it’s going to see Apple announce all new record earnings and another huge jump in stock price.

Now Piper-Jeffray analyst Gene Munster is piping in, and not only are his estimates higher than Wall Street consensus, but that Apple could have sold 33 million iPhones and 12 million iPads this quarter. Not too shabby, considering the new iPad was on sale for only two weeks before the fiscal quarter ended.

Mobile technology is playing an ever bigger role in the workplace. According to a recent study by IT training and certification giant CompTIA, 84% of knowledge workers use an iPhone or other smartphone for at least some work tasks on a daily basis – unsurprisingly email and using web-based services ranked as the most common and universal uses.

Despite that level of use, the survey – which didn’t break out numbers for corporate-owned versus employee-owned devices – found that only 22% of businesses have an official policy regarding the use of mobile technology. An additional 20% indicated that they are exploring options for mobility policies but haven’t yet completed them.

The French designer Philippe Starck, famous for both his interior design and mass produced goods like toothbrushes and chairs, revealed in a recent radio interview that Apple has been working on a “revolutionary” new product that will be unveiled within the next 8 months.

An iPad stand made from a pair of hammers, a screwdriver and some old coins and bolts. What could possibly go wrong? This amazing iPad stand was put together by Etsy makers Docks4iPods, and works just fine for the iPads 2 and 3. It will also take up more than its fair share of counter or desk space, and the screwdriver can be moved by loosening the wing-nuts and rotating it further back, letting you angle the iPad a little lower.