A couple of new ads for the iPhone 4S surfaced earlier today. Featuring none other than the one and only Samuel L. Jackson, the first 30-second spot highlights Siri, the new iPhone’s loving digital assistant. The second ad stars the lovely Zooey Deschanel. Both ads seem to be in rotation for all three U.S. iPhone carrier partners — AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.

Apple appears to be spearheading a new ad campaign featuring high profile celebrities and the iPhone 4S, but so far these two ads are the only ones that have been spotted. Here they are in full HD, courtesy of Apple…

With more and more security threats to OS X like the recent “Flashback” trojan, now’s a better time than ever to protect you Mac from any and all possible security threats. In this video, I’ll show you the best ways to keep your Mac safe from viruses and malware.

Quickoffice announced its new cloud service known as Connect at the end of last month. The service is designed to sync Microsoft Office documents between your iOS devices, Android devices, Macs, and PCs. It’s an extension to the Quickoffice apps for iOS and other mobile platforms that offer the ability to create, edit, and view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files on the go.

Connect by Quickoffice is now available from the App Store and it’s a very slick app and a great addition for any iOS user or mobile professional.

It’s always fun to speculate about what Apple should or could do with its horde of cash, and this video runs through some of the wackier ideas: from building and staffing a lunar base for eight-and-a-half years. to buying a third of the world’s drugs and throwing a continent-wide coke party, to enslaving the Rolling Stones and making them play a concert night after night after night for thirty-four years. It leaves the best for last though: making 4,813 baby clones of Steve Jobs.

(<em>Thanks, Mike S!</em>)

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to make mockups, prototypes, sales videos, cartoons and more to help you communicate your dream to the world, then Cult of Mac Deals has something for you. It’s a course that will teach you how to use Apple’s Keynote to help lift your message about your startup to new heights. When you’ve completed this course you’ll have actionable steps on how to get the most out of that amazingly effective piece of software.

And – as a token of our appreciation – we’re giving it to you for free.

Next time you’re making a flight through Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport you might want to keep your iPad in your carry-on rather than leave it in your luggage. Or hope Transportation Security Administration agent Clayton Dovel isn’t on duty that day – which he probably won’t be because he just got busted for stealing a bunch of iPads from travelers’ luggage.

https://youtu.be/ovh0mdAHsyQ

Here in America, AT&T’s rather desperately trying to convince people to buy the Lumia 900 by saying it’s a “notch above” an iPhone.

In Russia, though, Nokia’s taking a different tack and trying to get people to buy the new Lumia 900 with this advertisement, in which they seem to imply that being locked into a two-year contract with a garish Lumia phone is like being entombed alive in a metal box filled with bad techno music, seizure-inducing flashing lights and half-a-dozen garishly made-up Russian call girls covered in glitter and reeking of cigarettes and vodka.

What iPhone fan could disagree with that metaphor?

[via Apple 2.0]

If you use Gmail like a lot of us do, you may have noticed that when swiping across an email to delete it, you’ll only have an Archive option. Well, if you’ve set up your email as a Microsoft Exchange account, you’ll have the option to delete the mail rather than just archive it. Here’s how.

I was a big fan of the Alupen when it launched — so much so that I went out and bought my own. It was chunky, looked like a metal pencil and felt pretty good in my big hands. Then came the Wacom Bamboo stylus and our love affair was over.

Now, though, the newer skinnier, cleverer Alupen Pro has got me two-timing the svelte Bamboo. Why? Because it has a biro built in.

Today mark’s the 35th anniversary of the iconic Apple IIe, the first PC that can really be said to have achieved true mainstream success, but between the Apple IIe and the Mac, there was another computer: the venerable Apple Lisa, which Steve Jobs named after his daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs.

The Lisa was a first for Apple in many ways: the first Apple computer to have a GUI, and the first Apple computer to ship with a mouse… both ideas that were borrowed by Steve Jobs from his historic visit to Xerox’s PARC labs. Unfortunately, due to both its price ($10,000 new) and the repeated delays, the Lisa never took off, and was in fact almost immediately replaced by the less expensive Lisa 2.

If you’ve got a 25K bill deep wad of Washingtons, though, you can now pick up a rare Lisa 1 computer system in original box on eBay, courtesy of the same seller who put that $100K 128K Mac prototype on sale earlier this week.

[UPDATE: See the end of the post for a possible solution, which works for some people.]

Many iPad 3 users are experiencing a bug which kills their 3G connection every time they connect to a Wi-Fi network. The cellular connection looks normal, with the carrier name, the 3G logo and reception bars, but when you try to do anything that requires a connection, it either times out or throws the error messages “Could not activate cellular data network.”

I am having the exact same problem, and here’s what’s happening.

If, like many people, you find Mondays just too much to cope with, you might want to avoid today’s app. It’s not the sort of thing that’s going to make your Monday feel any better, and in some cases it will just fry your brain until next Monday. Which would be a shame, because you’d miss out on a whole weekend.

Be forewarned, then: The Fourth Dimension is an app which will mess with your head. Deliberately. Even though the aim is education and expansion of knowledge, it will still mess with your head. You will emerge from the experience only fractionally the wiser, and quite a lot more confused than you were at the beginning. Don’t worry, this is perfectly normal.

Last week, the Department of Justice filed its lawsuit against Apple and several large publishing companies alleging a complex conspiracy to fix e-book prices and to limit competition among e-book retailers. It didn’t take long for Apple to fire back in a public statement, claiming that the allegations set forth in the DOJ’s complaint “were simply not true” and that Apple’s actions actually served to break “Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry” and to encourage — not hamper — competition. Who’s telling the real story?

Oh man. I wasn’t going to write anything about the Comfe Hands iPad grip(s), as they just look too awkward and bulky to carry just to fit to the iPad when you need them. But then I accidentally scrolled down the page and saw the image you now see above this post. It is titled simply “pointer” and it epitomizes everything I love about stock photography and catalog photography in general.

Thursby last week released ADmitMac PKI 4. The release is a specialized version of the company’s ADMit Mac software that focuses two factor authentication. The solution is largely aimed at government customers and regulated industries like healthcare where data security is paramount.

Thursby’s ADMitMac is an Active Directory integration solution that offers several features beyond the built-in Active Directory support that Apple provides in OS X. It offers Mac management capabilities, improved browsing of Windows network resources including Microsoft’s distribute file system, and a number of other administrative tools.

As spotted by the beautiful souls over at Reddit, someone in Apple’s patent filing department seems to have taken a shortcut in illustrating an application for way to make a touchscreen iMac useable by tracing the hands of of the divine Renaissance artist, painter and sculptor, Michelangelo.

Hey, you know what they say. Good artists borrow, great artists steal. And trust me, you don’t Apple’s patent clerks drawing their own hands if you value your sanity.

If you’ve ever wanted to own a rare piece of Apple history that looks like totally rad then this new eBay listing for a Prototype Apple eMate 300 might be the perfect. The only eMates Apple produced had a solid dark green casing rather than the clear casing you see above. The seller estimates only 6 or so of these clear eMate 300s were produced and it looks quite similar to the first generation iBook that derived a lot of inspiration from the eMate series.

If you got fat stacks of cash that you’re just looking to throw around, you can buy this bad boy on eBay right now for a whopping $8,499.00. Take a peak after the jump for even more pictures of Apple’s crazy touchscreen eMate prototype.

Visual editing software Smoke may now be in the clear for prosumer or indie filmmakers.

Autodesk’s latest version of Smoke will cost $3,495 and you can run it on your MacBook Pro. While that same wad of cash may still be enough to get you a cruddy used car, that’s about one-third the $15,000 price the California-based multinational was asking for the previous version of the software released just last year. The more affordable price may put cool effects like green screens and 3D within reach.

Despite the fact that competitors like Rdio have had one for ages, It’s taken Spotify frickin’ forever to release an official iPad app. That may be about to end though, as a Swedish technology journalist has just posted the above screenshot of what appears to be Spotify’s official iPad app… perhaps not-so-coincidentally ahead of a special announcement Spotify has planned for Wednesday.

Let’s hope it is the official app: it’s far past time, and applying a Twitter-like pane approach to the app is actually pretty brilliant. This app actually looks worth the wait.

[via The Verge, iDB]

Cyclists: Imagine that you could buy a speaker that combined the Bluetooth-connected, rubbery boxiness of JawBone’s JamBox speaker with the stretchy go-anywhere strap-and hook of Knog’s bike lights and cyclocomputers. Well, imagine no more, for a mere $70 will get you a SleekSpeak, a handlebar-mounted bike speaker over on Kickstarter.

Recently, we’ve been highlighting some of the major partnerships that are beginning to form between mobile management and mobile/cloud services vendors. These partnerships are strategic and aim to enable IT workflows that better secure, support, and monitor iPhones, iPads, and other mobile devices than what any one company could offer. So far, these partnerships and the integration of solutions that they offer haven’t included Apple or the basic management tools that Apple makes available for free – until now.

Mac and iOS management provider JAMF has posted a guide to integrating the company’s signature solution with Apple’s free Configurator tool to streamline iOS deployment.

Apple is set to expand its environmental concern by teaming up with China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs to audit its Chinese supply chain for pollution. Joint investigations are expected to start “in the next few weeks,” according to one report, with “a maker of printed circuit boards” the first of Apple’s suppliers to enter the spotlight.

Apple is reportedly gearing up to launch its much-anticipated “iPad mini” during the third quarter of 2012 in an effort to “counter attack” the upcoming Windows 8 tablets. The 7.85-inch device is expected to cost between $249 and $299, which will also allow it to compete with cheaper Android devices from the likes of Amazon.

Episode 8 of The CultCast is in iTunes now, and if you’re itching for a new Macbook Pro, you’re not going to want to miss it.

Join us and special guest, Ars Technica Writer Chris Foresman, as we reveal the secrets of the rumored new Air-like Macbook Pro, and explain why Intel says it could pack a Retina Display; and Facebook just bought Instagram, is now the time to jump ship?

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

Braven’s new Bluetooth speakers are like feature packed JamBoxes, only with a slightly more confusing product lineup. They are all marked by a great 12-20-hour battery life, can also be used to charge your USB-powered gadgets and — here’s the neat part — can be daisy-chained together using their 3.5mm audio-in and audio-out jacks.