Many of us feel a deep personal connection with our iPhones, and small wonder: the average person’s smartphone knows more about them than their spouse or significant other. Our iPhones hold our contacts, photos, videos, music, banking data, texts, emails, voicemails, web logins, apps and more. We use our phones to pay our bills, send texts to our girlfriends, check-in to our favorite club, play games with friends, and much more besides.

That makes our iOS devices a juicy target for tracking, and what most people aren’t aware of is that, historically, Apple has made it very easy to anyone to tell what you do with your iPhone. It’s called a Unique Device Identifier or UDID. Every iOS device has one, and using it, third-parties have been able to put together vast databases tracking almost everything you do with your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

The good news for privacy advocates is that the days of UDID are numbered. Following the recent stink the U.S. Congress raised over how iOS apps handle a user’s personal information without permission, Apple has given an ultimatum to third-party App Store developers: either stop tracking UDIDs or get kicked out of the App Store. Now ad networks and developers are scrambling to agree on a way to track your device in the future.

But are these replacements any good, or do they pose even bigger privacy concerns than UDIDs did?

Apple has filed for all sorts of patents related to 3D technologies over the years, sparking speculation that the company will one day bring us 3D-capable Macs and iOS devices. But evidence that it’s about to get serious about 3D technology for iOS devices comes from a recent job listing on its website for a “Computer Vision specialist to strengthen its multi-view stereo research group.”

Playing music through iTunes is something we do every day. It’s great to be told what track is playing when it starts, but not everyone wants to run a system notification app like Growl. If you still want to be see what the current iTunes track is, check out today’s tip.

United Continental Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Zane Rowe has departed his job at the airline to join the Apple team in Cupertino as its new Vice President of Sales. He has been United’s CFO since October 2010, and Apple is “thrilled” to be welcoming him to the camp.

French designer Philipe Starck teased us all last week when he revealed during a radio show interview that he had been working on a “revolutionary” new product with Apple that would launch within the next 8 months. As the news began to circulate, Apple quickly denied working with Starck, and the designer backtracked on his comments.

Starck has now confirmed that he was actually helping the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs design his own yacht.

Unboxing a new MacBook — or indeed any new Apple product — is a pretty exciting experience that most of us only get to enjoy once every few years. But thanks to a team of artists from Melbourne, Australia, you can enjoy the scent of a brand new MacBook Pro every day.

Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer, and Simon McGlinn have teamed up with Air Aroma to create a new perfume that smells just like a new MacBook Pro.

Want to download a trial version of Apple’s iWork apps? Tough. Apple just pulled them, replacing the page on its site with a notice sending you over to the App Store: “The trial version of iWork is no longer supported. But you can easily purchase Keynote, Pages, and Numbers from the Mac App Store to start creating beautiful presentations, documents, and spreadsheets today.”

Translation: Everything – and we mean everything, will be going through the App Store from now on.

Apple’s Lisa – now there was a proper computing machine. But, though she was one of Steve Job’s most sexy creations, she was also one of Apple’s biggest commercial failures due to her astronomic $10,000 price tag (10k!). We fancied her though, as any true Apple fan would, so put her cutting-edge, dual-floppy good-looks on a tee you’ll be proud to wear over your torso.

Cult of Mac’s new In Love With Lisa tee is perfect for you or the Apple fan in your life (bonus if that fan’s name is Lisa!). Remind the world of a time when Apple computers were big, boxy, and downright uncouth!

Our new tee is crafted from 100% super-soft cotton, ships worldwide, and is available right now. We’re already half sold out, grab yours now over at MightTees.com.

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.