Cult of Mac

Before Apple unveiled the new iPad on Wednesday, no one was quite positive what Apple would announce. It seemed pretty sure that the iPad 3 (as it was being called then) would have a Retina Display, but would it have an A5X processor or an A6 processor? 3G or LTE? 512MB of RAM or 1GB of RAM. Would it be thinner or thicker? And what would it be called: the iPad 3 or iPad HD? (Everyone got the name wrong: it’s just called the “new iPad” now.)

One thing few people had any doubt about was that Siri would be making her way to iPad this year… which is why Siri’s absence on the new iPad counted as probably the biggest disappointment of the entire event.

Why would Apple leave Siri out of the new iPad?

Watchdog group SumOfUs has launched a new petition asking Apple to prove that workers at Foxconn factories in China weren’t subject to illegal overtime to make the iPad 3.

Specifically, they’re looking for Apple to turn over individual worker hours from November 2011-February 2012 to prove they’re not violating China’s labor laws which prohibit more than 36 hours of overtime per month.

Cult of Mac talked to SumOfUs founder Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman about what the group hopes to achieve with this latest petition, launched the morning of the iPad event as of this writing reached 41,500 of its 50,000 signature goal.

In their rush to announce the new iPad on Wednesday, Apple hurried through the details of their new Apple TV and didn’t talk much about the new ability to stream your movies straight from iCloud to your Apple TV or iOS device. What’s awesome about the new feature is that it works for movies that you didn’t even buy from iTunes: iTunes Digital Copies.

Now that you’ve placed your order for your new iPad, it’s time to prepare your old one for the upgrade. When you transfer all of your data on launch day, you’re not going to want to eat up storage space with apps, photos, and music that you never use.

Here’s how to prepare your old iPad for an upgrade to the new one — the right way.

America’s first jailbreak convention is scheduled to take place on September 29th, 2012 at the South San Francisco Conference Center in California. The guys behind JailbreakCon, formerly known as MyGreatFest, have also announced the convention’s star-studded speaker lineup.

The creator of Cydia, the jailbreak equivalent to Apple’s App Store, will be headlining the event again. The convention kicked off in London, U.K. last year to warm reception from the rest of the jailbreak community. Expect even better things from JailbreakCon 2012!

As we head into South by Southwest this week, there is an aura of “startup fever” that is present not just in Austin – but everywhere you look. But let’s face facts: most startups fail, even if they launch to much fanfare. With that in mind, you’re looking to make your very own startup a success. You know the odds are stacked against you. So how do you put yourself in a postion to have a greater chance of success?

By taking advantage of the latest Cult of Mac Deal, which lets you join The Lean Startup Movement at a fraction of the regular price, that’s how.

Episode 3 of The CultCast just landed in iTunes friends, and there’s no doubt it is entertainment of the highest caliber!

In this episode, we talk all things “new” iPad. Find out which new features are our favorites, which ones surprised and delighted us, and which we are baffled are not included. Plus, should you upgrade from the iPad 2? All that and more if you can believe it. More!

You can download episode 3 right now in iTunes or subscribe and we’ll deliver a fresh new episode delivered to you every Thursday night. One click, it’s that easy!

Seriously, guys, if you haven’t already, it’s time to pre-order a new iPad, as multiple models are starting to slip from a guaranteed March 16th delivery date to “shipping on March 19th.” For example, the 16GB WiFi-only model, seen above. And when they say “shipping on March 19th”, they mean shipping all the way from China, which could take up to week. So get your order in now, or prepare to camp on launch day.

Earlier this year, OnLive debuted its OnLine Desktop app for the iPad. The app offers users a virtual desktop environment that includes Windows 7, Microsoft Office, Adobe Reader, and Internet Explorer (which allows iPad users to watch Flash-based web content). The service comes in both free and paid versions that include 2GB of cloud storage and OnLive plans to expand the service with more advanced plans for both end users and for businesses.

While users and reviewers have been largely happy with OnLive Desktop, it seems that Microsoft isn’t. After being mum on OnLive’s decision to release the app and service, Microsoft announced this week that it views OnLive as violating its license agreements and essentially pirating Windows.

At issue is the draconian puzzle that is Microsoft’s licensing system and how the company charges for virtual desktops.

With the U.S. Department of Justice gearing up to slap Apple with an antitrust lawsuit, the Cupertino company has spoken out over claims it has teamed up with publishers to raise the price of e-books, and downplayed the threat from Amazon’s Kindle. It argues that it gave publishers the opportunity to set their own prices, and that it cannot be blamed for e-book price hikes.

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The website and accompanying YouTube channel might come off like a desperate hobo panhandling for cash, but the meat of the iConnectionKit team’s project looks very interesting. They’re working to enable the iPad camera connection kit on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Along with everything else in iLife for iOS (and iWork too), iMovie got an update at the new iPad announcement on Wednesday. The big new feature is trailers, which you may have used before on the desktop. Now you can make them on iPhones (4 or later) and iPads (2 or later).

We wanted to put the new iMovie through its paces, so here’s a trailer we made.

Are you a Brit who ordered a new iPad on Wednesday? Check your email: Apple might have just welched on their deal with you to get it delivered by March 16th.

BBC executives are said to be planning a new ‘”download-to-own” service that will allow U.K. viewers to purchase TV shows online at around £1.89 ($3) an episode. The BBC is hoping that the scheme, dubbed “Project Barcelona,” will be able to rival iTunes.

Every time a new Apple device comes out, there’s a general commotion as analysts try to break it down atomically into its base elements, weigh the dust and figure out how much it all cost Apple to build, thus extrapolating how many oodles of money Cupertino’s raking in with each gadget sold.

For the new iPad, the initial estimates are in, and surprise! Despite improving the iPad’s battery, display, wireless internet speeds and GPU, Cupertino’s making a healthy profit on each iPad sold.

The iPad’s new Retina display is going to look fantastic. Reading text, for instance, is going to be like reading text in a real magazine, only brighter. This is great news for us, the readers, but not so good for the designers and publishers. Why not? Because many iPad magazines use bitmap images to make their pages. At normal resolution, this works out to perhaps 150-300kB per page, according to David Sleight of Stuntbox. When resized for the Retina display, that goes up to 2MB. Per page.

If you make anything but iPad cases, you’d be a fool to announce a new product on the same day as an Apple keynote. So, it’s a sign of how smart the folks over in San Francisco-based Waterfield designs are that they held off announcing their new bag until now. It’s a smart little waxed canvas number called the Muzetto Outback.

The new iPad arrives in the U.S. and ten other countries exactly one week today on March 16, and the first shipments have already started leaving the Foxconn factories in Chengdu, China. It’s unlikely, however, that they’ll arrive early.

Like trying to demonstrate a stereo through the speaker of a mono TV, or showing an ad for a color TV on a black-and-white set, it’s almost impossible to show off the new iPad’s Retina display on your sucky old low-res screen. Almost, but not quite. As you can see from the picture above, Apple has added a clever interactive loupe to the iPad’s Features page.

China Telecom has become the second Chinese carrier to offer the iPhone 4S today, ending the exclusivity enjoyed by China Unicom for the last 18 months. The company announced back in February that it would begin selling Apple’s popular smartphone from March 9, and it has taken over 200,000 pre-orders in just the last week.

If you live in the U.K. and you haven’t pre-ordered your new iPad yet, you’ll need to prepare yourself for a lengthy wait. You will no longer get the new tablet on launch day, March 16, with shipping times slipping to 2-3 weeks for all models.

You can now pre-order a new iPad from RadioShack with the purchase of a $50 gift card. Like Apple’s online store, pre-orders are guaranteed to deliver when the device goes on sale Friday, March 16th. As the first retailer besides Apple to offer the new iPad, RadioShack will also be offering AppleCare+ for iPad alongside Target, Apple, and carrier partners.

Developers of iOS apps spent last night absorbing all the news from Apple, and trying to figure out how they might be able to make the most of the new iPad’s features.

We asked some friendly devs for their observations. One predicted big things for iPad gaming, but we got some other interesting viewpoints too.

Here’s a round-up of some of the comments we got back from the developer community. If you make apps and want to have your say, get in touch – or let loose in the comments.

I’ve always wanted my own butler that I can order around and have him go fetch me a delicious Chipotle burrito whenever I want. Problem is, I don’t have half a billion dollars to pay for one, so I’ll never be cool like Batman and have a elderly british fellow named Alfred to satisfy my every need. Siri is the closest I’ll ever come to having a true personal assistant, except she doesn’t come equipment with Michael Caine’s impeccable British accent. But is Siri better than Alfred?

Do you know what was the most tweeted about thing yesterday? No, it wasn’t Peyton Manning. It was the iPad 3, the new iPad. Twitter just released the chart shown above to show just how bonkers the Twittersphere went during the iPad keynote.

Sure, it wasn’t on par with the death of Michael Jackson, but it was a pretty big deal. There are a couple of peaks that stand out: