Indie musicians have long had a difficult time getting accepted into iTunes, but it’s possible that’s coming to an end. Apple has just released it’s iTunes Producer 2.6.0 software update to a number of users, despite the fact that it has historically only been available to musicians, record labels and other partners of Apple’s iTunes Connect portal.

It’s been an expensive month for many the Apple fan. The new iPad isn’t cheap, and after spending between $500 and $830 on a new top-of-the-line tablet, it might be hard to scrape enough money together to actually furnish your iPad with apps, music or movies.

Don’t worry, we got you covered. Here’s how to save 20% off all App Store or iTunes purchases.

One of the feature on the new iPad is its dictation capabilities, a feature also available on the iPhone 4S (which also boasts Apple’s Siri virtual assistant feature). There are quite a few ways that high quality dictation and other speech to text capabilities could useful to professionals in many fields.

The problem is that in order to get that high quality dictation functionality, the new iPad and the iPhone 4S rely on Apple’s servers to do much of the work in turning your speech into text. More importantly, it isn’t just snippets of voice recordings that get sent to Apple. Personal data from your iPad or iPhone 4S gets uploaded as well and much of it remains associated with you and your device. That’s a general concern for most of us, but for professionals in regulated industries like healthcare or fields that require confidentiality like finance and legal professions, it becomes a critical privacy concern and may even break the law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iox5Q2nWi-Q

The staggering difference in quality of the new iPad’s display isn’t hype, it’s real. It’s a jaw-dropping difference, one that finally turns the iPad into the promise of its potential: a living, breathing page through which the wide world can be explored. The new iPad is the best consumer display on the market at almost any price, period…

Which makes it completely befuddling that in a blind test, a surprising amount of Apple Store customers couldn’t tell the difference between the iPad 2 and the new iPad.

Stick with photography long enough, and eventually you’ll need a a camera remote so you can trigger your DSLR without touching it.

Trigger Happy, an applaud-worthy idea currently on Kickstarter, let’s you do just that, but with your iPhone and one simple cable instead of one of those expensive, camera-specific triggers.

Apple’s new iPad has been available to purchase in the U.S. and nine other countries for just four days, but over 200,000 units have already been smuggled into China for sale on the grey market. Natives are reportedly importing the device into the city of Shenzhen, a city that borders Hong Kong, for a profit of around $20 on each device.

I never thought I’d get excited about boring credit cards, but Geode is an incredibly neat little kit which turns your iPhone into a payment system that can be used anywhere. And not some fancy NFC-style POS terminals, either. The Geode works anywhere you can use a regular credit card.

Your MacBook Air might be the fastest, lightest, portable-est Mac you ever owned, but it is likely also one of the most storage-deficient Macs you have ever owned, in modern times at least. That will all be solved when bus-powered Thunderbolt drives start to show up, but in the meantime, take a look at Western Digital’s new 2TB My Passport USB drives.

Here’s a fun trick with stacks, OS X’s answer to the original rainbow Apple menu functionality, which used to feature recent documents and the ability to place folders in it for quick and easy access to them. This was replaced in Mac OS X with stacks, a visual way to do a similar thing, but from the Dock. Today, we’ll use Terminal to make a Stack that shows the recent items from your Mac. Fun!

Having slipped to 2-3 weeks last week, shipping times for the new iPad through Apple’s online store have already eased to just 1-2 weeks.

Free apps that display in-app advertising are sucking the life out of your cellphone’s battery. A team led by Abhinav Pathak, a computer boffin at Purdue University, Indiana, found that around “65%-75% of energy in free apps is spent in third-party advertising modules.”

Translation: Free apps like Angry Birds and Facebook may actually cost you more than paid apps in the end.

Yesterday we reported that a number of new iPad adopters are taking to Apple’s Support Communities forum to voice their concerns about its operating temperature. Many feel the new slate gets a little too warm during prolonged use, and they’re concerned it’s a serious issue.

Thermal imaging has now confirmed that the third-generation iPad does indeed get around 10° Fahrenheit warmer than the iPad 2, but it’s really nothing to worry about.

Blizzard, the company behind the hugely popular MMO World of Warcraft, has revealed that is constantly looking at ways in which it can bring its title to the iPhone, and admits that it would be “foolish” not to explore the possibility. It promises that as soon as it has perfected the mobile experience, we’ll know about it.

In our new Apple-inspired graphic tee, Cult Of Mac reached back into the year 1983 to breathe new life into this classic Steve Jobs creation.

The Apple Lisa computer debuted with a mere $10,000 price tag, but her epic cost left her lonely with nary a desk to sit upon. We liked her sexy style and vintage look though, so partnered with Seattle indie brand Might Tees to make her sexy-curves available again on our new In Love With Lisa graphic tee.

But here’s the best part: this new tee is finely crafted and printed right here in the beautiful USA, ships worldwide, and is available now for just $25 — only .0025% her original selling price!

The numbers basically say everything. AAPL closed at over $600 per share for the first time in Apple’s history today, and it’s only fitting considering what was just announced. The new iPad sold a jaw-dropping 3 million units since its launch 4 days ago, making it the most successful iPad launch ever by a long shot. Not only that, but Apple announced shareholder dividends this morning — a decision that obviously pleased Wall Street.

When does it stop? That’s the question one has to ask when faced with the overwhelming success Apple is continuing to see with every new product. The Cupertino company’s earnings have been growing exponentially with ever business quarter, and Apple is already the most valuable company on earth. Absolute craziness.

It spits out the bullets, laughs in your face, rips out your heart, consumes it as it steams and then, without drawing in a single breath, screams a primal scream as it stares, unblinking, directly into the sun.

No, just kidding. Gorilla glass or not, it turns into Swiss Cheese. Still, beats those stupid drop tests, doesn’t it?

Can’t watch the video above? Click here.

Earlier today, Tim Cook played coy with how many new iPads they had sold opening weekend, but a mere eight hours later, the numbers are in, and it’s a record setting weekend indeed: Apple sold 3 million iPads in the first weekend of sales alone. That’s three times as many as last year… and with plenty to go around for everyone. Press release after the jump.

Even though the iPad has been around for two years at this point and has proven itself in a vast array of business settings, there are companies that haven’t yet needed to consider how to support or even officially allow iPads on their networks.

If you’re a IT professional at one of those companies, it’s pretty likely that you’ll eventually need to formulate a strategy – and after last week’s record breaking launch of the newest iPad, you’ll most likely need to come up with a plan sooner rather than later. You may already have new iPad owners lining up outside your office wanting to use their new latest and greatest iPad at work.

It can be a daunting prospect to figure out to integrate the new iPad (or even the original iPad or iPad 2) into your environment, especially if you’re under the gun to get the iPad into service as quickly as possible. Breaking that integration down into immediate needs and eventual goals is the best way to get started and it often starts with these five questions.

The Humble Bundle is back again, this time bringing five games never-before-seen on Android. If you’re wondering what Humble Bundle is, it’s a pay-what-you-want bundle of multi-platform, DRM-free, and independently developed games. Not only do customers get to pick their own price, but they also get to allocate their payment by deciding how much goes to the developers, how much goes to charity, and how much goes to Humble Bundle (which pays for the bandwidth and development of the promotion). They usually offer a slew of games for the price of “whatever” and then throw in a bonus game for those willing to pay more than the average customer (which isn’t that expensive).

Draw Something is the hip game to be playing on iOS right now. Is it just an electronic version of popular board game Pictionary? Well, yes, sort of, but with added iPad cool. It’s enormous fun to play, only let down by a stubborn insistence on having a live internet connection.

If you’ve been looking to build yourself a website, you’ve got plenty of options out there. But there’s not many that combine ease of use with elegance to boot.

Enter Sandvox, which allows users to create websites using their Mac simply and easily. And we’re bringing you Sandvox at 50% off the regular price in our latest Cult of Mac Deals offer.

Over the past few days, a large number of iOS users have been reporting that their App Store downloads are becoming stuck on the “Waiting” status when they attempt to install or update a number of apps at once. It is thought that the influx of Retina updates for the new iPad is causing an App Store overload.

Fortunately, there is a simple workaround. Here’s how to fix that frustrating “Waiting” freeze.

Tim Cook said earlier this morning that Apple saw a “record weekend” for its new iPad, and AT&T has confirmed record iPad activations during the product’s launch day on Friday, March 16th. Although specific sales numbers have not been given by Apple, AT&T or Verizon, all signs point to another record-breaking product launch for Apple.

A new report says that Apple’s flagship 5th Avenue retail store in New York City was selling 18 iPads per minute during launch day, totaling a staggering 13,000 units sold during the first 12 hours of in-store availability.

As a business owner, I love being able to take payments on my iPhone or iPad when I’m on the go — like at my booth during Seattle Comic Con. That’s one of the reason’s I’m a big Square fan. But while Square has a beautiful design and makes taking credit card payments a snap, it lacks a lot of features real businesses need.

Enter USAePay, which, like Square, also offers iPhone and iPad-compatible credit card readers. But together with their iOS app, USAePay provides many features Square doesn’t. And it’s for that reason, I decided to take USAePay for a spin; here’s what I found.

A new jailbreak tweak adds push notifications to the popular iPhone email app called Sparrow. We’ve already shown you a roundabout way to get push for Sparrow with the Boxcar app on a non-jailbroken iPhone, but you can now easily enable notifications with a Cydia tweak called Sparrow Push.