Anyone who’s ever flown is familiar with the “please turn off all electronic devices” speech that flight attendants give after closing the airplane door and again shortly before landing. The ban on electronic devices of all kinds exists out of fear that devices might interfere with the planes navigation and other systems, even if the device doesn’t include any sort of radio antenna.

The ban on electronic devices has come under fire recently as the F.A.A. has been certifying the use of iPads in the cockpit during all phases of flight (including takeoff and landing) by various commercial airlines as a replacement for hefty “flight bags” of paper manuals and charts.

In a move that will music to the ears of Words With Friends addict Alec Baldwin, the agency is looking at allowing the use of electronic devices by passengers during takeoff and landing

Old computers never really die, they just get passed on to grandkids and collectors. Likewise old computer users never die, they just don’t get out as much as they used to. The internet is an unfriendly place for 8 bit processors and dialup modems.

To help relive old memories and make new ones, several festivals dedicated to computers with no commercial value make the rounds each year. This year for our vintage geek pleasures: the perennial Apple II bash called KansasFest, and the Vintage Computer Festival East.

Activision Product Director Noah Heller talked with T3 a bit about their Call of Duty Elite app and its natural progression from smartphone to tablet.

“We’re working on the tablet app right now, I can’t tell you much about it but what I can tell you is that it will be a truly native, customised application for the tablet, it’s not just a simple port.”

Bringing COD Elite to the tablet has many advantages to the smartphone counterpart as it allows Activision to take advantage of the additional screen space. What additional features will be added to the tablet app remain a mystery but there’s been talks about possibly adding live Heat Maps among other things.

Apple wasn’t willing to go on record with the new iPad’s initial launch figures just yet, but when quizzed about it during the Q&A session of today’s announcement of an official dividend and stock repurchase plan, Tim Cook did let slip a bit about how well the new iPad had done.

These cute little iPhone cases are made from nothing more than paper napkins and a little bit of lacquer. Using a technique called decoupage, these cases are made by hand in Thailand and sold on Etsy under the NapPage brand.

What I love about them is that the whimsical designs are fashioned into such clean, professionally finished cases.

Confirming a press release from just ten minutes earlier, Apple CEO Tim Cook has confirmed that Cupertino will use its vast hoard of cash to initiate a quarterly dividend payment to current shareholders, as well as buy back almost $10 billion in stock to help avoid dilution of employee equity.

We suspected as much, but the inquisitive engineers at Chipworks have confirmed that the camera inside the new iPad is indeed the same one found in the iPhone 4. The optics, as we already knew, come from the iPhone 4S’ camera.

Chipworks says that “It is very likely that Apple has recycled the 5MP back illuminated CMOS image sensor from the iPhone 4,” — the Omnivision OV5650.

Screenshots: we all take them. To show a co-worker or IT support person what’s not working on our computer, or to send a picture of a spectacular sunset in Minecraft to brag to our friends on Facebook, perhaps. Last week, we looked at a way to change the default screenshot name via some Terminal magic in OS X Lion. Today, we’re going to look at something perhaps even MORE useful: changing the default image type of those screenshots.

The conference call announced for 9 a.m. this morning hasn’t even happened yet, and Apple’s already announced what they are doing with the cash: initiating a $10 billion share repurchase plan, as well as issue dividends and make strategic investments. All told, they expect to spend $45 billion over the next three years.

We’ll give you more details when the call starts, but for now, here’s the press release.

In addition to the new features we detailed earlier today, Apple’s second OS X Mountain Lion beta adds a nifty security feature that will prevent third-party applications from accessing your contacts without your permission.

Who ever thought that Instagram would be a source for product leaks? But it looks like the iOS-only photo-sharing service has inadvertently outed the successor to the Lumix GF3 — the GF5.

Following the release of Apple’s second Mountain Lion beta late last week, registered developers have been stumbling across a number of new features that weren’t present in the first beta. These include Twitter notifications, “iCloud Tabs,” and location-based reminders.

The new Apple TV has been opened up to reveal the same old 8GB of storage, along with 512MB RAM — double that of the previous generation Apple TV. XBMC forum member aicjofs got bored one day and decided to rip open his own Apple TV to see what was inside — a nerd after our own hearts.

Apple has issued a press release announcing a conference call it will be holding tomorrow morning to discuss the “outcome of the Company’s discussions concerning its cash balance.” In case you didn’t know, Apple is sitting on nearly $100 billion in cash, making it the most valuable company in the world.

The call will be hosted by Apple CEO Tim Cook and the company’s CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, on March 19th at 6:00 A.M. PDT/9:00 A.M. EDT. Could AAPL shareholders finally receive dividends?

It’s the time of year where we start to remove clutter from our lives and get some serious spring cleaning done. That doesn’t just mean what’s visible in your home and office, but the stuff inside your computer — and your head as well. It’s time to take some of those ideas you have or those projects you’ve started and see them through to completion — or toss them out completely. Ands no one really likes to do the latter unless they simply don’t have the tools and time to get the job done.

Well, if you’ve been yearning to create that awesome iPhone app or game, been itching to put together that WordPress site that converts clicks into cash and have that business you’ve been wanting to start but don’t have the resources you think you need….we’ve got a chance for you to take care of all of that. That’s because we are offering you a chance to win 4 of our video tutorial courses courtesy of Cult of Mac Deals. These courses are valued at over $900!

The most common question I heard after the new iPad launch wasn’t about the retina display, or how I liked the camera. People didn’t ask which games were the best, or how fast it was. The number one thing people wanted to know was whether they should upgrade their iPad 2 to the new iPad. The answer is simple: No, you don’t need the new iPad if you have an iPad 2. But that doesn’t mean the new iPad is a disappointment.

Performer and monologist Mike Daisey has been all over the news since the This American Life radio show retracted its most downloaded episode ever in which Daisey talked about visiting Foxconn, the Chinese factory that Apple products are made in. This American Life said that Daisey’s story contained “significant fabrications.” The New York Times also edited an article it ran by Daisey to reflect the inaccurate re-telling of his experience at Foxconn in China.

To put it plainly, Daisey said he saw things he never saw and met people he never met. He’s been feeding his audiences false information for many months. For the first time in the show’s history, This American Life has run a special retraction episode to clear up the mess. If you’ve been following the Apple/Foxconn issue, you should really give it a listen.

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of getting a new Apple product. Opening it up and using it for the first time is always fun. For hardcore Apple fans, the experience can be even emotional. Here’s a humorous video I made about the emotional side of unboxing an iPad.

Why yes, we did just release episode 4 of The CultCast two days ago, but this is a special New-iPad hands-on edition recorded just hours ago! They’re here, we have them, and in this special episode, we tell you what we think of them.

And make sure you catch the end; we decided to include an impromptu preshow discussion on the Agony and Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs, the powerful monologue by Mike Daisy that’s been getting press for allegedly being partly fabricated. We discuss: it’s focussed consumers’ attention on labor conditions in China, does it matter that it might not be 100% true?

WIMP computing was invented during the Nixon Administration.

In 1973, Xerox PARC developed the Alto computer, the first to use all the WIMP elements of windows, icons, menus and a pointing device, also known as a mouse.

And it’s in this nearly 40-year-old paradigm that we find ourselves trapped by a quirk of human nature: We’re creatures of habit. We don’t like to change the way we do things. And so here we are, still using a mouse (most of us, anyway).

Everywhere you look these days, people are gaming with their iPhones and iPads. Whether it’s a new variation of a classic game like Tower Defense or a smash hit like Angry Birds or Words with Friends, you see — and know — that there are thousands of games out there to played on this platform.

But you’ve got this idea for a game. One that would be perfect for iOS. Problem is, you don’t know how to execute that idea, nor do you have the budget to have someone take that part of the process on.

Well, if you hurry you can still pick up the iOS game development course from Cult of Mac Deals, because it may just be your ticket.

Everybody’s excited about the new Apple iPad‘s high-resolution screen. But ultimately, the Retina display is just a pretty face. It can’t do anything that the screens on previous models couldn’t do.

In fact, just about all of the features that are considered “new” in the newiPad are really just bigger helpings of the old capabilities: More pixels on the screen. More graphics performance. More megapixels in the camera. More megabits per second with the mobile broadband connection. There’s more of everything. But what’s fundamentally different?

One of the least appreciated new features is one that truly brings entirely new capabilities to the iPad. That feature is Bluetooth 4.0 support.

Read this column at the Computerworld.com site.

Apple has seeded OS X Lion 10.7.4 to registered developers following the release of the second Mountain Lion developer preview this afternoon. Lion 10.7.4 can be downloaded now in the Mac Dev Center. The release weighs in at 1.33 GB for the combo update and 580 MB for the delta version.

10.7.4 (Build 11E27) will be deployed to the public once Apple gets the kinks ironed out with developers. A server version of Lion has also been seeded to accompany 10.7.4. The last version of Lion to go public was 10.7.3 at the beginning of February. A supplemental update was released last week to solve an issue with malfunctioning Time Machine backups.

There’s a good reason we say The CultCast is the best 30 minute Apple conversation you’ll hear all week long: not only do we bring you the best news, products, and rumors in every show, we make it fun!

And there’s never been a better time to subscribe to The CultCast. We just released a fresh new episode filled with informative Apple banter.

Fancy a listen? Good show! Episode 4 is out now, and if you subscribe, we’ll delivery another great CultCast to you every Thursday night.

Just a few short weeks ago, Michael Dell announced that his company should no longer be considered a consumer PC and device maker. Dell should now be considered an IT vendor with a focus on enterprise data center products, went the message. The company was going to get out of the device and peripheral business.

What a difference a few weeks can make when it comes to a company’s message. While the tech world focused on today’s launch of Apple’s new iPad, Dell’s chief commercial officer Steve Felice was talking up the company’s ability to challenge the iPad in business environments. Or put more accurately, the ability that Dell will have to challenge the iPad when Windows 8 ships later this year.