It’s light, it’s tough and it’s beautiful to both look at and touch. Is there anything better than bamboo for making an iPad case? Maybe not. And Silva’s bamboo case for the iPad 2 is finally, finally available to buy.

Yesterday, we reported that Apple’s new Messages app icon looked pretty shamelessly similar to that of HipChat‘s. Now HipChat has spoken out about the maybe-theft-probably-concidence, and while they don’t have any hard feelings, they still think it sucks they’re about to get steamrolled by Apple.

Enjoying the Messages beta that Apple released yesterday? It’s fantastic, isn’t it? But don’t get too attached to it, because unless you plan to upgrade to Mountain Lion this summer, you’ll lose the application when the beta ends.

It’s amazing what you see when you look closely at numbers, and super-analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco looks closer than most. Parsing some of Tim Cook’s keynote speech at Goldman Sachs earlier this week, he did some digging came up with the incredible graph you see above.

Apple has been introducing high-resolution artwork in preparation for Retina Display Macs since last July, when the company released OS X Lion. And it continues to do so, with artwork from its new Messages beta available at double its normal size.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAEH1H-4Siw

Following our handy video roundup of new OS X Mountain Lion features, InsanelyGreatMac has published a video walkthrough of AirPlay, which allows you to mirror your Mac’s display on a television hooked up to the Apple TV.

As you can see, the feature works in much the same way as AirPlay on an iOS device, sending both video and audio from your Mac to your TV over a wireless network.

While registered developers have already been testing iOS 5.1 betas for some time, it seems the firmware holds several new features that Apple is yet to release to developers. A leaked “pre-GM” build has reportedly been obtained by a Brazilian iPhone blog, which reveals a new camera slider for the lock screen, and support for the Japanese language within Siri.

This is Pinwheel, a new iOS app for leaving and finding virtual notes anywhere in the real world.

It’s in private beta right now, but you can join in if you ask nicely and leave your email address in the box of the Pinwheel home page.

Avid Apple fans will undoubtedly remember The New York Times’ series on supply chain worker abuse overseas. The Times published a piece looking at Apple’s effect on the global economy followed by a second article titled, “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad.” The probing look into worker abuse at Foxconn, Apple’s largest supply chain partner, sparked a firestorm of reactions from the media.

Since the report from the Times, Apple has made every effort to reassure the world that it is leading the industry in terms of supply chain accountability. CEO Tim Cook recently stated that Apple does more than any other company to provide fair working conditions. While that may be the case, it seems that The New York Times has now be given the cold shoulder for uncovering the issue originally.

A new jailbreak app called MultiTunes lets you sync with multiple iTunes libraries on your iOS device. Apple limits you to one iTunes library at a time by default, and while iCloud and iTunes Match make it easier to access your music from anywhere, some would still like to sync with different libraries without deleting all locally stored music first. That’s where MultiTunes saves the day.

https://www.cultofmac.com/147043/30-new-os-x-mountain-lion-features-in-2-minutes-video/

If you’re as excited as I am about OS X Mountain Lion, you’ll want to check this video out. Since only developers have access to the Mountain Lion beta at this point, I put together this quick video for all of Cult Of Mac’s great readers detailing 30 of the best new features of Mountain Lion, all jam packed into just two minutes. Check out the video after the break.

Apple has seeded a pre-release of Safari 5.2 to registered developers. Following the release of the OS X Mountain Lion developer preview this morning, a new beta of Safari has been made available with browser features from Apple’s upcoming desktop OS.

Namely, Safari 5.2 for OS X Lion introduces the unified, Google Chrome-like address/search bar. There are some other minor cosmetic changes that mirror the Safari version from the Mountain Lion developer preview.

Today a German court ruled that most of Motorola’s products infringe on Apple’s slide-to-unlock image patent with the only exception being the slide-the-circle gesture used in the Motorola XOOM. This ruling allows Apple to enforce a permanent injunction against the Motorola products found in violation. Motorola can still appeal the decision therefore Apple would be taking a very big risk enforcing such an injunction at this time. Should the ruling be overturned, Apple would have to reimburse Motorola for any lost sales due to the injunction. Regardless of Apple’s decision, one thing is for sure: Motorola will now have to make changes to their UI.

If you grew up during the 1980s, many of its style tropes will have been burned indelibly into your brain. Shoulder pads, snow-washed jeans, pleated pants, and tacky, tacky poster art, exemplified by selective-colored black and white photos. If you can imagine a monochrome image of a rose, with the petals colored lipstick red, then congratulations: your mind just traveled back to 1985. Now, with Paint FX, your iPad can do the same.

Nowbox is a slick iPad app that allows you to waste spend many hours watching YouTube.

Nowbox was co-founded by Thomas Pun, who worked at Apple for six years, including stints as technical manager for the team responsible for the H.264 encoder technologies that shipped with QuickTime 7 and on the first video iPod.

When Apple announced iMessage for iOS 5 last summer we were excited to finally have a universal messaging app that sought to free our cellphones from the slavery of wireless carrier texting plans. Today with the announcement of Messages for OS X it looks like Apple is serious about creating a messaging service that supplants texting and chat services by providing a one size fits all solution that works well on every screen. The new Messages app is pretty awesome and it’s a needed step forward that finally unifies iChat, iMessage, and Facetime, but it is not without its flaws.

No matter what type of bootcamp you take, you’re bound to get something out of it. Mind you, most these bootcamps involve some sort of physical development — which is one type of levelling up that you can (and should) get yourself into. But the latest Cult of Mac deal wants to help you level up your web development skills, and that’s where the Web Developer Bootcamp Bundle comes in.

This Web Development Bootcamp is filled with 7 comprehensive chapters of valuable content that will teach you 9 different types of programming languages for what it would cost you for just one new web development textbook. Usually this course sells for $199 — but for 1 week only it’s just $79!

Here at Cult of Mac, we’re a big fan of HipChat, a phenomenal team calibration tool based around group chat and IM, which works on any platform with dedicated apps for Mac and iOS. In fact, it’s how we keep in touch with each other throughout each work day. The app is a mainstay in our docks.

So when we woke up this morning and found out Apple was announcing a new version of OS X including a brand new Messages IM app, the first thing we thought was: “Hey! That icon looks familiar!” Very familiar.

Bag-maker STM hails from dehn undah (if you think my Aussie impression sounds bad here, well, it’s even worse in person), where they’re apparently pretty huge. They’re less well-known here in the States — but that’ll likely change thanks to a big marketing push and bags like the fantastic STM Velo ($100), a designed laptop bag stuffed with unusually clever features.

Chances are, you’re already salivating to download the latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion, when it’s released later this summer. For a fair number of Mac owners, though, installing Mountain Lion is going to require buying a new machine, as Apple has abandoned support for Intel’s GMA 950 and x3100 chipsets.

Here’s a list of the machines that can run Lion that can’t run Mountain Lion.

Apple has included a more subtle, yet very important, change in OS X Mountain Lion that points to the company’s focus moving forward. If you open the “About This Mac” window in the Mountain Lion developer preview, you’ll notice that “Mac” has been dropped for a simpler “OS X.” The prefix has also been dropped from promotional materials on Apple.com and the Mac App Store.

Why the change to just “OS X Mountain Lion?” Apple is continuing to blur the line between hardware and software. It’s about the unification of iOS and the desktop experience.

With Mountain Lion, Apple has finally tied iCloud to the Mac desktop. While iCloud has worked seamlessly on iOS since launch, moving documents between iCould and your Mac was embarrassingly awkward, involving web browsers, dragging and dropping.

Now, it has been shoved deep into the heart of the OS, in the form of a kind of alternate Finder.

Not a huge change, but we just noticed that in OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has changed the way adding widgets in Dashboard works to be more akin to Launchpad, with a full screen of equally spaced widgets being selectable instead of Lion’s approach, which puts available widgets at the bottom edge of the display.

In case you hadn’t already noticed, Apple announced OS X Mountain Lion earlier today, its latest operating system for the Mac which will make its public debut this summer. Mountain Lion will further increase the iOS influence on Apple’s desktop operating system, with the arrival of features like Notification Center, Messages, and Notes.

But for gamers, undoubtedly the most exiting new feature will be Game Center’s arrival on the Mac. With promises of cross-platform multiplayer and the ability to rack up achievements on both your Mac and iOS devices, this is set to create a new bridge between mobile and desktop gaming that will revolutionize cross-platform play.