Cult of Mac

I have some amazing news for our friends over in the UK. T-Mobile UK has announced that they will be bringing the UK its first mobile phone plan to offer consumers the freedom to make unlimited calls, send unlimited texts, and use as much mobile internet as they want – with no fair use restrictions. This is a breakthrough plan for the UK and one I wish all carriers would adopt. The Full Monty plan will kick off tomorrow and will be available via T-Mobile stores, online, telesales and in-direct partners.

Following the violence that spoiled Apple’s iPhone 4S launch at a number of retail stores throughout China earlier this month, the Cupertino company has introduced a new iPhone lottery system in Hong Kong that will make it incredibly difficult for scalpers to purchase the device. Those hoping to bag the device in-store must first request an iPhone reservation, then provide government-issued ID when they arrive to collect the handset.

Well, the shortage finally appears to be over: a quick check of Apple’s online iPhone 4S order page shows that all models of iPhone 4S are “in stock” and available for immediate dispatch for the first time since the device’s debut in October.

There are a couple of solutions on the market that combine simple hardware with an iOS app to take control of your entertainment system, but Peel is probably the coolest and most easy to use solution that we’ve played with. Peel invisibly controls your entire entertainment system — TV, cable box, Blu-ray player, AV receiver, Apple TV, and more — without the extra hassles of plugging stuff into your phone and dealing with network passwords. Normally the Peel system retails for $99, but for the next 3 days you can pick one up from Fab.com for only $45.

Tim Cook was outraged by a recent report from The New York Times that provided a detailed look at the poor working conditions for Chinese factory workers assembling our Apple gadgets. It seems he’s not the only one. The BSR, a leader in corporate responsibility which works with Apple to develop sustainable business strategies, has labeled the report “inaccurate” and “misleading,” and has requested that it is corrected by the NYT.

Meet the HP Envy 15, a laptop that Engadget says “unapologetically copies the MacBook Pro” but “stumbles in several critical areas” including being heavier than the MacBook Pro and having a worse display, touchpad (pictured), keyboard and battery life.

Completely shameless, no? It’s the tech equivalent of The Third Man’s Harry Lime selling counterfeit penicillin on the post-war Viennese black market. Accept no substitutions.

[via Reddit]

Insult, meet injury. Microsoft has just inadvertently ended up buying 1,400 iPads to schools in Madison, Wisconsin. Bet they wish they were Windows 8 tablets instead.

Back in 1981, Bill Gates co-wrote a PC game called Donkey, commonly known (as some apps were back in those days) by its filename, DONKEY.BAS. If you’re old enough to remember those days and old enough to yearn for them, you might enjoy playing Donkey all over again on your iPhone.

The Flaming Lips are huge Apple fans. Heck, they covered The Beatles’ famous song “Revolution” in tribute to Steve Jobs. But their latest track takes it a step further. Frontman Wayne Coyne roped in Siri to lay down some vocals on “Now I Understand” — a “sound construction” piece available for one week only.

ADR Studios is the Italian design company behind the iPhone SJ, a sultry concept design for the iPhone 5 featuring an edge-to-edge capacitive touchscreen, 10 megapixel camera, A6 processor, and a polycarbonate body that’s about as light as you can imagine.

It’s a design that’s not realistically going to happen, but we’ve been a little obsessed with it for the last month or so. We feel similarly about ADR’s new iWatch2 concept: Apple’s never going to make a device that was so exclusively and unapologetically a wristwatch, but if they did, man, I wish it would look like this.

For fans of vintage Macintosh computers and truly rare finds, a very unusual item has just surfaced in the wild: a 128k Macintosh prototype that used a 5.25” “Twiggy” floppy disk mechanism, the same kind Apple used with the first generation Lisa workstation.

Now here’s a bizarre headscratcher. A reader’s Mac Pro was upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, then refused to subsequently boot off the Snow Leopard DVD to reinstall the older OS on another drive. Despite many different attempts, for this one Mac it appears perhaps you can’t go home again…

I use Bryce occasionally to produce art for friend’s projects. I just discovered it crashes under Lion. DAZ, the manufacturer acknowledges the problem but has no date when the fix will be made. Thinking I could install Snow Leopard and run Bryce under it, I set up a partition on an external drive and attempted to install SL. Lion was having none of it. I also attempted to boot from the SL install disk. It was also rejected out of hand.

Thanks for any help you can provide,
Mike

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNx6X4ZZFRA

QuasiDisk, a new file manager for the iPhone, has snuck into the App Store with a hidden talent that’s sure to get it pulled pretty swiftly. The $1.99 app doesn’t just provide a quick and simple way to transfer documents between your devices, but also the ability to tether your iPhone’s data connection with other devices via proxy.

There’s been a lot of ohhing and ahhing about Cobook in the last few days, but spend just a few minutes playing with it and you’re likely to be ohhing and ahhing too. I know I am.

Becoming an Apple engineer could well be one of the most exciting careers currently available in the technology industry, but don’t expect to working on the iPhone 5 during your first week. It seems the Cupertino company is so obsessed with secrecy that new employees are made to work on “fake” devices for months, until they can be trusted not to leak them.

Notification Center, one of the biggest features in iOS 5, is a great step in the right direction, but is somewhat lacking. In this video, I’ll show you some great tweaks for jailbroken devices that let you customize notification center to no end.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / IWORLD 2012 – The final day of Macworld / iWorld was my fifth day away from my wife, daughter and son, and despite spending time around technology that I’m passionate about and in a city that is as awesome as advertised, I was a little homesick.

That’s why when I came across a pod that demonstrated an app that may very well help me in the future when I am spending days away from my family, I was all ears. Babiis is the missing piece in my “travel puzzle” going forward.

Update: We have selected a Winner and would like to CONGRATULATE Wayne Rodrigues (@waynerod10)! Way to go Mate!! Please email us at [email protected] to get your goods.

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New Year’s Resolutions come and go, and I’m betting a few of you have promised yourself this year is the year you’re going to learn to build that website or start figuring out how to freshen up that web 1.0 site design you already have. Well, we want to make sure you make good on that 2012 resolution by giving away 3 of our most popular video tutorials valued at over $450!

One lucky winner will receive one of each of the following online video courses:

1. Adobe Illustrator CS5 Course – Create eye-catching Graphics and Images
2. Ruby Programming Tutorial – Build your own future by mastering Ruby on Rails
3. HTML5 Crash Course – Learn to Create Dynamic Websites

Here’s how to enter the giveaway:

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — As the App Store approaches its fourth birthday this July, some early apps are getting quite mature. With each update, more and more features get added.

Take for example a trio of apps from Abvio for running, walking and cycling. The company was previewing version 7 of their apps here at the show, and they have become very full-featured indeed.

SAN FRANICSCO, MACWORLD / IWORLD 2012 — Before the 2012 edition of the expo wrapped yesterday, I had the opportunity to take one last pass on the exhibit hall floor to check out what the Saturday crowd was showing interest in. There was one product that grabbed my interest as a writer, especially considering how much I use my iPad for creating articles.

I’m not the best typist — not by a long shot — and I’ve used a keyboard for my iPad for longer posts over the past year. Whether it was a keyboard that was part of a case or my trusty Apple Bluetooth Keyboard, I had one with me at all times. That’s where the iKeyboard comes in.

There are those faithful who will never surrender their little white Apple earbuds. To them we say: Wear proudly. But for the rest, for those who don’t want to deal with sub-par sound, earbuds flopping around and having to hunt for foam covers, come with us — and we’ll show you a world of possibilities.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — Those brainstorming sessions that we’d all like to eavesdrop on at Apple are managed using an iPad system.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — Here is some video of the big drum circle that wrapped up Macworld. Such a great way to end a conference!

Macworld is done, but we’ll have the remainder of our show posts tomorrow.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / IWORLD 2012 — The exhibit hall was hopping today, with plenty of Apple enthusiasts checking out the various booths and panel discussions throughout the day.

Today’s crowd — not surprisingly — was the most diverse of the three-day event due to the “weekend factor”, and among the crowd were a lot of first-time attendees who were pretty happy with what they saw.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — Watershed is a company based in North Carolina that makes a variety of waterproof bags, including a range of military backpacks.

It has an iPad tote bag called the Grid Tablet that is used by none other than the Navy Seals.