The internet sounded the bell a little prematurely last night, but it now appears that iTunes Match is indeed rolling out to international customers. While we all thought the service had been rolled out to most of Europe and Australia yesterday, it was later confirmed that the launch was an error, with Apple emailing apologizes to international customers and handing out refunds.

Now it appears that many countries, including Australia, U.K., Canada, Mexico, and others, are now able to access iTunes Match from the iTunes Store.

Some Columbia University students were recently robbed in upper Manhattan. While robberies happen on the streets of New York City every day, this particular instance was an interesting case of smartphone theft.

The pair of bandits ambushed three students and demanded that they hand over their iPhones. Not only did the robbers demand iPhones specifically, but they also refused to steal Droid or Blackberry phones. Ouch.

Amazon, known for its shyness about sales figures, made a bit of a splash today, announcing it had sold 1 million Kindles per week for the past three weeks. Sure, that isn’t much to go on, but it prompted some to wonder whether the No. 2 tablet maker is about to overtake the iPad.

Acer is prognosticating again – hide the babies and keep your tin-foil hats firmly in place. The netbook maker’s chairman now expects Apple’s Mac sales will run out of steam by 2014, deflated by Intel’s ultrabook. This after diagnosing overwhelming tablet demand as a “fever” and the iPad slipping in popularity. Kreskin need not be worried — and neither should Apple.

2011 has been a huge year for gaming on iOS devices. It saw the introduction of Apple’s dual-core A5 processor in the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S, which in turn pushed the boundaries of what’s possible on a mobile device and saw the release of console-quality games like Infinity Blade II, Modern Combat 3, and Real Racing 2.

To celebrate the year’s best games, we’re on a mission to find 2011’s best iOS game and we need your help. We’ve already asked you to vote for your favorite from more than 20 titles, and now we’ve roundup up the top 10 finalists. These are the most popular iOS games as voted for by you, but we’re not done yet.

Now it’s time to vote for your number one.

The booster rockets have yet to stop for iPhone demand. That’s the word from one Wall Street analyst expecting sales of Apple’s handset to be 30 percent higher than predicted for the December quarter – and even more in 2012.

Last week, we asked you to vote for your choice of the best iOS apps of 2011. Big thanks to everyone who contributed. Here are the results.
Let’s go through the list in detail; at the end, we’d like you to vote on the best app of the year, for inclusion in Cult of Mac’s annual Best of 2011 list. Let’s go!

Despite Apple’s best attempts to get the tablet banished from Australian soil, Samsung is now selling its Android-powered Galaxy Tab 10.1 down under, and it has a whole new marketing angle that’s guaranteed to attract attention. The Korean company is now labeling its device “the tablet Apple tried to stop.”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTpldq3myV0

We’ve seen cats enthralled by tablets and dogs who just love iPhone adverts, but this is the first time we’ve seen a reptile playing smartphone games. In this video posted to YouTube by “ThatSpecialGuy,” a bearded dragon crushes ants using her tongue in her favorite smartphone game, Ant Crusher.

The video has already attracted a whopping 1.2 million views on YouTube. Surely this is now the world’s most famous lizard?

I’ve been so excited for the iOS port of Grand Theft Auto 3 that as soon as I opened my eyes this morning, I reached over to my iPhone and checked the App Store to see if it had arrived. (Sad, I know.) As promised, it was there, and having played it for a little while this morning, I can assure you it’s better than you ever imagined.

All Macs come with a powerful word processor in the form of TextEdit. Here are five tips to let you get the most from it and maybe even avoid the need to splash out on Microsoft Word or iWork Pages.

Apple is slowly rolling out international support for iTunes Match today, with the service appearing in the U.K., Australia, and parts of Europe. The music matching service has been exclusive to the U.S. since its launch earlier this fall, but it made its way to Brazil earlier this week. If you can’t see it where you are, here’s a handy tip to get it working.

Pogoplug has been busy. For a company that focuses really intently on a single concept — namely, putting your stuff in the cloud — it has released a prolific number of products since the original Pogoplug first debuted in early 2009. Today brings their latest offering: The Pogoplug Series 4 ($100).

Cloud Engines, the outfit that makes the Pogoplug, sent us an Series 4 to check out, and we got a little hands-on time with it before the launch today.

As a photographer and podcaster, I’m a big Joby fan. Their tripods are generally high quality, incredibly flexible, and as functional as they are fun. The Joby GorillaMobile Tripod for the iPhone 4/4S ($40) is definitely worthy of much the same praise, but an issue I have with its build quality and price leave me with a raised eyebrow.

While most music apps focus on one or two instruments, Rockmate brings a while music studio to your iPad. Up to four people can play music at once, which may initially sound a little cramped on the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen.

If you’re interested in Rockmate, you’ll only need to part with $0.99 to get your hands on all of the musical goodness. As the app’s developers say, “Let’s rock together.”

Have you ever wondered what it was like behind the scenes of Apple’s famous ‘Think Different’ advertising campaign? The 1997 ad was mainly attributed to Steve Jobs in Walter Isaacson’s biography, but there’s more to how it all went down.

An advertising executive that helped create the campaign has taken to Forbes to set the record straight, and the truth is that Steve Jobs originally hated the very ad that brought Apple back from the brink of destruction.

As far as Kickstarter projects go, this one has definitely piqued our interests. Unlike the “cheap, lightweight afterthoughts” that comprise the vast majority of most iPhone docks, the Elevation Dock looks like it has the potential to be one of the highest quality docks we’ve ever seen.

Yesterday we reported that Apple was in the process of using its cash hoard to buy Anobit, an Israeli flash memory maker. But what’s so special about Anobit anyway, and why would Apple buy another maker of flash memory when they’ve already got deals in place with some of the world’s best flash manufacturers?

The answer: Anobit is making truly magical technology, and Apple wants that magic for itself.

From the cockpit to the squad car and everywhere in between, 2011 was the year the iPad became a part of business. Throughout the year, we’ve introduced a number of jobs that have adopted the iPad and we return to see how Apple’s tablet has reshaped industries big and small. In fact, the jet you take for your holiday travel may be co-piloted by the iPad 2.

Think you’re sick of Siri videos? Think again: here’s Siri rapping the Notorious B.I.G.’s song “Hypnotize” with an amazing amount of flow, thanks to a clever video made by Robert Boehnke for London’s Music Hack Day.

Now when can we get this feature natively, Apple? And better question yet: can Google’s Majel be programmed to rap some Tupac for a genuine East Coast vs. West Coast rapper showdown?

[via Gizmodo]

It’s not always easy to read the tiny text displayed on our iOS devices. But did you know that the iOS operating system features a handy “Speak Selection” feature that will read selected text out loud?

Once activated, the feature allows you to select a piece of text within any app, then have it read out loud. Here’s how to enable and use it!

Remember Netflix’s plan to radically redesign their iPad app’s UI that we were so crazy about? Well, it’s here now, and it looks fantastic.

That’s not all that’s new for Apple fans, though.

When Google first released their native Gmail app for iOS, it was just a total mess: an HTML5 web app that not only had less innate functionality than loading up Gmail in Mobile Safari, but couldn’t even do its one selling point — push notifications — right. Heck, it even gave error messages at boot. Iit was so bad Gmail pulled the app within hours of release.

A little while later, Google released an updated version that fixed everything wrong with the old Gmail app, but it was still a total snoozer of an app. But today’s update to Gmail for iOS actually brings some cool new features to the table that might persuade some folks to switch from Mail.app.

This year we’ve seen a slew of absolutely amazing accessories for Apple devices come to the market for both the iMac, MacBooks, iPhones, iPad and AppleTV. Many of them have been remarkable but we’re having a hard time distinguishing which Apple Accessories should be considered the absolute best of 2011, so we’re turning to our readers to help us out.

Still shopping around for last minute gifts for your friends or family? Consider these three books authored by Cult of Mac writers, which may be just what you’re looking for.