It’s not just Robin Williams making fun of Siri on national TV these days. Wry faux-conservative Stephen Colbert picked up his iPhone 4S the other day to address the recent controversy over Siri’s inability to find a single abortion clinic in New York, which Colbert describes as such an impossibility (“There’s one at the top of the Empire State Building”) that he summarily declares Siri to be a pro-life, racist arch-conservative, “like Laura Ingraham, except less robotic.” But who can blame her? As Colbert points out, it’s “only a matter of time before she loses her job to the Mexican yoPhoñe.”

Very funny. If you like Colbert, check it out.

Earlier this week, we reported on a controversy surrounding Apple’s Grand Central Store, set to open Saturday. Critics are blaming New York City’s mass transit agency for inking a ‘sweetheart’ deal giving the tech giant a huge break on the lease cost. The MTA is now fighting back, telling those wanting an investigation into the Apple store to “bring it on.”

Trying to compete against Apple’s iPad can be costly – especially if you are RIM and your PlayBook tablet went from design to discount bin in record time. Today the Waterloo, Ontario company announced it will take a $485 million charge for a growing number of PlayBooks it just can’t sell.

It is hard to imagine that I’ve written and contributed to more than 450 posts during the nearly two-year tour of duty with all the rest of the Cultists at Cult of Mac.

I’ve served up news, break fixes, tips, opinions, etc. to more users than I ever could have imagined, and I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to do so. I have always been greatly humbled by your reader responses and surprised by a few too. I have had an amazing time meeting some really great people along the way.

I’ve accepted a job offer with a new start-up, which will take me in new directions and adventures in blogging. However, I’ll never be far from where my heart is. I’ll still be deep into all things Apple. I’ll always be a part of the Cult of Mac just like all of you.

If you would like to stay in touch, please follow me on Twitter or visit my personal website for updates on my next project or big adventure.

Ray Bradbury is a living legend of futurism, and short of Tolkein and Asimov, probably the most important writer of fantasy and science-fiction in the 20th Century. He’s also a feisty old technophobic grampaw who would rather smash an iPad into pieces with his walking stick than read a book on one. That’s just one reason why Bradbury’s most famous book, Fahrenheit 451, has never been available in e-book form up until now.

The other reason? The novel famously describes a future dystopia in which books are burned on sight by a totalitarian government, and Bradbury has long contented that the power of the premise goes away when you’re reading it on a medium besides paper.

Bradbury’s had to suck up his objections to iPhones and iPads, though. The 91-year-old author has finally lived to see Fahrenheit 451 comes to iBooks and Kindles.

Syrian are no longer allowed to use Apple’s iPhone after authorities banned the popular device this week in a bid to stop activists from documenting government violence. Following the move, Steve Jobs’s biological father, John Jandali, announced his support for the Syrian people on YouTube.

Netbooks were the dodo birds of technology: ill-equipped to compete and eventually done in by a consumer form of natural selection — the iPad. After just about a week on the shelf, the Kindle Fire is being labeled the “netbook of the tablet market.” Analysts looking beyond the $199 price believe the Amazon tablet just can’t compete with the market-leading Apple device. Are Kindle Fire purchasers headed for a serious case of buyers remorse?

This video shot with an iPhone 4S has a couple of great “We’re going to need a bigger boat” moments in it. Shot about 25 miles southeasy of Wrighstville Beach, the 18 foot Great White shark circled this 21 foot ship for a good half hour, occasionally slapping the side of the boat with its tail, probably to test how easily the boat of meat would capsize. Incredible.

[via Daring Fireball]

Ever wondered how long you spend on your iPhone playing Angry Birds, or watching videos on YouTube? Well, if your device is jailbroken, there’s a handy new tweak called App Stat that will tell you exactly how much time you put into each app.

Smart Folders in Mac OS X Lion are finally something to talk about. In earlier versions of Mac OS X they were frankly kind of dumb, but not any more. They now act and work just like regular folders in Finder and they are incredibly fast. That is why Apple made a Smart Folder, All My Files, the default folder when you open a new Finder window in Mac OS X Lion.

iTunes Home Sharing has been around for a few years and is a handy way to access your media between devices. One reader wonders about trying to use this service while traveling:

My setup is Apple based i.e. iPad/iphone/appletv2/airport extreme/imac. The iTunes Home Sharing works brilliantly. Is there a way by which I can retain the home sharing function remotely? In other words if I am on 3g and still use the be able to see the iTunes media as I would on the same wifi? I have seen various articles referring to vpn and then indicating that iTunes is not available through the vpn tunnel or through the airport extreme etc.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I have a worrying addition to Call of Duty, and I love having the opportunity to get my fix on iOS when I’m away from home. I’m a huge fan of Call of Duty: Zombies, which has been available for the iPhone and the iPad for some time. But now it has a successor called Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies… and it’s awesome.

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

Hey Geronimo, an indie-pop band from Australia, have brought a number of iOS games to life for their latest music video that sees titles like Plants vs. Zombies, Flight Control, Cut the Rope, and, of course, Angry Birds played in the real world.

The humorous clip perfectly suits the band’s famously kooky image, and I think you’ll love it if you’ve played any one of these releases before.

[via VG24/7]

Your iPhone could be spying on you, according to the latest trove of documents from Wikileaks, which looks like it could be the biggest scandal yet.

Called the Spyfiles, it’s a trove of documents about the “mass interception industry” — the massive post-9/11 surveillance community that electronically snoops on entire populations.

The industry is selling software to government agencies — some of it delivered by Trojans — that can take over your iPhone. It can track its every use, follow your movements (even in standby), recognize your voice, record conversations, and even capture video and audio from the room it is in.

Just a day after the injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was lifted in Australia, allowing Samsung to sell the device down under for the first time, Apple has won a one-week extension that will once again put the tablet’s launch on hold while it prepares its appeal to the High Court.

Review by Jordan Trimas

The Seagate GoFlex Slim Performance Hard Drive ($100) is a compact, sleek, and fashionable storage accessory good for both Mac and PC users. If you’re looking for a sexy and functional piece of computer candy, the GoFlex Slim is the Prada of portable storage solutions.

Mac OS X Lion includes buried “HiDPI” display modes, which brings the possibility of Retina Display Macs one step closer to reality. Essentially, these display modes make user interface elements twice the resolution typically found on Macs, therefore increasing clarity and detail throughout the UI. This is exactly how the iPhone handles graphics with the Retina Display, and provides some insight into what Apple might be planning for future iterations of it’s computers. While not very practical at this point in time, it’s neat to try out. In this video, I’ll show you how to enable these HiDPI display modes in OS X Lion.

Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber can’t touch the iPhone’s popularity, at least if Yahoo’s top search term results for 2011 are to be believed. Apple’s coveted smartphone edged past celebrities and major news topics to become the most-searched term on the Yahoo search engine.

With the recent controversy surrounding Carrier IQ, U.S. Senator Al Franken has jumped back into the fight for privacy and sent an open letter yesterday to Carrier IQ asking the company to answer a number of questions concerning the company’s key-logger and data logging software. Senator Franken’s letter contains 11 pointed questions mostly asking why the company logs information, what type of information they’re tracking, who receives the information, and how is it used?

Carrier IQ’s software is currently running on millions of smartphones in the U.S. Apple released a statement on Thursday promising to eradicate all traces of Carrier IQ’s software with a new software update. Android manufacturer HTC released a statement today blaming carriers for the inclusion of CarrierIQ on their phones. Samsung also released a similar statement.

If you’re in New York December 5, it would behoove you to stop by the West 14th store for a free workshop with Dan Marcolina.

Marcolina’s the guy behind the acclaimed iPhone photography book and app “iPhone Obsessed” (currently on offer for $3.99 in iTunes) and he’ll be sharing tips and tricks including how combining picture choice and multiple app processing can turn a simple snapshot into a statement.

There have been a countless articles and even books about how you might channel Steve Jobs trademark style for presentations, but you’d have a hard time finding videos of all of those talks in one spot.

Enter Stevenote.tv. It’s a labor of love from web designer Fabio Fiss, who thought it would be a fitting tribute to the late Apple co-founder to gather all of his public appearances by topic in one place.

https://www.cultofmac.com/132693/the-official-spotify-ipad-app-is-coming-soon/

Angry Birds Seasons has been updated for the holidays with a new “Wreck the Halls” edition for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Mac. The company behind the massively successful franchise, Rovio, releases updates for its Angry Birds Seasons app alongside new holidays, with the previous update being for Halloween.

For Christmas, Rovio has released an update with 25 new levels and several other added features. The Angry Birds “Wreck the Halls” update can be downloaded in the App Store right now.

Spotify is working on an iPad app, and the highly-anticipated release is on the near horizon. According to Spotify UK managing director Chris Maples, the company is making its official iPad app “a priority” and it is “absolutely in the pipeline.”

Spotify is already available on most devices, and the iPad will be a welcomed companion to the service’s iPhone app.