Cult of Mac

At Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters, they serve up to 15,000 meals per day to some of the illuminati of tech, including more than a few celebrities, without a blink. But according to Google superchef Charlie Ayers, when Steve Jobs entered the Google cafeteria, everything was different: the employees parted like “Moses before the Red Sea.”

Jobs liked Ayers’s food so much that when Ayers left Google to open his own restaurant, the Calafia Cafe, Steve Jobs followed him, and even brought his entire family to the restaurant for a last-minute Easter dinner. Even though he was a regular, Ayers says no one ever approached Steve Jobs, except one customer: a little boy who asked for (and received) an autograph. Awww.

[via Forbes]

If you’ve been sitting around debating whether or not to buy the Fall 2011 Mac MEGA Bundle, you better hurry the heck up and make a decision. The Deals.CultofMac Fall 2011 Mac MEGA Bundle will only be available for another 20 hours. If you’ve ever wanted to test your hand at web development, give Flux a go; you won’t find it cheaper than here! We’re busting out the Fall 2011 Mac MEGA Bundle  packed with great creation tools as well as productivity goodies and utilities. This bundle has 8 top Apps worth a total of $300 that we’re able to sell for $35. This bundle has a shorter lifespan than some of our other deals, though, and will only be around for 6 days, so get it while you still have the chance.

The Recording Industry Association of America has targeted a business called ReDigi that specializes in selling “used” iTunes tracks online. While ReDigi promises users its practice is perfectly legal, the RIAA is having none of it, and wants the company closed down.

It demands the company abandon its business and its “infringing activities,” and hands over its sales records to the RIAA. It also wants ReDigi to open its servers so that the music files held by the company cannot be exploited.

As part of the streaming video on demand service’s push towards consolidating its user interface across all tablets, Netflix just unveiled the new GUI to their official iPad app. Sayonara, whitespace!

We’ve seen a lot of Steve Jobs tributes since his death in October, but this one is particularly impressive. Speed painter Aaron Kizer took to the stage at the 11th Hour Live Music and Arts Show in Owensboro, Kentucky and in a blur of brushes painted an incredible portrait of Steve Jobs in just six minutes.

Remarkable. Check out the full video below.

In an intriguing note, a Wall Street analyst suggests Samsung — you know, the South Korean company keeping Apple’s legal department in yachts and private islands — could be one of the beneficiaries of $3.4 billion Apple will spend to retool suppliers’ factories in 2012. Or Apple could just build itself a couple of state-of-the-art chip factories from scratch.

The guys over at G-Form go to extreme lengths to show off the impressive capabilities of their gadget cases, like dropping a 12lb. bowling ball on the iPad, and throwing a perfectly good MacBook Pro off of a balcony.

The iPad becomes their victim again in this latest stunt, which is intended to show off the incredible strength of the company’s Extreme Edge and Extreme Portfolio cases, as they’re dropped from 1,300 feet.

Sometimes you need to give your iPhone just a little bit more oomph. Maybe you need to output just a little more sound so you can DJ the impromptu breakdancing showdown that’s spontaneously popped up in your NYC subway car, or maybe you need to give your iPhone’s battery a jolt after being declared MTA Breakdancing Champion Of The Lower Boroughs And The Universe.

Either way, Spar’s Zephyr has got you covered. Think of it as a metallic JamBox with a lightning rod inside: a Bluetooth speaker and hands-free speakerphone, paired with an external battery that can juice up your iPhone in a pinch.

A Vietnamese book publisher has just published a touching, beautifully designed 2012 memorial calendar to the life of Steve Jobs, filled with the most iconic Steve shots of the last thirty years and aspirational quotes from the fiery, passionate Apple founder himself on the way to live life.

If the U.S. makes it easier for tourists to enter the country, more of them will come to spend their money – especially on electronic gadgets, Fox News maintains.

They make the case for iPad buyers from Brazil, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Despite the evidence that they’ll be soon making iPads and iPhones there, nightmarishly high tariffs still make the U.S. a better place to buy Apple products. (By the way, Cult of Mac will be in Sao Paulo Nov. 20, come say hi and talk about all things Apple in Brazil).

After missing its initial October launch date, iTunes Match finally went live yesterday, but only for those in the United States. Users in other territories are left waiting for the music matching service, with no indication of when its international rollout may begin.

Those in the U.K. may be the next to get the service, according to a CNET report, but it won’t arrive until at least the start of 2012.

Mac OS  X Lion introduced the world to FileVault 2 Apple’s solution to full disk encryption. It is one of my favorite features in Lion, and it is definitely a welcome addition to Mac OS X. Just about anyone can use it to encrypt the startup disk on their Mac, but more importantly, they can use it to encrypt their USB thumb drives and SD cards. Why is that important?

It is important because USB thumb drives and SD cards are small and easily lost. If they are encrypted, you don’t have to worry about whether the content they carry falls into the wrong hands.

Apple has issued a video update for its 15-inch MacBook Pro that addresses a freezing issue users some users may be suffering with the mid-2010 model. The update also fixes a bug that presented users with a blank screen when they attempted to watch a video on their machine.

Apple’s MacBook Air has been an incredibly popular machine since the company introduced solid-state drives as standard and reduced its price tag back in October 2010. But for some, it just doesn’t come big enough.

However, dreams of a 15-inch model are about to come true, according to sources in Apple’s supply chain. And it’ll be here by March 2012.

Adding to their now dizzying array of cloud-in-box hardware and desktop app that turns your Mac into a cloud server, Pogoplug has just unveiled a web-based cloud service that can be used as a standalone media storage option, and either accessed through a web browser, or through the desktop or Universal iOS app. And just like Apple did with iCloud, they’re giving the first five gigs away for free.

When you first hear about it, Blueprint 3D doesn’t sound like it could be a compelling iOS puzzle game – but it is.

The premise couldn’t be simpler. Each level shows you the blueprint image of an object, exploded in 3D so that the object itself isn’t immediately obvious. Your task is to move the exploded view around until its identity is revealed. That’s it.

Love this portrait of Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs silhouetted in an old-school Apple logo.  It brings to mind the early days of the Cupertino company and its humble beginnings.

It’s the handiwork of Laurent Bourrelly who was inspired by Jonathan Mak’s iconic black-and-white image of Jobs that spurred a media storm.

“I thought Woz deserved as much props as Jobs,” he said.

Let’s hope this re-imagined logo ignites less controversy.

Via Flickr

The man behind the popular iA Writer app, Oliver Reichenstein, has posted some interesting observations on the App Store ecosystem. In a Google+ post titled “Revenue = X,” the founder of Information Architects explains how his decision to drop the price of iA Writer on the Mac and iPad has resulted in a way to “increase exposure without affecting profit.”

Dropping iA Writer’s price has resulted in more purchases than expected, and Oliver’s profits have largely stayed the same since he made his app cheaper.

Adobe recently announced that it was effectively killing Flash for mobile devices, and the company’s Principal Product Manager has felt the need to take to his blog and share the reasons that Flash failed.

Hardware fragmentation, the growth of HTML5, and Apple itself all played into Adobe’s decision to end Flash.

I fell in love with Super Mario Bros. when my parents bought me a Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) for Christmas as a young boy, and I’ve been obsessed with Super Mario games ever since. There’s nothing that would please me more than having the chunky plumber in my pocket on my iPhone. But since Nintendo refuses to bring its titles to iOS, we’re forced to play the alternatives.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The absence of Super Mario has spawned a number of terrific platforming alternatives that are just as enjoyable. I’ve been enjoying a number of them over the years, and thought it was about time I shared the best of the bunch.

If you were one of the millions to buy the iPhone 4S, today is your last day to order AppleCare+ coverage. Apple introduced a new type of AppleCare with the iPhone 4S, and the deadline for adding the coverage to your policy is today, November 14th.

AppleCare+ gives customers a two-year warranty and coverage for two incidents of accidental damage. The plan costs $99 and is highly recommended for any new iPhone owner.

Oh, wow. The engineers over at app developing firm Applidium say they’ve cracked Siri’s security protocol wide open. In fact, using their method, they say that any app and any device can now use Siri in theory. In reality, though? There are a few obstacles remaining.

My Notification Center tends to get a bit busy. It shows me my favorite stocks, weather, five of my most recent emails and upcoming calendar appointments. Now and then I’d like to clear these items from the Notification Center.

Here is an easy way to do just that.

iTunes Match went live earlier today as a beta, but Apple apparently can’t handle the demand: it’s already temporarily unavailable for new subscribers, who are being told to “check back in an hour.”

Honestly, want our advice? Check back in a week. Even in developer beta, iTunes Match took ages to match our libraries, and a million people hammering on the service on launch day isn’t going to help matters.

Apple’s new music service, iTunes Match, launched today as a beta, and it includes the handy ability to upgrade your low quality audio tracks to lossless audio tracks and then mirror them in the cloud. In this video, I’ll show how to set up iTunes match and upgrade your songs. It just couldn’t be easier.