In technology, two years can be a lifetime. It’s encouraging to learn the iPhone 3G is still going strong. According to reports, suppliers will ship 2 million of the handsets during the December quarter, making it the second best-selling iPhone behind the iPhone 4.

Japan’s Sharp, maker of huge-screen televisions, voiced confidence Thursday as it told reporters Apple isn’t much of a concern. What about the almost incessant chatter that the tech giant will enter the TV manufacturing market with an iTV in 2012? “It’s not something we’re studying very hard,” an executive claims. Unclear whether this is bravado or whistling past the graveyard, but perhaps Sharp missed class the day Apple mangled a whole string of industries thought to be untouchable.

Apple quietly issued an update to its Apple TV earlier this week, which finally introduced TV show streaming from the cloud to users in Australia, Canada, and the U.K. for the first time. However, there may have been a good reason why Apple was so quiet about it.

It would seem that the feature isn’t ready yet — or that it was not meant for certain territories — because just days after being introduced, Apple has removed it again.

News aggregators designed to give you maximum reading pleasure on the iPad’s 9-inch screen are scaling down for iPhones. Case in point: Zite just launched a version providing all the news that’s fit to scroll on your iPhone.

Warner Bros. issued an update to its terrific Scribblenauts Remix game for iOS yesterday, which introduces voice-controlled gameplay to the iPhone 4S with a feature called “Scibblespeak.” Much like Siri, the device’s built-in digital assistant, Scribblespeak allows you to create objects like a “zombified cheerleader” using nothing but your voice

Holy crap. Check out this photograph of all the people who queued up for the opening of Apple’s new Grand Central Terminal location, as photographed by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt. You’d think this was an iPhone 5 launch!

Also interesting to me: look at the number of Apple Geniuses on hand. Most stores would be lucky to have that many customers at once, let alone need that number of employees to handle their customer base.

Are you a rag-swaddled, impoverished soul, prowling the cold, ice-swept streets in an O. Henry-esque search for the perfect Christmas gift that can be had for your loved one for less than $420? The Spirit of Christmas is here with the deal for you: Apple has just dropped the price of all their refurbished iPad 2s, and they now start at just $419.

If you’re a big fan of The Beatles’ psychotropic adventure to save Pepperland from the hopping foots and music-hating Blue Meanies, here’s a great deal: Apple is offering the children’s e-book adaptation of The Beatles Yellow Submarine for free to anyone who wants to download it.

Here’s a quick but useful tip for those who love their desktop backgrounds and change them on a regular basis.

In the ever-changing patent wars, somedays you are the windshield and some days you are the bug. After coming up roses Thursday, Apple finds itself on the losing side against Samsung and Motorola.

Back in November, iOS hacker Pod2g announced in a message on Twitter that he had discovered a bug in the iOS 5 software that could provide an untethered jailbreak. To backup his claims, Pod2g has posted a video to YouTube that demonstrates the hack in action, but he’s yet to provide any indication as to when the jailbreak might go public.

Still looking for a gift for the Apple fan in your life? Our new Cult of Mac tee might just be the perfect fit (oh yeah, pun INTENDED). This 100% Jerry Maguire-approved tee is proudly crafted right here in the beautiful USA, is a limited print, and has a great unisex fit.

So don’t let another shopping day slip by, time’s a runnin’ out! You can pick up our new tee for just $22 over at Seattle indie brand Might Tees.

São Paulo, Brazil – The arrival of the much-awaited Brazilian iPad may be in doubt – although our trip to the Foxconn factory showed that an local iPhone is in the works – one thing is certain: there’s a huge market for gadgets here.

Brazilians pay some of the highest prices in the world for their iDevices, but many of them buy alternatives – black or gray market goods and fakes.

Commerce hub São Paulo has a whole neighborhood dedicated to selling these off-market electronic items called Santa Ifigênia, where I paid a visit with Alessandro Salvatori of Blog do iPhone.

A crashed computer is one of life’s annoyances. A crashed computer that you can’t subsequently reboot becomes a bigger headache. Sometimes the battery in a laptop can be the culprit:

My Macbook froze out of nowhere. I have only had it for a few months. I purchased it new. I tried pushing the restart button and option/command/esc (what it says in the manual to do) but none of that works. My mac is totally unresponsive. What should I do?

Thanks in advance,
Andrea

Apple has issued an update to Aperture today which fixes a Photo Stream bug that prevented new images from automatically importing into your library once it had reached 1,000 images. Despite being such a minor fix, however, the update weighs in at a whopping 551 MB.

While all the information we have on Apple’s iPad 3 is purely speculation at this point, it seems inevitable that the device will boast a high-resolution Retina display. The Retina display has been a big selling point for the iPhone and the iPod touch for a couple years now, and we’re all crying out for one in the iPad.

However, Apple may not be the first to bring a Retina display tablet to market, because Samsung is working on one of its own which could be unveiled in February.

Do you follow Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing on Instagram? You should, because he’s actually a great photographer.

Apple’s SVP of marketing has been tweeting quite a bit as of late — he recently gave the new Flipboard iPhone app a thumbs up to his 52,000+ followers. Now, Schiller has taken to Twitter again to congratulate Instagram on winning the best iPhone app award in iTunes Rewind 2011.

Following the release of Twitter 4.0 for iPhone, TweetDeck has released a new, HTML5-based version of its Mac app in the Mac App Store. Unlike TweetDeck’s previous Adobe AIR apps, this new version is simply a web-based client.

These days of spectacularly gloomy news just might be getting you down. If you’re looking for an antidote to the “If it bleeds, it leads” media mentality, a do-good iPhone app might be just the thing.

Called “Boom Boom!” it’ll feed you a diet of good news and shared acts of kindness to go. The free app is based on a feel-good game called Boom Boom cards, which has 26 acts of kindness that you (or your kids, or teens) perform and keep track of.

Apple has released its professional music applications for the Mac, Logic Pro and MainStage, in the Mac App Store. These two additions follow other high-end tools that Apple has brought to the Mac App Store, including Final Cut Pro X.

Logic Pro is available for $199 while MainStage costs $29.99. Both apps have also been updated with new features and improvements.

Jawbone has pulled its newly-released UP health band and offered a “no questions asked” guarantee that customers can get a full refund and keep the product.

In an official statement Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman says “We recognize that this product has not yet lived up to everyone’s expectations – including our own – so we’re taking action.”

In an effort to keep up with the entrance of popular magazine-style web readers like the ever popular (and Phil Schiller approved) Flipboard, Google has just released their new app, Currents, for both iOS and Android. And our sites Cult of Mac and Cult of Android are both launch partners!

Holy cow! They’d been teasing it forever, but all of sudden, now it’s here: Square-Enix has just released their beloved SNES era classic Chrono Trigger on the App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch!

2011 is quickly drawing to a close, and before we shut down our computers and get drunk for Christmas, we thought it would be a good idea to celebrate some of this year’s finest iOS games. We’ve compiled a list of our favorites and we’d like you to vote for the game the you think is this year’s greatest.

Samsung has a hit on its hands. Unfortunately, it involves being thrown out of court — this time in France. To add insult to injury, not only did a French panel call an attempt to ban iPhone 4S sales “disproportionate,” but ordered the South Korean smartphone company to pay Apple’s legal bills.