Cult of Mac

An interesting report from Bloomberg takes a look at 5 million iPhone users on the largest and most valuable carrier in the world, China Mobile. What’s surprising about China Mobile’s iPhone user base is the fact that Apple’s smartphone isn’t officially offered on the carrier.

Millions of Chinese Apple lovers are using their iPhones on a network that can’t even offer 3G data speeds for the device due to frequency incompatibilities. If that’s the case, then why are so many people content to use the iPhone on China Mobile? The answer: Wi-Fi.

One of the apps available in The Fall 2011 Mac SuperBundle offered on the Cult of Mac Deals page is Camtasia by TechSmith ($149 regularly/$99 introductory pricing, in the Mac App Store. Camtasia is a screen recording application for the Mac that has generated a lot of buzz over the years on the Windows platform, and has started to make some noise on the Mac front as well.

Camtasia is laden with features like simultaneous webcam and screen recording, contains a wide selection of effects and filters, and offers online video tutorials to help you through the process of putting together a great screencast. If you’ve ever wanted to put together a screencast, Camtasia is an incredibly simple — and yet powerful — tool to get the job done. But it’s not without its flaws.

Apple has closed its original SoHo location in New York City to perform some renovations. The SoHo store on Prince Street is closed for a limited time, and Apple has opened a temporary store on Greene Street.

Described as “raw and “rustic,” Apple’s temporary SoHo store is bustling with activity and features all the aspects that customers would expect from an Apple Store. Apple sure knows how to throw a store together.

A recent report from The Wall Street Journal gives an inside look at Tim Cook’s influence as Apple’s new CEO during the past couple of weeks. Cook has been known as the mastermind behind Apple’s incredibly efficient operations for years.

In the wake of Steve Jobs’ death, Cook has already begun to do things differently than Jobs, and he is proving to be a very different type of Apple CEO.

WIRED magazine has collaborated with Gizmodo to release the “Wired App Guide” iPad application in the App Store. The app provides 400 detailed reviews of “essential tools for every type of smartphone user.”

With categorized app reviews and an index of the hottest apps in the App Store, WIRED’s new App Guide is a must-download for any Apple enthusiast.

So you get a shiny new iPhone 4S, and you want to make Siri do something cool. Cooler than Shit That Siri Says, anyway.

What do you do? You get Siri to pour you a beer, of course. And you call it Beeri. Hic.

Alongside the fifteen new countries that will get the iPhone 4S on November 11th, Apple’s latest and greatest handset will also come to its fourth US carrier: the little known regional carrier C-Spire Wireless. And for subscribers on a budget, the iPhone 4 will be coming to C-Spire too.

Do you remember Microsoft’s top secret Couriet tablet project? It was a dual screen, book-like tablet first leaked well before Apple unveiled the iPad, created by J. Allard, the mind behind Microsoft’s fantastic Xbox console.

It’s a concept that has aged well, mostly because it’s one of the only tablet designs around that isn’t just trying to rip off Apple’s idea of what a tablet should be wholesale. It’s still, in fact, brought up as an example of how Microsoft could have competed with Apple in the tablet market from the get go.

So what happened to the Courier? Why wasn’t it released? It all came down to the fact that Bill Gates had an “allergic reaction” to the project because it didn’t run Outlook.

GarageBand is one of the best apps you can show off on your iPad 2 to convince even the most ornery skeptic, and it just got even better: with the 1.1 update, GarageBand is now a $4.99 universal app, and can run on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

Today Apple announced that it will begin selling the iPhone 4S in 15 more countries starting on November 11th, including Hong Kong and South Korea. The news is part of an aggressive roll-out by the tech giant, which hopes to have the iconic smartphone in 70 countries by the end of December.

Apple has seemingly missed its iTunes Match launch date after promising at its ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ event early last month that the new service would be up and running in the United States at the “end of October.” Developers who have been testing the service in beta are discovering today that the iTunes 10.5.1 beta has now ended, with no replacement in sight.

Oh, this is slick. The PlugBug by TwelveSouth is an accessory for your MacBook that solves the problem of how to charge an iPad 2 and your laptop at the same time from a single outlet, and it does so pretty damn ingeniously if you ask me.

So here’s the deal. Apple’s got their MagSafe power bricks so protected by patents that it’s impossible to sell, say, an aftermarket MagSafe brick that charges a MacBook and iPad from the same bifurcating cable.

TwelveSouth got around this restriction in a pretty clever way. At the top of every MacBook power brick is a removable wall socket adapter, which you can even plug standard laptop power cables into. The PlugBug just snaps into the power brick adapter slot and offers a 10W USB port to simultaneously charge your iPad and MacBook at the same time.

I love it. Heck, I’m putting in my order now. If you want to do the same, it’ll cost you just $34.99 with free shipping in the US.

Samsung is currently drafting up a crafty plan to get Apple’s new iPhone 4S banned from Australia, and to help its case it is requesting “the source code for the iPhone 4S firmware” and details of the company’s subsidy agreements with carriers Down Under.

Although the gap between Apple and Android appears to be shrinking in terms of overall market share, it’s bigger than ever when it comes to the share of the web. In October, web-connected iOS devices rose to 61.6 percent. By comparison, online Android devices comprise 18.9 percent, a paltry sliver of Google’s overall mobile market share.

Despite reports that Bitcoins are near enough dead, hackers have created another Mac Trojan that attacks your computer’s GPU in a bid to generate the digital dollars, as well as your precious personal information.

Over the weekend, we showed off Siri running on a jailbroken iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G thanks to the tireless efforts of iPhone hackers chpwn and Steve Troughton.

Clearly, Siri works just fine on lesser devices like the iPhone 4 and iPod touch, but despite this, chpwn and Troughton warned that we wouldn’t see an authorized release anytime soon. Now chpwn is clarifying why, and it’s just as the Dev Team warned us: Siri on non-iPhone 4S devices require piracy.

A third-party app allowing iOS devices to stream music via Amazon’s Cloud Drive has been yanked from the App Store amid reported legal concerns, and that’s not all: the developer says Apple is delaying approving an update for another music app that streams music from Google’s similar cloud music service.

With a cough of dust and a slithering of centipedes, The Who’s Peter Townshend has once more fallen out of his coffin to roam the world. This time, rock and roll’s elder statesmummy has emerged from his tomb with a purpose: to call Apple and iTunes a “digital vampire” that “bleeds artists.”

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Retail Operations, Ron Johnson, has officially left the Cupertino company to become CEO of JC Penney. His biography was removed from Apple’s website today and a successor is yet to be announced.

The App Store is yet to offer any third-party email clients, but that’s all about to change thanks to Google. The company is reportedly “on the verge” of launching a “fantastic” Gmail app for the iPhone that may have already been submitted to Apple for approval.

It appears that Apple has had a Hulu Plus app for the Apple TV cooking in Cupertino for over a month, and the app is running on prototype Apple TV units inside Apple’s headquarters.

According to 9to5Mac’s sources, a Hulu Plus app is “ready to roll out” to current Apple TV users right now. Apple hasn’t pulled the trigger yet due to “political” reasons, like the fact that Hulu Plus directly competes with the TV section of iTunes.

There are a few red faces over at the Veteran’s Affairs Department headquarters in Washington. The day after they unboxed iPads for a pilot program, one of the tablet computers was already missing.

The iPad had not been issued to an employee and did not have any apps or information loaded on it, according to VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker.

It sounds as if the thief seized an opportunity: Baker said that if the iPad had been formatted, the $50 million department-developed cyber security app would’ve been able to find it.  The data service plan was cancelled as soon as it was discovered missing. Security footage hasn’t yielded any info about the theft that included another 21 computers.

Blog Next Gov reported the iPads will be loaded with an app of patient records as well as other apps. Those records will be downloaded only by doctors in encrypted form.

The hiccup is a small one in a 1,000 iPad-deployment. Baker said that while there are currently only 500 Apple devices (iPads and iPhones) in use at the VA, he expects the number of iPads to mushroom to a thousand and eventually tens of thousands. The VA has plans to roll out 100,000 tablet computers (Android and Apple) and in line with the U.S. CIO’s recently unveiled “Future First” plan to move to cloud computing.

Via Next Gov

Spotted by 9to5Mac, artist Guilherme M. Schasiepen has posted a gallery of concept iTV images. The images depict a multi-touch TV set with 3D that doesn’t require glasses.

Color us skeptical, but the idea of a touch-screen television seems absolutely unrealistic. This concept is still pretty gorgeous, however.

Last week’s three-month minimum delay to their Xeon-class Sandy Bridge processors may be the final nail in the Mac Pro coffin, inside sources are now reporting.

Apple is finally unveiling its seamless glass cube entrance to the Fifth Avenue store on Friday, according to MacRumors. Apple’s Fifth Avenue retail store is one of the most recognized Apple stores in the world and a main tourist attraction in New York City.

$6.6. million in renovations to the Fifth Avenue store will finally be revealed to the public on Friday, November 4th. Since June, there have been a series of temporary walls hiding the work that has now been done to the glass cube entrance of the store.