Cult of Mac

In the immediate aftermath of Steve Jobs’ death on October 5, the praise was overwhelming.

He was the greatest CEO in history, a prescient visionary, prolific inventor, influential designer, brilliant artist. He could walk across San Francisco Bay without getting his New Balance 991 sneakers wet, bend light with his will and turn dog shit into gold.

Then the backlash hit.

About a week after Jobs’ death, the promotional tour for Steve Jobs, the Walter Isaacson biography, began in ernest. This week, the book itself hit. And so did the “dark side” revelations. Plus, former rivals and Apple employees with an axe to grind came pouring out of the woodwork to tell snarky stories about Jobs’ flawed morality, bizarre personality and petty misconduct.

As they are wont to do, the lame-stream media pounced on the negative angle.

The praise was too much. But so is the ongoing character assassination. It’s time to bring the pendulum back to the center, and provide context for some of the most egregious dissing.

In particular, there are four major falsehoods about Jobs being thrown around in the past three weeks that need to be addressed.

In iOS 5 Apple implemented a handy feature that lets you mark multiple emails as read. In the stock Mail app, multiple emails can be selected and marked quickly to save you the time and hassle of having to go through each individual message one by one. 

Trident’s new A.M.S. iPhone 4/S case is edgy. And maybe dangerous. It’s probably what Q would give Bond to protect his iPhone, except it doesn’t come equipped with rocket launchers or a laser.

A 22-year-old man got a 25-year jail sentence for a ripping off part of a man’s pinkie while stealing an iPad.

The Denver Post reported that Brandon Smith apologized to the victim, Bill Jordan, who did not appear in court for the sentencing hearing “because he fears for his life.”

For all those kids out there frenziedly ringing doorbells or knocking on doors till your knuckles hurt: If no one’s coming out to rain candy into your little plastic jack-o-lantern, they’re probably just taking advantage of OnLive’s Halloween weekend of temporarily free-to-play games and too busy to come to the door.

Snap your Halloween party pics right by taking photobooth-style shots from your iPhone with Hipstamatic’s Incredibooth — offered free over the weekend.

According to the iPhone 4S Siri Operating Manual, “Siri is a learning computer that adapts to your environment and personality, answering your requests as it identifies your wants and needs.”

But what happens when Siri makes an evolutionary leap in intelligence while you and your drunken buddies are goofing off with her? As this hysterical video from LaughPong makes clear, it can lead to a moment of extreme awkwardness.

Seriously, if there’s one Siri humor video you watch, watch this one. I think it’s the funniest Siri gag yet.

(Thanks, Brittany!)

It’s that time of the year, folks. What’s not to love about an Apple-themed pumpkin carving on Halloween weekend?

Reader Glenn sent in the above picture of his Steve Jobs pumpkin. We want to see what fine creations you guys come up with, too!

For those of us that have something to hide, you’ll be happy to know that in iOS 5 Safari offers a private internet browsing mode. Once it is toggled on it prevents Safari from compiling a history of your browser activity.

Having problems with battery life since upgrading to the iPhone 4S? Apple may be getting in touch with you to help them troubleshoot your battery problems, hopefully solving the iPhone 4S’s woeful drainage issues once and for all.

While this illustration may be taking the point a little too far, it does have a point.  Siri may have an attitude now, but at least it’s not self-aware.

Yet.

Great news for iOS gamers: the Assassin’s Creed series is coming to iPhones and iPads. But expect a radical formula change when Assassin’s Creed: Recollection hits the App Store. Instead of freely exploring an ancient city in search of targets to assassinate, Assassin’s Creed: Recollection is a board game.

30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy (with some help from Law and Order: SVU‘s Richard Belzer and Ice-T) makes a compelling case for why whatever Steve Jobs’s “I finally cracked it!” moment was when it comes to solving the so-called television problem, it probably wasn’t a Siri-controlled iTV.

[via iClarified]

Could one of the executives Steve Jobs handpicked for Apple’s Board of Directors be inept? That’s the question some investors are raising following news that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating board member Andrea Jung’s role as CEO of Avon Products.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6kZ89OzsPY

The iPhone 4S arrives in Italy today – along with another 22 countries – and the Italians are so into it, they are apparently standing in orderly lines to get it.*

Outside the Roma Est store in the country’s capital, however, Apple employees went on strike.

It’s never a good sign when you have to give your tablets away in order to compete with Apple’s iPad. A month after cutting consumer prices on its PlayBook, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion is telling businesses they’ll throw in a free tablet if they buy two of the devices. The only thing missing from this desperate plea for sales is the word “please.”

Nokia may finally have found its answer to the iPhone, a pair of new Lumia Windows phones that one analyst tells investors is ‘competitive’ with the Apple smartphone.

If Apple was hoping to unveil its iPhone for customers of China’s third-largest mobile carrier in the world’s largest cell phone market, it may have to wait. China Telecom may have to delay introducing the handset until mid-2012, according to a Friday report citing supplier checks.

It’s been a long year. You deserve to treat yourself, and your Mac, to some beautiful new apps to make life easier. No one wants to spend $350 on an app shopping spree though, so we’re here to get you the hookup on 10 amazing apps while saving you a quantified butt-ton of money at the same time.

This week Cult of Mac Deals and StackSocial are bringing you ten apps to make your Mac driven life a thousand times better. We’ve scored you a deal to that saves 86% off the original price. 10 apps for $49 instead of the advertised $366?! This is the biggest deal we’ve had yet. Here’s a run down of the ten apps that are included in our Fall 2011 Mac SuperBundle.

Although we Yanks and select Euros already have iPhone 4Ses in our pockets, the iPhone 4S launch is hardly over. Far from it.

Today, Apple started selling the iPhone 4S in twenty-two other countries. Those countries are: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Any Liechtensteiners care to report on how the lines are looking over there?

Early betas of Adobe’s upcoming Photoshop CS6 software reveal that the application has been given a complete overhaul and features a darker user interface that looks a lot like Apple’s Aperture software. In addition to the new look, the software also features new 3D capabilities, an autosave facility, and a ton of other new tools.

Don’t underestimate the power of China when it comes to the cellphone market. ZTE, based in the populous Asian nation, became the world’s No. 4 maker of mobile phones, overtaking Apple, which held the spot in the previous three-month period.

While Apple’s latest gadgets are a must-have for some, they’re not all that useful for iOS jailbreakers. The company’s new iPhone 4S, along with the iPad 2, cannot be jailbroken when running iOS 5. But thanks to the iPhone Dev-Team, it won’t be long before you’re using Cydia on them.

Your Mac’s home directory, or home folder, is represented by a little house in the Finder and is the default location for your documents, music, photos and other items on your computer. The name of the home folder is also your Mac account username, or “shortname” in UNIX parlance.

Since these items are related, the process for renaming the home folder and changing your username is similar to moving your home folder to another location such as a second hard drive. Here’s how it’s done.

Apple is pushing out more updates to computers released in 2011 to enable Lion Internet recovery. Initially this recovery feature was only available on the MacBook Air and Mac Mini when they made their debut in July.  Recently, however, Apple made it available on certain model MacBook notebooks and this week it was released for early 2011 iMacs like the one I purchased in June.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m surprised that Apple enabled Lion Internet Recovery on my iMac. I thought they’d hold out and only offer it on a refreshed model as an incentive to upgrade.