Cult of Mac

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.

Apple’s Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) was integrated into the company’s Mac OS X platform back in 2004, and made its way into QuickTime and iTunes software shortly afterwards. Today, Apple has released the audio codec as open source project.

We’ve seen a shedload of Steve Jobs tributes since he passed away on October 5, but when it comes to paying tribute with one of the devices Steve created, this is the most impressive we’ve seen so far. This iPhone 4 mod was devised by a Chinese student, and it’s a tribute Apple would be proud of.

No doubt, leather requires some sacrifice. Those who want their iPads wrapped with animal hide usually have to make do with considerably more bulk, less usability or less money in the bank account — or, most often, all three. But Sena’s new Florence iPad 2 case ($70) is a surprising exception.

Planetary isn’t the most practical iPad app, but it’s absolutely one of the prettiest. The app reads your iTunes collection, then forms a gorgeous miniature galaxy — complete with elegantly animated solar flares — on your iPad, where the suns, orbiting planets and moons all represent artists, albums and songs respectively.

Wizardry has to be one of the longest lived franchises in gaming history — and is especially beloved by us, because the dungeon RPG’s first-ever appearance was on an Apple II. Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls will be the newest title in the 30-odd-year lineage when it debuts on November 3 for the iPhone.

This week Cult of Mac Deals took the deals hub to the next level and pumped out two great deals for our readers. Because everyone was so enthusiastic about the Fall 2011 Mac SuperBundle that we announced yesterday, we wanted to remind you that we’ll still be carrying the Prizmo deal for another four days. Ever thought about getting a scanner, but held back because of size and cost? Do you have a Mac and a digital camera? Then good news! Prizmo for Mac offers a great solution to accomplish your scanning needs without the extra hardware. So, what can Prizmo do for you?

Last year, a poll by the Consumer Electronics Association found that Apple’s iPad came in second to world peace for Christmas desires.

If you believe another poll from a U.K. app developer, world peace is soo last year. Now all anyone wants is an a ton of money, closely followed by an iPad.

You probably don’t give too much thought to all the parts that make up your shiny new iPhone 4S, but there’s a whole Apple economy built in.

For example: that sharp new 8-megapixel camera that is a key feature of the new device is causing a lot of headaches for a company called OmniVision Technologies Inc. — there are already two law firms looking into what happened when Omnivision realized that it couldn’t supply as promised the camera for the iPhone 4S.

If you’ve been using OS X Lion, you’ve probably noticed the linen theme in some of the interface elements. If you initiate Mission Control, you’ll notice the wonderful linen texture on the outside border of your screen. Apple has brought this design to aspects of iOS, including the Notification Center background.

A guy took the swatches Apple uses in Lion and created full-res wallpapers for everyone to enjoy. You can download these linen-themed wallpapers for your iPhone and iPad.

Apple’s on a roll this week after the plethora of updates yesterday Apple has released three more new ones today. They are HP Printer Software Update 2.8, Aperture Update 3.2.1 and Thunderbolt Software Update 1.0.

All of these are available now via Software Update on your Mac. Check out all the gory details after the break.

Back in 1997 at the beginning of the Second Jobs Dynasty, Apple introduced a special edition Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) to celebrate the company’s 20th year in business. The TAM was positioned as a high-end luxury system, selling for $7000 and delivered by a tuxedo clad technician, but highlighted where Apple was heading in industrial design with a vertical orientation, elegant fit and finish, and an LCD display later adopted by the iMac.

In this promotional video a (then) relatively unknown Apple designer named Jony Ive (with a full head of hair) shows off his newest baby and explains the company’s design philosophy. The TAM was a flop in the marketplace but foreshadowed Apple’s subsequent design renaissance, and has since become a coveted collector’s item.

[via 512 Pixels]

Dropbox Teams is a new service that the popular cloud storage and sync service is offering to small businesses and professional groups. The new plan is designed to encourage collaboration and large data transfers between a limited group of people.

The service will start at $795 per year for up to five users, with $125 per additional user. Dropbox uses Amazon’s S3 backend for secure data transfers with AES-256 bit encryption. Customers are able to access their shared Dropbox folders on a array of devices, including the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Mac.

Bloomberg and DirectTV have both announced live video streaming services today that offer on-demand video content for iPad users.

Bloomberg TV+ offers free, live 24-hour coverage from its network on the iPad and the ability to download content for watching offline. DirectTV’s iPad app offers free, live TV for its customers.

You can set up your iPhone notifications in many ways. You might like vibrating alerts, audible alerts, or maybe you don’t want any alerts at all. Now there is a new visual alert, but it’s buried away and hard to find.

Today I’ll fix that and show you where it is hiding.

Holy cow, this is an awesome deal. The latest game from Halfbrick Studios — the guys behind Fruit Ninja — is called Jetpack Joyride, and between me and my girlfriend, I’ve probably put more time into it in the last couple of weeks than I did into my senior year thesis.

It usually costs ninety-nine cents, but Halfbrick Studios has teamed up with Apple to offer Jetpack Joyride for free to people who sign up for the official Apple App Store Facebook page.

That’s a heck of a deal. Too bad I already own Jetpack Joyride! Let’s hope the next freebie is this good.

Late last month, Apple rolled out the iTunes Music Store to twelve new European countries. Now they’ve done the same for the iTunes Movie Store, so if you’re Bulgarian, Czech, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovakian, Slovenian or from Cyprus, hey, go nuts!

[via MacTrast]

Care to see just what Apple means when they talk about Android’s fragmentation problem? Check out this incredible chart put together by Michael Degusta. Not only are most Android phones out of date, but almost half of the smartphones on this chart have never been up-to-date with the latest version of Android OS, even at release!

Comparatively, every release of iOS has been backwards compatible for at least three years. No wonder the iPhone developer community is so strong: devs and users alike can count on almost every iPhone owner being on the current, most bug-free version of iOS!

We thought we’d put this Apple television business to rest as a pipe-dream, but then Steve Jobs’s biography came out, where he claimed he had finally “cracked” the TV problem. Now the rumor mill has started itself up again with renewed vigor, and the latest report from Nick Bilton over at The New York Times: his sources tell him that Jobs thought that the “industry was totally broken” a real Apple-branded television set “isn’t a matter of if, but when,” a “guaranteed product.”

It’s not quite Game Over for Nintendo, but Angry Birds and other iPhone games cost the company nearly $1 billion for the first half of 2011. What’s more, an aging Wii is being overshadowed as more and more gamers turn to smartphones. It’s enough to give Donkey Kong indigestion.

The BlackBerry is popular again. Ha ha ha. Sorry, just kidding. That popularity extends only to owners rushing to trade them in after a recent nationwide service outage.

Indeed, one firm specializing in buying your unwanted phones says BlackBerry trade-ins are up 80 percent this week — and it can be entirely attributed to long beleaguered Blackberry owners trading in their devices for the iPhone 4S.

Fancy a break from the constant tintinnabulation of your iPhone? Here’s a great Siri tip spotted by the guys over at OS X Daily: just press down the hold button and tell Siri to “turn off all alarms.”

Once you’ve been able to catch your breath, turning your alarms all on again is as easy as saying “turn on all alarms.”

We reported yesterday that our favorite Photoshop-on-a-budget app, Pixelmator, was hitting the big two point oh today, and so it has.

It’s available now on the Mac App Store as a free upgrade to previous users, or a $29.99 purchase new.

The biggest additions to Pixelmator 2.0 are content-aware fill, vector drawing and editing tools, wrinkle, blemish and damage repair tools for photos, new retouching tools such as smudge, sponge, burn, and more. In addition, Pixelmator 2.0 gets full OS X Lion support, a new interface and some impressive speed and stability improvements.

For 90% of us, Pixelmator was already a better and cheaper replacement for the industry standard, Adobe PhotoShop. With 2.0, closes the gap another few percent, and becomes even more of a no-brainer to recommend to just about everybody.

If Apple needed another argument in favor of the iPhone, Sprint’s CEO Wednesday offered up a whopper: iOS devices are 50 percent more efficient than Android handsets when it comes to slurping up 3G data. The comment seems to confirm previous reports that devices running Google’s mobile operating system are the data hogs, not iPhones.

Ever since Steve Jobs’s untimely death and the release of Walter Isaacson’s biography, America’s been going Steve crazy… but you know where Jobsmania is even worse? China. In fact, from the launch lines, you’d think it was the iPad 3 that was coming out, not a book.