AT&T’s plan to gobble up the fourth largest carrier in America is, for all intents and purposes, dead. After the Department of Justice moved to block the deal, AT&T began to back out of the deal.

So here’s a question. How does one of the biggest companies on Earth, with more lobbyists and politicians in its pocket than you can count, find itself incapable of closing a merger deal with a fourth-rate carrier, even after spending millions on campaign contributions, kickbacks and lobbying?

The simple answer? AT&T done $%!@ed up.

When we have an iOS device stolen, thieves don’t just obtain our precious iPhone, but they also obtain all the information that’s stored on it. Our devices are filled with personal data such as names and addresses for our friends and family, and for our convenience, they save usernames and passwords for all kinds of different services.

That’s why we secure our devices with passcode locks. But did you know you can use an alphanumeric passcode to make it even more secure?

Here at Cult of Mac, we’ve got our own axe to grind against freemium App Store games that try to get kids to max out their daddy’s credit cards with expensive in-app purchases, so it’s nice to see The Daily Show take freemium game makers to town in an absolutely hilarious, spot-on segment that shows how scummy these waters of the App Store can really be.

The iPhone 4S has finally been approved by Chinese regulators. Apple’s newest device today received its network approval, paving the way for carrier China Unicom to begin offering the smartphone in time for Christmas.

Which phone would fictional advertising genius Don Draper from AMC’s Mad Men use? No surprises here: as this picture of Jon Hamm from the set of the hit television proves, only the phone with the best and most convincing advertising campaign on Earth, an iPhone, would do for Draper.

[via iSource]

Earlier this morning, we told you about a promising untethered jailbreak for most older devices capable of running iOS 5. Unfortunately, though, this jailbreak will only work on past-gen devices like the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, and the iPod touch.

Why? So far, the A5 chip inside of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S have proven impossible to jailbreak by conventional methods. The iPad 2 was jailbreakable under iOS 4.3.3 thanks to the JailbreakMe 3.0 userland exploit, but since then, no further jailbreaks — tethered or untethered — have been identified.

Here’s the good news, though. French jailbreaker Pod2G just took to his Twitter feed and while he didn’t confirm his new jailbreak exploit would work on the iPhone 4S or iPad 2, he at least suggested that it was possible it would. Could this be the ray of hope every iPhone 4S owner has been looking for?

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.