Cult of Mac

Okay, not really, but we can dream. Here’s the real deal with this painting.

Foxconn workers at the company’s plant in Yantai, a city in the northeastern Shandong province, have had to evacuate the building today as another fire and possible explosion engulfed parts of the factory in smoke. Thankfully, it seems no one has been injured.

I pity the fool company who is fighting Apple’s iPhone 5 event announcement with a new product launch or software update today, but we certainly couldn’t let this pass unmentioned. In keeping with their new, more aggressive release cycle, Mozilla has just released Firefox 7 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

What’s new? Speed! Mozilla claims they’ve finally fixed Firefox’s notorious inefficiency in handling memory. Hurrah!

More than 75 percent of the handsets T-Mobile sells are smartphones, the carrier told a gathering at this week’s Mobilize 2011 forum held in San Francisco. What’s more, 90 percent of those smartphones are powered by the Android operating system.

We mentioned this in our last story about Apple’s invites to the iPhone 5 event, but it’s worth it’s own post: Apple’s invitation to it’s “Let’s talk iPhone” event seems to sneakily confirm that Apple will only be announcing one new iPhone at next Tuesday’s event.

And…. it’s official. Apple has just sent out invites to an October 4th event at their Cupertino, California campus, starting at 10am.

There’s not much else to go on right now, short of the confirmation, but we all know what’s coming next Tuesday: the new iPhone, whether the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, or both.

I like this tip since it offers you a quick and easy method for viewing the windows belonging to other apps without loosing focus on the current app you are using.

Some people can write prose with no apparent effort, seamlessly gliding from one paragraph to the next with nary a skip of a beat.

For the rest of us, an outliner can be an extremely useful tool for gathering, sorting and refining our thoughts: and OmniOutliner is one of the best outliners you can find.

At this point, everyone knows that Apple’s going to unveil the new iPhone next week, which means that your window of opportunity to sell your old iPhone 4 to some sucker has pretty much closed.

Don’t fret, though. We know someone will buy your used iPhone 4 from you for a good price. If you’ve got an iPhone 4 in decent nick, NextWorth.com is promising to give you $250 for it… a $50 premium over their usual trade-in price, no questions asked.

That’s crazy. Crazy… like a fox!

Quit your worrying. That’s essentially the message coming from one Apple watcher on Wall Street following a day of hand-wringing over a report Apple had reduced by 25 percent iPad 2 orders from suppliers. Improvements in the tech giant’s supply chain and inventory still mean plenty of tablets for the anxious hordes of iPad customers.

Apple’s unveiling of the fifth-generation iPhone now looks certain to be held on October 4, but how long will we have to wait until we can actually get our own sweaty mitts on the device? According to once report, the much-anticipated iPhone 5 will arrive in the U.S., Japan, and some parts of Europe around the middle of next month.

This image of an AT&T van parked outside an Apple store in San Francisco has sparked speculation over whether or not the upcoming fifth-generation iPhone will have 4G/LTE capabilities. Why? Because that Apple store is closed for refurbishment, set to reopen on October 5 — a day after the rumored unveiling of Apple’s new iPhone — and is thought to be having AT&T’s LTE base stations installed inside

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Have the salad days of Microsoft passed? Insiders say CEO Steve Ballmer was greeted with yawns at a recent annual meeting replete with reportedly “painfully flat demos and lifeless speakers.” Ballmer, who once derided the Apple iPhone market share as a ’rounding error,’ is now on the defensive, adopting the mantra “Windows Cannot Lose.”

Readers continue to contact us with questions about their Macs and iDevices, so we’ve decided to run Ask MacRx more frequently during the week. Today we address one of the most common questions for a Mac consultant, why do I get that spinning beach ball all the time?

It seems like there is never a day goes by that I am not confronted with the Spinning Ball of Death, most often while in Safari (although granted, that is the application that I use most frequently). Lately (post Lion installation) I have even been getting a message “Browser is Not Responding.”

Worried your nice new Mac won’t support those upcoming fiber optical cables? Well, worry no more. Intel has confirmed that the current range of Thunderbolt-capable Macs will indeed support fiber optical cables, which should be ready by next year.

Following a new trojan threat for Mac OS X that was uncovered last week, Apple has updated its anti-malware tools for the Mac that will ensure we continue to sleep soundly at night, safe in the knowledge our beloved Macs aren’t at risk.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has flat out denied Apple the trademark for multi-touch technology. Apple detailed its revolutionary multi-touch display to the world with the original iPhone back in 2007. Apple’s trademark request was also filed at that time.

Apple wanted to trademark Multi-Touch. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has finally ruled that Multi-Touch has a too much of a generic meaning now, not to mention the fact that nearly every smartphone and tablet on the market uses the technology.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a jacket that lets you store your iPhone, iPad, sync cables, and maybe even a MacBook Air? The folks at AyeGear think so.

The AyeGear jacket lets you take your Apple devices with you wherever you go.

A retirement center in Florida says an iPad pilot program started in July is helping keep residents young at heart.

The iPad’s large touch screen and light weight are helping healthy residents socialize more — as they play with puzzles and games — and it’s been “pretty amazing,” the home director says with re-educating stroke and dementia patients.

Los Angeles-based TRTL BOT turned to Kickstarter for the latest project: A massive, multi-use iPad 2 case/stand called The Shell, with a nod to keeping an iPad safe during brutal use. Like when it’s in the hands of kids.

That Facebook engineer who quit for Google after his bosses refused to release his feature-complete app? Turns out they might have been holding it back for a reason: Apple’s going to feature it at next week’s iPhone event, and they’ll show off new Facebook iOS 5 integration alongside it, just like Apple’s already rolled out in the iOS 5 betas for Twitter.

Moving swiftly to take advantage of a rapidly changing debacle – err, situation – Scoopertino reports today that HP has just launched a new CEO Swapper app for the iPad. Using proprietary CEO Seeker™ technology, the app allows desperate HR Departments and Boards of Directors to search for possible CEOs by category and compare results right at your fingertips.

Apple has announced the date for its Q4 2011 earnings call to investors. The Cupertino company will hold its financial conference call on October 18th for the fourth fiscal quarter.

Q4 of 2011 ended on Saturday, September 24th. After stellar results in Q3 of 2011, Apple is expected to do just as well, if not better, in its results for the fourth quarter.

Initially after the release of Mac OS X Lion it looked like Apple had removed the tap-to-drag functionality in Mac OS X. Tap-to-drag activates when you tap your trackpad, release, tap again and then hold to drag items around on the screen.

Well Apple didn’t remove it, but they sure did find a good place to hide it and I’ll show you where in today’s tip.

Australian carrier Vodafone has erected a teaser page on its website for the rumored iPhone 5. The webpage features says “End the rumors” and presents a form for customers to receive updates about “this year’s biggest smartphone release.”