We’d have been more interested in this a couple of weeks ago, but the guys over at AppV managed to get their hands on a new iPhone 4S and have done a short video walkthrough of the device, demonstrating the Siri settings interface which allows you to turn voice control on and off, change your Language Settings, adjust Voice Feedback and enable Raise to Speak mode. That’s a new revelation: although Apple’s Siri promo videos hinted at it, this is the first time I recall an accelerometer controlled “Raise to Speak” mode confirmed.

There’s also an early benchmark of Mobile Safari, which proves that the iPhone 4S renders pages about twice as fast as the iPhone 4, which was already pretty much the fastest web browsing experience on the block. The ‘S’ in iPhone 4S does stand for speed, after all.

[via MacRumors]

You’ll either love or hate Mac OS X Lion’s Restore feature. If you didn’t know it the Restore feature kicks in when you relaunch an app. All the windows that were open the last time you used that app are open again and restored when the app launches again.

Although Restore works great for some apps like Safari I don’t really like how it works for the Preview app. Lucky for us we can permanently turn Restore off for Preview.

Here’s the cover of the October 17, 2011, issue of The New Yorker. Notice that they reuse the same ‘St. Peter uses an iPad’ gag as the recent Next Media Animation tribute to Steve Jobs.

When you are running a Mac as a kiosk or to run a demo, it can be helpful to block out all elements of the user interface. This user from Norway can’t figure out how to force Safari in Lion to always open links in true fullscreen mode:

We are a group of mac users that can not figure out why or how to get our Safari to be a true fullscreen app when we click on a link to start safari. So here is what we struggle with: how to get safari on Lion to open links in true fullscreen without the toolbar in the top?

This is GhostGuitar, the air guitar application all you part-time rockers have been waiting for.

A gang of 14 thieves arrived on mopeds to raid Apple’s flagship store in Covent Garden, London, in the early hours of this morning and made off with a handful of valuable Macs and iOS devices. Robert Shoesmith, a man who is already camping out for the iPhone 4S, was woken up when the store’s alarm went off at around 1:15 AM.

Although the iPhone 4S just went on sale this past Friday the first wave of iPhone 4S shipments from China have started with a delivery date of October 14th. The carrier in my case is UPS.

I received my shipping notification this morning and other reports are cropping up about customers receiving their shipping notices from Carriers like Sprint and AT&T. I haven’t heard if Verizon models have shipped yet from either Apple or any of the carriers.

Have you received your shipping notification? Let us know if your iPhone 4S has shipped, from where and what the estimated delivery date is in the comments.

A number of lucky customers who pre-ordered the iPhone 4S on Friday, October 7, are already receiving shipping notices to say that their devices on the way — 4 days before the device is scheduled to launch. The orders are available for tracking via UPS with expected delivery dates ahead of this Friday, however, don’t expect your package to arrive early.

Here’s a great tale from former Apple employee John Lilly, describing what it was really like to work under Steve Jobs back in the late 1990s.

Review by Jordan Trimas

It’s nice to know that when I get caught in the rain with my headphones on, I don’t have to anxiously hide them if I’m wearing the Monster iSport Immersion In-Ear Headphones ($180). Did your kid spill his Kool-Aid on them? They’re machine washable!

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTg00wIijNY

Fans of the popular Portal and Half-Life games from Valve will be familiar with GLaDOS, the malicious AI computer system.

As highlighted by The Loop, Filmmaker Jeff Heimbuch has created a parody mashup of Apple’s Siri intro video. GLaDOSiri will help you set reminders and complete tasks, but don’t expect a her to be nice about it.

According to Deadline, Sony Pictures is working on a “hefty deal” to secure the rights to Walter Isaacson’s official Steve Jobs biography for a major feature film.

The movie will allegedly detail the story of how Jobs built Apple from the ground up in the heart of Silicon Valley. The biography that the movie will be based on features over 40 official interviews with Jobs, as well as hundreds of personal anecdotes from his friends and competitors.

Jailbreakers rejoice! The famous, web-based jailbreak tool called JailbreakMe is fully operational and safe to use again.

After the JailbreakMe.com domain was sold to an unidentified person, the site was deemed unsafe to visit. Now, the site has been brought back online in its original form to let users jailbreak their iDevices.

JailbreakMe was created by Nicholas Allegra, or better known as “comex” in the jailbreak community. Allegra was recently hired by Apple.

Steve Jobs has passed on, but his legacy remains something that cannot fade. His influence at Apple will continue to be felt in the years to come, thanks largely to the fact that he personally oversaw plans for the next four years of products before his death.

Is the G-Form Extreme Sleeve for iPad ($60) really and certifiably resistant to explosive munitions? Dunno. We don’t have access to C4, and our insurance company would probably refuse to cover us if we did. Also, we didn’t run over the Extreme Sleeve with an iPad in it or drop bowling balls on it, because we’re pretty sure these aren’t use-case scenarios most (or any) iPads would encounter.

What we did do, however, is run the little monster through rugged alpine and gritty urban environments, then compared it with other extreme-environment solutions for the iPad. Here’s how it did.

The developers at Myriad are working on porting Android apps to the iPad. Alien Dalvik 2.0 is a project that aims to run apps coded for Android in the iPad’s iOS environment.

Alien Dalvik effectively wraps Android apps in runtime packaging to create a seamless experience for the user. Android apps can be run on the iPad’s home screen like regular App Store apps.

Despite criticism from journalists and industry analysts, the iPhone 4S saw a record-breaking amount of pre-order sales yesterday on AT&T.

AT&T has said that initial demand for the iPhone 4S has resulted in the most successful iPhone launch in the carrier’s history. The nation’s largest wireless carrier has reported 200,000 iPhone 4S pre-orders in the first 12 hours of availability.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBe0zjdURc4

The same guys that brought us the hilarious iPhone 4 videos are back with the “banned” iPhone 4S promo video.

In the video, the comedians from ooJLEoo introduce the revolutionary (and not so revolutionary) features of the iPhone 4S. We’ll let you be the judge.

Me & Steve Stories — Some of the best stories about Steve Jobs are the personal, intimate ones. We’re collecting them here and will run as many new stories as we can find. If you have a story about Steve you’d like to share, please send us your submissions.

In September, 2004, KC Bradshaw was working as a trampoline installer, which is how he got to meet Steve Jobs in person and leave with a very special souvenir.

Apple announced speech recognition for the next iPhone. Big deal. Android’s had it for more than a year. Apple is just playing “catch-up” and the feature’s not really earth-shattering anyway. Right?

Wrong. Everything in that opening paragraph is wrong, except the sentence that reads “big deal.” Siri is a very big deal, the biggest of deals.

In fact, Siri is the most important thing to happen to mobile in this decade so far. 

Exciting news – we have a new offer on Cult of Mac Deals.  This one is near and dear to my heart as this app has saved my butt multiple times in crisis situations.

Disk Drill is one of those apps that you think (and honestly hope) you’ll never need. It’s the app that you go to when you delete something then empty your trash bin only later to suddenly realize…”$*(@_!…I need that file back”!

This might be a record folks since iPhone 4S ship times have hit the one to two-week waiting period in less than 24 hours after going on sale October 7th. As you can see from the picture above all models from all three carriers have sold out for pre-order launch day delivery.

If you want an iPhone 4S of any type at this point your only option, if you want one on launch day October 14th, is to stand in line at your local Apple Store or other iPhone retailer. However, if history repeats itself we all know that the best place to find stock will be at the local Apple Stores.

It looks like Apple has yet another iPhone hit on their hands and I’m anxious to see what happens next year when LTE service becomes more widely available.

In recent years, Steve Jobs became famous for emailing terse responses to queries sent by Apple customers to his public email address: [email protected].

It’s not a new habit, it seems. Back in the early days of Apple, Jobs used to mail letters with computer chips attached to them. Letters of Note posted the one above. How many of these are out there?

Police busted over 100 people who stole credit card information, mainly so they could get their hands on Apple’s insanely great products.

“This is primarily an Apple case,” NYPD deputy inspector Gregory Antonsen told the International Business Times.

If you want one of those iconic black mock turtlenecks made popular by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, you may have to wait a couple months.

Following Jobs’ death October 5, St. Croix Collections, maker of the mockneck, reported that it has sold out of the black version Jobs wore.