Cult of Mac

Akitio’s pretty new alloy enclosure has a back full of inputs: eSATA, USB 3.0 and two FireWire 800 ports. There’s no way to jack in a Thunderbolt connection, though.

Review by Jordan Trimas

The JayBird Freedom JF3 ($99) Bluetooth wireless headphones are a successful attempt to build upon a paramount technological concept: take something good and make it great — or in this case, take a good pair of IEM headphones and ditch the cord. It’s like a musical bris without the rabbi — or the baby.

It’s time for round three of the Cult of Mac ‘Me and My Mac’ reader submitted gallery. We’ve asked our readers to send in pictures of themselves with their Apple gadgets, and we’ve got some great submissions to show everyone this time around.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMsRwcWcv-U

Say hello to the “iPad Dockintosh.” This iPad speaker dock is made out of a classic Apple Macintosh Plus and iPad insert. The retro and modern worlds collide.

Featuring an easy insert for your iPad, this setup will turn your favorite tablet into one seriously retro fusion of Apple gadgetry. You can initiate the home button from the Macintosh body itself, and open the detachable front to check out the integrated dock, charger and speaker.

Watch the video all the way through to hear how and why Techmoan created this awesome setup.

(Thanks, Corbin!)

Apple has been on quite the winning streak lately. With the next iPhone announcement on the horizon, things are only looking up for the folks in Cupertino.

With Apple set to reveal its last quarter financial results on October 18th, predictions are that the company will see growth in Mac and iPad sales, with a slight decline in iPhone sales.

According to a study by research group InMobi, 41% of smartphone users in the US, Canada and Mexico are willing to buy a smartphone they have never seen. Yesterday Apple announced its next iPhone event to take place this upcoming Tuesday, and everyone is eagerly awaiting what Apple has up its sleeve.

Apparently, enough people have faith in Apple to place their bets on a phone that hasn’t been announced yet. More than 50% of surveyed consumers in the US said that they plan to buy the iPhone 5 within the next 6 months.

Is Jefferies & Co. analyst Peter Misek huffing the magic hallucinogen jay bone? He claims that Apple canceled an iPad 2 HD, despite having already built a million of them, but also, that Apple will be launching the iPad 3 in January. What?

Twitter is, of course, about to become deeply baked into iOS 5, and that’s going to drive a lot of traffic to the micro-blogging service’s servers. So what is Twitter doing to get its servers prepared for the rush of new traffic? Injecting them with radioactive super-server serum?

The answer might surprise you: not a damn thing.

On Twitter, one of Cult of Mac’s readers said calling the Kindle Fire competition to the iPad 2 was like calling a Kia competition to a Porsche.

It’s an interesting analogy. True, the Kindle Fire’s hardware is inferior to the iPad 2’s in almost every way. It boasts an 800MHz dual-core processor to the iPad 2’s 1.2GHz A5 dual-core powerhouse. The screen is smaller than the iPad 2’s, though it has better pixel density. It only has 8GB of storage, it has no 3G, no GPS, no camera. It only registers two points of multitouch to the iPad 2’s eleven, for god’s sake. So the analogy seems to fit, right?

Not so fast. Sure, Apple’s hardware is great, but Apple has proven that hardware is only as good as its software. That’s why Apple’s products are so magical: they are a seamless amalgam of excellence in software and hardware design, intertwined.

It’s a philosophy towards design that Apple’s competitors have just never understood. And that’s why the Kindle Fire is going to be huge, the iPad’s first real competitor. The Kindle Fire is going to be a Kia that drives like a Porsche, and when Apple counters it — and I think they will — it’ll be going head-to-head with an iPad mini.

Apple appears to be tweaking its inventory database, making room for two versions of the iPhone 4, as well as a slightly updated iPod touch, multiple reports suggest Wednesday. The reports come on the heels of Apple announcing a media event for October 4, ‘Let’s Talk iPhone.’

Wow. Kindle Fire is going to be huge.

Amazon, like Apple, has lots of pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and has pulled them all together in the Fire.

If you didn’t hear the news, Cult of Mac hit 100,000 Twitter followers last week. To celebrate, we hosted a huge giveaway yesterday on Twitter. Because some people were sad that they didn’t come away with a prize, we’ve decided to extend the celebration farther into the week and give readers a few more chances to win. Today we’re giving away a Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard for Mac. It’s one of the coolest new keyboards we’ve seen because you don’t have to keep spare batteries on hand anymore. If you want a shot at winning this beautiful thing here are the rules for today’s contest:

Amazon has just launched its first real tablet called the Amazon Kindle Fire — a 7-inch device that runs Google’s Android OS, selling for just $200. A torrent of speculation in the months prior to its unveiling suggested the device would be the first to really compete with the iPad, so how does it compare to Apple’s iPad 2?

We take an in-depth look at the specifications for the Amazon Kindle Fire vs. the iPad 2 to see whether Amazon’s new device really has what it takes to worry the iPad.

Amazon just announced its long anticipated tablet, the Kindle Fire. And while the hardware doesn’t compete with iPad, the price certainly is: it’s a fully-featured tablet with access to millions of apps, games, songs, movies, TV shows and books, all for just $199.

Amazon has yet to announce specifics on its 7-inch tablet which some hope would compete with the iPad, but early leaked details suggest the “Kindle Fire” may be all wet.

Once is a new photography magazine for iPad, but it’s one with a nice twist: the publishers plan to share income with the contributors.

Despite its unprecedented success and staggering popularity the world over, Apple’s iPhone is no longer Britain’s coolest brand, having been knocked off the top spot of the ‘Cool Brands index’ by Aston Martin.

Our favorite friends at iFixIt have taken their rusty bone saws and hacked through the aluminized breastplate of Apple’s new 27-inch Thunderbolt display to find what they find inside

Their conclusion? Considering the fact that there’s no computer inside this thing, the Thunderbolt display sure has a lot of guts!

Following recent speculation that has suggested Apple may release a “budget” iPhone at its October 4 event, that will have minimal storage and will rely on streaming content from the cloud, the Cupertino company has gone ahead and taken over the iCloudiPhone.com domain name. But does it really mean anything?

Tracking shipped packages is fast and easy in Mac OS X Lion due to Apple Mails tight integration with WebKit. It is also one feature that Apple brought to Mac OS X from iOS that I actually like.

Those of us with Macs take for granted how easy it is to import pictures from our iPhones and iPods to our Macs – at least, once you’ve done it the first time. Things are a bit less obvious for iDevice owners running Windows:

Is there an easy way to move all the pictures from the camera roll [on my iPod touch] to my computer or an external hard drive?

Richard

I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of FIFA Soccer 12 on consoles for some time now, so I was delighted to hear that it’s already available on the Mac. That’s right! FIFA has finally come to the Mac, thanks to EA Sports and TransGaming.

A Polish newspaper reports that Apple’s iTunes Store is set to open up to another ten countries in the European Union. A launch date for the service is still unknown, but sources have reportedly indicated that it could come “at any time.”

Looking to replace your aging iPod classic or iPod shuffle? Then it might be best to make a trip to your local Apple store sooner rather than later, because Apple could be about to axe these two devices by the end of this year.

We were sent this video anonymously earlier this evening. The tipster says it shows the iPhone 5.

Watch as the user goes into System Settings. They select a special “Developers” tab, which then allows them to switch graphics processors.

The “Developers” tab suggests it’s a special prototype provided to partners to test the graphics performance…