Cult of Mac

A casual observer might be forgiven for thinking that to Apple, Google is Enemy #1. Apple’s most profitable (and therefore important) businesses center on the iPhone and iPad. The most serious competitors in both these product categories run on Google’s Android platform.

The belief that Google is the enemy makes intuitive sense on two counts. First, when you, the gadget-happy user, chooses a device, you may consider an iPhone or an Android device side-by-side. Clearly, you’re choosing between them, and Apple and Google are competing against each other for your business. Likewise for a tablet.

Second, we’ve all been trained to think of technology platforms as the main battlefield for industry control and dominance. Long-time Apple fans still feel the burn of the Windows-Mac wars, which in fact continue to this day.

But this user perspective masks the business reality, which is that there is far less head-to-head competition between Apple and Google than you might think.

Apple has introduced new recovery features available through a combination of new hardware and software. One of these new features is called Lion Internet Recovery which will allow you to start your 2011 MacBook Air or Mac Mini directly from Apple’s servers.

The recovery process starts when the Command+R option doesn’t work or when you install a brand new blank hard drive.

Here is a tip that will let you force your 2011 or later Mac to launch Internet Recovery on startup.

Of all the product tie-ins Apple never approved, getting an iPod for predicting a death has got to be the worst.

Cynical journos have long had newsroom betting pools on when public figures would meet their makers but website whenwillamywinehousedie.com brought that gallows recreation to the Internet public back in 2007.

The prize? An iPod Touch.

If you’re a member of the Mile High Club, chances are that you own an iPhone.

A new report from AllThingsD says that two-thirds of Gogo in-flight WiFi users favor the iPhone as their browsing device of choice. 20% of mobile WiFi usage is attributed to the iPod touch, while Android only accounts for 12%.

We’ve all seen a ton of Apple knockoff computers, phones  and iPods, but I did a double take the other day when I spotted these “tablet” and “touch” calculators meant to look like Apple’s iPad and iPad Touch at a drug store here in San Francisco.

Might make a good gag gift or stocking stuffer, but who uses standalone calculator anymore?

It’s been rumored that Apple will eventually introduce Near Fields Communications technology in an upcoming iPhone model, but speculation that such a technology will be implemented this year has been all but debunked.

If you’re itching for the ability to have NFC-like “wave and pay” capabilities on your iPhone 4, then it’s your lucky day. A simple hack has been discovered that turns your iPhone 4 into a NFC-capable device.

Remember how ugly Apple’s online Order Status page was? Well, Apple has finally cleaned up its online store web design to reflect the rest of its top notch aesthetic taste.

While this isn’t particularly huge news, it’s still worth mentioning. Now you can see the order status on that new MacBook Air you just bought on a prettier webpage.

In OS X Lion, Apple redesigned iCal with a new faux leather look that resembles a physical calendar binding. This type of design choice is called “skeuomorphic,” because it was, “deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar.” Lion’s version of iCal takes the old look and feel of a physical calendar and ports that to a virtual application.

While some may like the new look of iCal in Lion, many have raised complaints. If you’d like to make iCal look like it did in Snow Leopard, we’ve got just the trick to return iCal back to its monochromatic glory.

Do you remember WebM? It was the video compression technology Google spontaneously announced early last year as an open, free alternative to the H.264 codec, used by Apple in every video shown on the iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Despite the fact that Google said that this was completely free, and H.264 is technically subject to a number of royalty fees, uptake on WebM has been pretty slow. Steve Jobs himself thought it was such a non-starter that all he did was link to a screed against WebM that argued that it was just a slight variation on the H.264 codec, and well covered by MPEG-LA’s patent pool… something that was likely to get Google sued.

Well, here comes the lawsuit.

One of the perpetual complaints levied at Apple over the years is the fact that iTunes is a bloated mess of an app that tries to do too many things at once to maintain Apple-style elegance.

No doubt Apple would love to address these concerns, but what it would take is a complete overhaul and rewriting of the software from the ground-up. Give how much of Apple’s business links into iTunes — everything from apps, to music purchases, to iBooks, to iPhone, iPod and iPad syncing — that’s a prohibitive task.

A prohibitive task, according to reports, that Apple’s already in the thick of.

Hey there, true Beliebers! You know who jailbreaks? No less a personage than Mr. Justin Bieber, that chart-topping iTunes artist!

Do you feel like you have to be just a huge honking moron to use Internet Explorer instead of a superior browser like Safari, Chrome or Firefox? That might not just be hyperbole: a new study has found that the IQ of people using IE is lower than the average of those using competing browsers.

Don’t expect another Nokia-like settlement in Apple’s current legal wrangles with HTC and Samsung. The Cupertino, Calif. tech giant could convert courtroom victories to market gains over Android worth more than $30 billion a year, argues one analyst.

AT&T has just slashed $98.99 off the price of Apple’s iPhone 3GS allowing you to purchase the device for as little as one cent. There is a catch, however. A device that cheap will come with a few warts.

Apple’s new MacBook Air models don’t ship with OS X Lion on a USB thumb drive like they used to. That diminutive little white wedge of flash storage is gone, no where to be found inside of the box that these computers ship in. If you want one, you’ll need to pay Apple $69 for the privilege in August.

That’s a potentially big problem for some users. Yesterday, I found this out the hard way after an attempt to install Mac OS X Lion onto a 32GB Class 10 SDHC card failed. Apple’s failure to ship their new Macs with any media can leave you with a hosed Recovery HD partition, and a potentially lengthy fix may be the only way to get it back.

Following last week’s discovery of a white iPod touch digitizer in Asia, it now seems these parts are making their way around the globe — even appearing in the United States. One gentleman on the East Coast has managed to get his hands on a white iPod touch display for his fourth-generation device, but was it made by Apple?

Too lazy to do your chores or errands? Willing to pay some cash to crowd source it? Meet TaskRabbit, a collaborative service that allows you to post up things you don’t really want to do, along with how much you’re willing to pay for them to get done, and then get a willing stranger to show up at your door to do them.

As you stare lovingly at your new MacBook Air before you go to bed tonight, caressing its smooth aluminum shell, know this: its Thunderbolt port is inferior when compared to that of its cousins.

Apple may not be the world’s largest computer maker, but a growing number of reports put the Cupertino, Calif. iPhone company as the largest global smartphone manufacturer, topping beleaguered cell phone giant Nokia.

Frustrated by Apple’s reticence to release a Mac with a built-in 3G modem for everywhere internet connectivity? Don’t sweat it, Apple may have something else in mind: Super WiFi that would allow your MacBook to connect with your Time Capsule from up to 62 miles away.

Best of all? That tech just got one step closer to reality.

The iPhone 5’s rumored September release isn’t far away now, and as we enjoy a number of case leaks and photos of the device (purportedly) in the wild, carriers are beginning to prepare themselves for its launch. AT&T has reportedly begun communicating launch plans to its staff, but Korean carrier KT has even started listing the device in its system.

Having watched Mark Malkoff’s hilarious video earlier this week, we now know it’s possible to have a pizza delivered to your local Apple store, take your pet goat to check out the latest Mac minis, and get your iPhone repaired while you’re dressed as Darth Vadar. But will a real Apple store help you troubleshoot your knockoff MacBook Air?

This is one in China did!

Apple sold 9.2 million iPads in the last business quarter of 2011, and the company’s CFO even went on record to say that Apple is selling “every iPad we can make.” This has been evidenced by the delayed shipping times for the iPad 2 since its release, with the tablet finally receiving a normal online shipping estimation only a couple weeks ago.

To contrast the iPad’s unprecedented success in the consumer tablet market, the Motorola Xoom shipped 440,000 units last quater. And, no, “ship” does not mean “sold.”

With more and more Mac apps gaining compatibility with OS X Lion, Microsoft’s widely popular Office suite for the Mac is the next in line. MacNN is reporting that Microsoft is hard at work implementing Lion features like Auto Save, Versions, and full-screen mode in Office 2011.

Apple’s own iWork productivity suite has already been updated with these Lion-specific features, and Microsoft aims at adding these features to Office in the coming months.

There’s nothing quite like the bliss of simply plugging a gadget into a slot and being rewarded with superb performance; and if the gadget happens to exude raw sex appeal, even better. Sounds familiar, right? Because that pretty much describes Apple’s entire lineup. It’s also a perfect description for the dynamic Samson Meteor Mic ($99).