The downside of the iPhone’s gargantuan success as a money maker for Apple is that it can also have an “outsized impact” on Apple profits. The iPhone contributes 49.2 percent of Apple stock value, one analyst warns. Wall Street also said the iPad has replaced the iPod as the tech giant’s halo product, buoying sales of other Apple products. Even so, at least one analyst thinks that Apple could go as high as $540 a share.

Remember MacDefender? It was the first really big piece of malware to hit the Mac operating system, and was a huge problem for Apple’s tech support teams… such a huge problem, in fact, that Apple introduced a self-updating anti-malware database into OS X, which basically killed MacDefender and its variants off.

MacDefender worked by tricking users into believing that they’d been infected by malware (which they in fact had — MacDefender’s own — even though it was trivial to remove the infection) then tried to bilk them out of their credit card numbers for bogus anti-malware software.

MacDefender died off pretty quickly after Apple updated Snow Leopard to fight it, but the perps behind the software went unidentified. Now, it looks like they’ve been caught, raided and busted.

Responding to their customers’ garish ineptitude in trying to outprice the $999 MacBook Air, Intel has decided to do notebook makers’ work for them and put together a reference bill of materials on how to build cheap ultrabooks capable of competing Apple’s superslim ultraportable.

Apple’s stock Maps app for iOS is great at what it does, but there are a number of useful features that it’s lacking. Thankfully, Cydia boasts a plethora of jailbreak tweaks that allow us to add our own enhancements — the latest of which introduces a handy speedometer.

The drawback to success is you’re only as good as your last killer product. Perhaps that’s what Apple executives were thinking when they recently told a Wall Street analyst any rumored low-cost iPhone would have to be more than out-cheap Android, but be a ‘category-killer’ like the iPad and iP
hone.

One of my favorite improvements that shipped with Mac OS X Lion is Mail 5.0 and its new Conversations view. This new view allows you to view message threads by combining messages into a chronological timeline. It has one drawback, since by default, any messages that you sent don’t show up in the timeline. That makes it hard to read and make sense of the thread. Here is a tip on how to fix it.

Following the release of OS X Lion last month, some early adopters ran into issues when attempting to install Xcode 4.1 that meant installing the software was rather difficult. Apple has now addressed this in the Xcode 4.1.1 update.

The incredibly popular Infinity Blade from Epic Games was one of the first titles to be build using the Unreal engine. Famous for its eye-popping visuals, it’s so impressive that in just six months after its launch the game had achieved over $10 million in sales. If you haven’t already bought this game, now’s the best time, because it’s on sale for just $2.99. But you’ll have to be quick!

Earlier today, we told you that Apple was looking to discontinue the Magic Mouse in favor for the Magic Trackpad. This report was based off an inside source confirming that Apple was phasing out the Magic Mouse’s part number from its inventory.

Our source in Apple inventory has followed up with us, and it appears that Apple has instead discontinued the Magic Mouse’s old part number in favor for a new one. This move may indicate an update to the Magic Mouse, with the most logical prediction being better integration with advanced gestures in OS X Lion.

Lets’ face it — cycling is geeky enough with Lycra, weird cycling shoes and helmets so dorky they look like they were designed by population-control advocates — it doesn’t need the added panache of a Bluetooth speaker bungied to the handlebars.

Thanks to the massive stock selloff today, Apple is within $16 billion of displacing Exxon Mobil as the the world’s most valuable company.

At market close, Exxon Mobil’s stock fell $3.88 (4.9 percent) giving it a market cap of $366 billion. Apple’s stock fell too, but only $15.20 (3.87 percent) for a market cap of $350 billion. That puts Apple within $16 billion of Exxon. Two weeks ago, the gap was $50 billion. Any day now…

Via NYT.

It’s back-to-school time. And with so many universities handing iPads to students, parents may wonder how many devices they truly need.

Apple’s retail model has inspired a flattering crop of copycats.

After the news of the China clone stores, it looks like there is a thriving crop of pseudo-Apple resellers in Georgia.

We’ve gotten word from a previously reliable source that Apple is discontinuing the Magic Mouse in favor of the Magic Trackpad. Our retail source has informed us that Magic Mouse inventory is not being replenished for Apple stores, and that Apple is finally phasing out the Magic Mouse.

Here’s a mockup of the iPhone 5 spy pic posted to the MacRumors forums, courtesy of another forum member.

As you can see, it looks just like the iPhone 4, but thinner. There’s also no tapering or plastic back, as previous rumors have suggested.

Via Arnold Kim.

Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Air might look just like last years model, but don’t let that fool you the insides have been almost completely replaced. Powerful new processors and upgraded internal components make Apple’s powerful and ultra-portable notebook computer even better than last years model. I called it blazing fast last year, but this year I have to say it’s smoking fast. Its performance leaves some MacBook Pros in the dust.

I’ve spent two weeks with my new 13-inch MacBook Air putting it through all kinds of real world tests, using it daily for a variety of tasks like word processing, web surfing, image manipulation, and running various applications including Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and Mac OS X Lion virtualization.

I’d like to share with you what I experienced during the first 14 days I used this new 13-inch mid-2011 MacBook Air.

On the right, the iPhone 4’s proximity light sensor. On the right? The same part in the iPhone 5. We’re getting pretty close to launch, boys and girls, but what does a part like this tell us about what the iPhone 5 will look like?

Could this be the iPhone 5? The picture was posted to MacRumors’s forums, and was snapped at the office of a French cell phone company, according to the forum member who posted it.

I’ll be honest here, I really want HP to do well in the tablet space Theoretically, HP has many of the same advantages with webOS as Apple has with iOS: the two companies totally control both their software and their hardware… a potentially huge advantage over the competition. Plus, webOS is genuinely an awesome, exciting platform, and if it ever gets off the ground properly, iOS will benefit from some real competition.

That said, their first tablet, the TouchPad, was very much a beta product. Featuring a bulky design and a serious derth of tablet-optimized apps, not many people chose a TouchPad over the iPad. No wonder, then, that HP’s had to slice $100 off its asking price.

As BlackBerry-maker RIM clings to life-support, more than half of the smartphone’s owners have Apple’s iPhone on speed-dial. More than half of BlackBerry users intend to switch to the iconic iPhone as Wall Street experts pull the plug on RIM’s recovery plans.

Been holding out on buying Lion until you can get it on officially sanctioned physical media? According to 9to5Mac, Lion USB recover media is now available for fulfillment… an it’ll even be handed out free to those of us who aren’t able to use Lion’s built-in recovery tools to restore their hosed Macs.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXDCR41huhQ&feature=player_embedded#t=0s

Following this morning’s discovery of a new Apple patent for inductive charging, MacRumors points to a video from WiTricity, the company that develops magnetic resonance charging technology, which demonstrates a much better method for wirelessly charging our Apple gadgets using our Macs as a power source.

Apple’s intentions to introduce a wireless system to its iOS devices has been well documented over the past few months, but just exactly how it plans to do it remains to be seen. However, a new patent application published by the U.S. Patent & Trademarks Office today could reveal all.

Beware Android users, malware authors are picking Google’s platform as their first foray into mobile mayhem, security researchers say. Interestingly, there’s no mention of malware using Apple’s iOS.

Of all the things we expect to see from Apple’s iPhone 5 in the coming months, it isn’t super-speedy LTE capabilities. However, China Mobile says that it has struck a deal with Apple to bring the next-genearation iPhone to its 4G TD-LTE network.