The iPhone is the equivalent of fly-paper when it comes to keeping customers. The Apple smartphone has at least an 89 percent allegiance, twice that of the closest Android handset, according to a Wall Street survey announced Friday.

The option to purchase additional content within iOS applications seems to have been plagued by an error for at least 10 hours now, with in-app purchases “failing in a big way,” according to one report. iOS developers who rely on the income they receive from in-app purchases are beginning to lose their patience with Apple.

Using tokens in Finder searches and some other application searches will make searching for files on your Mac a lot easier. It all starts when you press Command+F in the Finder.

We received a slew of tech questions from Cult of Mac readers after our inaugural Ask MacRx column, and even provided a few answers! Glad we can provide a useful service. Today we discuss ways to control your Mom’s Mac from afar, missing QuickTime codecs after getting a new Mac, and line spacing issues with replies in Apple Mail.

Here’s something for the iPhone photography freaks out there. It’s called Piece, and it just does one thing: slices your photos up into tiles.

Despite recent rumors that suggest there will not be an iPhone 5 this October — just the iPhone 4S instead — DigiTimes reports that there are issues currently affecting the supply of iPhone 5 touch panels, which will plague the initial shipments of the device.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has revealed that both Apple and Dropbox have joined the Digital Due Process coalition — a group whose mission is to pressure Congress into updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

It’s been a long-standing rumor that Apple will introduce Nuance speech-to-text capabilities in the public release of iOS 5. Apple partnered with the vocal technology giant known as Nuance months ago, and the two have supposedly been meeting behind closed doors to get Android-like speech-to-text integrated into iOS 5.

While this Nuance technology has yet to reveal itself in the public beta of iOS 5, a well-known App Store app is already showcasing the feature blatantly to the public.

Most of us work, right? Because Apple makes great stuff, but most of it isn’t free. Which means you need money, and that means you’ll need to get paid for your time. That’s where HoursTracker Lite, and its iPad equivalent, HoursTracker HD Lite, come in handy.

Here’s a Blast from the Past, a Best Buy flier from 1996 advertising sale prices on Hewlett-Packard, Packard Bell, and Macintosh Multimedia Computers. These are start-of-the-art systems approaching 200MHz speeds! A 133MHz HP Pentium package goes for $1899, while a blazing fast 180MHz PowerPC-based Mac will set you back $2399 – monitor sold separately.

Regent Seven Seas Cruises 700-passenger ship, whose routes include a Caribbean Escapade and Land of Towering Glaciers trip, now serves up iPads for the luxury suites.

Adonit’s humble origins as a Kickstarter project hasn’t stopped the outfit from taking the iPad-accessory world by storm. Adonit’s Jot styli were radical standouts in our stylus shootout a few weeks back, and their version of an iPad 2 keyboard case, the Adonit Writer for iPad 2 ($100), sparked similar “whoa”s as I marveled at its design.

To lure budget-weary U.S. lawmakers to into a session about saving federal research, organizers titled it “Deconstructing the iPad: How Federally Supported Research Leads to Game-Changing Innovation.”

Congressional sponsors of the forum, a trio of Republicans —  U.S. Randy Hultgren (R-Il.), Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) — must have known they had their work cut out for them.

33-year-old Jason Daniel Goodman left his iPod Touch behind at an Oregon gas station almost a year ago. Employees figured something that valuable would be claimed, so they waited five months.

We’re back with another round of Cult of Mac readers and their Apple gadgets. We had some great submissions for round one, and round two has proven to be just as great.

Android smartphones will quickly dominate as home media hubs, beating out Apple’s AirPlay, one market research firm predicts.

Western Digital has revamped its popular “My Passport” series of portable hardrives with next generation editions for the Mac.

The My Passport Studio and My Passport for Mac hardrives feature slimmer, all-metal designs and come in a variety of storage capacities.

Historically, AT&T has tended to hand out early upgrades to the next iPhone to qualifying customers around the time a new iPhone is announced. Which makes the above image very interesting, as it says that AT&T is already handing out early iPhone upgrades to existing customers, coinciding with a mid-October release.

I’ve been using Notational Velocity for years and years, and I can’t imagine using a Mac without it.

It’s an extremely simple application, but that’s a large part of its appeal. It stores text notes, and searches through them at blazing speed.

If you need even more proof that Sprint is getting the iPhone next month, here’s another careless move on the part of the nation’s third largest cell carrier: in a move prettty obviously suggestive of a major new smartphone incoming next month, Sprint will cap its data tethering plans to 5GB starting October 2nd… two days before the next iPhone is rumored to be unveiled.

Apple has seeded OS X 10.7.2 Build 11C62 to developers with areas of focused testing for iCloud. As we near Apple’s next media event, developers are putting the finishing touches on iCloud integration.

Apple has promised that iCloud will go live alongside iOS 5 to the public sometime “this Fall,” with the event estimated to take place on October 4th.

For months, we’ve been talking about the possibility of two iPhones: a speed bump upgrade called the iPhone 4S that may end up also being Apple’s low-cost, prepaid option, and the iPhone 5, the radically redesigned next gen device.

Over the last month or so, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the iPhone 5 is going to show up next month. There’s no evidence for the device in the supply chain, while there’s tons of evidence that the iPhone 4S is coming.

The image above of a new Otterbox case for the iPhone 4S might be the nail in the iPhone 5’s coffin, though.

In my home state of Massachusetts, a fight is brewing between Apple and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, after the latter had her stolen credit card fraudulently drained using iTunes, and Cupertino barely lifted a finger to help her.

Apple’s custom built A4 and A5 processors are the latest target in yet another patent violation lawsuit filed against Cupertino, this time by Taiwanese company VIA technologies.

It seems that Apple’s iOS devices have become so popular that one department store has installed vending machines to sell them. Macy’s now has machines — just like those that sell you snacks — full of iPod nanos, iPod touches, and iPads.