Cult of Mac

A new survey finds nearly all iPhone owners will use upcoming iCloud and iMessage. However, avoiding the new Apple services may be like deciding to not breathe.

Mozilla’s Firefox 5 web browser officially launches today, “bringing together all kinds of awesomeness to make browsing better for you.” Here’s what’s new…

If you’re shooting a photo and uploading it to Flickr, chances are good that it’s on an iPhone 4, as Apple’s iconic smartphone has officially surpassed the Nikon D90 as the most popular camera on Yahoo’s photo sharing site.

This morning, the Apple Store briefly went down, and when it came back up, we had new Time Capsules, coming in two and three terabyte capacities starting at just $299.

Apple just announced its all-new Final Cut Pro X video editing software, which is now available from the Mac App Store today along with Motion 5 and Compressor 4.

Android’s marketshare is on the decline for the first time ever. Phones based on Google’s mobile operating system hit a snag in March… and it’s likely to continue in the U.S. when the iPhone 5 is released in September, says one analyst.

A newly published FCC filing prematurely confirms the release of Apple’s new AirPort Extreme wireless base station, indicating the launch of the device could be just hours away.

Apple has decreased its order of the iPhone 4 in anticipation of the fifth-generation device, strengthening those rumors that claim a new iPhone will launch before the end of this year.

While yesterday’s reports of a black MacBook Air left many mouths watering, the device could remain all but a dream for the foreseeable future, after one anonymous Apple employee has confirmed that the company has tried, but failed, to create a black model of its ultraportable notebook.

This is what the iPhone was made for. INK: Tattoo Simulator will save your ass (literally) from desecration by a massive tattoo of an obscure Star Wars character, the name of the girl you just met in your freshman college biology class and want to spend the rest of your life with, a portrait of Newt Gingrich or whatever kooky longing for ink your drunk mind might come up with.

If you’re in New York City June 21 and want to make sweet music with a bunch of strangers, take your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and head for the New York Stock Exchange.

Apple’s recent patent that would block piracy at concerts via an invisible infrared sensor has been more hotly contested than a bootleg Beatles’ concert performance.

The SavetheInternet.com Coalition, which claims some two million members plus charter members including Lawrence Lessig and the ACLU, wants Steve Jobs to reconsider. And they want you to sign an online petition to get his attention.

Although BlueAnt focuses exclusively on Bluetooth communication gadgets (and now earphones), they aren’t as well recognized as some of the other names coming up in our review, and they don’t proffer up a ton of offerings. In fact, they currently only offer five; with the BlueAnt Q2 Headset ($100) positioned as their marquis headset.

After having his iPhone 4 literally stolen from his hand in a snatch-and-grab in San Francisco, Cabel Sasser was delighted to have it phone home two weeks later through Find My iPhone.

There was just one problem. The iPhone 4 was now 7,830 miles away. Here are the pictures, along with Cabel’s priceless reaction.

One of the big questions about Apple’s upcoming iTunes Match is how the online music service will handle songs acquired from non-standard sources, like analog LPs, or yes, file-sharing networks.

Coming this fall, iTunes Match will scan your iTunes library and make available in the cloud all the songs you’ve purchased online or ripped from CDs.

But Apple hasn’t explained what will happen with songs encoded from sources like tapes or LPs; or those couple of tracks you accidentally downloaded from a file-sharing network and forgot to delete. Will iTunes Match reject these songs or make them available?

In theory, the system should recognize most digitzed music. Apple has explicitly said it will not discriminate based on source, and someone likely ripped the songs from CD before sharing them with the world.

We’ve found a way for you to check how iTunes Match will treat your music library before Apple makes it public.

For almost twenty years now, Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software has been toiling away, a lone developer who has single-handedly produced a library of old-school RPGs that contains over fifteen separate games.

To put the scope of Vogel’s prolificness in perspective, imagine if Richard Garriott had made the entire Ultima series by his lonesome and you’ll have an idea of the creativity and single-mindedness on display here: Vogel has collectively put together thousands of hours of some of the most intricately written and smartly crafted RPGs in computer gaming history at a pace that would give some of the biggest game design houses a permanent case of creative whiplash.

Vogel’s most recent and popular games have long been available for the Mac, but his latest title, Avadon: The Black Fortress, marks development for an entirely new platform: the iPad. It’s worth getting excited for.

Every day, there’s another app bundle, and sometimes it seems like each is more forgettable than the last. Code Canyon’s Freelance Mac App Bundle is a wonderful exception: it’s the first app bundle we’ve seen in ages worth getting excited about.

Although Apple still sells a white model, the piano black plastic MacBook is much missed. It might be Back to Black time for the MacBook line, though, as several anonymous sources are now reporting that the Thunderbolt and Sandy Bridge equipped MacBook Air could get a black anodized aluminum finish when it lands in July.

While you can hardly blame Microsoft entirely for this one, you’d think they’d at least notice that the featured Dictionary application on their official Windows Phone page had stolen its icon wholesale from the competition. Could we get a slow clap, please?

[via Craig Hockenberry’s Twitter]

We start another week of deals with two iPod bargains and software to help archive your Mac files. First up is the iMotion Kick Portable iPod speakers from Altec Lansing. Next is a 2GB iPod shuffle for just $30. Finally, there is Entropy for the Mac, an archiving utility.

Along the way, we also check out other devices of interest to Mac fans. As usual, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

When can you expect iOS 5 to drop on your iPhone? September’s a given, but the latest rumor gives an exact date that all the ripples of the iCloud will come to your device… along with the iPhone 5.

Ever since the first iPhone, bloggers and pundits have wondered what it would be like if Apple actually baked an iOS emulator into a future version of OS X that supported multitouch displays. Something Dashboard-like, called up with a function key press. I bet it would look something like this.

Many companies have stared Apple in the eye over Cupertino’s App Store ultimatum to ban links to out-of-app purchases by June 30th. Now the first one to blink is the streaming video subscription service, Hulu.

Adobe just released an update to its Flash Builder and Flex development tools, and for the first time developers can use the programs to create apps for distribution through the App Store for iOS devices. But are cross-platform Flash apps on the iPhone and the iPad really a good idea?