Cult of Mac

When it comes to mobile, Microsoft has been caught with its pants down twice in the last four years.

The first time was when the original iPhone completely turned the smartphone industry upside down overnight back in 2007. Microsoft was so slow to respond that by the time they released their first true touch-based operating system, Windows Phone 7, in November of last year, they had gone from a dominant player in the smartphone market to losing almost all of their market share.

Before Microsoft could even get Windows Phone 7 out the door, though, it happened again. Apple released the iPad in 2010, and this time, iOS didn’t just revolutionize smartphones… it attacked the very foundations of Microsoft’s Windows empire itself, cannibalizing laptop sales and utterly destroying the netbook market.

Creating a new iOS app can be a daunting task. Keeping track of all the ideas, pricing schemes, graphics, and collaborations can leave a developer feel swamped. The guys behind App Cooker hope to solve all those problems by providing the most advanced iOS mockup tool made exclusively for the iPad.

Jam packed with incredible features, App Cooker aims to be a must-have tool for all app developers and designers. Here’s a quick video of some of the things App Cooker can do for you:

After almost a decade of turning a blind eye to speculators squatting on domain names prominently featuring Apple’s trademarks, Cupertino is finally trying to take back iPods.com. Once it has the domain, though, what does Apple plan to do with it?

Apple last update for iwork.com was released in January this year. Users were notified via e-mail, that enhancements to iWork.com Apple’s public beta online service for iWork ’09 users had been released.

This announcement came out of the blue at the time regarding a service that has definitely been off the radar for a long time and in beta for longer than I can remember. It’s future isn’t clear considering the pace at which Apple is deploying features on it. Perhaps that will change this year with the rumored release of iWork ’11 and the imminent release of Apple’s iCloud services at WWDC 2011 next week.

Now that ex-Microsoft business veep Stephen Elop has taken over the floundering handset giant Nokia and inked deals with his old employer to use their mobile operating system, you’d think he’d want his employees to start using Windows Phone 7 handsets… preferably Nokia ones.

Not so. He wants them using iPhones.

In the bizzaro land of both tech marketing and Wall Street analysis, reality can sometimes become twisted. For example, despite the long struggle to get Verizon onboard, one observer suggests Apple could leave them behind in the dust with the next iPhone by launching with 4G support on AT&T’s network only.

Have you ever been invited to a meeting but you have no idea where it’s located or how long it will take you to get there? Well, in the future your iPhone may be able to tell you through dynamic calendar alerts.

When MobileMe gets rebranded as iCloud on Monday, it’s most anticipated feature is the ability to scan your iTunes library and automatically mirroring it in the cloud without uploading a single audio file. The big question about scan and sync has been whether it will only work with tracks purchased in iTunes, or if it’ll work with tracks ripped from CDs, purchased from Amazon MP3 or — yes — even pirated. Apparently so… because Apple will pay the record industry for every pirated track.

We’re going to take this one with a big ole’ grain of salt: a 17-year-old Chinese kid is said to have swapped a kidney for an iPad.

A young man known as  “Zheng” contacted an underground organ trafficking outfit via the internet to sell his right kidney for about 20,000 RMB, circa US$9,000 dollars.

We don’t know where this came from.

We don’t know who made it (J.G. Thirlwell, perhaps?).

We don’t even know if there’s an iPad or iPad 2 ensconced within this case’s leathery, plush-lined folds.

We’d love to find out (tell us if you know), but until we do, mere ignorance will not stop us from posting this exquisite iPad Case, because all we can see is that gorgeously medieval gold emblem, showing Isaac Newton lazing under an apple tree, waiting for the full weight of gravity to come crashing down on his head. That was Apple’s original logo back in 1976.

As Apple retail stores begin to clear their inventories of the AirPort and Time Capsule wireless networking devices, could Apple be planning a refresh for these devices during WWDC next week?

With just 4 days to go until this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference and the unveiling of Apple’s new iCloud service, the company decided now would be a good time to take control of its $4.5 million purchase for the domain.

GarageBand and iMovie for iOS, and while iMovie’s update is just a bug fix patch, GarageBand has gotten some more meaty improvements.

The iPad is so hot companies were trying to promote themselves by given them away before Steve Jobs even launched it.

Now it seems that Apple now starting to enforce a lengthy series of guidelines with would-be promoters that may signal the end of iPad giveaways. 

I love this little mini-episode of How It’s Made. It takes an almost antediluvian bit of tech — rolls for automated player pianos — and then shows how two Apple computers almost as ancient help make them.

Making rumors that Apple would be integrating Twitter support directly into iOS’s photo sharing functionality just a little more likely, Twitter has just announced that they are baking native photo sharing into the microblogging service. Is this just the laying of groundwork for a more unified iOS/Twitter experience?

XtremeMac recently released a thin plastic snap-on shell that covers the back of the iPad 2 called the Microshield ($35). It ships as is with no other options and the minimalist case leaves you wondering about who it was made to appeal to and the use of the word “shield” in selecting a name for it is misleading.

If Apple releases Mac OS X 10.7 Lion at next week’s WWDC, not only could it gain its own “Find My Mac” feature, but it could allow you to remotely wipe your hard drive even if the perp who stole your Mac isn’t logged into the computer.

Next week, Apple will finally confirm years of rumors of taking iTunes to the cloud and unveil iCloud, their media locker service that will automatically scan and match your existing iTunes library for streaming to any iOS device.

In some ways, though, iCloud’s taken too long to get here. The era of unlimited bandwidth is over. In the last year we’ve seen both mobile carriers and ISP broadband providers impose severe data caps on their users. The vast majority of iPhone and iPad customers only have 2GB of data per month to play with. How much media can you really stream with a 2GB data cap?

Let’s find out!

We start June with two deals on MacBooks and some iPad 2 cases deeply discounted. First up is a MacBook bundle, including a 2.3GHz Core i5 processor with 8GB of RAM for $1,449. Next is a number of MacBook Air machines, starting at $829 for a 1.4GHz machine with an 11.6-inch screen and 64GB of SSD memory. Finally, we wrap up today’s spotlight with 70 percent off on select iPad 2 cases, including a Snap On case in five colors.

Along the way, we also check out iPhone 4 cases, as well as software for your Mac. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

When we talk of cat-and-mouse within the context of Apple, we’re usually talking about Apple vs. jailbreakers, but it seems there’s a new mouse in town: Mac Defender.

Less than a day after Apple released a new security update nuking Mac Defender from orbit, a new variant has appeared that skirts around the protections of the update.

While tablets might be a revolution for everyone else, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings thinks they’re a bore. Where it’s really at? The Apple TV.

Apple updated its iWork applications for iOS yesterday to include support for the iPhone and iPod touch, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them. As a regular user of Keynote, Numbers and Pages on the iPad, I have been patiently waiting for their iPhone counterparts for some time – and these are well worth the wait.

Here’s an added incentive to upgrade to Apple’s soon-to-be-released Mac OS X ‘Lion’: free iCloud services.

PC executives have seen their profits and marketshare so decimated by iPad that they now having to make the ultimate sacrifice: slightly smaller bonuses.