Cult of Mac

After a ten month delay officially blamed on needing to put “more UV protection” into the mix (and unofficially blamed on light leaking onto the camera sensor), the mythical white iPhone 4 is here.

It’s available now on Apple’s official site in both AT&T and Verizon flavors, but be warned: there’s a 3-5 business day ship time, and that number’s probably only going to go up. If you want one today, go to a store.

The best comment on the white iPhone 4 I’ve seen today comes courtesy of Twitter’s AmyJane, who writes: “Got white iPhone email from Apple. Thought, “What kind of ass buys a new iPhone now?” Exactly 10s later I dropped and shattered my iPhone.”

AT&T’s issued its second warning to jailbreak tetherers: either sign up for their official Personal Hotspot tethering plan, which costs $45 for 4GB, or AT&T will upgrade your mobile data plan for you.

Between last year’s arterial spray of unreleased Apple products leaking in Vietnam and the surplus of presciently iPad 2 cases popping up in Asia months before Apple unveiled the second-gen tablet, it’s been pretty clear for awhile that Foxconn needed to get its house in order. They had some pretty bad leaks, and given Apple’s notorious secrecy concerning future products, heads were bound to roll.

Now they have. Digitimes is reporting that three Foxconn employees have been arrested for leaking the iPad 2 design weeks (editor’s not: weeks? Try months) before apple’s official announcement.

In a recent study by National Geographic co-sponsored by Nintendo Power magazine, it was found that the only people on Earth who have never heard of that strange, mushroom-gobbling, Koopa-smashing plumber, Mario, are the natives of certain Papua New Guinea aboriginal tribes. So I guess we know where Apple is outsourcing the App Store review process: a shameless rip-off of Super Mario Bros, using Nintendo’s trademarked assets, has hit the hit the iOS App Store.

If the PC industry was waiting for a reason to embrace the tablet, they need only talk to the folks at Canalys. The research firm – the first to view tablets as PCs – said Thursday PC sales experienced 187.9 percent year-over-year growth when the iPad was lumped in with sales.

Apple was displaced by Dell from the No. 3 spot it held during the last quarter of 2010 by just a measly 1.5 million units. However, the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant shipped 74 percent of the 6.4 million tablets sold during the first quarter, the research firm announced.

Fring – the popular video chat and VoIP application for iPhone and iPod touch – has just been updated to introduce group video calling with up to three other people. It’s the first application in the App Store to offer this feature, and it’s completely free.

To use Fring for video calling, you will obviously need a compatible device, such as the iPhone 4, the iPad 2, and the latest iPod touch. Fring is also available on compatible Android devices and supports cross-platform communication, so you can call and video chat between iOS and Android. The application works over 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi.

Fring uses a feature called ‘Dynamic Video Quality’ (DVC) that automatically and continuously adjusts your video call quality to match your connectivity; which its developers say provides you with the best audio and video quality possible.

If you’ve tried the new group video calling feature, let us know what it’s like in the comments.

PAH! I say to you. PAH!

Not because I despise what you say, but because I’m playing PAH!, and when you’re playing PAH!, you end up saying PAH! quite a lot.

PAH! is an iOS game with a twist. You don’t need any hands to play it, you only need a voice.

Pop quiz app Revinyl recently got updated and now comes with a killer new feature: direct access to the full iTunes music database.

While the vast majority of us gave up hope on the white iPhone 4 and just bought the black one instead, one analyst believes that the white device’s “mystique and scarcity value” could generate 1-1.5 million sales per quarter for Apple. Brian White, an analyst at Ticonderoga, believes the delay in the white iPhone’s release could drive sales.

Speaking to The San Jose Mercury News, White said:

The purchase of consumer electronic devices is not always a completely rational decision, and people buy Apple products for many different reasons, including status, aesthetics, functionality, quality and the ‘cool factor.’

In our view, this delay has created a certain mystique and scarcity value around the white iPhone 4 that we believe could drive incremental iPhone 4 purchases in the range of 1 million to 1.5 million units per quarter until the iPhone 5 potentially comes to market in September.

The white iPhone 4 finally went on sale today – 10 months after it was announced. Various manufacturing difficulties were blamed for its delay, and at times many speculated the device would never make it to market. A Cult of Mac poll yesterday revealed that only 12.41% of readers will buy the white iPhone, while 40.98% said they were now waiting for the next generation of the device.

[via MacLife]

Bob Mansfield is Apple’s Senior Vice President of hardware engineering, who earlier this week sold 99% of his shares in the company for $13.7 million, according to an SEC filing. Mansfield frequently trades his Apple stock; selling shares while they’re at their peak, then buying more as they fall with a 15% employee discount. His latest sale is his largest so far.

On Monday, Mansfield reportedly sold 38,863 of his Apple shares – leaving him with just 501 – each worth $351.89. Over the last three years, Mansfield has sold almost $58.5 million worth of investments, taking home $37.9 million after taxes.

Apple has reportedly purchased the iCloud.com domain for the new cloud-based storage service it is currently working on, paying $4.5 million to the previous owners who have now rebranded their service. Visitors to iCloud.com are currently redirected to the new service – now called CloudMe – but it is believed Apple will take over the domain when it’s ready.

The report comes from GigaOm, who cites a source familiar with the company:

My source, who is familiar with the company, says that Xcerion has sold the domain to Apple for about $4.5 million. Xcerion hasn’t responded to my queries as yet. At the time of writing, the Whois database showed Xcerion as the owner of iCloud.

MacRumors also received some information on the iCloud rebranding last week, but were unable to obtain enough information at the time to link the change to an Apple takeover.

Apple’s upcoming cloud-based storage service – also dubbed a ‘music locker’ – will purportedly be a solution for storing music and other content online which can then be streamed to internet connected devices, such as the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

The most recent speculation has suggested that Apple is currently in the process of signing deals with all of the major music labels and getting the service ready for launch. An announcement is expected at WWDC in June.

A crash report received by iOS developer FutureTap reveals that Apple is currently field testing the next major release of its iOS firmware using third-party applications from the App Store. In a message posted to Twitter, FutureTap discloses a crash log from a device running iOS 5.0:

Just received the first iOS 5.0 crash report. MKUserLocationBreadCrumb sounds interesting.

FutureTap followed up the message with a screenshot (above) of the crash log, highlighting the “MKUserLocationBreadCrumb” API. MKUserLocation is part of the iOS MapKit Framework, which is used to find your device’s current location; while the “BreadCrumb” element is said to indicate a new tracking feature.

It’s possible the new feature has something to do with the new mapping technology that Apple revealed it was working on in a press release yesterday, however, this isn’t expected to appear as a finished product for another couple of years.

While there’s nothing major here, this crash report reveals – unsurprisingly – that Apple is readying its iOS 5 firmware for its announcement at WWDC in June. We will probably see its release alongside the fifth-generation iPhone – expected this fall.

[via AppleInsider]

To create buzz at the Seattle premiere of Mike Daisey’s excellent “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” the host theater threw a lookalike contest.

Maybe you had to be imbibing the complimentary Appletinis (har!) to appreciate it, but none of these guys, or the gal, who participated look much like Steve Jobs.

Note to self: a black turtleneck does not an icon make.

But you can still catch the play until May 22.

Via Geekwire

Car manufacturers are finally developing better ways to hook your iPhone into your car.

Check out this video demo showing how BMW is integrating the iPhone into car entertainment systems.

Patched in through BMW’s iDrive system, the iPhone can can be used to play music, web radio, or send updates and messages to Facebook and Twitter.

“This suite of technologies allows smartphone features — the things people really love on their smartphone — to be integrated in a safe, easy-to-use way in your BMW,” says BMW Technology Group senior engineer Rob Passaro in the video.

“The great thing about this is, as Apple updates new features on its iPod, we get it automatically. You don’t have to go to the dealership to get these functions in your car as soon as they are available.”

Check it out:

Steve Jobs and Larry Page have been invited to testify at the May 10 senate hearing on privacy and mobile telephones.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy extended the invitation, saying in a letter to the two that: “like many Americans, I read with deep concern recent press reports indicating that” the devices “collect, store and track user location data without the user’s consent.”

The white iPhone 4 is finally going to be released tomorrow after nearly a year of questions, speculation, and overall doubt. The real questions is, are you going to buy one? Please participate in the poll below. There are plenty of choices to choose from, so the results should be interesting!

[polldaddy poll=4980606]

Happy voting!

The touch-tablet market is still in its cradle and already Apple has won. The iPad now has a lead so vast that it will not and cannot be dislodged from its position of dominance.

Fans of competing platforms don’t want to hear this, of course.

The Google Android faction believes that — finally! — a real, shipping tablet-specific version of open-source Android exists, so a tsunami of iPad-killer Android devices will now quickly overwhelm and surpass the iPad. This is wishful thinking based on a false belief and an inadequate appreciation for the primacy of apps and the destructive power of platform fragmentation.

Read the whole story here.

Those maverick statisticians over at Retrevo have put together one of their smartphone landscape studies, finding that most consumers feel that their smartphones are either obsolete or will soon be obsolete.

That’s sort of a no-duh claim at first, but when you actually look at the numbers, smartphone makers are actually making new and better smartphones faster than consumers can possibly buy them.

Look at that chart above: during the last year alone, Samsung released over 30 new smartphones, while HTC released over 20 new smartphones. If you purchased a Samsung or HTC phone even as recently as a few months ago, there’s a good chance it’s already behind the tech curve.

The notable exception here? Apple. Ignoring the slight hardware changes of the Verizon iPhone 4 and white iPhone 4, Apple’s only released two smartphones over the course of the last two years: the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4.

Better yet, Apple historically has only radically redesigned the iPhone every two years. That means if you buy an iPhone shortly after it comes out, you can be reasonably sure it won’t be totally obsolete before your contract is up. What are the argument for buying an Android smartphone again?

Sometimes Dashboard can seem like a hassle. While it can be very handy for quick tasks, having to open a specific application to access these widgets can become cumbersome. It is also impossible to perform other tasks while using these widgets. Well, a simple command can fix all of that, and let you enjoy widgets alongside Mac OS X applications. Find out what to do in this video.

If you like to manage your photos on your iPad but prefer Lightroom’s rich feature set to iPhoto or Aperture, meet Photosmith, an app for the iPad that allows you to do all of your Lightroom organizing, rotating, sorting, metadata editing, labeling and keywording.

All you do is import your photos into Photosmith using your method of choice — Camera Connection Kit, EyeFi card, email, etc — then do all of the light editing and organizing on your iPad. When you get back to your main computer, a Photosmith plugin for Lightroom slurps the images into your library, ready for editing.

Don’t want to wait to get home to share? No problem. You can export your photos using Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox or e-mail.

This is a pretty cool program for the die-hard photographer working within Lightroom. On your next vacation, you can leave the laptop at home and just bring along your iPad for most of your on-the-go needs. $18. [via Gadget Lab]

We start the day with two MacBooks in the spotlight, along with several cases for the iPad. First up is a number of MacBook Air laptops from the Apple Store, starting at $849 for a 64GB SSD model. Next is a crystal silicone case for the iPad, just one of many listed today. We wrap up the spotlight with a number of MacBook Pro units, starting at $929 for a 2.4GHz model from the Apple Store.

Along the way, we check out a deal on an 8Gn iPod nano, as well as software for your Mac. As always, details on these and many other bargains can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

The white iPhone 4 will be here shortly, and given Apple’s difficulty getting it to market, you could be forgiven for thinking that it is in some way unique compared to the regular iPhone 4 besides chromatically. But nope, it’s basically just an albino iPhone 4, albeit with a different proximity sensor design… and it’s just as prone (or not prone, depending on your personal feelings on the extent of the problem) to the fabled iPhone 4 “death grip” as its predecessor, as this video from Italian Apple blog iSpazio makes clear.

End result? White iPhone 4 drops a bar, but signal isn’t otherwise compromised. Someone alert Consumer Reports: they haven’t had a tizzy about the iPhone 4 lately.

Stuck on an ancient PPC Mac? That’s cool: they’re still great machines, and I have an old Powerbook I keep around as a guest laptop myself. The problem, unfortunately, is that while these machines are still quite excellent at lighter computing tasks, the thing they have primarily been good for — doing some light browsing and emailing — has become more and more difficult, thanks to the heady advances of HTML5 and CSS3, and the decision of browser makers to leave the PPC architecture behind.

Mozilla’s excellent Firefox browser decided with version 4 to drop support for the PPC architecture, but thankfully, there’s TenFourFox, which takes Firefox 4 and gets it up and running under OS X 10.4 and 10.5, with precisely tuned builds for each PPC processor.

What does this mean? Firefox 4’s advanced Javascript engine, WebM video support, HTML5 and CSS3 on your old Mac. That old Mac just might have some Facebooking in it left yet.

[via TUAW]

Gameloft is famous for using hugely popular games as the inspiration for some of its iOS releases. For example, Modern Combat 2 is not too dissimilar to Modern Warfare 2; N.O.V.A. bears some resemblance to Halo, and Starfront’s similarities to Starcraft are uncanny. As a keen iOS gamer, I like this. Though some game developers are beginning to offer iOS versions of their most popular releases, some still aren’t, and I admire how Gameloft offers a substitute to some of my favorite console and PC games.

Gameloft’s latest release is called Order & Chaos Online – and is their iOS answer to World of Warcraft (WoW). It just hit the App Store and comes with a $6.99 (universal) price tag. That’s not too bad for an iOS game, but you’ll also need to pay a subscription fee. You get three months free when you first login, and to continue playing after that you’ll have to pay $0.99 per month, $1.99 for three months, or $2.99 for six months.

Order & Chaos Online is a true real-time, full 3D massively multiplayer online role playing game, or ‘MMORPG’. It features a vast fantasy world for your to explore with thousands of other players from around the world. When you begin the game, you use the character creation system to cuztomize your hero.

Trying to answer the perilous question why they were storing cell phone tower data to begin with in their response to the iPhone tracking furor earlier today, Apple has disclosed a future product: a crowd-sourced database, using iPhone users as a way to determine arterial congestion… of the traffic variety, not circulatory.