Cult of Mac

Sony surprised visitors to the Consumer Electronics Show back in January when the company announced its intentions to take second place in the tablet market within a year, despite not having a tablet under its name. But at a media launch in Tokyo on Tuesday, the company announced two new devices that will be coming to take on the iPad this fall.

Identified, for now, by the code names S1 and S2, the new Sony tablets will be powered by the latest Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system, and will both feature Wi-Fi and 3G/4G capabilities. The S1 will feature a 9.4-inch display and a Tegra 2 processor, with an “off-centre of gravity design.” It will also boast an IR port for controlling Sony’s line of Bravia televisions.

The S2 has two 5.5-inch displays with a foldable design; which can be used independently to display different functions, or together for browsing websites and other tasks.

Sony chose not to reveal any further details about either tablet, disclaiming that “design and specifications are subject to change without notice.” Both devices will be compatible with selected PlayStation games, and are scheduled for a worldwide launch this coming fall.

The S1 certainly looks like a pretty swanky tablet in the picture above, but I’m sure I like the foldable design that comes with the S2. Until we know more details about each device’s technical specifications, it’s hard to determine whether these Sony tablets will worthy adversaries for the iPad 2. However, I can’t imagine Sony would release them if they weren’t strong contenders.

[via AppleInsider]

It seems more and more likely that Wednesday will be the day the infamous white iPhone 4 is launched, finally putting an end to the rumors that have surrounded the device for the last 10 months since it was originally announced. There’s one more before the big day, however: it seems that only the 16GB model of the device will be available when it hits stores.

A UPS shipping invoice obtained by Boy Genius Report shows a shipment of 20 white iPhone 4 16GB units destined for one AT&T store, while there are no 32GB units to be seen. A separate report over the weekend claims that both models of the device were being shipped to Best Buy stores across the U.S., but inventory numbers for the 32GB device could not be confirmed.

If you’ve waited 10 months for a white iPhone 4, it seems you may be stuck with a 16GB model if you have no intention of waiting any longer.

It’s safe to assume the white iPhone 4 won’t be on the list of Apple’s best product launches.

No matter how harmless this whole iPhone tracking feature may be, some people still aren’t happy about it. While many of us have brushed it off and chosen to ignore what seems like something blown way out of proportion, others have decided to take things a little more seriously.

Now dubbed ‘Locationgate’, the issue has been the subject of class-action lawsuits and government investigations. But surely if users are really concerned about their iPhone tracking their every move, they can just turn location services off, right? Wrong.

The Wall Street Journal has revealed that even with location services disabled on the iPhone, the device continues to collect and store users’ location data with the help of cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots. This isn’t a dirty little secret, however; this is well within the rights of every cell phone maker. But what’s interesting, is that Apple seems to lie about it.

The iPhone LocationGate scandal continues to escalate.

Senator Al Franken has summoned Apple and Google to appear before a Senate judiciary hearing on mobile privacy in May.

We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!

Ok, so all jokes aside, it’s no secret that many of us here at CoM are fans of Leo Laporte and his immensely popular all-things-Apple show Macbreak Weekly.

Well, in a moment of questionable judgement, Leo invited me on Macbreak to talk all things Apple for two whole hours, and I humbly accepted.

If you could use a dose of live Apple news and entertaining banter tomorrow between the hours of 11am and 1pm Pacific time, please tune in: https://live.twit.tv.

If you haven’t had a good laugh today, you should check out this video that’s been circulating of “Steve Jobs” rehearsing his iPhone 5 introduction keynote.

It’s absolutely hilarious to me that anyone would think this video is real, especially after hearing Steve say the iPhone 5 is going to have its own version of smell-o-vision. I also didn’t realize Steve Jobs sounded a lot like George W. Bush, but he does in this video.

The best part though is when Steve decides it’s time to suit up in his “go-time” sneakers, does a quick in-place foot shuffle, then compares the airy weight of his newly donned sneakers to the lightness of the new iPhone 5.

[via Tuaw]

One feature that people have been asking for (for MobileSafari) is the ability to download files without relying on a third-party application. Well, there’s a jailbreak tweak for that, more appropriately named “Safari Download Manager”. It’s available in Cydia for $5, and does just what the name suggests. Not only does it work for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but it also works with the iPad.

Now this is cute – and it likely won’t last. Society6 studio Burb is offering a Steve Jobs in Carbonite case for the iPhone. Very touching. Keep your iDevice clean and snug with the essence of Apple retained.

Available for iPhone 4 and 3G/3Gs, $35. Act fast, Apple’s next Cease & Desist is likely on the way…

[via TUAW]

The next revision of Apple’s MacBook Pro lineup will boast a brand new case design for the first time since the aluminum unibody models were introduced in 2008. The current lineup of MacBook Pros – which was recently refreshed earlier this year to introduce a Thunderbolt port, Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, and new GPUs – will be the last revision before an all-new design.

A source for MacRumors has provided “reliable confirmation” that a redesign is currently in the works, however, there are currently no details on what the new MacBook Pro will look like:

Unfortunately, we have no specifics on what the next MacBook Pro might look like, though many have previously speculated that Apple will take cues from the MacBook Air line.

I’m sure previous speculation won’t be far off either. Apple’s latest MacBook Air has proven to be a huge success and at its unveiling back in October 2010, Steve Jobs hailed the device the “future of notebooks.”

My guess is that the next MacBook Pro will be at least thinner and lighter, with SSD storage and better battery life. If we’re really lucky we’ll get one of those Retina displays everyone’s talking about.

[Update] Thanks go out to all our followers who were really excited about the Mono Solar Charger. We had a lot of responses and wish we had a few more of these to give out, but there can only be one winner this time. Stay tuned for a new giveaway we’ll be announcing next week. And the winner is…..

DriveC “@cultofmac I will continue to hold the environment hostage unless my demands of one Solio Mono Solar Charger is met by 10AM PST on Thursday.”

Congratulations. Get in contact with me on Twitter in the next 48hours or I’ll be giving it to someone else.

Last week we reviewed Solio’s Mono Solar Charger (review here), and now here’s your chance to win the nifty device for yourself. We’re giving away one Solio Mono Solar Charger this week to one random reader. Here are the qualifications to be entered in the giveaway:

1) You must be one of our followers on Twitter. (if you’re already a follower there’s no need to un-follow and then follow again)

2) Write a tweet mentioning @cultofmac on why you want the Solio. (example: need Solio from @cultofmac cuz Steve Jobs refuses to give my iPhone a removable battery).

Only one entry per person. The winner will be chosen at random, but creativity will definitely help you get seen. Contest ends Thursday at 10AM PST.

Good luck.

We start the last week of April with three new deals. First up is an 8GB version of Apple’s current iPod nano for just $130. Next is the i.Sound Twin Charging dock for the iPod and iPhone. We wrap-up today’s spotlight with an anti-glare screen protector for your iPad 2.

Along the way, we also check out a discount on select iPad cases, as well as software for your Mac. As usual, details on these and many more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Boom. According to MIC Gadget, who aren’t about to start cutting off pinky fingers to testify the image’s veracity, the front panel on the right is for the next iPhone, featuring most notably a significantly (but not miraculously) thinner bezel.

It certainly looks legit enough. Rumors have had it that the next iPhone will largely be identical in hardware to the iPhone 4, but boast the new A5 chip, a larger screen real estate in the same form factor accomplished by narrowing the bezel, a modified antenna design and possibly a capacitive home button.

What do you think? Real or fake? Let us know in the comments.

When the new MacBook Airs shipped with Snow Leopard on USB disk drives, many of us hoped that the days of DVD-based operating system installs were behind us. Optical media is pretty much dead, after all, largely thanks to Apple’s successful push into digital delivery with their iTunes service. Sure, you need to ship operating systems physically somehow… but as more and more of us jettison our DVD drives, USB is just a heck of a lot more ubiquitous.

It doesn’t look like OS X 10.7 Lion will be the first Apple operating system to ship exclusively on USB drive, though. A listing for Lion has just popped up on German’s Amazon website, and it’s for a DVD, not a thumb drive. My guess is that users will have a choice at retail — how else to satisfy the need to upgrade of MacBook Air users like me? — but still, it’s a tad disappointing. Maybe Apple’s waiting to go all-in on flash media OS installs until it can be done through Thunderbolt?

[via AppleBitch]

If you’re on iOS 4.3.2 and fancy taking a joyride on another company’s network besides the one you are indentured to, good news: the iPhone Dev Team has released Ultrasnow 1.2.2, which will allow you to unlock iOS 4.3.2 on both the iPhone 4 and on the iPhone 3GS.

If you’re on the 3GS, you’ll need to be both jailbroken and on the 06.15.00 baseband, which is easy enough to do… *cough*.

Once accomplished and rocking either an iPhone 4 or an iPhone 3GS with baseband 06.15.00 restored, you’ll need to preserve the old baseband and grab Ultrasnow through Cydia. The process is a bit complicated, and sometimes results in test participant implosion, so follow this tutorial for a walkthrough on getting through the carrier unlock process safely.

In a typically terse email to a concerned iPhone customer, Apple CEO Steve Jobs thundered down some authoritative wisdom about the so-called iPhone LocationGate scandal: Apple isn’t tracking anyone, and if you think that Android isn’t tracking you, think again.

Apple has increased its supply commitments by more than a third to $11 billion – a record – during the March quarter, according to an SEC filing. The jump from $7.9 billion usually spent in that three-month period indicates the Cupertino, Calif. company is pulling out all stops to ensure it meets demand for the iPad 2 and expected iPhone 5.

“We believe the increase is attributable to procurement ahead of a tight supply environment and expected shipment increases in June (iPad) and September (iPad + iPhone),” Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty told investors.

Last month, President Obama almost smacked some goofus upside the head for insinuating he couldn’t get an iPad. “I’m the President of the United States. You think I’ve got a – you think I’ve got to go borrow somebody’s computer?” he said.

It was a perfect little moment of presidential sass, and the only way it could have been more perfect is if Obama had called his interlocutor a jive turkey before actually smashing him over the head with his iPad. However, questions abounded, including what flavor of iPad Obama favored: a first-gen model or the iPad 2?

Well, here’s your answer, courtesy of the White House’s Flickr account. The president owns an iPad 2 and what appears to be an unassuming gray polyurethane smart cover… a wise choice on the President’s part, given how prone to picking up Marmite and beer stains the leather covers are.

But one great, eternal question remains: does the president use the iPad 2 WiFi-only model, or the iPad 2 3G? Update: As a reader points out, it’s an iPad 2 3G!

[via TUAW]

We’ve been following the roll-out of iPads in schools, now principals are getting them too.

Much like city councilors, the administrators are using tax dollars for iPads to reduce paper and, to some extent, paperwork.

Case in point: in Salisbury, North Carolina, all seven principals in the district are using them to perform teacher evaluations, classroom walkthroughs and assessments, calendars . The highly totable tablet allows them to patrol the halls and take notes, potentially making them more present and active in school affairs.

The rationale seems sound, until you read this:

“I walked through rooms showing my iPad off to students, taking pictures and having conversations with kids about how technology makes learning more fun,” Nancy Barkemeyer principal of West Rowan Middle school said. “Having a new ‘toy’ helped me make connections with some kids.”

Still, aside from trying to impress the cool kids (do we ever stop trying?), it might be good that school principals get up to speed, tech-wise.

What do you think about spending tax dollars for administrator iPads?

Via Salisbury Post

Tablets are set to create 17 percent of all wireless data demand by 2020. Already, the media-saavy tablet category creates five times as much data traffic as the average smartphone. The tablet’s demand on the network is growing at 30 percent per year, according to Goldman Sachs.

As an illustration, the Cisco Global Mobile Date Forecast says the average data traffic in 2010 per tablet was around 405MB each month. By comparison, a smartphone generates 79MB of data traffic each month.

Here’s the official caption:

Filmmaker Spike Lee uses his iPad to photograph President Barack Obama as he greets guests at the National Action Network’s Keepers of the Dream awards gala in New York, N.Y., April 6, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).

But I know you guys can do better than that.

Keep it clean, play nice and make our drizzly San Francisco Monday.

Photo Via White House Flickr stream

A new jailbreak tweak that’s just hit Cydia enhances your Tweetbot experience by introducing a ‘now playing’ feature – enabling you to tweet the music you’re currently listening to at the tap of a button.

The simple hack adds a new button to the window in which you compose your tweets – and one tap will insert the artist and the name of the song you’re listening to, in addition to the ‘#nowplaying’ hash tag.

While there are other third-party Twitter clients that support this feature straight from the App Store, there aren’t many to choose from. And if you’ve already fallen in love with Tweetbot, this tweak is a great add-on. It’s free to download – all you have to do is search for ‘Now Playing for Tweetbot‘ within Cydia.

We loved the Tweetbot app from Tapbots in our review, and this extra little bit of functionality makes it even greater for music lovers. It’s also another great example of the way in which applications can be improved with minor jailbreak tweaks.

[via iPhone Download Blog]

This week’s roundup of must-have iOS games includes the second episode in a series of five Back to the Future games from Telltale – with a brand new story for Marty and Doc.

We’ve also got Real Racing 2 HD – which has just been updated to feature dual-screen gaming, allowing you to connect your iPad to your HDTV and enjoy the ultimate racing game at 1080p.

Final Fantasy III also makes our list of favorites. This 90s classic has been around on the iPhone for a few weeks, but it now features new and improved 3D visuals and story sequences exclusive to the iPad.

Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of this week’s must-have’s – including Bunny the Zombie Slayer and NBA Jam – after the break!

High resolution artwork discovered in the latest build of Mac OS X Lion has generated rumors that Apple could be planning to bring a Retina display to the Mac. Preview 2 of Lion, which was released in late March, features icons in sizes up to 1024×1024, and a desktop background at a resolution of 3200×3200.

The new Lion wallpaper was discovered at the beginning of April by OSXDaily, and was noted for its ultra-high resolution which no Apple display has ever supported. The new icons – which are double the size of the current 512×512 Mac OS X icons – were discovered over the weekend by MacMagazine.com.br.

Considering there is currently no need for icons or wallpapers of this size, these discoveries would suggest Apple is working on bringing a better display to the Mac. MacRumors notes that Apple has built-in Support for HiDPI display modes in Lion:

Taking cues from iOS, Apple has reportedly built in support for what it calls “HiDPI display modes”. These HiDPI modes allow developers to supply 2x-enlarged images to support double-high resolution displays. Like the iPhone 4’s Retina Display, this means that user interface elements will remain the same size, but everything will be twice the resolution and therefore twice as detailed.

While a Retina display Mac would be pretty neat, I would much prefer one in my iPad first.

After 86 hours of downtime, the man behind Cydia has confirmed that the app is finally back online following an issue with Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service. In a message posted to Twitter on Sunday night, Jay Freeman – better known as Saurik – wrote:

After 86 hours offline, Cydia is finally back! I’m eating some celebratory cake, and am looking forward to a night with >1.5 hours of sleep!

The downtime limited Cydia’s functionality for all users, and meant purchasing packages, using the Theme Centre, and managing Cydia accounts was near impossible.

Though some users may have had some success with accessing these services more recently, there were still intermittent periods of downtime as Amazon’s EC2 service slowly came back online.

All issues seem to have been completely ironed out now and Cydia is fully functioning for all. Hooray!

[via iPhone Download Blog]

Pictures taken by a source at Best Buy reveal that the retailer’s inventory database is currently listing an April 27th launch date for the elusive white iPhone 4. The device featured in the pictures is the GSM model – which supports the AT&T network – though it is expected that the CDMA model designed for Verizon will launch on the same day.

One report over the weekend claims that 16GB and 32GB models of the white iPhone 4 have already been shipped to Best Buy stores located throughout the U.S. – with around 10 16GB models on order for each store. Inventory numbers for the 32GB are currently unconfirmed.