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Rovio’s Angry Birds is one of most successful iOS games of all time and it seems like everyone who’s ever used an iOS device has played it. But it’s not just humans who enjoy catapulting birds into pigs: OptoFidelity has created a robot with the sole purpose of playing Angry Birds.

The Finnish company uses its robots for touch panel testing and performance testing for mobile devices using video and optical measuring systems, so they already had the components required, and say it wasn’t hard to build a system for “this particular need.” The difficulty was getting the robot to play through every level of the game and achieve a three-star rating for each one.

Microsoft’s latest attempt at persuading customers to buy a Windows PC rather than a Mac is an advertising campaign that compares the price of Apple machines with computers from Asus, Dell, HP, Sony, and others; and then asks buyers to “do the math” and look at the money they could save – which they could then spend on a trip to Hawaii.

For example, compare Apple’s MacBook Air with a selection of Windows netbooks and straight away you’ll notice the difference in price – with the MacBook Air listed at $1,049 compared to netbooks for as little as $299. We’ll ignore the fact that Microsoft has classed the MacBook Air as a netbook and move on to specifications.

A few months ago, we reported that AT&T is starting to crack down on iPhone tethering usage. Jailbroken users are able to tether without subscribing to an extra plan. Some new information has emerged regarding how AT&T determines who’s tethering.

One of the most interesting revelations of the Fortune piece “Inside Apple” that’s making headlines this weekend is how Steve Jobs thinks Apple will be OK without him.

Fortune reporter Adam Lashinsky writes:

“Jobs himself believes he has set Apple on a course to survive in his absence. He has created a culture that, while not particularly jolly, has internalized his ways.”

Kicking off this week’s selection of must-have iOS games is a brand new soccer game from X2 Games – the team behind the award-winning X2 Soccer titles. First Touch Soccer promises to be the true next-generation of soccer on iOS, offering the “most complete, realistic and addictive soccer sim available.”

Spider Jack is the latest puzzle release from Chillingo and I’m betting this game will be the next iOS game craze. Inspired by Cut the Rope, this game features a similar gameplay mechanic and all the ingredients needed to be a fantastic iOS puzzler.

Frisbee Forever is a whole new way to play frisbee and the only official frisbee game for iOS. It boasts super crisp 3D graphics and a frisbee experience like no other!

Find out more about the games above and check out Pulse: Volume One – this week’s final must-have – after the break!

GeekTool is a neat little System Preferences add-on that  lets you expand the usability of your desktop. Whether it be adding the time, date, weather, or even your Twitter feed, GeekTool can change your desktop from a boring backdrop to a useful information center. This video will show you how to setup GeekTool to fit your needs, as well as where to find many useful add-ons for it.

My wife and I sat down at a nice restaurant last week. Our table was right next to a larger party of four adults and two young children — both girls under the age of 7 years old or so.

Each of the girls had her own iPad, and each iPad had some high-end noise-cancellation headphones plugged in. One girl was engrossed in a children’s movie, and the other was enjoying a series of apps designed for kids.

So of course I whipped out MY iPad and blogged about it.

Granted, this scene took place in Silicon Valley, where there’s no such thing as an inappropriate social context for consumer technology and, in fact, in the very town where Steve Wozniak lives (Los Gatos). Still, it was a remarkable scene, and one that will be repeated across the nation as the iPad phenomenon spreads.

Letting kids use or own iPads is controversial. Parents, teachers and others aren’t so sure about letting kids get sucked into yet another electronic diversion. Pilot programs at a few schools around the country to experiment with iPad-based learning tools are often met with criticism by parents and teachers alike.

Everybody’s asking: Are iPads healthy for children?

I’m here to tell you: That’s the wrong question.

Chinese American Carol Chow runs a trendy bakery in Beijing called CCSweets. Her most popular items are iPhone cookies and iPad cakes, which take hours to make. One iPhone cookie costs about $35. An iPad cake costs almost as much as a real iPad.

Chow says the popularity of her desserts has spawned local imitators, who simply copy her designs. (I wonder if they’re really Android-based pastries under the frosting….)

Read the whole story and watch the video.

At the top of this week’s list of must-have iOS apps is the awesome comic creation tool that previously came bundled with Intel Macs. Comic Life from plasq allows you to use the photos in your iPad’s camera roll to create your own comic masterpieces.

Notificant is a brilliant new productivity app that makes is fast and simple to create reminders for the things you’d usually forget. Choose to have notifications alert you on your iPhone, as well as any of your other iOS or Mac devices.

Exploring your music collection has never been as stunning as it is with Planetary – a free iPad app that has climbed rapidly to the top of the free app charts. Fly through a 3D universe dynamically created by information about the recording artists you love.

Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves – including Cadence.fm and 4oD Catch Up – after the break!

As WWDC and the unveiling of iOS 5 approaches, we’re all wondering what Apple may or may not bring to its devices with the next major iOS release. One thing that could be introduced is speech recognition, courtesy of Nuance Communications – the company behind the Dragon Dictation applications for the iPhone and iPad.

According to a TechCrunch report that cites “multiple sources,” Apple has been negotiating a deal with Nuance which could see them integrate the company’s speech recognition technology into the iOS platform. While negotiations could have potentially been about an Apple takeover of Nuance, TechCrunch believes that at this point that’s unlikely.

Apple’s iOS updates lately have been interesting because they haven’t performed a complete restore and recovery of my data — in other words I didn’t have to reload all my apps, media, etc. after the firmware was updated. This happened recently with iOS 4.3.3 and previously with iOS 4.3.2.

In some cases after short firmware updates like these I’ve experienced problems with apps, my internet connection, multitasking, and a few other things. Here are some tips that will help you eliminate these problems if you encounter them.

I often take these basic iOS troubleshooting tips for granted and I thought that this would be a good time to share them with all of you.

The iPad 2 came to China this morning and sold out in less than 4 hours, according to our friends at M.I.C. Gadget.

Apple’s flagship store in Beijing attracted a massive crowd of customers and scalpers, who started lining up at 5 p.m. on Thursday. Overnight customers were treated well: there was a special waiting room for them to sleep in, and everyone got a wristband, allowing them to leave the line for an hour and return to their place in line.

There was even a special section for scalpers, who set up shop behind a barrier. Here’s the details:

When people look for cases and other accessories for their new gadgets, they tend to turn towards name-brand manufacturers. Me? I head straight for eBay. For years, I’ve purchased dozens upon dozens of cases and screen protectors for extremely good prices on eBay, and the quality of most of them were quite exceptional.

For less than $17, you can order a faux-leather iPad 2 case (in white), an iPad 2 screen protector, and a stylus. After about 2 weeks of using all of them, I’m ready to give you my verdict.

In an effort to appease the angered politicians in Washington, Apple is sending VP of Software, Bud Tribble, to the Senate hearing to discuss the storage of location data on iPhones. Location-Gate became one of the hottest topics concerning privacy and the use of cellular phones recently. At the center of the controversy, Apple quickly released an update to iOS (4.3.3) to amend the issue of iPhones storing user’s location data, which could possibly be acquired via a third-party to discern everywhere the user has been over the past few months. Senator Alan Franken has been the most vocal opponent of the recent discovery and was the one to initiate the hearing.

Bud Tribble has been with Apple since the 80’s, but as a Jobs loyalist, he left the company when Steve was ousted and became one of the founding members of NeXT, serving as the company’s VP of Software Development where he worked on projects that would later become the foundation for OS X.

We close another week of bargains and deals. In the spotlight are a number of Mac minis, starting at $599 for a 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo desktop. Next is a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad from the Apple Store for just $349. Finally, several leather iPad cases are available from rooCase.

Along the way, we also check out various accessories for your favorite Apple product, plus software for the Mac. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Last night, the iPhone-Dev Team updated redsn0w, PwnageTool, and ultrasn0w to take advantage of iOS 4.3.3. Fortunately, Apple didn’t patch i0nic’s exploits, so he just needed to update his untether exploit to work with iOS 4.3.3 on the usual set of devices. More information and IPSW download links below.

Shipment delays to the iPad during the last quarter were reportedly due to light leakage issues with displays produced by LG, according to a DigiTimes report. Apple’s other supply partners were forced to increase their shipments this quarter to rectify the shortage.

During the first quarter, Samsung supplied a total of 4 million 9.7-inch iPad panels, outpacing its rival, LG, who only shipped 3.2 million. It is believed, however, that now LG’s light leakage issues have been resolved, it will increase its supply of displays during the second quarter.

Review: Early 2011 Apple iMac (27-inch screen, 3.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i5)

Apple updated its venerable iMac this week with new machines that are fast, sleek, and beautifully packaged.

Sporting Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, powerful new graphics cards and Thunderbolt ports that can support two external monitors, the new iMac is the undisputed champion of all-in-one machines. Plus, it’s the only one out there that’s not butt ugly.

As well as being the most attractive desktop computer available, it offers just about everything modern computer users might need in a self-contained package, from a HD webcam to a gesture-sensitive trackpad.

I’ve been testing a 27-inch model with a 3.1Ghz Core i5 chip (the biggest, fastest stock model currently available at the Apple Store), and it may sound silly, but it’s almost too much machine for my needs. The screen is so big, I have to sit back lest I get motion sickness. And the i5 chip has power to spare for someone like me, who doesn’t do high-end video or graphics work.

Still, I’ll take it. If the chip is too powerful now, it sure won’t be in a couple of years.

Summer is upon us friends, and if you haven’t started losing that winter gut to get ready for the beach and other summer festivities now is as good a time as ever to get started. A lot of the guys here at Cult of Mac are fans of cycling and our favorite iPhone app for cycling workouts is the recently updated Cyclemeter ($4.99) by Abivo. One of the nicest things about the app is that it can be used not only for cycling but also running, swimming, or hiking. To celebrate the coming of summer, Abivo sent us 10 promo codes to give out today. We’ll be giving them out to 10 of our faithful Twitter followers on Saturday, May 7th at 10am PST.

Here’s how to enter the giveaway:

1: Follow Cult of Mac on Twitter (this contest is open to current followers and new followers).

2: Tweet the following line: “I need the new Cyclemeter app from @cultofmac because [insert your personal reason]”

3: 10 winners will be selected on Saturday morning at 10AM PST. I’ll DM the winners their promo codes.

Note: 5 Instant Winners will be chosen for the first 5 people who tweet us a picture of them riding a kids bike in Walmart.

Have fun, and good luck.

The hits just keep coming from Cupertino. Apple is breathing down the neck of cell phone giant Nokia, posting triple-digit year-over-year growth in smartphones — and climbing to the 35th spot on the Fortune 500 list of U.S. corporations.

Apple “not only continues to expand its reach in existing markets, it also keeps creating new ones,” lauds Fortune. The iPad maker not only “showed the world the power of tablet computing” but also introduced the iPad, “one of the most highly anticipated electronic products this year.” The tech giant rose more than 20 places on the vaunted list compared to 2010, when Apple ranked 56th.

Ben Hopkins is the developer of the forthcoming iOS platformer, 1-Bit Ninja, and while ostensibly the aesthetic he’s going for is that of the Game & Watch titles of his youth, the effect is much closer to early Gameboy titles. For my money, that’s a good thing, and has made 1-Bit Ninja a title to watch out for, even if its Fez-like 3D effect — in which the game world is rotated by a multitouch gesture to reveal its depth — appears to be a cool but ultimately pointless gimmick.

1-Bit Ninja is due out later this month.

The iPhone Dev-Team’s PwnageTool has just been updated for Mac OS X users to provide a stable jailbreak for the latest iOS 4.3.3 release. Just as before the application provides an untethered jailbreak for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad (1st-gen) and the iPod touch (3rd- & 4th-gen).

PwnageTool uses i0nic’s untethered exploit to safely install jailbroken 4.3.3 firmware whilst preserving your 1.59.00 baseband. This gives users the opportunity to continue to use UltraSn0w to unlock their device.

Like Mike Schramm over at TUAW, I love this photo of an iPhone that has been “aged to perfection”. In fact, it looks very similarly to the way my first iPhone looked a few years in.

No doubt Steve Jobs’ heart would stop if he saw one of his products looking this way, but in truth, that’s one of my issues with Apple’s products: they have never been designed to age gracefully, but instead, seemingly to exist in a vacuum of asceticism.

It’s something I have always liked about the first iPhone that it can handle scratches better than the models that followed it, as long as the display is protected. It’s hard to imagine that a workman’s iPhone 4 will look nearly as good despite its blemishes four years down the line.

According to Semiaccurate, Apple is working on a plan to migrate all of their MacBooks over to ultra-efficient ARM processors by 2013. But does that really make sense?

Other World Computing has just announced its latest Mercury Aura Pro Express solid-state drive designed for the latest generation of MacBook Airs. Boasting a whopping 480GB of storage, the upgrade offers nearly 4x more capacity than currently available from factory available SSDs, and is an incredible 68% faster.

As you’d expect from an SSD, however, especially one designed for the latest MacBook Air, these babies come at one heck of a price. The 480GB upgrade will set you back a staggering $1,579.99, but you’re not going to find this kind of storage for Apple’s ultra portable notebook anywhere else.