Now that several reports show the iPad eating into sales of traditional low-cost PCs, the blame game has begun – starting with Acer. You may recall Apple sales in the U.S. recently surpassed Acer, which fell 42 percent. The computer maker’s former CEO now blames the company’s slowness in responding to the iPad threat.

“I already saw if we want to become a major player in this new world, we needed to do certain investments, mainly on software and on smartphones and tablets, on touch,” ex-CEO Gianfranco Lanci told a blog earlier this week. Lanci resigned in late March amid reports he was blamed for the iPad cannibalizing Acer’s market.

iAd slots in iOS applications designed for children will no longer be filled with adverts, according to an email one developer has received from Apple.

Mike Zornek, the developer of the Dex a Pokemon browser application for iPhone and iPod touch, noticed that his iAd fill rates had dropped and emailed Apple’s iAd Support Team for an explanation:

OCZ has just announced its Agility 3 and Solid 3 series of 2.5-inch solid-state drives aimed at users dying to get their hands on a super-speedy SSD, but with a tight budget to contend with.

While the iPad has seemingly countless uses, one fairly uncommon one is the ability to use it as an external display for your Mac. iDisplay, a simple little app from the App Store, lets you achieve this. After all, if you already have the iPad, why not use it to your advantage? This video will show you how to set up iDisplay and tweak it to your liking.

Last fall we reported on the sale of Apple 1 system #82, which sold at a Christie’s auction for over $213,000. A rare piece of computing history, many wondered what the buyer, Italian businessman Marco Boglione, planned to do with his prize purchase.

Turns out like many collectors of old tech, Boglione wanted to fire that puppy up and relive the past! The system was brought to Politecnico di Torino University in Turin, Italy. After a careful power-up sequence designed to gracefully coax 35-year-old transistors back to life, the Apple 1 ran a simple BASIC program displaying the words “Hello Polito” on an old NTSC monitor – to honor the university and (presumably) the famous “Hello, World” program many students of programming are familiar with.

In a fitting meeting of old and new, a MacBook Pro was used to send control instructions to the Apple 1.

Those who are familiar with my long smoldering side-joint, Ectomo, know I might have a little bit of thing for the Eldritch, the R’lyehian, the Nyarlathotepesque. Cthulhu, in other words.

So I’m sure you’ll excuse the steaming pool of ejaculated central nervous system at my feet as I write this, because I got a little bit excited when I heard tell that indie dev Red Wasp Design is bringing Call of Cuthulhu: The Wasted Land to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

See that? It’s a just-awarded patent for an iPad boasting a landscape-oriented dock connector port in addition to the regular port-oriented one.

I’m sure there’s at least a few of you guys out there who are looking at that line-drawing and clawing strips of flesh out of your face in frustration: “ARGH… WHY DIDN’T APPLE RELEASE THAT?” Sorry, guys. The Department of Redundancy Department called, and they wanted their port back.

As promised, Apple sent V.P. Guy Tribble to Washington to address Senator Al Franken and other stuffy politicians about the so-called LocationGate scandal.

Cupertino’s message? Same as it ever was: we don’t track user locations. Period.

“We do not share customer information with third parties without our customers’ explicit consent. Apple does not track users’ locations. Apple has never done so and has no plans to do so,” said Tribble.

Curiously, while Apple may not track users’ locations, the United States Department of Justice would like mobile providers to start, allowing the Department of Justice to attain records that would “enable law enforcement to identify a suspect’s smartphone based on the IP addresses collected by Web sites that the suspect visited.”

What’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily what’s good for the gander. Apparently, it’s only okay for the government to keep track of what you do with your smartphone, not Apple.

Supposedly, what you see on the left here is the new iPod Nano, complete with 1.3 megapixel camera and with the clip removed. Consider us skeptical that Apple would ditch the Nano’s sports cred for anything as utterly superfluous as camming yet another camera into people’s pockets.

Just like their first kit for the original iPad, ModulR have released a case set of modular accessories for the iPad 2. At the heart of the system is a $40 iPad 2 case (with included hand strap) that features attachment points to which a whole slew of industrial-looking modular accessories can be attached, like a shoulder strap ($20) or a magnetic fridge mount ($15).

ModulR didn’t just resize the old set and slap it onto the iPad 2 — they say they’ve reworked it from the ground up, incorporating user feedback from the original set, resulting in a slimmer case and the ability to customize cases with a corporate logo. Which means it’s probably only a matter of time before a BMW ad features hard-hat wearing workers on the factory floor walking around with BMW-emblazoned iPads, right.

Apple has infamously railed on Google for being fragmented on multiple occasions, lambasting the Android-maker for allowing carriers and handset manufacturers to dictate the terms of updating the Android software.

Cupertino was right to criticize: the vast majority of Android smartphone users couldn’t even be reasonably sure before now that they’d even be able to update their operating system in the future. But Google’s made a big step today towards addressing Android fragmentation: they’ve announced a partnership with carriers and handset manufacturers that guarantees that new smartphones will receive Android platform updates for a minimum of eighteen months.

Following the announcement of their new cloud-based music service, Google today unveiled the latest version of their Android mobile operating system.

Code-named Ice Cream Sandwich, the next update is mostly dedicated to converging Android’s diverging smartphone and tablet code branches into a single united trunk.

If that sounds familiar, it should: it’s exactly what Apple had to do when it forked the iOS code for the original iPad’s release. At the time, the iPhone and iPod Touch were on version 3.1.3, while the iPad shipped with version 3.2.

We start the day with three hardware deals. First up is a number of new iMac desktops, beginning with a 2.5GHz Quad Core and 21.5-inch screen for $1,105. Next is several MacBook Pro laptops, starting at $899 for a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo. Finally, another Apple LED Cinema Display for $849.

Along the way, we also check out a number of cases for the iPad 2, iPad and iPod nano, 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.

An analyst believes that as soon as this year, Apple will rip the Intel right out of the MacBook Air and transfuse an ARM-based chip in its place, maybe even some successor to the iPad 2’s A5 SoC. But that’s just stupid. Isn’t it?

Ably beating Apple for a change, Google has just joined Amazon in unveiling their cloud-based music service at this year’s Google I/O conference… but it’s still hard to believe that Cupertino won’t be able to clobber Google Music once iTunes joins the cloud, especially given the new service’s reliance upon Adobe Flash.

It is quickly becoming clear that the end of the PC-era is approaching as consumers rapidly adopt mobile alternatives, such as the Apple iPhone and iPad. Intel, which powered many PCs, could be left in the dust, warns a former Apple executive. “Now that the PC market is in its twilight, with mobile devices proliferating and stealing growth from the PC, surely Intel has got to get into the race,” writes Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive now with venture-capital firm Allegis Capital.

Gassée, who headed Apple Macintosh development in the 1980s under then-CEO John Sculley, writing in his blog “Monday Note”, slammed the chip giant for its “complete absence from the mobile scene. Not a single smartphone contains an x86 processor.”

Karelia Software announced a major upgrade to the company’s flagship Sandvox product Tuesday, making it possible even for CEOs to quickly and easily build a website.

Far simpler than Dreamweaver yet more flexible and robust than iWeb, Sandvox 2.0 is designed for Mac and brings fully competent web design within the realm of possibility for those with nothing more than a desire for presence on the Internet and a vague idea of what it should look like.

Its palette of stock site designs aren’t especially cutting-edge but what Sandvox does offer is clean and uncluttered, with a range of inoffensive color themes that should appeal to the wide audience of individuals and small business owners who may be flummoxed by an infinite variety of web-publishing platforms — and don’t want to pay an actual web designer to build an attractive, functional website.

Touting it as the first app-as-schoolwork project in the U.S., the kids at North Heights Alternative School in Amarillo, Texas are at work on an app called Amarillo 365.

Priced at $2.99 (with $1 going to a scholarship funds for the students), the app will provide visitors and locals alike with information on local attractions and events.

“We go out and we do all the research we meet with the business leaders, community leaders the kids basically are writing on their entries, they’re doing four to five entries of about 150 words,” said Mark Williams, North Heights English Teacher and project supervisor. “They’re having to do some intense research.”

Onyx is a free system maintenance tool for Mac OS X.

One of the nice things about Onyx is that it covers everything you can think of. It’s packed with tools that you might want to use often, plus some you might use only once in a blue moon. But they’re all there, in one place.

A 20-year-old died in a drug deal where the currency was an iPad for heroin.

Malachi Urbini, a student at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, was reportedly shot in the face by 19-year-old Taivon Cunningham.  According to police, Urbini had previously handed over his iPod in trade four stamp bags of heroin earlier that night.

It’s a safe bet that most Cult of Mac readers – and certainly all the Cult of Mac writers – are broadly in favour of almost everything Apple creates.

Almost everything.

If there’s one feature of OS X (Snow) Leopard that drives me and every other Mac user I’ve ever known mad with fury, it’s the Help Viewer, and its obstinate insistence on floating on top of every other window in sight.

The competition between Apple and Google over who will control the cloud looks less and less like a puffy summer day and more akin to an approaching storm front. After Amazon first beat the Cupertino, Calif. company to the punch. it appears now Apple’s only cloud strategy includes that very expensive iCloud.com domain. Google Music is expected to be unveiled Tuesday in limited fashion, providing free storage for already-owned tunes, as well as playlist creation.

However, Google provides a hint as to what’s holding up Apple’s cloud-based iTunes service: those persnickety publishers. In an uncharacteristically open comment, Google digital content exec Jamie Rosenberg blasts labels as “more interested in an unreasonable and unsustainable set of business terms,” according to the Wall Street Journal‘s All Things Digital.

Pix and Stix is a new accessory duo designed for those who love to rock out with GarageBand on the iPad. It’s a set of drum sticks and a guitar pick featuring electro-conductive rubber tips that make them compatible with the iPad’s touchscreen, allowing you to drum and strum naturally without wearing out your fingertips.

The team behind Pix and Stix is currently trying to get Kickstarter-like funding, so the kit isn’t quite available just yet. If you want to get your hands on it, you can order now for $14.95 and as soon as it reaches its funding goal of $8000, the team will start making them and your order will be guaranteed. If it doesn’t reach its funding goal, you’ll get your money back.

From the Archive of Things People Hoped Were Lost, another forgotten Apple video has surfaced from 1984. Unlike the formidable 1984 TV commercial that introduced the Mac, We Are Apple (Leading the Way) was a fluffy dealer sales presentation that highlighted Apple’s growth and breadth in those halcyon days.

Apple had four product lines in 1984, the Apple II, Apple III, Lisa and Macintosh. All share the spotlight in this cheesy sales extravaganza. Sung to the tune of Irene Cara’s What a Feeling and presented in the lost art of the multi-image slide show, it’s hilarious. Who knew the Lisa was so portable – and such a babe magnet!

[via gajitz]

The Booqpad Agenda iPad 2 case from Booq is the perfect mix of past and future. It brings the futuristic technology of the iPad 2 and the old technology of pen and paper together making this the best iPad 2 case yet for note takers. It accomplishes all this in a package that is ready for the executive boardroom and beyond.

The Booqpad is a folio style case that is available in four styles. First, there are two models made from 100% recycled PET that come in Gray-Green and Sand-Plum colors that retail for $49.95. Second, one model made from a genuine Nappa leather exterior comes in Coffee-Cream and retails for $99.95. Finally, the last model the one that I am reviewing comes in black leatherette and grey and it retails for $49.95.