Cult of Mac

Yesterday, Apple opened up registrations for 2011’s WWDC, and within ten hours had already sold out of tickets. The more interesting rumor from yesterday, though, was that Apple would refrain from unveiling the iPhone 5 at this year’s WWDC, instead focusing entirely on software. That would mean that instead of the iPhone 5 shipping in June, as it has historically done, the iPhone 5’s launch would be pushed back until later in the year.

After the initial shock, the rumor sounds extremely likely. The report came from Jim Dalrymple over at The Loop, whose sources are solid. Moreover, the early year launch of the Verizon iPhone and Apple’s continued delay in shipping the white iPhone 4 (while repeatedly promising it’s still coming) all imply that Apple’s not planning the iPhone 5 in June, but will push it until later in the year, to debut before the holiday shopping season.

Over at Slashgear, Chris Davies brings up one interesting point: a late 2011 debut might give Apple more flexibility in making the iPhone 5 4G compatible. Qualcomm’s next LTE chipsets are due out at that point, and will allegedly boast improved power efficiency… the very issue that led Apple to leave LTE support out of the Verizon iPhone earlier this year.

If Apple does delay the iPhone 5 until later in the year, it’s all the more likely we’ll see a sizable update boasting 4G capability. For Verizon users, that means LTE; unfortunately, on AT&T, their HSPA+ “4G” smartphones are actually throttled to be slower than their regular 3G phones. If the iPhone does go 4G later this year, the Verizon iPhone 5 is going to be the clear winner: AT&T’s 4G network is a disgrace, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get substantially better anytime soon.

Google’s Android operating system is expected to lead a growing smartphone market, increasing its No. 1 position to just under 50 percent by 2015, according to one analysis released Tuesday. Apple is in third-place, its iOS commanding just 15.7 percent of smartphones. Potentially more troubling, the IDC report shows Apple’s growth by 2015 relatively flat, falling to 15.3 percent in four years.

As the smartphone market takes 49.2 percent of the mobile handset market, Nokia’s Symbian will suffer. The cell phone giant’s smartphone market share will fall from this year’s fourth-place 20.9 percent, to 0.2 percent by 2015, according to the researchers.

Steve Jobs was a righteous man, blameless in his generation, and Steve Jobs walked with God. According to the Jerusalem Post, this divine partnership will result in Apple building a veritable ark of an Apple Store in Jerusalem.

Measured in the go-to unit for ark building, the new Apple Store would be 185 cubits long and 185 cubits wide, or about 50,000 square feet in size. To put that in perspective, that’s absolutely gigantic: it’s the size of a football field, or about the size of a supermarket with 12-14 aisles. It would be humongous, without a doubt the largest Apple Store on Earth.

Why build such a massive Apple Store in Jerusalem of all places? “Symbolic reasons,” natch. In fact, the Jerusalem Post goes as far as to say that this Apple Store would house the world’s first “Apple Digital Library,” which would be open to the public.

It’s nice to think of an official Apple Store in Jerusalem, but I think we can all agree that a Home Depot sized Apple Store smack dab in the middle of one of the oldest cities on Earth sounds more than a little bit like wishful thinking. Some reporter annoyed with not being able to get an iPad 2 through Apple’s official Israeli reseller, iDigital, perhaps?

What can we expect when Apple previews iOS 5 at this year’s WWDC starting on June 6th? More robust integration with MobileMe’s forthcoming digital locker feature, that’s for sure, but what else?

For a hint, look at Cupertino’s acquisitions over the last year, says TechCrunch’s MG Siegler. He points to Apple’s 2010 acquisition of Siri, a startup branding its services as those of a virtual personal assistant.

Siri released a cool iPhone app that allowed you to ask your phone real world questions and have it cough up and map answers to you. For example, ask “Where is the nearest Starbucks?” and Siri would draw you a map, complete with walking instructions, as well as allow you to call them with just the click of a button. Ask “What’s playing at the local drive-in?” might pull up showtimes.

Very swift stuff, and now it’s being reported that Apple has deep baked Siri functionality right into iOS 5. That’s always been the rumor, but the idea of iOS doing this sort of stuff natively is just so sweet it’s liable to make one a little nauseous if they think too long on it.

Late tonight, Amazon took the wraps off of Amazon Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, free services for network storage and playback of MP3s and DRM-free iTunes audio files. Just as Ed predicted. Anyone with an Amazon account can sign up for 5 GB of space, and then you just upload your music library for access through any Flash-based browser or a brand-new Android app. From now forward, any Amazon MP3 store purchase will automatically be added to your Cloud Drive and won’t count against your storage quota. Larger capacities are available at $1 per GB per year starting at 20 GB.

In almost every regard, it’s exactly like Lala, the totally amazing cloud music service that Apple bought almost a year and a half ago and then promptly shut down. The only difference is that Lala also offered 10-cent song purchases for cloud-only use (as opposed to downloaded for offline use). This makes it all the more ridiculous that Apple still doesn’t have a cloud music service released. We’ve been hearing for some time that the iTunes Locker will arrive any day to offer something comparable, but Amazon’s move shows just how much Apple has slow-played its move toward streaming.

It would actually be fascinating to see Amazon release an iOS client for Cloud Player to really hold Apple’s feet to the fire. My over-riding concern with what I’ve heard about iTunes Locker is that Apple wouldn’t even match Lala’s old ability to offer songs from your entire music library and would instead offer access only to iTunes purchases. With Amazon offering something this simple and successful, Apple will have to go all out. This is why real competition is a very good thing for Apple users — it forces the company to leap over its own bar, not just hit it. Moreover, it will mean pushing ahead even if terms with record labels aren’t perfectly favorable.

— Sent in by everyone in my Twitter feed.

UPDATE: I’ve just discovered that if you visit your Cloud Drive through Mobile Safari, it is possible to play back audio on an iPhone, but only one track at a time through downloads. Hardly a useable solution, but an interesting trick nonetheless.

Now, far more useful is that you can also play back video loaded into the Cloud Drive on an iPhone, so long as it’s in a format Safari supports (preferably H.264). Amazon isn’t making a big deal out of video yet, but there is definite potential here. Especially if the geniuses at VLC or Plex figure out how to pull down a stream from your Cloud Drive…

That didn’t take long: Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is already sold out — less than 12 hours after $1599 tickets went on sale.

This looks like a record. Last year, it took 8 days for WWDC to sell out.

Apple’s annual developers conference takes place June 6-10 in San Francisco. The conference will focus on iOS 5and Mac OS Lion — and Apple seems to be setting expectations that there’ll be no iPhone 5 at the show. In past years, Steve Jobs has used to the WWDC stage to introduce new iPhone hardware.

A group representing thousands of independent software developers on Monday sent a letter objecting to four Democratic senators’ request last week to smartphone companies to remove applications that alert drivers to DUI checkpoints.

The folks at Digifit seem to have been working feverishly on evolving their iPhone-linked fitness-monitoring system since the last time we covered them, a few months ago.

In fact, the system seems to be evolving very closely along the lines of Wahoo’s Fisica system — so closely that their new $50 Digifit Connect 2 dongle (that’s it pictured below) looks the spitting image of Wahoo’s version. No surprise then that the $15 Digifit app is now also compatible with the Wahoo dongle. In addition, there’s a new $120, water-resistant, iPhone 3/4-compatible Digifit Connect Case for mounting on bicycle handlebars.

Apple Insider is reporting that a bomb threat has been made against Apple’s Elk Grove, California distribution center, with three builds evacuated as the threat is assessed.

We start off another week with another deal on the MacBook Air from Apple. This offer lasts until 4:30pm ET today and includes a 1.4GHz MacBook Air with a 12-inch screen for $850. Next is a way to convert all of that vinyl sitting around into digital tunes for your iPod. The Ion ISB Vinyl Turntable is just $59. We round out our spotlight deals with a small USB hard drive with hefty storage – 1TB.

Along the way, we check out FM transmitters for your iPhone, along with storage and other gadgets of interest to the iPod, iPad or iPhone owner. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Y’know how you’ll be chugging along on a game and get to a point where, for hours, the gameplay is just sod-awful boring? And you want to get up and watch TV, but don’t want to leave the game for fear something actually exciting — like crashing into a mountain — might happen? Well, there’s an app for that. In some instances, anyway.

In this case, clever app FSXFollow saves countless faux pilots from the numbing monotony of piloting their faux Cessnas over the Midwest, by shunting all the data to their iDevice, so the pilot can walk off and get a latte or watch TV. Definitely limited appeal to this app (and frankly, if the simulation or pilot is too hardcore to employ a simple time-lapse feature, I’m not sure getting up to watch TV or do laundry in the middle of a flight is any better; but then I’m not down with all the current FAA rules), but the concept is cool — using a handheld as an integral part of a much larger experience on the desktop.

FSXFollow works with apps like the superb X-Plane and Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X and costs $6. There’re more examples of this kind of mobile/desktop symbiosis, of course; anyone got a favorite?

Apple’s official Camera Connection Kit for iPad is pretty accommodating when it comes to sucking photos out of your digicam and into your iPad. Using the array of dongles, you can either suck content in through USB or just slap your SD card.

What about users stuck with that old stalwart standard, Compact Flash? Sure, you can slurp your pictures in by connecting your DSLR or video cam to your iPad 2 via USB, but what’s the fun in that when you can do it directly, thanks to this Compact Flash Card Reader for iPad.

The price is $30, which is the same as Apple’s official Camera Connection Kit costs, and comes with a built-in USB reader that can also suck in video and photographs from any thumb drive. If you’re looking to supplement your iPad with another photography-minded dongle, this looks like a good buy.

When Microsoft’s own answer to the iPod debuted back in November of 2006, one neat little feature it boasted that the iPod didn’t was the ability to share a song on your Zune with a friend for up to five plays by squirting it through WiFi to them when both your Zunes were in range. It was a really neat idea that, like many mechanisms allowing a user to lend digital content, ended up being crippled by chintzy, overly protective publishers.

Perhaps for just those reasons, Apple never did come up with their own way to share songs between iPods, but now, there’s an app for just that: Eavesdrop, which allows you to broadcast your iPod’s music library to any iOS device within range over WiFi and Bluetooth.

It’s a really neat idea. Unfortunately, since the functionality isn’t baked into iOS, both you and your friend will have to pay $1.99 for the Eavesdrop app to listen to each other’s music… and I can’t help but wonder how long it’ll be before Apple pulls the app due to recording industry complaints. So get it while it’s hot.

Apple’s tagline for this year’s WWDC is “Join us for a preview of the future of iOS and Mac OS X.” Jim Dalrymple over at the Loop says that tagline is worded very carefully, and that according to his sources, Apple will not announce any new hardware at the event… pushing the release of the iPhone 5 back indefinitely.

Traditionally, Apple unveils the newest iPhone every June at WWDC, along with iPod Touches in September and new iPads in March, but according to Dalrymple, Apple’s going to mix this up this year. Why?

“You get caught up in patterns, and it holds true, until it doesn’t,” Gartenberg told The Loop. “There is no reason for Apple to follow a predictable yearly pattern, and it keeps their competition off guard a little bit.”

As he seems to do every year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs not only made Barron’s list of the world’s most valuable CEOs… he was declared “without a doubt” the most valuable one.

Taking his place amongst bigwigs like Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathwawy), Reed Hastings (Netflix) and more, Steve Jobs is cited for racking up 100 million iPhones sold, the release of the iPad and Apple’s incredible golden touch overall.

Barron’s list of most valuable CEOs isn’t a popularity contest: it’s based on the objective metric of stock performance, which has been on such an upward trajectory for the past few years that seemingly the only thing that can sink it is Jobs’ retirement (and even then, given the talent and culture Jobs has put together over at Apple, only temporarily).

This isn’t the first distinction Barron’s has awarded Apple this year: back in February, Barron’s handed Apple its second Most Respected Company award in as many years.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2BBDrwnCNo&feature=player_embedded#at=143

For all of you iPad 2 fans outside the U.S. who waited for the new device over the weekend, here’s one unboxing from an Italian customer that underlines the reverential quality many Apple fans experience when opening a new product.

I’m not entirely sure the Vatican would approve, though the garlic and dried peppers — perfect for aglio, olio e pepperoncino, every Italian’s pinch-hit pasta dish — are a nice touch.

If you waited in line to get your iPad 2 on March 25, was it what you hoped?

Via The Apple Lounge

Tablet manufacturers looking to compete against Apple’s iPad see small as their biggest opportunity. That’s the upshot of a Monday report indicating 7-inch tablets have more room on shelves as the Cupertino, Calif. company dismisses such tablets as unusable.

“Korea-based Samsung Electronics’ 7-inch Galaxy Tab and ViewSonic’s 7-inch ViewPad are both generating stronger sales than their 10.1-inch models,” a Taiwan-based industry publication writes. While the 10.1-inch versions offer greater expandability for such things as keyboards, sales are described as “not as stable” as the smaller 7-inch tablets.

Just in case you thought these guys mistook the line outside of London’s Regent Street Apple Store for a line for Justin Bieber tickets, guess what? The UK’s sold out of iPad 2s.

Boy, I sure wish we had this here: down in Oz, would-be Australian iPad 2 buyers can reserve their tablets right through Apple’s official retail site, then walk in and pick them up the next day. Magic!

Well, magic if any of Apple Australia’s retail stores actually had any iPads to dole out, which they don’t.

Still, Apple Retail stores are getting new iPad 2s in on a three or four-times weekly schedule, which means that if you’re an Australian wanting to get an iPad 2, constantly refreshing that page and swooping in on any available unit is probably the most painless way for you to get yourself an iPad.

Maybe we’ll see this same functionality roll out to the States? Sooner please, Apple.

[via MacStories]

Brits depending on their iOS devices to wake them up for work or school in the morning got a seriously gaffe-prone error call this morning, after alarms all around the Isles failed to go off at the proper time this morning, ranging from going off one hour too late to not at all.

It wasn’t just Brits either. The rest of Europe’s iPhone owners were plagued by the same bug, after clocks were moved forward by an hour on Sunday.

The culprit? Apparently, that same stupid time change bug that hit iPhone users last autumn.

It’s not entirely clear if this is a bug still present in iOS 4.3 or one that is only affecting users who have failed to update from iOS 4.2.1.

Any of our readers in Europe want to help us get to the bottom of this? Join the comments and give us a rundown of what happened with your alarms this morning, along with what device and version of iOS you have.

Hey! You! Get off of my cloud! Okay, those may not be their words, but Amazon reportedly may make some announcement about a cloud-based storage service this week. If true, the online retail giant could beat Apple and Google to the punch.

Amazon is talking about a so-called ‘digital locker’ to Hollywood and music moguls, which could store music, movies and ebooks, according to one report. Although there is no word how receptive the execs are to such a plan, it may be further than Apple. The Cupertino, Calif. company is said to have gotten an earful from music heads that don’t agree on streaming fees. The labels want fees for every stream, no matter if it comes from an iTunes purchase or an already-owned CD.

This is ace. This is precisely what the iPad 2 is all about.

For those of you who don’t know them, Dan and Dan are a mysteriously identical comedy duo from the UK. If you like this style of weird Brit humor, there’s lots more of it on their YouTube channel.

Apple just announced the official dates of this year’s WWDC expo, and as rumored, they are June 6th and June 8th. Accompanying the announcement, Apple has posted a teaser page for their annual Apple Designer Awards, which seek to recognize “apps that demonstrate technical excellence, innovation and outstanding design.”

The good news here is that, unlike last year, Apple will be giving out awards to both iOS and OS X developers. This is a relief, since only iOS developers were recognized last year, with Steve Jobs mysteriously saying that this was just “the normal cycle of things.”

The bad news? If your software isn’t on the App Store, Apple’s not going to bother recognizing your software, no matter how excellent. With the iOS App Store, that’s a non-issue, but considering the fact that the majority of Mac software isn’t on the Mac App Store yet, it prevents developers with a choice: either give Apple a 30% cut of all of your software sales or don’t qualify for an award. That’s sure to cause controversy.

Way back in the early days of the App Store, an early hot property in the store was Podcaster, a simple utility that allowed users to browse, subscribe to, and download podcasts to the iPhone. It was very useful, both for finding new things to listen to on the go, but also for eliminating one of the key reasons for unnecessary and redundant syncing to a computer.

Naturally, Apple had it removed. Then it came back as RSS Player a few months later. And got stripped out again, in both cases for providing redundant functionality, an absurd claim, as Apple’s built-in iTunes app is only capable of searching for podcasts — subscriptions aren’t allowed. Fortunately, Apple has  finallycome to its senses and now allows podcasting apps to be installed on non-jailbroken phones again, including the original Podcaster. Better still, the choices have multiplied, which brings us to the stellar subject of this review, Instacast.

This $1.99 app (a price I happily paid), approaches phone-based podcast management exactly the way I would like it. Its sole focus is on subscriptions rather than individual files. It uses a simple search mechanism that was able to track down every podcast I wanted to track. It also offers recommendations for popular series. You can also subscribe to any podcast you currently have loaded onto your iPhone. Rather than downloading these podcasts immediately (a potential nightmare), Instacast snags episode descriptions including links to either download or stream any given podcast. Piece of cake.

But the simple power of the app only becomes clearer with longer term use as you build out your library. It implements the increasingly-standard swipe down to refresh gesture first seen in Tweetie. This pulls down descriptions for any newly released episodes within your existing subscriptions and adds them to the existing queue. I have only synced my iPhone once since I downloaded Instacast, and that was to install iOS 4.3.1. I’m actually strongly considering deleting my podcast subscriptions from iTunes.

Now, the app isn’t perfect. Though the UI is fairly intuitive (usually through borrowing conventions of Twitter/Tweetie and Reeder) it has a few oddities, including an easy-to-miss play button, no on-screen volume controls, and no obvious way to delete a downloaded episode (you have to mark it as read). I assume such issues will be resolved in the near future, and the positives definitely outweigh the disadvantages.

In short, Instacast fixes part of a problem of both the iPhone and iPad: much as Apple has defined a new class of mobile computers that doesn’t rely on a desktop or laptop for full functionality, the company has also pushed administration of such devices onto desktop and laptop devices. It’s impossible to boot up an iPad for the first time without syncing it to a computer, and neither machine can install its own software updates without a tether. While this attitude is understandable for firmware and OS updates, it makes no sense for podcasts and other kinds of content. The longer I use Instacast, the more it feels like I’m finally cutting the cable.

Cult of Mac rated: [xrr rating=8/10]

Apple has been using Liquid Contact Indicators(LCI) in practically all of their devices for as long as I can remember, but it looks like with the iPad 2 they’ve stopped using them.

This makes sense because these sensors have not been all that reliable and subject to a lot of false positives from something as mundane as sweat. In 2009 this was a big news topic that I covered for CNET and I spoke to local Channel 2 news in Houston, Texas about complaints they had received from iPhone users. Even CNN had something to say about it.

It was so easy to trip these sensors that there was even a lawsuit over it.