Cult of Mac

It can be expensive to upgrade your iPhone before your 2 year contract is up. You’re largely paying off your iPhone through a two year subsidy, after all, which means that if you want the iPhone 5 after you just got the iPhone 4, AT&T — while delighted to extend your contract — needs some dosh to not come out behind in the deal.

No one debates that. What people do debate, though, is how much money it should cost an end user to upgrade their iPhones early. Currently, it can cost up to $499 to upgrade to a 32GB iPhone 4 before the end of your two year contract… even if you’re in your last months of the existing contract.

Well, guess what? It’s about to get worse. Starting yesterday, new pricing for iPhone Early Upgrade Pricing went into effect, bumping the price of an early upgrade another $50 across the spectrum of AT&T iPhone models.

While GarageBand for iPad is a neat little acoustic sandbox for even we tone deaf plebs, it was of particular interest to musicians who were already heavily invested in GarageBand for Mac. With the iPad version, these musicians hoped they’d be able to put together a few bars of a ditty on the subway or during a flight, flesh it out a bit, then import it into their Mac at home for a polish; alternatively, they hoped they could take their current GarageBand projects on the road with them.

Unfortunately, when GarageBand for iPad actually ended up hitting, it actually was quite difficult to do any of the above. That wasn’t intentional, though, and over the weekend, Apple pushed the 6.0.2 update of GarageBand for Mac out through the usual channels, bringing support for opening projects imported from GarageBand for iPad.

By not bother sweating about the contracts with the labels until after the service was live and leveraging their massive Amazon S2 cloud server cluster for quick rollout, Amazon was able to leap-frog Apple and Google into the cloud with Cloud Locker, a stream-anywhere digital locker for multimedia files.

Now it looks like Amazon wants to try to do it again, this time with mobile payments, and while they may not beat Google and Apple to the punch on NFC, they’ve already got all the rest of the infrastructure in place to use the competition’s NFC chips when they finally start rolling out to handsets.

If you love your music, you’ve probably encountered this situation: you’re streaming songs from the web via one of your favorite sites, and the phone rings, so you need to hit pause. Or your Most Hated Song Ever comes on, and you just want to skip it as fast as possible.

But wait, you have 67 tabs open. And that’s just in the browser window that’s visible. There’s two more windows full of tabs minimised in your Dock. Where’s the music, the pause button, the skip controls? Gah.

Factotum is a tiny utility that solves the problem. It works in Safari and Chrome, and lets you attach your Mac’s built-in media control keys (aka F7, F8 and F9) to a long list of web streaming services (the full list is Rdio, Grooveshark, Hype Machine, Pandora, Last.fm, Napster, Playlist.com, Live365, BBC iPlayer, Songza, Jango, We Are Hunted, Deezer, thesixtyone, and Blip).

Want it? Go here. It’s four bucks in the Mac App Store.

(Via OneThingWell)

Finally! Possibly the most anticipated jailbreak has finally been released. The iPhone-Dev Team came through once again, and has released updated version of both redsn0w (version 0.9.6rc9 for both Windows & Mac OS X) as well as PwnageTool 4.3 for Mac OS X. While it doesn’t work for the iPad 2 (no jailbreak is available for it yet), it still works for every other device. Download links and more information after the break!

The Apple iPad turns one year old today. The first day the iPad was available was April 3, 2010. That was the day that I had  the Wi-Fi only model in my hands. It wasn’t until near the end of April 2010 that I finally got a hold of the Wi-Fi + 3G model. My life and the life of countless others hasn’t been the same since.

The iPad was met with some skepticism when it was announced in early 2010. The “magical and revolutionary” device was ridiculed, laughed about, and even mocked. People cried about it and the impact it would have on their businesses and Adobe cried about it. However, all that ended when people and developers got one in their hands.

Initial reviews like the one from Cult of Mac’s very own Leander Kahney were very positive and even first impressions were good. People loved it so much one of them even wrapped it in chocolate — only to give it away again to someone they loved.

The iPad proved itself again and again finding niche and mainstream applications for it at home and at work. The iPad may very well be the most popular Apple computing device in this decade. Although the iPhone may give it a run for its money. We’ll see. Maybe there will be a tie for that title.

The introduction of the iPad 2 last month will keep the iPad juggernaut moving along well into the 21st century. Frankly I cannot wait to see what Apple comes up with next!

Happy Birthday iPad! Congrats Apple.

With an estimated 2.5 million users, MapMyFitness is almost certainly one of the top fitness-tracking services on the web and the iPhone;  which means last week’s announcement that their apps now fully integrate with the Wahoo Fisica dongle should make a lot of people happy.

The MMF website and apps, most of which are free, are already chock-full of features like a deep library of user-generated maps, mapping functions (like route elevation profile generation) and their new nutrition-tracking feature; adding the ability to record sensor data should catapult the system to the top of the heap. The integration with the ANT+ Fisica sensor dongle doesn’t quite extend across MapMyFitness’s whole suite of apps, but hits the major ones, like MapMyRun, MapMyRide and MapMyFitness (all three of which are really almost identical).

Apple launched its new ad campaign for the iPad 2 Saturday based on its founding philosophy of bringing technology to the masses.

If you are a recent Mac switcher, there is a good chance that there are some Windows applications that you still may want to use. If so, Virtual Box is a great application to let you do this. In this video, you will se how to get virtual box, install an operating system, and run Windows apps side by side with your OS X apps.

Skobbler, makers of Forever Map, a cool 99¢ navigation app for iOS devices is giving away an iPad2 on Monday so you have a small window of time to squeek through and snag your chance.

All you have to do is “Like” Skobbler’s Facebook page and “Like” one of its daily status updates between March 29 and April 4 to be entered in their drawing.

The rules are unclear whether that means you have to “Like” a daily status update for each day between 3/29-4/4 or if it’s OK to “Like” just a single status update during that timeframe, but it couldn’t hurt to get happy with the “Like” buttons. The folks at Facebook seem to enjoy and how else are you going to get an iPad2 these days?

A part purported to be destined for a forthcoming iPod nano suggests that the seventh generation device could bring back a camera and video recording capabilities to the second smallest iPod, whilst retaining its current tiny form factor.

The picture above was sent to Apple.pro two days ago, and on previous occasions the Tiawanese site has been relatively accurate with its leaks of upcoming parts and devices. The site recently leaked plans of the revised iPhone 4 built for CDMA and Verizon before its launch, and prior to that it published pictures of a miniature touch screen that later arrived in the current iPod nano.

It’s hard to recall now, but the number-one complaint about the iPhone when it first came out was the on-screen keyboard.

Engadget’s Ryan Block asked: “Will the iPhone be undone by its keyboard?” People talked about how on-screen typing would destroy the iPhone in the same way that the hand-writing recognition system helped kill the Newton.

Even more incredibly, one of the main iPad criticisms when it first came out was the visibility of finger smudges on the screen when you turn the power off.

These concerns seem quaint now, textbook examples of the limited human-ape mind trying to grapple with novelty. It’s like people complaining about their new “motor car” a hundred years ago by saying the infernal contraption fails to slow down when they say, “whoa, Nellie!” and won’t speed up when they whip the fender with a riding crop. “It’ll never catch on!”

Many annoying tech pundits (including and especially Yours Truly) bitched and moaned about Apple’s global ban on the sale of third-party physical keyboard and refusal to create one of their own.

I believe Apple deliberately used its red-hot iPhone product to force the world to accept and learn to appreciate on-screen keyboards, and break them of their physical keyboard habit. When Apple released the iPad a year ago, it was usable with two Apple keyboards (the standard Bluetooth keyboard and a new cradle keyboard). But no matter. The on-screen keyboard idea had already been accepted by a critical mass of users.

Despite widespread acceptance, people are still divided on whether on-screen keyboards are good or bad, and most still prefer a physical keyboard. But let’s look at the big picture.

You want your computer to be as secure as possible, right? Here’s one thing that newcomers to OS X might want to change pretty soon after getting their hands on their first Mac.

The OS X web browser, Safari, is a pretty good browser in almost every respect. But it has one default option that, personally speaking, I’ve never felt very comfortable about leaving switched on.

We received these cryptic press releases from two fairly well-known developers today, and we just thought we’d share them with you — especially since one of them was marked confidential and requested we not reveal anything till Monday; as if! We’re revealing it NOW! (Yes, we’re horribly easy to manipulate).

We close out another week with three hardware deals in the spotlight. First up is a number of unibody MacBook Pro machines from the Apple Store, starting at $929 for a 2.4GHz 13.3-inch model. Next is a 1.83GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook with 13.3-inch screen for just $500. Finally, another round of Mac minis, starting at $599 for a 2.4GHz version. All are April Fool’s-free deals.

Along the way, we check out an eMac G4 PowerPC desktop for $100, a 2GB iPod shuffle for $34 and a leather case for your iPad. As usual, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Toy giant Hasbro Inc. is bringing 3D to your iPhone and iPod.

For about $35, their new goggles called My3D promise to bring a new experience to your Apple devices. Available in black or white, they launch in exclusive at Target stores on April 3; the U.S. retailer has an exclusive for the goggles until June.

The design is a little more streamlined than the version we showed you back in November, but it still looks a little like a View-Master, which first brought the 3D experience to kids in 1939 and slunk off into the sunset due to declining sales in 2009.

Instead of those little plastic discs of the View-Master familiar to kids the world over, with My3D you’ll be able to download special apps from the iTunes store.

There are currently eight free apps available on iTunes, ranging from Tunnel Pilot and Shatterstorm to 360° Shark.

Hasbro promises there will be a mix of gratis and paid content available — likely to include trailers and movie snippets following the 3D film trend.

Lumiere is yet another photo effects filter app for iOS, but before you sigh and say: “Oh no, not another Hipstamatic clone,” I want you to pause and give this one a second look.

What makes Lumiere different isn’t that it applies filter effects to your photos – Hipstamatic and a gazillion other apps already do that – but the way it lets you flick from one effect to the next.

Concerned citizens in Kentucky can report “suspicious activity” to their state branch of Homeland Security through an iPhone app.

Called Eyes and Ears of Kentucky, the app is offered gratis on iTunes. The handiwork of developers NICUSA, it has been in the store since March 7. So far, it has not received enough reviews to reach an average rating. Through the app, you can report a suspicious incident or activity along with details about the alleged subjects and their vehicles.

Unlike iFixIt’s gag, this Playmobil Apple Store Playset isn’t a real product, but if enough people are interested and Apple’s lawyers look the other way, maybe it could be.

From the description:

A quick peek at the miniature Genius Bar and we were feeling a bit woozy. Then we saw the tiny Steve Jobs presenting in the Keynote Theater on the top floor and that was it. Our wallets popped out faster than you can say Jonathan Ive and we plunked down whatever money was needed to own this amazing playset.

Of course, once we had the playset, we had to get the optional Line Pack to simulate our own exciting Apple product launches. Since it comes with a tiny Woz on a tiny Segway, it was a no-brainer. We decided that Apple & PLAYMOBIL™ together is the most unlikely and awesome collaboration ever. It changes everything.

Think Geek’s brought its April Fool’s Day products to market before, so it’s possible this could become real someday.

Soon, Little Rock, Ark. may be known for more than being the site of former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s library. Reportedly, Apple may open its first store in the city of 190,000 this October. Before you get your bags packed for the ribbon-cutting, be aware there’s been similar chatter since 2007.

However, a blog that tracks Apple’s retail moves reports the Cupertino, Calif. company has signed a lease in the Chenal Mall. If the report bears out, the addition could remove a gaping hole in what is described as a ‘black-out zone’ for Apple retail locations. The zone stretches from the Gulf to southern Missouri.

When you bring in your iPhone for repair, Apple has a nasty habit of replacing your iPhone’s standard Phillip’s Head screws with proprietary pentalobular torx screws, which require a very special driver to remove. The result? It becomes all the much harder to repair your iPhone yourself.

iFixIt‘s April Fool’s Day joke this year may be a gag, and a good one, but it’s also a real product: an iPhone Oppression Kit that allows you to replace normal phillips screws with pentalobular ones, or vice versa. $10.

Today’s April Fools Day, which means that most of the news today will be in the form of witless lies propagated by mouth-breathers to try to “gotcha” bloggers, all to appease some ancient Pagan God. We will be doing our best not to partake in the festivities, so in the mean time, please enjoy this video of a Claymation iPad, produced by Svetlana Shokhanova at the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow.

The formula for transforming a stock Apple product into something worthy to be sold for a boatload of money to the most garish of Beverly Hills Frankensteins and gaudiest of Middle Eastern Oil Barons is as old as time: buy something from the Apple Store, drizzle it in glue, then roll it in crushed glass and gold foil and voila: a luxury iProduct.

Here’s the latest: the ZShock Lunatik iPod nano watch case, a product with its audience clearly identified in the title. Diamond-encrustations, white gold, Apple’s second-cheapest iPod, all yours for just $18,000.

How successful might an iPhone 5 be on Verizon’s LTE, or 4G, network? Although the new handset with support for the faster technology isn’t expected until late this year, we can get a glimpse via Verizon’s recently-introduced Android-based Thunderbolt from HTC. Nearly a third of Verizon stores report the Thunderbolt is outselling the iPhone.

While 61 percent of the 150 Verizon stores polled by BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk said both the iPhone and the two-week-old Thunderbolt are selling equally well, 28 percent of the locations report more customers are asking for the Android-based smartphone. Just 11 percent said the iPhone is preferred.

Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci becomes the latest head of a PC company to exit after fighting a losing battle to topple Apple’s domination of the tablet market. Apple’s successful iPad and other products is seen as the “key reason” why Lanci left.

Executives at Motorola, Toshiba, Sony, Lenova and Asustek Computer reportedly could also be dethroned, according to an industry publication, citing unnamed sources. “First-tier smartphone and PC brands are still unable to find an effective strategy to counter Apple’s advance,” the Taiwan-based DigiTimes writes.