Cult of Mac

AT&T just bought T-Mobile USA for $39 billion so there are now only three major mobile carriers in the US – AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint.

Both carriers use the same technologies: GSM, HSPA+ and LTE. AT&T Mobile will become a monopoly for GSM cellular services in the US.

This doesn’t bode well for consumers who will now only have one GSM carrier to choose from and one less carrier for anyone to choose from.

AT&T will become the largest US cellular carrier surpassing Verizon by a nice margin based on an estimated number of subscribers at Verizon as 94 million. Purchasing  T-Mobile will add about 34 million subscribers to AT&T’s 96 million creating a subscriber base of approximately 130 million for the combined carrier.

It also looks like T-Mobile subscribers will finally get a chance at owning an iPhone. In the last few months, the iPhone has gone from one carrier to all the major carriers except Sprint.

This is a guest post by Mark Hosbein, a potential iPad 2 customer. Mark has been unable to get an iPad 2 after several days waiting in line. He expresses the frustration felt by many. As we’ve reported, Apple continues to see long lines for the iPad 2 a week after launch day. Mark’s piece was originally published here.

I just returned from the Apple Store at the Short Hills Mall in New Jersey. I arrived at the mall at 5.20 AM to wait in line for my chance to buy an iPad 2. I was number 27 in line. I did not get one. The line went to 81. My wife had been there for the past two days, and both days she was shut out. She was number 39 yesterday, with no luck.

For a revered brand, Apple is risking customer will in the way they are managing the iPad launch.

Plans to build a 16,000 square-foot Apple store in the balconies of Grand Central’s main terminal may have been abandoned by the Cupertino company, according to a source close to the M.T.A., who says that preliminary negotiations have fallen through.

Jeffrey Roseman, a retail executive for Newark Knight Frank, posted a tweet on Thursday that backed up these claims, and indicated plans for Apple’s largest store in the world weren’t going ahead: “Lets see if Apple NOT coming to Grand Central, gets as much press as it got, when the rumor started.”

The store was expected to open this September, celebrating 10 years of Apple retail, and attracting some of the 700,000 people who visit the terminal each day. A source for Cult of Mac confirmed Apple’s plans to build the superstore back in February, however, it seems that the M.T.A.’s strict guidelines made Apple’s plans too good to be true.

<strong>Note from Leander: I’ve reached out to my source who said the deal was signed, sealed and delivered. I’ll report here what they say.

Google has today launched Google TV Remote for iOS – a fully functional remote control for Google TV devices, featuring the complete range of buttons, a mouse pad, and even voice search.

The application has been available on Android devices for a while, and just like the Android version, this one’s free to download. It’s compatible with all Google TV devices and it’s simple to set up – just ensure your iPhone or iPod touch and your Google TV device are connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

Check out Google’s tutorial for the app below:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGBMFxN_eys&feature=player_embedded

Steve Jobs famously once quoted Picasso as saying: “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” And by that metric, Apple is a lousy artist.

Apple is stolen from by just about everybody. Microsoft and other companies steal design and interface ideas from Apple’s OS X. Cell phone handset makers steal Apple’s iPhone design elements. The new tablet market is essentially Apple’s iPad plus the tablets that steal ideas from the iPad. Everybody has stolen Apple’s approach to app stores.

There’s a difference between stealing ideas and stealing intellectual property. Stealing winning general approaches to doing things like multi-touch gestures on a tablet device is good. Stealing the code to do that is bad.

Microsoft has long been accused of stealing Apple ideas in the many designs of Windows that have occurred over the years. Windows has tended to be more challenging to use than OS X over the years, and Windows products tend to be less elegant. Because of all this, Apple fans often dismiss Microsoft as a company without innovation.

In fact, the opposite is true. Microsoft’s research wing is an under-appreciated engine of invention, in my opinion. And while Microsoft fails to productize some of its best inventions, it’s also occasionally successful at implementing new ideas in real products.

I’ll go further. Apple and its customers would benefit enormously if Apple were to steal the following five key ideas from Microsoft.

Thanks to everyone for participating in the Geo Walk iPad2 giveaway contest this week. As determined by random drawing the winners are:

iPad2 — Manny Vallellanes
Code#1 — David Hanson
Code #2 — Stanley Moon
Code #3 — @mcgurgu
Code #4 — @Johnnsen

Look for more Cult of Mac giveaways here on the site, and be sure to keep up with all the latest news and info by following @cultofmac on Twitter and by Liking us on Facebook.

Apple has a serious problem on its hands with the iPad 2 display.

Last week I purchased an iPad 2 on launch day. It suffered from backlight bleeding. I took it back to my local Apple Store, which replaced it on Friday. This second iPad 2 also suffers from backlight bleeding.

I’m pissed. I spent more than $1,000 for the whole thing with accessories – I want something worth the investment not a dud.

But I’m not taking it back to Apple a third time. Why not?

We’ve reported a number of times about how Apple’s Find my iPad (or iPhone) feature has helped retrieve multiple lost or stolen iDevices. This week reader Jacob Dayan from Israel wrote to tell us his own successful, and moderately harrowing, story about getting his iPad back when he returned to his car to find his window smashed and a bag of items missing. From his blog:

“When I call my wife to tell her the bad news, it hits me. I can find my iPad! I ask my daughter Vered to log in to my MobileMe accounts, and within few minutes I hear the good news – the blue dot is active, my iPad is on the map! I start the chase, and Vered instructs me from remote. “Turn left … they are heading to the other cemetery… they are now approaching Rt 40..”.

Dayan follows the thief for 10 miles, until his daughter reports that the iPad is inside an apartment building.

A friend and I were talking today about the iPad 2, the Smart Cover, and the 31 magnets they contain today. We were pondering what would happen when we tossed the iPad 2 with an attached Smart Cover into our laptop bags right next to a MacBook with a standard hard drive inside. A co-worker of my friend had brought this up earlier leading us to the question, “Can the iPad 2 and Smart Cover magnets damage (or erase) our MacBook Hard Drive? ”

The clear answer is — No! The myth about magnets erasing data from hard disks or computers is mostly false and a hard one to shake since many of us were trained to keep the two apart. Let me explain why the myth isn’t exactly true.

One week after the launch of the iPad 2, there are still overnight lines for the device.

Friday morning, there were 71 people in line for possible iPad 2s at the Los Gatos Apple store, according to CultofMac.com columnist Mike Elgan.

Mike called neighboring stores, and was told there were similar lines at stores in Santa Clara and Palo Alto.

It’s the same story at Apple’s stores all around the country. Look at the photo of the Waikiki store above. “Still no iPad2!” reports the photographer, Jayson Smith. At the 5th Avenue store in Manhattan, there’s a perpetual line of several hundred hopefuls.

Most are turned away disappointed. All these lines are for “possible” iPads. Although many stores have been getting fresh deliveries of iPad 2s every day, not all do. Still, standing in line seems quicker than ordering online. Shipping for online orders has been pushed back 4-5 weeks.

The Apple Store in Charlotte, NC, gave disappointed customers free Smart Covers when deliveries of iPad 2s failed to arrive, according to AppleBitch.

The store… told customers the previous day that an iPad 2 delivery was due for the following morning. However, when no iPads arrived, the customers in line, around fifty of them, were apparently offered a free Smart Cover by the Manager as an apology for the mis-information.

Some Apple stores have resorted to telling customers there are no stocks right off the bat. At one store in Los Angeles, this is how staff are answering the telephone:

“Hello. This is the Apple Store and no, we don’t have any iPad 2s available,” reports Twitter user SB ARTS TV.

Every time a new iOS device gets a camera, it seems like there’s some first with it: the first movie or music video or television show or bang bus episode. Here’s a new first: a Minneapolis man is the first to use his iPad 2 to report breaking news. Even more interesting is the man in question is Robert Stephens, who co-founded the Geek Squad, which is now owned by Best Buy.

Here’s what happened. Driving to work one day, Stephens saw a fireball erupt in the distance. He quickly whipped out his iPhone, and started recording the explosion while driving “to see if anyone had dialed 911 yet.”

Once Stephens got to the scene, he pulled into a nearby parking lot, transferred the footage from his iPhone 4 to his iPad 2 using Apple’s USB Camera Connection Kit, edited the footage with iMovie, added a map, subtitled it and added a voice over and uploaded the film to YouTube. Before long, his coverage was being used by CNN and MSNBC.

Pretty impressive. Just think of how quickly a seasoned journalist could have turned a report around with the iPad 2. Thanks to companies like Apple, we’re not living in an era of citizen journalism where a good story breaks in just minutes, not hours or days.

[via TUAW]

An online petition to pull an app from iTunes targeted at “homosexual strugglers” has reached 20,000 signatures.

Apple has not commented publicly on whether it intends to pull the free app from Christian group Exodus International and did not return Cult of Mac’s request for comment.

Last November, Apple removed an app called the Manhattan Declaration from the iTunes store after outcry and over  7,000 signatures on an online poll that the content was an anti-gay and hate-mongering. The app makers asked to have it re-instated to no avail.

The group behind the latest petition, Truth Wins Out, has also asked Apple to intervene but received no response. Signers of the petition more than tripled since our last post on the Exodus app.

They issued the following statement: “If Apple continues to bury its head in the sand, we will hold a press conference in front of their offices featuring sexual and spiritual abuse victims of “ex-gay” programs.”

We’ll keep you posted.

We close out another week and just days before the start of spring with three hardware deals in the spotlight. First up is a number of iMac desktop machines from the Apple Store. These i3 and i5 Core-based machines start at $1,019 for a 3.06GHz model. Next is a MacBook Pro, running a Core i5 at 2.3GHz for just $1,129. We wrap up the featured deals with an 8GB iPod nano (5th-gen) for only $99.

Along the way, we take a look at various cases and assorted accessories for your favorite Apple devices. As usual, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Apple is telling suppliers that they will no longer be selling MobileMe subscriptions in preparation for a launch of a new, free and radically overhauled version of the service launching next month.

Here’s something sort of unexpected… A few people have received text messages from AT&T saying that, to tether a smartphone to a computer, it requires a tethering plan. The ones who’ve received these messages are all jailbroken, and use MyWi, a jailbroken application to allow Internet tethering over WiFi, USB, and Bluetooth, for their Internet tethering needs.

Continue reading to find out more about this.

Back in 2000, when Google was just getting started, its venture capital backers insisted the fledling company find an experieced CEO to provide ‘adult supervision.’

Venture capitalist John Doerr arranged for Google’s young co-founders to meet with half-a-dozen Silicon Valley CEOs in an attempt to get the process started. Larry Page and Sergey Brin met with Intel’s Andy Grove, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and several others.

At the end of the tour, they were ready to hire a CEO but there was a problem, according to Wired senior writer Steven Levy:

… they would only consider one person: Steve Jobs.

Jobs was busy running Apple, of course, which was just about to introduce the first iPod, the product that would transform the company. Doerr persuaded them to widen their net and introduced them to Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Novell. Schmidt became Google’s CEO in 2001.

The nugget about Steve Jobs is from the latest Wired magazine, in a story about Larry Page retaking the reins as Google’s CEO. It is not yet online. The story is an excerpt from Levy’s upcoming book, “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives,” which is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Since Apple introduced iOS 4.3 last week, I’ve found a number of complaints about battery issues with the firmware update. I’ve even experienced these problems personally and I know many of you have too.

The update has caused issues with the battery life on my iPhone 4 and my iPad 2 is getting considerably less time out of its battery than my old iPad running iOS 4.2.1, so if you haven’t upgraded to iOS 4.3 you may want to wait until this issue is resolved.

According to users on Apple Discussions under the topics iPhone 4 – ios 4.3 – Battery Drain and iOS 4.3 causing battery drain, the iPhone’s battery life is severely shortened by the latest iOS update. As a result some users are also complaining that battery life is lasting 2 to 4 hours less than before the update was applied.

What sort of impact did Verizon have on iPhone 4 sales? Very little, according to one analyst. Verizon iPhone sales have been “solid, but not spectacular” during the March second quarter, BMO Capital Market’s Keith Bachman told investors Friday morning.

Quarterly iPhone sales should reach 16 million units with Verizon adding 1.5 million to 2 million handsets, Bachman adds. The numbers assume the usual 10 percent slide from the year’s first financial quarter, ended December 31. As a result, there likely won’t be a “material upside” for this quarter, the analyst writes.

Game guru Peter Molyneux has launched a £1000 reward for the return of his stolen iPad.

Molyneux, the mind behind Dungeon Keeper, Populous and Black & White, got his iPad and passport nicked from his car in parked in Stamford Brook Road London.

He posted a shout-out to his 20,000 followers on Twitter in the hopes of getting it back.

Peter, peter, peter: never leave iDevices in the car.

And yeah, the Find My iPhone app is also a good way to get back stolen stuff.

While much of the world’s focus is on the fate of Japan’s nuclear reactors, for the tech industry concern is also on the potential fall-out from temporary shutdowns of vital chipmaking plants. With the country a major supplier of silicon chips, the uncertainty may prompt ‘panic buying’ of semiconductors, a situation from which Apple may be uniquely immune.

“Many electronic original equipment manufacturers worldwide could be engaging in panic buying of semiconductors and electronic components,” hardware researcher IHS iSuppli announced Thursday. Several distributors report “a surge in orders” from customers fearing Japan’s 9.0 earthquake could disrupt supplies for everything from personal computers to tablets.

Rather than have all of his iOS devices strewn around his desk higgledy-piggledy, Andrew Kim designed the Polyply, a simply piece of kit that keeps his Apple gadgets as tidily arrayed as the interlocked tetronimos in a game of Tetris.

It’s not a real product, and we’re not sure it needs to be, since it’s the sort of thing that could easily be put together with some plywood and strategically carved acrylic fronting. You could make this easily yourself in a configuration personalized to your own iOS device set-up.

We love it, from the way it doubles as an iPad keyboard dock to the careful notches allowing the charging cables to slither through. Well done, Mr. Kim!

Which country’s natives and autochton’s love Apple best? You’d think the country’s home, America, but according to a neat little exercise in statistical research by the Pingdom Blog, it’s actually the Swiss, where almost one out of five people owns a Mac.

I love that the Swiss are so into Apple. It seems so appropriate that a country obsessed with the excellence of gadgets — from the latest million-gear horological marvel right on down to the common knife or belt — would heartily embrace the Mac.

And they have. 17.61% of all computers in Switzerland are Macs. America may love Macs — 15.36% of our computers were made by Apple — by the Swiss still have us beat for general enthusiasm.

Which regions reject the Mac most totally? Depressingly, it’s Asia — where all Macs are built — followed by South America, which only has a 1.08% market share of Macs.

[via MacStories]

Although not much more than a questionable confirmation of existing rumors, 9to5Mac is claiming that a source close to Foxconn has told them that the iPhone 5 will have a larger edge-to-edge screen and an aluminum back while otherwise sharing the form factor of the iPhone 4.We’re not sure what to make of these rumors.

The Mac App Store is off to a slower start than the iOS App Store, according to a new market research report by Distimo, which tracked data across a number of app stores including Apple’s, the Android Market, the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace and more.

The Mac App Store is also made up of a much higher percentage of paid apps than the iOS App Store. A scale-topping 88% of all Mac App Store apps are paid, with only 12% being free.

I’m not much surprised by these numbers. The Mac software ecosystem was incredibly fertile long before the Mac App Store came on the scene, and much of the App Store’s earliest titles weren’t newly made for the platform, but instead existing paid apps ported over. Of course most of the Mac App Store apps are paid: existing paid Mac apps had the most to gain and the smallest barrier-to-entry to hit the Mac App Store running at launch. I imagine that these numbers will shift dramatically as OS X Lion makes the OS X experience more iOS-like.

With all the rumors about NFC being in the next iPhone — or not in the next iPhone — we have a few more details about Apple’s remote computing plans that revolve around the technology.

According to a source close to the company, Apple is busy testing several prototype iPhones with near field communications (NFC). Unfortunately, the source has no knowledge of when Apple will actually introduce the technology in the iPhone. It could be the next model, due this summer, or next year’s, they said.

However, Apple is working out the kinks in an ambitious remote computing system — and a key component utilizes the recently launched Mac App Store.

As we previously reported, Apple is working on a system that allows users to log into another computer using an NFC-equipped iPhone. The iPhone pairs with the host machine, and loads the user’s files and settings over the net. It’s as though the user is sitting at their own machine at home.