Cult of Mac

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGMsT4qNA-c

These toddlers can barely speak, but they sure can rock an iPad.

Check out the video above. In it, two-year-old Bridger shows his mastery of the iPad. Just watch him swipe his way through the Home screen to find the app he wants.

The videos in this post are just a sample of many toddler videos on YouTube, demonstrating the unbelievable ease two- and three-year olds have mastering the iPad.

Here’s a 17-month old:

Over at Etsy, Jositajosi is selling a selection of lovely hand-sewn cases for MacBook Air and iPad, using authentic Scottish tartans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC5lFMu2Qak

Check out this funny Mike Tyson video where he offers to cure your Angry Birds addiction in three easy steps.

The skit was recorded with Mashable Editor in Chief Adam Ostrow at South by Southwest to promote Tyson’s new Animal Planet show, Taking on Tyson.

Mashable: Mike Tyson Can Cure Your Angry Birds Addiction [VIDEO]

Will you pay to read the New York Times on your iPad under its new subscription plans?

Or will you try to game the system, getting free access through Twitter, Facebook or Google?

[polldaddy poll=4736679]

Despite widespread controversy over their revised policies, Apple has just gotten one of the biggest names in publishing to agree to play by the new in-app subscription rukes: the New York Times has just announced that they are signing on with Apple’s new subscription plan and give 30% of all revenue to Apple if those subscriptions are signed up for within the New York Times app itself.

They’re also launching a paywall to exclude most non-subscriber access.The three different packages all include access to the New York Times website, and are seemingly priced according to which apps you can use in addition to your web browser.

• New York Times + smartphone app: $15 per month
• New York Times + tablet app: $20 per month
• New York Times full access: $35 per month

That’s over $450 a year for full access. The good news, however, is that the New York Times will continue to offer metered free access to their website, allowing non-subscribers the option to read 20 articles online for free each month, and possibly more if you are referred through Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The New York Times beefing up their iOS apps and offering subscriptions is good news, but we’ll have to see about this paywall. That could, in the long run, be a decision that the New York Times regrets.

A recent analyst downgrade of Apple stock due to concern over potential supply slowdowns prompted one well-known Apple watcher to warn against focusing on the wrong factors. “Calls based on supply-side concerns have led investors astray, but demand for Apple’s products continue to rise,” Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster told investors Thursday morning.

Despite the temporary shutdown of some key component manufacturers due to Japan’s recovery efforts, both steady demand for Apple products and the Cupertino, Calif. firm’s earlier contracts to ensure parts, will lessen any impact. “Which should move share higher,” Munster said.

He noted there will be “component delays for some of Apple’s key products including iPhone 4 and iPad 2 through the June quarter.” Among the potential sticking points: Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co., maker of Bismaleimide Triazine Resin (also known as “BT Resin”) is shutting down production until damage is assessed. Toshiba, which makes 40 percent of NAND flash chips – heavily used by Apple – is also stopping production.

Munster is the latest to refute a Wednesday report by JMP Securities analyst Alex Guana connecting a slowdown at Apple supplier Foxconn with potential supply problems for Apple. The accompanied downgrade – the first since October 2010 – sent Apple stock lower before recovering Thursday morning.

[Barron’s]

For those of us who woke up at 1AM on March 11th to order our iPad 2s, the last week has mostly been a disappointing one. Although Apple began shipping out some 16GB iPads earlier in the week, it seems like they’re only now getting around to readying beefier iPad 2s like my 32GB 3G model for shipment.

Apple’s holding off on deliveries of initial pre-orders of these units as long as possible. As you can see, my order for an iPad 2 was placed within three minutes of the order page going live, but Apple is only now preparing it for shipment, which will presumably go out later today. That implies that people who ordered a 32GB+ iPad 2 3G shouldn’t expect to see their device until at least Monday.

Meanwhile, my Smart Cover was delivered today, which is like your mail-order bride shipping over her steamer trunk full of frilly underwear and fuzzy handcuffs two months before she boards a plane herself.

My guess is we’re not going to see many other product launches like this from Apple. It appears that even they were surprised by iPad 2 demand, and released the tablet at least a month before they actually had the number of devices produced that they needed for a successful, hassle-free launch. I expect the next iPad launch to go a lot smoother than this one did.

Apple’s supply of iPad 2s is clearly constrained, and it doesn’t look like that’s likely to change anytime soon. In fact, Apple’s ability to build more iPad 2s is expected to become even more constrained as at least two of the company’s core component suppliers in the region have temporarily shut down operations to assess damages caused by the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.

The two component suppliers in question appear to be the Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company, who provide resin to Apple for iOS device circuit boards, as well as Toshiba, which provides Apple with its flash supplies.

The end result is it looks like Apple’s going to have an even harder time making new iPads, iPhones and iPod Touch’s for the rest of this quarter, and possibly well into next quarter. If true, that might make the iPhone 5 launch even more problematic and line-crazy than the iPad 2’s was.

There’s bigger difference between the 3G and WiFi versions of the iPad 2 than just their modems. According to iLounge, the iPad 2 WiFi and iPad 2 3G have differences when it comes to microphone quality… with the more expensive iPad 2 3G losing out to the WiFi-only model.

Although the microphone hardware between versions is the same, the mic level quality on the iPad 2 seems to be affected by its slightly different placement. On the WiFi iPad 2, sound quality is better due to the fact that the microphone opening is centered and bored through an aluminum surface; the mic opening on the 3G models, on the other hand, houses the microphone opening in plastic.

The result? The iPad 2 WiFi has cleaner audio through the microphone than the 3G version, which iLounge found to be slightly muffled and echo-prone as a result. It’s not a big deal if you’re willing to pop-in some in-line mic earbuds, but it’s still a difference worth being aware of.

A flashlight app for the iPhones reported half a million downloads following the devastating earthquake in Japan.

Flashlight 4, the handiwork of identical twins Chris and Ryan McGarty, is a free app that turns the flash from the camera into a flashlight.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has put pen to paper during his medical leave to write Apple employees in Japan, and if any CEO has ever written a classier and more modest promise of total and complete support to those in the turmoil of a great national tragedy, I’ve yet to read it.

Although we’ve known for some time Amazon will open an Android App Store (a developer site is already available), it wasn’t clear when the service would launch. However, an unintended sneak peak has given rise to speculation the App Store is almost ready to go live.

A German website Wednesday found 50 Android applications listed at an Amazon URL, which quickly disappeared. Among the titles listed were Zenonia, Raging Thunder II, SetCPU, The Moron Test and SwiftKey. Many of the app prices bested Google’s Android Market and some even were exclusive to the Internet bookseller.

An app from a Christian Ministry is “designed to be a useful resource for men, women, parents, students, and ministry leaders” over what it calls “homosexual strugglers.”

Wall Street analysts are blaming a relatively-unknown for Apple stock dipping 4.6 percent Wednesday. Following yesterday’s downgrade of Apple by JMP Securities on concerns over a slowdown at supplier Foxconn, another Apple-watcher replied any link with Apple’s health is a coincidence.

“Apple’s contribution to Han Hai (which uses the trade name Foxconn) is limited,” Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner told investors Wednesday. “The correlation between Apple and Hon Hai’s revenue therefore appears to be a product of coincidence more than causality,” the analyst wrote.

This is great. Japanese games giant Capcom has slashed the price of Street Fighter IV for iOS to just one dollar (59p in the UK) until March 22nd. Sega is doing something similar for Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic 2.

Every penny from those sales will be donated to relief funds for the victims of the Japanese tsunami and earthquake. Street Fighter has already knocked Tiny Wings off the top of the UK Top 25 list as a result.

Capcom says: “We can never thank you enough for all the support each one of you are giving to us. People from all over the world, please unite with us to help people in the disaster-struck area.”

You heard ’em, kids. Grab your bargains now, and send a dollar to help people who need it.

Now you might think that the world already has enough plain text editors, but those of us who spend all day writing will always disagree.

Writer is a new text editor on the Mac App Store. It’s similar in some respects to applications you’ve seen before, yet it’s also distinctly and subtly different.

Thanks to its 21 built-in magnets, the iPad’s Smart Cover makes a great fridge magnet.

Just clip it to the fridge. It’s pretty sturdy. It clings to the fridge surprisingly strongly. There’s little danger of it coming loose, even when swiping your finger across the screen.

It’s another reason to invest in a $40-$70 Smart Cover when you get an iPad 2.

Via 9to5Mac.

The picture above is an edited version of a photo that I made while I removed my iPad 2 from its box to create a gallery of photos for Cult of Mac recently. The arrow, which I added to the original picture, points to an anomaly the most obvious out of a handful of them on the display of my iPad 2. I purchased the iPad 2 last Friday on launch day.

Once that gallery went live I started receiving comments from readers stating that it looked like I was encountering a back lighting issue on my iPad 2. I honestly wasn’t sure what was going on because to my eyes the anomaly had a yellowish tint to it. I thought it was just the adhesive problem that plagued some iPhone 4 users last year. That problem actually disappeared on its own as the adhesive dried and dissipated.

Unfortunately that isn’t the case for me, since according to the Genius at the Genius Bar this afternoon the problem is with the backlighting after all and it isn’t a problem that will go away.

I made an interesting discovery today. I took my original Apple iPad case ($40), you know the black one, that the original iPad was inserted into making it kind of like a book or folio. It turns out that my iPad 2 with black leather Smart Cover (see my in-depth review) fits perfectly and tightly inside.

Wow I thought this a great opportunity to recycle something I didn’t know what I was going to do with after upgrading to the iPad 2.  So hit the read link to find out how you can recycle your old iPad cover yet retain the unique Smart Cover and all its magic.

Is it fair to compare the progress of international deal-making among government policymakers to the innovation cycle of a technology company headed by a man known as the company despot?

If you’re unable to get your paws on a new iPad 2 even at an Apple flagship store, you may be fighting organized grey-market forces. The New York Post reports today on a group of scammers who use strength in numbers to buy iPads from the Fifth Avenue Apple store in New York:

“The illicit, highly orchestrated scheme was in full gear yesterday, with a ringleader doling out massive wads of $100 bills to about five cohorts. The sidekicks then went up and down a line of about 200 Asians outside the store and around the corner, handing out the money.

“The scammers in line then went inside and bought iPad 2’s — wiping out the store within minutes.”

The slabs of scarcity are then sold on the street for up to $2000, or immediately sent to Asia for resale.

When it comes to iPhone photography, some folks are Hipstamatics while others are Instagrammers. For the latter bunch there’s now a new app for iPad called Instagallery (iTunes link) that lets users do all kinds of fun stuff with the Instagram API.

Users can view all Instagram photos as a gallery on the iPad, see popular photos, or sign in to to see photos from those people they follow. They can view their own photos, “like” photos, read and add comments, see what users their friends follow, and more.

Instagallery was developed by InfinitApps, costs $1.99 and is available in the iTunes App Store.

Adobe’s Photoshop Express application for iOS has been recently updated to version 2.0, and introduces a brand new camera pack available through an in-app purchase. The camera pack costs $3.99, and for that you get three great features that promise to deliver professional results and better photos, including noise reduction, a self timer, and an auto review mode.

Find out more about these features after the break!

We start out the day with a mix of deals, ranging from hardware, accessories and software. First up is another deal on Mac mini desktop machines from the Apple Store. The several available units start at $599 for a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini. Next is a luxury convertible flip case for your iPad. This leather case includes a screen protector, multi-function flip stand and built-in elastic strap. Although Spring is still a few days away, a new MacUpdate promo bundle is available. This one includes 11 apps, such as Parrallels 6, Mac DVD RipperPro 2 and Civilization IV – all for $50.

Along the way, we also check out replacement front glass for your iPhone 4 and a case for your iPod touch. As usual, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.