Cult of Mac

Just ahead of Apple’s upcoming iPad 2 announcement, Random House has begun populating the iBooks Store with such titles as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. The news comes just after the larger publisher announced it had agreed to the Cupertino, Calif. company’s “agency model” for pricing e-books sold to iPad and iPhone owners.

Earlier this week, Random House said it had adopted Apple’s pricing method for e-books partially at the request of book stores hoping to sell more electronic books to support lagging sales of physical titles. The tech giant has required publishers to adopt the “agency model,” where booksellers receive a 30 percent cut. Some publishers had objected, instead preferring Amazon’s tactic of selling e-books at a loss, hoping the increased demand for electronic reading material would boost its Kindle e-reader.

As everyone awaits Apple’s announcement about the next-generation iPad, the Cupertino, Calif. company reportedly is gearing up to sell 6.5 million of both the new tablet and the initial product during the first quarter of 2011. The tech giant could ship 40 million of the popular devices during the full calendar year, the Wednesday report adds.

Possibly preparing for heavy demand and hoping to not repeat shortages seen for the first iPad, Apple has between 300,000 to 400,000 iPad 2 units for the initial San Francisco, Calif. launch, slated for today at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. The company has reportedly already ordered between 1.7 million and 2 million iPads during the first two months of the year. Apple in March is expected to order more than 2 million of the iPad 2 devices.

The Griffin Survivor case for iPhone 4, which retails for $49.99 and works on all iPhone 4 models, is the latest rugged case leaping out of the gate running neck and neck for top dog with the likes of the Ballistic HC and many others. I was surprised to see another new case this late after the release of the iPhone 4 with the iPhone 5 just around the corner. However, it may be that the vendors know something we don’t. Perhaps the iPhone 5 will share the same dimensions as the iPhone 4 just like the iPhone 3G and 3GS.

Griffin labels the Survivor as “Armored Ready for Anything. ” I don’t think so and I’d like to explain why I say that.

This chunky silvery thing is an iKn2, a sturdy and secure case for iPad, built for those times when you might want to use one as a public kiosk device.

That was quick. Google appears to have already upgraded CultofMac.com in its search results, just a few days after downgrading us.

As we noted yesterday, Cult of Mac was collateral damage in Google’s war on crappy content farms. For some inexplicable reason, we got downgraded when Google tweaked its algorithms last Thursday.

But today we’re back in. We’re on Google News (a very important source of daily traffic) as well as Google’s general search results. However, we still get outranked by some of the scraper sites that steal our content, so not everything’s perfect.

Why we’ve been upgraded, I have no idea. Google’s head of spam, Matt Cutts, tweeted me yesterday, saying Google had likely seen my post and would get it resolved. And Wired.com published a story about us today after speaking to a Google Fellow Amit Singhal. But the changes were already in place early this morning, which makes me think Google is slowly tweaking its algorithm to get better results. I’ve asked Cutts for an explanation, and will post up if/when I get a reply.

I’d like to thank readers for your awesome support. We got some very nice notes in the comments to the last post. Made my day. Thanks guys.

Honk – ($0.99) iPhone – Navigation

If you’ve ever returned to your car to find that you’ve earned yourself a whopping great fine for running over on the meter, or parking too long in the same spot, Honk is here to help! Simply swipe the virtual parking meter to record how much time you’ve got to park and Honk will ensure you’re reminded when it’s nearly time to move your car. The app icon on your home screen will even display how much time you’ve got left minute-by-minute, so it’s easy to see at a quick glance. You can even use to Honk to remind yourself of where you parked by making handwritten notes, taking photos, and using your GPS location.

This one looks a bit fishy, but we’re throwing it out for fun. Amazon.de may have accidentally posted the specs and release date of the iPad 2.

According to the screenshot above, snapped YourAppleDaily.net, the iPad 2 available will have Thunderbolt, a camera and 1.2GHz CPU. And it will be released released on March 17.

Here’s the specs:

9.7-inch screen (same as the current iPad)
1.2GHz CPU
Wi-Fi
Thunderbolt
Camera
Bluetooth
Available 17 March

However, the link to Amazon.de provided by YourAppleDaily.net isn’t working (here’s the link), and a search of Amazon.de pulls up zip.

That just leaves the screenshot above…

Reader Lovell just sent this very puzzling email regarding something new from Apple tomorrow regarding phones. He writes:

I had a friend go to apple today to purchase an iPhone 4. The salesmen talked her out of buying it and told her to come back tomorrow. Would not say what was coming out tomorrow but said she would be verry happy. I ask what it could be phone wise because she said I don’t want a white iPhone but yet the salesmen still wouldn’t say.

Lovell is in Lexington, Ky. I’m stumped. Anyone thinking it could be the rumored cheapo iPhone?

Here’s an iPhone photography app that’s rather different to all the others.

It’s called nofinder, and its name is a clue.

[polldaddy poll=”4641595″]

The Apple universe is all a twitter on the day before the Cupertino company tells media what “2011 will be the year of.”

The folks at bookmaker.com are wagering that we’ll see three versions of the iPad 2 (96%), a front and rear-facing camera  and a  non-smudge screen & gyroscope (96%).

Less likely, they speculate, are a USB port (83%), flat back (61.7%) and a 7-inch version  (160%) . (Yep, that’s over 100%. For once, the fuzzy math isn’t mine, that’s how betting odds work).

Take our poll and let us know what you think. Or what you hope for.

As the fervor surrounding tomorrow’s big announcement builds, fanboys and fangirls are eagerly sitting around their computers gulping down all the latest iPad 2 rumors that the Internet has to offer. One of the popular rumors out there is that tomorrows iPad 2 unveiling will be a disappointing spec bump and that the real grand daddy of tablet computers, the iPad 3, will be unveiled later in the year (possibly in September if Gruber and others are correct).

Cult of Mac has published a number of articles supporting the idea that Apple will be releasing two iPads in 2011. While there have been a significant amount of doubters to this theory of two iPads being launched, one must take into account that such a move wouldn’t be completely unprecedented. I’m referring to the iPod Mini 2G vs. the iPod Nano in 2005.

This is the icon for a new section of the Finder in Lion (Apple’s latest update to OS X) called “All My Files.” It helps users find recently-used files, listing them by type, date and so on.

Look carefully. The file cards contain some of Steve Jobs’ best-known quotes, including the words to the famous “Think Different” commercial.

Do you recognize the quotes?

Via Tuaw: Mac OS X Lion features hidden tribute to Steve Jobs

In replacing the Mini DisplayPort in the latest revision of the venerable MacBook Pro line, you can bet that Apple’s going to start rolling out Thunderbolt to all Macs with each new iteration of the line-up… starting, it seems, with the venerable white unibody MacBook.

We start March with two iPhone app deals and a MacBook bargain. First up is a new crop of free iPhone applications, including “3D Pool Master.” We then move onto “Slingo Supreme,” a free casino bingo game for the iPhone. We wrapup the spotlight deals with a 2.1GHz 13-inch Macbook for just $570.

Along the way, we also check out iPad cases and warranties, along with a $849 27-inch LED Cinema Display. As always, details on these and many other Mac items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

We’ve received some tidbits of information about the iPad 2 launch tomorrow from an Apple staffer:

• MobileMe is being revamped with cloud storage features.
• The iPad 2 is a ho-hum update. It’s more of a speed bump than a redesign.
• The iPad 3 is the one to get excited about, and it’s on track for release later this year.

Add another potential announcement to the already long list of items we are expected to hear from Apple Wednesday: iBooks. Random House, one of the largest publishers of physical books, is now ready to accept Apple’s “agency” pricing model for ebooks sold through the Cupertino, Calif. company’s iBookstore.

The publisher, the lone holdout, said starting today, it will change its pricing to meet Apple’s requirement that booksellers get a 30 percent cut of the e-books’ retail price. The shift toward Apple’s position is hoped to increase e-book sales from iPad owners. The Apple tablet is competing with Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook, among other e-readers.

Speaking to large crowd at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka spent several minutes gushing about Apple for building the App Store and allowing a game like Angry Birds to be bought and enjoyed by millions of people around the world.

Before the App Store, according to Vesterbacka, there was a “carrier-dominated Soviet model” when it came to making games for mobile devices. “Other people decided on our behalf what was a good game and what was a bad game,” Vesterbacka said.

The App Store changed all of that. “We really have Apple to thank [for our success].”

What of Angry Birds 2 though? Vesterbacka said it’s coming, and that Rovio plans on releasing new Angry Birds games (in the plural) this summer.

Chances are, we’re likely to get a sneak peek of those games at tomorrow’s iPad 2 event. Although it is likely just serendipity that both the annual Game Developers Conference and the iPad 2 launch event are taking place during the same week in San Francisco, it seems like the opportunity to get the developer of the App Store’s most popular game on stage and show off his new games would be an impossible impulse for Cupertino to ignore.

Actually, come to think of it, is it coincidence that GDC and the iPad 2 event are behind held in the same week, or will tomorrow’s announcement have a heavy gaming focus?

The second hacker charged outing an AT&T security breach that exposed over 120,000 iPad 3G customers’ personal data was released on bail yesterday.

Andrew Auernheimer, who left the New Jersey courthouse looking slightly disheveled but with signature beard intact after posting bail without commenting to the press, had been behind bars since mid-January.

He and Daniel Spitler, both in their mid-20s and members of the Goatse Security group, were each charged with a count of fraud and a count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization.

They were charged seven months after vulnerability was discovered by researchers at Goatse security, who wrote a script that harvested iPad 3G owners’ ICC-IDs (or integrated circuit card identifier, used to identify SIM cards to a network) and email addresses through exploiting a hole on AT&T’s website.

Auernheimer also goes by the alias Weev. The last two entries in his LiveJournal on January 14 featured a portrait from a friend (or fan?) looking haunted on what appears to be a cross and a bit about his interest in Jyotish, or Hindu astrology.

After reviewing his birth chart (“you may face a risk to your life and limbs during your 25th year”) he notes:

“It even knows the year of my peril. Just gotta make it through. Keep on truckin!”

Via AP

Wednesday’s Apple announcement, widely expected to include an updated version of the Cupertino, Calif. company’s wildly-popular iPad tablet, will be “crucial” for the tech giant to maintain its lead against rival products, one analyst said Tuesday.

“We believe Apple must make a convincing case for why the iPad 2 is better than the plethora of competitors coming to market, while at the same time persuading iPad 1 buyers to upgrade to iPad 2,” Ticonderoga Securities’ analyst Brian White told investors in a note. Why the importance? The tablet provided 17.2 percent of the company’s revenue during the first quarter of 2011 – and the figure is rising.

Most of us have been taking it as a matter read that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would not be attending Wednesday’s iPad 2 event: he’s on a medical leave of absence, and Tim Cook has proven to be a reliable — if unexciting — stand-in for Jobs in the past.

Italian Apple site SetteB it defying conventional wisdom with a new report, though: they claim that Jobs will at least attend tomorrow’s iPad 2 event at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, and depending on how he’s feeling, might even host.

You know what, Steve? As much as we don’t really feel like it’s an Apple event if you aren’t prancing onstage like some sort of crazed conductor to a music only you can hear, it’s seriously okay. You can just sit in the audience for a change. You’ve earned a bit of a rest, and the iPad 2 is going to be awesome even if you’re not the one to physically deliver it in your hands to the rest of the world.

[via 9to5Mac]

We’ve seen transparent iPhone 4s before. It’s a simple process, actually: just unscrew your iPhone 4 with a torx driver, then douse the back panel in acetone or naphtha until the black paint bubbles away. Screw the now transparent panels back on, and voila.

If you hate paint thinner fumes, though, and just want to avoid the part of the process that involves huffing dangerous chemicals, the lads over at M.I.C. Gadget are selling a transparent back panel for the iPhone 4 for just $23.90 each.

It certainly looks cool, seeing your iPhone’s silicon guts electronically pulsing beneath the handset’s translucent skin, but before you decide to do this mod yourself, just a warning: this mod is going to greatly downgrade the image quality of your iPhone 4’s camera. Apple has had a near impossible time preventing ambient light from leaking onto even the white iPhone 4s sensor. How do you think your camera’s going to do when it’s got an invisible skin?

There’s an old saying which allowed Mac computer users to sleep while Windows fans dealt with swarms of pesky malicious hackers : security through obscurity. However, now that you can’t go a day without hearing or reading about Apple, that maxim may be wearing thin. Security researchers now report hackers have a way to remotely send commands to your Mac OS X computer.

Although security research firm Sophos wants to call the Trojan the “OSX/Musminum-A”, hackers involved prefer “Blackhole” RAT, or Remote Access Trojan. Whatever the name, the security exploit could allow hackers to control your Mac, even displaying a fake “Administrator Password” window. However, before you hit the defcon-3 button, there are some details you might want to know.

One or Apple’s subtler masteries is price. Cupertino knows how to keep the prices of their products understandable, without gumming them up with multiple SKUs and convoluted pricing structures… and while past Apple products have often times been accused of being burdened with the dreaded Apple tax, in recent years, Apple’s managed to price their products so low as to undercut the competition (the iPad, for example, is still the only competitive sub-$500 tablet).

No surprise, then, that Apple’s new business-centric IT service, Joint Venture, flaunts an immediately grokkable price: $499 for five users annually, with each additional user costing just $99. All tax deductible.

Joint Venture hasn’t been formally announced, but it’s expected to get some talk time at tomorrow’s iPad 2 event. It’s not a show-stopper service, but if I were a small business owner trying to convince my partner to switch the office to the Mac, I’d be kissing a snapshot of Steve Jobs right now.

Steve Jobs almost joined such Neo-Arthurian luminaries as Sir Elton Hercules John, Sir Robert of Hope and Dame Kylie Minogue, according to a former Labour Party politician, who says that the Apple CEO was almost offered a knighthood back in 2009 for his services to technology.

According to the former senior British MP, although the argument for Jobs’ knighthood was compelling, the Apple boss’ impolitic inscrutability ultimately cut him out of getting the war.

Although the suggestions for knighthood reached the final stages of approval, at the end of the day, Steve Jobs was irrefutably blocked by Downing Street because Jobs had once refused to attend an annual Labour conference, which would have been seen as a big political win for then-current Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Why was Jobs considered?

Apple has been the only major global company to create stunning consumer products because it has always taken design as the key component of everything it has produced. No other CEO has consistently shown such a commitment.

If it hadn’t been blocked, Jobs still wouldn’t be the first American to be a British Knight, or even the first tech magnate: Bill Gates won in 2005. However, due to his lack of British citizenship, he still wouldn’t be allowed to go around, belligerently demanding strangers to refer to him as “Sir Steve,” a la Ben Kingsley.