Cult of Mac

You only need to take the quickest and most cursory glance at the newsf eeds to know that the iPad 2 isn’t just coming, and it’s right around the corner, hitting Apple Stores no later than sometime in April.

But if you need more proof, consider this: AT&T is having a massive sale on all iPad accessories. They’re clearing house of all the accessories that in a few short months won’t work with the current-gen iPad, and they’re desperate enough that they’re slashing prices literally in half.

Yup, all iPad accessories are now 50% off at AT&T. You just don’t discount accessories on a successful current product like this if you aren’t expecting them to be obsolete soon. As for how soon, if AT&T knows something the rest of us don’t, my guess is that we’re looking at a March launch for the iPad 2 instead of April. Why clear house now if there’s still two months to go?

For the second year running, Apple has been named Barron’s most respected company in an annual survey of money managers.

If you use online streaming service Spotify, you’ll know that the client software required for controlling it is pretty good.

It’s simple to use, and not too cluttered with controls and extras. Since I started paying £5/month for Spotify’s advert-free Unlimited service, I’ve been listening to it for many hours on end, and found only one problem: I have to switch back to Spotify to control it.

Now it’s true that Spotify can be controlled with your Mac’s existing dedicated iTunes buttons – F7 for previous track, F8 for play/pause, and F9 for next track. But this only works well if iTunes isn’t running at the same time. If both apps are open, they both respond to these commands, and audio chaos ensues.

Spotify Menubar is a simple free utility that solves this problem by allowing you to set up your own system-wide keyboard shortcuts for Spotify, so you can avoid the conflict with iTunes and still have easy keyboard access to your favorite songs.

It would be nice if Spotify Menubar had some clickable controls of its own, which would better justify its position on the Menu Bar in the first place. But for those of us who spend hours a day with our heads inside Spotify playlists, it’s a useful little widget to have around nonetheless.

More deals from the supply front, as Apple reportedly inks a deal worth $7.8B with tablet rival Samsung to supply components for the upcoming iPad 2 and other mobile devices created by the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant. The report follows earlier talk the tablet maker had signed agreements with several manufacturers in a bid to corner the supply of parts required for a high-resolution ‘retina’ display.

This latest agreement reported by the Wall Street Journal would make Samsung Apple’s largest supplier, something which has raised eyebrows. Samsung makes the Android-based Galaxy smartphone and Galaxy Tab tablet, which are alternatives to Apple’s MacBook and iPad.

New over at Photojojo is this bizarre $35 add-on for iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4: an 8X zoom lens kit.

You get more than just the lens. The kit comes with a slide-on case for your phone, on to which you attach the lens itself. There’s also a mini tripod so you can keep the whole thing steady.

It certainly looks weird, but it’s so cheap that I can see plenty of photo nerds jumping at the chance to play around with iPhone zoomery.

If you do, let us know what you think of it, or link to some of your sample images.

Christy Pelland isn’t exactly a pinup, but you’d be forgiven for making that assumption viewing the pic above.

Pelland is a photographer by trade who specializes in retro-pinup portraits. And she loves her Macs.

Read on for more about her love affair with Apple, what makes Mac nerds sexy, her studio set-up, and yes, more pics.

It’s not often Apple and the corporate boardroom are mentioned in the same sentence, but an increasing number of analysts say the Cupertino, Calif. company’s iPad is a big hit with business. As CEO Steve Jobs puts it: “We’ve got a tiger by the tail…”

Apple’s secret weapon in what Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes calls “the consumerization of IT” is the infiltration of the iPad, iPhone and other products not originally aimed at the enterprise. And as for the iPad, the tablet is “running far ahead” of competitors, making competition for corporate dollars Apple’s game to lose, according to the analyst.

UPDATE: The big question about a streaming-only iPhone is apps: How will users download apps? My source compared it to the second-generation Apple TV, which is a streaming-only device but includes 8GB of onboard memory (for the OS and buffering media). “I’m not 100% sure on the amount of memory available for the user,” he said. “I know there is some memory but it acts more like the memory on the AppleTV. There is some there, I’m just not sure how much.”

We have more detail on Apple’s iPhone nano, which according to Sunday’s Wall Street Journal is real and may be headed to market this year.

But what we have will blow your mind.

Back in 2005, after his battle with cancer and first medical leave of absence from Apple, Steve Jobs gave a rare glimpse into his personal passions and motivation in an inspiring commencement speech to Stanford University graduates. As Jobs once again takes leave of his child – and prognosticators debate what may become of Apple – Matt’s Macintosh has created this lovely compendium of an excerpt from that address, with music and great old photos from Before the Turtleneck.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. It’s what has made Apple so special. It can still change the world.

This week, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch all published rumors that Apple plans to compete in the mid-ranged smartphone sector, with the launch of a smaller, more affordable iPhone, to be sold alongside the iPhone 4. At Cult of Mac, we predicted as much six weeks ago.

Of course, rumors of a smaller, cheaper iPhone are nothing new. They’ve been around for almost as long as the iPhone itself. And with good reason. Any seasoned Apple watcher will recognize this as Steve Jobs’ standard MO. Launch an iconic, up-market product, allow the market for it to grow and mature, and when the underlying technology becomes cheap enough, introduce a smaller, more affordable mass market version.

The recently released Greenpois0n jailbreak tool has been updated to release candidate 6 today, and this particular version will allow you to jailbreak your second-generation AppleTV and install the popular NitoTV software, adding a few great new features to your device.

The process is exactly the same as that used for release candidate 5, and just as before, this will provide an untethered jailbreak for all devices, meaning you won’t need to plug them in to your computer when you want to boot them.

Greenpois0n RC6 is available for both Mac and Windows, and you can download it now from here.

Kicking off our list of must-have iOS games this week is NBA Jam, the latest App Store hit from EA Sports, featuring all the over-the-top, high-flying, 2-on-2 arcade basketball action, just as you remember it. Relive that ’90s nostalgia with the hottest new arcade sports game for the iPhone, with the voice of Tim Kitzrow, the original NBA Jam play-by-play announcer.

Also in our favorites this week is Karoshi, an incredibly popular PC game which has now made its way to the iPhone, and also into the news headlines this week thanks to its dark storyline. Unlike the majority of games in which your sole purpose is to survive, in this one you take control of an overworked Japanese businessman whose mission is to end it all. As horrific and offensive as it sounds, it’s nowhere near as bad as you think, and it’s actually a lot of light-hearted fun.

Hungry Shark – Part 3 is the third of our choices this week, as well as the third in this series of top-selling aquatic eat ’em-ups. Chomp your way to the top of the food chain as you trawl the depths of the ocean in search of food to satisfy your voracious appetite in the most exciting Hungry Shark yet.

Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves, including Carnivores: Ice Age and Chicken Coup, after the break!

Taking screenshots in Mac OS X can be a useful tool. Unfortunately, Apple never talks about this tool, so in turn, it is a relatively unknown feature. In this video, I will show you two easy methods of taking screenshots.

Ben David Walker, a student from the U.K., has designed a new banner notification system for the iPhone that cleverly uses some empty space in the current iOS.

As we reported yesterday, Apple is revamping the much-criticized pop-up notification system in iOS and is buying a third-party app developer for its technology.

The current notification system is a mess. It was designed in 2007 when users had the odd SMS message or alarm, but is useless for 2011 when users have multiple messages coming in from Twitter, Facebook, SMS, as well as alarms, reminders, voicemails and missed calls. There is nowhere in iOS to see them all in one location.

But there would be using Walker’s new system. Here’s how it would work.

Going around town today, I didn’t have time to plop myself in front of a television, and so I constantly checked my iPad when at WiFi hotspots to update myself on the exciting developments in Egypt.

Oh, there’s gonna be a bumper crop of iPhone musicians born this weekend if Frontier Design Group has their way. Practically all their music-slinging iPhone apps are on sale to celebrate the iPhone coming to Verizon, including the highly regarded iShred app — sister app to the free iShred LIVE app required to use Griffin’s GuitarConnect and StompBox accessories — GuitarStudio and PianoStudio, all three of which are normally $5 each, but on sale for a buck apiece.

As musician and fellow Cult of Mac contributor Lonnie Lazar says, these apps won’t turn you into a Rock God; but they’re certainly a truckload of fun and great tools to learn with. Sale ends tomorrow, so don’t mess around if you want ’em.

Now that Apple’s killed off the XServe once and for all, there’s not a lot of options when it comes to fitting the existing Mac server options into a standard 1U rack space… or is there?

The RackMac mini by Sonnet Tech allows system admins to install two Mac minis in a standard rackmount enclosure while allowing full access to the CD drive, power LEDs and even the IR port on the unibody mini.

I’m no admin, but Sonnet seems to have thought of everything here, right down to a wiring and ventilation system to prevent the Mac mini from overheating. Each kit costs $16.

Apple doesn’t let app developers assign functions to the iPhone’s physical buttons. It’s easy to understand their point in the matter — those physical buttons are for system settings, not as function keys — but I’ve always wished Apple would make an exception when it came to camera apps. Using an onscreen shutter button just isn’t very nice, especially when you’re trying for a self-portrait.

The Camera Mic App is an ingenious dodge against the prohibition against using the iPhone’s physical buttons as a shutter in a camera app: instead, it uses the iPhone’s mic itself as a shutter button. Just load the app and tap the mic when you want to take a picture.

Briilliant, and only $0.99. If you take a lot of duck-lipped Facebook self-portraits, this is the app for you.

Over at Geek.com, I took Sparrow — the new Tweetie-esque Gmail client for Mac, now available on the Mac App Store — for a spin.

What’d I think? I really liked it… so much so that it has dislodged Postbox 2 as my e-mail client of choice.

Here’s a bit of my review:

Sparrow treats email a lot like Twitter, a four-year old micro-blogging medium still in the process of evolving. It’s a presumptuous move on the part of Sparrow’s developers, and one many users will just never be able to get beyond, either because they needmore functionality from an email client… or, after decades of using email one way, they just can’t believe that they could be more productive treating it more ephemerally…

How seriously do you take your email? How much can you go with its flow? Power users will be driven mad by the lack of sophisticated mail wrangling functionality in Sparrow, but that’s the whole point. Sparrow wants you to treat your inbox like a stream that can be dipped into, not an ocean to be tamed; it’s the equivalent of skipping stones, not piloting a submarine.

You can read the whole review here, and stay tuned to Cult of Mac for an interview with the Sparrow team next week in which we discuss the philosophy and future of the app.

When I wrangled a brief listen to Antec’s new soundscience rockus 3D 2.1 system at CES last month, I was pretty sure this was a direct challenge to Bose’s venerable Companion 3 system. All the pieces are there: subwoofer, two satellite speakers and the stand-alone volume dial; even the price, $250, is the same.

Antec’s take, though, takes more style risks and adds this: an active system that feigns 3D, giving the impression of a 5.1 system by processing incoming signals and “placing” the sounds in a virtualized 3D soundscape to create the effect. At least, that’s the idea; the little taste I received at CES certainly inicated they might have got it right. Full test coming.

The profile image on Twitter for Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim shows him wearing a Pharoah’s crown, typing away on a Mac laptop. Ghonim, a Google marketing exec in Cairo, was released after 12 days in custody by authorities for a  Facebook page Facebook Page about the death of everyman activist Khalid Said that catalyzed protests.

I got to talk to a researcher this week about social media in the Arab world – and how the services many of us use to keep in touch with far-flung old flames and cousins serve as portable microblogging and news distribution tools in places where most media is state-run or party-funded.

We’ll try to catch up to Ghonim after the euphoria dies down to ask him what role Apple devices play in these historic events.

UPDATE: we corrected the FB page thanks to reader ademsemir who says that iPhones played a big part in recent events. 

Via @ghonim

We close out another week with an iPhone extravaganza in the spotlight. First up is the latest crop of iPhone application price cuts, including “Toy Story Mania.” Next is a new batch of freebies from the iPhone App Store, such as “Garmin Pilot My-Cast Aviation,” a weather and flight-planning tool. We wrap-up with a deal on Verizon’s iPhone 4, which began sales to the general public Thursday.

Along the way, we check out cases for your iPad, deals on MacPros and iMacs, along with software and accessories. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

I’m with Scoble on this one: the Nokia/Microsoft partnership is a pretty good idea. Here’s why:

1. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 is actually pretty good. It’s certainly better than Nokia’s Symbian and arguably better than Android.
2. Microsoft gets massive hardware distribution, which will attract developers.
3. Apps: The platform will be too big to ignore. And apps are what count. You can’t just have cool devices or cool software, you’ve got to have a platform. This is why HP should also go with Windows Phone 7, instead of trying to get webOS off the ground (it’s great, but it’s doomed).

As Scoble says:

Nokia has great hardware design and supply chains. They always have great cameras, great screens. Supply chains matter. A lot more than anyone thinks (the stuff Apple never talks about, but works its ass off on is supply chain management — I got to see this first hand when I visited China).
You add that all up as a salad and now the smart developers have to take another look at Microsoft and Nokia. They can’t ignore them like they can RIM (we all know people won’t use a lot of cool apps on a Blackberry).

Scoble: Dear Nokia Fans: You’re Nuts!

UPDATE: I sent an email to App Remix’s CEO Jonathan George asking whether his company was going to be bought by Apple. His response? “No comment…” he said.

Apple is working on a new notification system for iOS and will be buying a small company to build its technology into the operating system, according to one of our sources.

Apple’s pop-up notification system for new text messages, voicemails and the like has often been criticized as one of the weakest parts of the iOS. Notifications are intrusive, modal and often cryptic. It’s a mess.

HP/Palm’s webOS banner notification system, on the other hand, has been widely praised for its utility and ease of use. And from this week’s preview, it looks to be getting better.

There were rumors last year that the iPhone’s notification system would be fixed after the chief architect of Palm’s system, Rich Dellinger, returned to work at Apple. However, the system still hasn’t been fixed, and according to our source, Apple is now trying to buy a small app developer to fix it.

Our source, who asked to remain anonymous, didn’t know the identity of the company, except it already has an iPhone app in the App Store.

One candidate is Boxcar, a free app from App Remix that enables push notifications for Twitter, Facebook, and email. Boxcar’s system has been highly praised, especially the new iPad version.

Other than that, we couldn’t find other obvious possibilities for the company Apple is buying. If anyone has a good idea, please leave it in the comments.