Apple Wednesday said it will release a free update to its iOS software which the Cupertino, Calif. company claims will secure location data stored on the iPhone and iPad. The update will “reduce the size of the database file, encrypt the file, and ensure it is deleted if users disable location services on their iPhone or 3G-connected iPad,” Apple announced in a press release.

Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported the tracking feature continues even when users disable location services. The growing concerns, which now goes by “Locationgate,” has prompted class-action lawsuits and government investigations.

Apple is certainly rather talkative today; as well as confirming the release of the white iPhone 4 tomorrow, it has also issued a press release announcing that the iPad 2 will launch in another 12 countries this week.

Tomorrow, April 28th, the second-generation tablet will hit Japan; while Hong Kong, India, Israel, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and UAE will get the device on Friday, April 28th. China will also get the device on May 6th.

Customers can purchase the device at Apple retails stores from 9 a.m. local time, select Apple authorized resellers, and from Apple’s online store beginning at 1 a.m.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for the iPad 2 I ordered in the U.K. on April 1st. What gives?

Embattled cell phone giant Nokia Wednesday announced it will cut 7,000 jobs as a result of its Microsoft Windows Phone agreement and outsourcing its Symbian handset software. The cuts represent 12 percent of the company’s handset employees and could save Nokia $1.46 billion.

“The competitive environment has changed rapidly,” explained Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. The cuts including 4,000 layoffs and 3,000 jobs shifted to Accenture are just the latest move by Nokia. It recently inked a deal supporting Microsoft’s Windows Phone software instead of Symbian. Additionally, Apple recently was pegged as the largest mobile phone company, in terms of revenue, causing Nokia to be the largest handset maker in only volume. The former Microsoft executive Elop was hired about a year ago in a bid to make the Finnish company more competitive with Apple’s iPhone.

In 2009, Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics (Blue) released the Yeti, a wonderfully talented little microphone that many, especially many podcasters, took notice of then proceeded to fall in love with. The Yeti was beautiful, dead-simple to use, and very Mac friendly. Yeti was also the first USB mic to allow users to record in any one of four different polar patterns (four I say!) making it incredibly versatile. And now, with the Yeti Pro, Blue is making their hit mic even better.

Apple has today issued a press release and finally confirmed the launch date of the white iPhone 4. It will be available beginning tomorrow, April 28th, from Apple’s online store, its retail stores, AT&T and Verizon stores, and select Apple authorized resellers.

It was also be available from various carriers in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and the U.K.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president – who confirmed in a tweet that the device would launch this spring – said in the press release:

The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it’s beautiful. We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right.

The device launches 10 months after it was first announced, with various manufacturing issues rumored to be the cause of the delay. Apple’s official statement will finally spell the end of white iPhone 4 rumors. Oh, Lord, what a wonderful day.

Crucial has just launched its new M4 lineup of 2.5-inch solid-state drives, which are the successors to the RealSSD C300 range, and boast faster read and write speeds. The M4 uses 25nm technology NAND flash created by its parent company Micron, and is available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB models.

Crucial claim the new M4 SSDs reach read speeds of up to 415MBps – a 17% increase over its predecessor – while write speeds are up 20% with speeds of up to 260MBps.

As with all SSDs, however, this technology doesn’t come cheap. The 64GB M4 will cost you $130, which rises to $250 for the 128GB, $500 for the 256GB and $1000 for the 512GB. All can be purchased directly from Crucial and include a three-year warranty.

While the M4s are pretty pricey, solid-state drives are a great way of improving the speed of your Mac. Traditional hard drives are famous for being the bottleneck in modern-day Macs, and since the release of the incredibly nippy second-generation MacBook Air, many users have realized the difference an SSD can make and have adopted the new technology. Recent tests have proven that MacBook Pros equipped with SSD drives are significantly faster than those with traditional HDDs.

[via Macworld]

Apple pushed out the 9.1.2 update to iPhoto ’11 yesterday, introducing some new card themes and improving the application’s stability with several bug fixes.

Improvements to the application include fixes for the zoom slider in magnify view, an issue which prevented the toolbar from auto-hiding in full screen view, and minor issues with formatting with book, card and calendar themes.

The full release notes for the 9.1.2 release are as follows:

This update adds new card themes to iPhoto ’11. It also improves overall stability and addresses a number of other minor issues, including the following:

• Addresses an issue that prevented the Zoom slider from being accessible in Magnify (1-Up) view
• Fixes an issue where Toolbars were not auto-hiding in Full Screen view
• Search field now correctly performs an “includes” search when searching by text string
• Fixes minor formatting issues with book, card and calendar themes
• Message Size of emails now correctly updates when changes are made using the Photo Size menu
• Addresses an issue that prevented some iPhoto 5 libraries from upgrading correctly
• Multiple book pages can now be drag-selected when in All Pages view
• Design tools in print project panels are now accessible via separate Layout and Options buttons
• Photo backgrounds applied to a book are now preserved when book type is changed
• Tab key can now be used to navigate through all text fields in a book project

The update is recommended for all users of iPhoto ’11.

iPhoto ’11 users can get the update via Software Update, Apple’s website, or through the Mac App Store.

A new report from Nikkei Shimbun – the Japanese newspaper behind the iPhone 6 LCD rumors – claims the iPad 2 will finally launch in Japan on Thursday, April 28th. The second-generation tablet was delayed for over a month due to the earthquake and tsunami that recently devastated vast parts of the country.

Apple announced that it would be delaying the launch of the iPad 2 in Japan in the middle of March – stating its teams were focusing on recovering from the recent disaster – and the company is yet to release an update on the delay.

The iPad 2 was scheduled to launch in Japan on March 25th – the same day it hit 25 other countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Norway and the U.K.

If Nikkei’s claims are accurate, the iPad 2 will launch in Japan just a day after the white iPhone 4 is released worldwide; a busy week for Apple, it seems.

[via MacRumors]

Here’s TweetDeck v2, not just an update but a complete “re-imagining” of the original, say its makers.

To create v2 they stripped everything out and started again from scratch. The result is a Twitter client that’s faster and easier to use.

ipswDownloader is a great new tool that makes the process of finding and downloading iOS firmware releases incredibly simple. Developed by Vitaly Parovishnik, and available for both Mac and Windows, the app supports every iOS device there is – including AppleTV – and features iOS firmware from version 1.0.1.

What’s great about ipswDownloader is that once you’ve selected your device and the firmware version you want to download, it provides additional details on the release that jailbreakers in particular will find incredibly valuable; such as the baseband version, whether the firmware can be jailbroken and unlocked, and the size of the download.

ipswDownloader is completely free to download and use. The full list of supported devices can be found after the break.

Remember that really cool transparent rear panel for the iPhone 4 we posted about a while ago? It was allegedly achievable by removing your device’s rear panel and eliminating its black paint with some paint thinner – allowing you to look in on the iPhone’s internal beauty. Now you can have your own transparent iPhone without ruining your device’s housing with paint thinner.

iFixit have just released their new transparent iPhone 4 rear panel for just $29.95. The panel includes the flash diffuser and camera lens, so you require nothing more to acheive this ultra cool mod.

Installing the panel is easy: you simply remove the two screws at the base of your device and the rear panel slides off. Recent iPhone 4s will require a pentalobe screwdriver, whereas earlier models will require a Phillips #00 screwdriver.

The panel is currently only compatible with GSM models of the iPhone – apparently Apple has modified the rear panel layout for the CDMA iPhone, so Verizon customers are out of luck.

I’ve been looking forward to the day that I could swap my MacBook for an iPad as a blogging tool. I can write nearly as fast on the tablet as I can on a real keyboard, and I also tend to take it everywhere, unlike the laptop. Until the last week, however, every blogging app I’ve downloaded for the iPad so far has been inadequate. The official WordPress client is just a disaster — I’ve literally never gotten it to work with Cult of Mac’s hosted account. BlogPress has broad compatibility but generates crummy posts that look like they were put together on a BlackBerry Pearl.

So it was with considerable excitement that I ponied up my $3 to download Blogsy, a new app that promises to be the MarsEdit of the iPad. Having used it for nearly a week, I’m extremely pleased. It has serious formatting capabilities, HTML and rich text modes, administration tools for your blogs, and built-in content import from Flickr, Picasa, YouTube and Google Images, not to mention a popover Web browser. Basically, it takes all of the multitasking inherent to blogging and turns it into a single app.

Special credit should be awarded for the app’s genius media layout mode, which involves tapping and holding on an image to convert it into a friendly alien mascot, then dragging the mascot to the exact location desired for the picture. Simple.

That’s the good news. Though I am blown away by the features and user interface of Blogsy, the software is still too unpolished to rely upon. Sometimes when I start it up, it claims my connection to the CoM home base is corrupted. Other times, it crashes while trying to save a draft, wiping out writing with no chance of recovery. It’s really not ready for heavy use yet. I look forward to its improvement, however. Once the bugs get worked out (and they add Tumblr support), Blogsy will become the platform of choice for on-the-go writers.

Until then, it’s a great novelty. I wrote this post in it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t post it, so I had to email it to myself to save the text.

Cult of Mac rated: [xrr rating=5/10]

Dancing at Apple’s retail stores is becoming quite a trend. First there was iJustine, followed by the lip-syncing kid iTr3vor, and now the cast of a Disney TV movie.

Over the Easter weekend, the cast of Disney’s new made-for-television movie, “Lemonade Mouth,” invaded the Apple retail store at The Grove in Los Angeles to dance a number in front of amused shoppers.

Staff eventually gently shoed them out, but unfortunately not before the movie’s title song “Determinate” drives you absolutely f–king crazy.

Via TUAW and IFOAppleStore.

White iPhone this! White iPhone that!

Who’s sick of it already?

[polldaddy poll=4975121]

If you’ve run up against the New York Times‘ new paywall, here is the simplest way to continue reading — guaranteed. This isn’t just a Mac tip: it works on Windows too.

Apple’s reportedly on the cusp of getting all the major music labels signed for their upcoming cloud-based music locker service… but don’t expect it to be free. According to rumblings from industry sources, Apple is planning on charging for their cloud-streaming service.

Apple’s not happy with Amazon for calling their new app store for Android… well… “Amazon Appstore for Android.” In fact, they’re suing over it, claiming ownership over the term Android.

Amazon’s trying to get the suit tossed out, of course. First witness for the defense? It’ll be Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself.

What does Apple’s excess of $65.8 billion in cash reserves mean in real world terms? Well, for one thing, Steve Jobs could walk into any home in the United States, peel off a few bills from his fold of walking-around money and then, merely by fluttering those bills rhythmically and speaking in a soothing tone of voice, convince even the sternest ethicist, most rigidly defined vegan or opulently well-to-do moneybags to eat his wife and children.

Or, put a less prosaic way? Apple’s stock reserves are so great that if something happened and Apple stopped selling anything at all, the company could keep going until 2018 on its savings alone.

Put even less prosaically — we swear this time — Apple’s cash is worth half of Google’s entire enterprise value. Wow. [via GigaOM]

We start off with the iPhone 3G. This handset is unlocked and loaded with 16GB for just $328. Next is a 27-inch Apple LED Cinema Display for $849. We close out the day’s spotlight with a humorous-appearing GOgroove 2.1-Channel BoomBUDDY Music dock.

Along the way, we also check out various accessories, such as FM transmitters and iPad cases. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Got multiple iTunes accounts? Tired of switching manually from one to the other all the time?

If you’re in that position, you might like to check out this thread on Reddit, which offers a few solutions to make your life easier.

Seamless is a fresh new iOS app that solves a problem we’ve all met: you’re in front of your Mac, listening to some amazing music, and you have to get up and leave.

You could find the same song on your iPod or iPhone, and start it again there. You could even try to scrub through it to the same point in the song. Either way, the mood is lost.

The helicopter pilot who rescued 28 people in the deadly Queensland floods in January told an inquiry commission how they relied on an iPhone with Google Maps to navigate.

Pilot Mark Kempton made a statement to the Queensland Floods Commission recalling how his chopper arrived over shortly before 5pm that day and his crew were shocked at the sight of the brown water rushing beneath them, taking water tanks, trucks, boats and an airplane with it.

You’d think this is something Apple would already have locked down already, but the guy who just mindlessly rubber stamps all patent applications at the USPTO apparently lost this one behind some filing cabinets for a few years. No bother, because he found it, and now Cupertino owns a patent for the veritable iPod click wheel… just in time for Apple to eliminate it entirely with the next generation of all touchscreen iPods! Great timing!

It looks like tomorrow will be the day the white iPhone will go on sale, and to prove it, you can already buy one in either 16GB or 32GB varieties… as long as your are one of les Belgiques, that is.

Yup, you can buy a white iPhone 4 now from at least one retailer, but only if you’re in the Benelux region. All of us without a genetic predilection towards marzipan, the collected works of Hergé and finishing off a day with a flagon of Geuze will just have to wait another twenty-four hours. Which is no big deal, considering we’ve already been waiting for an incredible ten months.

As a final, off-hand comment: anyone else the white iPhone 4 looks kind of fat in this pic?

As a massive fan of first-person shooter games, I’m always looking for great iOS shooters that will help me get my fix when I’m away from a console. Thankfully, the App Store is home to some great FPS games from developers such as Gameloft, EA Games, Treyarch and Villain.

Our latest app list is a collection of the best FPS games in the App Store – check them out after the break!