Apple may enjoy 50 percent growth for the next two years, fueled largely by the increasing demand for mobile applications. That’s the word of the founder and CEO of a research firm, speaking in a Wednesday interview. Forrester Research’s George Colony also predicted the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant’s revenue will soon pass IBM and HP.

Colony described an “app Internet” where users turn to mobile apps, rather than the Web. Apple is “going to be a $200 billion revenue company,” he predicts in a Bloomberg interview. Already the iPhone, iPod and iPad maker had a market capitalization topping $300 billion by the start of 2011. Analysts expect Apple sales will grow 50 percent to more than $100 billion this fiscal year, ending in September.

As an American who lived abroad for a decade, only to recently move back, I know the sting of overseas prices for Apple-products. In many ways, it feels that the rest of the world subsidizes America’s low prices on Apple products.

Case in point, this chart by Setteb.it, comparing iPad 2 prices in the US with 18 out of the 25 countries that will launch iPad 2 tomorrow, March 25th. This is the sort of data that just rubs salt on the wounds of a European, since even a base 16GB iPad 2 WiFi will cost about $175 more than it would have if they bought the iPad 2 in the States.

This might seem a little misleading, since Europe’s VAT is quite high, and usually hovers around 20%. However, Apple’s still passing on a premium to EU iPad 2 buyers, even after VAT is subtracted. For example, Brits looking to buy the 64GB iPad 2 3G will pay about $63 more for that model than yanks… and that’s after the British number has been adjusted for VAT.

Prices like these are why when I lived in Europe I would schedule all of my Apple purchases around trips to the States: the money you can save on buying a MacBook Pro and an iPad together in the States more than pays for the plane ticket.

[via TUAW]

Israeli company Tawkon sells mobile applications that “monitor” your exposure to mobile phone radiation. The idea is that if you experience a sudden spike of radiation while you’re talking, it’ll warn you so you can quickly hurl the phone as hard as you can across the room, douse yourself with lead paint, duck, cover, then resume the conversation.

We’ve seen Tawkon try to capitalize upon the Antennagate controversy to drive interest in their services before. Similarly, it looks like they wanted to capitalize upon the tragedy at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant to launch a renewed push into the App Store.

Now Steve Jobs himself has told them enough panic-mongering is enough: in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and the resulting wave of radiation panics here in the United States, Jobs told Tawkon that Apple has “no interest” in publishing their app.

Tawkon’s launching on Cydia instead, which is fine, but I’m with Steve on this one: given that the iPhone has no native radiation-detecting mechanism (and therefore isn’t accurate), combined with the fact that there is no medical basis for fearing cellphone radiation exposure and the heightened fears about radiation both domestically and abroad, this just isn’t an app that needs to be on the App Store.

If you run a WordPress blog either on your own server or through WordPress.com, your blog just became Flipboard-style cool on iPad, thanks to an awesome new feature which turns any WP blog into a beautiful, flickable animated magazine… all through the magic of HTML5.

Designed by Onswipe, the feature lets you flick through stories, tap into them to drill down through them and swipe to browse. The animations are gorgeous. Here’s an example, though you’ll need to have your iPad handy to see the magic.

If you’ve got a blog hosted on WordPress.com, this functionality should have already gone live for you. On the other hand, if you’re self-hosting a WordPress blog, you’re just a plugin away from making the functionality live for your visitors.

Very, very cool. Let’s see if we can get Leander to spring here on Cult of Mac.

For some time, Apple has viewed its Apple TV device like stamp collecting – an interesting hobby. The concept is intriguing, but the real money could be made if there was a more direct connection to your living-room TV, hence analyst speculation the Cupertino, Calif. company might someday get into the TV business. That day could be sooner than expected amid a Wednesday report TV makers are considering putting key Apple TV technology inside new TV sets.

The technology, known as AirPlay currently streams video and audio from Apple devices, such as the iPad or iPhone, to the Apple TV set-top box. However, now TV manufacturers, looking for a way to revive slumping sales, are talking with Apple about putting the technology directly in new TVs.

MarsEdit is the best blogging tool for OS X, bar none. If you do blogging for money or just for the love of it, MarsEdit is a dream come true for you. It will save you lots of hassle and hours of time.

Disney shareholders have re-elected Steve Jobs to the company’s board of directors, despite opposition from the AFL-CIO, the labor union federation.
As previously reported, the AFL-CIO opposed Jobs’s re-election because of his poor health and his job as CEO of Apple. The union argued that Jobs already had his hands full and advised shareholders not ro re-elect him.

Nonetheless, Jobs was re-elected on Wednesday at Disney’s annual shareholder meeting in Utah, according to Bloomberg.

With 7% of Disney’s stock, Jobs is the largest individual shareholder in the company. He has been a director at Disney since 2006, when Disney bought his other company, Pixar, for $7.4 billion.

First up in the deal spotlight is seven refurbished MacBook Air laptops from the Apple Store, starting with a 64GB unit with a 11.6-inch screen for $849. Also on tap is “Monkey Island: Special Editition for Mac,” just one of the two free downloads from MacUpdate. We close out today’s featured items with a 27-inch LED Cinema Display for $849.

Along the way, we check out a number of cases for your iPad, as well as a bargain on an iPod touch and various accessories for your iPhone and iPod. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Textbooks based on the iPad gained a boost Wednesday. Interactive learning developer Inkling announced a “multi-million dollar financing” deal with two educational publishing giants. McGraw-Hill and Pearsons became minority investors in the San Francisco-based company which produces software enabling students to interact with iPad-based textbooks.

“Until now, digital textbooks have failed to gain real traction because they add little value over the printed book,” Inkling founder and CEO Matt MacInnis said. Inkling’s software allows readers to add comments and share textbooks with friends. “We build every textbook from the ground up for the iPad to create a more engaging learning experience,” MacInnis adds.

As promised, here’s the statement from Apple over the removal of the Exodus International “gay cure” app.

Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said Wednesday:

“We removed the Exodus International app from the App Store because it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.” (Emphasis ours).

It’s short and sweet — but opens up a big can of worms for other groups or companies who may have apps approved that later are targeted as offensive to “large groups of people.” In the case of removing the Manhattan Declaration, a “large group” was about 6,700 online signatures, for Exodus it reached 150,000.

Apple has never re-instated an offensive app after pulling it — but I suspect there will be some backlash on this one.

It seems only fitting the “father” of Mac OS X would take the software’s 10th anniversary for his exit. Betrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Mac software Engineering, and a long-time Steve Jobs associate, Wednesday announced he’s leaving the tech giant. His replacement has shepherded the next-generation of MacOS X — 10.7 “Lion” which includes greater ties to Apple’s mobile iOS platform.

Serlet, who holds a Computer Science doctorate, announced he wants to “focus less on products and more on science.” He described the upcoming Mac 10.7 as “a great release and the transition should be seamless.” Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice president of Mac Software Engineering, demonstrated Mac OS X 10.7 Lion to the media in late 2010.

Cult of Mac broke the story of the Exodus International app getting removed from the iTunes store yesterday evening. Cupertino still hasn’t opened for business yet, so we are still awaiting a statement from Apple on its policy for content in the store.

The president of Exodus International Alan Chambers warned via Twitter last night that it may be open season on other apps that draw protest.

“It’s official, the @ExodusInl App is no longer in the @AppStore. Incredibly disappointing. Watch out, it could happen to you.”

We’ll keep you posted.

I’m madly in love with my 11-inch MacBook Air, but sometime I wish I had a little more screen real estate for it… an external display that was as portable as it is.

Toshiba’s new portable LCD, the creatively christened Mobile LCD Monitor, looks like just the thing: it’s an iPad-thin 14-inch unit, allowing you to add a 1366×768 secondary display driven entirely by USB, no AC adapter required.

Remember Word Lens, the jaw-dropping iOS Babelfish that allowed you to just point your iPhone at a sign in Spanish and turning it into English (and vice-versa?)

Well, if you’ve got an iPad 2, good news: your camera-equipped tablet is now fully supported in the latest version of the free app.

Of course, “free” should be surrounded by insidious quotes, because in reality, there’s nothing free about Word Lens. You can download it for free, sure, but the app does nothing without buying either the Spanish to English or English to Spanish modules as an in-app purchase… each of which costs $9.99.

Word Lens is still one of the biggest jaw-dropper programs on the App Store, though. If you’ve got an iPad 2 and are just itching to show someone what it can do, picking up Word Lens for free $9.99 is a choice option.

If you haven’t scored your iPad 2 yet, and are also looking for some sporty wheels, high-end Mercedes-Benz customizer Brabus has the package for you. Updating their iBusiness package that we reported on last year, the new version modernizes hardware and ups the specs for this next (fast) lap around the sun.

The iBusiness 2.0 package is available for all S-class models. A pair of iPad 2s on adjustable keyboard trays are installed front and center (in the rear seats). These are married to a trunk-mounted Mac mini with internet access and a 15″ widescreen display – in addition to the seatback headrest displays! Videoconferencing, in-flight television and passenger control of many vehicle functions are possible. A 64GB iPod Classic helps keep your tunes accessible, and WiFi and USB link it all together.

The demo model isn’t too shabby in the automotive department either: the Brabus 800 iBusiness 2.0 is housed in a Mecerdes S600 sedan that has 788 horsepower, goes 0-62mph in 3.9 seconds, and comes with rear privacy curtains and an optional Yachting wood trim package. Sweet.

Considering how much time I would spend in this car, there seem to be a shortage of cupholders…

[via Motor Trend]

It’s sitting on my iPad just waiting for some playtime, but I picked up Forget-Me-Not by Nyarlu Labs by dint of this wonderfully pithy description courtesy of Touch Arcade: “the magical lovechild of Pac-Man and Rogue.”

I’m a huge fan of rogue-likes, but coming from a heritage of text input and computer terminals, their input mechanisms tend to be too complicated to translate to iOS.

That’s why I love the look of the approach taken here. Rogue-likes are traditionally RPGs at heart, but by marrying the spirit of Rogue — random levels, malevolent difficulty and permadeath — with the arcade trappings of Pac-Man, Naryu Labs appear to have created some sort of endlessly replayable Pac-Rogue mutation, in which your simplistic avatar explored ever-changing mazes, killing ghosts and collecting flowers, fruit and keys.

Very neat. Forget-Me-Not is a universal app and available on the App Store now for just $1.99.

Right now, if your iPhone runs out of juice, your only option is to slap in a third-party battery pack or rush to the nearest USB outlet. In the future, though, you might be able to just lay it out in the sun to soak up some rays, thanks to a prototype solar panel that is completely transparent and thin enough to work with touchscreens.n

The solar panel is made by a French company, and was spotted by Mark Spoonauer over at Laptop Magazine. The layer is only 100 microns deep, yet photosensitive enough to fully juice your iPhone after laying in the sun for just six hours. It’s makers, Wysips, wants to work with Gorilla Glass to integrate the film directly into future glass panels for handsets like the iPhone 4.

I still think it’s unlikely that Apple would ever recommend you lay your iPhone out in direct sunlight when it’s running out of juice, but Cupertino’s certainly toyed with the idea: back in June, we examined a patent for a solar-powered iPhone with invisible collection cells that seems to be forecasting the creation of just such a solar-charging touchscreen.

A small company called Robocast seems to be making a bit of a cash grab against Apple in a new patent infringement lawsuit, as the former claims that Cupertino has ripped off their automated browsing technology in iTunes, Apple TV and Front Row.

It looks like Apple has responded to the outcry over an app from Christian group Exodus International aimed at “homosexual strugglers” by removing it from iTunes.

Some 145,000 people signed an online petition demanding it be removed. (That’s the entire population of Pasadena, California, Rochester, England or Beihei, China).

The real issue: Apple has no coherent policy about what kind of content gets approved and remains in iTunes.

Apple has not yet released a statement about why it yanked the app, which had been available since February 15 and marked 4+ for containing no objectionable content.

Our obsessive checking for it just showed that poof! The Exodus International app was no more.

There’s nothing about it in Apple’s online press room, though it is likely a spokesperson will issue some kind of statement when reporters start ringing tomorrow — since they took the app out after close of business today here in California. (We’ve also put in another request for comment.)

As of this writing, Exodus’ site still has a prominent front page splash for the app and gay rights group Truth Wins Out hasn’t updated the poll with the news, either.

UPDATE: At change.org they are still urging folks to sign the petition — until Apple releases a statement about why it was pulled.

Does that means Apple has pulled the app, like more than 140,000 customers have asked? It’s hard to tell; Apple hasn’t issued an official statement yet. Until they do, it’s important that we keep up the pressure, so that Apple hears loud and clear that “ex-gay” therapy deserve no place in the App Store.

More to come.

In what appears to be an effort to persuade users to not switch over to Verizon, AT&T is sending out marketing materials elaborating why their network is the perfect match for your beautiful iPhone.. Have the recent estimates that Verizon has snagged 10% of the US iPhone market-share after only a few months gotten AT&T a little bit worried that a lot of users will switch networks once the iPhone 5 comes out? Coupled with their recent gift of 1,000 free rollover minutes to customers, maybe AT&T is finally trying to put forth some legitimate efforts to satisfy their customers after years of complaints. I’ve been an AT&T subscriber since June 29th, 2007 (the day the first iPhone was released). Never once has AT&T decided to send me their seasonal magazine title “AT&T Magazine.” Yet for some reason I was greeted by their 12-page mag when I received my mail today.

The reasons AT&T says you should stay with their network are as follows:

AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile would result in new efficiencies and economies of scale. It would enable the provisioning of more and better services at lower cost than the two companies could achieve separately.

And that’s exactly why the Obama administration may block it.

The iPhone 4 integrates an LED flash into the 5MP camera’s lens, but it’s neither big nor particularly bright. Enter the iFlash, a little dongle that snaps onto your iPhone’s Dock Connector and triggers when you take a picture.

Except to what end? The idea here is to supplement your iPhone 4’s LED flash with something beefier, like the way you can buy an external flash for an SLR camera. The problem is that those latter types of strobe have a lot more capability than the iFlash, not least of which is the ability to bounce the flash off of a wall or a ceiling, resulting in a more natural shot.

If you’re taking a picture with your iPhone 4 and the built-in flash isn’t resulting in an attractive image, the iFlash isn’t likely to improve matters. If you really just want to turn every single person at the dance club into a pale-skinned, red-eyed vampire next time you’re out, though, the iFlash is attainable for £19.99.

[via Technabob]

The venerable iPod Classic hasn’t been update since September 2009, and even that was a negligible update to the last model, the sixth-generation iPod debuting in 2007. The long gap, coupled with Apple’s increasing focus on their iOS devices, have prompted some to ask if we’d see the discontinuation of the iPod Classic sometime soon… especially as it looks increasingly likely that the next iPod Touch might come with as much as 128GB of flash storage.

If you love the iPod Classic, though, don’t pay the morbid speculation any mind. Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself has weighed in upon the matter, writing a (nearly hysterical) MacRumors reader and saying that they have “no plans” to kill off the iPod Classic.

Honestly, that sort of relieves me. It’s easy to look at the iPod Classic as antiquated tech, but I like to think of it like a samurai sword, razor-keen and honed to perfection after countless foldings. That it doesn’t have the same functionality as a ray gun doesn’t make a samurai sword obsolete, it just makes it less flashy, more focused and subtle.

The iPod Classic is aimed at exactly one kind of person: the guy who wants to have his entire music collection in his pocket at all times. As music file sizes get larger, as digital music collections grow, there’s always going to be someone for whom the iPod Touch just doesn’t cut it. Apple always wants to be able to sell those guys an iPod. They’re the guys who built the brand to begin with.

Updates galore! Hot on the heels of the Snow Leopard 10.6.7 update yesterday, a fresh new update to Apple’s Aperture is also now ready for your installing pleasure via Software Update.

The Aperture 3.1.2 update fixes the following:

I don’t really know much about Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP except what the guys over at Touch Arcade have written about it here. I know it’s an iPad game with a title that is phonetically spelled like a slight speech impediment. I know it features a cigar smoking protagonist named the Archetype, a protagonist called The Scythian, and supporting characters named Girl, Logfella and Dogfella. I know it’s due out Thursday. And that’s about it.

What else do you need to know, though, that isn’t conveyed in the mystifying, absorbing and utterly gorgeous trailer above? Look at the style of it: simplistic, abstract pixel art brought to life by ultra-realistic, fluid-like motions. Something about it reminds me of Another World. I can’t wait.