Cult of Mac

Google apparently is hiring outside developers and reassigning some employees in an all-out effort to match Apple’s long-standing iOS application lead. The head of Google product management is leading the charge to create Android applications ranging from games to social-networking tools – all free, but with embedded advertising, according to a Monday report.

Although Google has created just 20 apps so far – the majority based on well-known properties, such as Google Maps, the Mountain, View, Calif. Internet giant intends to “hire dozens of software developers,” according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites unnamed sources. But the app race between Android and Apple is about more than pride. One analyst firm predicted apps could become a $15 billion market this year.

With competing products like the Samsung Galaxy Tab finally making their way onto store shelves, the iPad’s no longer the only tablet in town… and consequently iOS is starting to lose some of its dominance.

In fact, Android tablets were able to increase their market share over tenfold in the last quarter. The result? Apple’s dominance over the tablet market has shrunk from a commanding 95% market share to “just” 77%.

Don’t cry too hard about Android’s ascension as king of smartphones and Apple losing a few share points. The Cupertino, Calif. company is crying — but it’s all the way to the bank. Although Apple has just 4.2 percent of the entire cell phone market – not just smartphones – the company pulls in 51 percent of the profit.

Earlier Monday, research firm Canalys announced Google’s Android pushed Nokia’s Symbian out of smartphone No. 1 position, selling 32.9 million smartphones, compared to 31 million for Symbian. Although Apple’s share of the smartphone market slipped to 16.2 percent, Asymco’s Horace Dediu points out Monday Apple’s share of the overall mobile phone market has increased to five percent – up from 4 percent in October of last year.

Although wildly popular where it’s available in Europe, streaming music service Spotify has had a hard time breaking into the United States, having missed their self-imposed, end-of-year 2010 deadline due to music label recalcitrance.

Recent reports indicate that Spotify has finally managed to sign a deal with Sony, and it’s expected that more labels will soon follow suit. But why did it take so long to make this progress? Spotify’s head of business development Faisal Galaria thinks it’s because of Apple.

We’re starting to reach a speculative consensus on what sort of hardware changes we’ll be seeing in the iPad 2, with the latest analyst report claiming it will contain a better quality (but non-Retina) display, faster chips, separate CDMA and GSM SKUs, and iPod Touch style dual cameras when it is released in March or April.

Google’s upstart Android operating system has toppled Symbian, as the most-used smartphone operating system. Symbian, created by cell phone giant Nokia, held the position for a decade. Nearly 33 million Android-powered smartphones sold during the previous quarter – seven times that of a year ago. Meanwhile, Symbian sales totaled 31 million during the last three-month financial period of 2010.

Apple placed third in the smartphone rankings, selling 16.2 million iPhones during the same period, compared to 8.7 million the previous year, according to research firm Canalys. The growth was overshadowed by Android’s gargantuan 615.1 percent increase over 2009.

A dad whose daughter ran up his credit card while playing the Smurfs’ Village app has launched a Facebook group to convince Apple to ban in-app purchases in kids games.

The fledgling group – as of this writing, it has 20 members – started after Tobias Feldt’s daughter bought a load of Smurf extras by accident.

Feldt says Apple refunded the purchase immediately, with no questions asked – as it often does in these cases – but he decided the incident shouldn’t end there.

Feldt has tried to teach his two children to play games responsibly. His oldest daughter, age nine, was “devastated” when she found out that she had run up a bill playing the game.

Skype for Mac version 5 was released last week, and while it added group video chat to the popular VoIP applications, it also takes a way a pretty big system feature: the ability for Flash-based app to access the web cam when Skype is running.

Reports of the problem have been flooding into Skype’s developer database since early November, when Skype for Mac 5 was still in beta.

Nonetheless, the problem not only persists in the final version, but according to Skype, the app’s insistence on hogging the camera even when it isn’t being used is by design.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — They call themselves the “Kickstarter Kids.”

They’re the group of entrepreneurs backed by Kickstarter, the group funding website — and there were a bunch of them at Macworld.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Here’s a surprising statistic from Macworld 2011: about 40% of show goers don’t have a smartphone.

That was the number given to me at a meetup on the show’s last night. It was from someone who ran a competition all week in one of the booths. To win a prize, entrants had to download an app to their smartphone — and about 40% didn’t have a device that could download apps.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Down on the show floor, I ran into podcaster Tim Chaten, who was using an iPod touch to record video.

Chaten had his iPod touch mounted in a home-made camera rig, complete with an external microphone.

It looks like a pretty good setup for shooting quick and easy videos.

Here’s how he put it together:

This week’s must-have iOS apps features the impressive new BEP360 application from the Black Eyed Peas, which boasts the first jaw-dropping ‘3D360’ mobile music video, as well as access to each band member’s Twitter feed, an addictive little mini-game, and more.

Task Eater is a beautifully simple task management application that helps you to stay organized with the help of your iPhone. It offers all of the great features you need to manage your todo list, including notes; color highlighting; and due dates with alarms, and its minimalistic user interface makes everything very easy.

Essay is a rich text editor that provides only the most essential formatting options to keep you focussed on your document. It uses the HTML file format and offers a wealth of features that make it a fantastic writing application for any writer.

Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves, including 3D Audio Illusions and CelebrityBooth, after the break!

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Even without Apple, Macworld 2011 was packed and there was a great vibe. Check out some of the most interesting products on the show floor.

Above: These wholesome twins at the ShedWorx booth were so nice. ShedWorx develops VoltaicHD video conversion software for the Mac.

One of the most impressive iOS games included in our must-haves this week is the much anticipated Dead Space from Electronic Arts. Delve into an all-new Dead Space story three years on from the destruction of Marker in the first Dead Space release, and find yourself on a mission of uncertain purpose in the Mines of Titan. Experience first-hand the events that unleash Necromorph hordes once again in the first ever Dead Space storyline devised for iOS.

Zombie Cafe is a unique cafe management sim in which you use zombies for your workers as opposed to living humans. In a town where it’s hard to find good employees, you’ve partnered up with an evil corporation to use zombies as free labor to build your cafe empire. What’s great about Zombie Cafe is that when your local competition gets too fierce, you can summon your team of zombie workers to attack your neighboring rivals and steal their secret recipes.

In Grim Joggers you have control of a group of 15 joggers and your mission it to take them as far as you can before each and every one of them faces their gruesome end. This arcade-style survival game sees casual jogging become a gory bloodsport.

Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves, including Pocket Dinosaurs 2 and Aerial Assault, after the break!

I’ve been keeping my eye out for a basic, inexpensive iPhone stand for a while now. I use my iPhone as an alarm clock at night and I’ve needed something to keep it propped up. Well I’m happy to report I’ve found my solution, it’s called the Glif.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Here at Macworld, people are raving about the iStreamer, a small metal box that turns your iPhone or iPad into a high-fidelity audio source by connecting it to your home stereo.

Columnist Jeff Yang has a great piece on how Steve Jobs used his extreme focus to make Apple into the new Sony.

There’s tons of great stuff in here. It’s a very well-informed piece.

Here’s Yang talking about how Jobs’ study of Zen has influenced his approach to design, which I’ve never seen discussed before:

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Macworld 2011 is in full swing. Even without Apple, the show is packed and there’s a great vibe. The best thing is the people. Check out some of the many friendly faces and interesting products on the show floor.

Above: Three-year-old Hope Malabed takes a break with an iPad. There’s lots of kids with iDevices at Macworld.

I realize a lot of people don’t care about how nasty their iPhone or iPad screens get—but I do—and I know I’m not alone.

Well those of us who like to keep a clean screen have a nifty new tool at our disposal: it’s called the Sidekick, and from what I saw, it works great. Peep the video to see how it works.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Given the explosion of visual art inspired by mobile devices running Mac iOS and apps developed to help artists create work on them, it came as a bit of a surprise to see the way Macworld organizers chose to display digital art at the 2011 Conference and Expo.

The Expo’s art was placed in “digital art galleries” displayed on 27″ Samsung wide-screen TVs housed in unobtrusive kiosks, dispersed in the cavernous hallways of the 2nd and 3rd floors, where only a portion of the conference’s attendees — media personnel and those who purchased something other than Expo Only tickets — was likely to see it.

This is curious in the light of recent attention given to the digital creations of artists producing work on the Mac platform, which in years past could be seen framed, on brightly-lit wall space, in the middle of well-trafficked concourses.

Click on images in the gallery above to see artist and title information, as well as the curious distortion effects rendered in iPhone photographs of art (made, in many cases, ON iPhones) displayed in a digital TV slideshow.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Two years ago, when Apple announced the company would skip the Macworld Conference and Expo after 2009, some took the news like a punch to the gut — and many wondered if the twenty-five year-old event would survive.

But without Apple totally dominating the event, the show has become what it was always supposed to be — a place for the wider Apple community to meet and mingle.

Got a new MacBook Air and looking for an accessible docking solution for when you want to work on a larger monitor at your desk?

The BookArc is an attractive docking solution for the Air made from heavy gauge steel with a built-in wire management system that neatly integrates the cables that need to plug into both sides of the Air.

You’ll need to supply your own display, mouse and keyboard, but once that’s done, turning your Air into a desktop is as easy as positioning your closed Air in the BookArc cradle and plugging it in… and because your Air docks in a closed position, it should run even faster than if you just plugged your display normally, because the Air’s GeForce 320M only needs to drive a single display.

The BookArc is only $39.99, but it won’t ship until February. If you want to keep appraised of when it becomes available, you can sign up for notifications over at the official website.

If you want something more capable than an AppleTV to hook up to your television (most notably the ability to play local content), the Mac mini has the perfect form factor for a working HTPC… and now Mac accessory maker OWC is ready to supercharge it for you for that express purpose.

Called the Media Center Solution, the service works by just shipping any new Mac mini to OWC, who then go about upgrading the RAM to 4GB, installing a bundle of open source media center software like (Plex, Handbreak, MakeMKV) and then linking the Mac mini with either a 4, 8 or 12TB RAID, which will allow you to store up to 6,000 hours of DVD-quality video.

That’s not all. Not only will OWC send it to you back with an optional external Blu-Ray drive, you can also pick between two Elgato HDTV interfaces allowing you to use your Mac Mini as a DVR. They’ll even throw in a $15 iTunes gift card and an Apple Remote.

Monster Cable’s a pretty loathsome company, suing pretty much everyone who dares put the word “monster” in their names while selling absurdly overpriced copper under advertising claims that border on the pseudo-science employed by snake oil salesmen. I hate these guys… which is part of the reason why I’m so shocked by how neat I think their latest product is.

Ludicrously called the Monster iMotion CarPlay 3000, the cable is a car charger for your iPhone or iPod with one neat little extra: it allows you to control your music without ever touching your device just by making gestures in mid-air as you drive.

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — Macworld 2011 is in full swing. Even without Apple, the show is packed and there’s a great vibe. The best thing is the people. Check out some of the many friendly faces and interesting products on the show floor.

Above: Cute girls in short tube dresses. Good thing are weather here is unseasonably warm! They are promoting MacKeeper and boy did they get a lot of attention!