Cult of Mac

And you thought getting busted for checking out porn at work was bad: an Italian member of parliament was snapped checking out prostitutes on his iPad during a session.

Except that in the Viagra-fueled Italian government that’s pretty much business as usual. Simeone Di Cagno Abbrescia, 67, is a member of Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi’s PDL party, who perhaps thought checking out what to do after work on the iPad’s glossy 9.7-inch screen was no big deal.

The tablet computer – if he’d had a laptop he could’ve adjusted the screen down – was probably what got him busted by a fellow politician with a phone cam.

Well, this is a heck of a scoop to wake up to on Wednesday morning: 9to5Mac has got its grubby little hands upon what they claim to be the display of the iPad 2’s LCD, fresh off of the assembly lines of China.

AT&T is waking up to the fact that it has lost its exclusive to the iPhone. Now the company is starting to try to prevent massive customer departures when the Verizon iPhone goes on sale this month. The first try directly aimed at current AT&T customers was the e-mail I received today titled: Feel free to make a call while reading this email.

Computer speakers requiring serious plunking down of dough (we’re going to peg “serious” at over $100 in this particular instance; the Z520s weigh in at an MSRP of $130, well over the threshold) ought to pack really good sound, some sort of neat tech trick or come with a year’s worth of free pizza. The 2-way Z520s try the middle route by offering some design wizardry that almost, but doesn’t quite, account for the price — or make up for an acute case of bass-gone-missing.

Ever had a sudden hankering to crank out a few Real Racing HD laps on your iPad while river rafting? Yeah, neither have I (although that might have something to do with the fact that I’ve never been river rafting). But if the itch ever struck, it’d probably be best if the iPad was vacuum-sealed in a tablet-sized, waterproof DryCASE; luckily the company just added the tablet-sized version to their line at Macworld. The cases start at under $60 and includes a headphones/mic jack.

Oh, and think the whole whip-the-iPad-out-while-rafting thing is laughable? Yeah, so did I — until I came across this in the company’s press release:

“A new buoyant waist band has just been added by many requests by stand up paddle surfers and kayak enthusiasts.” Cool.

For the adventurous spirit wishing to go back to the 80s and live on the frontier of national cellular service, all the while carrying around a phone roughly the size of a Korean War field radio, here you go: Thumbs Up’s ’80s Phone, a case for your iPhone 4 that is sure to make you look like Gordon Gekko sent hurtling forward in time. Yours for about $20.

The App Store might have just racked up its 10 billionth download, but the vast majority of those apps have only been given the most cursory examination by users: in fact, according to analytics firm Localytics, 26% of all apps are only used once after they are downloaded.

Localytics’ findings aren’t specific to iOS: they studied thousands of apps across the Android, BlackBerry, iOS and Windows Phone 7 platforms. Across the board, though, one-time use was on the rise in 2010, making it more important than ever for app developers to make that first impression count.

Apple released iOS 4.3 Beta 3 to developers this afternoon. The update includes a new firmware update for the new Apple TV, iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS as well as the 3rd and 4th generation iPod touch.

Registered iOS developers can download these updates as well as a new SDK from developer.apple.com.

Let us know if you find anything interesting in the new beta by leaving a comment.

Go down to your local Apple Store and you might just see this wonderful display for the new MacBook Air. Channeling Pixar’s Up, the display features a single helium balloon dangling aloft an 11-inch MacBook Air.

All is not as it seems, of course: nearly invisible fishing wire is being employed to create the illusion. The Air’s light, of course, but not so light that it can be lifted by a child’s balloon.

Still, this calls for an experiment: I wonder who out there is brave enough to figure out how many balloons are needed to send an Air into the stratosphere and willing to back up their math by lending their notebook and its iSight camera to the cause?

What with Apple and TV both as American as pecan pie (which, ironically, is actually way more American than apple pie), you’d think the U.S. would have a chokehold on TV-iPhone innovation. Nope — besides Al-Jazeera now streaming live news on the iPhone for free, last week Germans had a chance to watch and interact with the world’s first augmented-reality TV show.

Viewers of Galileo, a quiz show that airs on the German ProSieben channel, were able to interact with the questions on the TV screen by viewing and interacting with augmented reality versions of the questions on their iPhone screens, courtesy of augmented-reality app Junaio (For a visual demo, suffer through a short ad and watch the cute video). Not to worry though — Metaio, the German-based developer that makes Junaio, says similar stuff is on it’s way to the U.S. soon. Fantastisch!

We start of with one of several cases available for Apple’s iPad. The TabletFlip case comes in a two-pack for just $30. Next is a deal on a Core 2 Duo MacBook running at 2.4GHz and with a 13.3-inch screen – just $910. We wrap up the spotlight with a 500GB hard drive coupled with an iPod dock (but no sync) from Buffalo.

Along the way, we’ll also check out a way to enlarge your iPhone’s screen, a two-year warranty for your iPhone and some software for your Mac. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deal” page right after the jump.

What’s the opposite of putting a pig in lipstick? Making a leggy supermodel wear a sow mask? I’m just struggling to find the proper analogy here, because some mad man has just released a fairly exhaustive skin for iOS that makes your iPhone look like — horf — a Windows Phone 7 series device.

[polldaddy poll=”4482430″]

Everyone seemed excited when the iPhone 4 launched with video chat app FaceTime. But aside from the burgeoning iPhone porn chat industry, is anyone actually using it?

Jamey Heary over at Network World wonders. And so do I.
While I love the idea of Jetson-like communications devices, video chatting never seemed that useful to me, even as an expat, to make it something I used regularly – as per a piece I did for Wired back in 2005 writing about my video-call enabled Nokia smartphone.

Once you have waved at your relatives and someone asks you to flash them, the novelty wears off.

Do you use Facetime? How often?

Let us know what you find it useful for or why you haven’t bothered in the comments.

Hidden inside a sheathe of patents awarded to Apple today is a particularly interesting one that suggests that your future Mac just might be a slab of aluminum that glows.

If you look at the back of your MacBook, it’s pretty easy to piece together Apple’s current process in making the Apple logo glow. They carve a cut-out of the Apple logo in the MacBook lid, close it up with a sheet of opaque white plastic and when your display is on, the light leaking out causes the logo to emit light.

What Apple wants to do is make the logos and LED displays of future Macs glow without carving a hole in the aluminum. They basically want light-emitting logos and indicators to be invisible unless they are emitting light.

Search Google on your desktop browser and as long as it is HTML5 compliant, hovering your mouse over a link will give you a visual preview of that site, giving you all the more context as to whether or not it’s really the site you need.

Up until now, Google’s Instant Preview functionality wasn’t available to iPad and iPhone users, but it looks like the search giant’s on the cusp of changing that: while it hasn’t been rolled out far and wide, Google is currently in the process of testing a rollout of Instant Preview for Mobile Safari.

Once it’s live, the feature will work only if you tap the magnifying glass icon next to each search result. Tapping that icon will open a preview window that shows a snapshot of the page, which can be flicked through iOS style with your finger.

Extraneous, but neat (and, thankfully, optional). Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that the feature is live yet, but it should be coming soon, so keep your iPads tuned.

Wondering just how you went through your 2GB allowance of data this month when all you did was do some browsing and email? A new lawsuit filed in California federal court says you’re not the only one.

The lawsuit filed by Patrick Hendricks alleges that AT&T has been systematically overcharging iPhone and iPad owners with capped data plans by falsely reporting the amount of data. According to Hendricks’ lawyers, this so-called “phantom data” can inflate the actual amount of incoming data by as much as three hundred percent.

“AT&T’s billing system for iPhone and iPad data transactions is like a rigged gas pump that charges for a full gallon when it pumps only nine-tenths of a gallon into your car’s tank,” the complaint reads.

San Franciscans like to share – heck, there are three startups here that will let you borrow your neighbor’s car for a small fee – so it seems like a great place to launch an app that lets you rent someone’s parking space.

Also, finding parking in San Francisco sucks. Enter iPhone app Park Circa, which lets you rent out your parking space to fellow drivers for a low rate or snag a spot on the fly without having to worry about having change for parking meters.

The app, in beta for iPhone and soon to come to Android and Blackberry phones, is free to download on iTunes.

For some time, makers of components required to build today’s headline-grabbing electronics, such as touch-screen phones and tablets, have been eclipsed by big-named electronics firms. The times have changed and Apple is the prime example. The latest instance is a report suggesting the Cupertino, Calif. company wants to corner the market used to build high-resolution “retina” displays for the next generation of smartphones and tablets.

Apple has inked agreements with LG Display, Sharp and Toshiba Mobile Display, the three suppliers one analyst firm says makes the technology behind the new display. Competition for display components “has reached a fever pitch” straining availability, according to iSuppli.

Amongst the constabulary of Mac scuttlebuttheads of which I am an earnest member, that the iPad 2 will ship with a built-in SD card slot — all the better to allow people to edit photos and video on the device, if not increase their storage capacity — is held in consensus.

The prediction is based upon the appearance of numerous iPad 2 cases coming out of Asia that not only have appropriate holes for front and rear-facing cameras and a slot for the iPad’ 2s beefier new speaker, but also a slot that seems just the right size to slide in an SD card.

AppleInsider is now throwing some cold water on those of us expecting to read SDs on the iPad 2, though, instead positing that it’s just a slot reflecting the relocation of the iPad 2’s SIM card slot.

Yesterday, Intel announced a massive hardware recall that surely stopped the hearts of a few investors: the Cougar Point chipset used for their cutting-edge Sandy Bridge CPU had a hardware bug that caused the SATA 3GB/s port to degrade over time, potentially harming hard drives and other devices connected to it.

All things considered, it’s not actually a huge issue. Intel expects that over 3 years of use it would see a failure rate of approximately 5 – 15% depending on usage model. Still, at the end of the day, Intel expects to spend a billion dollars recalling and replacing the chipset. Oof.

The good news, of course, is that a Mac owner, this won’t affect your current system a whit: there aren’t any Macs available with Sandy Bridge just yet. Here’s the bad news, though. That imminent imminent Sandy Bridge MacBook Pro refresh? That might get delayed.

In normal times, ARM would have headlined Apple’s use of its chips in some of the most iconic electronics sold. However, the Cupertino, Calif. iPad and iPhone maker has assumed the role of a black hole for component suppliers: felt, but unseen – and unspoken. As such, when ARM announced a 72 percent increase in fourth-quarter profits from chips destined for tablet computers, Apple was mentioned only as an “influential market leader.”

ARM’s fourth-quarter net income reached $46.7M, up from around $27M a year ago, the chipmaker told reporters Tuesday. “ARM continues to sign licensees with influential market leaders in an increasingly digital world, and as the industry chooses ARM technology in a broadening range of products, it further drives our long-term royalty opportunity,” the company announced.

Tech bloggers are salivating over the possibility that the Verizon iPhone will create a “Perfect Media Storm” when it is released on February 10.

“These kinds of stories only come along every generation or so,” said one industry expert who insisted on anonymity for this article (and also insisted on ordering Lobster during our off-the-record lunch). “Really monumental tech events expand rapidly across the media landscape until almost every single headline is focused on that piece of news. It is a remarkable and terrifying occurrence, I’ve heard tell.”

Pundits are warning that the Verizon iPhone launch will attract noticeable attention from the Main Stream Media, including obligatory “lining up” segments on local newscasts, and a variety of daytime TV clips. Add to that scenario the brewing social media battles between Apple fan boys and iPhone haters and you have a tech news super cell that is capable of generating Apple headlines for weeks on end.

Even spammers will contribute to the upcoming media tsunami with their unending stream of boorish VeriPhone “opinion pieces” that are nothing more than keyword targeted word salad or repurposed content from legitimate sites. Angry AT&T users could also foment media attention as they publicly bash their aging network.

While no one can predict what the actual Verizon iPhone media storm will look like, expect it to pick up speed starting early next week.

Teaser articles with flashy headlines will appear first, hinting at the raging media storm that will soon follow. Then, as review units are tested, expect a sustained torrent of “under the hood” coverage from all areas of tech media.

Finally, on February 10, the event will make landfall with national news and cable networks cutting together segments comprised primarily of glamour shots of the new phone and happy Verizon customers getting their Apple devices.

What follows is a sampling of headlines sure to appear during the impending Verizon iPhone media storm. Prepare yourself and your loved ones for this type of journalism, as we will see much more of it in the days ahead.

Can You Hear Me Now? Comparing Dropped Call Data on Verizon and AT&T

OVERCLOCKED: Which iPhone Is Faster?

Top Ten Verizon iPhone Tips and Tricks

Which Network Really Has You Covered?

There’s an App for That – A Detailed look at how the app experience plays out on both networks.

Verizon iPhone Ships a “Billion Million” Units – Predictions of units sold in the coming months from tech press and analysts.

I’m returning My Verizon iPhone

Apple Stock: How High is Too High?

Why Android Is The Best Smartphone EVER!

This Guy’s Blog Post is WRONG!

No Way! That Other Blog Post is WRONG! – A protracted back and forth between two tech journalists to elicit links, coverage, and increased attention.

Where is the White iPhone?

How The Verizon iPhone is a Win for AT&T

I Told You So: How I Predicted All of This Over a Year Ago

iPhone, Therefore I Am

The iPhone as Fashion Statement

Why I Hate The Verizon iPhone

Why I’m Leaving AT&T

This Verizon iPhone Top Ten List Goes To Eleven

How the iPhone Reinvented Telephony

One iPhone to Rule Them All

“It almost never happens, but these giant media storms have occurred in the past,” said our source. “This new iPhone is something like the moon landing, really.”

When Apple and Verizon debuted the new CDMA iPhone 4 last month, the changes over the existing models weren’t dramatic: about the only thing new about the handset’s hardware was a slightly rejiggered antenna design and a nudged volume button or two.

The software, though, was different enough to take note of: boasting the version number iOS 4.2.5, it included support for the new Personal Hotspot settings feature which, in Verizon’s case, will allow handset owners to set their iPhone as a WiFi hotspot for up to five connected devices.

It now looks like Apple’s made some tweaks to iOS 4.2.5, bumping the version number to iOS 4.2.6, which you can now download. It’s a 652MB file, and given the slight nudge in version numbers, it’s probably a small bug fix.

As for when the rest of us GSM hoi polloi will get the Verizon iPhone’s Personal Hotspot feature, it’s reckoned that iOS 4.3 will bridge both the CDMA and GSM iPhones and bring the same features to all devices sometime in February. Hoorah!

Although Amazon’s Kindle platform seemed to stumble a bit in the wake of the iPad’s debut, mostly from surprise, they’ve since rallied and continued to increase their lead as the biggest e-bookstore on Earth. In fact, according to Amazon’s own metrics, they now sell more Kindle e-books than they do paperbacks.

How’d Amazon compete with iBooks? Ubiquity: Kindle software is available on almost every modern OS out there, and a Kindle book purchased on one can be read on another. Amazon managed to achieve this feat by cutting middlemen out of the transaction entirely: if you purchase a book in-app, you simply are directed to an Amazon webpage. It’s all done on the Internet.

If a new report coming from The New York Times is anything to go by, though, Apple may be ready to strike Kindle on iOS down for the count unless it agrees to utilize iTunes’ own in-app purchase system, though.

Samsung may have helped Android attain the top spot in smartphone sales, but the open-source operating system from Google hasn’t done the same for the handset maker’s attempt to rival Apple’s iPad tablet. According to one analyst firm, 16 percent of Samsung Tab devices are being returned.

“Consumers aren’t in love with the device,” ITG Investment Research analyst Tony Berkman told the New York Post recently. ITG tracked sales of the Tab between its November debut through Jan. 15. By comparison, the iPad sold through Verizon, reportedly has a 2 percent return rate.