Cult of Mac

Retrospectively casting an eye over an incredible year for both Apple and its customers, one of the most surprising developments of 2010 was the Mac’s long-overdue maturity into a serious gaming platform after years of false hopes and promises.

More surprising than even that, though, is the fact Apple almost had nothing to do with it: even while Cupertino oiled and massaged iOS into a platform capable of rattling the nerves of gaming’s most unassailable colossus, they continued to ignore Mac gamers and its developers.

So who was responsible for the Mac Gaming Renaissance of 2010? There’s no one company in particular, but let’s start with Valve.

Ignoring the Zune HD (as most consumers seemed to have done), the dominance of Apple’s iPod Touch over the touchscreen media player market has gone essentially unchallenged ever since it first debuted in fall of 2007… but Samsung — makers of the popular Galaxy S smartphone and the Galaxy Tab — are looking to change that at this year’s CES, when they unveil the Galaxy Player.

When Apple updated the iTunes 10 icon earlier this year, it sparked huge controversy among Mac users everywhere — many branded the new icon ugly, lifeless, and unconventional. The debate showed that lots of Mac users like to see beautiful apps with beautiful icons.

Here are 15 of our favorite Mac OS X icons from 2010 that stand out for being beautifully designed, brilliantly colorful, and wonderfully unique. We’ve selected icons that make you want to find out more about an application, and that you’d proudly place in your dock for all to see.

We hope you like them. Check them out after the break. If you know better icons, please tell us about them in the comments. Free apps for the best ideas.

There is an interesting new video photography app called, 8mm Vintage Camera by Nexvio, Inc., that brings your iPhone and iPod Touch back in time to capture the beauty and magic of old school vintage movies.

It accomplishes this by mixing and matching different films and lenses and it does a good job of it. The total number of combinations allow you to get a glimpse into retro filming with 25 old school looks from bygone eras. It even comes complete with retro colors, flickering video, light leaks, dust and scratches (my favorite), and frame jitters. You can add any of these to your video with a flick of your finger.

You got another Apple gadget for Christmas, didn’t you? And you love it, don’t you?

So at what point do you officially declare yourself to be one of those Cupertino Kool-Aid-guzzling, Steve Jobs-worshiping, pathetically devoted Apple fans you used to loathe?

Ten years ago, there were two kinds of people: PC users (a.k.a. “regular people”) and Apple fanboys. At least that’s how it looked from the PC side.

Macs were pretty, but considered by us PC users to be overpriced, underpowered, insufficiently supported by either software or hardware, too hard to customize, optimize or repair and completely devoid of key application areas, such as games.

The world was black and white. You were either a PC or a Mac. Then things got complicated.

We start the first week after Christmas with a number of deals. First up is a 2.13GHz MacBook Air laptop for $1,100. (You can also get the same hardware, plus a bundle of 4GB memory and three years of AppleCare for $1,966.) Also on tap is the latest crop of price cuts from the iPhone App Store, including “Awareness Headphones” an auditory app. We wrap-up the deal spotlight with “Solomon’s Key,” an action role-playing game for the iPhone or iPod touch that is free.

Along the way, we’ll also check out some hardware deals, such as a 27-inch iMac and a unibody MacBook Pro laptop. Additionally, there are after-Christmas discounts on cases for your iPhone and iPod touch. As always, details on these and many other deals can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Still got a lump of cash around after Christmas? An eBay seller has just posted a rare prototype of the first portable Macintosh for sale to the highest bidder.

Made from American Rosewood treated with a variety of washes and finishes, I love the look of Trunket’s wood finish stickers for the iPhone 4, right down to the adorable elephant icon. If only the font of Trunket’s logo itself didn’t look like something that would be more appropriate on some terrible nu metal band’s debut CD jacket. $24 a pop.

With Motorola’s upcoming Android Honeycomb tablet and Research in Motion’s imminent PlayBook both set to use new dual-core ARM processors, the iPad 2 will have make a similar jump if it is going to stay competitive according to a recent analyst note.

Last week, VoIP service Skype crumbled under the strain of holiday calling. In the aftermath, Skype published some support documents to help users out, but then quickly pulled them after it was discovered that not only were they looking to roll out FaceTime-style video chat to the iPhone, but also release a native iPad app… and rounding everything out? A juicy hint about the Verizon iPhone.

Eager to keep your nubile teenage daughter from using the new iPhone she got for Christmas as a sexting terminal? Cupertino’s just patented technology to keep her blossoming libido as virginal as the App Store.

Verizon may be getting a late Christmas present, if a new report proves correct. Apple is planning to ship between 20 million and 21 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2011 – 5 to 6 million of those CDMA-based. (Another 14 million to 15 million of the Apple handsets will reportedly be GSM.)

According to a Taiwan-based industry publication, citing unnamed suppliers, Asia will also get the CDMA phones. However, this latest talk of CDMA iPhones could bolster the already red-hot speculation Verizon will launch an iPhone early next year. The move would break the exclusive stranglehold AT&T has held ever since the iPhone was introduced in 2007.

Chances were, if you received some electronics this Christmas, it bore the Apple logo. Products made by the Cupertino, Calif. company were the most-gifted items, according to the online elves at Amazon.

Despite being No. 1 in “Most Wished For” TV and video products, No. 2 Roku actually reportedly was found under most trees. Amazon’s Kindle e-reader again topped the list as bestselling electronic device, the same as it has the whole holiday season.

When Stephen Colbert pulled the soon-to-be released iPad out of a custom pocket in his tux at the Grammys, he set the bar for wearable geek fashion pretty high.

Too high, maybe.

Of all the cool ways you can carry Apple’s new tablet computer, here are five that will earn you a citation from the fashion police and make your blind date run.

What’s past is present, at least in the Vintage Tech World. 2010 saw some significant stories involving those attic treasures: an Apple 1 sold for a whopping $213,000, a Mac Museum for $10k, and an Apple II Festival turned 21. Meanwhile iPads were spotted co-habitating inside old Macs, obsolete status befell our PowerPC friends, and The Macintosh Way lived again.

Travel back in time for this review of the Year in Vintage Apple News.

As part of our review of all the great things we’ve come across in 2010, we’ve picked 15 of our favorite iOS icons that stand out from the rest for being beautifully designed, brilliantly colorful, and wonderfully unique.

We’ve selected icons that make you want to find out more about an application, icons that you’d proudly place on your home screen for all to see, and icons that represent the awesome apps behind them.

There are, of course, hundred of thousands of iOS apps in the App Store, and we’ve selected just 15 of our favorites – we hope you like them. Check them out after the break.

Of course, we probably missed a bunch. Please nominate your favorite icons in the comments. We’ll give out free app codes for the best ideas.

Happy holidays everyone! This video summary of Apple’s past year is pretty cool. The launch of the iPad and iPhone 4; iOS 4 and The Beatles on iTunes? It was a pretty big year.

Made on a Mac with Final Cut Studio by Kelvin Choi.

A hot item that has been around for a little while and has made quite a few gift guides for 2010 are the Ceramic Speakers by Joey Roth; a standalone speaker system made from “simple” materials for use with iPod/other portable media players, laptops, and turntables with phono pre-amps.

Everything about these speakers is interesting, starting with the ceramic materials they’re made of. I can’t help but wonder where Joey’s inspiration came from. Could it have been a flash of genius like when Doc Brown in Back to the Future slipped off the toilet hitting his head on the bathroom sink while attempting to hang a clock in his bathroom, conceiving the idea for the Flux Capacitor?!? Now I like to think I have my most brilliant thoughts and inspirations stimulated by ceramic bathroom fixtures, but the pairing of ceramic in use with speakers seems as unlikely as a Time Machine made from a DeLorean.

Earlier this week, Apple removed a WikiLeaks app from the App Store and joined the shameful ranks of U.S. companies that oppose press freedom.

Here’s the disgraceful episode as seen through the eyes of Next Media Animation, a Taiwanese tabloid that animates the news.

Jobs kicks WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange out of the App Store. He returns to hug other companies that have tried to privately censor WikiLeaks (Amazon, PayPal, Visa and Bank of America etc.). Outside, Assange pulls out an Android phone and fires up the banned WikiLeaks App.

As Next Media shows, you can’t suppress the truth. My Christmas wish is that Steve Jobs would get on the right side of this immensely important story. Unfortunately, he’s not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfOZ58USCyI

Via MICGadget. Thanks Chris.

Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the iHouse, not a creature was stirring – not even a MagicMouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care – in hope that an iPhone 4 would soon be there. The children were snug, their tummies full from a big meal – with visions of iMacs and iPad deals…

Okay, enough cheap rip-offs of Clement Moore. We spend the last day before Christmas showcasing a number of stocking-stuffer bargains, including applications for the iPhones and iPads likely to be unwrapped Saturday. First up is a new crop of price cuts on iPad apps, such as “Catan HD,” a guitar simulator. Next we check out some new iPhone app price drops, including “Inspector Gadget.” We wrap up our spotlight deals with an 8GB iPod touch (with a $50 gift card) for just $205.

Along the way, we also take a look at some iMacs on sale, such as a 22-inch desktop running a 3.06 Core 2 Duo processor for $929. As always, details on these and more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

There’s a lot of fantastic Apple-centric projects trying to get off the ground thanks to crowd-sourced funding site Kickstarter, but if you’re green-conscious to boot, why not check out Eric Strebel’s Solar Vox, a portable gadget charger perfect for juicing up your iOS device?

The Solar Vox needs $35,000 of funding to become a real project, so if you’ve got Gaia tattooed anywhere on your body or just want a way to juice your Touch when you’re out hiking, maybe drop a few bucks on this one and help make it real.

For the iPhone user who has everything except his arms, meet the NoseDial, a new app that makes your contacts larger so that you can dial them using simply your face’s bulging proboscis. You don’t have to be a double amputee to use it, though: it’s also good if you’re trying to call someone with gloves you don’t want to take off.

Our favorite gadget vivisectionists over at iFixIt have just released a new iPad app that aims to be a free, easily-referenced glossary for their healthy library of open source self-repair manuals for every gadget under the sun: from the first generation iPod to the new, nigh-un-self-serviceable MacBook Air.

The Cherokee Language isn’t one that doesn’t get a lot of play off of the reservation, but you’re probably carrying around at least one terminal for it in your pocket: the Cherokee Language is now a part of iOS.

It’s actually been on iOS for a while now, since iOS 4.1, but the road to getting there was long: three years ago, the Cherokee Nation made a request of Apple that they would add their language to those supported on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. In September, though, Apple finally baked it into their mobile operating system along with approximately fifty other languages.

Cherokee Nation’s language technology representative Joseph Erb was pretty excited to see it added. “There are countries vying to get on these devices for languages, so we are pretty excited we were included.”

Cherokee is a dying language, and only 8,000 members of the approximately 300,000 strong tribe still speak it. Perhaps a few more will be turned on now that it’s a part of the most respected mobile operating system on Earth.

It’s close to Christmas, but not so close that there’s no stupid to report, so here’s your Yuletide dose: French site La Vie and photohournalist Jordan Pouille are again claiming that Foxconn is Hell on Earth.

Not that you’d come to that conclusion yourself, as the photoessay itself consigns itself to bookending shots of the barred windows at Foxconn’s dormitories (to prevent suicides) with shots of workers going to work, performing coordinated dances, shopping at malls, listening to pop music and shopping for food. What an Auschwitz, right?