Cult of Mac

Apple 1 system number 82 has found a new owner, for the bargain basement price of only $213,600 (£133,250).  Sold via Christie’s of London, and originally shipped from Steve Jobs’ garage, the pre-auction estimate had been up to $240,000 (£150,000).  The buyer remains unknown at the time of this posting.

The Apple 1 was considered the first personal computer, and approximately 200 systems were produced.  About a quarter of those survive today.  This kit includes the motherboard, cassette adapter, manuals, the original shipping box in good condition, and a signed letter from Steve Jobs to the first owner.

This particular Apple 1 has made the rounds.  Cult of Mac first reported on it in November 2009 when it was posted on eBay for $50,000. A year later and it has appreciated significantly in value.

What’s in your attic?

Pop some acid and the above video above will look chromatically normal to you, but as some owners of Sony and Philips brand televisions are discovering, dropping some lysergic bliss is about the only way to get the new AppleTV to play nice with their sets.

Following Thanksgiving as it does, Black Friday — and it’s smaller and more stupidly named sister “holiday.” Cyber Monday — is generally an America-only affair, but not if you shop directly from Apple, who are now teasing their November 26th “one-day Apple shopping event” both domestically and internationally.

TJ Maxx and Marshall’s are selling a limited number of iPads for $100 off their retail price at random outlets this Black Friday weekend, but as Steve Jobs made abundantly clear in an e-mail yesterday, they’re not an authorized reseller.

Where’d TJ Maxx get all the iPads then? Easy. They might not be an official reseller, but that hasn’t stopped them from buying from one… or reselling those iPads at a loss.

Following yesterday’s story that Steve Jobs and Rupert Murdoch might meet on stage to debut the world’s first iPad-only newspaper, comes a new report suggesting not only that Apple will hold that event on December 9th, but also use it as an opportunity to unveil a new subscription billing option for periodicals on the iPad.

Apple’s elves in China are going into hyper-drive to meet expected increased holiday demand for the red-hot iPad, a report suggests Tuesday. Foxconn Electronics has added new manufacturing sites able to produce 10,000 additional tablets each day.

The new plants in Chengdu could eventually produce enable Foxconn to produce around 40 million iPads per year, prompting the report to call the inland China factories “a major supply base” for the first quarter of 2011. Apple could sell 15 million iPads in 2010 and start 2011 with a second-generation tablet.

Here’s AirPlay working on the new Apple TV streaming from an iPad. It works great in Apple’s Video app and YouTube, but I can get audio only to work in iTunes — video isn’t working.

When I select the AirPlay popup, it shows a speaker icon for the AppleTV — not the normal screen icon. Audio streams fine but it won’t play video. Puzzled.

UPDATE: It’s audio only in Netflix too.

UPDATE 2: It looks like video playback is disabled in certain apps, including iTunes on iOS devices, which is more of a storefront than a multimedia app. Video bought through iTunes and played back through the iPod app on an iPhone (and the Videos app on an iPad) work fine. Jason Snell at Macworld had the same experience.

Here’s video of Apple’s new AirPlay video streaming running on an AppleTV updated to iOS 4.1. The Apple TV is playing a Family Guy trailer streaming from a MacBook Air. Pretty cool. The big question about AirPlay is whether it will play video that hasn’t been obtained from iTunes. The Family Guy trailer was downloaded from the iTunes store. I’ll be testing non-iTunes video shortly.

Black Friday’s an exciting time of the year for the gadget hound, but let’s face facts: so many of those big box discounts are purely illusory, and you can already get an equivalent or better price through Amazon.com.

That’s why Amazon has released Price Check, a free iOS app that lets you quickly check Amazon’s price on a product by scanning barcodes, snapping a picture, saying the product’s name aloud or typing it in to search. If the price is better, you can then easily add it to your shopping cart.

You can download Price Check for free here.

According to a new report by analyst Brian Marshall, we should all expect the iPad 2 in April.

No duh. Apple’s stuck to a rigidly defined yearly update cycle for all of their iOS devices, so you don’t need to go to Analysis U. to figure out exactly when to expect the next iPad.

But the April date for the iPad 2 isn’t really the meat of this story. More interesting is what Marshall says we should expect spec-wise from the iPad 2, which is… nothing special at all.

With just days left before Thanksgiving, we highlight three deals for your iPhone. First is a stylish Dot case for the iPhone 4 handset. For that case, we have a number of iPhone 4s – including a 32GB model for $249 – from AT&T. Finally, after the Thanksgiving festivities are over, it’s time for Black Friday – and we’ve got the app for you. The Black Friday app from dealnews keeps you update on all the ads (released and leaked), along with a way to store your shopping lists as you peruse the Web sites.

Along the way, we’ll also check out more deals on iPods, an 11g Airport Extreme and software for your Mac. As always, details on these and much more can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Gearbox Software’s Borderlands was one of my favorite video games of the past year, but unless you’re willing to reboot into Boot Camp, it doesn’t run on a Mac.

It’s a shame, because in many non-trivial ways, it’s the best multiplayer Diablo-like since, well, Diablo II. Borderlands takes place on a Mad Max style extraterrestrial world in which every chest, container or killed enemy spits out a treasure trove of randomly created weapons, each with their own unique special abilities.

I spent about 80 hours playing through Borderlands when it was released on the Xbox 360 earlier this year… such a substantial block of time that the inamorata can’t even hear the game’s title without whiplashing herself with an eye roll… so no one tell her that Borderlands is coming to the Mac coming December 3rd, complete with all the DLC, for the quite reasonable price of $49.95.

No surprises here, but if you’re not one of the lucky bastiches who manages to score himself a $399 iPad from TJ Maxx or Marshall’s this Black Friday, don’t expect the Apple Store to price match: as an email from Steve Jobs makes abundantly clear, TJ Maxx is not an authorized reseller, and they are selling them for $399 at a loss.

Steve Jobs publicly vowed to make the iTunes app market porn free, telling customers if they want smut they should get an Android. Whether you want sexy stuff on your smartphone or not, there’s undeniably an appetite for adult material.

That’s why developers keep submitting salacious apps to the iTunes store – playing peek-a-boo with the public as they are approved and then shut down. Big names like Playboy and Hooters iTunes offerings are, kind of a tease – lots of skin, but no nudity and “games,” like a squeaky-clean screen washing app. Android is another story.

While there is no adult material in its official app store, almost exactly a year ago a company called www.mikandi.com launched a porn app market for the Android platform, billing it as the world’s first mobile adult shop. (See our post about what Android users get a looky-loo at when they use it).

Google adopted a hands-off policy towards this parallel porn shop – and following its pattern of keeping mum about it, a Google spokesperson declined to comment for this post. It’s also worth noting that Android’s open approach allows users to use and install third party apps without jailbreaking phones.

Cult of Mac talked in exclusive with MiKandi (it’s pronounced “my candy”) CEO Jen McEwan about what’s hot in the store and where the market is headed.

To prove seeing is believing, we downloaded MiKandi, the adult app market for Android about to celebrate a year in business, and took a little tour of the apps offered there.

Mikandi (pronounced “my candy”) was a quick download on the Nexus One phone we used. To install, users must agree to allow the app to have access to the phone store and location (info they need to combat the Android’s ongoing fragmentation problem) then a lengthy end-user agreement that begins with the caveat that users must be over age 18.

In a few seconds – the waiting message reminds us it’s “loading goodies” — and the store opens. (If you’re concerned about prying eyes, you can also register for a secure account online or through the app store itself).

Ever mused on why Apple is Apple, and not, well, anything even vaguely computer related? Steve Wozniak’s disembodied head boils it down for you: it apparently comes from Steve Jobs’ days as a migrant fruit picker in the orchards of Oregon, and was chosen simply because it sounded “unique and interesting.”

It’s been well over six months since we last heard that Apple might be considering dropping its MobileMe subscription fee, but newly discovered code in the iOS 4.2 and 4.2.1 gold master builds suggest that Apple hasn’t scrapped plans for MobileFree: in fact, it could launch imminently.

Is the new 11.6-inch MacBook Air a netbook? Steve Jobs would become apoplectic if you called it one, and he’s right. Sure, the 11.6-inch MacBook Air has about the same form factor as a 12-inch netbook, but without any of the latter’s compromised build quality or lousy performance… even when running a netbook’s go-to operating system, Windows 7.

Today is the day. Finally. Apple is shipping iOS 4.2 to iPads, the iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4, and second, third and fourth generation iPod touches. iPad users have the most to benefit since they will be getting app folder enhancements and multitasking for the first time. The update also includes Game Center, AirPlay and AirPrint for all devices. Find My iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is now free to use without a MobileMe subscription and you can now rent TV episodes directly on your iPad.

The update should be available for downloading around 10:00 AM PST today. You’ll need the latest copy of iTunes (version 10.1) so make sure your Mac is up-to-date. Afterwards tether your iOS device to your Mac and check for updates in iTunes after the appointed time.

Check out Apple’s press release for complete details on this exciting new iOS release.

Rivals attempting to share in the wave of momentum for tablet computers may be hurt by an expected wait-and-see attitude as consumers look toward a rumored iPad 2 from Apple. That’s the assessment by anonymous overseas suppliers talking to an industry publication.

According to the suppliers, the expectation of a new iPad sometime in the first three months of 2011 will “seriously weaken” sales of competing tablets from PC makers. Additionally, predictions for tablet sales in 2011 my be overly optimistic and risk disappointment.

Both Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs agree: devices like the iPad are the future of media, and the death of print.

It looks, however, like Apple and News Corp. might be working more closely to bring that end about than it was previously thought: according to WWD, Apple is helping News Corp. build an iPad-only, subscription-based newspaper to devices in early 2011… and Steve Jobs himself might debut it.

The new MacBook Air is Apple’s least self-repairable notebook yet, thoroughly bolted down by proprietary Torx screws, but if you thought that was just an anomaly, think again: Apple’s so averse to you cracking open your iPhone that they are actually retrofitting proprietary screws into iPhone 4’s brought in for in-warranty servicing.

Macs don’t really get viruses very often, but there’s more than a few anti-software firms who’d like you think they do… and sell you some software to help squash them.

Anytime we write about Mac viruses, then, it should be done with some salt dissolving on the tongue, and anti-virus firm Sophos’ latest report showing a surprising amount of malware on the Mac is no exception.

The data was culled from 50,000 malware reports generated by 150,000 users of Sophos’ free Mac anti-virus software during the first two weeks of November. The chart looks bad, but in actuality, it’s not really very dire… a fact that Sophos themselves are being upfront about.

In the tablet tug-of-war between Apple and Android-maker Google, the Cupertino, Calif. company may have one the first scuffle in South Korea. Although the iPad doesn’t officially go on sale there until Nov. 30, carrier KT reportedly sold some 60,000 units in less than won week of presales.

With a little more than one month left in 2010, KT — Apple’s partner in South Korea — expects to sell 200,000 iPads, according to a local report. By comparison, the rival Android-based Samsung Galaxy Tab from SK Telecom pre-sold about 25,000 tablet in its first week of availability. Overall, Samsung expects to sell more than 150,000 by the end of November.

Apple’s intentions to bake reprogrammable SIM modules into future devices may have been killed off, thanks to the carrier revolt we reported on Friday.