Cult of Mac

You might not remember his name, but when you see his pictures, you’ll probably recognise the work of Eadweard Muybridge.

I hope you didn’t jump out of bed at the crack of dawn today, throw open the curtains, crack open a few eggs in the frying pan, connect your iPad to iTunes and then sit down to spend the next few hours to continuously hammer the “Check for Update” button, because we’ve got some bad news for you: it doesn’t look like iOS 4.2 is going to drop today.

Apple’s social network Ping is kind of a lonely kid. The iTunes-based network launched in September has only attracted 2,000 artists.

Twitter, on the other hand, is a big man on the social media campus.   Some 95 million taunts, shout-outs, heads’ up, musings pass through it  every day — and a lot of that noise is about music.

So Twitter has now “friended” Ping in the hopes that it can become more popular.

If you’re an Instapaper user on iOS — and honest to god, you really should be — there’s a sexy new update available that not only contains an impressive algorithm to automatically switch you over to black-on-white dark mode the moment the sun sets outside of your window, but also includes new sharing options, article preview on the iPhone and the ability to use an “ihttps://” prefix to launch pages.

Check out the full change list below the jump.

Publicity stunt? Sure. But that still didn’t stop photographer Jesse Rosten from lighting his latest shoot with nine iPads mounted on several pieces of plywood. Now that’s an Apple-centric strobist!

As a glimpse of the possible gaming future of an iOS-capable AppleTV, this is pretty tops: for the latest update of The Incident, Big Bucket Software has added the ability to hook your iPad up to your HDTV and play the game from your couch using a Bluetooth-paired iPhone as the controller.

If Apple ever introduces an App Store for the AppleTV, this is the way they’re going to do it: in the meantime, we can count on jailbreak developers implementing this sort of functionality in jailbroken AppleTV apps. I can’t wait for someone to get an emulator working on this thing already!

We have just learned that a new patent has confirmed Cult of Mac’s earlier report that Apple is working on ambitious remote computing tech that would allow files and settings to be transferred between the Mac and iPhone through a Near Field Communications (NFC) chip.

Is the writing on the wall for iTunes?

For the first time, U.S. music fans are streaming as much music as they download — and streaming is set to overtake downloading in a matter of months.

NPD Group says 30 percent of U.S. music consumers streamed music in August; the same percentage that downloaded music to their computers.

But streaming is growing fast. In a few months, it will far outstrip downloads, NPD Group spokesman Lee Martin told Evolver.fm.

Incredibly, the new numbers also include downloads from peer-to-peer file sharing networks as well as legal downloads from iTunes and Amazon.

Apparently, the convenience of streaming services, which now offer instant access to vast libraries of music of a wide variety of devices, even beats out piracy!

Good thing Apple has a $1 billion server farm coming online soon (if not already). But when are we going to see streaming from iTunes?

Evolver.fm: Americans Now Stream As Much Music As They Download

Neil Ferguson, developer of Virus Strike, explains how to become a successful iPhone game developer in 10 steps.

I believe that anyone can develop an iPhone game. I recently developed a physics-based puzzler for the iPhone, Virus Strike, on a zero budget despite having zero experience developing iPhone games. It wasn’t easy, but there are very few set-up costs if you have the right skills and approach.

Admittedly, I’m an experienced programmer – I started developing on a BBC Micro at the age of 8 and now work full-time for a software start-up in London. Obviously, my experience helped me when I was developing Virus Strike, but I don’t think you necessarily need to have any programming experience to develop a successful game. Just follow these 10 steps:

Boldly joining the digital age, Danish audio systems manufacturer Bang & Olufsen has introduced the BeoSound 8 portable docking station for all iOS devices.  With their usual brushed aluminum elegance, this Boombox Extraordinaire docks with iPods, iPhones and iPads, and offers a line-in AUX connector and USB port to accept audio input from your Mac or PC.

Consumer Reports infamously loathes the iPhone 4, but if their latest list of computer ratings are anything to go by, that seething distaste doesn’t extend to Apple’s notebooks: not only do they highly recommend most of Cupertino’s current laptops over the competition, but they’re absolutely gaga over the new MacBook Air.

According to Apple, the new A4-powered AppleTV has been a modest success, selling over 250,000 units by mid-October, but despite this, it’s not listed in Amazon.com’s list of the top 100 electronics…. and some people smell a conspiracy.

Macworld may not have an official Apple presence anymore, but Macworld 2011 is shaping up to be one of the biggest years yet for the show when it hits January 26th in San Francisco: according to IDG General Manager Paul Kent, it’ll be over thirty percent bigger than ever before.

Earlier in the week, it was reported that Apple might have acquired Wi-Gear, a company that makes the iMuff line of wireless Bluetooth headphones.

The evidence seemed pretty good for a secret buyout. Not only did Wi-Gear’s home page feature a somewhat unceremonious message about the company ceasing operations and being unable to respond to any press inquiries, but Wi-Gear co-founder moved to Apple as an iOS Bluetooth Engineer.

Unfortunately, like many good rumors, the evidence didn’t add up to the truth of things. Asked about a buyout by Macworld, Wi-Gear CEO Mark Pundsack said: “I wish!”

Right now, if you have Mac OS X 10.6.5 and an iPad running iOS 4.2 GM, AirPrint’s a bit of a mess: some people are reporting that it is working, but many are not having any luck.

We suspected that it was just this sort of compatibility problems that caused Apple to scale AirPrint support back to AirPrint-compatible printers at the last minute, but developer Steven Troughton-Smith has some instructions on how to bring it to your Mac under OS X 10.6.5 and iOS 4.2 GM.

Yesterday, reports suggested that support for Apple’s AirPrint feature had been plucked from iOS 4.2 for shared printers connected to Macs and PCs, leaving only a subset of AirPrint-compatible HP printers mentioned in the official developer documentation.

Has Apple just had last minute compatibility problems they’re not willing to delay their iOS 4.2 update for, or has the AirPrint feature been canceled? Not according to Steve Jobs, but unfortunately, his comments on the matter aren’t particularly illuminating.

I have an embarrassing confession to make: I wear out headphones the way most people wear out socks. Whether from Shure, Ultimate Ears, Sony, Koss, or 99-cent Chinatown bootleg, one of the ears won’t be playing sound within the first three months I own them. Fraying cables, rusty headphone jacks from rain, shorted audio drivers from running-induced ear sweat (?!), and many more have kept me from my music collection. I can’t help it; I wear my headphones everywhere. Consequently, I’m increasingly interested in durability as a key design consideration beyond just audio quality and a comfortable fit.

And I might have finally found the ideal iPhone headset for the active, occasionally irresponsible urbanite: V-Moda’s Vibrato headphones.

If you’ve ever opened your AT&T bill and puzzled for a moment over the “Internet Taxes” heading charge before shrugging and just paying it anyway, good news: you might be eligible to get back a few beans thanks to the palliative magic of class action lawsuits.

TextWrangler is a well-named application. It’s there to do a particular job, and that job is wrangling text.

It’s natural to assume that iTunes is a monolithic one-window application, because there’s no obvious way to view your vast database of music, videos and apps in anything other than just that one window.

No obvious way, but it is there.

UPDATE: I go to dinner and all hell breaks loose. Sorry for the bogus info. My bad. I should have checked this out first. Apparently, this combo update is not good — it causes kernel panics. Here’s a legit link to the 10.6.5 combo update on Apple’s site: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1324

Here’s the hidden URL where you can download the Mac OS X 10.6.5 Combo update. This combo update is not visible on Apple.com

Some folks think it’s usually better for your OS to install the combo update. From what we understand, the combo update does a more complete update than incremental updates applied through OS X’s Software Update. For example, system glitches caused by earier updates may be fixed because the combo update reinstalls everything that was included in previous updates (in this case, everything in 10.6.1 through 10.6.5).

It can also help avoid update headaches, we’re told.

Thanks Roman Zavřel of Letem Světem Applem.

Here’s the link to the Apple Support document describing the update and how to get it.

10.6.5 promises increased performance in playing well with Microsoft Exchange, better image processing with iPhoto and Aperture, adds SSL support for transferring files with iDisk, resolves an issue syncing Address Book with Google, allows systems with a Mac Pro RAID Card (Early 2009) to be put to sleep, and adds RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras — among other things.

See the full support document for details.

NBC’s Jimmy Fallon is the first American late night TV host out of the gate with a dedicated app for Apple’s mobile device users, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (iTunes link), available free as of Wednesday in the App Store.

Fallon, arguably the most tech-savvy of all the late night talk show hosts in the US, regularly spotlights tech and social media in his show’s skits and jokes and in the past showcased “fantasy” apps such as “Axl Rose Relaxation” and “Moldova Y/N” that actually made it into the production release.

The mobile app — compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch — will also showcase video clips and photos from the TV show along with behind-the-scenes blog posts from the Late Night site.

City councils across the country are adopting the iPad, in the hopes that the magical device can help them go paperless and save money, but taxpayers are skeptical of the savings.

The just-proposed scheme in Aurora, east of Denver,  is pretty typical: the city council there wants to try out iPads to see if it can save printing out the information packets for meetings. The city currently spends about $900 per member every year to print, assemble and deliver the info packets to the 10 council members and the mayor for a total of around $9,900.

They’ve budgeted $729 for the iPads plus $180 per year for data plans, so by using iPads they would break even in about a year.

Residents, however, don’t appear to buy it. Some 62% responded “You’re kidding me. What a scam. Like they read all that stuff anyway” to a poll in the Aurora Sentinal, just 36% responded “Why not? Saves trees, saves money. Go for it.”

We know that all kids want for Christmas is an Apple device, it turns out adults do too.

According to a survey by the Consumer Electronics Association, people old enough to vote did put one thing first, though.

First, adults would like the holidays to bring happiness or peace. Then comes material desire:  a laptop. And third, an iPad.

Bringing family together, health and money trailed behind, though they did make it into the top ten at seven, eight and 10 respectively. (CEA didn’t disclose info on  sample size or makeup. Pet peeve alert!)