Cult of Mac

Previously on Cult of Mac, I decried the growing alarmism of tech punditry regarding Apple’s as-yet-unreleased Mac App Store. GDGT’s Ryan Block citing something about the cloud or something, noted that his pet applications are probably not going to be hosted by the App Store, which therefore means that meaningful innovation in desktop software is impossible. I begged to differ.

But my greater scorn has been reserved for the subject of this post, the Gizmodo commentary “Big Brother Apple and the Death of the Program,” by Matt Buchanan. If you haven’t read it, do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s a doozy of tortuous logic, FUD, and faulty analysis well-worth your time. The following is my rebuttal to several of its most absurd assertions.

We’re giving away some apps this week that will be sure to help distract you from work during the day, so listen up. Today’s apps are not for the faint of heart.  We’ve got stunt bikers, We’ll pick five random winners to win 6 great apps and if you want a chance to get your hands on some these iPhone and iPad apps this week, then follow the instructions carefully below:

1. Like us on Facebook AND Like Appular
2. Post a tip on our Facebook wall. The tip can be anything related to Apple/Mac or it can be a suggestion for an app that you’d like us to review
3. Your post on our wall will be your entry into the giveaway, only ONE entry is allowed per person, and the giveaway will last until 11:59pm PST tomorrow tonight. We’ll contact the winners on Wednesday about how to get the codes!
4. Optional step – Tell us what you think about these apps if you own them already in the comments section.

Special Thanks to Appular for helping us put together these app code giveaways! If you’ve got a mobile app that you’d like marketed effectively, contact the good folks at Appular!

Here’s a look at the apps we’re giving away:

Despite the wary uncertainty of several Secret Service agents, Sylvester Cann was able to get President Obama to autograph his iPad at a recent rally at the University of Washington in Seattle. Much to Apple’s chagrin, the autograph was captured through their arch-nemesis Adobe’s Adobe Ideas app.

Obama — cool as a cucumber — seems to have been a sport about it all: he reportedly thought autographing an iPad was pretty awesome.

Photo effects apps are two-a-penny on the App Store now, so if your photography app is going to make a splash it needs to offer something more than just whimsical visual effects and a selection of fake-Polaroid borders.

Pinhole Camera claims to turn your iPhone into a digital pinhole camera. It’s quite fun to use, mocked up like a home-made pinhole cam made of sticky tape and cardboard.

But what sets it apart isn’t the basic photos – it’s the double exposure feature that lets you merge two photos into one.

For the past three years, AT&T’s constabulary of phone-slinging retail monkeys have been rigorously trained in all aspects of the iPhone so as to best pimp Ma Bell’s exclusive handset… but as rumors about the end of that exclusivity have increasingly gained traction, so have AT&T’s efforts to train their employees in other smartphones, says Bloomberg.

Last week, we reported that Apple’s new MacBook Airs were shipping without Adobe Flash preinstalled… a radical departure from the norm for Apple, which has been bundling Flash with OS X (and OS 9 before it) as the default for seemingly ages. Was it a fluke, or is this Apple’s new policy?

Nope, not a fluke, according to Apple, who say that Adobe Flash will not come preinstalled on any of their machines in the future.

iPhoto ’11 is an incredible update to Apple’s casual photo managing/editing suite which makes organizing and tweaking your digital snaps simpler and more streamlined than ever, but only if iPhoto ’11 doesn’t gobble up your existing library as part of the upgrade process… a mishap that is striking an alarming number of upgraders.

During his time as head of Microsoft, Bill Gates was famously anti-Apple, going so far as to issue an emphatic decree banning all Apple gadgets on the software giant’s mega-campus. Since then, however, Gates has been replaced by Steve Ballmer and the prohibition against iPods and iPhones has gradually loosened up… but there’s one place where Gates’ fierce rivalry with the House that Jobs built continues unabated: the palatial mansion of Bill and Melinda Gates.

Apple’s new data center in North Carolina is “fully operational” and prepared to “ramp up production,” according to a weekend report. Additionally, the industry publication appears to confirm last week’s report that the Cupertino, Calif. company may double the current 500,000 square-foot server farm.

The report buttresses a July statement by Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer to reporters. “We expect to complete it by the end of the calendar year, and begin to use it,” the executive said. Since acknowledging the North Carolina site’s existence nearly a year ago, the location has been the source of rumor and speculation.

I’ve noticed an alarming trend over the five days since Steve Jobs introduced the Mac App Store at Wednesday’s Mac-focused media event. On all sides, the internet is being overrun by otherwise savvy tech pundits who have decided that Apple’s efforts to provide an easy-to-use, accessible, and intuitive marketplace for Mac software is irrelevant at best and, though you didn’t hear it from me, evil, too.

The most alarmist such pieces I have encountered thus far are Ryan Block’s “Will the Mac App Store have enough to sell?” from GDGT, and Matt Buchanan’s “Big Brother Apple and the Death of the Program.” The former, as you might imagine, argues that desktop software is dead, while the latter, predictably, foretells a grim future in which you won’t be able to read these words, and the keyboard I’m typing this post on write now will instead devote itself to composing Jobs-praising hymns.

I don’t often give myself over to Fisking, but I think it only makes sense to deconstruct these pieces by responding to specific arguments within. I am, necessarily, only excerpting from each piece, so I encourage you read them in their entirety — the full context is as ridiculous as the smaller slices. Up first, Ryan Block tells us why your notebook doesn’t have any software on it.

Apple’s new iMovie ’11 is here and while it isn’t the best part of my iLife, like iPhoto, it does make an occasional cameo appearance in my life. The new iMovie features that Apple announced last Wednesday are pretty good making an already great program better.

The new movie trailers, improved audio editing, one-step side effects, people finder, themes, and world premiere all bring new or improved features the give me more opportunities to be creative. I’ll be able to finally craft movies that are almost as good as the ones made by Steven Spielberg. Well maybe not that good, but definitely better than before.

If you’ve not discovered Trainyard yet, it’s high time you got yourself to the App Store and spent a dollar on it. It’s one of those games that offers a great deal of entertainment for a very low price.

iSeeU is a new accessory from PLAYMASS for the iPhone 3GS that provides users with the functionality of a front-facing camera in a pretty novel way.

It’s a clip-on accessory with some carefully arranged mirrors that reflects what’s in front of your device in to the camera at the back, kind of creating a front-facing camera. Check out the video below to see how it works.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti8XI3X-eCA

Although the iPhone 3GS is not FaceTime compatible, there are video calling applications in the App Store that work perfectly on the older model, like Fring, Tango Video Calls and Yahoo! Messenger

iSeeU is now available to pre-order for $24.95 and will be launched in “early October.” A release date which I think may have been missed. It’s available in five colors and comes with a carrying case.

Steve Jobs is reported to have confirmed by email that the switch on the side of your iPad will forever be a mute switch from iOS 4.2 onwards, and that users won’t be given the option to change it back to an orientation lock.

When the iPad was first released, the switch on the side of the device was an orientation lock, and many users were very fond of this function. In the most recent iOS firmware, the function of the iPad’s switch has changed to enable users to quickly mute the device, just like they can on the iPhone.

One iPad user, named Robert, sent an email to Jobs himself to ask whether the iPad switch will always be a mute button from iOS 4.2:

“In IOS 4.2 for iPad is the switch on the side going to be the mute and not screen orientation lock from now on?”

Jobs replied with a simple “Yep.” and then Robert asked whether users might be given the option to customize the function of the switch:

“Are you planning to make that a changeable option?”

Jobs provided another simple reply: “Nope.”

So, your iPad switch will always be a mute button from iOS 4.2. As an iPad user myself, I have to say I’m a little disappointed that the switch has changed to a mute button – although it’s only a slight change, I felt the orientation lock was much more useful. Turning the iPad to silent was easy enough already in iOS 3.2.x by just holding down the volume button.

[via 9to5 Mac]

One of our favorite applications this week is a great new photography app called Simply Postcards that lets you turn any photo into a real postcard that you can have printed with a personal message and mailed to friends and family.

Printer Pro is Readdle’s latest application for iOS, and one of the most impressive applications in our favorites this week. It allows you to wirelessly print a whole range of documents direct from your iPad, including email attachments, web pages, and iWork documents.

Also featured is a great language translator for the iPad, and the most definitive guide to Central Park for your iPhone.

This week’s must-have iOS games features a great new sports package for the iPhone that offers 5 action-packed sports games including archery, bowling, and tennis. Yoo! Sports claims to be the next generation of iOS gaming.

Reckless Racing is EA’s fantastic new dirt-road racer and another of our favorite games this week. It combines traditional top-down racing with state of the art graphic environments optimized for the Retina display.

Angry Birds Halloween also features – the ghastly special edition of one of the best-selling iOS games in the App Store.

Cult of Mac members and fans of Bloom County, a long lost friend has returned.  Straight from the labs of the RetroMacCast and brainchild of RMC co-host John, the Banana Junior 9000 Fully Portable Personal Computer has been reborn!  It Computes, Sorts, Prints, Draws, Figures, Doodles, Slices, Dices, Whistles, Whimpers, Dances, Prances… and most important of all… It Turns ON!

Holy Mackerel this thing is fast! 46 tabs in Safari and 21 in Chrome; 18 open applications, including hogs like Safari, Mail and iTunes.

No spinning beachballs!

There’s no slowdown whatsoever. It’s amazing. This thing flies. It’s the $999 11-inch MacBook with only 2GBytes of RAM — the machine people said would be underpowered. But it’s not. Not by a long shot.

It’s the fastest laptop I’ve used in years, and Apple is going to sell boatloads of them. It’s very exciting.

I’ve got to go on a scout trip with my son. Full review on Monday, and more pictures after the jump.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ifrXlloH9s

Cult of Mac was asked by CNBC’s Street Signs to contribute our thoughts on the current market debate of whether it’s wiser to invest in Gold or Apple. Even though we don’t masquerade as financial advisors, the debate in the short-term seems fairly straightforward to us, and here are a few of the major points:

Sadly this is kind of true about the new Macbook Air, since even the base model is two, three, or more times higher in price than most Windows-based netbooks. However, if you compare the two platforms I think you’ll still be better off with the Macbook Air.

[via Macenstein]

Docks that can accommodate the iPad are a quickly swelling niche in the home electronics market; iHome’s throws another hat into the ring with their wide-stanced iA100, combining a sleek look and Bluetooth connectivity.

Bluetooth capabilities include streaming music from a BT-equipped iDevice, and turning the unit into an iPhone speakerphone (though Skyping won’t work, as Skype has yet to add BT functionality to their app). Sound from four active speakers is enhanced through the same Bongiovi DPS processing technology found on their flagship iP1, and a free app available through the app store add a slew of features like enhanced alarm controls, and even sleep stats.

The iA100 is available now, and sells for $199.

This is turning out to be a pretty artsy weekend for the iPad. Not only will there be an explosion of iPad and iPhone art at the first ever Mobile ArtCon in Manhattan, but Infinite Dreams has also just launched a free version of their Let’s Create Pottery HD app, which turns the iPad into a virtual pottery wheel and kiln and has to be one of the most stunning creative apps we’ve seen on the device. there’s even a virtual showroom, where finished creations can be displayed.

The full, $5 version of the app will also be on sale at $3 through the weekend, though it’s not immediately clear what the differences are between the two.

We wrap up another week of Mac deals with three bargains in the spotlight. MacConnections is now offering a discount on Apple’s recently released MacBook Air laptops. The $969 deal includes an 11.6-inch unit with a 1.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 64GB SSD. Also on tap is a bevy of iPhone games from EA, including Sims 3, Spore Creatures and more. Finally, there is a deal on the iDuo iPod/iPhone dock with card reader.

Along the way, we’ll also take a look at iPhone hardware and Mac software. As usual, details on these and many other bargains can be found on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Clubbers at a Miami hotspot find out the dreaded answer to whether their names are on the guest list thanks to iPads.

Door staff at LIV at the Fontainbleau Hotel use Apple’s magical tablet to check guest lists, table reservations and organize their email lists.

The MacBook Air, heralded earlier this week for its ultra-thin 0.68-inch profile and lack of any hard disk drive, is putting a knife in the back of drive makers. That’s the word from one company hurrying to move from dinosaur drives to a flash memory future.

“The new announcement of the MacBook Air is really stabbing Seagate and Western Digital in the back,” LacCie CEO Philippe Spruch, told the Wall Street Journal. The French-based Lacie is transforming quickly into a flash-based firm. The MacBook Air, instead of a hard disk drive uses flash for storage and a read-only memory card for installations. Who are the winners and losers in the storage upheaval?