Cult of Mac

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq8Dok2Th2s&hd=1

Watch out! A major new security hole in the iPhone software has just been discovered… a bug that allows anyone who picks up your phone to easily unlock it and access all of your phone data under iOS 4.1.

In case you want to try it yourself, here’s how you gain access to a locked iPhone through the security hole. When your iPhone 4 is locked with a passcode, tap the emergency call button, then enter three hash keys. Now tap the call button then immediately hit the lock button.

Do the above correctly and you’ll be rewarded by being dumped into the iPhone’s Phone app. From there, you can access the user’s favorites, contacts, dial pad,. recent calls, voice mails and even send SMS and email messages through the Address book.

It’s a pretty huge bug, and it seems to work on all iPhones running iOS 4.1. This is the sort of thing Apple will patch pretty quickly, but in the meantime, show extra dilligence and care in not leaving your locked iPhone lying around.

Could Apple, with $51 billion burning a hole in Cupertino’s pocket, turn its acquisitive eye toward consumer electronics pioneer Sony? That’s the question getting attention today as rumor of potential purchases by the iPhone maker push Sony stock higher. Like many rumors, the Sony buyout chatter has vaporous origins.

Although analysts appear skeptical as to how friendly such a takeover would be, just the potential of a buyout had Sony’s stock climbing 3 percent. Also fueling the rumor were comments by former Apple CEO John Scully. Scully, talking with reporters, said Steve Jobs always envisioned Sony as Apple’s goal.

Here at Cult of Mac, we love Apple’s new A4-powered update to their “hobbyist” set-top box, the AppleTV… but all is not rosy for everyone. According to reports coming in from users, the new AppleTV might be prone to a very, very subtle skipping problem that — once seen — becomes impossible to unsee.

Next Monday is November 1st and for us would-be wordsmiths, that date has special import as the first day of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Over the next thirty days, tens of thousands of would-be novelists will smash out as much prose as they can, trying to finish the first draft of a short, complete novel before the clock strikes midnight on November 30th.

In order to help novelists prepare for the orgy of fiction that will all but consume the lives of Mac-using NaNoWriMo next month, Scrivener — our favorite project planner for writers and novelists — has seen fit to release the public preview of the much anticipated 2.0 update… and it’ll be completely free to use until December 7th.

Remember last week’s report that said that almost one-third of all iPad owners had never downloaded an app?

We bought it — after all, the iPad is a compelling device right out of the box without ever plugging in a credit card company — but it looks like we were being overly credulous. Nielsen Group, who originally posted the numbers, has just released a huge honking update on their previous numbers… this time claiming that only 9% of iPad users have never downloaded an app.

One of the little secrets that has made Apple the most profitable company in tech is their ability to achieve high margins on their gizmos, but the new MacBook Airs might set a record even for Apple: according to analysts who have estimated its bill of materials, the entry-level, 11.6-inch MacBook Air costs only $718 to make.

That means that for every 11.6-inch MacBook Air Apple sells, they make $281, a profit margin of 28.1%. That’s for the 64GB: buy yourself a 128GB MacBook Air and the profit margin jumps to 34%. Buy a 128GB 13.3-inch MacBook Air and that margin nudges forward again, this time to 37%.

Those margins are excellent, even comparatively: Apple, on average, achieves a profit margin of just 20% on the rest of their laptops.

Software giant Microsoft plans to open a new retail store Nov. 6 in Minnesota’s gigantic Mall of America — directly opposite from the Apple Store.

I predict that the Microsoft Store will fail spectacularly.

PC giant Dell tried retail locations a few years ago — the company peaked at 140 mall kiosks before the company announced that electronics superstores and the dell.com web site were better places for customers to buy.

Gateway tried it, too. The company opened more than 260 “Gateway Country” stores several years ago before shutting them down and selling out to Acer.

Microsoft’s Mall of America store will be much larger than the Apple Store across the walkway — reportedly 8,600 total square feet and 5,200 of which devoted to public showroom. And it will be a lot bigger than Microsoft’s existing retail stores in Scottsdale, Ariz., Lone Tree, Colo., and Mission Viejo and San Diego, Calif. (Apple has 310 stores.)

The new Microsoft store will mimic Apple’s shiny modern industrial wood, metal and glass architectural style. Employees will high-five customers as they stream in on Day One. There will be computers and tablets and smart phones displayed.

Microsoft’s strategy for competing technologies has always been to “embrace and extend.” The strategy for retail appears to be “copy and outspend.”

Why the Microsoft Store Will Fail

Tech giants, including Apple, open retail stores for four reasons:

1. Increase sales

2. Improve branding awareness and affinity

3. Improve public familiarity with products

4. Provide a place for tech support

I predict that Microsoft will fail in all four of these areas. Here’s why:

Apple Stores are profitable. The Microsoft store will not be. It probably wasn’t designed to be. It probably can’t be. The details of Microsoft’s money-losing retail strategy, especially for this giant store, will be contrasted unfavorably with the details of Microsoft’s incredibly lucrative retail strategy. Microsoft will probably lose a lot of money on this store, and the fact will embarrass.

The majority of PC users and the majority of cell phone owners — in other words, the majority of mall goers — do not use Apple products. Apple increases sales with its Apple stores by introducing people to its products.

People may walk by the store fogging the glass 10 times before they ever go in. Once inside, they play around with the computers, fondle the iPads, and allow themselves to be dazzled by the big screens.

For the average mall goer, the Apple Store is a journey into an exotic and beautiful alternative universe. But the Microsoft Store will be like a journey into… Best Buy.

Placing the Microsoft Store directly opposite from the Apple Store is an error. Once the novelty has worn off, the Apple Store will be consistently busier with a much broader spectrum of consumer. While the Microsoft store may be a hit with a 13-year-old boys who want to play Xbox on giant screen, proximity will expose differences in the consumer appeal of each company.

Note that Microsoft has many loyal and enthusiastic business customers. But they won’t be at the mall to represent.

Apple has its Genius Bar, which is a mixed bag of customer service experiences. Some people walk away unhappy, but some people are completely satisfied.

Offering tech support at the Microsoft store is probably a bad idea. Because the Windows platform is what Steve Jobs would call a “fragmented” environment (OS from one company, hardware from another), tech support issues are likely to require intervention by companies other than Microsoft. So Microsoft may not offer tech support, which makes the company look bad. Or it may offer tech support, which makes the company look worse. It’s a no-win for Microsoft.

The problem with Microsoft opening a store directly across from an Apple Store is that it invites comparison between a company that’s in a position to benefit from retail against one that isn’t.

Retail benefits Apple because the company’s products are more beautiful than its competition and less familiar. Retail benefits Apple because its products are all of a kind, they look as if they come from the same company with the same aesthetic value. So the Apple Store has a unified appeal that Microsoft won’t be able to fully replicate.

Microsoft may be a great company with much to offer. But it has nothing to gain from a retail store — especially one right across from an Apple Store — except embarrassment.

Apple’s new 11-inch MacBook Air is astonishing. It’s unbelievable. It’s the most exciting consumer PC that’s come out for years. It’s a netbook, but it’s not a PoS. It’s blazing fast. It’s unbelievably light and thin. It’s beautifully made. Really beautifully made.

It has an older CPU and skimpy RAM, but it is NOT underpowered. For users like me, who aren’t editing Hollywood movies, it’s more than adequate. Heck, it’s a huge leap forward. Like Jobs said at the launch, this is the future of notebooks. Extremely thin and light, yet capable of running dozens of applications without bogging down. There are compromises, of course, but the most important things — portability, durability and functionality — are very much in place.

Last year, I bought a 13-inch MacBook Pro, which I loved. But in comparison to the 11-inch Air, it looks like a bloated old relic. It’s positively primitive: a porky throwback to a previous computing era.

I know what you’re thinking, “Cult of Mac. This guy’s a zealot. He’ll buy anything Steve Jobs tells him too.” I admit, I’m a fan. But the Air is important. It’s different. It’s right up there with the iPad and the iPhone. This is a breakthrough product.

The AppleTV has been jailbroken and we’ve already seen the release of the first AppleTV app courtesy of nitoTV, but how to install it without an AppleTV version of Cydia? Jailbreak maestro MuscleNerd gives us the four-one-one:

1) Jailbreak your AppleTV using PwnageTool
2) SSH into your Apple TV2, the default password is “alpine”

3) Type “passwd” and enter a new password (if you haven’t already)

4) Type: echo “deb https://apt.awkwardtv.org ./” > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/awkwardtv.list

5) Type: apt-get update

6) Type: apt-get install com.nito.nitoTV

7) Type: killall Lowtide

Done and dusted! Enjoy the amazing ability to get weather… on your television! The future is now!

Couch potatoes take note: Peel, a free app that’s a sort of mix between Netflix’s movie suggestions and TV Guide, made its debut last week.

And it’s got a star-studded development team backing it up. Core members of the original iTunes team helped create Peel’s interface, and a team that beat Netfilx’s movie-suggestion algorithm in a competition worked on Peels innards.

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.