The kids have spoken. They don’t want toys for Christmas. They don’t want candy. They don’t want games or CDs or DVDs.

They want iDevices.

The iPad is just about perfect for reading magazines; surprising, then, that more publishers haven’t come out with iPad-specific apps, right? Thankfully, publishers seem to be catching on, and last week saw two tricked-out versions of women’s magazines debut as apps on the iPad.

Nintendo, the mobile gaming pioneer, now sees Apple as the immediate threat to its future, not Microsoft. “Do I think that in the near term [Apple] can hurt us more than Microsoft? Absolutely,” Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime tells an interviewer.

September was a good month for Apple’s push into mobile gaming. Alongside its claim that the Cupertino, Calif. company held 50 percent of the portable gaming segment, and that the iPod touch was the No. 1 gaming device, Apple opened a gaming center for its lucrative App Store. That, along with a survey finding iOS gamers nearly outnumber Nintendo fans is enough to explain why the DS maker sees Apple as the “enemy of the future.”

Laptop users usually have a strong preference for either glossy or matte displays, but unfortunately, if you buy an Apple notebook, you’d better get used to seeing reflections: all of Cupertino’s current notebooks save the 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros come with displays of the glossy variety.

So what if you’re twitching for the new MacBook Air, but can’t stand seeing the translucent enantiomorph of your ugly mug overlaid on your desktop all the time? No problem: just call up TechRestore, send in your MacBook Air along with $250 bucks and they’ll rub some fine-grained sandpaper all over your glossy display until it nice and matted.

Sorry, we kid: in actuality, TechRestore will simply retrofit a matte display into your MacBook Air that is identical, spec-for-spec, with the stock one. Not worth a quarter grand to me personally, but then again, I’m a narcissist.

[via TUAW]

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDb7qwrpFqs

Every time a new and much anticipated gadget finally hits store shelves, it is inevitable that a couple losers will buy one just to film themselves destroying it. As you can see in the video above, the new MacBook Air will not be spared this ignominy, as a bewigged Jake Gyllenhall lookalike and an individual who can only be described as the one of the grossest humanoids in the world blow up a new Air with dynamite… and in slow motion.

The white iPhone 4, which has become somewhat of a mysterious species among the vast herds of black-and-silver handsets, may soon appear in the wild. Apple’s new Apple Store applications is listing it among the options for reserving and iPhone.

Although not available at Apple’s online storefront, the white iPhone, in 16GB or 32GB configurations, is listed in the “Reserve product” tab of the application. The option may mean the white iPhone 4 is ready for wider distribution.

Although I actually play them with what can only be described as garish, butter-fingered ineptitude, I love SHMUPs, and so I’m really excited to take Firi Games’ new $0.99 shoot-em-up Phoenix for a spin.

Not only does the graphics and action look absolutely fantastic — a throwback to some of my favorite SHMUPs like Cho Ren Sha 68k — but Phoenix boasts one nifty little trick to separate itself from competition like Cave’s Espagaluga II: while most SHMUPs are all about pattern recognition, Phoenix is totally random, piecing different enemy ships and bullet patterns together on the fly so that no game is ever the same.

Our most beloved of open-source video players, VLC, got a spankingly sexy iPad port last month… and now it’s been updated as a universal binary that supports the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and third/fourth gen iPod Touch.

If you’ve previously downloaded the iPad version, the update also adds the ability to delete files within VLC itself, as well as faster decoding and increased support for some of the more esoteric extensions.

Is there anything VLC doesn’t run on at this point? Besides the AppleTV, that is, which is positively twitching for a port?

VLC is a free download from the App Store. Go get it.

Earlier this month, Microsoft promised that Mac owners born with mental aberrations grave enough to compel them to buy a Windows Phone 7 handset over an iPhone would be facilitated in their madness by native OS X syncing software, and what do you know, Microsoft was as good as its word.

The software is called Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac, and it will allow you to sync content including music, photos, video and podcasts from your Mac to your Windows Phone 7 handset. You can read a review of the software here.

Want to get your iPad engraved with a foul limerick, or a portrait of Woz realized in ASCII, or a hip-hop style roll call of everyone who has ever shown you disrespect, or — I guess — some pithy line of sentiment? Apple’s finally offering to engrave iPads for customers. Like their iPod engraving program, getting some letters laser-etched into your iPad’s case is free if you order the tablet through Apple’s online store.

Isn’t that nice? Just remember that if you opt to get your iPad engraved, you can no longer exchange it unless it arrives as dead as a door stop.

If you’re a regular user of Skype and you’re considering picking up a MacBook Air, be warned: for some reason, Skype version 2.8.x just does not want to play nice with Apple’s new, wafer-thin notebook.

It’s not clear what is causing the problem, but the symptom is obvious: when you first open Skype, the login phase never fully resolves itself. Instead, users find themselves stuck staring at the login window until they quit the app.

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.