Cult of Mac

We close out another week with three highlighted deals. The first up is Yahtzee HD for the iPad. This classic board game comes to Apple’s best-selling tablet for just $1.99 – a $3 price drop. Next up is a leather case for your iPad from Zoogue. The item includes a suede interior, adjustable stand and an elastic car headrest attachment. We end the features with the latest crop of price drops from the App Store, including “Wheel of Fortune” for just $1.

Along the way, we also check out other apps for your iPhone or iPod, hardware such as a hands-free headset and other items. As usual, details on everything is available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Writing for The Economist, Glenn Fleishman has a fascinating look at the design and prototyping process of Glif, an iPhone 4 tripod adapter that just raised $70,000 in two days on Kickstarter:

They started with a computer model of the adapter, created with Rhinoceros 3D design software. The software is $995 for Windows, but they used the beta test version for Mac OS X, which is free. They tested their designs through rapid prototyping, uploading files to Shapeways in the Netherlands. It took about ten days for Shapeways to “print” each prototype in 3D, and a day later it would be in the designers’ hands in New York. Shapeway charges by material volume, so each each Glif test cost about $10. They would try out a few variants each time just to meet a $25 minimum.

The Economist: An atom-based product, developed in bits

It took Athens, Greece-based artist Charis Tsevis about a week of 16-hour days to create this trippy mosaic portrait of Steve Jobs for Brazilian magazine ALFA.

Tsevis is an old hand at innovative Apple collages, whose work has appeared in Fortune and inspired a send-up of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

This one is something of a departure, taking us back to the colorful early days of Apple history. More on the inspiration behind it and close-ups after the jump.

My external hard drive doesn’t get much use, except for one thing: archiving massive libraries of RAW images. The only problem with this solution is accessing the images once they’re off my computer requires finding the drive, plugging it in and trying to search through thousands of images for the one I want to show to someone.

Phooey. What a hassle. That’s what I like about Western Digital’s free new photo viewing application for iOS devices that works with its line of external hard drive like My Book World Edition, My Book Live and WD ShareSpace, which allows users to access and stream up to 285,000 images placed in a shared folder.

The app will slurp up your photos wherever you have an Internet connection. Certainly beats trying to load ten years of photos onto your iPhone through iTunes.

It’s becoming a familiar storyline: exclusive agreements to sell Apple’s popular iPhone are being threatened as more carriers want in on a good thing. In the U.S., the question has been who will join AT&T to offer the iPhone. In Asia, China Telecom is the latest name mentioned to join Apple’s current exclusive carrier, China Unicom. A report now cites a Deutsche Bank analyst claiming China Unicom’s exclusive iPhone arrangement could “likely come to an end early next year.”

Although China Telecom execs refused to confirm they’d begin selling a CDMA iPhone, “our own channel checks suggest that the company has been in intensive talks with chipset supplier Qualcomm and Apple,” according to the analyst’s report. China is often mentioned as a potential recipient of any CDMA iPhone. Additionally, China Telecom and Verizon both use the CDMA and EV-DO standard.

Although I’ve always been absolutely terrible at them, I love Sid Meier’s Civilization games, and the fourth game (and its expansions) is probably the most commonly launched app on my iMac after Mail and Chrome. I’ve been eager to here tell, then, of an OS X port of the newest game, Civilization V.

Good news for me and my fellow Civ junkies then, as Mac Rumors reports that an OS X compatible port of Civilization V will be heading to Valve’s gaming digital delivery service Steam within the next few weeks.

Universities across the U.S. are arming students with iPads, so it only makes sense that one school would teach them how best to use it.

Central Michigan University created a pilot course on iPad literacy to make sure they’re getting the most out of it.

What’s in the iPad course curriculum? Business uses for social networking, using the GPS device, making presentations with the Blackboard app  — and a presentation from a lawyer about software and music copyright.

Are you on iOS 4.1? Eager to jailbreak? Better set an alarm now to remind yourself to check the Internet on October 10th at 10:10:10AM. That’s the cheeky time when hackers will release the first working jailbreak hack.

An Apple repair company called Mission Repair is arching eyebrows this morning with the claim that they have gotten their hands on the next iPad’s aluminum case, which they say has a port on the side for landscape docking.

Although we’ve seen a patent for an iPad with the ability to dock in both landscape and portrait modes before, this is the first time we’ve seen physical indication that Cupertino might be considering two dock connectors on the next iPad.

Here we go again: Apple’s plans for an Tunes subscription service is making headlines once more.

According to sources, Apple’s Vice President of iTunes Eddy Cue has been having talks with major record labels for a monthly all-you-can-stream subscription plan, similar to those offered by services like Napster or Spotify.

When you think of Apple’s string of successful product launches, the word “underperform” doesn’t immediately enter your vocabulary. However, one Wall Street analyst believes the Cupertino, Calif. company has plenty of room for growth. The iPhone maker’s stock has risen 37 percent in 2010, but is a far cry from the 75 percent earnings consensus from consumers. In fact, the Oppenheimer analyst expects Apple will report Oct. 18 a “blowout” quarter and sales of at least 12 million iPhones.

“The prime factor behind the underperformance of the stock relative to the fundamentals seem to be investor concern about Apple’s size,” Yair Reiner told investors Friday. “Bottom line, as big as Apple is today, it seems destined to get much bigger,” he adds. On that note, Oppenheimer raised its 12-to-18-month price target for Apple stock to $345 on expectations of $19.9 billion in revenue – up from previously forecast $18.5 billion.

Mention Nokia and the discussion turns to courtroom battles and two-way animosity between the Finnish cell phone giant and Apple. However, in a bit of refreshing candor, a French Nokia executive recently told an audience: “Apple is a must-have in US and EU.”

Nokia’s Cedric Thomas told the gathering of media content developers at MIPCOM that while Nokia is still a key player in Asia and Europe, Apple dominates the app landscape in the United States and the EU. Indeed, a recent survey found the share of iOS-based devices in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain grew 5.3 percent compared to a year ago, while Nokia’s Symbian platform dropped 14.4 percent over the same period. While Thomas, who heads Nokia’s Ovi marketplace in France, touted news that the company’s store now has 2.5 million downloads per day, the number pales in comparison to the 16.6 million apps downloaded each day from Apple’s App Store.

Macs are solid machines, but (like many of us) they have a tendency to slow down and get more lethargic over time.  Launching and switching programs takes longer, the dreaded Spinning Beach Ball appears more often, and soon even simple tasks become arduous.  What’s going on?

Many things can decrease performance, but several culprits are common: not enough disk space, not enough RAM, and running too many apps at once.  I see these in my consulting business regularly.

Who says old computers are worthless?  The (former) Mac Museum of Franklin Park NJ, which we reported up for sale on eBay last week, has found a buyer. Closing price after 20 bids: $10,000!

The Museum’s models include the Lisa, Mac 128k, Plus, SE/30, Color Classic, Mac Portable, TAM, Newtons, etc., along with lots of posters, peripherals and paraphernalia.  It’s a very respectable price for a longtime labor of love, hopefully the buyer will be able to fulfill curator Gil Poulsen’s goal of making the collection more publicly available.

In related news, Vintage Mac collectors worldwide are now updating their own inventory valuations…

Slide-on cases may be causing big problems for the iPhone 4, GDGT reports. It seems grit and other particles can become trapped between the case and the iPhone 4’s glass back, causing scratches, cracks and even shattering the glass. According to sources inside and outside the company, Apple has locked-down a team of engineers to investigate the problem before it turns into another PR disaster like Antennagate.

It’s unclear, however, how widespread this problem is. Or even if it is a problem. I have an iPhone 4 and have used several slide-on cases. I haven’t had issues with scratching or trapped dirt.

So, please help us, is this problem? Don’t forget, this is specifically about scratches caused by slide-on cases — not scratches in general.

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Seems the iPhone’s become a superb diagnostic tool through sound analysis — not only can it evaluate watermelon ripeness, but now it can also be used to measure the tension of tennis or squash racquet strings with the racquetTune app.

The $1 app sports a slick, clean interface that displays a string’s tension after a few taps; there’s also a swingweight calculator thrown in for good measure.

The Swedish developers say racquetTune has been tested at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm to good result — who knows, perhaps even by Bjorn Borg himself.

Today’s your day if you are looking for a jacket or case for your mobile Mac. We have deals on real (and fake) leather jackets for your iPad and iPhone, as well as a transparent stand for your iPhone 4. Along the way, we also have chargers, cables and screen protectors.

As always, details on these and many more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

In nearly every single Mac application you use, you’ll find the Hide command. It’s a very useful thing to know about.

On my way to my local beer garden with my camera, I finally stopped to take a good snapshot of one of my favorite Berlin windows displays, which belongs to the local computer repair and resale company Fux Data. Click to embiggen.

How wonderfully retro is this? The display used to be a sort of Prenzlauer Berg oasis for retired Macs, featuring an old Macintosh IId, Power Mac G4 Cube, Apple IIe, iMac G3, eMac and Macintosh Plus, as well as the odd man out, an ancient Commodore CBM still looking fiercely ready for a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War.

Recently, though, the display has changed with the addition of presumably empty boxes for the unibody MacBook Pro and iPad. It’s like a couple of metrosexual twenty-somethings busting up a senior dance at the local retirement castle.

There’s not much news to this post, I’ve just always wanted to share. I’ve probably spent more hours than I can count puzzling over the G3’s clearly kicked-in CRT: my current working theory is it’s the aftermath of the ill-advised installation of OS X 10.5.

SAN FRANCISCO, MobileFocus, CTIA — The CTIA conference is one of North America’s biggest mobile phone shows and it was dominated by Apple — even though Apple wasn’t there.

Attendees were either talking about Apple, showing off Apple-challenging products, or selling Apple-compatible accessories and add-ons.

Just check out some of new iPhone and iPad accessories below that were shown off at the MobileFocus press-and-analyst-only sneak peek on Wednesday night.

In the iPhone world, the phrase “cat and mouse” brings to mind just one thing: the perpetual struggle between the iPhone Dev Team and Apple when it comes to hacking iOS devices to run unsigned code, commonly referred to as a jailbreak.

Most recently, it seemed like the mouse had managed to drop a ten ton anvil on the cat’s head with the SHAtter exploit, a jailbreaking technique which will work on all iOS devices that is only patchable by Apple through hardware. If what’s going on in the Android landscape is anything to go by, Cupertino might soon regain the upper hand.

What’s that you say? You missed your chance to get a free case from Apple for your iPhone 4 as part of their Antennagate free case giveaway? Well, good news: you can once again buy an official iPhone 4 bumper in a panoply of colors directly from Apple. It’ll cost you just $29.99.

Don’t have the scratch? Not to worry: you can still try your luck complaining to an Apple Store Genius about your iPhone 4’s attenuation issues. Really, though, isn’t it worth thirty bucks not to have to listen to some insufferable turtleneck lecture you on the physics of radio antennas for half an hour before he wearily sighs and condescends to hand over your free Apple-branded rubber band?

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal threw some more sparks at the kindling of the rumored Verizon iPhone, claiming that it was conclusively on track for debut in the first quarter of 2011.

Personally, I wasn’t inclined to believe the rumor. It was only two weeks ago that Verizon’s own CEO said that the iPhone wouldn’t be coming to their network until they had their 4G network in place, claiming that the wireless carrier needed to “earn” the iPhone.

Today, though, I’m ready to change my tune due to two new revelations. The first is that Verizon has announced that they would be rolling out 4G to 38 cities this year, and start showing off 4G-capable smartphones at CES in January 2011. That makes a 4G Verizon iPhone next year possible, even within the Wall Street Journal’s optimistic first quarter timeframe.

This, boys and girls, is the latest product from Arcam, designers of high-end hifi based just outside Cambridge in the UK.

The rCube is £500 worth of portable iPod music system audio loveliness, which Arcam calls “one of our most important products ever.”

If you thought the original iPad had legs, wait until a much-discussed mini iPad appears. A 7-inch version of the popular tablet device could sell 45 million copies, according to Asian component sources talking to one analyst. That is far higher than other forecasts of around 4.5 million to 4.7 million of the original 9.7-inch units.

That message from Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White was largely lost in the whirlwind of commentary surrounding Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal report that Apple was indeed preparing a CDMA iPhone for Verizon. White, touring China, talked with his component sources there about the iPad’s future. One Asian source tells the analyst it plans to ship 13 million iPad components during the second half of 2010.