Cult of Mac

There are currently hundreds of cases available for the iPad, in all sorts of shapes, colors, and sizes, but is the official Etch A Sketch case from Headcase not the coolest you’ve ever seen?

Based on the world’s favorite drawing toy from Ohio Art, the Etch A Sketch iPad case is made from impact resistant plastic that will help shield accidental drops, and features a felt backing to protect your device from scratches while it’s inside. It also boasts rubber feet, a retractable kickstand, and strategically placed windows that allow access to all of the iPad’s buttons and ports, including the ambient light sensor.

It’s impressively realistic, right down to the gold paint on the Etch A Sketch writing, and it should be for an officially licensed product. Although incredibly cool, it will set you back a nice $39 – slightly more than a real Etch A Sketch.

[via TUAW]

The Apple iPad appears to be spearheading an expected 296 percent jump in flash memory for 2011. Once known for producing iPods and iPhones with insatiable appetites for memory, the iPad (along with its rivals) tablet device means 1.7 billion Gigabytes of flash memory will ship next year – up from 428GB used this year, according to iSuppli.

The hardware analysts expect 8.8 billion GB of flash memory will ship by 2014. “Tablets have stolen some cache from netbooks,” declares senior memory and storage analyst Michael Yang. Part of the reason for the iPad’s popularity is its use of NAND flash storage, rather than traditional hard disk drives.

The role of iPods and earbuds as inner-cochleal deafening devices has been debated for years, with recent studies suggesting very strongly that hearing loss in children and teenagers is much higher than it should be thanks to the likes of Apple’s portable media player.

It might not be quite time to strike a new iPod off of your child’s Christmas list, though: a new study suggests that the prevalence of young people suffering from hearing loss thanks to loud music may be much lower than it has seemed.

According to a report done by the University of Minnesota’s Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, the conventional hearing tests are producing false positives for hearing loss at a rate of about ten percent.

That’s not enough, obviously, to throw caution to the wind. Cramming ear buds down your aural holes, putting on some Iron Maiden and then wildly spinning your iPod’s volume wheel until brains start dripping from your tear ducts is still going to have some consequences.

That said, it seems that the threat iPods pose to the hearing of our nation’s youth is about the same as it ever was: as long as you listen to your iPod at a lower, more responsible volume, you’re fine

If you’ve ever wondered what killed off AT&T’s unlimited bandwidth plans, look no further than the App Store.

The study was performed by Finnish analytics company Zokem, which analyzed the mobile web usage of over 10,000 smartphone users across 6.5 million sessions in sixteen countries over the past year.

What Zokem found was that while a smartphone’s mobile browser — Safari, in the case of the iPhone — is still the biggest bandwidth hog on most smartphones, apps are now taking up 50% of mobile data volume. Predictably, the most popular apps across all smartphones are Facebook and Twitter.

Keep in mind that this study was not aimed at any particular platform, so iPhone users were lumped in with Android, Palm and Windows Mobile customers as well. Given how well-developed the iPhone’s App Store is compared to its competitors equivalent marketplaces, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if iOS device users use up an even larger percentage of mobile data through apps. At the end of the day, though, the disparity between app and browser usage is only going to get more profound as more media — and perhaps iTunes itself — enters the cloud.

More than 60 percent of current iPhone owners will remain with AT&T even when Verizon begins selling the Apple smartphone, according to a new survey. The findings contradict early fears about how the exclusive iPhone carrier could be hurt if Apple expands participating U.S. partners.

The survey by Credit Suisse found 63 percent of iPhone owners would remain with AT&T and just 23 percent (or 1.4 million) of 18 million iPhone users would jump to Verizon. Previous reports suggested AT&T could lose up to 40 percent of iPhone owners should Verizon get the nod. Verizon could begin selling a CDMA iPhone as early as January, 2011, some analysts believe. (Credit Suisse is betting on February 15,2011 for Apple to announce a Verizon iPhone. The analysis firm previously said there was a 75 percent chance AT&T would remain the exclusive iPhone provider through 2010.)

iPhontography is a revolutionary new art form of images inspired by, shot with, and edited on the iPhone. A series of exhibits, the result of a presentation made in August at the Artistic Photographers of America meeting in San Francisco, will bring together artists and their work at some of Apple’s larger retail stores around the country and the world starting later this month.

The work is curated from art submitted to Pixels at an Exhibition, a website created to showcase images submitted by iPhone users from across the globe. Show curator Knox Bronson and other iPhone artists will attend each exhibit and present information about the Pixels project and talk about techniques and apps used to create the images on display.

The exhibits begin September 27 at the flagship Apple retail store in downtown San Francisco at One Stockton Street, with a reception from 6:00 – 8:00pm.

Additional exhibits are thus far scheduled for Chicago on October 21, and at the New York City Soho Apple store on October 29 – in conjunction with the PhotoPlus International Photography Expo and Conference. Plans for shows in Los Angeles and London are also said to be in the works.

The blog AutoSpies.com captured pictures at the Paris Motor Show of BMW’s new replacement for the old-and-busted rear-seat DVD screens: Apple iPad cradles that rotate, and support both portrait and landscape orientations. No, this isn’t just some concept. It’s the new hotness.

The cradle debuted on the new BMW X3, but will be available for all other model series starting in the Spring.

Popular open-source media player VLC is now available for iPad, thanks to developer Applidium.

Offered gratis, VLC faces some competition from other universal media-playing apps already available for the iPad including paid apps  OPlayer ($2.99) and CineXPlayer ($3.99).

VLC has long been my go-to app for video viewing (can’t remember the last time I even bothered to update Quicktime), nice to know it’s available now for the iPad, too.

Women’s activewear retailer Lole launched a new store design concept with 15 iPads they hope will connect customers and make the store more sticky.

The new concept store called Atelier Lole opened doors recently in one of Montreal’s main shopping drags, St. Denis Street. One of the main portions of the store is set aside for community, with tree stump stools and iPads on a low workbench opposite a wall featuring customer’s travelogue pics.

Described as kind of a “living Facebook,” through an app developed especially for the stores users can also “flip” through photos directly on the iPads located along the Atelier’s social wall.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qq3-5Vajw8

Perhaps more than any App Store publisher, Gameloft is just the master of the quickly dashed off tie-in game: a huge chunk of their 123 game strong iTunes library are entries into popular gaming franchises like Splinter Cell, Rayman or Prince of Persia.

What’s awesome about Gameloft, though, is what happens when they can’t get the rights to a gaming franchise. For example, when Gameloft couldn’t get the rights to the Resident Evil series, they just released Zombie Infection, which looked and played exactly like Resident Evil 5. Their title Gangstar: West Coast Hustle is a similar knock-off on the Grand Theft Auto series.

The trailer for their latest game, Dungeon Hunter 2, is obviously one of their latter genre of game knock-offs… this time of Blizzard’s Diablo series. That said, the first Dungeon Hunter is still one of the most competent hack-and-slash RPGs on the iOS platform, and now that Dungeon Hunter 2 is adding co-operative multiplayer into the mix… this is one of my most anticipated iOS games no matter how stupid “Gothicus: land of fear, land of destiny!” sounds when you actually think about it.

We start off another week with two hardware deals and one free application for your iPhone or iPod touch. First up is the Superleggera case for your iPhone. The Acase unit includes two screen protectors for $8. Next is Flip/Bubble, a messaging app from the iTunes App Store. Finally, there is a deal on Sony’s Speaker Dock and Clock Radio for the iPhone or iPod for $80. The unit comes with a 7-inch LCD screen, 16GB of memory and an iPod dock.

Along the way, we’ll also check out other gadgets for the iPhone, iPod and Mac. As always, details on these and many more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHOZZJ_2Wjg&feature=player_embedded

Samsung’s just pushed live their latest advertisement for the first of the prestige-band iPad competitors, the Samsung Galaxy Tab… and while you certainly shouldn’t expect device agnosticism from someone who has “Cult of Mac” written on his paychecks, I’ve got to say, I think they did a pretty good job enumerating the Tab’s relative advantages over the iPad.

In about two minutes, the commercial quickly and compelling puts ticks next to the boxes of all the iPad’s more niggling omissions — web cam and expandable storage being the most obvious — and even a few that no one really cared about, like the fact that you can’t also use the iPad as a big stupid looking phone, which you can with the Galaxy Tab.

Apple has reportedly acquired all shares of the Swedish face-recognition firm Polar Rose. The company develops three software applications able to recognize faces in images.

The Cupertino, Calif. based company appears to be interested in two Polar Rose applications, Face Cloud and FaceLib, according to a Norwegian Mac site Mac 1. Speculation is that the software could be rolled into web apps, such as MobileMe. Apple already offers face recogntion in iPhoto.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-naRP6vllXc

Whether Infinite Lives’ forthcoming Contra-inspired shooter Moral Decay gets pushed live on the App Store has a lot to do with how Apple’s reviewers decided to view the game’s central protagonist…. a bearded man in sandals and Messianic robes who can fly on a rainbow, shouts “Oh my father!” when he’s shot and spends most of the game using an AK-47 to transmutate a constabulary of sinners as multivariate as sumo wrestlers, extraterrestrials and Satan into big, spattering chunks of gelatinous gore.

Here’s the question: will Apple’s reviewers subscribe to Infinite Lives‘ pretense that their protagonist is, in fact, an unassuming dude by the name of Christ T? Or will they decide that Chris bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ of Nazareth and should therefore be censored based upon the sheer principle of the thing?

My guess is the latter, in which case I hope Infinite Lives quickly gets a Cydia release: as long as you like your gaming violent, full of chiptunes and almost panoffensive in its 8-bit religious sensibilities, this looks like a hella fun game.

[via Pocket Gamer]

Like all iPods before it, the new sixth-generation iPod nano comes with a handy diagnostic mode to allow Apple’s constabulary of technicians to dig into the underlying wetware of the device before the flouncy frills of the operating system have been slathered on top.

Unlike past iPods nanos, though, the new nano doesn’t have a clickwheel, which makes accessing its hidden iTerm Diagnostic Mode slightly different than before.

If you want to access the nano 6G’s diagnostic mode, here’s how you do it:

1. Reset your nano by holding down the sleep and volume down buttons until the Apple logo appears.

2. When you see the Apple logo, hold down all three buttons until “iTerm: iPod Display Console” flashes on screen.

3. (Other) You can reset your nano into Disk Mode by simply holding down the volume buttons when you see the Apple logo.

My favorite takeaway from the new nano’s diagnostic mode? The fact that the sixth-generation iPod nano is apparently codenamed “Snowfox” internally. That’s just adorable.

At this year’s Photokina expo in Cologne, Germany, Casio has unveiled their latest point-and-shoot, the EXILIM EX-H20G, a sexy and slender little camera that manages to differentiate itself with an interesting Hybrid GPS system which can figure out your position by using your last known coordinates, even if you’re indoors.

Here’s how it works: the EXILIM EX-H20G is chassis-stuffed with acceleromaters and motion sensors, all of which work to estimate your current position the second you walk through the front door. Walk back outside again and the EXILIM tries to get a new fix and updates any photos that have been made in the interim with revised coordinates.

Outside of that nifty little software trick, the EX-H20G has a 14.1-megapixel sensor (which is surely too much for a sensor this small) that is also capable of recording 720p HD video at up to ten degrees of optical magnification. It will be released in November and play nice with your Mac for the price of just $349.99.

The Monday Giveaways are BACK and we’re badder than ever. This week’s slate of apps has everything from Zombies and custom ringtones to everyone’s favorite game, Words with Friends! We’ll pick 5 random winners to win 4 great apps and if you want a chance to get your hands on some these iPhone apps this week, then follow the instructions carefully below:

1. Follow us on Twitter (you must do this, if you’re not following us, we can’t contact you if you win).
2. Tweet this: @cultofmac and @appular are tearing it up with FREE iPhone apps! #cultofmac
3. Your tweet will be your entry into the giveaway, only ONE entry is allowed per person, and the giveaway will last until 11:59pm tonight. We’ll contact the winners on Tuesday or 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:

Over the years, Napster has pupated from an illegal peer-to-peer music sharing network to a streaming audio subscription service, and today marks another surprising evolution in a brand that has, over the past decade, meant all things to all men: it’s now an iPhone app.

10-4, you heard that correctly: Apple has finally approved Napster on iTunes as a free application. Weighing in at just 1.8MB, Napster will stream over 10 million songs to you on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, provided you’re willing to give a Hamilton a month to Napster LLC (which the App Store listing proudly reminds us is “a Best Buy company”) for their Napster plus Mobile Access subscription.

Okay, it’s not the long delayed U.S. launch of our favorite streaming music service, Spotify. None the less, it’s great to see so many options for streaming your music start hitting the App Store, and I think it heralds great things for Apple’s own entry into the Cloud: clearly, whatever Apple’s got planned, they don’t think existing services like Napster or Spotify are a threat. iTunes Live, when it comes, is going to do things we didn’t even know we wanted.

Always faddish in their production of knock-offs and crap gadgets, the black market electronic shops of the Far East have lately been disgorging a surplus of cases that sandwich in a SIM slot and a cellular radio, thus allowing you to make phone calls on your jailbroken iPod Touch. They’re clever hacks, to be sure, but it appears that Cupertino itself has already thought of just that approach to transforming an iPod Touch into an iPhone… and if Apple can think of it, you can bet that they’ve patented it.

In fact, earlier this year, Apple filed a patent application for an “accessory transceiver” that would bring mobile calling and data to the iPod Touch. You know, just like the Peel 520. Or the tPhone. Or any of the other iTouch-to-iPhone cases we’ve written about since August.

An agreement allowing newspapers and magazines to parlay the iPad into new print subscriptions may be one or two months away, according to a Monday report. The pact with publishers could be timed to coincide with Apple unveiling a new iPad in early 2011.

Apple has “accelerated its efforts to persuade publishers to join the company’s first foray into selling newspaper and magazine subscriptions for the iPad,” the Wall Street Journal reports. The Cupertino, Calif. company has already discussed its plans with Time Inc., Condé Nast, News Corp. and Hearst’s publishing divisions, the paper reports, citing insiders. Hearst may have already agreed with the proposal. Apple reportedly said “at least one” company is willing to sell subscriptions through its iTunes service, the report adds.

Recall the old joke about being slightly pregnant? Shift the premise to Apple’s tablet and you have the latest opinion on whether the iPad will hurt Mac sales. After previously thought to hurt PC notebook sales most, an analyst tells investors Monday morning the iPad is “slightly cannibalizing” demand for low-end MacBooks.

Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu slightly reduced his expectations for September Mac sales to 3.8 million, down from 3.9 million. He points to suppliers indicating the tablet is “slightly cannibalizing” the most inexpensive MacBooks. At the same time, the analyst increased his forecast for iPad quarterly sales to 5.7 million, up from 3.6 million. The rosier picture is due to the kinks being worked out of iPad screen supplies.

We all like our eyes. What a shame we subject them to such an endless onslaught of photons from computer screens all day long.

F.lux is an app designed to make your eyes feel a little more comfortable while working on a computer.

Like a time travel scenario where you meet your own grandfather as a child, enthusiasts working with the Einstein Newton Emulator project have ported the Prodigal PDA to the iPhone.  The current implementation is only available as source code and runs a bit slow, but is an actual working version of NewtonOS complete with handwriting recognition and familiar input gestures.

Most of us don’t need VoiceOver, the accessibility feature that’s built into the operating system of each and every iPhone.

But for one blind iPhone owner, it has been a life-changer.

Your choice of smartphone may tell more about you than you realize. Various sources are reporting on a Nielsen Mobile Insights survey about mobile phone usage; among other findings: iPhone users prefer chicken, while Android owners love ribs.

[coupons.com] examined its mobile coupon usage from the different platforms and came up with some staggering results. Did you know that women’s body wash coupons were routinely used by iPhone owners while men’s body wash was often purchased by Android owners?

If that doesn’t floor you, you should know that iPhone owners buy baby products 42 times more than Android users. Google OS users are more apt to use pain-relief coupons though, probably because of the headaches of using Android’s multimedia player. [intomobile]

According to the Wall Street Journal additional details from the survey reveal that a higher proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds use Androids than iPhones, BlackBerry users tend to use their phones more for business purposes than entertainment, and iPhone users tend to be more affluent and better educated.

I’m not sure whether this is more useful as flame-bait or marketing demographics, but it’s fun!

[via Digg]