Thursday marks the first day Verizon Wireless and AT&T offer the iPad. The two carriers are just the latest outlets for Apple’s extensive push to sell the tablet during the all-important holiday period. Earlier this month, the Cupertino, Calif. company unexpectedly announced Verizon would sell the iPad, alongside its longtime partner AT&T. The move only fuels speculation Verizon will soon also offer customers a CDMA version of the iPhone.

AT&T customers can purchase all three iPad models at the usual price, while Verizon subscribers will get a Wi-Fi iPad bundled with the carrier’s MiFi mobile hotspot. As for data plans, AT&T offers a 250MB per month deal for $14.99 or a $25 per month option with 2GB. Subscribers also receive unlimited access to AT&T’s more than 23,000 U.S. Wi-Fi hotspots.

Earlier this month, Valve finally brought their fantastic team-based cooperative zombie shooter Left 4 Dead 2 to the Mac. It was a much-appreciated port, but it was a bit odd, in that Valve had opted to bring Left 4 Dead 2 to the Mac before the original game in the series, which was built on the same engine.

According to Valve, the delay in bringing Left 4 Dead to the Mac simply had to do with the first game in the series being a bit more complicated to port to OS X than they had anticipated. They promised a release by Halloween, though, and I’m delighted to say that they’ve been as good as their word: load up Steam for Mac and you can now download Left 4 Dead.

The best news is it’s dirt cheap: Left 4 Dead will only cost you $9.99 if you buy it this week. Why not spend an extra 5 bucks, though, and pick up both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 for $14.99? That’s just a steal.

Like Valve’s previous games, Left 4 Dead is Steam Play compatible, which means once you own it on the Mac, you also own it on the PC, and vice versa. If you intend on shooting zombies with some buddies this Halloween, though, make sure you have OS X 10.6.4 installed, as well as a 2GHz dual-core Intel CPU, an ATI Radeon x2400 or NVIDIA 8600M GPU or better.

If you’ve been waiting to buy the white iPhone 4, we hope you’ve caved by now and just gone black instead. It’s hard to think of a more troubled product: not only has the white iPhone 4 undergone a troubled manufacturing history thanks to light leaking into the camera sensor, but Apple’s said that we can’t expect to see one until spring 2011… just three months before they unveil the fifth-generation handset.

To be honest, it doesn’t take a genius to see that the white iPhone 4 is probably never going to arrive: at this point, it makes more sense for Apple to aim to have the white iPhone ready for June for simultaneous launch with the iPhone 5 than try to sell the white iPhone 4 at the tail end of the current generation.

In fact, that’s just what Boy Genius Report is now claiming, saying that the white iPhone 4 has been secretly canceled. Not that Apple will admit as much: BGR says that they will instead just claim there’s another delay in March, and assume everyone will forget about the debacle of the white iPhone 4 by June.

Apple’s probably right: the longer the white iPhone 4 is delayed, the more the returns diminish on actually releasing it. Time for an informal poll: how many of our readers are still holding out for the white iPhone 4? Let us know in the comments.

With T-Mobile losing its iPhone exclusivity in Germany to O2 and Vodafone, the last European iPhone exclusivity deal is dead. That’s good news for German consumers, who now are not only in a position to avail themselves of the spoils of the carrier wars as different mobile providers scramble to attract customers, but who also now have the option to buy an unlocked iPhone directly from Apple.

Yesterday was a big day for Verizon iPhone rumors. Hot on the heels of a rumor that Apple was working to create a reprogrammable SIM Module that might open the door to dual GSM/CDMA compatibility comes a perhaps contradictory report from the always dicey Digitimes that suggests that Cupertino has already awarded the build contracts for a CDMA iPhone to two of the biggest Asian electronics makers.

We’re feeling pretty generous this week.  This is our second of three giveaways that we have lined up for this week.  Think of these free codes as us throwing virtual candy in your virtual pillow case…whatever.

The Giveaway

This one is pretty easy.  Make sure you’re following us on Twitter. We’ll be randomly tweeting out FREE codes throughout the day, so you should probably create a separate column just for us if you’re using Tweet Deck or something similar.  I’ll even make it easy on you by including the #cultofmac hash tag in the tweets.  You better be quick, because the code is DONE once someone claims it.

Special thanks to the great folks over at Appency for providing these codes.  If you’re a mobile app developer and you need to take your mobile app marketing to the next level, definitely consider Appency for all of your Internet marketing needs.

Terms and Conditions: These codes are only good for U.S. iTunes users only.  No purchase is necessary to be a part of this giveaway.  This giveaway is void where prohibited.

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

Cannon Cadets

Cannon Cadets, the hot new physics game from the people that brought you #1 hits Little Metal Ball and Marine Sharpshooter! 80 beautifully illustrated levels, an awesome LEVEL BUILDER and level sharing community, addictive gameplay and lots of re-playability are just a few reasons why Cannon Cadets is the new must have game!

BlancSpot: The Art of News

If you want news at your fingertips, mute the noise and the bias. From politics to culture, Mongolia to the Sahara…If you want to engage both world events and friends in real time…Welcome to Blancspot!

Say goodbye to your iPhone SIM tray. Apple may be looking to get rid of their phones’ reliance upon SIM cards once and for all, instead replacing it with a custom, writeable module that would enable Cupertino to sell iPhones directly to the user without being locked to a specific carrier.

Publicly-traded companies are obliged to file annual reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision. Most are dry, recitations of a firm’s plans and projections, but sometimes they give insight into an otherwise tight-lipped organization, such as Apple. The Cupertino, Calif. company, riding high from its recent iPhone 4 and iPad successes, has increased its staff by a third, hiked its advertising budget and isn’t expecting any big acquisitions in 2011.

Apple has 26,500 employees, a third more than the 10,000 reported in 2009. The increase may be linked to the company’s retail expansion. The iPad maker has 317 retail stores, up from 273 a year ago. The company told federal regulators it plans to open 50 more retail locations in 2011.

This just in: two security companies who make their money selling anti-malware software and/or consultancy services for the Mac platform say that two new Trojans are in the OS X wild. Luckily, though, you’re only really at risk if you’re not thinking too hard about what you’re doing on your machine.

On Monday, we mentioned the launch of Peel, a new app that uses an algorithm similar to the one used by Netflix to try and figure out what its user should watch. Here’s the second half: A peek under the hood, excerpts from a chat with Peel’s (née Zelfy) VP of marketing, and a look at an accompanying piece of hardware that’s (maybe) coming next.

New York City is full of characters — that’s one of the biggest attractions of living there.

Freelance radio producer and artist/animator Eric Molinsky spends his commuting time on the city’s subway system capturing the visual aspects of those characters using Autodesk’s SketchBook Mobile application, as the New York Times notes in a blog post profiling Molinsky on Friday.

The results are available for all to see on Molinsky’s iPhone Sketchbook Drawing blog.

From the beaky-nosed, middle-aged woman in a blue hat to other characters whose faces are artfully-shaded, each of these portraits manages to capture the spirit or mood of a person, a bit like a Richard Avedon portrait. In my mind, the pictures look as if they should be in an edition of the New Yorker magazine illustrating some story, or in the Times‘ “Metropolitan Diary” section illustrating some anecdote.

There’s something utterly romantic and wonderful about bringing the timeless art of sketching to a device like the iPhone — in my experience, it’s actually cool functionality like this that seems to have  converted a lot of my older technophobe friends  into iPhone and iPAD devotees.

As you’ll see from the comments on the Times blog post, it turns out that Molinsky’s hobby isn’t that unusual: a lot of other people have been using apps like Brushes to do sketches too.

Above: A subway rider on the 3 train August 9, 2010, sketch by Eric Molinsky.

This might be the ultimate nightmare Halloween mask in Redmond, Wa. Regular Cult visitors will no doubt have seen it alongside ads for CultofMac Editor Leander Kahney’s book, Inside Steve’s Brain. The illustration was crafted by graphic designer Dan Draper, who also rendered the uncannily close image of the new MacBook Air for our scoop on the MBA’s details.

A life-size image suitable for plastering over an actual face can be found at Draper’s flickr page. Heads up! Trick or iPod Shuffle!

Apple’s App Store has a lot of great software — the problem is finding it. With more than 250,000 apps to choose from, it’s hard to find the genuinely good software among thousands of substandard and me-too efforts. The star-rating system doesn’t work, and it’s easy to miss recommendations on sites like this one.

We’re pleased to announce a major new feature of the site: an app discovery and recommendation service powered by Mplayit’s App Tapp platform.

CultofMac’s App Finder helps you to find, share and discuss great apps. But the real power comes from signing in with your Facebook account. This allows you to get app recommendations from friends and colleagues. You can get also follow app experts, get personalized app recommendations, and share the apps you like with friends.

Using our App Finder is pretty self-explanatory, but here’s a brief tutorial showing how it works:

A war of words between the CEOs of Google and Apple makes for great headlines, but does little to illuminate reality.

Google says its Android OS is “open,” while Apple’s iOS platform is “closed.” Apple, on the other hand, claims Android is “fragmented,” while iOS is “integrated.”

They’re both right about Apple, at least with their respective spins, but wrong about Google. Google, in fact, is at least as “closed” as Apple.

Go here to read the rest of this post on Datamation.

Whether you are looking for a new workhorse Mac Pro or some silly downtown with your iPhone, we have the deal for you today. First up is a quad-core 2.66GHz Xeon Mac Pro Workstation for $2,119. Next, get your iPad engraved for free at the Apple Store. Finally, a new batch of marked-down iPhone applications, including “SpongeBob Marbles & Slides.”

Along the way, we’ll check out a slew of new cases for your iPhone or iPod, as well as software for your handset or desktop computer. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

European-based streaming music player Spotify Tuesday denied reports of acquisition talks with Apple. A blog had reported Spotify and Apple were involved in buy-out discussions.

Although the company normally wouldn’t comment on speculation, “we wanted to make it clear that we have absolutely no intention of selling Spotify,” a spokesman told a reporter. An earlier report suggested the two companies were in talks about the Cupertino, Calif. firm acquiring Spotify, which is attempting to enter the U.S. digital music market.

For a brief, wonderful four hour period yesterday evening, iOS gamers were able to download iDOS, a working DOS emulator for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that not only allowed you to run vintage DOS games and applications in full Retina Display resolution and replete with sound, but could even handle Windows 3.0.

By all accounts, iDOS — which was based on the popular DosBox emulator — was amazing, and Touch Arcade reports that it happily ran everything from vintage Sierra adventure titles to Blizzard’s Warcraft II to disc-images of the multimedia horror game 7th Guest.

Don’t bother trying to download iDOS now, though: Apple quickly yanked it. No one’s really sure why, although Apple has traditionally frowned on emulators before… but 9to5Mac has a really good theory: it seems iDOS allowed users to access the entire iOS filesystem, no jailbreak required, albeit without write access.

Part of me hopes that was the problem: it seems like an easy fix to close that hole up. I’d like the opportunity to play around with iDOS. My instinct, though, is that Apple took a stronger disliking to it that will prevent it from re-entering the App Store no matter what changes the developers make.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ByK2OAvx0

If you’ve somehow managed to do the impossible and deny the temptation to download PopCap’s incredible horticultural zombie defense game, Plants vs. Zombies, jeez… cave already. PopCap’s just put it up for sale on the App Store for only $0.99. Prefer the fuller featured iPad-specific version? PopCap’s put that on sale too: it’s now 50% off at just $4.99.

Seriously, just go download it already. As far as I’m concerned, this is the best game on the App Store.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5iZyN7Ir3Q

Last week’s Back to the Mac event ran pretty long even for an Apple gig, but at the end of the day, it turns out it’s pretty easy to compress into just a couple of minutes of signal. Or, at least, a couple minutes of adjectival hyperbole.

The new MacBook Airs are locked down tight, with our good friends over at iFixIt describing it as perhaps Apple’s least user-serviceable notebook yet. How locked down is it? Even the RAM is soldered to the motherboard. In fact, once you actually break open the MacBook Air, about the only thing that is remotely user replaceable is actually the Toshiba SSD drives installed inside.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that companies are already hawking replacement SSDs for the MacBook Air. The company in question is Photofast, based in Taiwan, and they’re now promising imminent delivery of a 256GB SSD memory module which will double the maximum memory capacity of your Air.

Price and release dates are still unknown, unfortunately, but according to Photofast, the upgrade will be fast and stable, and will actually give your new Air a 30% performance boost in read or write speeds of Apple’s advertised 160MB/s speeds. Apple’s conservative in their estimates, so it’s probably not that big of a boost, but considering the SSD drive in the Air is mostly responsible for the slender notebook’s excellent performance (despite relatively puny processors), even a slight bump in SSD performance is likely to be noticeable.

An interesting rumor floating around today suggests that Apple might be using the holidays around Thanksgiving to migrate its iTunes services to their huge North Carolina data centers.

If you want to do some serious typing on your iPad, you’ll pretty much need to pair it with the official Apple Bluetooth Keyboard. The only problem is that once you pair your iPad to the keyboard, it can sometimes be annoying actually reaching up from the chiclet keys to actually navigate your tablet through directly interacting with the display through multitouch.

Or maybe it isn’t at all and I’m just lazy. Either way, the Flashpoint iBoard seems to be a product that is aimed squarely at lazy iPad keyboard monkeys like me. Essentially, it’s a standard Apple Bluetooth Keyboard that comes with a bunch of stickers that can be stuck to the keys for assigning app shortcuts, which the keyboard manages to launch thanks to an included app. A full-keyboard silicone cover rounds out the whole package.

Price? Even though the Flashpoint iBoard is essentially just a repackaged Apple Bluetooth Keyboard with some stickers and a raincoat thrown in for free, it actually costs $5 less than buying the same keyboard through Apple.com. Even if you think the Flashpoint iBoard is stupid, then — and we’re willing to admit it kind of is — it’s still an excellent deal if you’re in the market for an iPad-pairable keyboard.

The Apple Store app just got some new functionality that that will make it easier and more painless to meet with your local Genius Bar tech barista for the speedy identification of your iMac’s ills.

More evidence has been uncovered that Apple intends to double the size of its soon-to-be-operational 500,000 square-foot data center in North Carolina. Apple, in 2009, purchased 70 acres just across the street from the already-disclosed location of its Maiden, NC site, according to new reports. The news appears to support rumors that the Cupertino, Calif. company will eventually create a 1-million acre site to support future streaming media ventures.

Initially, when in 2009 Apple acquired land for a second data center in addition to its Newark, Calif. locations, reports put the land purchase at 183 acres. However, this new report supports talk of a “Phase 2” which would create a second mirror-image of the previously-disclosed data center.

Apple should sell 22.5 million iPads in 2011, controlling half the 45 million tablets likely sold. The prediction comes from an unlikely source: ViewSonic, maker of an iPad rival. ViewSonic, maker of the just-released ViewPad 7, hopes to get 10 percent of the remaining non-iPad tablet purchases – or around 2 million units.

ViewSonic’s Asia Pacific president, Alan Chang, believes tablets will eventually force the phase-out of netbooks in Taiwan. The company’s 10-inch iPad alternative now uses Android, but will also offer a Windows 7 version.