Cult of Mac

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By all rights, id software’s John Carmack should be an engorged psychic brain floating in a tank somewhere: he talks like some kind of representative of a spatial robotic hive mind, and his ability to code next-gen graphics engines are often years ahead of their time.

Consider, for example, this demonstration Carmack gave at yesterday’s QuakCon 2010 keynote. What you see here is the id tech 5 engine, which will drive id software’s forthcoming next-generation post-apocalyptic shooter, Rage… except it’s running on the iPhone 4 at 60 frames per second , with Xbox or PlayStation 2 level graphics. That’s nothing to sneeze at… and Carmack promises it’ll

Sure, this isn’t an actual “game” yet, just a technology demonstration… but Carmack expects to see the iPhone version of Rage come to the App Store later this year as a smaller prequel game, with a more robust sequel to be released simultaneously with the console version next year.

Of course, where id software tends to fall over isn’t in the technology, but the actual gameplay, so who knows if Rage for iPhone will actually be worth playing. Either way, though, this is on track to be the best looking game on the App Store.

Google’s Android has topped Apple’s iOS in worldwide smartphone operating system sales during the fiscal second quarter, analysts announced Thursday. The lapping of the iPhone maker came as smartphones saw a 50 percent jump in second-quarter sales.

Android jumped to 17.2 percent of the worldwide smartphone operating system market, selling 10.6 million units, up from 1.8 percent a year ago with 755.2 thousands units sold. Apple’s iOS, by contrast, showed a smaller increase of market share, up just 1.2 percent from the same period last year, when it stood at 13 percent of the global smartphone operating system market.

In the U.S., the Android platform displaced the RIM OS to become the No. 1 smartphone operating system in the United States, Gartner announced.

“A non-exclusive strategy that produces products selling across many communications service providers, and the backing of so many device manufacturers, which are bringing more attractive devices to market at several different price points, were among the factors that yielded [Android’s] growth this quarter,” Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, said.

File this under “Whatever,” but DVICE is claiming that they have a source who has been testing the CMDA Verizon iPhone prototype, which they say will be very different indeed from the iPhone 4.

The suspect differences include a new internal antenna which they say might be made out of Apple’s new LiquidMetal acquisition, a larger 3.7-inch display and a 1.2GHz A4 processor.

Look, we’re just reporting it. If Verizon gets the iPhone in January, we seriously doubt it’s going to be significantly better than the iPhone 4: Apple’s not likely to offer different features for different iPhones, especially when a CDMA iPhone can’t really be rolled out internationally.

A Verizon iPhone would just be the foot in the door to a wider US market, not a major revision of the handset. After all, eventually Apple’s going to want to converge both the CDMA and GSM flavors of the iPhone into one device capable of running on any network under the sun… and they’re already looking at the Qualcomm chips capable of making that happen.

If you’re a photo editing professional, the news that Photoshop has finally come to the iPad will probably produce some swelling of ebullience within your breast, but you’d best be served by tamping your enthusiasm down: it is not the finger-controlled Photoshop for iPad that you’ve been dreaming of.

Rather, all we’re looking at here is an updated binary of the old Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, bringing native iPad support to the mix. That app will allow you to do some cropping and rotating and color adjustment on your photographs, but not much more than that.

If that’s all you want from an iPad photo-editing app, fantastic: Photoshop.com Mobile is absolutely free. I just wish we’d seen a more meaty update to indulge my desire for more substantial couch-side putzing about.

The Apple Store ‘geniuses’ are not just there to sell you an iPad or tweak or iPod. No, according to a retail executive, Apple’s retail staff “look into the heart, not the pocket book” of customers. Ron Johnson, senior vice-president of retail for the Cupertino, Calif. firm, views the growing number of brick-and-more stores in almost mystical terms.

Speaking with Retail Week, Johnson said Apple’s Regent Street location “is our highest traffic store in the world.” Apple’s new Covent Garden store in London is much more than a store. “We’ve created a place for people to be,” Johnson said.

 Apple may be planning to use Liquidmetal for a new iPhone antenna, says the co-inventor of the sci-fi metal alloy.

Interviewed exclusively by CultofMac.com, Dr. Atakan Peker says Liquidmetal might be a good material for building a next-generation antenna to replace the problematic part in the iPhone 4.

“Let me state that this is very exciting for me,” he said. “I made the first and original alloy formulations… I am a big Mac fan and greatly admire Apple as a company. I have been using Mac exclusively my whole life, both at work and home. It is a pleasant surprise for me to see both get together.” As Apple explores innovative materials, it could also be working towards an apple folding phone with a cutting-edge Liquidmetal hinge. Learn more about it here.

As Apple explores innovative materials, it could also be working towards an apple folding phone with a cutting-edge Liquidmetal hinge. Learn more about it here.

Liquidmetal is already used to build the antenna for the Verizon USB727 wireless modem, which got great reviews for its reception.

Forget liquid metal T-1000 Terminators and morphing iPhones, Apple already uses Liquidmetal in one of its products, and you’ll never guess what it is…

I learned the answer by talking to Liquidmetal’s co-inventor, Dr. Atakan Peker, who granted CultofMac.com an exclusive interview. It’s not confirmed by Apple. Peker bought the product and immediately recognized his alloy: “That’s my metal,” he said. It’s not used in European versions of the product — only U.S. and maybe Asia.

Leave your best guess in the comments. The winner gets a brand new Magic Trackpad. The answer will be revealed on Monday. You have to name the specific component. Saying “iPhone” or “Mac” won’t cut it.

Apple has just signed an agreement with Liquidmetal Technologies for the exclusive use of the space-age material in consumer electronic products. Peker, who used to be VP of Technology at the company, thinks Apple will make extensive use of Liquidmetal alloys, which are super hard but extremely light and flexible. They will likely be used to make seamless, scratch-proof cases, possibly in freaky shapes. First order of business is likely a new antenna for the iPhone, Peker predicts. More here: Liquidmetal May Be Used For New iPhone Antenna Says Inventor [Exclusive]

Rising from the dead like a Newton running Mac OS 9, a new form of Mac Zombie is evolving in the wilds of Apple Geekdom: recycled old Macs being used as iPad stands.

One way for old computers to beat mortality is emulation: early Macs had Apple II emulators, PowerPC Macs running Mac OS X had Classic mode, even the venerable Lisa has an emulator.  Software emulation gives life to vintage machines long after the actual hardware ceases to function.

A new trend seems to be developing with the iPad: rather than running software within iOS, the iPad is making a home for itself inside the modified cases of old Macs!  We’ve covered these items before, but taken in aggregate a new form of Mac recycling seems to be evolving within the Cult of Apple.

If you’re a rugged, outdoorsy type — or just really careless — you’ve undoubtedly been looking for the toughest case ever for the iPhone 4.

OtterBox has been the go-to company for this sort of iPhone protection. And while it’s taken them some time to come up with something for the iPhone 4, the company has finally released something in its tough-as-nails Defender line.

OtterBox offers three levels of case protection. There’s the Impact, which is designed for everyday casual protection; the Commuter, for people who are looking for a little more; and the bulk-be-damned Defender series, for those who want the absolute most protection money can buy.

How does it measure up?

We start with a couple deals on iPods. First up is a 4GB iPod Shuffle for just $57. Next is an 8GB iPod nano for $99. At the other end of the spectrum is a Mac Pro Workstation powered by 12-core Xeon processors running at 2.93GHz for $6,469.

Along the way, we check out price drops on iPhone and iPad apps, plus various software and hardware deals. As usual, details on these and many other items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Last month, the always somewhat suspect Digitimes asserted that Apple intended on going head-to-head with the netbook market by releasing an 11.6-inch MacBook Air something later this year. Here’s one fan’s wishful thinking Photoshop on what such an Air might look like.

There’s nothing too hard to buy about the way Apple would choose to layout the keyboard on an 11.6-inch MacBook: as netbooks have shown, twelve inches is the sweet spot when it comes to not compromising keyboard size. Nor is the trackpad hard to swallow, given the fact that Apple will doubtlessly eliminate the physical button from future Air trackpads.

Making the Air even thinner seems like a pipe dream, though: Apple’s not about to switch over to an Atom chip, which means a thinner Air would come at the expense of battery life. And where’s the black glass bezel that Apple’s favored for all of their modern computer designs?

Still, I’d buy a smaller Air if the price was right and Apple could match the existing MacBook line’s battery life: my Hackintosh netbook is getting woefully long in the tooth.

[via 9to5Mac]

Remember Clear’s iSpot, a wireless hotspot that gives $25 all-you-can-eat WiMax to any iOS device wirelessly connected to it? It was a great deal, but the only limitation was that it couldn’t be used with your MacBook, iMac or — horf — PC.

Some plucky modders, though, have come to the rescue, ungimping the iSpot for use with any device you want to connect to it. It’s a simple fix: all you do is load a new config file in the iSpot’s web portal. Once it reboots, your iSpot will be completely unrestricted, and you’ll be able to connect the $99 device to anything you choose to throw at it, making the iSpot an even more stellar deal than ever before.

[via Gizmodo]

We were delighted by Apple’s surprise roll-out of a battery charger last month, having long wanted a solution as green-friendly as Cupertino to the problem of peripheral juicing. It’s also a pretty good deal: Apple’s charger comes with six batteries capable of retaining 75% of their original charge after three years, all for the song of $29.

We might have gotten a better deal with the Apple Battery Charger than we thought, though. According to Czech site Superapple, Apple’s batteries and charger appear to simply be a rebranding of Sanyo’s Eneloops… which are actually a little cheaper than Apple’s own. Good to know.

Monday’s rumor that Apple would throw its annual iPod event next week has been flatly contradicted by Cupertino’s failure to send out press invites, but don’t worry: according to AllThingsD, it’s definitely happening this year.

The rub? It’ll be later than usual, not earlier: Kara Swisher’s floating a mid-September date as the most likely bet for the event. As for what we’ll be seeing, a new iPod Touch with a FaceTime-capable camera, an A4 CPU and a Retina Display is probably a given, with a new iOS-driven AppleTV called the iTV also looking possible, and maybe even a new multitouch iPod Shuffle.

Following up their earlier report that the next iteration of the AppleTV would be a $99, iOS-driven device, Engadget is now reporting that when that device arrives, it’ll be an AppleTV no longer. Come this autumn, prepare to meet the iTV.

Internally, the iTV will be very similar to the iPhone 4, right down to an A4 CPU. According to Engadget’s sources, though, the A4 won’t be able to output full high-def, 1080p video, but will max out at 720p… prompting some truly bitter internal debate in Cupertino’s halls, we’re told.

Why not? Engadget’s source says it’s because the A4 CPU can’t handle 1080p output, but that doesn’t make any sense, given the fact that the iPhone 3GS could play full HD video just fine. And why would there be any internal debate about maxing out at 720p if it was an unavoidable hardware limitation, and not a conscious choice? Are they planning the iTV’s second-generational obsolescence right out of the gate?

Half of U.S. retail stores can’t keep the iPhone on their shelves – but that’s an improvement, one analyst said Thursday. Additionally, the ‘antennagate’ mess of a few weeks ago had little or no effect on demand.

Seven weeks after the iPhone 4 was launched, barely half – 16 of 30 stores – had the new handset available. To try to keep up with the continuing demand, Apple is shipping the handset out every day, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

I like to keep my todo list nice and simple, so for a while now it has been a plain text file that sits inside Dropbox.

That still meant that remote edits of the file using my iPhone were tricky and fiddly. They won’t be any more, though, because I’ve just spent a dollar on Nebulous Notes, a new text editor for iOS devices that’s designed for dealing with documents stored in the cloud.

Specifically in this case, documents stored inside Dropbox. You have to tell Nebulous Notes your Dropbox sign-in credentials, and it offers to remember them for you (with added protection of a four-digit PIN for security’s sake).

The editor itself offers a choice of a handful of fonts and colors (including green-on-black for you green-on-black text editor fans).

There are a few other basic Dropbox-level functions, too: the app can create new folders and text files, as well as delete stuff you’ve already got in your Dropbox. It is strictly limited to displaying and editing plain text, though: it can’t handle rich texts, and it won’t display images or PDFs. But if – like me – the main thing that matters is the words, that’s not going to be a problem.

This is the Option symbol, which you’ll see quite a lot of as you use Mac OS X.

Depending on the age of your Mac or your keyboard, the key itself might have all sorts of different things on it. It might just have the option symbol. It might have the word “Alt” on it, or the word “Option”; or both; or some combination of one of those words and the symbol.

This can make things confusing for newcomers. To make it easier, remember that Option = Alt = ⌥, and that the key you need is adjacent to the Command key.

Just as the Mac Command key is similar to the Windows Control key, so the Mac Option key is similar to the Windows Alt key, or the AltGr key. Hold it down while pressing other keys, to make them do different things. It’s a modifier.

Dear Steve Jobs:

What happened to quality?

Not long ago, before Apple became big and popular, your company was loved by many of us without hesitation. We still love Apple, but it’s getting harder to feel that way. Apple is clearly loosing a foothold on quality. Perhaps you are taking on too much at one time.

I’m writing this letter after experiencing a ton of problems with my new iPhone 4, including issues with Bluetooth, the proximity sensor, and yellow-tinged photos from the camera. I just took it back to the Apple Store to be replaced. Customer service is still awesome, but quality is slipping.

It’s obvious you’ve noticed quality problems too. That’s why you just appointed Jeff Williams as a Senior Vice President of Operations, and gave him the job of ensuring the highest standards in quality for Apple products. He’s got his work cut out for him. So we hope he’ll hit the ground running.

Steve, please consider the following examples of why Apple’s attempts to do too many things at once are resulting in quality failures in just about everything it does.

Remember the recent iPod Shuffle rumor predicting Apple will shortly launch a new version with a 3-inch multitouch screen?

Well, here’s how it might look.

Our friend Graham Bower from MacPredictions made this mockup. He has some good ideas about how it might work. Graham predicts the device is a bit bigger than the current iPod shuffle. It has two buttons on the bottom: On/Off and Shuffle. The square screen shows nothing but album art.

In shuffle mode, it transitions quickly between multiple album covers, moving in different directions to suggest shuffling.

Swiping your finger from left to right across the screen cues the next track, and in the other direction it goes back to the previous track.

Swiping your finger up and down controls the volume. Tapping on the screen toggles between pause and play. It’s that simple.

No need to resort to physical violence to escape from jail, just let an engrossing iPhone game do the work for you.  GamePron brings us of this tale of a gaming fix with a higher cost than usual:

Everybody knows that there’s a certain risk one takes when playing addictive, engrossing games when you’re meant to be doing something else.  The prevalence of awesome games on the iPhone hasn’t helped that risk – as a Philippines police officer has learned.

Five inmates recently escaped from a police precinct in Cagayan de Oro City, snatching up the officer’s keys where he’d left them while playing a quick few levels of Plants vs. Zombies.   Apparently, the convicts had no trouble getting the keys and gaining their freedom – although four of the five were recaptured shortly after.

A cautionary tale for those playing addictive games on the clock – though I suspect one (likely) former prison guard now has a lot more time to work on his high score!

[via SlashDot]

I love my iPhone photography apps, and I thought I knew about all the best ones. Turns out there’s always something new to learn.

Heather Powazek Champ posted a list of her favorite iPhone photography apps, and among them was one that was totally new to me: Diptic.

The gaping security hole in Mobile Safari has been fixed with updates to Apple’s iOS operating system.

Apple has just updated iOS to 4.0.2 for the iPhone (and iPod touch) and iOS 3.2.2 for the iPad. The updates patch a security vulnerability that allowed Safari to run code embedded in PDF files.

The updates are available through iTunes. Click “Check for Update” to download.

If you are plannign to jailbreak your device, do it before updating. o not get surprised, if the latest firmware includes a baseband update as well. If that happens, it will block the ultrasn0w carrier unlock as well.

Obviously, the new iOS updates break the jailbreak at JailbreakMe.com, which exploited the vulnerability.

The updates may also contain new baseband firmware, which will break carrier unlocking. To jailbreak and unlock your iOS device, see our Jailbreak Superguide.

Here are the details from Apple:

To celebrate Woz’s 60th birthday today, his wife Janet commissioned this song as a gift.

“That’s Woz,” is sung by Jonathan Mann, an up-and-coming YouTube singing star whose song about the iPhone 4 antenna was played by Steve Jobs at a press conference. Mann followed this up with a song about Jobs. A song once wrote a tune about Paul Krugman that went wildly viral and landed him on the Rachel Maddow Show.

Mann’s song about Woz is a tribute to the Apple co-founders pure geek values. “Do it for fun,” he sings during the chorus. “Don’t do it for the money. That’s just Woz.”

Mann is singing a song a day and posting them to his YouTube channel and his Song A Day website.

(See also Mann’s funny NSFW tribute to heroic JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater.)

We start another day of deals with something for everyone. Today’s featured bargains include a leather case to protect your iPad, a 1.33Ghz iBook G4 for $269 and Apple’s on-going Back-to-School hardware sale, which offers a free iPod touch when you buy a computer.

Along the way, we’ll also check out new iPhone and Mac software, hardware deals and gadgets that caught our eye. As always, details on these and many more items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.