Cult of Mac

Being the star of the best comedy series of all time has its perks: recognized waiting in line like some sort of pleb by an Apple Store employee, actor Jason Bateman was pulled from the line and ushered into the Apple Store to get his iPhone 4 ahead of the less famous people waiting in line in front of him.

Usually, we’d be incensed at the privileged treatment celebrities get, but in Michael Bluth’s case, I think we can make an exception.

Edit: This post was originally accompanied by a photo of Jason Bateman being spoken to by an Apple store employee while waiting in line for his iPhone 4, which we picked up from the celebrity gossip blog WWTDD. If you want to see Jason Bateman looking bored and sitting on the ground in a long line while an Apple Store Genius with his underpants exposed talks to him, you should go over and see the pictures there.

As consumers worldwide flock to purchase the iPhone 4, China Unicom is still talking with Apple about bringing the latest iPhone and the already-released iPad tablet to the giant Asian marketplace, according to a Friday report. As happened with the China launch of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, the carrier could start out already behind the flood of gray market competitors.

According to the Wall Street Journal, China Unicom faces a repeat of previous iPhone launches, when it introduced the handsets without Wi-Fi and priced higher than those bought in other nearby countries. Although the government has officially lifted the ban on outside Wi-Fi versions, it’s unknown whether the carrier can cut its $730 price tag on the iPhone to a level that would spur massive sales.

My 27-inch iMac’s display is so big and gorgeous that ever since I got it, my 50-inch living room plasma has been getting a lot less burn-in. The 2560 x 1440 iMac display is just so choice: just about everything looks better on it.

Unfortunately, up until now, there hasn’t been an easy way to hook your iMac up to an HDMI source, which means there’s no good solution for watching a Blu-Ray movie or playing an Xbox 360 game on your iMac.

Belkin’s AV360 Converter is a simple bridge that acts as an HDMI-to-miniDisplayPort converter. It requires a free USB 2.0 port to keep powered, but otherwise you can pipe in any HDMI signal to your iMac or MacBook without any further fuss.

There’s a couple big downers here, though. The first is the price: $150 is a lot of money to spend on something like this. The second downer, though, is that while the AV360 Converter will accept a 1080p signal, it will downsample it to 720p on your Mac… pretty disappointing if you’re trying to finally watch your Blu-Ray copy of Planet Earth on the 27-inch iMac’s gorgeous display.

The AV360 Converter is available for order now directly from Belkin

As iPhone fans soak up the latest information about the handset’s features and abilities, Apple CEO Steve Jobs and other leaders of the Cupertino, Calif. company likely are more mindful of something else: the high rate of iPhone owners who are upgrading to the latest model. While only 38 percent of purchasers of the original iPhone upgraded to the iPhone 3G in 2008, more than three out of four iPhone 4 purchases Thursday were from current iPhone owners.

“Apple is effectively building a recurring revenue stream from a growing base of iPhone users that upgrade to the newest version every year or two,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told investors Friday. Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner found a similar response in his survey of first-day iPhone 4 buyers. He found 76 percent of purchases were upgrades which took place 14.7 months after buying the previous Apple handset. Buyers “were inspired by desire rather than need,” Yair noted Friday.

It is with some regret that we close the comment thread on the open caption contest for the historic meeting of Steve Jobs and Russian president Dimitry Medvedev: you guys are killing us.

Winner “nudge” who concocted the above simple but effective headline wins an trio of cool promo codes: iAnnotate iPad app, Soduku 2 and Hangman RSS for iPhone.

Special mentions to Jeremey Laflamme, Kevin Kestler, Julie and Alfredo for the laughs.

TV-B-Gone is a small, portable device that allows you to remotely turn off televisions, and consequently it’s easily one of the most irritating, selfish and pretentious gadgets on Earth. Now it looks like an iPod.

The iPhone might not run Flash, but that hasn’t stopped Zynga from bringing their popular social gaming phenomenon Farmville to the App Store.

Almost everything short of a Flash-engine is the same in the iPhone version, allowing players to buy and sell their crops and livestock. Any changes on your farm are reflected in the Facebook app, and vice versa. Additionally, iOS players get some exclusive new Farmville items to play with, including a Snow Leopard.

Farmville is available now on the U.S. App Store. It’s free to download.

Although we won’t know exactly how many iPhone 4s were sold on the first day they hit shelves until Apple releases the official figures, one analyst pegged first-day demand at 1.5 million handsets. That is 1.5 times as many handsets the Cupertino, Calif. firm sold during the first three days in 2008 and 2009.

Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner understands these first-day prognostications are somewhat futile. Such announcements have “become something of a national sport, a bit like guessing whether Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow,” he admitted to investors Friday. Still, that doesn’t keep analysts — or the press – from playing along.

Having problems with your iPhone 4 reception when you touch the bottom of your device? According to antenna expert Spencer Webb, don’t blame Apple… blame the FCC.

Just about every cell phone in current production has the antenna located at the bottom. This insures that the radiating portion of the antenna is furthest from the head. Apple was not the first to locate the antenna on the bottom, and certainly won’t be the last. The problem is that humans have their hands below their ears, so the most natural position for the hand is covering the antenna. This can’t be a good design decision, can it? How can we be stuck with this conundrum? It’s the FCC’s fault.

You see, when the FCC tests are run, the head is required to be in the vicinity of the phone. But the hand is not!

Basically, because phones have gravitated away from clamshell or extendable antenna designs, and because the FCC has rigid guidelines on how much radiation a cellphone is allowed to pump directly into your skull, Apple had to put the antenna at the bottom of the phone… right where most people will grab onto it.

When Apple rejected WiFi Sync from the App Store, speculation was that their reasons had a lot to do with future Cupertino’s own plans to allow iDevices to sync with Macs wirelessly.

The latest Jobs’ email lends some credence to that theory. Rick Proctor wrote Jobs and asked, “Do you think you will ever allow syncing iPhone to Mac over wifi?”

Jobs’ terse but cheery response: “Yep, someday.”

Excellent news. I’m sick of syncing my iPhone through wires like some sort of caveman. If we get wireless syncing, though, is it too much to ask for inductive charging as well?

We are being told of a problem using your iCal application after upgrading to iOS 4.0: you travel back in time. Seems users are reporting that old events reappear as new in the iPhone 4.0 version of iCal.

“And it seems to be able to loop, reminding you of the same event numerous times (I’ve seen as many as 4 reminders for one event. In the past.)” one blogger wrote. Another problem: syncing. One user who emailed Cult of Mac said he was unable to sync his MacBook iCal items with his iPhone 4.

Others report problems retrieving items from their Google Calendar.

“After new iPhone 4.0 update, my iPhone calendar will not pull in all of my calendars created in google calendar. The only thing pulling in is my main (primary) email account calendar–but all of the other ones are missing.” A user identified as a Google employee suggested using a gmail account to gather email.

The apparent iCal troubles aren’t the only complaints being aired following Apple’s release of the iPhone 4. Talk arose about a yellow screen and dropped calls due to “wrong” hand placement. That last report, which pointed to the iPhone’s antenna, prompted Apple CEO Steve Jobs to speak out. “Avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases,” Jobs suggested.

[via Imminent blog, Google support forum]

You’re probably sick of reading about the iPhone 4, so here it is in a nutshell: It’s slick as sh*t and I recommend without hesitation that you buy it.

• No yellow spots
• Holding it the “wrong way” drops bars, but it doesn’t matter much to performance.
• It doesn’t scratch that easily, no matter what you’ve read.
• Industrial design is beautiful.
• The screen is gorgeous: like going from SD to HD.
• Photos and video are much improved.

This is awesome: A Tublr blog with a boatload of screencaps from Apple’s TV ads showing people holding their iPhones the wrong way.

Earlier today, Steve Jobs said the iPhone 4 ‘Death Grip’ was a “non-issue” and people should “Just avoid holding it in that way.”

Which of course is total bullshit, as Apple’s own ads show.

Here’s some more, including shots of Jobs himself clutching his iPhone in his left hand:

We’ve been able to replicate the iPhone 4 radio reception ‘Death Grip’ with older iPhones, and speed tests show that network performance is perhaps more complex than the number of bars in the upper left corner.

Buzz in the blogosphere as hordes of consumers began using their shiny new iPhone 4s on Thursday was all about whether Apple might have a problem on its hands with the device’s antenna. With some uncertainty as to how widespread the problem might be and as to whether it could be something hardware or software related, it does appear possible to hold the iPhone 4 in such a way as to cause it to lose reception and drop calls in progress.

A Macrumors reader reportedly emailed Steve Jobs about the issue, asking “What’s going to be done about the signal dropping issue. Is it software or hardware?” — to which Jobs initially replied in his classic, koan-like manner, “Non issue. Just avoid holding it in that way.”

In a more considered followup response that some are considering an “official statement” from Apple on the matter, Jobs called the problem “a fact of life for every wireless phone,” and advised users to “avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases. ”

No matter how this plays out in the coming days and weeks one thing certain is that, be it truly a hardware problem or merely a software issue — it’s not going to make AT&T any new friends in the U.S.

I just confirmed that the iPhone 4 loses reception when the antenna band is touched. Plus, it’s enough to make the iPhone drop calls. This is a serious problem, and I can’t believe Apple let this slip through.

My new iPhone 4 drops from full reception (four-to-five bars) to just one bar in a matter of a few seconds when my fingers and thumb are touching the antenna band. See the video above. But when I take my fingers off the sides and hold the iPhone by its glass back, the number of bars quickly climbs to five again. The problem was first reported by Gizmodo, and seems to widespread, if not universal.

It’s enough to make the iPhone drop calls. I just tested it by calling my office phone. Holding the iPhone in my left hand, reception plummeted and the call dropped.

iPhone fail!

Today is iPhone 4 day and like the rest of you I got up early today. I’d say way to early since it was 4:00 am and I was surprised to find out that my alarm clock on my iPhone could be set to such an early hour. The engineers at Apple HQ in Cupertino could not have done a better job on that alarm, but for once I was wishing they’d screwed it up since I think it should be a crime for an alarm clock to ring before 5:00 am.

We start off the deals with “RedLaser,” a barcode scanning application for the iPhone. We also check out a flexible bluetooth keyboard for the iPad and a replacement dock for your iPhone 3G. Along the way, we check out a number of applications for your iPhone and iPad.

As always, details on these and many other items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

The best corporate profile of Apple since, well, Leander Kahney’s book Inside Steve’s Brain is in the July/August 2010 issue of Fast Company, published Thursday on the magazine’s website.

Author Farhad Manjoo does a fabulous job of “capturing something that feels like magic” behind Apple and the company’s success by delving into its relationships with current partners such as San Francisco design firm Eight, Inc., by speaking with former employees and others who have watched the company for years, and coming away with 10 essential lessons for any company wanting to become the Apple of its industry.

Of course it’s well known the secret to Apple’s success — notwithstanding Steve Jobs’ personal direction — is nothing more than “discipline, focus, long-term thinking and a willingness to flout the rules that govern everybody else’s business.” And yet, as Manjoo discovers, it’s also much more.

There’s a great series of photographs showing everyday, normal people dressed in the Steve Jobs “uniform” of jeans, running shoes and long-sleeve black mock turtleneck, from which one comes away amazed that only Jobs himself doesn’t look like a total dweeb wearing it. There’s a fabulous graphic by Jeremy Caplan, the iCensus (possibly available only in the print article), depicting who matters (and who doesn’t) in Apple Nation.

And in the end we learn how clues to the future are already built in to Apple’s most current products, and why “we’ll only be able to spot them in retrospect.”

Highly recommended.

Remember the days when Apple was considered a company with its majority of sales within the United States? Well, that was before the iPhone burst onto the scene. In 2010, international sales will account for 80 percent of iPhones purchased, an analyst told clients Wednesday.

Internationally, Apple has six times as many iPhone owners than in the U.S., according to Gleacher & Company (formerly Broadpoint AmTech) analyst Brian Marshall. Combined, Apple’s 150 international carrier partners have 460.7 million subscribers. AT&T, which has the exclusive U.S. iPhone market, offers just 65.1 million postpaid subscribers.

Just a quick note from my commute: the line at the flagship Apple Store in San Francisco’s Union Square is stunningly huge, spanning the enter length and width of the block, and then wrapping around the corner for who knows how far long.

This is subjective, but this line is dwarfing what I saw for the iPhone 3G launch, which was by far the biggest previously. If Apple has supply, they’re going to sell two million phones this weekend alone…

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Cable Car Turnaround,San Francisco,United States

Although the iPhone 4 has stolen some of the spotlight, demand for the iPad remains strong, suggesting Apple will have trouble into November building enough units, one analyst said Thursday. Apple is building 7.5-9 million iPods for the September quarter.

“Our checks in the supply chain indicate Apple iPad demand continues to outstrip supply,” Sterne Agee analyst Vijay Rakesh told investors Thursday morning. This indicates “solid preorder/order trends on the iPad given build visibility now extending into November,” he adds.

Now here’s a classic set of unboxing photos!  Over at Clone77’s 365 days project the newest iWonder gets the Imperial delivery and setup treatment from an industrious bunch of mini Stormtroopers.  Love the coordinated effort, and use of the lightsaber for cutting the plastic!

Clone77 appears to be on a yearlong project to expose his troopers to the wider world, very entertaining.  The iPhone 4 arrived on Day 133.

Thanks to the always-enjoyable iPhoneSavior for the tip.

If you’re about to buy a new iPhone 4, you should consider selling or trading in your old one.

If you want to sell your old iPhone on eBay or Craigslist, take a look at our guide — How to Sell your iPhone Online — which tells you how to wipe the data and good strategies for getting the best price.

Selling your iPhone online will get you the best price, but will likely involve a degree of hassle, of course. Probably the easiest, hassle-free way to get rid of your iPhone is trading it in with Gazelle, an electronics recycling service.

You can even trade in your iPhone from your iPhone. Here’s how:

Matt Haughey:

What happens when you strap a $1700 digital SLR camera doing full HD video to a $2k remote controlled helicopter? You get amazing freaking video.

Another example of what you can do with a few grand worth of equipment that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to do with a real helicopter (not to mention, would also be super dangerous)

Via Matt Haughey and Robot Wisdom.