Cult of Mac

Fantastic news. Mac gamers! PopCap Games’ entire library of 13 incredible Mac games is now available for the lump sum of just $50.

Well, score one for the Vietnamese. As rumored yesterday, Apple has stealthily upgrade the entry level plastic unibody MacBook to bring it more up to line with the specs of the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Here’s what the new MacBook looks like: on the outside, it’s the same, but its electronic innards now contain a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB 5400RPM hard drive and an NVIDIA GeForce 320M integrated GPU.

The biggest update is actually the battery: it now gets the same 63.5 watt hour batter as the 13-inch MacBook Pro, which gives it up to 10 hours of wireless productivity. That’s actually netbook range, now.

The new MacBook is a better deal than ever, and as usual, it only costs $999.

Passwords. Loathe them or detest them from the depths of your innermost soul, they are a fact of life on today’s internet. And so many people use the same one everywhere.

1Password is aptly named. Once you give it control of your passwords, you don’t ever have to worry about remembering passwords again. You’ll only have to remember one – the one that unlocks 1Password itself.

We start out another week with a new crop of App Store deals. First up is the latest App Store freebies, including “Turn the World,” a puzzle game. A memorization puzzle game, “Mindshapes” leads off the iPad app price cuts. Finally, we round out our featured deals with an Apple Store offer: 8GB iPod nano for $99.

Details on these and many other items ( such as unibody MacBook Pros starting at $929) are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Sure, the app store is swimming in trivia quiz games, but Qrank is different — and ever since the game raised its shiny little head up off the App Store floor earlier this month it’s had us hooked like sugar junkies to a candy factory.

the free app cranks (you knew it had to be in here) out a fresh quiz every day, and you’re only allowed one crack at it per day, which is one big reason why it’s as addictive as, well, crack. That, and the way the game connects players socially — everyone has to answer the same questions, which makes it easy to let your friends know you’re smarter than them.

If you don’t have friends, the game publicly ranks you against everyone else playing that day, so you can be smarter than your state, the nation — or the whole world.

We all know that Flash movies can be a PAIN sometimes, and the SWF and FLV Player Pro takes away all of those frustrations. SWF & FLV Player PRO version delivers even more functionality to you: ability to save currently played Flash movie no matter whether it is loaded from web or locally; switch to full-screen viewing mode; capture the current frame of the movie and produce a series of screenshots out of your favorite FLV or SWF movie, and more!

The great folks over at Eltima Software are giving away 20, yeah, I said TWENTY FREE licenses of the SWF and FLV Player Pro. Here’s what you gotta do to get your hands on a copy of one of these licenses that retails normally at $19.95.

1. Follow us on Twitter (this is MANDATORY, or else we can’t DM you to send you the code if you win)
2. Tweet this between 1:30pm May 17th and 1:30pm May 18th: “Check out @CultofMac and @EltimaSoftware giving away 20 FREE SWF/FLV Player app codes! https://ht.ly/1M8ae #cultofmac”
3. We’ll randomly pick 20 Twitter accounts that tweeted the proper message and send the app code to you through DM.

Again, make sure that you’re following us on Twitter, because if not, we’ll skip you and move onto another Twitter user to give the code to. You must be 18 years old to enter the giveaway. Good Luck!

The urge for YouTube fame got the better of a trio of three teen crooks, whose iPod recording of an assault and robbery of another teen got them arrested.

Two 14-year-olds and a 13-year-old in Waldorf, Maryland approached a 13-year-old on a neighborhood basketball court at 5:30 pm. They reportedly tried to pick an argument with the victim, who packed up his stuff and tried to walk away from them.

The suspects attacked him, striking him on the back of his head. One of the suspects recorded the assault on his iPod while the other two stole the victim’s backpack.

Free Radical Software has just released Rhythmic for iPhone and iPod Touch. Rhythmic allows one user to transfer song information, including relevant song data and cover art, from their device to another with the same technology used to transfer contacts in the popular iPhone app Bump.

Once a track is Bumped, the recipient can choose to download the track from iTunes.

I could see this app working well at iPod nights at your local beverage dispensing establishment. Can you think of other instances when this might come in handy? I can’t. I’m also weary of the negative comments in the App Store. Fun idea, though.

Little doubt remains that Apple will introduce its next-generation iPhone next month. The latest evidence: a report that Apple’s key iPhone supplier is set to ship at least 24 million iPhone 4Gs this year, starting in June. Many believe Apple will unveil the new iPhone at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference June 7.

According to Tiawan’s Digitimes, Foxconn will ship 4.5 million iPhone 4Gs in the first half of 2010, with 19.5 million devices ready for the remainder of this year. If correct, the shipping timetable would resemble the iPad, where Apple first pushed the tablet device out in limited quantities, then opened the flood-gate as manufacturing increased.

If you think Apple’s dogged pursuit via a police raid of blogger Jason Chen’s was a little extreme, you’re in good company.

Uber geek and Mac user Bill Amend’s Fox Trot strip offered one explanation for Apple’s dogged pursuit of the lost iPhone.

In the Sunday strip, 10-year-old Jason Fox gets a fake ID, to use as bait for attracting tech bloggers.

But the joke’s on them and knee-jerk fan-folks, although some of us (and many of you) haven’t defended at least the superficial, brick-like looks of the lost iPhone.

Amend did say, via Twitter, that there was at least one situation where the said 12GV iPhone might come in handy…

Bill Maher might be on to something. The politicomedian made a bold statement last night that suggested Steve Jobs (aka Sven Jorbs) should make a run for the Oval Office.

Last week, President Obama admitted to being technologically challenged. Maher, noting that the President’s historic run for office was fueled primarily by social networking, refused to take Barry’s ignorance as adorable. Video and transcript after the jump.

The Todo app for the iPad was released recently, and to celebrate Appigo is offering this gorgeous little piece of productivity for $4.99; 50% off of its everyday $9.99 price tag.

About Todo:

Todo is a powerful set of tools that makes task management simple and fun. Use Todo on your iPad or iPhone alone or synchronize your tasks to your desktop (iCal or Outlook) using Appigo Sync (free download) or to the web using the popular online todo list Toodledo. Todo helps you focus on what matters most and allows you to integrate the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology or your own.

Appigo has noted that future updates to Todo for iPad are free.

The first sales figures of magazines testing the iPad are coming in and so far they are muted. Conde Nast says it has sold 365 iPad editions of the December 2009 Men of the Year issue, so far.

“This costs us nothing extra: no printing or postage,” GQ vice president of publishing Pete Hunsinger told reporters. “Everything is profit, and I look forward to the time when iPad issue sales become a major component to our circulation,” he added. GQ, which began selling the iPad version in April, sees the period as a testing phase, where the publisher can test the waters on pricing, advertising and ways to offer a digital version of the print publication.

Details are now emerging about how closely-involved Apple’s co-founder became during the search for a stolen next-generation iPhone that later was splashed across the front page of a prominent gadget blog. According to court records released Friday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs contacted the site around April 19, asking for the phone’s return.

Soon afterwards, Gizmodo editor Brian Lam e-mailed Jobs, telling him the blog would return the device only after Apple acknowledged it came from the Cupertino, Calif. company. A letter asking for the return of “a device that belongs to Apple” was sent to Lam by Apple attorney George Riley. Talking with lead San Mateo County Sheriff’s investigator Detective Matthew Broad, the lawyer had said the prototype’s return was “invaluable” and the potential damage from its loss “was huge,” according to an affidavit.

Quickerteck has done it again! First they brought us a charge monitor for the iPad that indicates if you’re getting enough juice to charge your pad. Now they’ve brought us a 10 watt foldable solar panel for the iPad that comes with the aforementioned charge monitor.

Quickerteck states that the panels will charge your iPad as fast as using a wall charger and they can be yours for a cool $250.

The name of the product is the best part: Apple Juicz.

My questions to you: Would you use this? Is it reasonably priced?

It looks like in-flight entertainment will become a little less annoying in July 2010.

Bluebox Avionics has announced its Ai IFE  which “leverages the power, flexibility and quality of the most advanced consumer device ever produced” (apprently that’s the iPad). Flight attendants would either pass out iPads or chain them to your tray tables and you could enjoy a Airline specific iPad experience  thanks to Bluebox’s proprietary security solution and custom apps.

I’m not sure how practical this is, but it would be nice to move away from the seat-back touchscreens with the hidden credit card swiper.

[via Engadget]

It’s common knowledge that plugging a regular SIM into the iPad is as simple as cleaving it down to microSIM dimensions… but what if you want to use the unlimited AT&T iPad data plan on your iPhone? Over at HiJinks Inc, they’ve posted a great guide to doing just that.

Put this firmly in the rumor file for right now, but Macsimum News is reporting that a live streaming version of iTunes will debut at this year’s WWDC, building upon Apple’s December purchase of online streaming service Lala.

At first blush, I absolutely loved this iPhone speaker dock, crafted in the GlaDOS style aesthetic of an old iMac arm. And, undeniably, it looks great.

The problem is, it’s not a speaker, per se. Instead, it uses resonance to transmit the sound from your iPod, iPhone or other MP3 player into the hard surface of the table underneath it. The audio output is rated at 12W, with a built-in amp for a bit of a boost, but the inevitable result here is still going to be terrible sound.

What a pity. I always loved the lamp-style iMac. At $42, though, this is a waste of money as anything besides a conversation piece.

The same hackers who got the Android operating system running in a dual-boot configuration on the first and second generation iPhones are now working on porting the hack to the iPod Touch.

In a new blog post, Linux on the iPhone is reporting that the binaries of the iPod Touch port are coming soon for jailbreakers to play with.

With the hatchet between Apple Computers and Apple Records long buried and the digitally restored catalogue sounding better than ever, the continued absence of The Beatles from iTunes is a bigger mystery than ever. Don’t blame Apple, though… either Apple. According to former Beatle Paul McCartney, it’s EMI gumming up the works.

“To tell you the truth I don’t actually understand how it’s got so crazy,” Sir Paul told Newsbeat. “I know iTunes would like to do it, so one day it’s going to happen.”

“It’s been business hassles”, he said. “Not with us, or iTunes. It’s the people in the middle, the record label [EMI]. There have been all sorts of reasons why they don’t want to do it.”

On their part, EMI say that discussions are ongoing, and claim that they would love to see The Beatles’ music available on iTunes. Translation: they want a much bigger cut of the iTunes pie, and you’ll have to rip your Beatles’ tracks yourself until Apple caves… which I seriously doubt Cupertino has any intention of doing.

The impasse continues.

All hail Vietnam, new Xanadu of surprising Apple leaks! Vietnamese site Tinthe — the very same site that leaked video of the fourth generation iPhone last week — somehow managed to get their hands on pictures and specs of the next MacBook.

Don’t expect anything too boldly different from the case: the new MacBook appears to be identical to the old unibody plastic. This is mostly just a hardware refresh to make the MacBook more competitive with the baseline 13-inch MacBook Pro, and like the latter laptop, the new MacBook gets a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and an NVIDIA GeForce 320M GPU.

With Twitter gaining so much popularity in the mainstream, there seem to be hundreds of Twitter clients available for Mac. But what about us Tweeters who still have old Macs and are running OS X Tiger or even Panther? Twit Menulet fills the gap for those Mac users who still want to Tweet without having to upgrade their entire system. Read on for the full review and an exclusive offer for the Cult of Mac audience:

Steve Jobs and Gawker haven’t seen eye-to-eye lately, so it’s somewhat surprising to see the Apple CEO engage in a lengthy email exchange with Gawker’s Ryan Tate over the App Store’s walled garden ecosystem and Apple’s ongoing feud with Adobe and other intermediary APIs.

Less surprising is the fact that Gawker’s Tate, in response to Jobs’ polite, reasonable and clear-headed replies, quickly resorted to disrespectful dickhead mode (partly fueled, it seems, by one too many cocktails.

The exchange begins with a simple question by Tate: how does Jobs think Bob Dylan would feel about Apple if he were still 20 today? “Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with revolution? Revolutions are about feedom.”

Jobs’ response is to say that the iPad is about freedom: freedom from spyware, freedom from poor performance and (lamely) “freedom from porn.”

“Some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away. It is,” Jobs wrote.