On the eve of WWDC, a speculative story on mp3newswire.net suggests some interesting possibilities for Apple in the video and media space given the explosive adoption of iDevices:

In 1959 5,749,000 television sets were sold in the US, bringing the cumulative total of sets sold since 1950 to 63,542,128 units. This number supported, through advertising, three national television networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS (a fourth, Dumont, folded in 1956) and numerous local independent stations. Television was big business by the start of the 1960’s.

Now here are another set of numbers. As of April this year Apple sold 75 million iPhone and iPod touch units, devices capable of delivering video via Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity. Add to that figure 2 million iPads and counting. By the end of the year Apple should have about 90 million smart mobile devices in the wild.

With the announcement of the leaked next-generation iPhone coming tomorrow morning at WWDC, the rumor mill is in even higher overdrive than usual. The photo above, from Pursuitist, is an alleged photo taken “inside” the Moscone West center in San Francisco that purports to reveal the all-new iPhone HD. It’s also a transparent fake, as the colored iPhones are an amateur mock-up that 9to5mac posted almost a month ago. I find it hard to believe that Apple would conclude that a fan’s creative would be the ideal way to launch their latest and greatest phone.

Also notable: The word “iPhone” and the 64GB capacity aren’t well-centered on the back of the device, another dead giveaway. You can head over to Pursuitist to see more fake photos if you wish, or wait until about 11 a.m. Pacific tomorrow to see the real thing.

via TUAW

It’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

This time, we review 10 Pin Shuffle Lite, Air Video, Air Video Free, Cliffed, Dubble, Escape Board (iPad), Giana Sisters, Instapaper Pro, Iron Horse, Racecar (iPad), Sky Force, and Sky Force Reloaded.

Confused by which combination of keypresses triggers your favorite shortcut? What about trying to remember which arcane spell of glyphs describes that shortcut in Mac terminology?

There’s a site for that… or, at least, there will be, when its owner gets finished with it. Keyonary is an online directory of keyboard shortcuts . Using the search bar, you simply type in the shortcut you’d like to find and Keyonary will return it to you.

To be honest, the site’s pretty rough right now, and while the presentation is slick, the owner’s entering all these shortcuts in by hand… which means that while Photoshop and OS X are fairly well covered by Keyonary, there’s a lot of shortcuts for other popular Mac apps still to be filled.

Still, we wanted to point Keyonary out… not because of what it is now, but what we hope a little encouragement will allow it to become: an I Use This for user-submitted shortcuts to all your favorite Mac applications.

We close out a Memorial Day-shortened week with more hardware deals. First up is a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro for $1,098 from Expercom. Next is a 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini for $799 from the Apple Store. (Apple may introduce a refreshed model of the desktop machine during next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Calif.) We round out or top bargains with a MacBook Core 2 Duo running at 2.4GHz for $999 from the Apple Store.

Along the way, we also check out speakers from Macally and Sony, a clock radio for your iPhone or iPod, and the latest batch of App Store freebies, including “Word Droppings,” a word-base action game.

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

An upscale Manhattan tailor has designed a $600 suit jacket with an iPad pocket.

Mohan’s custom tailors, founded in the 70s before men needed gadget pockets, said the somewhat gimmicky-looking iPad suit is the result of customer requests.

You don’t have to be very sartorially savvy to wonder how the jacket — pictured either flat or with the model holding it — could stand carrying a 1.5 pound device on one side without deforming the fabric or giving you a lopsided look. Mohan’s says it has “several dozen” appointments scheduled for fittings.

As invites roll in for extracurricular activities for WWDC next week, only one so far offers something besides drinks and the same folks you’ve seen all day: a museum-style look at working Apple technology dating back to 1976 — including an original Apple I.

The aptly-named iNSpired tour is sponsored by BoxTone, Mobile Service Management software provider and you’ll get to ogle 25 years of Apple’s insanely great tech as you hobnob with community members over drinks and food. (They promise a “hands-on” experience but keep your potato-chip grease off the keyboards, thanks.)

Apple employee #16, Wendell Sander, aka father of the Apple III, is coming to the party, he’s bringing the Apple I.

Entrance is free for WWDC attendees, spaces are limited, tell them you’re with us (promo code: CultofMacFan) when you register and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win an iPad and a VIP pass.

See you there?

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzWa9gDoQUg&feature=player_embedded

The classic German board game Carcassone has finally come to the iPhone with an official port including original artwork, eight different AI players, a cool looking solitaire mode and Internet multiplayer with push notifications.

From the App Store description: “Build a medieval landscape, tile by tile, claim landmarks with your followers and score points. As a winner of the prestigious “Spiel des Jahres” award in 2001, the game allows for a plethora of play styles and strategies.”

The game’s iPhone-only for now, but a universal iPad version is imminent.

I’ve never played Carcassone but it is a game much beloved by my board-gaming friends. I’ve been eager to get my teeth into this one.

Carcassone can be purchased on the App Store now for just $4.99

Samsung is getting into the tablet game with their own would-be iPad killer, but unlike many other Atom-based netbooks, Samsung has a secret weapon: an A4-like mobile CPU created by (now Apple owned) Intrinsity, the Hummingbird S5PC110.

A new report by the Hong Kong based advocacy group SACOM (Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior) says that an eleventh employee has died at Foxconn.

Unlike the last ten deaths, though, the latest reported death wasn’t a suicide. Instead, 27 year old Foxconn employee Yan Li died on May 27th after a continuous 34 hour working shift. Allegedly, Yan —who worked night shifts at Foxconn from 200 — literally worked himself to death.

Yesteday, an AT&T spokesperson put the kibosh on any possibility of using the iPhone’s new tethering abilities to drive your iPad.

“It won’t be possible to tether the iPhone to the iPad to share Internet access,” an AT&T spokesperson bluntly said.

The usual hue and cry against AT&T resulted, but now, AT&T is clarifying matters, saying they don’t have any problem with iPads and iPhones tethered together in conjoined bliss. Rather, they blame Apple.

“You’ll need to speak with Apple. There is no AT&T policy around tethering and the iPad,” a spokesperson told Gizmodo.

Well, that’s certainly good news if true. I can’t think of any reason Apple wouldn’t allow this if their network partners are onboard. Hopefully, then, iPad-to-iPhone tethering is something we’ll see in iPhone OS 4.0.

Since the days of Mac OS X 10.3 “Panther” Apple has provided a wonderful utility, Migration Assistant, to help move data between your old and new Macs. With this utility you can easily migrate your installed applications, system settings and user data from your old system to your new one.

On the whole Migration Assistant works very well, performs successfully more often than not, and has gotten better with every subsequent release of Mac OS X. However despite Apple’s best efforts there are times when Migration Assistant can’t or won’t work.

A Manual Mac System Migration is just a fancy term for copying things over. The key is knowing what needs to be moved and how to connect the two machines.

Our favorite iPhone newsreader app, the wonderfully minimal and elegant Reeder, is finally getting a long overdue iPad version.

In fact, it’s undergoing the App Store approval process as we speak… and as a first look of what to expect, Techcrunch posted some gorgeous shots of what the iPad Reeder app will look like, which merges Reeders existing muted and clean aesthetic (Instapaper for feeds is a good comparison) with functionality like pinching to quick-look at a stack of feeds:

As an indirect response to Adobe’s own We campaign, Apple has unveiled a wonderful new sandbox playground advocating HTML5, which allows users to play around and do a number of things in their browsers that they might not even know HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript can do.

It’s a lot of fun as a playground, and certainly shows what HTML5 can do. The only problem? It’s only viewable on Safari: try to run it on any other HTML5-capable browser and you get a message prompting you to download Apple’s own browser.

We’ve been hearing tell of an HDMI-equipped Mac Mini for awhile now, with past reports indicating that prototype Mac Minis spotted by Apple employees had their DVI port replaced with HDMI, thanks to the inclusion of NVIDIA’s MPC89 CPU.

Now Apple Insider is reporting that they’ve heard from four different source who claim that Apple is having Mac Mini supply shortages… usually a “tell” for when a new model is approaching.

Children are excellent arbiters of the truth, their reactions are honest and straightforward.  In the case of the iPad, those reactions include excitement and awe.

Apple has noticed.  After a group of students from Wesley Chapel, Florida was photographed trying out some iPads at their local Apple store, the images made their way to Apple.  The company just sent 13 free iPads to some very lucky students, and may use the pictures in an upcoming ad campaign.

Kudos all around – a win for everybody here!  Thanks to AppleInsider for the tip.

Paper Toss for iPhone is a brilliant pick-up-and-play game that is guaranteed to kill some time when you’re waiting for your train, when your boss is out of the office, or when you’re waiting for your little ones to give up the TV. If you’re one of the 21,000,000 paper tossers out there, you’ll be pleased to know the game is now available on the iPad, including a new level and improved visuals for the larger screen. But is it worth that $2.99 price tag?

Despite offering tethering for laptops, AT&T will not allow you to tether your iPad to your iPhone.

An AT&T spokesperson told TechFlash “it won’t be possible to tether the iPhone to the iPad to share Internet access.”

Tethering your laptop to your iPhone — an option built into the upcoming iPhone 4.0 OS — will be possible via USB or Bluetooth. But the iPad’s Bluetooth profile for tethering is not enabled.

TechFlash: AT&T: No iPhone-iPad tethering

We start off the day with yet more deals on MacBook Pros. This one comes from Expercom: a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook with 13.3-inch screen for $1,098. Next, we have some free iPad applications, including “Bumper Boats HD Premium,” a puzzle game. Another crop of iPhone app price-cuts have arrived, including TomTom USA.

Along the way, we also check out new iPhone cases, speakers and Mac software. As always, details on these and many other items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

The iPad has already gone beyond kid-appeaser — a recent study reported that the most downloaded apps are for adults using the device at work.

So if you want to give the iPad a permanent place in your office, you might want something to prop it up with that doesn’t involve pencils and rubber bands.

While in some office environments, funky DIY stands (including a cat) might be conversation starters, in others, they just look, well, funky.

Here are our top five picks for iPad stands that deserve a place next to that sleek perpetual calendar and won’t look like some random piece of junk when your iPad is elsewhere.

1. Old Time Computers Marble finish stand. For that banker desk look, try this handcrafted stand in hardwood with a marble finish. It comes with a USB cable and audio jack,  available for $59.00 on Etsy. The same artisan has some terrific wooden stands in the same vein — including a combo iPad/iPhone dock charger —  as well as antique-looking external keyboards with a steampunk aesthetic.

Apps that use GPS to peg a user’s location on a map are nothing new — but an app that works with the user’s own maps — of say a college campus, airport terminals or the sprawling San Diego Zoo — now that’s a pretty neat trick.

Snap + Map by FogTechnologies is a $2 app that lets you does exactly that, by superimposing your GPS location onto a user-defined map — either downloaded in the form of a pdf or from a picture taken with the iPhone’s camera. The app calibrates the iPhone’s GPS receiver with the map by asking you to enter your current location, then move a short distance and enter it again. Of course, much of this app’s usefulness depends on the iPhone’s somewhat spotty GPS capabilities.

Brilliant idea though — especially for ephemeral locations like Burning Man, where I can totally envision this app saving my life during my next visit; possibly quite literally.

Take Smule’s Glee or I Am T-Pain popstar-forging apps, strip away the Auto-Tune (and some of the polish), stir in a little Simon Cowell and bam — you’ve got Music Idol, a dollar-app that creates a virtual American Idol community on the iPhone, complete with the ability to rate other would-be star’s performances.

The app — which has also been formatted for the iPad —  gives users the ability to upload 20-second performance, then show off their talents through the app’s searchable database or post clips to the user’s Facebook page. The developer claims a 2000-member user-base (culled partly from an earlier version of the app called Riff Raters).

While the Smule apps are collaborative in nature, this one seems like more of a way to introduce the world to your unique talents — or perhaps invite a hailstorm of abuse. Either way. to prod talent in the app’s direction, the developer is giving away $10 iTunes gift cards every week.

You can now search for iPhone apps when using Google’s mobile search page. The feature, announced earlier this week, displays matches at the top of search results on the Google site.

Selecting an app takes users to Apple’s App Store, permitting users to view that application’s listing, along with the name of the app’s creator and user reviews. The searches can be conducted either from an iPhone or Android handset.

The feature, which the Mountain View, Calif. company plans to roll out for other phones and more countries, is currently available only in the U.S. for the iPhone and Android-based phones.

Although my affinity for Apple’s iDevices has long made switching an impossibility, I’ve long loved DVD Jon’s DoubleTwist application, a wonderful and streamlined iTunes-replacing program that allows you to sync your music or video library to pretty much any device under the sun.

Today, DoubleTwist got even better. Although the program has long synced to Android phones, the DoubleTwist Player, which finally gives Android what its been sorely lacking: a killer media player app. Even better, it offers some degree of interoperability with iTunes, and allow you to import your iTunes playlist, ratings and playcounts.

It’s free for a limited time, and finally brings an Apple-like media experience to Android phones. The only limitation is the lack of a widget allowing you to control your media playback from the homescreen, although it’s promised soon.

[via Gadget Lab]