Cult of Mac

Things sure have changed for music-lovers in a big way over the last decade; I still remember balking at paying $50 for a pair of Sony earbuds not so long ago. Then the iPod ushered in the age of the portable MP3-player revolution, and things would never be the same — the earbud market exploded, and a wealth of hi-fi earbuds roared onto store walls.

The $200 Ultimate Ears 700s, with their phenomenal performance, compact, whisper-light profile and no-frills approach, could be considered the two-seater sports car in this mass of earbuds; right down to their lack of tolerance for abuse.

Two of my favorite gadgets to hit up when rec time rolls around are my iPhone and my mountain bike. Combining the two together might result in a sort of Shangri-la-like experience, but until now the only option available to me would have been something like the almost surely life-threatening activity of negotiating twisty singletrack while attempting to score the next mining license in Space Miner.

But the new Xtreme Sports: Biker iPhone app seems a saner alternative that’ll have much less impact on my health insurance. The first-person freeride mountain-bike simulator rolls out 25 levels across forest, mountain, urban, winter and park environments — all for a buck. Pretty sick, dude.

I haven’t tried it yet, but if I actually get to the point where my time is free, it seems a good bet I’ll be trading a dollar for a ride.

We close out another week with a deal on a refurbished 2.16GHz MacBook Pro with 17-inch screen for $899. Also at the top of our list: 3 percent off an iMac 22-inch or 27-inch desktop computer, plus the latest batch of App Store freebies, including “Coolrado,” a 3D platforming game.

Along the way, we’ll check out other software for the iPhone and iPod touch, as well as bargains on various gadgets. Details on these and many more items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

A 44-year-old man is in federal custody after using a social networking app to meet and have sex with a 14-year-old girl.

Moses Virgil Campbell Jr., 44, allegedly used the “iDate-Personals Dating Service for Singles of Any Sex” app on his iPhone to hook up with a teen, according to an affidavit written by FBI Special Agent Alicia M. McShane.

This is the third sex case involving minors and iPhone apps we’ve come across — after one in Canada involving Grindr and another unnamed social networking app in Phoenix.  Both Grindr and iDate are free apps and classified as “games,” require users to be 18 or over.

Deals are good; free stuff, better —Macbuzzer currently has both on their site.

We’ve just started playing around with Cockpit, a customizable multi-controller that controls other apps on your Mac; normally $25, Macbuzzer is giving it away for free.

If that doesn’t hit your sweet-spot, they’re also selling a collection of nine Mac apps that includes: time-tracking/invoicing app, recipe manager, Twitter client, Internet radio recorder, information manager, backup manager, book-keeping app and a bookmark utility. The $288-valued package is currently at $20, but the price increases by a dollar per day, so best not waffle if you want ’em.

First quarter iPhone shipments are more than double what they were in 2009, IDC reports.

Apple now has 16.1% of the mobile market share, landing it in the top three smartphone vendors after Nokia and Research in Motion.

The bump in shipments was in part due to iPhones reaching outside North America, the report noted, adding forthcoming developments that may keep the numbers rising:  “CEO Steve Jobs announced the latest operating system update, enabling multi-tasking, folders, enhanced email, iBooks for consumers, and iAd, a mobile advertising platform, for developers. A fourth generation iPhone is expected to arrive this summer.”

The explosive growth isn’t limited to Apple — the report notes 54.7 million units shipped in the first quarter, for a 56.7% overall spurt — but it may change the minds of analysts who said the iPhone would remain a niche product and proclaimed a death watch.

Via CNET

Nokia is again back in court, this time claiming Apple’s iPad and iPhone infringe five patents. The venue — a federal court in Wisconsin — has some people scratching their heads.

In its latest legal jab at the Cupertino, Calif. consumer electronics giant, Nokia alleges the patents involve “enhanced speech and data transmission, using positioning data in applications and innovations in antenna configurations that improve performance and save space, allowing smaller and more contact devices.”

Apple announced Friday the iPad will be available in nine more countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK May 28. International pre-orders for the iPad are set to begin Monday, May 10.

The next round of international launches are expected to be announced in July with the Cupertino, Calif. company selecting Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore.

One wouldn’t ordinarily mention “scalpers” and “Apple developers” in the same sentence, but this time it seems appropriate. The World Wide Developers Conference has sold out the 5,000-seat San Francisco, Calif. venue in just eight days. This, despite a series of limitations Apple imposed on this year’s event.

First, the Cupertino, Calif. company hiked the ticket price from $1295 to $1599. Then the June 7-11 dates were announced a month later than usual. Apple also froze out the Mac, focusing on the iPhone OS 4 and awarding only designers of iPhone and iPad apps.

It can be difficult getting your hands on an iPad. Apple admits it. Analysts announce it. Now the mainstream media are reporting it. Following up on online stories stretching back into mid-April, an investigation now finds Apple retail stores in 13 cities across the country have no iPad inventory.

New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Boston, Seattle, Denver and five other areas told Bloomberg Thursday they were out of iPads with no indication when a new supply would arrive.

As an IT consultant you get accustomed to certain problems and complaints from users.  “My computer is running slow” is a universal favorite.  “You said this would only take a few minutes” is another perennial frontrunner.

But one stands out as arguably the most common end user headache: “My Email Isn’t Working.”

Sigh… Welcome to the club.  Email headaches are endless.  Fortunately, many issues are common problems that can be fixed relatively easily.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB9gQgaVJsw&feature=player_embedded

The iPad Camera Connection Kit has always been an intriguing accessory, not just because it allows the iPad to directly interface with cameras and SD cards, but because it seemed like a ripe target for hackers to add third-party support for other USB accessories once the jailbreaks were in. In fact, when it was first announced, I wondered how long it would take someone to figure out how to get their iPad reading data off a USB hard drive.

Not very long, it turns out. Max Shay has just posted an in depth walkthrough on how to hook up an external hard drive to your jailbroken iPad.

It’s not simple: you need a split USB cable to supply enough juice to the hard drive and an external computer with a terminal application to fool the iPad into mounting the external storage. But as a proof of concept, it’s pretty interesting stuff: I wonder how long its going to take hackers to figure out how to use the SD dongle in the iPad Camera Connection Kit to give the iPad expandable storage.

iHome’s pantheon of docks, clocks, and speakers for the iPhone and iPod are pretty hard to keep straight, but their flagship iP90 alarm clock docking station has always been one of their more visible products… and now they’ve updated it with a host of new features that make the iP90 a better buy than before.

Like its previous incarnation, the iP90 will charge and play music from the iPhone and iPod, and functions as a speaker dock, a dual alarm clock and an AM/FM radio. The new iP90’s most immediately obvious improvement, though, is a larger and more clear display, as well as improved sound quality thanks to Reson8 stereo speaker chambers as well as adjustable bass and treble.

In addition, the iP90 now has a Time Sync feature that automatically sets the time on your clock to the more trustworthy time on your iPhone or iPod. A switch for changing the clock to daylight savings time is also there, although if your phone is setting the time for you, I don’t really see the point.

Like the earlier model, the iP90 looks like a good addition to any iPhone owners bedside table. It will cost $99.

In a post on Yahoo’s Mobile Blog, the big purple Y! seems pretty gobsmacked that 10% of iPad traffic is coming from outside of the US, despite the fact that there has yet to be an international roll out of the tablet.

Ostensibly for keeping track of your kids, employees or your child labor’s iPad surfing, Mobile Spy’s iPad Spy is probably really meant for the jealous paramour, the sleazy private dick or the professional identity thief: it allows you to record the email and website visits of anyone using the iPad on which it is installed.

iPad Spy runs as a background process, so it requires a jailbroken iPad to work. When it’s installed, there’s no hint that anything is running, but the software will record all of your emails and website visits and silently upload the data to a website to be perused by the (probably malicious) installer.

Sure, this technically could be used as another level of iPad parental controls, or to make sure your employees aren’t looking at porn on their company iPads, but let’s face it: this is really just for creeps. If you’re paranoid about such things, the best advice is to just not trust any iPad with a Cydia icon on the homescreen.

[via Gizmodo]

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ug55F6_t74&feature=player_embedded

Now that Spirit is out, emulation on your iPad is finally possible for everyone who can click a “Jailbreak” button and launch Cydia.

Even better: the iPad’s larger screen real estate finally makes an iDevice into a satisfying emulation console when paired through Bluetooth with a standard Nintedo Wiimote. All you need to do is jailbreak your iPad, download the latest version of snes4iPhone through Cydia ($5.99) and pair your Wiimote with your iPad to set Samus spin jumping with perfectly analogue precision.

Couple this with a $0.69 business card holder and you’ve got yourself a fantastic portable SNES you can be proud of.

[via Touch Arcade]

Taking their cue from start-ups like Square, Visa is planning to get in on the iPhone payment act, with a line of special iPhone cases that will allow you to make credit card purchases at retail just by waving your handset in front of a cash register.

Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber pointed out this excellent alt-universe mock-up of what icons for non-universal iPhone apps should look like on the iPad home screen.

We start off with another deal on iMacs, including a 21.5-inch 3.06GHz desktop machine with LED-backlit screen for $999. Also on tap is the latest batch price cuts from the App Store, including “Dogs Play Poker,” a poker game. Finally, we check out DMG Canvas 2 for the Mac, which helps create and customize disk images.

Along the way we’ll look at many more items, details of which can always be found on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Earlier this week when we ran down a handful of options for mounting an iPad in a car, we missed this gem from blogger Jacky Yuen of alohaeveryone.com. Watch in the clip above as he demonstrates how he affixes his iPad to the dash of his car by running some thin cord through the vent ducts and hanging the iPad — sheathed in an Apple iPad case — on it like boxers on a clothesline (also notice the demo of Air Video, a great little video-streaming app we’ll review soon).

The viewing angle isn’t customizable, it requires cooperative ducts and the official Apple iPad case ($39), and it sure isn’t pretty. But it looks like it works; and unlike the other solutions, it’s cheap and it’s available right now. Or at least as soon as you’ve got the case and liberated that ball of string from your cat.

If you’ve ever wanted a full subscription to Car and Driver or Maxim on your iDevice, now’s probably a good time to take the plunge: Zinio, the biggest electronic magazine rack on the web, has slashed subscriptions today for five of its titles to $5 — a pretty good deal, as a year-long subscription to one of these titles is now what one issue — in either the electronic or print edition — usually goes for.

The remaining sale titles are Spin, PC Magazine and Nylon. The subscriptions are for a full year, and the titles can be read on a Mac or PC, or on the iPhone, iPt or iPad through Zinio’s free app (we’ll review Zinio on the iPad soon).

Sale ends today at 4 p.m. PDT though.

The iPad has always been seen as Apple’s answer to the growing demand for low-cost netbooks. Now comes more evidence that the iPad is hurting sales of netbooks. Since the iPad’s introduction in January, demand for the low-cost notebook computers has steadily fallen, one analyst said Thursday.

It’s hard to envision the “magical” tablet (as Apple CEO Steve Jobs often describes the iPad) being a cannibal, but that’s what Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty indicates. Sales of notebooks and netbook computers are the leading candidates for cannibalization by the iPad, Huberty told investors Thursday.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7Aw5C7WQ6g

Macs do bundles better than anyone, but if you’re a Mac gamer, the Humble Indie Bundle might be the best one yet. Not only do you get to name your price for five amazing Mac indie games worth $80 — World of Goo, Gish, Lugaru HD, Penumbra Overture and Aquaria — but you get too choose if you want your money to go to support Child’s Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or line the developers’ pockets with filthy lucre.

Right now, the average contribution for the pack is just $7.87, with the total money raised over $360,000. I’m sure Cult of Mac readers can push that average contribution number up a few sense: these games, these developers and these charities are all worth your money.

Apple’s always experimenting with new ways to interact with their devices, and their latest patent takes that experiment one step further into turning your iPhone into a programmable heart rate monitor.

The patent describes a design in which a series of electrodes are seamlessly embedded into the iPhone’s shell in such a way that they are not “visibly or haptically distinguishable on the device.”

You may not be able to see or feel these electrodes, but that doesn’t mean they don’t do anything: instead, they’ll constantly measure your heart rate, with the data used to do anything from measure burned calories to change your music depending on your mood to automatically discharge the battery as a “paddle shock” when your heart suddenly explodes. Win!

More than half of Verizon Wireless customers surveyed are interested in buying the iPhone when it becomes available, a new report indicates. There is “an unprecedented demand for the iPhone among Verizon subscribers,” one analyst firm says.

Changewave surveyed 4,000 Verizon subscribers and found 19 percent are “very likely” to buy the Apple handset with another 34 percent saying they are “somewhat likely” to purchase an iPhone. Another analyst believes a Verizon iPhone could appear in 2011 and sell a minimum of 11 million handsets the first year.