If you don’t want to go out with a PC, there’s a new start-up determined to help you meet other Apples: Cupidtino.

The reasoning behind it?

Diehard Mac & Apple fans often have a lot in common – personalities, creative professions, a similar sense of style and aesthetics, taste, and of course a love for technology. We believe these are enough reasons for two people to meet and fall in love, and so we created the first Mac-inspired dating site to help you find other Machearts around you.

Right now, Cupidtino consists of a skeleton staff of three based in San Francisco, who say that the MacMatchmaking site should launch in June.

They also say the site will be gay-friendly, as long as you don’t bring a “Vista laptop, Windows Phone & Zune.”

We think the idea is clever — and plan to corral Cult of Mac singleton staffers to act as lab rats for the beta. In the meantime, if time you sign up, let us know!

UPDATE: CoM writers Lonnie and Eli have agreed to check it out. More to come…

The iPad is smoldering hot, especially in a professional grade microwave where it goes in pristine, then bursts into flames and comes out a charred, broken brick.

Kenny Irwin, aka dOvetastic, who zaps everything from 1960s telephones to gas masks in an industrial microwave on YouTube, ordered an iPad 3G just to fry it in a performance art piece.

In this 10-minute video, watch and flinch as he gets an iPad 3G straight from FedEx, unboxes it, registers it, then sticks it in the oven with the voice of disturbed/disturbing fanatic.  It quickly goes up in flames, then the charred carcass is taken out with what looks like a pizza oven spatula.

Are you looking for a good price on an iPod? Maybe $99 for a nano? We have the deal for you. The Apple Store is selling a number of iPods (nanos and touches), starting at $99 for an 8GB fourth-generation iPod nano. There’s also a deal on a 16GB iPhone 3GS for $149. Finally, the App Store has another round of freebies, including “Pew Pew Land”, a tower defense game for your iPhone or iPod touch.

Along the way, we’ll check out some bargains on Filemaker Pro 11 and Final Cut Studio 3, as well as an Eye-Fi 8GB memory add-on and a Morphie Juice Pack battery backup. As usual, details on these and many other items can be found on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Update: the original version of this piece failed to identify Clintprints.com as the website for poster artist Clint Wilson. We regret any confusion the omission may have caused.

Rock Show, the music poster marketplace developed especially for Apple’s iPad by Neutrinos, received an update in the iTunes App Store Wednesday that should help the Portland-based startup gain recognition for its innovative business model as well as for the creative designers behind the posters in its inventory.

Rock Show leverages the iPad’s screen real estate to deliver high resolution views of limited edition fine art print concert posters from artists and designers such as Darren Grealish (The Killers, Stevie Wonder, Brian Jonestown Massacre and Lee Scratch Perry) and Lil Tuffy (Dead Weather, Sonic Youth), which makes it a nice vehicle for showing off the iPad’s graphics chops.

Users can also buy posters from within the app, a model Neutrinos founder Rob Banagale hopes will make Rock Show the best digital marketplace for art prints in history.

“Nailing this idea has meant discussions with designers and careful design for users,” Banagale said. On the designer side those discussions led to the creation of a dealer backend for the app that allows designers to upload and maintain which of their posters are made available while also tracking their sales and inventory. “The posters are made by individual artists and design studios from the United States, Canada and the UK,” Banagale explained, saying, “Some of these folks do their own printing and many of them handle shipping posters personally.”

As the old saying goes, statistics can be made to say anything. Particularly when it comes to the increasingly-heated rivalry between Apple and Google. Half of all visits to mobile websites are done via the iPhone, ad network Chitika just announced.

The numbers come just days after Admob released figures in late April indicating smartphones running Google’s Android operating system outpacing iPhone OS-based phones. Does that fact Admob is owned by Google make any difference? Possibly, say some observers.

Add Google to the list of companies planning an ebook service. The Internet giant’s Google Editions service could be up and running as early as June, the Mountain View, Calif. company told publishers Tuesday. Google would compete with Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble for the growing audience of electronic readers.

Unlike its competitors, Google Editions would be available from any Web browser. Apple ties its iBook library to the iPad and iPhone while Amazon has its Kindle reader.

Infamous crap-gadget house Brando’s latest dispensable accessory is a compact Bluetooth keyboard that they claim is perfect for the iPad, which crams 52 keys into a form factor no larger than the iPhone in a device only half-an-inch thick. It costs $37.

I don’t get it. If you want to type on your iPad, you can use the on-screen software keyboard or connect a Bluetooth keyboard if you prefer a more physical and tactile typing solution. How is using a physical keypad the size of an iPhone easier than either of those options? The keyboard’s cheaper than Apple’s own alternatives, but not cheap enough to be so useless.

It’s a bad time to invest in a portable USB hard drive as a Mac fan. Apple’s dropped Firewire support on many of their notebooks, but have yet to adopt the USB 3.0 standard, leaving Apple customers stuck using aging and slow USB 2.0 hardware.

If you’re looking for a new hard drive, then, it’s easy to recommend Seagate’s new FreeAgent GoFlex line which can connect to most interfaces, including USB 2.0, USB 3.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800 and eSATA.

Campus police at the University of Illinois are testing an iPhone app that lets them keep an eye on students that puts security cam footage at their fingertips via iPhones and iPods.

They’re using an app called iRa C3, a video command center designed for security personnel and first responders that can be accessed via web interface, iPhone, or iPod touch.

Cost is based on the number of cameras and users; the campus set-up of 15 cameras covered in high-risk crime areas cost $25,000. (Or it would have: app maker Lextech lab, founded by alumnus Alex Bratton took $15,000 off the price, a parent’s group ponied up the other $10,000).

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As the resident sadomasochist in love with roguelike games, I’ve been waiting for months for Dinofarm Games to release their lovingly crafted take on the genre, 100 Rogues. Now they have, and it’s available on the App Store for $4.99! Kalloo! Kallay!

During a call discussing News Corp’s latest financial results, Rupert Murdoch told investors that the Wall Street Journal has been extremely successful on the iPad, and it’s far more profitable for them than similar content on the Kindle, at least on a per subscriber basis.

An exciting new feature in the latest iPhone OS 4.0 beta might finally address a long standing complaint of both users and app developers: the inability to easily move non-media files between the iPhone and a computer. According to Boy Genius Report, iPhone OS 4.0’s new File Sharing feature will allow you to transfer and sync files directly between your iPhone and your computer.

All you do is plug your iPhone into iTunes, go to the Apps tab and scroll down. On the left side of the screen, you choose an app from a list of supported programs, while the right side of the screen allows you to copy files into that app’s sandbox or save them from your iPhone onto your computer.

The File Sharing feature doesn’t work yet, but it’s an exciting hint at things to come. It looks like a lot of the office and productivity suites on the iPhone OS are about to get a lot easier to use across multiple platforms.

Beta 3 of the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK has a couple of great new interface features, including the ability to close background apps through a hold-and-close method similar to the way deleting programs functions on the operating system, but I think I like the new media player widgets best.

In the latest beta, if you load the multitasking interface you see a new set of widgets that sit in the dock to control iPod playback. The widgets include three buttons for track navigation (Play/Pause, Track Back, Track Forward), a shortcut to launch the iPod application, and a software orientation lock which serves the same function as the iPad’s hardware switch. Accessing the widgets is as simple as swiping left on the dock.

Very slick, but what interests me most is the possibility of further widget sets. If third-party developers can program their own widgets to control background apps from the dock, multitasking on iPhone OS 4.0 is just going to rock. Skype widgets anyone? My guess is that’s just what Apple has in mind, and the screen orientation lock will be the one standard icon

In what might charitably be called the most toothless and limp parody this side of your dentureless grampa doing a timely Grover Cleveland impersonationation right before nap time, Ellen DeGeneres went on her talk show on Monday to poke fun at the iPhone 3Gs.

Ellen’s hilarious gag? When she wants to send a text message, she can’t do it through the “Maps” application. The punchline? The iPhone’s hard to use!

This tutorial helps you find out the ECID of your iPhone, which helps extracting SHSH keys needed to downgrade your device.

Ingredients:

• iPhone 3GS / iPod Touch G3 / iPad
• Mac
  Continue reading

At Steve Jobs 30th birthday party, the jazz great Ella Fitzgerald sings him happy birthday. She seems to have no idea who he is.

Part 14 of “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs,” Macworld founder David Bunnell’s personal history of the Mac.

I am all for the Federal government funding and deploying a robust and relentless antitrust division. I don’t wish to go into detail or name examples here and now, but I believe the emasculation of antitrust and restraint of trade investigation and prosecution over the past 30 years has meant a great disservice to the public and to the economy. If that arm of the Justice Department gets revived under Obama it will be a good thing for the country and for the world.

With respect to antitrust claims against Apple related to either the iPhone Developer’s Agreement or the iAds program I don’t think Apple has a thing to worry about.

Scrivener is quite simply an excellent tool for writers.

Packed with features but not overwhelming you with them, it is particularly well suited for writing long-form works: books, screenplays, academic papers, and any other text work that can be broken into chapter-sized chunks.

Scrivener was developed by a writer, so it works the way a writer’s brain works. It knows that long written works are likely to be written in these scattered chunks, not always in the order they will appear in the finished book, and not always published in the order they were written. Scrivener lets you write, then re-arrange your writing using smart outliner modes.

The chunks of writing are known as “Scrivenings”, and if you use the “Edit Scrivenings” command you can edit each chunk in context alongside its siblings. It’s a terrifically useful way of writing.

Scrivener is flexible. There are loads of features on offer, but you can switch off anything you don’t need. It handles big projects with many hundreds of text pages and associated research files, it saves everything automatically (you never need to hit Command+S), and it offers excellent value for money.

For basic writing, you have TextEdit which comes pre-installed on your Mac and is excellent for many tasks (I use it for writing articles every day). But for anything beyond basic writing, Scrivener is well worth considering – and is a great deal cheaper – than the likes of Microsoft Word. For long-form writing, it’s hard to beat.

(You’re reading the 3rd post in our series, 50 Essential Mac Applications. Read more.)

I haven’t eaten watermelon in what must be going on a year now, but I’m sure this dollar-app is a must-have for serious watermelon afficionados (the clip looks like it was filmed in Israel, which is notoriously watermelon-crazy).

The developer claims iWatermelon Deluxe can determine if a watermelon is ripe just by having the user set the iPhone onto the melon in question, selecting the melon’s color and size, and tapping its rind a few times.

A somewhat odd description on the dev’s website additionally suggests that “iWatermelon is also fun to try on more Hollow [sic], round objects.” Not sure what they’re suggesting, but plopping an iPhone on someone’s head, rapping on that head and then explaining that you’re using an app made for watermelons to determine whether they’re ripe or not is sure to be a conversation starter.

In a post yesterday about CoPilot’s new iPad navigation app, I remarked that I’d like to see more iPad car mounts than the custom dash fabricated by Soundman Car Audio; turns out, while it doesn’t look as if anything is available yet, there are a few companies working on solutions which should be available soon. Here’s a quick look at what’s coming.

We start off with a roundup of iPad apps, including “Glyder 2 for iPad.” In the same vein, we have the latest batch of App Store price drops, including the “Chop Chop Ninja” action game. Finally, the Apple Store offers a number of unibody MacBook Pro laptops, starting at $929 for a 2.26GHz model with 13-inch screen. (There’s also a deal on a fully-loaded Core i7 MacBook Pro with AppleCare for $2,699.)

Along the way we’ll also check out software bargains and other deals on gadgets. As always, details on these and many other items can be found on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page which starts right after the jump.

Even if you don’t jailbreak, step on or otherwise open up your iPad you can always wear the innards on your chest with the Exploded iPad tee.

This is the latest model in the Exploded Apple series — like the 128K and iPhone —  from artist Garry Booth and Dion Briggs.

Also available in a poster version, the design is printed on American Apparel tees in 100% cotton. You can snap up either one for $19, plus shipping.

Beats the heck out of the jokey iPad tees that have flooded the market so far.

Federal antritrust regulators are taking a keen interest in changes Apple made to its iPhone developers agreement, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters are reporting.

Steve Jobs is at it again — emailing Apple customers with answers to their questions.

This one was sent to CultofMac.com by reader Paul Greenberg, who asked Jobs about a missing MobileMe feature that’s been bugging him for three years: the inability to sync notes via MobileMe.

As Microsoft’s Internet Explorer falls to just under 60 percent of the browser market, Google’s Chrome has jumped ahead of Apple’s Safari, indicates a new survey released Tuesday. Although Mozilla’s Firefox took the largest percentage of the market lost by Microsoft, Google’s Chrome took 6.7 percent, versus 2.5 percent for Apple’s Safari.

Internet Explorer declined to 59.95 percent of the browser market, down from its high point of 80 percent in 2008, according to Net Applications, which analyzes Internet traffic trends. Firefox picked up about nine of those lost percentage points, with Google’s Chrome snaring 6.7 percent of IE’s share (up from 0 before 2009), and Safari took 2.5 percentage points for 4.72 percent of the browser market.