Cult of Mac

The iPhone’s stripped down version of Safari lacks many of the features of its more well-endowed OSX brother — for instance, Mobile Safari won’t do tabs, or let users make in-page word searches. And iPad’s Mobile Safari won’t perform those tricks either.

A couple of months ago, we reviewed Vais Salikhov’s Find In Page, a $1 app that patched the latter hole, making in page searches possible on the iPhone. Version 2.0 was just released yesterday, making it fully compatible with the iPad.

Find In Page is probably even more of a must-have item on the iPad than it is on the iPhone, since the iPad is such a surf-board that Safari will probably get used much more heavily than on the iPhone. Although, maybe a few hours worth of patience are in order here — it’s entirely possible the tweaks revealed within the next few hours or so might contain this same little fix.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt-Jaz1oRAU

They’re called bullet hell SHMUPS (shoot-em-ups): Galaga style arcade shooters where enemies puke so many bright bad bullets at you that surviving even for a few seconds requires muscle memory down to the pixel… and Cave’s one of the most devious development houses out there at creating them.

Consider me more than impressed, though, by this video from Cave, demonstrating their upcoming iPhone port of ESPGALUDA II. You wouldn’t think a SHMUP requiring pixel-perfect positioning would work on the iPhone, but it’s amazing how good the controls here look.

According to Cave, ESPGALUDA II will be released on Saturday and cost $4.99. Considering beating a game this difficult at the arcades would cost you a couple grand in quarters, that’s a steal: for an unabashedly clumsy and inept SHMUP fan like me, that’s basically like buying a game and getting a MacBook Pro for free.

Carved unibody aluminum may well end up being to the gadget design of the late oughts what wood paneling was to the gadget design of the late 70s, so why not ironically set the trend and transform your MacBook into a laptop Mike Brady could be proud of with these laptop skins from Karvt?

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

The “Get A Mac” series may be over, but Apple’s app-centric iPhone campaign is still as effective as ever. In the latest ad, “Shopper,” a husband explains how he used his iPhone 3Gs and the RedLaser price comparison app to get his wife a new espresso maker.

Unlike other iPhone ads, this one is unique in that it focuses on a sole app, but these ads still really hit the right note to me: they’re down-to-earth messages aimed at the every man focusing on the one indisputable thing the iPhone still does better than every other smartphone out there: software.

He may be homo sapiens‘ answer to a hipster Droopy, but after Steve Jobs, Justin Long is the avatar of the Apple experience thanks to the popular series of “Get a Mac” ads. Now he tells the Onion AV Club that the campaign might be through.

Although Apple said it sold 300,000 iPads just on April 3, that figure has more than doubled as of Thursday morning. More than 600,000 iPads have gone online, according to a running tally begun earlier this week by advertising network Chitka.

California, unsurprisingly, has the most dense iPad per population ratio in the country, with one tablet device per 1,441 citizens of the West Coast state. At the other end of the spectrum is Wyoming with one iPad per 8,247 citizens of the big sky state.

Just days after Apple began sales of the initial iPad, the Cupertino, Calif. company is readying a smaller, less-expensive version for 2011, a report suggested Thursday. The unit would be 5- to 7-inches and carry a $400 price tag, according to a Taiwan tech publication.

The mini iPad would focus on consumers needing a smaller device and tasks not requiring much text input, Digitimes said, citing the publication’s research analyst. The analyst made the claims based on “talks with upstream component sources,” according to the Digitimes Web site.

We’ve already explained how the Dock is split into two halves, and looked at the applications side of it in the last screencast.

This time, we’re looking at more ways to customize the Dock, and make it bend to your will.

Last week’s release of iTunes 9.1 was largely noted for enabling the use of the iPad, no small feat. Of potentially far more use for those of us who haven’t yet managed to scrape together the pennies to buy an iPad is the ability to downsample all music for devices, whether iPad, -Pod, or -Phone, to 128kbps AAC. What this means is that you can keep high-quality (even lossless) audio files on your computer, and still carry a ton of songs without investing in a 160 GB iPod classic.

This is incredibly welcome news for me. I have a 28.07 gigabyte iTunes library, more than enough to take up nearly all the room on the highest-capacity iPhone 3GS. And lately, it had gotten to the point that I couldn’t even update my larger apps unless I deleted some music. So I synced my iPhone, clicked on its icon in iTunes, and then checked the box under Options reading “Convert higher bit rate songs to 128kbps AAC”. And voila — my phone was out of commission for eight hours! Seriously, don’t stop this process if you start it — there are grave consequences for interruption.

But when I woke up, the magic had been done. I went from eight spare megabytes (really) to 8.5 spare gigabytes — a thousandfold improvement. It’s like Apple upgraded me to a 40 GB iPhone while I slept. The music isn’t noticeably worse (to my ears, anyway), and it means I can carry a lot more of it. Brilliant. Thanks, Apple.

As noted by new iPad owners (including the Cult’s editor, Leander Kahney), the iPad is a hungry baby, and sucking at the teat of some older USB ports leaves it screaming for more juice.

What about keeping the iPad topped up on a road trip via the USB car-charger you bought last year? No can-do — the one or half-amp those older chargers generally put out is fine for the iPhone, but just like other aging USB ports, starves the iPad.

Which means you’ll end up having to pop for something like Griffin’s new PowerJolt for iPad or Kensington’s PowerBolt (yeah, no potential confusion there), both $25 — about $5 more than what the old, lower-rated units sell for; the chargers are backward-compatible and play happily with all current iPhones and iPods.

We reach midweek with another round of Mac-related deals. First up is a number of bargains on Apple iPods, starting with a fourth-gen 8GB iPod nano for $99. We also check into a new batch of App Store freebies, including “BaseBrawl,” touted as a violent baseball game. The iTunes store has released another freebie: Juliet Venegas’ “Bien o Mal.”

Along the way, we check out some new apps for the iPad and iPhone, as well as some interesting hardware. Details on these and many other items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Current iPhone users will likely stay iPhone users, indicates new research released Wednesday. More than 9 in 10 iPhone owners stay Apple fans, an analyst said.

“While we believe that this retention can change rapidly, anecdotally during our survey we even received emails from three respondents asking when the next iPhone will be available,” wrote UBS analyst Maynard Um. Um expects Apple will announce 7.5 million of the iconic handsets were sold during the first three months of 2010.

A curious report emerged Tuesday surrounding the seeming never-ending attempt by Verizon Wireless to break into the exclusive U.S. iPhone market. While previous reports have used anonymous sources in the will they, won’t they soap opera, the latest voice heard came from Verizon’s CEO.

Ivan Seidenberg, speaking before the Council on Foreign Relations, said his company has told Apple it would like to sell the iPhone, according to the AP. Although Seidenberg provided no details, such as when Verizon made the request or Apple’s response, the CEO did use a recent Wall Street Journal article to peg his hopes. The WSJ reported that Apple was developing two new iPhones – including one compatible with the CDMA technology used by Verizon.

The second-generation iPad may include a camera, an analyst told investors Wednesday. Omnivision, which makes sensors for digital cameras is “well-positioned” to be a supplier to Apple’s iPad, as well as the iPhone, according to J.P. Morgan analyst Paul Coster.

In a related note, RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky said Tuesday most consumers interested in buying an iPad are waiting until the second-generation tablet device is released before pulling the trigger and purchasing the gadget. Abramsky speculates 60 percent of interested consumers held back from the April 3 launch, perhaps explaining why analyst forecasts were far higher than the 300,000 sales Apple reported Monday. A second-generation iPad would likely address items such as a camera, Flash and USB ports missing from the first iPads released.

Is printing directly from your iPhone or iPad in the cards for iPhone OS 4.0?

Well, maybe, although the evidence is pretty scant.
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Check the support pages for iWorks, and you’ll find this little note on the subject: “Printing directly from iPad is not currently available.”

The operative word here is currently, and while we’re reading a lot into it, it does at least hint that Apple’s considering how to best go about bringing direct printing to its line of handheld devices… and give iPad and iPhone users one less reason to open up their laptops.

Like many questions about iPhone OS 4.0, we expect to know more about this at Apple’s corporate event on Thursday.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3J0cMAwHUo

You won’t see this on the App Store anytime soon, since Nintendo would pretty much throw a conniption fit, but here’s Super Mario Kart running gorgeously on the iPad through the glories of emulation.

The emulator’s from ZodTTD, who has previously done iPhone’s SNES and N64 emulators. All we need to do now is just wait for the iPad jailbreak to mosey along and we’ll be racing Yoshi and fighting Gannon with the rest of the non-Apple tablet world.

[via Gadget Lab]

The hellish ordeal of going through airport security may involve throwing away all your liquids, walking shoeless on a filthy floor, being groped by a glorified rent-a-cop, and becoming the nude subject of body scans… but at least you won’t need to take your iPad out of your bag along with your other laptops. Yet.

According to the TSA, iPads don’t need to be removed from carry-on luggage when going through X-Ray screening.

It all comes down to thinness: the iPad’s svelte design makes it easier for the scanner to identify. Additionally, since there’s a minimum of peripherals available for the iPad, the tablet is unlikely to be obstructed by other hardware as it passes through the scanner.

Good news for frequent travelers, but consider me suspicious: this is just too reasonable of a position for the TSA to take for me to believe it’ll be in place for long.

Having some problems with your iPad’s WiFi connection? Apple’s aware of the problem, and has some ideas on how to fix them.

According to Apple, the iPad might not automatically rejoin known WiFi networks using third-party routers that are dual-band capable (802.11 b/g and 802.11 n) when each band’s network uses the same name or use different security settings.

Apple’s recommendation? Try creating separate network names for each separate band’s network (ie: add a G to the end of the name of the 802.11 b/g band) and making sure both bands’ networks use the same security settings.

We’ve been lucky enough to not have this problem, but what about you? Is this solution fixing your problem, or is their a bigger issue afloat?

[via Gizmodo]

The guys iSuppli are wonderful techno-vivisecters, capable of dismantling the latest Apple product with a few quick twists of the screwdriver and telling you how much all of the limbs and organs cost.

Predictably, they haven’t waited long to do just that with the iPad. So how much does that pretty 16GB iPad sitting on your lap right now cost Apple to make? Just $259.60.

Warning: The above video contains violence and/or wanton destruction of Apple product, and should not be viewed by anyone sensitive to either.

The iPad, as we all know, does not have a camera. But one developer has come up with an ingenious way of getting round that minor inconvenience, and turning the iPad into a photography device.

All you need to make it work is an iPhone.

We kick off today’s round of daily deals with a trio of Apple hardware. First up is a 160GB Apple TV unit for $189. Next is a deal on a no-contract 8GB iPhone 3G for $360. We round out the top trio of deals with a 500GB Apple Time Capsule for $179.

Along the way, we check out a DLO hard shell case for the 3G or 3GS, along with a new batch of App Store price drops (SimCity is priced at $2.99 — a $2 savings.) As always, details on these and many other bargains are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

As a Douglas Adams fan, I’ve always envisioned Apple, and not the great publishing companies of Ursa Minor, as the most likely creators of one of the most remarkable books in the universe, and I was hoping Gelaskins would already have a skin up transforming my iPad into the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by emblazoning it with the large and calming words: “DON’T PANIC.”

Unfortunately, they don’t, but in the meantime, I think this “Keep Calm and Carry On” skin might do the trick.

Check out Gelaskins for more ways to temporarily tattoo your tablet.

If you ordered an iPad after Apple moved delivery dates to April 12 from April 3, your gadget may be winging its way from China, according to a Tuesday report.

The Apple news site 9to5Mac is reporting customers are receiving shipping notification. Electronics retail giant Best Buy will also receive another batch of iPads in time for an April 11 sales event, the site also reports.

We’ve all been where Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster was on Monday. Always go with your first answer. After last week predicting Apple would sell 200,000 to 300,000 iPads on Saturday, Munster doubled that original figure to between 600,000 to 700,000. Then came Apple’s official sales count: 300,000.

In a mea culpa of sorts, the analyst told investors his enhanced estimate was based on a faulty belief that 75 percent of sales would come from online pre-orders. The actual percentage was more like 50 percent online.