A variety of circumstances, all of them terribly uninteresting, have prevented me from commenting on the recent introduction of iPhone OS 4 hot on the heels of the iPad launch. Since I’ve missed the window, I’ll keep the big picture thinking short: I think Apple has done exactly what it needs to maintain its lead in mobile operating systems. I wish I had it now. I will be annoyed if paid apps get over-run with iAds, but I don’t think such paid apps will sell well enough to survive.

But there’s a lot more to discuss in the details, and here, I have one big quibble with iPhone OS 4 – and it’s also a strength of WebOS and Android. Why haven’t notifications been fixed yet? If you own an iPhone, you know exactly what I mean. As you browse the web, or play a game, or even compose an e-mail, a blue box with white text pops up in the middle of the screen, letting you know about an imminent appointment, an incoming text message, a bill due through Mint.com, or even a Facebook friend request from your high school nemesis.

Looking for something to play this weekend? The amazing rogue-like RPG, Sword of Fargoal for the iPhone and iPod Touch is free to download for today only. I bought it for $4.99 a month ago, and it was worth every penny.

Fargoal going free is serendipitous, since this is an especially good time to grab the game: a new patch adding a chunk of new content is imminent, and the developers have been firmly committed to not just expanding the existing game, but evolving it in fresh new ways as well.

Mid-way through what turned out to be be a pretty weak episode, the third in the latest series of Doctor Who broadcast by the BBC this evening, we were treated to something unexpected: new Daleks.

And not just any old Daleks, oh no. These ones sport sleek curves, unibody enclosures, and come in a range of fashionable bright colors. They are, unmistakably, iDaleks, designed by Apple in California, built in a BBC warehouse on the outskirts of Cardiff.

It wasn’t just me that thought so. Within moments of their appearance on screen, Twitter was buzzing with iDalek comments. This gallery of concept art has more iDalek pics; and this PDF of an old-school Dalek in full Second World War attire is worth downloading. Weak story aside, the episode was worth watching for the best line – a wartime-green Dalek yelling: “WOULD YOU CARE FOR SOME TEA?”

After one of the longest waits in the Intel era, the MacBook Pros were updated Tuesday complete with a migration to the new Intel i5 and i7 architecture. In addition to the CPU update these new top-end notebooks feature better battery life, and the ability to switch from integrated to high performance graphics on the fly. We here at the Cult managed to get our hands on one of the top-dog 17 inch i7 models on Wednesday have have been putting it though it’s paces.

Follow us after the jump for out first impressions and a detailed rundown of the King of the Hill’s real world performance.

From Too Big To Fale.

A clever Craigslist capitalist is selling these cool iPad stands for $10. Says the ad:

This is a nice elegant portable durable plastic iPad stand to use either when using a Bluetooth keyboard or when watching a video or photo slideshow in vertical or horizontal position. The stand can easily be packed to take with you, unlike cumbersome wire stands or docks. It puts the iPad at a great angle for viewing and has a nice contoured shape which will not scratch your iPad. The beautiful black color blends in with the iPad the best out of any stand we have seen for a sleek professional look.

Made in the USA!

$10. cash. and I have a few of them available.

But here’s where to get them for just $0.69:

Note: This is a guest column by David Yoken, founder of Macuity, a Boston Apple consultancy, who discusses the joys of providing IT and repair services to machines that “just work.”

Just got off a call with an architectural firm for whom we set up a brand new server last week. The typical conversation I have with clients is amusingly formulaic, and this one was much of the same:

Me: How’s everything going with your new server?

Customer: It’s really wonderful. We haven’t had any problems, and the transition has been nearly seamless.

Me: Super! I’m glad things are working out. I suppose now would be a good time to talk about a service and maintenance contract and schedule for your new equipment.

Customer: Well, we probably can handle most everything on our own. Apple makes it so easy, so we’ll be fine!

Me: Oh, umm…, absolutely! How about remote monitoring or help desk services?

Customer: Yeah, sure, but you probably won’t hear from us much on that end either. I think we can take it from here, but thanks!

Above: Mark Fiore’s “Learn to Speak Teabag” cartoon, which Apple considers too objectionable for the App Store.

Thanks to a stink in the press, Apple has called Pultizer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore and asked him to resubmit his rejected app, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Apple initially rejected Fiore’s political satire app because it ridiculed public figures, which is against the App Store rules.

Although a few small, private colleges have rushed to adopt the iPad — pledging them to incoming students before they were even in stores — several big universities have delayed adopting them for at least a few semesters.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Princeton, Cornell and George Washington universities have deferred admission of the iPad for students.

Princeton and George Washington decided to wait over security issues; Cornell is concerned over connectivity and bandwidth.

First came iPhone apps for iMussolini then Che Guevara, now there’s an app for Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

Just like the other ones, iFranco is a compendium of speeches, messages, videos and audio El Caudillo made during his 36-year reign.

It also appears that, like the others, the $0.99 app was approved from a non-US iTunes store but is available in the US.

Apple will release its first quarter financial results Tuesday, April 20 at 5 p.m. Eastern (2 p.m. Pacific), the Cupertino, Calif. company announced Friday.

The iPhone maker is expected to announce it sold between 6 million and 7.5 million, according to Wall Street analysts. On Thursday, Apple was ranked in 56th place on Fortune magazine’s Fortune 500 list of most successful companies.

We wrap up another week with three MacBook offers as our top daily deals. First up is a MacBook Pro sporting the new Core i& processor, running at 2.66GHz and with a 15-inch screen. Three years of AppleCare is bundled with the hardware for $2,499. Next is a Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro running at 2.4GHz and with a 13.3-inch screen for $1,049. Our finally top deal is a series of MacBook Pros, starting at $1,699 for a 2.5GHz machine with a 15.4-inch screen.

Along the way, we check out some Mac Pro Xeon workstations starting at $2,549 for a quad-core 2.93GHz machine. Various hardware and software bargains are also on tap. As always, details on these and many more items are available on CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Apple’s fortunes just keep improving — literally. The Cupertino, Calif. maker of iconic consumer electronics reached 56 in Fortune magazine’s Fortune 500 list, rising 15 spots in the annual ranking of corporate success. Apple’s $36.5 billion in revenue for 2009 put it just behind 10th-place HP ($114.5 billion) and 38th-place Dell ($52.9 billion.)

The 26th-most-profitable company on the list, Apple’s $5.7 billion 2009 profit put it ahead of entertainment giant Walt Disney and McDonald’s. However, rivals Microsoft and Google continued to beat Apple’s profits.

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 Fox Vs Duck, GW Monkey, National Trust, Photogene, Reeder, and TinyPixels.

If you want to watch movies on your iPhone outside, you’ve got a couple of options. You can hold it in your hand like a sucker, or you can lay out $30 for this TV Hat, an absurdly long billed baseball cap with a built-in hood like an even bigger sucker. Just harness your iPhone at the end of the darkened viewing chamber and you’re good for hands and glare free viewing. Alternatively, duct tape your iPhone to your face. Whatever!

Poor Verizon. They’ve got the nation’s best 3G coverage, but there’s no concrete plans for them to get an iPhone in sight. They don’t even have the so-called Googlephone, the HTC Nexus One, probably the second best smartphone on the market after the iPhone.

Looks like Verizon just caught a break, though. They’ve just announced that they’ll be getting HTC’s latest, the Droid Incredible on April 29th, which is equal to the Nexus One in almost every way, including a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a 3.7-inch 800 x 480 AMOLED touchscreen display, an 8MP camera with dual LED flash, integrated 3G, GPS and wireless. It’ll be available for $200 with a two-year contract.

Not a bad little coup for Verizon, but with the next generation iPhone just around the bend and likely boasting a 1GHz A4 CPU, a 960×640 display and dual-cameras, the Incredible’s not going to look so very much so for long.

Political caricaturist Mark Fiore was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning to ever be awarded to a web-only cartoonist, so obviously he’s got some artistic and editorial merit… but not in Apple’s eyes.

Word from the Nieman Journalism Lab reports that Fiore submitted his iPhone app, NewsToons, back in December, but was rejected for “ridiculing public figures.”

It’s Friday and we’re all a little tired. Luckily, a surprisingly vociferous Steve Jobs has been taking to his iPad email client a lot lately to entertain us.

His latest missive? Explaining the rationale behind leaving the 13-inch MacBook Pros behind the Core i3i5 15 and 17-inchers with comparatively wimpy Core 2 Duo processors.

If you’re one of the 1+ million inhabitants of Canada’s Texas-sized prairie province, Saskatchewan, it looks like you’ll have some options on which wireless carrier to pick when Apple announced the next iPhone in June.

SaskTel has just announced that they are building out their new HSDPA network in the province, and they’ll be offering Apple’s handset to all of their customers.

According to President and CEO Robert Watson, “We’re building the 3G network right now. It will be up and running for July 1st (with) completion by the end of this year. The good news is that (Apple) is coming out with a new version of the iPhone in the June time-frame and they’re going to put us on that.”

That’s good news for Saskatchewanians: Rogers’ existing HSDPA coverage of the province is pretty woeful. Being totally dedicated to the region, hopefully SaskTel will do better with their network of 3G coverage, especially if they get the iPhone.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

We like our Steve Jobs slightly grumpy, so after his humorous prosaic experiment with Californian surfer lingo yesterday, it’s nice to see him get back to keeping it real: namely, by calling a potential customers nuts.

It’s part of the Congressional record: the head of the NSA says the iPad is “wonderful.”

During hearings to determine whether he will take charge of U.S. Cyber Command, the head of the National Security Agency, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, said:

“I am a technologist. I love computers. I have a new iPad,” Alexander told the committee of Senators. A few minutes later, Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado couldn’t help but bring it up again. From the Congressional Quarterly transcript:

Udall: I’m tempted to get a critical review of the iPad, but perhaps we can do that–

Alexander: Wonderful.

Udall: Wonderful. I will put that on — for the record.

Via Forbes’ The Firewall.

Here’s a notable mockup of the iPhone 4G (or iPhone HD) from designer Anthony De Rosa. Says De Rosa:

It’s almost sure the Apple approach to the new iPhone will be as expected (or feared).
Same form factor, to avoid nasty surprises for accessories.
No moving parts, the phone is not a “transformer”.
No MagSafe, LED or other crazy ideas.
Maybe we’ve a dual cameras, but without flash. iPhone isn’t a photocamera.
Then it might look as the just-arrived iPad and will be the ideal cradle for the new iPhone OS 4.0.
We’ve an upgraded hardware, to appreciate the potential of multitasking, a 5Mpx camera, larger and brighter screen, new CPU derived by the A4.
The rest of all will do by “the apple” on the back of the shell.
After all is an Apple device.

Another of De Rosa’s renderings after the jump, plus a polished video showing the phone running the new iPhone 4.0 OS.

Via Redmond Pie. Thanks Taimur.

The iPad in Germany will have data plans from at least three carriers on launch, Cult of Mac has learned.

In a surprise move, Apple isn’t partnering with T-Mobile, the official iPhone carrier, but E-Plus, the country’s third largest mobile operator.

However, not to be left out, T-Mobile is also preparing to offer a low-cost data plan for the iPad.

T-Mobile’s move as well as recent announcements by other European providers illustrates the likelihood that multiple carriers in several countries around the world will offer competing data plans for the iPad, which should drive down monthly data costs and also result in heavily subsidized iPads offered by multiple networks to anyone who is willing to sign a traditional contract.

It may also indicate that month-by-month 3G off-contract will widely be available both in Europe and abroad through Apple’s exclusive iPad 3G partners.

Jailbreak software for the iPhone 4.0 Beta is available for download. But be warned: it could brick your precious device.

The Dev Team has released an early beta of the redsn0w 0.9.5 jailbreak software for 3G iPhones. It’s for knowledgeable, developer types only, they warn:

Please note that this beta is not meant for the average end-user. There are many things “broken” with jailbroken apps in the 4.0beta1 environment right now […] This beta redsn0w allows the developers behind those jailbroken apps (like MobileTerminal.app!) to fix their software before the general public gets iphoneOS 4.0.
Because it’s meant for JB app developers, this beta redsn0w does not perform hactivation. You’ll need a properly-registered developer UDID with Apple to get past the activation screen. For similar reasons, there is no Windows version of this beta redsn0w (since apps are developed on MacOSX). Please don’t pirate Apple software.

More info here: iPhwn.

Via Gizmodo.

Well folks, this settles it: cats are Mac, and dogs are PC. Take a look at the little Corgi alarm going off in the video from Tested.com above for the incontrovertible truth.

I suppose this rules out an iPad at Buckingham Palace.

[via TUAW, Tested.com]