Cult of Mac

More smartphones are using Apple’s OS X operating system than Windows Mobile, a researcher said Thursday. Apple’s software now has 12.9 percent of the global smartphone market, pushing Microsoft out of No. 3 behind RIM and handset giant Nokia.

OS X-based smartphones – fueled by Apple’s popular iPhone – saw a 327 percent year-over-year increase, rising from 3.4 percent of the market in the third quarter of 2007. The increase far outstripped the 11.5 percent annual increase in the overall smartphone market, according to Gartner.

By contrast, Microsoft’s marketshare fell 3 percent to 11.1 percent.

Mac software maker Adobe Wednesday announced it will eliminate 600 jobs as the company blames weak consumer demand and the U.S. recession for less-than-expected fourth quarter revenue.

The San Jose, Calif.-based firm projected it would earn between $912 million to $915 million for the quarter ended Nov. 28, far below the $930 million Wall Street expected. Adobe had earlier estimated revenue between $925 million to $955 million.

Weaker than expected demand for Adobe’s Creative Suite 4, released in October, was given as one reason for the shortfall.

Wal-Mart may be set to sell a 4GB iPhone for $99, Starting Dec. 28, the BoyGenius Website suggested Thursday. The move would mark the return of the iPhone version dropped in 2007 in favor of the 8GB iPhone.

Although BG told readers to take the tip with a grain of salt, reviving the once $399 iPhone comes as handset makers struggle against tightening consumer spending.

“Anyone looking to spend $99 on an iPhone probably doesn’t care that much about storage anyway,” according to the blog.

If true, the action would jive with analysts who have suggested Apple could cut the iPhone’s price to $99. In October, Needham Research’s Charlie Wolf said Apple’s high margins would permit a 50 percent price drop, increasing the marketshare of the already popular iPhone.

The $99 iPhone would require a two-year contract. In October, BG wrote that the iPhone would appear Nov. 15 on Wal-Mart shelves.

The Amazon Mobile app could get you out of a few Christmas-present dilemmas. The app gives iPhone and iPod Touch users access to wish lists, shopping carts, one-click shopping, plus all the customer reviews and ratings that may make last-minute buys less of a shot in the dark.

It also includes a nice feature called “Amazon Remembers” which lets you save snapshots as visual post-its if you see something you want to buy later. The app saves the photo and searches for similar items, too.

Released a few days ago, it’s had some good reviews, including a five-star rating from “ericthewhat” who says: “Great. I can definitely see my drunk-texting problem becoming a drunk-shopping problem.”

Well, at least you won’t be sobbing into your beer buying stuff like “I’ve Never been to Me.”

In the first release, one of the useful things you can’t buy or download from Amazon are MP3s.

From the mobile app you can put MP3s on your wish list and then buy from your computer, but it’s a bit of a buzzkill for what otherwise seems a useful app.

Via: 37 prime

A version “Dope Wars,” the game that challenges users’ math and marketing skills as well as their street smarts (released for Windows some ten years ago) has been rumored to be coming to iPhone under the name Drug Lords.

The video posted here, from Pocket Gamer, UK, indicates it was to be available by the end of November, but a report Wednesday said it has been re-branded by the developer a-steroids and submitted for AppStore approval under the name Underworld, which, according to Pocket Gamer, should make it less controversial.

The game sets you up as a small-time drug pusher, selling your stash on the local street corner to other players, and even makes use of the iPhone’s GPS functionality, meaning you can be wheelin’ and dealin’ from your realworld local street corner.

Can’t wait to see what America’s scolds have to say about this one.

Via PocketGamer UK

Long term users of fabulous text editor TextMate could be forgiven for feeling a little miffed. Before Apple released Leopard, there was excited talk of TextMate 2, and much discussion about the fact that it would be Leopard-only.

But Leopard appeared and became old news and there was still no sign of TextMate. Updates on the TextMate blog were few and far between.

What’s up? Is TextMate 2 still going to happen?

The answer is a definite YES, but with the simple caveat: BE PATIENT.

This topic has bubbled up several times on the TextMate mailing list and developer Allan Odgaard has made it plain that TM2 is in ongoing development. But like anyone who takes pride in his work, he doesn’t want to release it (or even talk about releasing it) until he’s got it up to a certain standard.

Alex Payne made passing reference to this yesterday, in his post How I use TextMate, saying he feared it had turned into abandonware. A minor update over Thanksgiving put his mind at rest, but still raised the TM2 question for others. As for what it might include, see Peter Haza’s informed posts here and here.

So, just to be clear: TM2 is coming. It’s not abandonware. It’s hang-in-there-ware.

Or, in Odgaard’s own words: “Put TM 2.0 up there with Duke Nukem Forever and be positively surprised the day it is released :)”

(Photo used under Creative Commons license, thanks to Dmitry Baranovskiy)

Melodis Corporation looks to make manual searching and scrolling for telephone contacts a thing of the past on your iPhone with its free Voice Dialer, available now on the AppStore.

“Dialing by voice is a much simpler, more natural interface than scrolling through a long list of contacts,” says Keyvan Mohajer, president and chief executive officer of MELODIS Corporation. “Many voice-based dialers are unacceptable because they are too slow, particularly as the number of contacts grows,” he adds, saying, “The Melodis Voice Dialer scales easily to deliver speed and accuracy whether the user has 10 contacts or 10,000.”

Users can search for contact information or dial contacts automatically using different voice commands. For example, users can say “Michael Smith”, “call Michael Smith”, “call Michael”, and so on. Saying “call” before the name automatically dials the number. Users can also specify whether they want to call the contact at home, at work or on their cell phone.

The app uses the company’s proprietary Crystal Engine, which avoids the traditional approach of voice-to-text conversion for search, which the company claims can achieve higher accuracy compared to existing solutions.

Unlike Google’s Voice Search capability, which allows users to simply raise the phone to the ear and begin speaking, Melodis requires the touch of a button on the phone’s surface to activate its voice reception. The app is free, though supported by what the company describes as “non-obtrusive mobile advertising.”

We stumbled across Vito Technologies’ Star Walk app for iPhone and iPod Touch and found yet one more way for Apple’s mobile devices to make us say, “wow.”

Not quite a pocket planetarium, Star Walk does boast impressive, detailed graphics showing past and future astronmical events from any place on earth and is an easy to use, annotated guide to stargazing.

Available in six languages for $4.99, the app has gotten glowing reviews on the AppStore and the developers promise updates soon supporting improved night mode viewing and mapping for deep space objects. Yes, Google Earth is free, but would you pay 5 bucks to see into infinity?

When you’ve had it with commercial radio, after you can’t take one more suggestion from iTunes’ Genius or Pandora or somebody’s Last.fm playlist, turn to your Mac.

With Bitnotic Chill 1.0 your Mac can create 100% computer-generated, user-adjustable ambient music. Though purely machine made, Chill’s music is both relaxing and listenable.

Chill plays endless songs or, in Radio mode, an uninterrupted stream of unique tracks. Once played, songs can be saved in a variety of audio formats. Albums can be exported straight into iTunes to download to iPod or burn to CD. Each song is unique and royalty free, and can be used in any public space or project without licensing fees.

Nick Vardalos, owner of Cafe Bido in Sydney, Australia uses Chill as a royalty-free music alternative for his cafe and in music projects. He says, “It’s simple enough that you can turn it on and let it go do its thing, but for the electro-geek in me it goes deeper. I can export the songs it creates as MIDI files into pro production software and build on them, replace instruments, edit tracks, collaborate with friends.”

Created with musicians, as well as listeners, in mind, Chill has a variety of features that allow songs to be used in the studio or live. Individual tracks can be saved in MIDI, WAV, and AIFF formats. Count-in, song key and tempo info, and MIDI output allow performers to collaborate with chill in real-time.

Scott Burgess, Bitnotic’s principal, says, “Chill’s music is influenced by Eno, Debussy, and musique concrete, with some New Age thrown in. The songs can be mellow or they can be evocative, but they are always music.”

Available directly from Bitnotic, at $19.95 Chill is a cost-effective alternative to pricey publicly licensed jukebox and canned music alternatives for businesses wishing to provide music for their customers, as well as a cheap tool for musicians and producers wanting to incorporate electronica into their projects.

For the individual user, Chill can provide a welcome respite or a vibe to use for relaxing, meditating, or – ahem – working late into the night on this or that…

With the arrival, finally, of Apple’s Premium earphones with remote and mic, you can now use your iPod Touch as a telephone through the magic of free software from the VoIP pioneers at TruPhone.

Actually, that’s somewhat inaccurate. You’ve been able to partake of TruPhone’s magic previously using a microphone adapter that plugs into the dock connector, or a headset with built-in mic like the one that ships with iPhones, but now that Apple’s new headsets are on the way, TruPhone’s app seems much more interesting.

Once you’ve installed the software, you can make free calls–no matter where you are in the world–to other iPod touch owners, to customers of Truphone’s Internet telephony service and to users of Google Talk instant messaging service. Support for low cost calling to landlines (PSTN) is on the way, according to company reps, as is support for calling and instant messaging to Skype and MSN (free) and free check and set facilities for both Twitter and Facebook.

The software uses the iPod touch’s Wi-Fi connection to carry VoIP calls over the Internet to its destination. There is no monthly line rental, no subscription or other hidden charges, but it should be noted calls are not handed off to the cellular network if you move beyond or lose your WiFi connection.

Still, when you bought that iPod Touch, I bet you didn’t think you were getting a telephone, too.

First: here’s Dong Chang! (App Store) What is it, and what does it do? I think we’d better let the developer explain:

“It is every funny and easier to play. Try to sway your iphone/itouch Three dimensional direction, You can get three Hip-Hop’s accompanist. Whenever, any where you can dancing with your iphone/itouch. Come on, Move your body, geting Exercises! You will be enjoy it.”

Fantastic! Next!

Whacket! (App Store) “replicates the experience of playing your favorite racket sports – without the hassle of all those silly rackets.” Thank goodness for that. Rackets, eh? Who needs ’em?

The guys at Tap Tap Tap, responsible for the gorgeous Classics app, churned out this extra gorgeousness – made entirely out of iPhone app icons – to celebrate the App Store reaching 10,000 apps.

That’s 10,000 apps in less than half a year.

Just imagine what amazing stuff we’re going to see in 2009. I can’t wait.

We’re really going to need a better way to manage all our iPhone apps, though. All this flippy-flapping between screens is going to get really boring really quickly once there’s 50,000 apps competing for space there.

(Pic re-used here with Tap Tap Tap’s permission. Thanks guys!)

Anya Hindmarch is the handbag designer who made women club each other to proclaim to the world: “I’m not a plastic bag.”

She was tapped by UK department store Selfridges to fill their famous holiday hampers with goods.

Her credit-crunch defying “Ultimate Girl’s Hamper” (price tag: £1,000 or a staggering $1,475), includes some of the usual fare: Ruinart Champagne, 40 bottles of nail polish, Marshmallow Fluff and a “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” DVD.

You’ll notice from the image that just above the Fluff, however, is an iPod nano.

How did electronics creep into a holiday gift hamper?

Says Hindmarch: “I have always been fascinated by hampers, their history and Britishness. But am always disappointed by yet another basket whose contents I don’t actually want to keep.”

We hear you. The nail polish and Fluff will always run out, but the iPod will remain.

With Mac clone maker Psystar potentially on the legal ropes, Apple may now be looking for the South Florida company’s unknown backers identified Tuesday as only “John Does 1 through 10.”

In an amended complaint against Psystar, Apple refers to the new defendants as “various individuals and/or corporations who have infringed Apple’s intellectual property rights” and the Cupertino, Calif. company’s user licensing.

Miami-based Psystar’s emergence and its retainer of antitrust experts Carr & Ferrell has “always been a bit puzzling,” wrote CNET’s Tom Krazit Wednesday.

Back in May, CoM published a phone cam shot of a table that looked like an iPod found in a Milan hotel.

We tracked down the guy who made it, Mirko Ginepro, an industrial designer, graphic artist and photographer.

His iTable is made from Corian (frequently the stuff of kitchen and bathroom counter tops), the “screen” is glass and the necessary add-on to make the original design furniture-worthy, the legs, are steel.

Ginepro built three iTables for an installation at Milan’s design week this year, then sold one to the hotel and another to an art gallery.

“I like to take inspiration from everyday objects and as Mac user, those designs are the ones I see all the time,” Ginepro told Cult of Mac. “The idea was to take an object that didn’t start out as furniture and turn it in into something useful.”

The iTable is about 47 inches long by 29 inches wide (original measurements: 120 x 75 centimeters) and about 13 inches high.

It comes in classic white, black or sunny yellow. Each table is a one-of-a kind, made-to-order piece of art (read: workaround to wrangling a licensing agreement with you-know-who for mass production). More info on availability, cost etc. through his website.

There is an apparent shortage of iPods in the wake of surprisingly strong demand for Apple’s portable music players on Black Friday.

At Amazon.com, the wait time for 8GB second-generation iPod touchs has stretched to three to five weeks, up from 11 days. The same for the 16GB version, according to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu.

During the Black Friday weekend, Amazon was offering iPods at an 11 percent discount.

The shortages were also found at Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and others.

An early version of Windows 7, Microsoft’s follow-up to its ho-hum Vista operating software, may appear at a developers conference in mid-January.

Developers attending the 11-city one-day MSDN Developer Conferences will either be mailed or will receive the new software Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer touts as “Windows Vista, a lot better.”

Microsoft has said it would unveil Windows 7 in 2009.

Another wrinkle in the spy-vs-spy Mac security game appeared Wednesday when a Mac Trojan Horse attempted to disguise itself by naming a file “intego,” a reference to company.

Intego said the OSX.RSPlug.E trojan horse carries a medium-level risk for Mac users, making it the fifth version of the malware first discovered in 2007. In November, the developers outlined RSPlug.D, a trojan horse which downloaded a malicious file.

Like the most recent version, OSX.RSPlug.E entices Mac users with pornographic sites that insist a “missing Video ActiveX Object” must be downloaded in order to view a video. The infected download then contacts a malicious remote server.

Unlike previous versions of the Trojan, two .dmg archives: FlashPlayer.v3.348.dmg or FlashPlayer.v.dmg, create an encoded file named “intego” with read and write permission.

Apple has given iPhone developers an early Christmas present, freeing them (somewhat) from the convoluted mess of ad hoc distribution.

Once an application has been accepted to the App Store by Apple, developers can now issue up to 50 promotional codes. The codes allow the recipient to download a full copy of the application for free. Presently, these codes can only be used in the U.S. iTunes Stores by using the “Redeem” link in the App Store. The 50 code limit is reset for each new version of an application, according to a report at MacRumors.

Presumably developers may continue to use the ad hoc model, wherein a special version of their app can be sent, along with a mobile provisioning file, to up to 100 users (beta testers and/or reviewers) who provide the unique device identification number of their iPhone or iPod Touch, for giving out copies of apps prior to their acceptance in the AppStore.

‘Tis the Season to make a list out of everything you can possibly think of – who’s been naughty, who’s been nice, the Best of This and The Worst of That.

Apple released its lists of the Top 10 Paid and Top 10 Free Apps on the iTunes AppStore Tuesday, and also broke down the top apps by category. If you visited the iTunes store since the AppStore launched in July, you’ve been able to get a running snapshot of the Top 10 overall lists, as they have been published on the AppStore’s front page since the launch.

After opening strong, Super Monkey Ball ended up 4th on the list of top paid app downloads, while Koi Pond quietly, like a zen warrior, took the top honors. Amazingly, enough people paid for iBeer to put it in the #10 spot.

Among the free downloads, two music apps, Pandora Radio and Shazam were in the top 5 (#1 and #4, respectively) and in only two months of availability, Google Earth managed to place #7.

For all of the AppStore’s Top Lists, click here.

For all of the iTunes Store’s Top Lists, click here.

One day after a number of media outlets (including this one) made hay out of the fact that an Apple Support knowledgebase stated “Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities,” the company removed the page from its support website on Tuesday.

“We have removed the KnowledgeBase article because it was old and inaccurate,” said Apple spokesman Bill Evans, according to a report at Macworld. “The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box.”

Hedging his bet ever so slightly, Evans also said, “Since no system can be 100% immune from every threat, running anti-virus software may offer additional protection.”

Several Cult of Mac readers took issue with the proposition that Macs’ growing popularity has made them any more susceptible to viruses or malware than they have ever been. Thanks to reader James for the tip on the Macworld report.

On Monday night’s Colbert Report, the most feared television journalist in America let it be known he was none too happy that his Christmas Special Soundtrack was 15 spots down from Kanye West’s top selling album on iTunes. He called for the Colbert Nation to crash Apple’s iTunes servers at 5pm EST on Wednesday to vault his record to the top position and “force Kanye to admit I am the voice of this generation, of this decade.”

As of Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert’s disc had moved up two spots to #14, but his new rival, at this writing, is Britney Spears, whose album Circus is presently iTunes’ top seller.

There has been no word from the Colbert camp calling off the flashmob, nor comment regarding whether West’s arrogance remains in need of a takedown now that his record is no longer in first position. Knowing Colbert’s own reputation for having an outsized ego, however, it’s likely he’s still looking for a big bump in the polls on Wednesday.

Just yesterday the web was lousy with stories about the extended delay for the release of Apple’s premium in-ear headphones with remote and mic. Like magic, Tuesday the Apple Store began accepting orders for the hotly anticipated $79 premium iPod accessory, with delivery promised within 7 – 10 business days.

The headset features custom two-way balanced armature (a woofer and tweeter in each earpiece) that Apple claims will deliver “pro audio performance and impressive sound isolation” available more often at 2X to 3X the price.

One of the most anticipated features of these headphones is their ability to allow audio recording on the latest generation of iPods without fitting an external microphone to the dock connector. The headset also features convenient buttons that let you adjust the volume and control music and video playback, and while the specs indicate they are compatible only with 120GB iPod Classic, 4th generation iPod Nano and iPod Touch, many consumer audio analysts believe at least the speakers and microphone (if not the on-lanyard controls) will work with the iPhone as well.

This post has been corrected to accurately reflect its subject’s nationality. The post author was originally directed to the Italian version of the designer’s website, resulting in a misunderstanding as to his national origin.

Vlad Gerasimov is one busy guy. Proprietor of the outstanding design shop VladStudio, this Russian designer has created hundreds and hundreds of wallpapers, backgrounds and wallpaper clocks, a sampling of which is displayed in the gallery below.

Vlad has also created a few dozen PhotoShop tutorials that can have you designing like a pro in no time.

You can purchase a lifetime registration good for receiving higher quality, signature free downloads and Adobe source files until December 31st for $19.99, $10 off his regular registration fee.

This is great stuff and well worth checking out, a fine holiday gift idea for the artist or designer on your gifting list.

Apple has filed two patents bringing liquid-cooling to increasingly powerful (and hot) laptop computers. Once the domain of massive number-crunchers, liquid-cooled notebooks foresee a day when quad-core processors and better video overwhelms current fan-driven cooling.

In its U.S. Patent Office applications, the Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple outlined an active and passive liquid-cooling process.

The active liquid-cooling process involves bathing circuits, the heat relieved via fins. A more inexpensive passive liquid-cooling procedure would include a heat sink located behind the laptop’s display. Moving the heat away from the computer’s body could solve the dilemma of an overheated lap.