The Wall Street Journal is reporting that major publishers have approached ScrollMotion to adapt their textbooks for use on the Apple iPad.

You may have seen ScrollMotion’s existing e-books in the App Store: the company takes existing books provided by publishers and adapts them so they look good on the iPhone or iPod Touch’s smaller screen, then enhances them with built-in search, indexes, dictionaries and interactive flourishes.

Not very surprising that a company devoted to translating e-books to a format that takes advantage of the iPhone’s innate capabilities would be looking to do the same thing for the iPad. But according to the Journal, ScrollMotion has a long list of big-name textbook publishers already lined up,including McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Perason Education and Kaplan.

This development makes apparent the huge advantage the iPad has over the likes of the Kindle DX in the college textbook market: not only is the iPad a fantastic student tool in its own right for things like note taking and playing around with study-specific apps, but its textbooks can be truly interactive in a way Amazon’s currently can not.

That’s a revolutionary leap forward in the way students learnt… and the iPad is priced cheap enough that almost any student can afford to own one.

Forgive me for banging on about Notational Velocity – but it’s such an awesome app that it deserves a place on your Mac. And this week it just got a little awesomer.

The latest version of NV includes native support for syncing with Simplenote, the iPhone app and web notes service.

As I noted the other week in a post about rival (and NV-inspired) notes app Nottingham, the great thing about Simplenote is that you get access to what I call an “ecosystem”. Your notes are safe – there’s copies of them in the cloud and inside your NV database. But because Simplenote encourages third-party apps, you’ll always have plenty of choice about how you access those notes from your computer.

NV has also undergone a few visual tweaks to smarten up its appearance, not least of them smart and funny new icon by Colin Cody. There are some more technical details about the new update on this blog post if you’re interested.

Having all my Notational Velocity notes automatically and wirelessly synced with my phone is just wonderful. If you need a similarly simple synced notes service, I encourage you to download Notational Velocity and sign up for a Simplenote account. You won’t regret it.

The current iPhone OS SDK contains no official API support for USB syncing apps, but that hasn’t stopped persistent developers from getting around the issue by dropping their files into the iPhone’s DCIM folder and using private APIs to allow desktop apps to access your iPhone’s contents.

It was a hack, and developers knew Apple wouldn’t tolerate it forever, which makes it no surprise that several developers (including the makers of the popular e-reading app, Stanza, are now reporting that Apple is asking them to remove USB syncing capabilities from their apps.

This is a temporary inconvenience, but not really a bad thing. The beta SDK for iPhone OS 3.2 has official APIs for accessing an on-device shared storage folder, which will allows an iPhone to be mounted as a readable and writable disk when plugged into a computer through USB.

End result? Official, less buggy USB app syncing support come the end of March. Just don’t upgrade any apps that currently use the DCIM method of USB syncing until iPhone OS 3.2 hits iTunes.

With the iPad’s debut, we’re all looking forward to iPhone OS 3.2, but since we can’t expect that until the iPad starts shipping in March, we’ll have to make do with the latest software update to hit iTunes. So cram your 30-pin white connector umbilical into the omphalos of your iPhone, my friends, because iPhone OS 3.1.3 is here.

It’s a small update. Here’s what has been improved:

• Improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS

• Resolves issue where third-party apps would not launch in some instances

• Fixes bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard

Those first two changes may be tiny, but they are nice. Better battery life accuracy is always helpful, and that second fix looks like it might be focused on the issue where App Store apps sometimes wouldn’t launch until you downloaded a new app and installed it.

Needless to say, if you’ve jailbroken your phone, you go and see what the Dev-Team has to say about upgrading, although it looks like they’ve almost got it all sussed out.

We were a pain, I know, bugging you guys to vote for us in 2010 Golden Retrevo Awards.

But it paid off — we won a 2010 Golden Retrevo Award for outstanding achievements in the “All Things Apple” space. The awards honor the “best and brightest independent gadget blogs on the web.”

Many thanks for your support!

Our friends 9to5Mac also won in the same category, along with iPhoneography, MacYourself and The iPhone Guru.

Retrevo is an up-and-coming electronics shopping/review site, which claims more than 5 million visitors a month. Here’s the full list of Golden Retrevo Award winners.

Steve Jobs doesn’t follow a presentation template but as outlined in my new book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, he does consistently follow the same principles that have turned Apple product launches into an art form. The iPad announcement on Wednesday, January 27th was no exception: classic Steve Jobs.

Photos courtesy of Gizmodo.

The formidable Economist magazine has blessed Steve Jobs with a rare cover story examining the potential impact of the Jesus tablet.

Even rarer, the iPad story is mostly positive, even if the religious imagery is over the top.

The Economist fancies Jobs’ chances of shaking up not just one industry, but three — especially media:

Jobs’s record suggests that when he blesses a market, it takes off. And tablet computing promises to transform not just one industry, but three—computing, telecoms and media.

Companies in the first two businesses view the iPad’s arrival with trepidation, for Apple’s history makes it a fearsome competitor. The media industry, by contrast, welcomes it wholeheartedly. Piracy, free content and the dispersal of advertising around the web have made the internet a difficult environment for media companies. They are not much keener on the Kindle, an e-reader made by Amazon, which has driven down book prices and cannot carry advertising. They hope this new device will give them a new lease of life, by encouraging people to read digital versions of books, newspapers and magazines while on the move. True, there are worries that Apple could end up wielding a lot of power in these new markets, as it already does in digital music. But a new market opened up and dominated by Apple is better than a shrinking market, or no market at all.

Read more: Tablet computing — The book of Jobs.

Via 9to5Mac. Thanks Seth.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball is the most influential Apple pundit on the web, but readers often complain about the lack of comments on his website.

In fact, Gruber’s site is famous for not having comments. In an age when every website falls over itself to accommodate reader interactivity, Gruber stands alone. He has stubbornly resisted adding comments to his site for years.

Gruber has explained that he dislikes comments because they distract from his all-important voice. This is exactly the kind of egotistical statement that makes him unpopular with many people, especially other writers, but a must-read pundit.

But Gruber is about to get comments, whether he likes it or not.

The team behind MacHeist has just launched DaringFireballWithComments.net— a website that mirrors Gruber’s site with, you guessed it, comments.

“It’s good timing since he was gloating over his lack of comments today,” said John Casasanta, the brains behind the project, “and we’re gonna allow anonymous comments. It should be a shitstorm.”

We’ve covered a number of iPhone apps that field citizen complaints in a few different cities — Boston, Pittsburgh, San Jose — but always wondered if angry folks snapping potholes on the way to work would find their grievances fell on deaf ears.

The good news: if you live in Boston and can afford an iPhone, it’s like having a personal fix-it crew.

Some 2,500 downloaders of CitizensConnect have filed 750 complaints since October;  at least one reports swift action:

UPDATE: iMussolini Developer Luigi Marino told Cult of Mac that he discovered the lawsuit for copyright infringement by reading our story yesterday. Marino contacted the Italian state film archives, Istituto Luce, for clarifications about the video material he used from Mussolini’s speeches and they asked him to remove the app from the store to avoid a legal battle. Marino tells us he requested to pull the app and expects it to be gone from the iTunes store by 1 p.m. (CET).

UPDATE 2: iMussolini is gone. The competing Mussolini app — Mussolini’s historical speeches– — is, however, still available.

An iPhone app of Benito Mussolini’s speeches is the second-highest paid app in the Italian iTunes store a week after launching despite criticism for giving voice to Il Duce’s diehard fans and claims over copyright violations.

iMussolini, a mobile compendium of fascism, features 100 complete speeches,  plus 20 audio and video clips for €0.79 (it’s also available in the US iTunes store for $0.99, in Italian only) — without any kind of political commentary.

At about 1,000 downloads a day, iMussolini is more popular in Italy than Shazam and games like Ice Age and Dracula: the Path of the Dragon.

Comments by readers on iPhoneitalia, which broke the story, included enough pro-Mussolini sentiment  “Duce! Duce! Duce!”  and slogans (“Boia chi molla!”) to prompt complaints to the iTunes store that the app violates Italy’s 1952 Scelba law, which formally abolished fascism. The New York-based American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants  also slammed Apple over the app.

Today, the Italian state film archives, Istituto Luce, announced it will sue the developer for using archival clips and asked Apple to remove the application. At this writing, the app is still available.

iMussolini is the handiwork of 25-year-old Luigi Marino, who picked up an iPhone for the first time about six months ago and made the app in his spare time.

Cult of Mac spoke to Marino about why iMussolini is an excercise in free enterprise, getting the app approved and why his next app may feature Gandhi.

CoM: How did you start programming for iPhones?

Luigi Marino: I’ve been programming Java and C++ since high school, in July 2009 I bought my first iPhone and  in November 2009 in my first MacBook.  Programming for it is more of a passion than anything else. (NDR: Marino owns and runs an unrelated company).   In my free time, I also blog for an iPhone website called dev app.

Ok, so the groundhogs in the U.S. predict six more weeks of winter. Will some deals make up for the bad news? The Apple Store is selling a 16GB iPod nano for $119 with free shipping. Here’s a misnomer: an iPhone puzzle named “Hand of Greed” that’s free. Maybe you’d like to write a letter on your iPhone or iPod touch but don’t have a keyboard? Logitech’s Touch Mouse is available.

Along the way, we’ll look at a boombox for your iPod, a bargain on MouseWizard 6 and the price-slashers have been at it again with iPhone apps. As always, for details on these and many more bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Everyone knows your iPhone can control many items, including your TV, aerial drones – even a Mazda RX8. The iPod touch is great for your tunes, even suggesting music based on your preferences. But can your iPhone or iPod touch give you an invigorating massage? The makers of a robotic massage chair announced HT-Connect, a free iPhone app able to provide 16 auto-programmed massages.

Available in May, the HT-Connect interfaces with the AcuTouch 9500 massage chair from Human Touch. The app will “deliver a user experience that offers the same personalized and professional massage that one would receive at a spa or from a real, professional massage therapist,” said David Wood, CEO of Human Touch LLC.

Support for a bifurcation of computer sales has come from recent comments by an NPD analyst. Apple sold 90 percent of computers costing more than $1,000 during the fourth quarter of 2009 while the average Windows PC price is $475. The data illustrates Apple practically owns the “premium” U.S. computer market.

“The data is a startling confirmation — at least for the United States — about Apple’s success establishing the Mac as a premium brand,” said Betanews.

Although that $499 entry-level iPad is pretty much affordably by everyone, Apple will still be making a rather sizable profit on each one, if a bill-of-materials (BOM) breakdown conducted by BroadPoint AmTech analyst Marshall is to be trusted.

According to the BOM, the low-end $499 iPad only costs $270 to make, with the 9.7-inch touch-sensitive display being the most expensive element at around $100, with the 16GB SSD and aluminum case each costing only about $25.

As the storage jumps, so do Apple’s profits: the 32GB and 64GB iPads only see their costs rise another $25.50 and $76.50, respectively, but their suggested prices go up $100 and $200.

Apple’s most profitable BOM item? The 3G radio: it only costs them $16, but Apple’s charging over $130 for it. I personally wonder if some of that mark-up might be shared with AT&T to compensate them for assumed profit losses related to the month-by-month, cancel-anytime iPad 3G deal, but either way, Apple’s charging a premium for the functionality.

It’s all an estimate, of course — no one will know the iPad’s true cost until it’s actually vivisected after launch — but Apple knows how to put together a high-quality product that is both extremely profitable and an extremely good value. I wouldn’t be surprised if these numbers were exactly right.

Apple tends to focus its energies to making news and product announcements on its websites, but they’ve been experimenting a bit lately with integrating their PR machine with social media… mostly by putting up official iPad videos on their own YouTube channel, as well as pushing word of new Quicktime trailers through Twitter.

But 9to5Mac just noticed something interesting that may hint at Apple’s future plans for the popular Twitter micro-blogging service. Over a year ago, someone took over the twitter.com/Apple username… but now, in the wake of the iPad announcement (in which the iPad out-tweeted Obama’s state of the union address), it looks like that squatter’s been evicted.

Even better? You can’t sign up as Apple. This isn’t just a case of an account name being deleted: Twitter is clearly reserving the Apple account for Cupertino.

Of course, this could just be on Twitter’s own initiative, but it makes sense: Apple surely knows that Twitter is an amazing marketing and branding tool, and they’re presence on the site can only amplify the buzz about their company.

Rumors abound that Apple has halted its production of 27-inch iMacs until they can finally get to the bottom of the yellowing, flickering display issues, but if you’ve already got a gorgeous 27-incher, Apple has just released a second firmware update which will hopefully get to the bottom of any issues you’re having.

The update notes are, as usual, sparse:

Updates the display firmware on 27-inch iMac systems to address issues that may cause intermittent display flickering.

This is following on the heels of a late December update that changed the graphics firmware on the iMac’s ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 GPU, which didn’t seem to do much to solve the widely-reported display issues plaguing Apple’s most gorgeous desktop to date.

Hopefully this one will do better: the update is only 294KB and can be downloaded now through Apple Support.

There’s little to fault the Apple iPad for, at least as far as the price is concerned. The entry level $499 price is low enough that even those with their reservations about the iPad can pretty much afford to pick one up.

Or can they? According to an analysis by CBS MoneyWatch, the true cost of an iPad over four years is much higher than Apple is claiming.

How does Apple compete with the inexpensive netbooks without a netbook? One analyst believes the answer is to call it an iPad. The Cupertino, Calif. company’s tablet device could take 4 percent of netbook sales this year and 7 percent in 2011, Deutsche Bank said.

The iPad, unveiled last week, will “compete very well” against netbooks, particularly where “surfing, reading, game playing and emailing dominate the usage model,” analyst Chris Whitmore said.

Is the iPhone, Apple’s iconic handset, growing a bit long in the tooth? Probably not. But that seems to be the message from researchers reporting the iPhone lost market share during the fourth quarter, accounting for 16.6 percent of the market, down from 18.1 percent of smartphone sales in the third quarter.

Although iPhone sales were up 18 percent in the quarter, the entire smartphone market increased 26 percent as Motorola’s Android phones and Nokia helped boost sales, according to ABI Research. Ironically, ABI believes Apple’s iPhone could be encountering the same slump as Motorola’s once very popular Razr.

Sharp-eyed observers have noticed what looks to be an iSight camera in the iPad Steve Jobs used in last week’s keynote.

Even though Jobs didn’t talk about a camera, and it’s not mentioned in Apple’s official tech specs, something that looks like an iSight camera can be seen when Jobs first holds the iPad up for everyone to see.

As he holds it up, the light catches the iPad’s surface, illuminating something underneath. That something looks like an iSight camera, similar to the ones built into MacBooks, under the screens.

In the official iPad podcast, it can be seen around the 1:23:40 mark.

It’s not conclusive, of course, but corroborates the prototype images published by Engadget in the run up to the event, which clearly show an iSight camera in the same position. And references to a camera have been found in both the iPad’s Address Book software and the iPad firmware.

The absence of a camera on the iPad has been one of the device’s most puzzling omissions. Although, as our own John Brownlee first noted, a camera in a tablet that’s sitting in your lap, staring up at you, doesn’t produce the most flattering camera angles.

UPDATE: A repair company called Mission Repair says the iPad’s frame clearly shows an empty spot for an iSight camera, and it is exactly the same size and shape as the iSight slot in a MacBook’s screen frame. (Mission Repair received a shipment of iPad parts on Monday, the company blog says).

Thanks NyxoLyno.

Apple has just released iTunes 9.0.3, which looks like mostly bug fixes a big upgrade with a new look, among other things. Full details of the big, fat 100MB upgrade after the jump.

And now for something completely different.

I’ll admit, the first alarming thought that shot through my head when I stumbled across this vidclip on YouTube of Cult jefe Leander Kahney, was that he’d created it as fun-yet-terror-inducing way of emphasizing the “dead” part of the word “deadline” to Cult staff.

Turns out it was actually created by app developer Toga Pit — btw, cute marketing there, guys — to promote their new, maniacal-laughter-inducing iTouchMyFriends app, which turns images of your friends into manipulatable puppets. Just the evilness of the name ran shivers of anticipatory pleasure down my spine as I secured a copy to explore. I wasn’t disappointed.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZS8HqOGTbA

Here is Steve Jobs’ iPad keynote in less than 180 seconds. It’s wonderful! Amazing! Incredible!

The video sums up “all the important words,” says its creator, Neil Curtis.

“I assure you that no scene is repeated and everything was said on this keynote!” he adds. “Oh, and please don’t take it personal: it’s meant to be humor!”

We kick-off another week of deals with the Philips iPod docking speakers system. The system includes an FM presets, two 2-watt speakers, USB connection and an aux input. We also feature a new batch of free apps from Apple’s App Store, including Zenflation, a balloon flying game. We wrap up our top three offers with Process 3 for Mac, an idea and project organization tool.

As always, for details on these and many more bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Engadget has confirmed the reports of “extremely trusted sources” that the iPad’s iPhone OS 3.2 contains support for a host of long anticipated features, including video calling, file downloads and even SMS messaging.
According to their sources, the current beta of iPhone OS 3.2 includes hooks to accept and decline video conferencing, as well as flip a video-feed (for a front-mounted camera) and run the video call in either full screen mode or in a small window.

More than that, iPhone OS 3.2 currently hints at file downloads and local storage in the browser, which means you can finally slurp down a link to, say, an MP3 or eBook and use it in iTunes or iBooks. It also has hooks for iPad-specific SMS messaging.

This is preliminary code, and none of this functionality works right now, but at the very least, it implies some future developments in both the iPad and iPhone. It’s the video conferencing stuff that’s really interesting though: the iPad contains no camera, so either Apple’s already programming video conferencing support for the iPad 2G, the next iPhone is finally going to get a secondary forward mounted camera… or both.