Those who know what the Apple Tablet actually is have had a circle of secrecy woven around them twice by Cupertino’s Mephistophelean lawyers, but with all the ballyhoo right now about a late January announcement, it’s still easy to forget we actually don’t really know the first thing about the forthcoming device. How big will it be? What will the hardware be like? Is it more like a Macbook without a keyboard, or is it just like a big iPod Touch? What operating system will the Apple Tablet even run?

It’s been assumed for awhile that the Apple Tablet will probably be more iPhone-like than Mac-like, since Apple wants another platform on which the App Store can shine. It now looks like that assumption is correct: Apple has reportedly told select developers to ready full screen version of their apps to demo on the Apple Tablet in January.

When it rains, it pours — and it’s pouring tablet rumors. The latest is from the NY Times, which says Steve Jobs is “extremely happy” with the upcoming tablet, and that it will have a “surprising” UI.

In a report that’s basically a rehash of tablet rumors, the Times adds a couple of tantalizing morsels.

According to the Times, a senior Apple employee said: “I can’t really say anything, but, let’s just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet.”

And another recently-departed Apple staffer added: “You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet.”

What this surprising UI is, the Times doesn’t say, unfortunately. It doesn’t even hazard a guess. Gestures? The iPhone’s already there. Voice? Same — and it doesn’t even work that well. Handwriting recognition? Remember the Newton.

What else is there? A little rubbery red button like an old ThinkPad? A virtual scroll wheel?

Link.

“Apple has something big up its sleeve for next month,” says the venerable Financial Times of London.

The company has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for several days in late January, according to people familiar with the plans.

Apple is expected to use the venue to make a major product announcement on Tuesday, January 26th.

The prospect of a three-day event is tantalizing, but why would Apple need three days to announce a new product — like the long-rumored the tablet, say? My guess is the company needs a day to set up and another to break down. The 26th is a Tuesday: Apple’s favorite day for new product announcements.

Note, neither Apple nor YBCA would comment to the FT, but the center’s online calendar says the venue is free on January 25, 26 and 27. IE. there are no artsy events scheduled for those three days on a calendar that is otherwise full.

Having pulled out of Macworld, these days the YBCA stage is Apple’s favorite venue for product announcements. With CES in January, and the Apple-less Macworld in February, a January 26 event would be sandwiched right between.

The rumor comes on the back of reports that Apple is wooing TV studios for a new online TV service, which conjures the Apple TV to mind, but perhaps a new TV service would be tablet-centric? In addition,  the company is reportedly talking to magazine publishers about repurposing content for the upcoming tablet. Earlier this year, iLounge predicted the tablet would be announced in mid-January with a May or June sell date to build iPhone-like hype.

Via 9to5Mac.

MacSpeech Dictate is dictation software for the Mac that helps you enhance your productivity by simply dictating rather than typing. It is based on Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech engine, which ensures highly accurate speech recognition capabilities. In fact, the company claims it to be about 95% accurate. Although the lack of a Beta version makes it hard to believe but surprisingly, it’s very true.

Recently, I had a chance to test version 1.5 of this for myself and from my experience, it works really well. It’s not just a simple application, but a full-fledged dictation solution for any Mac user, especially for a writer or a journalist.

Hot on the heels of Playboy‘s — and, we neglected to mention, Playgirl‘s — foray onto the iPhone earlier this month, Cosmo last week released its Sex Position of The Day app.

And guess what: The $2 app trumps Playboy’s for titillation, by graphically (yet tastefully) depicting 77 illustrated positions from Cosmopolitan’s book, The Cosmo Kama Sutra. A rating system and clear-cut instructions accompany each entry, as well as the ability to rate each position based on the user’s preference. (Note: The app’s accuracy hasn’t been tested, but I’m open to suggestions from anyone attractive and female).

Even with the app’s fairly innocuous illustrations, I’m a little surprised this one made it through — perhaps the hyper-vigilant App Store guardians are relaxing their Vader-like grip ?

Sending a message to the neighbors, no doubt. Anyone else got a good idea for a network name?

Via FailBlog and LinkMachineGo.

Are you looking for a starter Mac, or an Apple for a child? How about a $99 500Mhz G3 iBook? It may be just two days until Christmas, but the deals keep arriving, like up to $250 off items at MacMall. If you have an iMac or new Mac under the tree and you’d like the perfect display, but your budget is blown – how about a refurbished 30-inch Apple Cinema Widescreen LCD display for just $1,299?

Along with assorted iPhone cases and accessories, the App Store has something every exhausted holiday shopper wants: freebies. This batch includes MotionInk, a media painter application. Not to be missed, though, are EA games for the iPhone or iPod; just $5 for NBA Live or Rock Band.

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

Kenji Kojima developed a music app called RGB MusicLab that transforms images into music. You can download the app gratis and do what you will with the ditty coming out of that awkward family portrait on your blog, video or work presentation.

Here’s how it works:

RGB MusicLab converts RGB (Red, Green and Blue) value of an image to chromatic scale sounds. The program reads RGB value of pixels from the top left to the bottom right of an image. One pixel makes a harmony of three note of RGB value, and the length of note is determined by brightness of the pixel. RGB value 120 or 121 is the center C, and RGB value 122 or 123 is added a half steps of the scale that is C#. Pure black that is R=0, G=0, B=0 is no sounds.

The clever folks over at Synthtopia took the app for a spin using a head shot of actress Megan Fox — currently topping lad mag FHM’s list of the sexiest woman alive.

It may be nearing the end of 2009, but there appears no end in sight to rumors Apple is soon to announce its mythical tablet device. The latest talk comes from a site claiming Apple will unveil the tablet in January.

Citing “a very connected source”, Boy Genius Report wrote Wednesday a 7-inch tablet and a 10-inch tablet are in the wings.

The camera in the iPhone is pretty crummy, even when compared to the constabulary of terrible camera sensors installed in other smartphones. When the iPhone 3G came out with a 2-megapixel camera provided by Aptina, the competition was boasting 3.2MP, and when the iPhone 3Gs matched that ante thanks to a sensor from OmniVision, other phones raised the bet to 5.

So there’s reason to believe a report from Taiwan’s Digitimes that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone will again boost its megapixels to match the likes of the Motorola DROID, which has a 5MP sensor. According to their sources, OmniVision is set to supply a 5-megapixel camera for the next-generation iPhone, due to arrive in the second half of next year.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql0V4SNt-c4&feature=player_embedded

With yesterday’s release-then-nearly-instantaneous-pull of the Nescaline NES emulator, the message should be clear: jailbreaking is the only real option for iPhone emulation enthusiasts. Good news, then, for jailbreakers: ZodTTD has has released the Nintendo 64 emulator N64iPhone through Cydia just in time for Christmas, with one killer little feature… Wiimote support through Bluetooth pairing.

Emulation tends to be slow on less beefy hardware, and it doesn’t look as though N64iPhone manages to defy expectations in that regard: even when using the Wiimote, the emulator appears tricky to control, with notable slowdowns. Still, at least it’s working. Heck, at least it’s real, unlike the last N64 emulator we wrote about, which turned out to just be a clever video.

If you can deal with slowdowns and convoluted controls in your quest for mobile Metroid Prime, you can download N64iPhone through Cydia for just $2.50.

Apple’s iPhone 3G garnered 4 percent of U.S. cell phone subscribers in 2009, ranking No. 1 in single handset models, according to an Internet research firm. The iPhone beat the RIM BlackBerry and Motorola RAZR, which placed 2nd and 3rd.

Apple may be preparing to sell up to 45 million iPhones in 2010, according to suppliers. The orders for an upgraded iPhone camera would double those expected for 2009. The news appears to coincide with other reports that Apple may introduce a new iPhone in mid-2010.

“OmniVision Technologies is expected to see CMOS image sensor orders for Apple’s iPhone devices grow to 40-45 million units in 2010,” according to industry sources cited by DigiTimes. The orders for a 5-megapixel sensor may be a response to Verizon’s Droid and Google’s Nexus One handsets which both have more sensitive cameras than the iPhone 3GS’ 3.2 megapixel camera. OmniVision supplied the iPhone 3GS 3.2 megapixel image sensor.

At this point, it’s not really surprising that the iPhone 3Gs’ graphics are capable of pumping out the polygons needed to bring a sophisticated 3D engine to the handset, but it’s still wonderful to watch Epic Games’ Mark Rein play Unreal Tournament deathmatch on his third generation iPod Touch. You can see a video of it in action after the jump.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4IjeO7g6kA
If you’re not sold on the freshmen  augmented reality apps available for the iPhone, this one probably won’t change your mind.

With it, you launch a simulated iPhone on your iPhone screen. Then you can zoom your virtual iPhone or spin it around and run other apps on it. The virtual “apps” aren’t real applications but the effect is suitably trippy nonetheless.

Developed by Ogmento for Orange Telecom Israel to generate interest for the iPhone launch there, it’s not available to the general public.

Useless? Pretty much. But sort of an Escher for the digital age.

Via Mashable

An iPhone price war currently underway in France may be our first glimpse of what we can expect if, as rumored, AT&T’s exclusivity deal with Apple runs out next year, and the iPhone comes to other carriers.

Flickr user raneko (who is no stranger to regular Cult readers) has just uploaded a bunch of fantastic photos of Apple mice through the ages.

Tis the holiday season and we want to give your iPhone a present. Star Walk, my childhood dream of an iPhone app, has given us 5 codes to give away to Cult of Mac Twitter followers.

Send us a tweet on Twitter with your favorite night sky memory by December 23rd at 2 p.m. PST and we’ll pick a winner at random. You must include @cultofmac in your tweet to be counted in the contest.

Here’s an example: “I remember driving through West Texas at night and softly weeping at the vastness of space @cultofmac”

Get creative even though we’re selecting at random. You can pick up Star Walk, the iPhone astronomy app, from iTunes for $2.99.

With just days before Christmas, we highlight three Mac deals for the harried, last-minute holiday shopper. If you have an iPod on your list, but you don’t want to cross that mystical $100 barrier, Apple still has 8GB iPod nanos for just $99. Not often does shipping make it into the headlines, but as retailers pull out all the stops to attract online sales, Apple still has free next-day delivery. But hurry – 1pm EST Wednesday is the deadline. Last on our top trio seems perfect for all those iPhone owners out there: 80 percent off select cases for the Apple handset. (We also have a 50% off deal for iPod touch owners.)

Along the way, we have deals on a skin for the Nike+ iPod running sensor, the latest batch of App Store price drops and more software for your iPhone or iPod touch. For details on these and many more bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the break.

One of the features I loved from the first moment I saw it in Windows 7 was Snap, the one that lets you instantly resize any document window by dragging it to one side of your screen.

Irradiated Software makes a Mac utility that does a similar job. It’s called Sizeup, and I find it pretty useful. But it’s keyboard-controlled, not mouse-controlled, and you have to remember some new shortcuts to get the most from it. How about a mouse-controlled alternative?

Enter Cinch, a new app from the Sizeup developers.

A word to drivers down under: make sure your license and registration are up to date.

Police in Tasmania are using iPhones to snap plates, relay the pics to a database of unregistered vehicles and unlicensed and disqualified drivers via an app developed for the department.

In just 10 days of operation,  the app has outed 167 unregistered vehicles and caught 107 disqualified or unregistered drivers, the Mercury reports. Formerly, officers had to radio in the information and wait for a co-worker to check.

Within the first 10 minutes of trying it out, police pulled up alongside a car at a traffic light ran the app and found the car was unregistered. They pulled over the car, found the driver was also without a license and drugs in the car, too.

The app, designed by the Tasmania police department, is also used by motorcycle cops.

Via Mac Daily News

A federal judge Tuesday dismissed a liability lawsuit against Apple, just hours after the Cupertino, Calif. company released a firmware update claiming to cure complaints about the iMacs screen. The lawsuit, which potentially could have become a class action, claimed Apple knowingly sold the allegedly defective computers.

While the lawsuit was dismissed as being too broad, Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled the claim could be resubmitted to add more detail, thus reducing the suit’s scope, reports said. Apple “internally recognizes and concedes” the defect without alerting consumers, the lawsuit alleged.

Belkin’s latest dongle — the tiny little Bluetooth Music Receiver — is a cute little gadget: it streams music from your iPhone or iPod Touch to any stereo thanks to the magic of A2DP.

It’s simplicity itself. All you do is plug the glowing, cycloptic dongle into your stereo, either through the 3.5mm headphone jack or using your stereo’s RCA cables. Once that’s done, you pair it with your iPhone, iPod Touch, or other A2DP-compatible PMP, and you’re good to stream music to your stereo from up to 33 feet away whenever you want. It’ll even remember six different devices.

For $50, it’s not a bad buy, although I can’t imagine I’ll take the plunge: 33 feet isn’t very far, and I figure Apple has got to get around to letting me stream my iPhone’s music to my Airport Express network through WiFi one of these days.

“Methinks AT&T doth protest too much,” might have been Hamlet’s response to the carrier again denying it will institute data tiers for iPhone users. Attempting to avoid a storm of protests over earlier comments, AT&T Mobility President Ralph de la Vega now tells BusinessWeek: “I guess I should have been more clear.”

The comment was the second in one week by de la Vega concerning a Dec. 9 AP report quoting the AT&T exec mentioning incentives for iPhone owners to “reduce or modify their usage.” AT&T has said iPhone owners use 40 percent of the carrier’s network capacity despite their being just three percent of smartphone users.

The iPod is always a tricky thing to manipulate in this chapping, frostbiting weather. In the December wind, the hand freezes quickly in a contorted, blue-skinned claw around the iPod Classic; fingers pressed against the iPhone’s frigid touchscreen tend to break off like icicles at the tips.

For iPod manipulation in these hypothermic months, then, a solution, courtesy of alpine gear makers, The North Face. They’ve just introduced two new jackets — the Hustle Audio Jacket for guys, the Femphonic Audio Jacket for women — which builds an iPod remote right into the sleeves. You can change tracks, play, pause and wiggle the volume around without once exposing your fingers to the ice-fanged bite of the season.

North Face jackets tend to be expensive, so you can expect to pay $350 for both the Hustle and Femphonic audio jackets, but while that’s a couple hundred dollars more than what you can theoretically buy an off-brand winter coat for, it’s only a $50 premium over North Face’s usual coat prices.