Apple will “vigorously” defend itself against a Nokia patent infringement lawsuit, according to financial documents released Tuesday evening. The remarks are the first made by the Cupertino, Calif. company about a lawsuit by Nokia that could be worth up to an estimated $1 billion.

“The complaint alleges that these patents are essential to one or more of the GSM, UMTS and 802.11 wireless communication standards, and that the Company has the right to license these patents from plaintiff on fair, reasonable, and non-descriminatory (“FRAND”) terms and conditions,” Apple said in a 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Plaintiff seeks unspecified FRAND compensation and other relief. The Company’s response to the complaint is not yet due. The Company intends to defend the case vigorously.”

In a complaint filed last week, Nokia accuses Apple of “attempting to get a free ride” off the Finnish company’s research efforts and not agreeing to licensing terms. Nokia alleges patent infringement covers iPhones since 2007 and includes GSM, 3G and Wi-Fi transmission techniques along with speech coding, encryption and security. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster believes Apple is seeking a 1 percent to 2 percent royalty, or $6 to $12 for each iPhone sold.

When you’re among the top achievers in your given field of endeavor it only stands to reason you probably choose the best tools available to do whatever it is you do, both professionally and personally.

Our survey of some of the best of the best across a wide range of endeavors shows lots of those at the top of their games choose Apple gear when it comes to computing and entertainment and we offer here a gallery of 10 top machers from the fields of media, sports, entertainment, politics and elsewhere who choose Apple products to enhance and enable their achievements.

There’s a reason the game is called Follow the Leader, isn’t it?

Via ObamaPacMan

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_WbL2xYquw

This is a hard one to watch: a 1984 Mac 512K meets its end in an industrial microwave oven.

Watch as it goes up in flames —  then witness the after effects of the burning on the keyboard, screen.

It’s the work of Dovetastic, aka Kenny Irwin, who has been zapping everything from 1960s telephones to gas masks  in the microwave on YouTube since February 2006.

Ouch. After it comes out of the oven, hours later, it keeps sizzling!

Need a stiff drink to get that happy face in charred plastic out from under my eyelids before it haunts me forever.

While Apple doesn’t hold any actual monopolies, Harrison Keely has create a board game remix that creates an idealized world where the goal is to own every Apple product ever. It’s not an actual game yet (someone would need to write some rules, design some playing pieces, and create draw cards for that), but it’s got some fun touches. Having to pay $100 extra when you land on Reality Distortion Field is a particularly excellent idea (I find it’s usually more in the neighborhood of $200 — ask 1st-gen iPhone owners). You can see the picture full size by clicking on it.

“An Affordable Way to Own Every Mac” — Teqnolog

ReelDirector is a mobile movie-making app that brings iMovie-like video editing to the iPhone.

With ReelDirector, you can trim clips, add text and transitions, and even edit different clips together. Currently, the iPhone’s built-in video editing capabilities are limited to just trimming clips. With this app, you can forget those limits.

ReelDirector is pretty easy to use. It has a huge feature list, which makes it possible to do most of the stuff that you do on iMovie, natively on the iPhone.

• ‘Stitch together’ different pieces of clip using the ‘drag and drop timeline’ interface similar to Apple’s built-in clip editing UI.
• Make simple edits and preview these edits easily.
• Choose from a variety of transitions to add or change for each separate clip.
• Add Text watermarks with different styles and several different positions.

Briefly, it’s a great utility to create short family clips or beautify some worthy moments. ReelDirector is currently available for $7.99 on the AppStore and is currently at the 60th position amongst the Top Grossing Applications.

ReelDirector is developed by a group of developers at nexvio, which specializes in producing such innovative Video and Image editing solutions for the iPhone platform.

New pictures from CNet show that Apple’s latest store in NYC looks to be a beauty.

Located on the Upper West Side at 67th and Broadway, the massive store will have an all-glass front and a huge glass roof (watch the amazing fly-over from Gary Allen at IFOAppleStore. Allen’s also got a cool mockup). The store’s glass facade will measure 54 feet tall, 75 feet wide and 30 feet deep.

In anticipation of the store’s opening before the end of the year, Apple has removed the big black tarp which covered the construction site, replacing it with a latex wrap. The wrap looks like a red curtain that’s been opened slightly to reveal the teasing message: “Opening soon. Apple Store Upper West Side.

Apple’s stock dropped 5 points on Tuesday to close at $197.37. The stock saw a run last week after the release of a raft of new products, hitting a high of $208.71.

One analyst suggests there’s resistance to the stock going above $207 (even though 2010 price targets are between $250-$300), but perhaps investors took some profits today?

Update: The big sell-off is probably due to the Galleon Group liquidating its investments after billionaire founder Raj Rajaratnam was charged with fraud. Bloomberg said the hedge-fund firm is busy selling 90 percent of its investments, mostly in Apple, Google and eBay. Thanks Fabio.

UPDATE: Oops. Sorry for the embarrassing headline typo. Fixed.

Leaping way, way ahead of competitors, Apple has approved more than 100,000 apps for the App Store, according to App Shopper, an app tracking site.

By contrast, there’s 246 apps for Windows Mobile, which has been around for six years, and about 96 apps for the Palm Pre (see Palm’s list of WebOS applications). Google’s Android,which is probably the iPhone’s strongest competitor, has about 10,000 apps, according to recent estimates. Google has yet to release official figures.

Apple in August said there were 65,000 apps. It took just another 10 weeks to approve more than 35,000 apps. (Apple has approved more than 100K apps, but the number actually available for download is slightly lower: about 93,000)

I recently came across orbit, which is one of the best navigation options available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I have an iPhone that has over 100 applications and it’s definitely a pain to get to the applications on the last page. I can always put the useful applications on the first page but at this point, I have just stopped arranging them. This is when Orbit enters the scene. Instead of swiping across all these pages, it lets me jump to a particular page quickly using simple tile view, saving me a lot of time. That’s the reason it’s one of my favorites.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs04IBr-8L4

Here’s what might happen if Apple invented an  iPhone called the 4G Talk.  Except, unlike what you would expect from Apple, it talks and doesn’t have anything nice to say.

Put your headphones on — as it taunts the poor guy trying to use it, the phone also doesn’t say stuff you’d want your co-workers to overhear.

Props to spoofsters Back of the Class for giving it an Apple-like voice.

Hat-tip to CoM reader Robot Emperor for sending it our way.

OK, I’ll be the one to step up and admit it: Some of us here at Cult of Mac have a… little problem with bags. We’re bagaholics — and I’m the worst. I even have a bag to hold all my bags. So when I say that Osprey’s Flap Jack Courier is hands-down the best laptop bike bag I’ve ever slung over my back, it’s a big deal.

Hit the jump to find out what exactly makes this bag so stupefyingly fantastic.

The King of Pop Michael Jackson’s posthumous album, This is It, launched yesterday on iTunes and almost immediately went to the no. 2 spot and 10 spots on the list of  hot-selling albums.

As of this writing, it was second only to the soundtrack to The Twilight Saga, the New Moon.

The widely-anticipated album almost didn’t make it to iTunes.

Jackson’s last effort contains only one new song, the title track, and Jackson’s estate did not want to sell the album, as per Apple’s policy, on a track by track basis.

Fans who shell out $13.99 for the whole enchilada also get four demos and a poem with the 15 tracks including “They Don’t Care About Us” and “Billie Jean.”

The uneasy compromise: the new single only comes with the complete album.

As commenter yippiyyip noted: “The lone fault is that the title song is not being sold separately. Buy the album for the song? No thanks.”

Would you shell out for an entire album to get just one track?

On October 3, a collector bought a rare Apple 1 on eBay for $18,000. The computer, one of about 50 thought to be still in existence, had an estimated value of $14,000 – $16,000.

Back in July 1976, the Apple I sold for $666.66; there were 200 of them hand made by Steve Wozniak. Sold in a kit,  it came with 4KB standard memory,  you could bump up to 8KB or 48KB with expansion cards. You had to add your own case, keyboard and display. (If you’d like to see one, check out the Smithsonian.)

The seller of this Apple 1, Monroe Postman, wasn’t even sure if it would still work.

So, who would pay $18,000 for an Apple I?

A  self-defined “PC person,” who believes that today’s Macs are overpriced. The collector, who wishes to remain anonymous for now, may one day launch a computer museum.

And perhaps trade that PC for a modern Mac.

Interview by Leander Kahney.

CoM: Why did you buy it?

I have been collecting vintage computers for number of years. Obviously, original Apple I is a dream for any serious computer collector and for me, this dream came through.

I have 150+ vintage computers in my collection, which I try to maintain in working order. Occasionally, I take some to local middle and high schools to show to the students. I have an exact working Apple I replica, which is always a hit. Students love playing Lunar Lander.

CoM: What are you going to do with it?

One of those days, I am planning to open a real “museum” for public and the Apple I will take one of the central places.

CoM: What does your spouse/significant other think of it?

Even though my wife is in the computer business herself, she does not pay much attention to my hobby. Obviously, $18K raised her brow, but she understood it in the end.

More pics, full interview after the jump.

As I noted a couple of weeks ago, I want a way to view all my iPhone apps on my iPhone, not just through iTunes. I review lots of iPhone apps and am a keen iPhone gamer. When apps vanish into the void, I forget they’re there (and so Spotlight isn’t much use), and it’s absurd that I can only delete apps in the void when using iTunes. I should be able to do this with just the device.

On Twitter earlier today, I said “iPhone now has 14 pages of apps (via cunning bug exploitation); time to do a major ‘review and delete’ session,” and people have asked me how I did this. Hat tippage must go to British games journo Stuart Campbell and web dev Dayanah, who independently discovered the exploit I now use, although the process of how to take advantage of it appears variable. In my case, it’s roughly as follows:

1. Ensure the device’s home screens are all totally full, and that Voice Memos is the last app on the final one.
2. Drag an app from one screen to the next, thereby ‘bumping’ Voice Memos into the void.
3. Download an app to fill the space left from app-dragging in step 2.

Voice Memos, irked at being bumped, should now make its way back to your first home screen, and you should have a brand-new second page. If you’re lucky, the new page will also include apps previously in the void. If not, reboot and these things will happen. Rinse and repeat the process to get more pages.

One warning: this is only a temporary solution. Open your device in iTunes and select then the Applications tab and your extra pages will probably vanish. In my experience, the same happens during a sync. However, as a means of accessing ‘hidden’ apps between syncs, it’s better than nothing, until Apple gets its finger out of its butt and finally provides a means of viewing more than an arbitrary number of apps on its mobile devices.

Are you seated comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

Once upon a time (1998), there was a company called Mitchell Corporation, and it created a game called Puzz Loop, and there was much happiness and rejoicing. The fun-filled game enabled you to shoot coloured marbles at a relentless stream of incoming ones, aiming to create chain collisions of like-coloured marbles, which subsequently vanished.

Like all good action puzzlers, lots of companies were upset because they hadn’t thought of the idea first, and so they went ahead and created their own versions. For example, in 2003, there was PopCap Games with Zuma, and then in 2005, Luxor by MumboJumbo.

For a time, all the Puzz Loops of the world lived happily in Videogameland, until the day they all decided to move to iPodWorld. There, they met Stoneloops! of Jurassica, and MumboJumbo decided to become a great big jerk and have Stoneloops! of Jurassica booted out of iPodWorld.

Stoneloops! of Jurassica might have had a a stupid name, but MumboJumbo’s real problem was that Stoneloops! of Jurassica was wearing a really similar T-short to Luxor, and therefore asked the Big Bad Apple to stamp on its rival’s head until it was dead and buried. And no-one lived happily ever after.

The end.

Clearly, rights infringement is a big concern on the App Store. However, Apple should not be placed in the position of having to nuke a product on the basis that it’s like another one, when the rival making the complaint rips off existing and older IP. If Mitchell Corporation had thrown a hissy fit, it might have had a point, but it didn’t. This incident, however, is the equivalent of TAITO getting the likes of Reflexion pulled from the App Store due to it being somewhat like Arkanoid, while Breakout owner Atari looks on, puzzled. However, TAITO hasn’t done this, because, unlike MumboJumbo, it hasn’t lost its marbles. [You’re fired—Ed.]

The third in a series of five t-shirt giveaways, correctly name this mystery Apple item and you could win a T-shirt.

Not just any T-shirt: choose from the Apple-inspired designs at Mighttees, which include the I Love Lisa we wrote about, a retro-style logo and Steve Jobs in typeface.

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is bringing cartoon icon Tintin to life in a movie, calling the shots via iChat.

Jackson was unable to trade his native New Zealand for the California set where flesh and blood actors are filming Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

So he told them what to do via iChat.

“Steven was on the set and Peter was in Wellington and he had lots of live links via iChat,” explained English actor Nick Frost, who plays one of the hapless Thomson detectives.

“I’ve never been directed before via iChat, which was an odd and not totally unpleasant way of doing business, just a bit strange.”

“Because of the time difference Peter would stay up all night and tinker and get in the sort of position that he was ready to shoot,” Frost said.

“Peter kind of re-wrote the scripts most evenings because he was in New Zealand, and so you would go in, in the morning with three or four pages of new dialogue and they were like, ‘Shooting this in 30 minutes, so get ready’.”

Also being told how to emote and where to stand via iChat are Daniel Craig, who plays a pirate, and Billy Elliot star Jaime Bell as Tintin.

This is the first of a Tintin trilogy slated to hit theaters in 2011; Jackson will direct the next one solo and team up with Steven Spielberg for the third.

Via Stuff

Release Candidate 2 (RC2) for Blackra1n, iPhone hacker George Hotz’s software for 1-click jailbreaking, has been released for all existing iPhone and iPod Touch devices. It adds support for new iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 8GB and fixes almost every bug present in the previous version. However, it will NOT unlock the device, enabling it to be used with different GSM carriers worldwide.

If you purchased an iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch 8GB within the last 3 weeks, there is a high probability that you have this new model. Blackra1n currently performs only a tethered jailbreak for these new devices, which means you need to use blackra1n every time you boot the device, otherwise all your jailbreak data gets wiped.  Other bug fixes include an issue with 3G network and some issues with Icy, Ripdev’s installer tool. Also, there is no need to rerun the new version, if the old one worked for you.

For those who don’t already know, blackra1n jailbreaks your iPhone or iPod Touch (any generation) with a single click in merely 30 seconds, making it the easiest jailbreak solution that ever existed.

Blackra1n for Mac and Windows is available to download at blackra1n.com.

Cult of Mac ‘How To’ is available here.

The main selling point of the Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX is that it works anywhere, even on glass.

It does as well. It even worked when I scrolled it over my construction hard-hat.

Full review after the jump.

Our recent preview of Lightroom 3 – Beta has generated a lot of buzz about the future of digital processing. One of the questions that keeps coming up is: how do I migrate from Aperture to Lightroom?

Well, it’s not has hard as you think, as long as you’re willing to invest a bit of time up-front to do it right.
Follow us after the jump, and we’ll have you loving Lightroom in the amount of time it takes to get a pizza delivered.

‘Tis the season for folks to bust out their best Home Ec skills (or their credit cards) in search of costumery to frighten and delight the young and old alike out trick or treating, or just looking for a few good laughs on Halloween.

Back in 2007, when the iPhone had been out just a few months, we saw a raft of costumes related to Apple’s newest technological wonderment. But so far in the succeeding years, we’ve not seen a whole lot of new takes on the idea and frankly, what we have seen has been pretty lame.

Look at the guy in the picture above. He had to be purposely dressing it down at a party full of Windows aficionados, right? But in the gallery that follows, we’ve had to reach back in time for things better than this. Apple fans seem to have fallen creatively short in recent years.

Is it possible nowadays to dress like a piece of technology known for its elegant design and not look like a complete (and uncomfortable) buffoon?

Let us know what you’ve found out there in comments below, or submit pics of your own awesome Apple-related costume designs and we’ll feature another gallery of the best down the road.

We’ve reported before about the legal spat between Mobigame, makers of fine indie game Edge, and Tim Langdell, who appears to make his money by suing anyone daring to use the name Edge in a videogame, and makes rather spurious claims regarding how he ‘spawned’ almost any major property with the word ‘Edge’ in its title, including Edge magazine by Future Publishing, Marvel comic Edge, and, er, 1997 Anthony Hopkins movie turkey The Edge. (He’s also laughably stated in the past how he has come to an ‘understanding’ with a guitarist of a very popular rock band.) TIGSource has a great overview of the madness.

Edge returned to the App Store recently, and Langdell will next year be battling EA, a company that’s had enough. Rather than just dealing with issues relating to EA game Mirror’s Edge—Langdell started advertising a game called Mirrors (a game by) Edge, which still doesn’t exist, and yet was in no way an effort to promote mark confusion—EA’s aiming to have Langdell stripped of all his Edge-related marks.

EA’s documentation cites numerous examples of Langdell filing out-of-date and falsified specimens, and the fact Edge Games isn’t a viable commercial concern. (ChaosEdge offers running commentary regarding Langdell’s so-called commercial concerns—a Mythora ‘reissue’ they bought from Edge Games was a home-made burned disc; and despite Langdell claiming its game Racers had sold out, the second purchase ChaosEdge made days later had an order number only one higher than their pre-Racers order.) Last month, company spokesman Jeff Brown said: “While this seems like a small issue for EA, we think that filing the complaint is the right thing to do for the developer community.”

Sadly, Langdell still won’t back down. We today heard Mobigame’s Edge is again under threat, with Apple giving the company five days to respond to yet another threat from Langdell. If you’ve an iPhone or iPod touch, get in there fast, because chances are that Edge is about to vanish yet again, and it may take an EA battering in court next year for Langdell to finally stop harassing indie developers.

Edge is available on the App Store for $4.99. It’s really good, so go and buy it before it’s too late.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — On opening night, Microsoft’s first retail store here drew lots more visitors than the long-established Apple store right down the street.

Microsoft’s store might be a plank-for-plank remake of Apple’s groundbreaking shops, but it’s got one thing Apple’s stores lack — walls of Xboxes.

Hit the jump for more retina-burning retail pix, Microsoft-style.

My beloved truck used to be behind the times. The factory-installed stereo had a cassette deck. Remember them? No iPod/iPhone connection and worse, no hands-free cellphone.

But now its got a shiny Sony Xplod aftermarket stereo, which features both iPod and Bluetooth connectivity.

There’s a lot of replacement stereos, but the Xplod has the easiest Bluetooth setup ever, and it always makes a seamless connection with my iPhone. It just works, every time, period. Now I’m always chatting it up in while I’m driving, and I love streaming music via Bluetooth. I should have got one years ago.

Full review after the jump.

Even though I own both Adobe’s Lightroom and Apple’s Aperture, I use Lightroom because of the advanced development module, the ability to paint on different exposures, and non-destructive editing. I had very high hopes for Lightroom 3, which Adobe just released in beta, and am pleased to say that with one pretty significant exception, I’m very pleased.

Tutorial Videos and more comments after the jump