There’s a lot to like about the iPhone’s App Store. The more than 100,000 programs within its occasionally strict boundaries offer a bevy of experience riches unmatched in the mobile computing space. But it’s also frustrating. Great apps get postponed or blocked altogether, while great ones like Skype have key features removed.

All of this is nothing new. Mac bloggers talk about this all the time. But I think I’ve also pinpointed exactly why such minor complaints are so painful. It’s called the Entertainment Category of the App Store.

For those unfamiliar with its seedy contents, the Entertainment Category is sort of a catch-all for all kinds of applications that don’t have a good home elsewhere in the App Store. Here’s a chart I made to illustrate the problem:

Yes, despite the fact that the entertainment category does include some legit apps, some of which are great (Pocket God, Emoji, and Movies spring to mind), it is, for the most part, a giant blue Pac-Man of lame softcore porn devouring all in its path. And it’s impossible to find anything actually entertaining there. Which is a disaster. It’s a disincentive to develop something good (who can compete against Naughty Hotties?), and that means that it inevitably gets worse over time.

Psystar, the unofficial Mac cloner, may actually have a shot at beating Apple, the Miami New Times reports in an interesting backgrounder on the two brothers behind the company, Robert and Rudy Pedraza.

The six-page profile includes several interesting factoids, including the revelation that their father is a convicted coke dealer.

The brothers started their knockoff business after one of them survived a near fatal car crash. The company is shipping boatloads of computers and is likely making money (quickly eaten by legal costs). Several copycats have cropped up, including the Moscow-based RussianMac.

To recap, Psystar sells cheap Hackintoshes that run Apple’s OS X. A Psystar machine costs about a third of a comparable offering from Apple, but runs OS X in violation of Apple’s shrinkwrap EULA license.

Apple is hell-bent on shutting the company down, but some IP experts think Psystar has a shot. The case hinges on the legality of EULAs — shrinkwrap licenses — that say you don’t own the software you buy, you license it. The legality of EULAs has never been tested in the courts, which makes the Psystar case so important. If Psystar wins, it may not only throw a wrench into Apple’s business model, it may alter the entire software industry.

The paper quotes a couple of intellectual property lawyers who say the tiny Florida company may actually win.

“They’ve already put some really good arguments forward,” says Randy Friedberg, an intellectual property lawyer following the case in New York. “There’s essentially one really interesting question here, and it’s whether that licensing agreement holds up.”

Bare Bones released a Yojimbo update this afternoon, which adds a handful of nice new bits and pieces.

If rumors that Apple is adding an RFID reader to the iPhone are true, it’s huge!

An RFID reader would turn the iPhone into an e-wallet — allowing you to pay for everything, from a cup of coffee to a subway ride. It could also turn the iPhone into an ID card, a security access system and an electronic ticketing device.

It’s could also function as an easy and secure online shopping system that doesn’t require you to enter your credit card number.

Your iPhone could unlock your car, pick up e-coupons at the local mall, and pay for all your supermarket groceries just by laying it on top of the checkout.

Imagine if such a system was enabled on your iPhone. It would supplant your wallet — if enough retailers adopted the system, of course.

This is the last week to purchase The Mac Sale’s newest bundle, so if you were thinking about picking this one up, do it before Friday.

For the typical bundle price of $49.99, you can pick up some quality software that would normally cost a lot more. Classic Apps like MacJournal and HoudahGeo make the bundle great, but I reviewed a couple of other apps like Picturesque and Searchlight that are simple and ultra effective.

The Mac Sale Bundle includes the following apps:

* CrossOver Games – Play a good number of Windows games on your Mac
* Opacity Express –  Great drawing app for tinkering or serious design.
* Vinoteka – Organize your booze with this pretty app
* MacJournal – The ultimate blogging and journaling tool by Mariner Software.
* Stor – New MySQL editor that’s easy to use.
* Stone iMaginator – Powerful Core Graphics powered image editor.
* Picturesque – Great tool for web graphics. I use this regularly.
* Searchlight – Search and send files remotely using the iPhone or your desktop.

The great thing about bundles is that while saving you cash you get the apps that you want plus you can try out a few you didn’t know you needed. The Mac Sale Bundle (affiliate link) is a steal at $49.99, and while reading developer interviews you can listen to their crazy The Mac Sale Bundle song. The Mac Sale ends Friday.

We start off with a hardware trio: The Apple store offers a number of MacBook laptops, starting at $749 for a 2.1 GHz, 13-inch machine. Next up is an 8GB iPod touch for $139 and an 8GB iPhone 3G for $49. Along with hardware, we have several cases for your iPhone or iPod, both of the hard and soft variety. To wrap-up today’s deals, we list a couple chargers and bluetooth stereo connectors for good measure.

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

The Video Electronics Standard Association (VESA) Tuesday formally approved the Mini DisplayPort standard. The move to standardize the technology first licensed by Apple could prompt low-cost alternatives to displays made by Cupertino.

Any devices or cables using the Mini DisplayPort connector must meet DisplayPort 1.1a standards. VESA previously announced the Mini DisplayPort connector would be rolled-into the upcoming DisplayPort 1.2 standard that expects to increase bandwidth to 21.6GB per second. The upgrade would support multiple monitors, 3D displays, high resolutions and more colors.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment Tuesday introduced a bevy of iPhone and iPod touch tie-ins with a number of holiday Blu-ray titles. The DVDs come with the pocket BLU app, enabling iPhone and iPod users to enhance the Blu-ray experience. Another app, social BLU, lets Blu-ray users more ways to interact on Facebook and Twitter using Internet-enabled Blu-ray players.

The titles offering the iPhone and iPod apps include the Blu-ray versions of Bruno, Funny People, 9, American Pie Presents: The Book of Love, Public Enemies and Inglorious Basterds.

Hilton Hotels just launched an iPhone app that lets customers book and modify reservations at over 520 hotels in 76 countries.

Offered gratis on iTunes, the Hilton Worldwide app could come in handy for stranded travelers thanks to a feature that lets you find hotels near you, by address or airport, and gives you directions from your current location.

The hotels at hand also include all of those in the Hilton network — another 3,000 + including the Doubletree, Embassy Suites and Home2 suites chains.

The app will also let you choose bed and pillow type — plus if you don’t think you’ll have the strength to make a request once you get in, you can put your order for room service in via iPhone, too.

Sounds good, but it still has to compete with Priceline.com’s app (which boasts William Shatner as the icon) already iTunes’ fifth-most-downloaded free app after launching a week ago.

What do you think, handy or meh?

Via USA Today

Remember the hoopla over Boston’s giant iPod billboard we reported on back in October? Questions arose whether a mayor’s aide had helped a business group obtain permission to erect the ad, despite the objections of the state’s outdoor advertising board and the mayor’s own historic reluctance for such things? The billboard was quietly removed, replaced by a public service mural.

Key to the decision was the Massachusetts Outdoor Advertising Board “deemed [the billboard] illegal because it advertised a product the storage business didn’t sell,” according to the Boston Herald. The ad was located on the side of a self-storage building that along with packing tape and locks, sold iTunes gift cards.

The billboard’s removal comes less than a half-year after the property owner and others paid $110,000 to obtain a one-year extension on a city permit.

In 2008 Apple opened its flagship Boston store.

[Via Boston Herald and 9to5Mac]

From now on, all Hackintoshes may be stuck at 10.6.1.

Hackintosh hackers have confirmed that 10.6.2 drops support for Intel’s Atom chips.

Writes leading hacker StelaRolo:

“The netbook forums are now blowing up with problems of 10.6.2 instant rebooting their Atom based netbooks. My sources tell me that everytime a netbook user installs 10.6.2 an Apple employee gets their wings.”

What’s this mean? StelaRolo says that a hacked kernel will likely appear, but Apple is clerly nuking the Hackintosh market.

In addition, Apple will not likely release any future hardware based on Intel’s Atom platform. Instead, Apple will concentrate on ARM-based hardware, the same platform as the iPhone. That includes the upcoming tablet.

As Seth Weintraub writes on Computerworld.com:

“Apple bought a processor-building company called PA Semi two years ago, in order to build chips for iPhones, said Steve Jobs. The chips that this new Apple division make will likely be the chips that power Apple’s tablet and even future laptops.”

Could Apple be catching Microsoft as tech’s most valuable company?

CNBC says Apple is already in Microsoft’s rearview mirror, and could unseat the software giant within two years.

While Apple is currently valued at $180 billion and Microsoft at $250 billion, Apple’s business is growing fast while MS’s is not.

“The biggest overriding reason why the company still has room to run is that its business is growing,” Erick Maronak, chief investment officer for the Victory Large Cap Growth Fund, told CNBC. “The day they introduce the tablet, that’s going to drive a lot of earnings.” (Maronak’s fund owns shares in both companies.)

Maronak said he would “not be surprised to see Apple’s market cap approach Microsoft’s in the next two years, though he also likes the software company’s growth prospects.”

Apple is already has a similar market capitalization to Google, Microsoft’s other big rival. Apple has doubled annual revenues to $36.5 billion since 2005, CNBC notes, and has boosted it’s stock price by nearly 900 percent in the last decade. Microsoft’s stock has fallen 35 percent in the same period.

CoM’s Take: We’ve argued here many times that the next 20 years of personal computing will belong to the consumer, not the busines market. Apple’s ease-of-use, design chops and vertical integration put it far ahead of anyone else when it comes to delivering consumer-focused technology.

Apple has just released the 10.6.2 update to OS X, which includes scores of bug fixes and improvements, including the nasty bug that can delete your data when using a guest account.

The “Guest Account Bug” was the big one, but Apple says the update fixes sundry issues, from Exchange contacts not showing up inSpotlight search to glitchy four-finger gestures. Full list of fixes after the jump.

The update has been eagerly awaited by Snow Leopard users suffering problems from spotty WiFi to constant spinning beachballs.

The update is available through Software Update or can be downloaded as a standalone installer. It’s available in two flavors:

Mac OS X v10.6.2 Update (473MB)

Mac OS X v10.6.2 Update (Combo) (479MB)

The update’s size when downloaded through Software Update can vary depending on your machine and the previous updates already installed.

If you jailbreak your iPhone, the first thing you ABSOLUTELY MUST DO is change the default filesystem password.

When you jailbreak, the filesystem’s password is set to the common password “alpine.” As people usually don’t bother changing this password after performing a jailbreak, it’s really easy for hackers to get access to any jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch on a public network.

EDIT: Just confirmed with GeoHot and it seems that at least blackra1n doesn’t install SSH by default, therefore this should not be a problem if you used blackra1n to jailbreak, unless you installed the OpenSSH package from Cydia.

An Australian hacker called Ashley Towns demonstrated this by circulating the first known iPhone worm, known as Ikee, which replaces your lockscreen wallpaper with an image of Rick Astley. Luckily Town’s Rickrolling is benign. He wrote the worm to demonstrate how easy it is to break into jailbroken iPhones.

Changing the password is quick and easy — after the jump is a tutorial showing how to change the SSH password.

Note: There is no need to follow this guide if you haven’t jailbroken your iPhone/iPod Touch.

Apple reportedly has begun shipping its 27-inch iMacs with Intel Core i5 quad-core processors to consumers who ordered the new desktop Macs in October. The company is now notifying buyers the iMacs have shipped from Shanghai. Apple had said it would ship the new Core i5 and i7 quad-core Macs in November.

The new iMacs include a 27-inch screen with 16:9 ratio and 2560×1440 resolution. The 2.66 GHz Core i5 750 iMac retails for $1,999 with a $200 build-to-order alternative includes a 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 860 processor. Both quad-core iMacs sport 8MB L3 cache with the “Nehalem” Core i7 reportedly 2.4 times quicker than the Core 2 Duo.

Along with a 27-inch screen, the new iMacs offer 4GB SDRAM expandable to 16GB. The desktop machines also include an ATI Radeon HD 4850 discrete graphics, 1TB Serial ATA hard drive and a slot-loading 8x SuperDrive.

[Via AppleInsider]

We’ve seen this before: A company that’s built a reputation offering stuff to the budget-minded shopper suddenly does an about face and starts wooing the uptown crowd. Sometimes it works brilliantly; often it’s a misfire.

Earlier this year, it was iHome’s turn at bat. The company, well-known for their cleanly simple, inexpensive line of iPod/iPhone accessories, stepped in a bold new direction with the release of their flagship iP1 iPod dock, a product that costs double their previously most-expensive item.

Hit the jump to find out if iHome struck out or hit a home run with the iP1.

We start another week with more deals on MacBook Pro laptops. This time we feature a 2.26GHz 13-inch machine from the Apple Store, starting at $999. Also available: 2.53GHz and 2.66GHz MacBook Pro laptops with prices ranging from $1,299 to $1,949. You can also get a $10 extra gift card when you bundle a $25 iTunes gift card along with a $25 Best Buy card. We round out the top trio with a 3-in-1 FM transmitter for the iPod or iPhone.

For details on these and other bargains (including a new round of App Store freebies), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

UK carrier O2 will unlock iPhones once subscriber contracts expire, allowing customers to use the Apple device on rival networks. The decision by Telefonica chairman and CEO Matthew Key could preview how carriers respond to the shrinking number of exclusive iPhone contracts.

“Once the iPhone becomes available on other UK networks, we will allow O2 customers to unlock their iPhones, although of course they will still need to honor any outstanding contract period they have,” Key told the Times. “At the end of their contract period, they are entirely free to move to another operator.”

Verizon has released three new ads attacking AT&T, the latest labeling the iPhone as a “Misfit toy.” The ad charges the handset belongs on the “Island for Misfit Toys” because of AT&T’s lack of widespread 3G coverage. Two other Christmas-themed ads take aim at the rival carrier’s coverage.

This latest round of ads differ from Verizon’s iDon’t Droid spots which highlighted the handsets limitations. Instead, the newest ads make a point of praising the iPhone while  taking to task AT&T’s coverage.

The first worm aimed at the iPhone has appeared. The worm is described as mostly innocuous, initially targeting unsecure jailbroken iPhones in Austrialia.

The worm’s creator, a hacker identified as “ikex” switches your wallpaper for an image of Rick Astley, a 1980-era pop star. Astley, who sang the 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up,” may be better known for the Internet prank known as “Rickrolling.” The bait-and-switch replaces an ordinary video with one of Astley.

In the iPhone’s case, the hacker displays “ikex is never gonna give you up,” followed by comment’s in the worm’s source code urging people to upgrade their phone’s security.

“The world’s first iPhone worm is hardly a true criminal exploit,” according to Forbes. “Instead, it seems to be half warning, half prank.” In the source code, the hacker wrote: “People are stupid, and this is to prove it so.” The worm affects only iPhones using the default SSH password allowing phone-to-phone file transfers.

Transport in Switzerland not only runs on time, but you can buy tickets with your iPhone.

The latest version of the SBB mobile app lets travelers buy e-tickets for trains and all public transport, so you can get off the train in Lugano and catch a bus for Mendrisio without missing a beat.

Users first register with the railway company site to buy tickets via credit card for trains and buses, including day and bike passes.

The app, offered gratis on iTunes, comes in German, French, Italian and English. It also offers timetables, a “take me home” GPS function and has a crowd predictor so you know when to stop in a cafe and wait for the next one.

Convert your mild-mannered Mac Pro into a hard drive speed demon.  Stuff it with drives fast enough to work with full-quality, uncompressed video. Get more than 300 MB/s on your internal drives! It’s so easy even I can do it!

I’ve been working in video production for the last 20+ years. When you’re working with video you need as much storage space as you can afford. You need a badass computer with big fat hard drives that scream.

You think you might wanna Hot Rod your Mac Pro?  This easy, step-by-step guide will show you how.

Tim Langdell‘s back, and this time he’s mad(der than a bag of spanners). Today, Nalin Sharma’s Killer Edge Racing is the victim. The short version: like with Mobigame’s Edge, Langdell claims Nalin’s game is riffing off Edge’s ‘famous’ marks; additionally, Pocket Gamer reports that Langdell’s moved to register Killer Edge Racing and Killer Edge Racers, despite Killer Edge having its roots back in 2005, way before Edge Games claimed to be working on a racing game of its own. (It’s since released Racers—and the word ‘released’ is used here in its loosest possible sense—see ChaosEdge for the full story. But given that Racers is a redressed PC game from a liquidated company and is ‘released’ on home-burned DVDR and is not on iPhone, there’s no possibility of confusion.)

Of course, Apple will continue to hide behind the DMCA in these cases, saying it’s doing what it’s doing for legal reasons. But as this case and the one regarding StoneLoops! of Jurassica show, Apple’s going to start looking foolish if it doesn’t implement some kind of robust background check and a longer process of investigation/arbitration/settlement prior to yanking a game. A dispute policy is utterly essential, but the one currently in place is clearly open to abuse.

Here’s hoping Sharma manages to get his game back on the App Store without compromising the brand he’s been using for five years, and that EA’s case with Langdell next year reaches a conclusion that satisfies the indie developers regularly under fire from his trolling actions (oh, and the 15-year-old girls on DeviantArt he steals artwork from to advertise his games that don’t actually exist).

Serious craft from Japan’s Mobile Art Lab in transforming the iPhone into an amazing interactive image in a children’s story book from the future. I love it. All kids should get one for Christmas.

You can read what it’s all about in this Google Translation of their page.

Via dsonz