Rogue Amoeba’s AirFoil started out as a way to stream any non-iTunes audio to your AirPort Express mini-router, back when AirPlay was still called AirTunes. Then it was expanded with a free iOS app which would let you stream music from AirFoil on the Mac to AirFoil on your iPod or iPhone, handy for hooking up to a stereo.

Now we have AirFoil Speakers Touch 3 for iOS, and it adds in proper AirPlay support, letting you send music from pretty much any iDevice you own.

Everyone is hoping that the next generation iPhone will be unveiled with significant design changes. Maybe an aluminum backing, a bigger screen, or even a haptic home button will make an appearance on a redesigned iPhone. Details are scant on what the “iPhone 5” will look like, but if these newest leaks are to be believed it looks like the next iPhone will still have a home button.

New part leaks were spotted today on TVC Mall that show black and white home buttons for the iPhone 5. At first glance the buttons look like those found on the newest iPhone 4S, but closer inspection shows a few differences.

We’ve heard plenty of speculation surrounding the future of Apple’s 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros in recent months, which are soon expected to adopt a new form factor and Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge processors. However, according to one analyst, there may no longer be a MacBook Pro… or a MacBook Air.

Instead, Apple will release an all-new MacBook that combines the qualities of both, while the 17-inch MacBook Pro will be discontinued completely.

For the price, the Sony RDP-X500iP is a hell of a lot of sound. In fact, it’s the best-sounding iPhone, iPod or iPad dock we’ve seen in its price range, and it even manages to match the audio quality of some speaker docks that cost $100-$200 more. If you’re looking to buy one, though, you should be aware of a couple of niggles before you drop your dough.

BYOD programs are popping in workplaces of virtually every shape and size. One of the big advantages of these programs is that you can decide what kind of mobile device (iPhone, iPad, or other device) and what apps make the most sense for your job and how you work. Some companies even offer reimbursement of some of the expenses associated with using your personal tech in the office – an example being your iPhone or iPad’s data plan (or a portion of it).

That sense of freedom is very empowering, but it often comes with the tradeoff of your company’s IT department enrolling your device in a mobile management system. This means that certain features of your device are likely to be restricted for security purposes. It also means that your company will be able to monitor and track how you use your iPhone or iPad and can wipe data remotely at any point. 

Exactly one month after the device made its debut in the U.S. on March 16, the new iPad will arrive in South Korea and 11 additional countries this week.

In Ray Bradbury’s dystopian sci-fi classic Fahrenheit 451, books are outlawed by the government in the 24th century.

According to Bradbury, this imagined ban didn’t happen overnight. It was preceded by gradual trivialization of information in general. People increasingly preferred TV sound-bites and frivolous, out-of-context nuggets of information over reasoned argument and well-researched books about important ideas.

Eventually, writers and readers of books became so culturally marginalized that it was easy for the government to just eliminate them and their work by burning down any home or building that contained books.

Bradbury’s nightmare is in fact happening, and way ahead of schedule. 

It seems that every week for the past few months, there’s been at least one or two announcements of app developers, cloud service providers, and mobile management vendors developing strategic partnerships to create or integrate their products into a single unified workflow.

Box’s OneCloud initiative, in which the storage provider teamed up with more than two dozen app developers to create seamless workflows for several different business and productivity tasks, is probably the biggest example of this trend. Others include Quickoffice launching its own cloud service as well as integrating with Accellion’s kitedrive, LogMeIn’s new Cubby service, and CloudOn’s virtualized version of Microsoft Office that integrates with Box and Dropbox for storage.

Over the last couple of months Sharp has been rumored to be Apple’s partner for producing the LCDs of the mysterious “iTV” the world is waiting for. While analysts, such as Peter Misek, have been linking Sharp to Apple for a while now, definitive proof of their connection has yet to surface. However, adding to the rumors, Sharp announced today that they have begun production on 32-inch Hi-DPI LCD’s displays this March that could be used in Apple’s new iMac line that is expected to be unveiled in June.

Last week I took a brief look at how managing a handful of Macs differs from managing dozens or hundreds or even thousands of Macs. Some readers asked how big companies like Apple, Google, Viacom, or IBM actually go about managing large numbers of Macs – both in terms of the tools they use and in terms of how their IT processes differ from supporting Macs in small businesses.

I can’t speak for how Apple manages the Macs of its thousands of employees, but I have worked with several large companies as a Mac IT professional – along with a number of schools and colleges, government agencies, and small businesses. Here’s a look at the tools and processes that they use to configure, deploy, and manage Macs on a grand scale.