The iPhone is Apple’s “gaming platform” of the moment that coupled with the App Store, has become a raging success after crossing the 1 billion app download mark last week in a mere nine months says something about the App Store and its creators.  The iPhone and iPod Touch themselves are being marketed more as mobile gaming units in order to attract more buyers and developers which will in turn bring with it more cash.  This summer the iPhone will be able to claim a line up of some pretty amazing games for a mobile platform.  Titles such as Metal Gear Solid, Doom, and now Myst just to name a few.  Originally revealed waaaay back in August of 2008, Myst is finally here ready for anxious gamers on the go to give it a go.  Myst was a pretty popular game after being released back in ‘91.  Fast forwards almost 20 years and several gaming consoles later and we arrive at the iPhone/iPod Touch.

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If your idea of a sweet and stylish shower curtain is a mural of a bunch shadows dancing aimlessly standing in various poses as if they dance and sing in the shower, then your morning showers are soon to be a tad more enjoyable.  The iShower as it is so cleverly named, will surely please you, or the Apple fanboy in your life and make his or her daily self cleaning ritual all the more fun.  So how much do you really like Apple and iPods?  Enough to shower with them everymorning?

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Source: Foolish Gadgets, Chip Chick,

So are you tired of being jerked around by AT&T and paying for a service that continually gets restricted? Even though AT&T as well as several other cellular carriers around the world have blocked VoIP apps from their networks, a certain app exists in the jailbreaking world that will open up your iPhone to not just Skype, but any VoIP app that you can get your hands on! First off, you have to be kosher enough with jailbreaking (if you really want to tap the iPhones full potential, you will), after jailbreaking, head to Cydia and download and install the app “VoIPOver3G”. After the silent install, no icon or visible marker is noticeable. It simply works. After installed all of your VoIP apps will now “just work” over 3G. Sweet! If you are a big VoIP user, this is definitely something you want to take a look at. You won’t be sorry. Oh and by the way…VoIP sounds fantastic over even AT&T’s network! (Of course, performance will vary depending on locaiton)

Source: Into Mobile, Image Source

If you were a mobile app developer who actually makes a living by creating, designing, and developing apps, not getting paid, or getting paid in a timely manner could certainly be detrimental. Well, that is exactly what many iPhone app developers are having to deal with. Apparently, the craptactic team that handles app approvals and rejections must also handle app developer billing. When someone spends weeks to months on a single app and expects cash flow in, and then the distributor drops the ball and either pays them late or neglects to pay them at all, it can certainly cause tempers to flare. Just how far behind is Apple? You know where to go.

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Love the iTunes Music Store but hate iPods and iTunes itself? Don’t fret as their are many options for you such as GTK Pod or Amarok just to get the juices flowing. We all know Apple loves their walled garden approach to the products and is now getting yet another lawsuit because of it. This time it cetners around BlueWiki getting a DMCA violation claim from the almighty fruit stating that their site, which reverse engineers the iPod/iTunes code in order to develop 3rd party progams to sync you iPod with, is in direct violation of copyright clauses within the DMCA. Naturally Apple wants you to only use iTunes because it is the best. No software is ever the best at anything, merely a favorite or one that holds popular majority, but never “the best”. The fighting is about to get uglier as the EFF has sued Apple over their legal threats stating that they are operating well within the law and that Apple has no right to dictate how a person syncs his or her iPod, or even if reverse engineering is illegal. Care to explore? You know what to click.

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If you were a bit peeved by the iPhone and iPod Touches lack of syncing certain files such as notes and documents just to name a couple, Missing Sync was your saving grace. It allowed you to sync files that your Mac that you normally wouldn’t be able to borrow from your device. Though, with the first rendition you could only sync files on the mobile device to the Mac, and not the other way around. However, Missing Sync 2.0 now brings the ability for true two-way syncing as to make the most of your mobile life and allow you mobile and desktop devices to always be in sync. As far as iPhone/iPod Touch app compatibility goes, Fliq Notes 2.0 and Fliq Docs 2.0 are supported. If the 2.0 update is exactly what you’ve been waiting for, you’ll have to part with $40 for the added functionality. Previously registered pre-2.0 users will be able to get the upgrade for free. You down?

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Source: Macworld,

Everyone who knows anything about computers knows that Apple computers will always be more expensive than their PC counterparts.  According to Microsoft and as well as many individuals, the “Apple Tax” is wasted money on nothing more than some cute little fruit logo affixed somewhere on your machine.  For others it is a sign of “coolness”, youth, and individuality.  One thing is for sure, Apple who was expected to weather the economic storm is mortal just like everyone else.  So much so that even they lost market share year-over-year with quite an astounding decline.  But how how much?  And is Apple really suited for marketing products that could propel them to the majority of the world markets, or at the very least the U.S.?  Heck, do they even want to be market leaders?

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Did you sign up with MobileMe and have had one, two, three, or more questions/problems that the written FAQ’s and other forum based topics couldn’t answer?  Good news English speaking users as Apple announced on this Monday, April 27th, on their MobileMe News Blog that MobileMe will now feature 24/7 Chat support (English only) to help you step your way through your issues no matter what time of day or night, and hopefully get you back on the straight and narrow faster and happier.  So turn that frown upside down and give the now voice powered support a shot.  Don’t forget to let us know how it goes!

Source: The iPhone Blog

With all the focus on the economy and companies announcing layoffs left and right, many were surprised with the latest news that has been floating around of Apple themselves letting go of a reported 10% of their work force.  In the great excitement that the announcement caused, many people have simply misunderstood what the numbers meant.  Apple reported 14,500 “full-time equivalents” at the end of March - not 14,500 employees.  For many, they’ll interpret full-time equivalents as employees, however, FTE is merely an accounting term used to calculate “man-hours”, not employees.  While Apple has been letting some people go, it is no where near 1,500.  So, your fears can subside as Apple isn’t in that bad of shape.  Happy Saturday folks.

Source: Mac Daily News, *Image Source: Bind Apple*

Lets take a short break in the craziness that is life and crawl through the depths of your mind.  Ok, we aren’t really going that far back in you mind…January ‘09 to be exact.  Do you remember a particular app that was made by the popular restaurant chain called “Chipotle”?  It was available for a whopping few hours before being yanked because the servers literally melted into the ground.  Do you remember their claim that they would relaunch the app within a couple weeks?  Well, three months later here we are, appless and still hungry.  What gives?  Well I wanted to know that very same answer too so I gave Chipotle some contact love by way of phone and email as many different aliases.  Right inside is their answer.  

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If you are any type of an Apple fan, I guarantee that you want to be Connor Mulcahey, a 13 year-old from Weston, Conn.  This lucky kid has offcially been named the winner of the billion app download contest by Apple and as promised will recieve a $10,000 iTunes gift card, a 32GB iPod Touch, a Time Capsule, and a new unibody Macbook Pro.  *Speechless…and drooling*  Enjoy your free bounty dear young child.  You are the envy of many.

Source: Macworld, *Image Source: Zcache*

If you are a close astronomer and love everything about space and the surrounding heavens, chances are you just may like to watch or track our very own man made satellites as they orbit by.  Doing so with the naked eye or even a fancy telescope can sometimes be difficult.  Thankfully there are creative iPhone developers who slave away in front of a computer for hours while the star gazers are outside having fun.  The fruits of their slaving?  GoSatWatch.  With this app, locating and tracking satellites is exponentially easier and even fun.  With special tabs for certain celestial objects such as the international space station make tracking the more popular objects even easier.  The app will pinpoint your location based on the iPhones built-in GPS in which you can have satellite tracks overlaid on the map showing just how close satellites are actually coming to your location.  All-in-all, star gazers and space nuts should definitely check out GoSatWatch.

Source: TUAW

In what is beginning to become a weekly occurance, Apple has again stirred up controversy regarding approved apps appearing in the App Store as well as the methods they use to approve/reject certain apps.  The latest scandal is actually quite disturbing and makes me want to puke - it’s that bad.  The app that is causing all of the commotion?  “Baby Shaker”.  The app does exactly what the title implies.  It is a basic app with no real meaning other than to silence kill digital babies.  The app starts with a screaming baby at which point you vigerously shake your iPhone/iPod Touch until the baby has red x’s appear over its eyes signifying that it is dead.  Pardon my plain, simple, and blunt english, but what kind of sick fuck makes something like this, approves this, and ultimately pays to downloads this.  Everyone involved should be fully ashamed and disgusted with themselves.  The topic it touches on is neither funny nor a way to make money.  I highly encourage everyone to boycott any other apps that Sikalsoft currently has in the app store as well as any future apps. Besides the questionable sanity of the developers involved as well as those that download this, the App Store approver(s) who let this slip by should be fired for the content they let slide though as well as their double standards.  There are countless farting apps, boob apps, the infamous $1,000 app, as well as countless other questionable apps that violate the “App Store Policy”, yet somehow shaking a baby is ok. In reality, Apple, the company as a whole would never approave of this, however, the person who thought it would be funny to approve this app should shortly be living on the street begging for pennies.  The developer, F*** them!

**Update    5:45pm (EST)**

Apple has officially removed Baby Shaker from the App Store.  The call for boycott still stands.

**Update 4/23/09**

Apple took the time today to officially apologize for the “great mistake” and oversight.  The official apology:

“This application was deeply offensive and should not have been approved for distribution on the App Store. When we learned of this mistake, the app was removed immediately. We sincerely apologize for this mistake and thank our customers for bringing this to our attention.”

So all is well again in Apple land.  Do you forgive them/in the process of putting it behind you?

Source: Tech Crunch, CNet

OS X 10.5.7 has been the talk of the Apple world for the last several weeks, and for good reason.  This last major update before Snow Leopard is set to bring a slew of bug fixes and minor performance improvements to the slightly older yet still highly capable operating system.  Nvidia as many of you may not know, recently annouced their new Quadro FX 4800 graphics cards for Macs.  What do I tie these two topics together?  Well, the release of the Quadro FX 4800 more or less confirms an imminent 10.5.7 release.  Again you ask “Why?”  The observant few will notice that under “Drivers & Downloads” on Nvidias site, one of the requirements for the new graphics cards is Mac OS X 10.5.7.  Surely Nvidia wouldn’t announce, market, and release a graphics card that has to have an operating system and patch that doesn’t exist yet - though stranger things have happned.  So, coupled with the countless other “10.5.7 imminent release” articles you see around the web *just google it*, this more or less confirms that very soon we will be seeing some new Leopard specific downloads in Software Update.  I for one am not super excited.  Sure updates are great and all as they bring new features, however Snow Leopard is just around the corner, and that will be much sweeter.

Source: TUAW

It has been several weeks since a story has been posted about some seemingly retarded and incompetent move on behalf of Apple’s App Store approval team.  However, not wanting to disappoint, the App Store approvers have once again given us something to talk about.  What exactly is the cause for concern this time?  Would you believe it all revolves around something as trivial and miniscule as a tiny icon that couldn’t occupy  more than 40-50 pixels square?

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