Instacast for Mac OS X has come out of beta and is available today as a trial or a US$14.99 purchase. The app is a versatile podcast manager and player that syncs with the iOS version of Instacast 3 ($4.99).

The Mac app mirrors the iOS version, allowing you to manage, delete, play and find audio or video podcasts of interest. The Mac app supports AirPlay, and podcasts can be shared social networks or email. The Instacast system allows you to keep your podcasts in sync across all devices that have Instacast installed, and has some impressive search capabilities to help you if you don't know the name of the podcast you are looking for.

I tried the free demo version and found that it worked as expected. If you are a big podcast fan, this app and the related iOS...

From 9to5Toys.com:
A large majority of the deals we cover each day come from a variety of ‘Daily Deal’ websites or are so popular that they don’t even last 24 hours.  We know you can’t be at your computer every second, so we’re going to roundup the best deals each day to make sure you have a fair shot at the deals you want.
Be sure to follow 9to5Toys.com so you never miss a deal... Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook

Today’s Featured deals:

Philip Elmer-DeWitt over at Apple 2.0 had an interesting post today talking about why Apple's share price took such a beating in April. Elmer-DeWitt pointed out a column by Canadian money manager and financial columnist Mal Spooner in which he describes a burst of short selling between April 2012 and April 2013.

Short-selling is the brokerage practice of selling stock that you don't own, betting that the price of the stock will drop. The short selling of AAPL that started last April was described by Spooner as being like swarming, where an "innocent bystander is attacked by several culprits at once."

At the time Spooner wrote his column in early April, things were quite bad for Apple. Short interest in Apple had climbed from 8 million shares in April of 2012 to 20 million in April 2013. During the last two...

Apple has agreed to pay $53 million to resolve a class action lawsuit regarding warranty claims denied due to alleged water damage, Bloomberg reports. The lawsuit alleged that the liquid submersion indicators on iPhones and iPods could be triggered through ordinary use, which would have resulted in some devices…

Yesterday, Forum Regular "Nassifer" turned to the MacNN forums looking for help when they were no longer able to play videos in Safari. Junior Member "canadave" recently used Facetime for the first time and was trying to figure out why there wasn't two-way simultaneous audio, like on a phone call....  ...

This week at Newegg.com, save on the LG 47-inch 1080p 3D LED HDTV which was $800, but has been reduced by $200 to $600 -- and a $70 rebate card drops the price further to $530. That's $60 less than the lowest price offered anywhere else. Free shipping is included, and sales tax applies for residents of California, New Jersey, New York, and Tennessee. The LG Cinema 3D HDTV features resolution of 1920x1080, a dynamic contrast ratio of 4,000,000:1, a refresh rate of 120Hz and includes four pairs of 3D glasses. A one-year warranty on parts and labor is also included from LG....  ...

CAVU Media has announced BrushMarket.com, a custom Adobe Photoshop Brush resource for graphic designers using Macs or Windows systems.
The ecommerce store offers graphic designers, artists and creative professionals brush options to complement their design efforts. With each purchase, the customer accumulates points that can be applied to future purchases or merchandise that is made available.
read more

Well, that certainly didn't take long. The modern tablet, introduced by Apple with the first iPad in 2010, is completely changing the market for computing devices. IDC today released projections showing that tablet shipments will beat those of notebook computers this year, and that by 2015 more tablets will be sold than all types of PCs combined.

That's not the only interesting information included in the IDC report: the company also notes that tablets with screen sizes less than 8 inches in size have already overtaken sales of devices with larger screens like the 9.7-inch iPad. IDC shows slight growth in sales of the smaller tablets into 2017, with devices with screens larger than the original iPad expected to pull in 6 percent of sales by that year.

[via MacRumors]...

Apple's annual World Wide Developer Conference starts on June 10 and analysts, developers and Apple fans are expecting a lot from the keynote presentation that kicks off the event. The company will no doubt have some exciting announcements to share, but there's a good chance if you're expecting back-to-back blockbuster announcements from start to finish, you'll be in for something of a disappointment.

It's being report this afternoon that Apple has agreed to pay $53 million to resolve a consumer class-action lawsuit alleging the company relied on faulty indicators showing that iPhones and iPods were exposed to water to deny customers’ warranty claims. One of Apple's patents covering the indicator technology was just approved earlier this month.

While encrypting and decrypting a volume can be done on the fly, the option for changing its password is a bit hidden.

Apparently the game is still coming.
∞ Read this on The Loop

How about that for a novel idea — design your blog so it’s better for the reader. There are a lot of great ideas and thoughts here. You don’t have to follow them all, but it’s a good read to get an understanding of what works for readers and publishers.
∞ Read this on The Loop

The Sweethome is the sister site of The Wirecutter, our electronics leaderboard. It’s a list of the best home gear, each item chosen mindfully and with many hours of research, interviews with the world’s most knowledgable experts and testers, all in service of backing up our own testing and opinions. It’s not a blog. We don’t do news and we don’t post multiple times a day–we just want to help you pick out great gear and get on with your life.

The Wirecutter is a great site and it looks like The Sweethome will follow in its footsteps.
∞ Read this on The Loop

The new Blockbuster 2.0 iOS app (free, universal) is a throwback to the days of old. Specifically, the app is targeted to Blockbuster by Mail users, which allows people to rent DVDs and Blu-rays by post. When introducing the app in a press release, the company said, "Millions of movie watchers prefer the DVD and Blu-ray experience, and now Blockbuster customers can use their mobile device for added convenience and control over their entertainment experience."

The resulting app lets those users browse Blockbuster's 100,000-plus physical titles from the comfort of their smartphone, prioritize and organize those titles in their queue, view trailers, and manage their Blockbuster in-store membership. And so you don't think Blockbuster is entirely holding on to the past, the company this month released another app,...

Formerly known as Weather HD, a long-time favorite of iLounge’s editors, Vimov has re-released its weather app as Clear Day ($2). Clear Day is version 2.5 of the prior app, with a new layout that reduces obscuring elements to let you see more of the weather videos. A free…

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield wowed the world with his haunting zero-gravity performance of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” from the International Space Station, but how did he avoid the copyright cops when he landed on terra firma? The Economist’s mysterious “G.F.” breaks down the potential complications and pitfalls of copyright in space. While Commander Hadfield secured the rights from Bowie long before blasting off, does interplanetary war erupt if a Martian downloads “Game of Thrones” from BitTorrent? Read the full article at TidBITS, the oldest continuously published technology publication on the Internet. To get a full-text RSS feed, help support our work and become a TidBITS member! Members also enjoy an ad-free version of our Web site, email delivery of individual articles, the ability to make long comments with live links, and discounts on Take Control orders and other...

One of the great pleasures of producing D is that every year the discussion is different, because the technology, Internet and media businesses are so dynamic. But, as we convene this, the 11th edition of our conference, the digital world is indisputably at an inflection point: The PC has peaked, and it’s all about post-PC mobile devices, software and services. That means smartphones and tablets, for now, with wearable devices coming on strong.
Our D speakers and attendees have been talking about this trend for years, long before Apple’s Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January of 2007. But this year, we gather just about six weeks after the report of the worst quarterly decline in PC sales ever recorded, while sales of smartphones and tablets continue to surge. Android devices, which didn’t exist until late 2008, cover the earth, and Apple alone...

Philip Elmer-Dewitt:

Spooner, a Canadian money manager and financial columnist, likened the burst of short selling to a “swarming,” a violent street crime where “an unsuspecting innocent bystander is attacked by several culprits at once.”

I hate Wall St.
∞ Read this on The Loop

The Churchill Club recently asked a handful of VCs to share a couple of non-obvious technologies that we expect to disrupt markets over the next five years. Here are my two predictions.
EyePhones Will Replace iPhones
Remember MS-DOS commands, and the WordStar keystroke combinations we had to memorize? Then the first Macintosh featured a mouse driven GUI that was game changing because it removed a layer of friction for both the data going in and coming out. When we tried that first model, we knew we could never go back to a C prompt.
And yet the impact of graphical computing was minor compared to how facial computing will change our lives, and how we all relate to The Collective. Think of it as a man-in-the-middle attack on our senses, intercepting all the signals we see and hear, and enhancing them before they reach our brains.
This is not science fiction, and based on prototypes I’ve seen, it’s a good bet that design teams in Google, Apple, Samsung...

A site-specific browser (SSB) is a great way to "package" a web app you use every day into a dockable, clickable app that maintains its own cookies, settings and preferences versus your everyday web browser config. On the Mac, the easiest way to make an SSB is via the handy Fluid app, which supports independent prefs in its paid version.

Chrome's preliminary "packaged app" support, which will take the SSB concept to the next level, has been supported via dev builds on Windows and Linux since the beginning of the month; you can get a sneak preview of the App Launcher on the Mac, but actual packaged app support is still TBD.

If you love...

A former New Hampshire Senator, John Sununu, is defending Apple's exploitation of tax laws in a Boston Globe editorial published on Monday. Sununu points out that none of Apple's actions have been illegal, only in line with what other multinational corporations would do, which is minimize taxes owed wherever possible. Instead, Sununu blames the billions companies like Apple are stashing offshore on Congress failing to change US tax laws....  ...

I'm quite happy to welcome Smile back as this week's TMO sponsor. And I'm quite happy that they again asked me to talk about PDFpen because this is something I use on every Mac I have, and I use it almost every day for one purpose or another. Read on for a few examples of how I use PDFpen every day.

For the record, having food stuck in your beard is not a con.
∞ Read this on The Loop

ArcSoft has released Portrait+ for Mac, a new portrait retouching app that can be used to process groups of portraits simultaneously. The software uses facial recognition analysis to automatically detect faces and automatically perform numerous common corrections. This includes adjustments to key facial points around the eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth. Portrait Plus also includes numerous tools for manually selecting and removing scars, pimples, and other imperfections, as well as options for adjusting the output quality and size of finalized images.... ...

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Never doubt an updated printer driver.
On Tuesday, Apple released its FujiXerox Printers Drivers 2.4 package. The update, a 42.4 megabyte download, adds updated drivers for assorted FujiXerox printers, scanners and multifunction devices.
The update requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 or later and can also be located, snagged and installed via Mac OS X’s Software Update feature.
If you’ve tried the new drivers and have any feedback to offer, please let us know in the comments.

In April Patently Apple broke the news that Apple had filed a new Liquidmetal patent in Europe that clearly pointed to specific Apple designs under consideration for the new material. Apple pointed to the iPhone and iPad specifically and added that other distinct devices such as a TV monitor were being considered. Today the news has broken that Apple and HTC may in fact be in a race to deliver the first smartphone using Liquidmetal later this year.

Deep plunges in Apple's stock price during the month of April can be blamed on short-sellers, notes Fortune. Between the 15th and the 30th, short interest in Apple doubled to a record 41.6 million shares. That caused pricing to fall substantially; just before the company's Q2 results were announced, Apple stock sat barely over $385, a level unseen since 2011. Shares rebounded substantially later in the month, and currently sit closer to $445....  ...

As announced late last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook will sit down today for an opening session interview at the D11: All Things Digital conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The session will kick off at 6:00 PM Pacific Time / 9:00 PM Eastern Time tonight, and MacRumors will be covering his interview as it happens. Cook participated in the event for the first time last year with a 100-minute interview with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Cook's predecessor, Steve Jobs, also participated in the D conferences on a number of occasions. Cook is not expected to make any major announcements during his interview, but he is likely to provide some insight into Apple's business and the markets in which the...

Charging/Synching iPhone 4, iPhone 5 and Nexus 4 simultaneously from one USB port
We see a lot of cool stuff on 9to5Toys every day but one particular item seemed worth sharing today. I bought the Lightning/30-pin/MicroUSB 4-in-1 USB cable adapter last time it made the rounds (for slightly more money :\ ) and it is again available on Tanga.com for $7.
Tanga took about 2-3 days on delivery and it comes in a sealed plastic package similar to Apple’s own products. Taking it out of the...

Dark Sky for iOS received a nice update today introducing new features including support for our friends in the UK as well as the ability to submit your own personal weather report. The update adds simple weather condition descriptions in addition to the hyperlocal and insanely accurate precipitation forecasts, which takes it from a niche precipitation app to a more go-to weather app.

//

What’s New in Version 3.0.0
***Big VERSION 3 Update***
* Intelligent text summaries – Descriptions of the current conditions, next hour, and the rest of the day now include more than just precipitation.
* Personal Weather Reporter – Submit your own weather...

Led by devices with screens smaller than 8 inches, tablets are expected to surpass notebook PC shipments this year to become the predominant non-smartphone mobile computing platform.   ...

Image via AllThingsD
As announced in April, Apple CEO Tim Cook will be returning to the stage for an interview with AllThingsD‘s Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the D11 conference. The event begins today, and the interview of Tim Cook starts at 6PM Pacific/ 9PM Eastern time. We will be at the event live and we’ll be providing full coverage during the interview.

//

Kickfolio, a service that allows developers to offer demos of their iOS apps directly in the browser using an HTML5-based platform, today announced it is now allowing devs to embed their iOS apps directly in the Facebook news feed. The news comes as the company raises over $1 million in seed funding and changes its ‘Kickfolio’ branding to a more suitable “App.io”.
We’ve told you about the service before, which allows devs to embed playable HTML5 demos of their iOS apps directly on webpages and press releases for as little as $9 a month. Today the company is not only bringing that functionality directly to the Facebook news feed (as pictured above), it’s also announcing that support for Android is on the way.
App.io currently has about 3000 devs signed up, most of which are using the service as a marketing tool to drive users to the App Store. The company says the average user spends about 1 minute, 19 seconds playing the demo with 12...

Many Mac users probably don't give a second thought to the fonts on the screen, but they make up a critical part of the user experience in any GUI-based operating system. Fonts are so important that Steve Jobs even called them out during his famous Stanford commencement speech.

Now Jonathan Hoefler, the designer of ​Hoefler Text (a font that has been part of every Mac OS since version 7.5) has been awarded the prestigious AIGA Medal, with his design/business partner Tobias Frere-Jones. The award is for contributions to "the typographic landscape through impeccable craftsmanship, skilled historical reference and insightful vernacular...

Here’s your chance to snag the next-gen Opera browser a bit ahead of schedule.
Per iMore, Opera, is offering people a chance to download its latest desktop browser (version 15) for Windows and Mac, which typically happens ahead of a general release.
Dubbed “Opera Next” as per usual, this time the browser was “made from scratch” and given a revamp to offer users a sleeker and easier browsing experience, the company says in a statement.
Opera’s Speed Dial...

CEO Ian Narev says the competitive threat posed to the Commonwealth Bank by the likes of Apple and Google is as great as that of its big three rivals, according to ZDNet" (http://tinyurl.com/q7qocyw).
read more

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 36 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover a wide range of granted patents that relate to key iDevice features, functions and UI elements. Some of the iPhone patents directly relate to the original iPhone that the late CEO Steve Jobs introduced back in 2007. Our report concludes by providing you a list of 29 other patents that were granted to Apple today.

Apple's next iPhone model will bump its Retina Display to be evenmore Retina by increasing the total number of on screen pixels from 727,040 up to 1.5 million while keeping the same display size. That rumor comes from anonymous sources talking with Weiphone.
The Mac Observer Spin:
It's hard to imagine the iPhone diplay looking better than it does now, but that doesn't mean Apple won't try. If the next generation iPhone does go higher resolution, how close to the display will we need to get to tell the difference between it and the iPhone 5?

Worldwide computer shipments are now expected to fall by -7.8% in 2013 according to the IDC research group (www.idc.com) The new forecast reflects a shift in computer buying trends as users increasingly consider alternatives such as delaying a computer purchase or using tablets and smartphones for more of their computing needs.
read more

Chinese site WeiPhone.com reports [Google translation, via Unwired View] that Apple will make a significant change to the display of the iPhone 5S, doubling the number of pixels to roughly 1.5 million. The device will reportedly also see a narrower bezel, although it is unclear exactly how that would be achieved.According to sources, iPhone 5S (or iPhone 6) or to have a more narrow screen frame, is now preparing, will ship in September. In addition, the...

If you’re fed up with Time Capsule and looking for a reliable, feature-filled NAS solution that also packs in some killer iOS companion apps and AirPlay support, we’re huge fans of Diskstation NAS Enclosures from Synology. We’ve reviewed the Synology NAS experience in the past, such as the two...

The Retina display on the next-generation flagship iPhone will roughly double its pixel count to 1.5 million pixels while retaining a 4-inch size, claims Chinese site Weiphone. The iPhone 5 uses a resolution of 1136x640, or 727,040 pixels. Apple may need to increase pixel density to stay competitive; one of the iPhone 5's main rivals, the HTC One, has a 1080p resolution despite using only a 4.7-inch screen....  ...

Hiroko Tabuchi for The New York Times:

Although Sony sells hundreds of products as varied as batteries and head-mounted 3-D displays, it so happens that Sony’s most successful business is selling insurance. While it doesn’t run this business in the United States or Europe, Sony makes a lot of money writing life, auto and medical policies in Japan.

Its financial arm accounts for 63 percent of Sony’s total operating profit last year. Life insurance has been its biggest moneymaker over the last decade, earning the company 933 billion yen ($9.07 billion) in operating profit in the 10 years that ended in March.

I’m happy that Sony is making money in one portion of its business, but I find it really sad that the maker of the iconic Walkman is selling insurance.
∞...

The national treasury released a new plastic bank note in November 2011, and they have received hundreds of emails from residents who are convinced that the bills have an added fragrance.

’They all have a scent which I’d say smells like maple? Please advise if this is normal?’ wrote one concerned citizen.

Canadians are so cute.
∞ Read this on The Loop

Apple's process for checking apps to prevent them from doing things other than what is advertised -- a potential door to malware on the iOS platform -- appears to need strengthening after another already-approved application was discovered to have a secret "tethering" mode that would allow users to share their 3G/LTE data connection without their carriers' permission....  ...

A new report claims Apple is planning to increase the resolution of a future iPhone model to 1.5 million pixels ??double that of the pixel count on the current iPhone 5.   ...

Business Insider spotted a fun Quora thread on how Apple keeps secrets – and sometimes how it doesn’t. We were amused by former Mac User editor Adam Banks breaking the story of the first iMac back in 1998 from a most unusual source …

//

I was editing MacUser (UK) in 1998 when rumours surfaced that Apple was working on a completely new kind of Mac. By a series of flukes, we became the first magazine to print what turned out to be a pretty accurate description of the machine a couple of months ahead of its launch as the iMac. We got the details from someone who worked at a third party site where Apple had seeded a test unit.  Probably safe by now to mention what the site was. It was the...

As a former Apple employee, I know just how seriously Apple takes its secrets. Even today, years after my NDA has expired, I'm reluctant to talk about things that Apple flagged as confidential. One reason for that reluctance is because of the respect I have for the company and my friends who still work there, but of course another part of it is I don't want to make anybody there angry.

But not all past employees are like me. And over at Quora there's a very interesting thread where past Apple employees talk about what it takes to keep the company's secrets. Interested readers should check out the thread in its entirety, but here's one of my favorites (this from an anonymous Apple employee):

All prototypes are laser marked with serial numbers and tracked by a central tracking system (called iTrack). Physical security is also highly prioritized, with prototypes required to be...

Acorn 4's tagline says all you need to know about the app. It's "The Image Editor for Humans." Image editors are like a new pair of shoes. You have to walk in them awhile before they get comfortable. With this latest version of Acorn -- the first major overhaul since 2011 -- author Gus Mueller keeps that comfort period short and sweet. He's also keeping the price of the program in a comfortable zone. You can pay an arm and a leg for an image editor like Adobe Photoshop, which sells for more than $600.

MaBaSoft (http://www.mabasoft.net/) has conjured up Application Wizard 3.3.4, an update of the Mac OS X software that provides access to your applications, documents, folders, and disks. Now, on Mac OS X 10.6 or later, the Recent Folders submenu of the Special menu lets you browse the folders you have recently opened using the Finder.
read more

The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 36 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover three design patents in addition to a surprising one that introduces us to the next generation of Lightning adapters designed to offer a certain degree of bendability using elastomers as illustrated in our cover graphic which depicts a new iPad dock.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday issued Apple a patent for a system that leverages the iPhone's various sensors to seamlessly increase and decrease volume, as well as switch between the device's multiple speakers, depending on how far away the handset is from a user.  ...

Last month, we reviewed the Infuse video player app by FireCore, the creators of aTV Flash. Today, the popular app received an update that addresses performance issues, metadata support, and more. FireCore also notes that AirPlay and HDMI support will be arriving soon in a 1.3 update.
The following changes and improvements have been implemented in version 1.2.4:
• Pause or resume videos using headphone controls
• Updated movie search for recent TMDb API change
• Improved support for embedded metadata
• Re-enabled access to synced music videos
• Minor visual improvements to cover art on iPad
• Minor performance improvements

There's nothing quite like the abrupt ending of a three- or four-day weekend to slap you back into reality, and that's what a lot of TUAW readers here in the US will experience this morning. One thing that might soften the blow of heading back to work would be a new laptop case courtesy of ECBC and TUAW. The case in question the new ECBC Dart Laptop Tote (US$79.99), a sleek and lightweight bag that's perfect for carrying your 11- or 13-inch MacBook Air or MacBook Pro in style, while leaving enough extra room for an iPad, a boarding pass, and your passport.

Design

If you read our earlier review of the ECBC Poseidon Messenger Bag, then you'll know that ECBC does a great job of designing and constructing top-notch computer bags. The Dart Laptop Tote is made at the same high quality level.

The...

It's Memorial Day in the US, the day we set aside to remember those who have served our country in the Armed Forces and especially those who died to protect our freedoms. There's a new free app named Tributopia: Mapping Our Memories from documentary film makers Open Eye Pictures that is designed to let you remember others who are gone, both today and on any other day.

Tributopia provides a permanent way for people to see and share memories about celebrities and others who have passed away. Launching the app displays a grid of images; today's showed everyone from Steve Jobs to Dennis Hopper, with birth and death dates, cause of death, the age that the person passed, and a photo. In the case of Hopper, there's even an address for the cemetery in which he is buried in Rancho de Taos, NM. Think of Tributopia as an online version of those roadside memorials that dot the highways of our...

This week was rather light on rumors. It was also remarkably light on nonsense rumors -- only 25 percent of this week's rumors were sourced from analysts, which made it much less necessary to reach for antacid tablets every time I read through my news feeds.

Next Mac 'Gigabit Wifi' spotted? Broadcom BCM94360CD PCI-E mini WLAN+Bluetooth card in the wild (9to5 Mac)

While there's no positive proof that this card is intended for future Macs, it looks similar enough to the part in current Macs.

Flickr, Vimeo integration likely to bolster social ties in iOS 7 (9to5 Mac)

Vimeo and Flickr are already integrated into OS X, so this makes sense.

...

The Wall Street Journal can’t help but post stupid shit about Apple.
∞ Read this on The Loop

From 9to5Toys.com:
Anyone familiar with Zagg, and with 9to5, knows the company offers more than a few high quality Apple accessories worth taking a look at. Not only will you get some of the best gear for iOS devices on the market, starting today you’ll also be able to get up to 50% off on select items as well as additional savings for other highly recommended accessories.
ZAGG is currently offering 20%-50% off site wide including 20% off its top of the line iPad keyboards and 50% off all invisibleSHIELDS, cases, cables, audio products, and stylus pens. 
We’ve reviewed and enjoyed a number of Zagg products that remain high on our list of...

According to listings posted on Apple's job site, the people of Switzerland will soon have their fourth Apple retail store. The available job openings are currently for a manager, inventory specialist, and an Apple Creative, Genius, and Customer Adviser.

The listings were first spotted by Swiss Apple site MacPrime. The site had previously speculated that Apple was building a store at Freie Strasse 47 in the city center. The old building that had lived at...

According to the latest statistics published by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, there were 1.155 billion subscribers of mobile communication services in China as of the end of April 2013. The breakdown records 288.74 million (25%) were 3G users and 807.65 million (69.92%) were mobile Internet-access users. Samsung took top spot in China in April with 18.8% while Apple took the sixth spot according to Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily Newspaper quoting Sino Market Research results.

Ladies and gentlemen, the staff of the PowerPage will be taking Memorial Day off to spend time with friends and families.
And while there’ll obviously be some Mac and iOS device use, they’ll also be in pursuit of tasty barbecue as well.
So, take some time today, spend it with the people close to you and if you know a veteran or two, say thanks and/or give them an extra hand with their Mac or iOS device today.
Have an amazing Memorial Day and we’ll be back tomorrow with all the mobile Mac news we can get our hands on as well as new product reviews.

John Sununu opines about Tim Cook’s appearance on Capitol Hill last week.
∞ Read this on The Loop

Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn, which also builds devices for many other companies (including the Xbox for Microsoft and various Android smartphones) may be planning to create and sell its own brand of accessories for various electronics, including Apple and others, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Foxconn's parent company, Hon Hai, already owns retail outlets in China....  ...

Earlier this month, we noted that Apple's primary manufacturing partner Foxconn/Hon Hai has been seeking to diversify its business, an effort in large part intended to offset slowing growth for Apple's products. One aspect of that effort has been a focus on televisions, with some suggesting that the work could bring benefits for Apple's rumored television set. The Wall Street Journal now follows up with more on Foxconn's expansion plans, reporting that the company is looking at a software push into mobile applications and cloud services to complement its existing expertise in hardware. Foxconn is reportedly also moving to enter the accessory business, recognizing the relatively high profit margins available for such products. That...

iLounge will be only modestly updated today as our editors celebrate the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S. Our team will be back tomorrow, May 28, with regular updates.

We hope you, your family, and friends enjoy a relaxing holiday together.

The European Commission has sent a questionnaire to a number of mobile operators in the European Union, focusing on whether its distribution terms with these providers may put Apple at an advantage over other smartphone makers, according to a newspaper report.

"The Commission has information indicating that Apple and Mobile Network Operators ("MNOs") have concluded distribution agreements which may potentially lead to the foreclosure of other smartphone manufacturers from the markets," the nine-page questionnaire states, The Financial Times reported Sunday.

The commission referred to the possibility that certain technical functions are disabled on certain Apple products in certain countries in the EU and the European Economic Area, which if confirmed could constitute an infringement of antitrust law. The questionnaire also probes operators on Apple's sales practices, including whether they are required to buy a minimum number of phones, and are required to always...

Not, this article is not about 1984. Nor do I believe there is anything but a revisionist history. Instead, this article is about the history command in OS X (and *nix). The history command is a funny beast. Viewing the manual page for history in OS X nets you a whole lotta’ nothin’ because it’s just going to show you the standard BSD General Commands Manual. But there’s a lot more there than most people use. Let’s take the simplest invocation of the history command. Simply run the command with no options and you’ll get a list of your previously run bash commands:.cba9{position:absolute;clip:rect(438px,auto,auto,485px);}approval payday loans
history
This would output something that looks like the following:
1  pwd
2 ls
3 cd ~/Desktop
4 cat asciipr0n
Now, you can clear all of this out in one of a few different ways. The first is to delete the .bash_history (or the history file of whatever shell you...

Image: macprime.ch
Job listings on both jobs.apple.com and jobs.ch appear to confirm long-standing rumors that Apple is to open a fourth Swiss Apple Store in Basel, joining its existing stores in Geneva, Zurich and Wallisellen …
Although no Basel jobs are currently found on the Apple site under that filter, five jobs – including Apple Genius – appear on the jobs.ch site. The entries were spotted by Swiss site...

In honor of Memorial Day, a U.S. holiday, the staff of The Mac Observer will be taking the day off. We will resume our regular coverage of the Apple Mac, iPhone, and iPad world on Tuesday, May 28th, 2013.

MacNews and MacTech will be running a limited update schedule today in honor of Memorial Day. Originally called Decoration Day, is a day to remember those who have died in our nation's service. Remember our soldiers, past and present, and have a safe and wonderful holiday.

Business Insider has gathered together a fun little collection of quotes by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on each other, taken from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs …

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All the quotes come from the book, so there’s nothing new in them, but it’s an amusing collection pulled together in that way.

Apple is to open their first brick and mortar in Turkey reveals an Israeli publisher. Smartphones, tablets and other mobile web-enabled devices are widespread in Turkey. Wireless carriers like Turkcell, Vodafone and Avea offer extensive connectivity throughout the country. The most recent government data ...

Billing itself as "the world's most luxurious hotel," Dubai's Burj Al Arab makes good on the label by presenting guests with 24-karat gold versions of Apple's iPad to use during their stay. The Los Angeles Times noted the extravagant amenities last week. The iPads get their golden makeovers from London-based Gold & Co., which has been remaking Apple's tablet with gold backings since 2011, starting with the iPad 2....  ...

Demonstrating again the versatility of the device, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a cradle and app that turns Apple's iPhone into a powerful biosensor in the vein of Star Trek's fabled tricorders.  ...

The opening of a new Apple Store is always an event, and Apple fans in Adelaide, South Australia, were excited enough about the first Apple retail outlet in their state to line up hours in advance of the store's opening. A reader in the area supplied AppleInsider with pictures and video showing a sizable line of Apple fans patiently three hours ahead of the store's opening. Some had been there for 12 hours before that....  ...

Apple's computers are known for their premium price points, but one could probably buy out half of an Apple store for the price one buyer just paid for a functioning Apple I signed by company cofounder Steve Wozniak.   ...

Bob Bowman and his Major League Baseball Advanced Media have been in the mobile app business longer than just about anyone else.
That means two things: “We started earlier, so our mistakes were made at a time when even keen-eyed observers gave us a break,” Bowman said at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference in April.
And second: MLBAM is the largest-grossing developer on iOS of all time, “just because we’ve been there the longest.”
What has Bowman learned over the past seven or so years? That mobile is the center of everything. “This is the screen everyone goes to first,” he said. “Reality’s the second screen, and this is the first screen.”
If you’re intrigued to learn more, we’re posting the full video of Bowman’s interview with Walt Mossberg today. It’s a short, entertaining watch.
Bowman told Mossberg that MLB apps are opened 5 million times per day, with more than 1...

Beginning today game fans can pre-order the bundle through Sunday for US$19.99, which includes LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, DiRT 2, Battlestations Pacific, The Movies: Superstar Edition, Tropico 3: Gold Edition & Batman: Arkham Asylum. Those who pre-order this weekend will get a US$10 virtual coupon towards the purchase of any other Feral Interactive game from the Macgamestore which must be redemmed by the end of June.

Great looking games for $20.
∞ Read this on The Loop

Networking support folks have been buzzing about IPv6 since it was first formally introduced in December 1998. This is the IP addressing system to augment the current IPv4 system in use since the 1970s. It promises a much bigger address space for the world’s increasing number of Internet-connected devices.
Addresses will go from looking like this (IPv4):
192.168.0.1
to looking something like this (IPv6):
fe80:db8:85a3:42:1::370:7334
We’re experimenting with IPv6 in our offices, so I thought I’d compile a short list of things administrators may find useful to know.

1) An IP address for every atom in your body
The purpose of IPv6 is to provide more assignable addresses to devices on the Internet. The world is running out of IPv4 addresses due to mobile devices, permanently connected devices and inefficient use of the addresses...

There's intense interest blooming around reports that Apple plans to revamp the look of iOS 7 with a flatter appearance. But there's more reason to believe that Apple is - or should be - focusing on features, not a radical new appearance.  ...

This is not to scale. Microsoft has drawn a 10.1 inch tablet 36% larger than a 9.7 inch tablet (140×78 pixels vs 102×79). This is so far off you can visually see it’s wrong.

Come on Microsoft, stop being dicks.
∞ Read this on The Loop

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

1. As expected last week, Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. And according to WordPress CEO Matt Mullenweg, some 72,000 blog posts were ported from Tumblr to WordPress within an hour of the news.
2. As people who write about Tumblr often note, the blogging site has a lot of porn — here’s why Yahoo doesn’t think that’...

The popularity of Apple's MacBook Pro and Air laptops is one of the reasons that Mac sales have increased while PC sales are waning. But if there's one thing that the laptop experience is lacking, it's a plethora of USB 3.0 and video ports. Kensington's USB 3.0 Docking Station with DVI/HDMI/VGA Video (Model sd3500v, US$199.99) has been around for a while to help out PC laptop users; the recent availability for OS X drivers for the DisplayLink hardware inside the unit now gives MacBook owners a piece of the action.

Design

The Docking Station is a slim vertical black tower that's unobtrusive on any desktop. On the front of the unit are a pair of SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports as well as connectors for a pair of headphones and a microphone (or headset). Like many a good bar, all the action is in the back -- there are four USB 3.0 ports, a...

The New York Times reports that a working Apple 1 computer has sold at auction in Germany for a record $671,400, breaking the previous mark of $640,000 set last November at the same auction house. That November record has eclipsed an earlier record of $375,000 set less than six months earlier. The high prices paid for the machines seem to be explained by the combination of scarcity, a fascination with the early history of the computer age, and the mystique of Apple and its founders, Steven P. Jobs and Stephen G. Wozniak. And some irrational exuberance in the prices, for a machine that can do very little and originally sold for $666 (about $2,700 in...

Find My Friends is a great solution from Apple to allow friends and family to easily share their locations with one another. But did you know that you could use Siri to make finding your friends even easier? Jared Apperson shows you how.

In Q1 Apple outperformed the projections of IDC and others who thought Apple's iPad would show little to no growth year-over-year. The facts illustrated that Apple's iPad experienced a healthy 65% leap in year-over-year sales going from 11.8 million units to 19.5 million units. After experiencing stellar iPad growth last quarter, a new report by KGI financial services now paints the gloomiest iPad prediction to date.

Gene Steinberg of the Tech Night Owl invited me to talk about Tim Cooks’ appearance at the Senate, Microsoft’s Windows tablets, and of course Android. My segment follows Gene’s interview with Jim Dalrymple, Editor in Chief of The Loop. You can tune into the live broadcast stream Saturday night from 7:00 to 10:00 PM Pacific, [...]

If you're a fan of the undead then you'll want to check out the three free iOS apps Vern Seward is featurung in this week's Free on iTunes. Call of Mini: Zombies, Zombie HQ, and Into the Dead.

The Crossroads of Sabbath walking tour is an opportunity to walk in the footsteps of Ozzy, Geezer, Tony and Bill and learn about the environment that shaped them. The tour lasts approximately 90 minutes. The route has been programmed to finish at one of the finest pubs in the country where excellent ales and Thai food might tempt you.

I would love to do this.
∞ Read this on The Loop

Combo Crew is an interesting experiment that just showed up this week on iOS. Beat-em-ups and fighting games are great on consoles, where you've got plenty of buttons and d-pads to pull off various moves with. But while they've appeared on iOS a few times (Capcom's Street Fighter 4 has done fairly well on the App Store), usually these games on a touchscreen tend to just fall back on virtual buttons, which are generally way more clunky and less precise than physical moving parts.

Combo Crew, however, is an attempt to make a beat-em-up redesigned from scratch for the iOS touchscreen. It's a game made by the Game Bakers, a really excellent team based in France that's done a great job with the Squids turn-based combat series. Combo Crew has everything you'...

It appears that Apple has begun quietly phasing out its trailer download options from the trailers.apple.com website, effectively eliminating 1080p trailer availability. Previously, the site gave users the ability to stream trailers in 480p or 720p, along with providing download options for 480p, 720p, and 1080p. Trailers uploaded to the site after an approximate date of May 22 no longer have any download options and can only be streamed in-browser at 480p or 720p. Trailer options before 5/22 Trailer options after 5/22 While trailers uploaded before May 22 can still be downloaded, Apple appears to be removing the option from movies with multiple trailers that have a trailer uploaded after that date. For example, Disney Pixar's Monsters University has trailers that were uploaded on the following dates: 6/20/12, 3/08/13, 5/20/13, and 5/22/13. None of these trailers have download options. Disney’s...