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In a press release sent out just moments ago, Apple has just announced that former Genentech CEO Arthur D. Levinson has filled the vacant Chairman of the Board position that Steve Jobs left empty by his death in October.

Levinson has been on Apple’s board since 2005 as co-lead director and served on all three board committees over that period.

In addition, Apple has announced that Disney President and CEO Robert A. Iger will be joining Apple’s board and will serve on the audit committee.

Press release below.

Apple has sent an email out to developers with the reminder that the annual iTunes Connect shutdown is scheduled for December 22nd-29th. The iTunes Connect portal shuts down every year during the holidays while Apple’s corporate employees take a much-deserved break.

The shutdown means there will be no app updates, price changes, or submissions approved for the App Store during that timeframe. This year’s shutdown lasts two days longer than previous years.

Steve Jobs’s legacy on the mobile industry is uncontested, but instead of just changing the balance of power between handset makers and the carriers, Jobs’s original vision was even more revolutionary: he wanted Apple to become a carrier using unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum.

You’re not going to exactly want to replace your tape measure, but as far as iPhone hacks go, this is about as cool as it gets: Acoustic Ruler allows you to measure distance up to 82 feet using a blast of pure sound.

For Apple, the iPhone’s clean desktop is simply an extension of its overall minimalist design. While keeping control of what apps appear on the smartphone makes fans of users, forbidding so-called carrier ‘junkware’ could be a deal-breaker for NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest wireless provider.

Great spot by 9to5Mac: Amazon just dropped the price of the Apple TV by $10 to just $89.99; they’ve also rechristened it the ‘2010’ model.

Could Amazon know something the rest of us poor suckers don’t? Is an updated 2011 Apple TV incoming in time for Black Friday? If so, don’t expect much besides a bump to an A5 chip: if Apple were to, say, bring Siri to the Apple TV, they’d definitely make a big fuss over it in an event.

Even if you’re not a jailbreaker, TinyUmbrella is a great little app that allows you to save your iPhone, iPod touch or iPads SHSH blob files locally. What is the actual use of such a technobabble practice? Simple: if you have your blob files stored locally, you can downgrade your iDevice to an earlier version of iOS; useful if your iPhone gets hit with a bug in the latest version of iOS, or an app you can’t live without stops working.

If you are running iOS 5.0.1, you might want to head on by TinyUmbrella’s official website and grab the latest version: it’s been updated to slurp down the latest version’s SHSH blob files.

Just how popular is OS X Lion 10.7, compared to its predecessors? “Lion’s adoption has been less than stellar,” says one online ad firm. Yet the figures don’t seem to jive with other Internet surveys, as well as Apple’s. Who’s right? As often is the case, it depends on who you ask.

Making an album of new songs seems to be too much like hard work for bands these days. It’s so much easier to pay some developers to make an app instead.

At Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters, they serve up to 15,000 meals per day to some of the illuminati of tech, including more than a few celebrities, without a blink. But according to Google superchef Charlie Ayers, when Steve Jobs entered the Google cafeteria, everything was different: the employees parted like “Moses before the Red Sea.”

Jobs liked Ayers’s food so much that when Ayers left Google to open his own restaurant, the Calafia Cafe, Steve Jobs followed him, and even brought his entire family to the restaurant for a last-minute Easter dinner. Even though he was a regular, Ayers says no one ever approached Steve Jobs, except one customer: a little boy who asked for (and received) an autograph. Awww.

[via Forbes]

The Recording Industry Association of America has targeted a business called ReDigi that specializes in selling “used” iTunes tracks online. While ReDigi promises users its practice is perfectly legal, the RIAA is having none of it, and wants the company closed down.

It demands the company abandon its business and its “infringing activities,” and hands over its sales records to the RIAA. It also wants ReDigi to open its servers so that the music files held by the company cannot be exploited.

As part of the streaming video on demand service’s push towards consolidating its user interface across all tablets, Netflix just unveiled the new GUI to their official iPad app. Sayonara, whitespace!

We’ve seen a lot of Steve Jobs tributes since his death in October, but this one is particularly impressive. Speed painter Aaron Kizer took to the stage at the 11th Hour Live Music and Arts Show in Owensboro, Kentucky and in a blur of brushes painted an incredible portrait of Steve Jobs in just six minutes.

Remarkable. Check out the full video below.

In an intriguing note, a Wall Street analyst suggests Samsung — you know, the South Korean company keeping Apple’s legal department in yachts and private islands — could be one of the beneficiaries of $3.4 billion Apple will spend to retool suppliers’ factories in 2012. Or Apple could just build itself a couple of state-of-the-art chip factories from scratch.

The guys over at G-Form go to extreme lengths to show off the impressive capabilities of their gadget cases, like dropping a 12lb. bowling ball on the iPad, and throwing a perfectly good MacBook Pro off of a balcony.

The iPad becomes their victim again in this latest stunt, which is intended to show off the incredible strength of the company’s Extreme Edge and Extreme Portfolio cases, as they’re dropped from 1,300 feet.

Sometimes you need to give your iPhone just a little bit more oomph. Maybe you need to output just a little more sound so you can DJ the impromptu breakdancing showdown that’s spontaneously popped up in your NYC subway car, or maybe you need to give your iPhone’s battery a jolt after being declared MTA Breakdancing Champion Of The Lower Boroughs And The Universe.

Either way, Spar’s Zephyr has got you covered. Think of it as a metallic JamBox with a lightning rod inside: a Bluetooth speaker and hands-free speakerphone, paired with an external battery that can juice up your iPhone in a pinch.

A Vietnamese book publisher has just published a touching, beautifully designed 2012 memorial calendar to the life of Steve Jobs, filled with the most iconic Steve shots of the last thirty years and aspirational quotes from the fiery, passionate Apple founder himself on the way to live life.

If the U.S. makes it easier for tourists to enter the country, more of them will come to spend their money – especially on electronic gadgets, Fox News maintains.

They make the case for iPad buyers from Brazil, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Despite the evidence that they’ll be soon making iPads and iPhones there, nightmarishly high tariffs still make the U.S. a better place to buy Apple products. (By the way, Cult of Mac will be in Sao Paulo Nov. 20, come say hi and talk about all things Apple in Brazil).

After missing its initial October launch date, iTunes Match finally went live yesterday, but only for those in the United States. Users in other territories are left waiting for the music matching service, with no indication of when its international rollout may begin.

Those in the U.K. may be the next to get the service, according to a CNET report, but it won’t arrive until at least the start of 2012.

Apple has issued a video update for its 15-inch MacBook Pro that addresses a freezing issue users some users may be suffering with the mid-2010 model. The update also fixes a bug that presented users with a blank screen when they attempted to watch a video on their machine.

Apple’s MacBook Air has been an incredibly popular machine since the company introduced solid-state drives as standard and reduced its price tag back in October 2010. But for some, it just doesn’t come big enough.

However, dreams of a 15-inch model are about to come true, according to sources in Apple’s supply chain. And it’ll be here by March 2012.

Adding to their now dizzying array of cloud-in-box hardware and desktop app that turns your Mac into a cloud server, Pogoplug has just unveiled a web-based cloud service that can be used as a standalone media storage option, and either accessed through a web browser, or through the desktop or Universal iOS app. And just like Apple did with iCloud, they’re giving the first five gigs away for free.

The man behind the popular iA Writer app, Oliver Reichenstein, has posted some interesting observations on the App Store ecosystem. In a Google+ post titled “Revenue = X,” the founder of Information Architects explains how his decision to drop the price of iA Writer on the Mac and iPad has resulted in a way to “increase exposure without affecting profit.”

Dropping iA Writer’s price has resulted in more purchases than expected, and Oliver’s profits have largely stayed the same since he made his app cheaper.

Adobe recently announced that it was effectively killing Flash for mobile devices, and the company’s Principal Product Manager has felt the need to take to his blog and share the reasons that Flash failed.

Hardware fragmentation, the growth of HTML5, and Apple itself all played into Adobe’s decision to end Flash.

If you were one of the millions to buy the iPhone 4S, today is your last day to order AppleCare+ coverage. Apple introduced a new type of AppleCare with the iPhone 4S, and the deadline for adding the coverage to your policy is today, November 14th.

AppleCare+ gives customers a two-year warranty and coverage for two incidents of accidental damage. The plan costs $99 and is highly recommended for any new iPhone owner.