We start the day with two hardware deals. Expercom has a deal on a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo 27-inch iMac, bundled with three years of AppleCare for $1,599. The Apple Store has a number of unibody MacBook Pros, starting at $929 for a 2.26GHz model. We round out our featured deals with the latest crop of App Store freebies, including “Made in USSR: Merry Cook,” a game and watch-style LCD game.

We’ll also check out a couple iPhone protectors, an alarm clock that also serves as a dock, and software for your Mac. As always, details on these items and many others can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

In yet another example of art imitating life — or imitating an iPhone app, or whatever — nefariously addictive app Pocket God is now a digital comic book, available at the App Store.

But developer Bolt Creative says the comic will also materialize as an honest-to-goodness printed comic, with a feature in the app helping users find comic-book stores stocking the title. Digital issues are a buck, and future issues will be available as in-app purchases; no details on the printed version yet.

And just in case you missed it, the comic’s first issue is accompanied by Pocket God’s — wow — 33rd  episode, which has our little half-pint islanders evading a massive gorilla in the jungle and performing rituals. Sound familiar?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nqlhzve4BOw

Electric Pig editor and lucky duck James Holland gives us a walk through Apple’s store in Covent Garden before it opens on Saturday, August 7.

Some of us at Cult of Mac weren’t too convinced of the store’s aesthetic appeal from the pics we posted yesterday — but on further inspection this new retail outlet is, well, stunning.

The store has two, count ’em two, of Apple’s signature glass staircases, one spiral and one square,  nicely offset by the exposed brick.

We also especially like London’s “largest pigeon magnet!”

Via Electric Pig

Sometimes analysts release numbers and information speculators take them and turn them into headlines, such as those we saw when Canalys released figures suggesting Android was outselling the iPhone. Often, the real story is buried in the details – or comments, as the case was today.

Aside from headlines declaring Google’s Android sales were beating Apple about the head and shoulders, Canalys analyst Horace Dediu put the figures in perspective. “Android is mostly competing with non-consumption and not iPhone. Android buyers are not choosing between it and an iPhone but between it and a dumb phone,” he writes on the asymco.com blog.

Serious>PC heavy, but if you game under Boot Camp, that shouldn’t be a problem, and there are numerous Mac titles like World of Warcraft, Civilization IV and Unreal Tournament 2004.

Other features of the G510 include custom-color backlighting, allowing you to truly tart up your keyboard according to your own chromatic specification, integrated USB audio for headset support, 18 programmable keys and simultaneous key input for up to five keys at once, allowing you to deploy some truly polydactyl shortcuts.

The G510 costs $119.99, and although it’s temporarily sold out, you can sign up to be notified when the keyboard’s next available over on the official Logitech website.

Independent app developer Tim Sears has just released his latest creation for iPhone, and if you are a Foursquare user, this is one for you.

Future Checkin utilizes the new background location features available with iOS 4 and allows you to check-in to your favorite, recent or nearby venues without even getting your phone out of your pocket.

You’d be hard pressed to identify a peripheral maker whose sense of design is more anathema to Apple’s than Logitech. Where one is symbolized by the plinth of aluminum, the slate of glass, the opalescent bar of plastic, the other is a PC-centric slab of black plastic and glowing LEDs. That said, Logitech makes some of the best gaming mice in the business, and their new G-Series Wireless Gaming Mouse G700 is no exception.

Featuring over 13 programmable buttons easily identified by their individual sculpting, smooth gliding polytetraflyoroethylene feet and a comfortable ergonomic design, the G700 is specifically designed for MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. Onboard memory profiles guarantee that it’ll always remember your settings even across Macs, while the 5,700 dpi laser promises to track your slightest twitch and jactitation accurately.

The G700 is even rechargeable: simply plug in a micro-USB cable to switch it into corded mode and give the internal battery a juicing good for over two weeks.

If you’re interested, the Logitech Wireless Gaming Mouse G700 is available for pre-order now for just $99.99. Sure, it doesn’t exactly match Jonny Ive’s vision for your desktop… but Ive’s clearly not a gamer, is he?

The Android platform is on fire. Phones based on the Google operating system are being activated at a rate of 200,000 per day – and have eclipsed Apple iOS sales. Google CEO Eric Schmidt points to the Verizon Droid X for the rapid rise.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday night at the Techonomy Conference, Schmidt said the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet giant still has a soft spot for its rival iPhone.

Ever since Dev Team member Comex unleashed his latest jailbreak on iOS 4 users through the website JailbreakMe, an extremely dangerous exploit in the way Mobile Safari opens PDF files has effectively been in the wild.

Surprisingly, once the exploit used to effect the jailbreak was known, jailbroken iPhones were counter-intuitively more secure than their locked-down cousins, thanks to a Cydia-only software hack that plugs up the PDF vulnerability.

Needless to say, Apple wasn’t about to let that stand, and after marking the bug as “critical,” Cupertino has now released a statement on the matter.

“We’re aware of this reported issue, we have already developed a fix and it will be available to customers in an upcoming software update,” Apple has said.

This is a huge vulnerability, and to me, that sounds like Apple intends to have the hole plugged within the week. If you plan on jailbreaking, better do it now… just remember that if you decide to stick with iOS 4.0.1, you’re going to need to watch out for malicious PDF files.

HardMac thinks they’ve got quite a scoop on their hands with this leaked illustration of what they say is a next-generation iPod Touch in a clear case. They claim their source is “very reliable.” I’m not sure I buy it.

Look, it’s all hearsay until Apple actually unveils something, but this “next-gen” iPod Touch doesn’t have a front-facing camera… and we’ve got very strong reasons to believe the next iPod Touch will have exactly that. We saw an LCD assembly unit for the next iPod Touch as recently as last month that had a FaceTime camera oculus, and Steve Jobs himself has said we can expect “millions of FaceTime devices” to ship this year. Since the iPod Touch is the only other iOS device we can reasonably expect this calendar year, a FaceTime iPod Touch seems like a lock.

Another point: it would be easier to put a forward facing FaceTime camera into the iPod Touch’s existing footprint than it would be to put the iPhone 4’s 5MP camera into that same footprint. In fact, the latter might be downright impossible… yet that’s exactly what this image seems to suggest.

Finally, if this is a current mockup according to Apple’s own next-gen iPod Touch specifications, then why didn’t they bother showing the iPod Touch running iOS 4?

It doesn’t quite grok for me. What do you guys think? Sound off in the comments.

3G? Pfft. What are you, some kind of stone-humping caveman? WiMax is the new hotness, and your pitiful iPhone 4 can’t even do it… or can it?

Thanks to Clear’s iSpot WiMax hotspot, it certainly can: in fact, the iSpot can serve up to 40 Mbit per second of mobile broadband throughput collectively to up to eight connected iOS devices… but only iOS devices.

That’s right: Clear’s iSpot has a special software feature that detects the operating system installed on the devices connecting to it and shuts out anything not running iOS.

On the plus side, that means that the iSpot is pretty cheap when it debuts on August 10th: that soap-like bar of WiMax goodness will cost just $99 with a $25 month-by-month unlimited data plan.

On the other hand, if you want to connect your Mac, expect to lay out another $15 per month: Clear won’t brook no moochers.

It doesn’t take much to get rumors flying. For example, the news Verizon’s CEO will deliver the keynote speech at CES 2011 in January. Naturally, this points to the oft-rumored CDMA iPhone. Maybe.

Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg’s speech could have a number of meanings. It could be a sign of the rise of the cell phone as a key component to consumer electronics. It could be an opportunity for Verizon to talk about its leading role in advancing Android-based handsets. However, it is unlikely Seidenberg would upstage Apple CEO Steve Jobs, given the Apple co-founder’s penchant for controlling the message.

Rolling Stone‘s Special Issue of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time made its debut Tuesday on Zinio, a digital publishing platform that could spell the difference between “survive” and “thrive” for old-school media publications looking to keep the doors open in coming years.

With a stable of top-tier periodicals such as National Geographic, Esquire, American Photo, Car & Driver and many more, Zinio definitely leads the way in showing how paper publications might remain not only relevant but vital and attractive to a new generation of “readers” weaned on the sizzle and flash of gaming and 3D entertainment.

Publication is morphing into something beyond simple words and pictures, evolving into an immersive medium that both pushes ideas and information out to consumers — and draws them in with interactive features and activities that take one beyond the superficial layers of what an article or essay might seem to offer.

Thus, with such crucial stakes at hand, did Zinio, Apple and Rolling Stone produce something of a mixed scorecard with the 500 Greatest issue.

Apple’s>”>suing a number of unlicensed third-party accessory makers for products of inferior quality that reflected poorly on Apple’s brands.

Of course, part of the reason why third-party accessories work so poorly is because Apple is sneaky and employ various hardware tricks to make sure that only “Made for iPod” accessories work perfectly.

The hackers over at Minty Boost have gotten to the bottom of one such trick Apple deploys to make sure that unauthorized accessories have a hard time charging your iPod or iPhone.

In essence, Apple uses secret resistors that are placed in the connectors for Apple devices: if these resistors aren’t there, your iPhone or iPod Touch won’t deted the 2.8V and 2V signals, and hence won’t charge, coughing up a “Charging is not supported with this accessory” message instead.

The good news for unauthorized accessory makers (and makers) is that once you know the trick Apple employs to stop iPod charging on non-“Made for iPod” devices, it’s pretty easy to work around. Now that the secret of how Apple gimps unauthorized accessories is out in the wild, though, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple come up with a new way to stick it to those unwilling or unable to pay their “Made for iPod” licensing fees.

While the East Coast has continued to get excited by giant floppy slices of pizza served out of a corner joint, the San Francisco Bay Area has somewhat quietly become the finest destination for real Neapolitan pizza (and stuff quite close to it) in the United States.

Above is photographic evidence that even Steve Jobs has gotten the word. On Saturday night, he attempted to get a table at Flour+Water, one of the insurgent pizzaiolos that has put SF pizza on the map (and was recently named best restaurant in the city by SF Weekly). And, like everyone else, Steve found out that unless you’re ready to wait for a table, you’re not going to get in the door.

Don’t worry, Steve! There’s plenty of other places to go! Zero Zero is a new powerhouse, Boot and Shoe Service is picking up steam, Delfina is unstoppable, and Anthony Mangieri, the you of pizza, will soon open his Una Pizza Napoletana close to Caltrain, so you can take Caltrain back home afterward.

Via SF Weekly

Ever since the iPad’s debut, it has handily dominated the 10-inch tablet space… but that hasn’t stopped companies like Dell from trying to make a dent in the iPad’s sales with smaller 5- and 7-inch tablets.

According to iLounge, Apple might be looking to compete with the burgeoning 7-inch tablet market with an iPad Mini of their very own.

It’s plausible, I guess: the iPad is pretty big — sometimes it seems a skosh too big to me — and a 7-inch iPad wouldn’t sacrifice much in usability for an easy gain in slingability.

9to5Mac is confirming that they’ve also heard this rumor from their sources, adding that the iPad Mini would likely have a 1500×1920 Retina Display.

What do you think? Is Apple aiming to shrink the iPad? If they did, would you want one? Let us know in the comments.

What good is an iPhone if you can’t run a tricorder on it?  Hiding out in the app store is this little gem called Tricorder TR-580, with realistic sound effects and a hidden trove of data.  Somewhat of a cross-series hybrid, it’s not an official Star Trek studio release but definitely worth 99 cents.

You can track crewmates in the field too. Makes a good companion to the iPhone Communicator app!

If I was in control of the available categories in the iTunes App Store I’d place MiTube in the “Quick! Get this App!” category. MiTube is a free iOS app designed for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad that allows you to download and save YouTube videos directly to your iOS device. If you haven’t gotten your own copy of this app then use this iTunes link to get it now.

Like we mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re pretty excited about the potential for the iPhone morphing into all kinds of contraptions through hooking up with a little extra hardware. New Potato is one of the lead outfits in this area, and they’ve just introduced a kit that turns the iPhone into a bike super-computer. Rad.

The $99 kit contains a rather large cadence/speed sensor, ruggedized rubber iPhone mount, mounting hardware and a dongle that the iPhone uses to communicate with the sensor; combine the  kit with the free LiveRider app, and presto — a cycling computer with all the standard functions (speed along with max and average, time, distance, cadence, pace) and more advanced functions like competing against a chase bike, ride map and speed graph.

Being the bike geeks we are here at the Cult, we’ve already started playing around with a test unit and we’ll have a full report up soon. Can’t wait? LiveRider is available from retailer J&R or directly from New Potato.

Ever tried asking a cow about the weather?  Because they’re not really the most informative beasts (about the weather, anyway).

“Cow, it looks like it might rain sometime today — any idea when?” Cud-chewing.

“How strong d’you think the wind will be later?” More cud-chewing, accompanied by blank staring.

“Look, cow, can you at least tell me if there are any severe weather advisories I should be aware of?” Cud-chewing stops, then resumes a few seconds later; blank stare may or may not actually be a look of terror.

Using the iPhone’s native Weather app is like asking a cow about the weather: it’s cute and harmless, but not very informative. Unless you’re exceptionally partial to cows and/or don’t mind walking off into the occasional surprise thunderstorm, it should be banished to the back page and replaced with The Weather Channel’s app.

A new survey published Wednesday indicates 93% of iPhone 4 owners are happy with their new Apple devices, down slightly from 99% of iPhone 3G S owners who copped to their ecstasy in a 2009 survey.

Market research firm Change Wave reportedly surveyed just 213 people to reach its conclusions, which may well make them statistically meaningless in the light of the millions of iPhone 4 smartphones in circulation since its public release in late June.

Brouhahas over the device’s revolutionary antenna design and concerns over security holes in its operating software might lead one to question whether more than 9 in 10 consumers remain truly “happy” with their purchase.

[Via Technologizer]

We start off the day with three hardware deals. Are you looking for an affordable MacBook, perhaps as a gift? Why not a 1.83GHz MacBook for $490? If not, how about a desktop machine? The Apple Store is offering a number of Mac minis, starting at $719 for a 2.66GHz unit. Or maybe you need more power and mobility? Check out some MacBook Pros, starting at $929 for a 2.26GHz version.

If you’re not in the market for hardware, we have plenty of accessories, including pre-orders for Apple’s recently-announced Magic Trackpad, deals on skins for your iPhone 4 or cases for your iPad. As always, details on these and many other items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

The crowds have to wait until Saturday, August 7 to swarm into the new Covent Garden store but here’s a sneak peek — thanks to  at what may be Apple’s most stunning retail store to date.

Sure, you may prefer the majestic Regent Street location also in London or admire the posh new Paris Opera store, but Covent garden is the largest in the UK and is said to be the most expensive Apple store to date.

These photos snapped by James Holland at Electric Pig show that Apple’s latest must-see retail spot is a three-story triumph of exposed brick of a restored 1870s building in the heart of London.

The German government announced Wednesday several Apple iOS devices have “two critical weak points for which no patch exists.” The warning from Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security advises users of iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices to avoid opening PDF files and visiting unfamiliar websites. Apple is already investigating the issue which appeared earlier this week.

The issue appears to be with iPhones using iOS 3.1.2-4.01, iPads using iOS 3.2-3.2.1 and iPods touch devices using iOS 3.1.2-4.0, according to the German statement. Earlier this week, hackers built “JailBreakMe”, an exploit of how Safari handles PDF files. The exploit “jailbreaks” the devices.

I would like to think that most of the people who know me well enough will agree that I have a sense of humor. My tastes in humor can range from the mundane, to a well said pun, or simply the mad cap adventures of a puppet. I really like puppet humor and there is one puppet that really makes me laugh out loud, like a braying donkey no less,the Mosspuppet.

The Mosspuppet has his own iOS app called Mossboard. It is his official iPhone app and it contains a collection of Mosspuppet sound bytes that you can play aloud and in any sequence you choose. You can see it demonstrated in the YouTube video above. It’s outrageously accurate and it looks like a lot of fun. I’m sure that it would have you in stitches in no time at all.

Unfortunately Apple doesn’t think that it is very funny since it was rejected from the App Store.  Perhaps the reason for that is due to the fact that the app comes with a sound byte which mentions the puppets desire to touch Steve Jobs’ nipples. Perhaps Apple finds that offensive, but I only thought it was funny. However, according to the Mosspuppet’s Twitter feed the real reason for rejection was the apps references to journalist Walt Mossberg. Umm.. yeah like I believe that.  [Note: If you are reading this Mr. Mosspuppet feel free to mention me in your app, but if you do be prepared to send me a copy of your app. I’ve got my UUID on standby.]

Come on Apple its just a parody. Have you forgotten that you’ve let other parodies into the App Store? I’m disappointed.  Are you disappointed? Let Apple, Steve Jobs, and the world know whether you are or not by leaving a comment.