Apple Gives $29 Snow Leopard Upgrade Away for Free to Some

If you still haven't upgraded to Snow Leopard, and you paid for Apple's cloud-based MobileMe service back when it still cost money, you can now snag the OS X upgrade for free.

Macgasm reports that Apple has been sending out emails to MobileMe users who have yet to upgrade to the three-year-old OS X update. The reason for this offer--Apple's MobileMe service will end on June 30, 2012, and Mac users will need the latest version of Mac OS X (Lion) to take

How to Create a Bootable Mac OS X Flash Drive

A bootable Mac OS X thumb drive comes in handy when you need to troubleshoot OS issues for yourself, your family, or your friends. It's also extremely useful for keeping your basic setup consistent across multiple computers, if you find yourself switching hardware regularly; and I've had fun in the past setting up a bootable USB keychain loaded with all the apps and files I need to turn any Mac-compatible computer into a viable media center quickly and easily.

Apple Soars on Many Fronts as Thorny Worker Issue Fades

Apple continues to impress in tablet and smartphone sales, it is making nice with social network behemoth Facebook and it is now solidly positioned as the world's biggest publicly traded company thanks to its meteoric stock price rise.

Add to that the fact that the thorny issue of Chinese worker conditions might be fading away and all appears to be right in the consumer electronics powerhouse's world these days.

Apple Dominates in Mobile PC Arena, Study Says

Apple's fortunes in the mobile PC arena continue to flourish, according to a report by market research firm NPD DisplaySearch. The company released preliminary results for shipments of mobile PCs in the fourth quarter of 2011--numbers that have Apple outpacing its nearest competitor by more than 14.7 million units.

That figure isn't limited to notebooks. In making its calculations, NPD also includes tablets, such as Apple's iPad.

Five Mobile Technologies that Didn't Change the World

It's an awesome time to be a gadget-happy consumer electronics freak. Multi-touch user interfaces. Huge advances in miniaturization and battery life. Cloud-based storage. Mobile computing has never been better.

But sometimes, when companies announce incredible new products or technologies, and everybody proclaims that a new era has dawned, and that culture-shifting transformations are about to take place -- nothing happens.

Android Dodges Apple iOS Address Book Debacle: But not by Much

Apple is eating dirt over how iOS apps share your data with publishers, primarily personal address books harvested by a certain company named Path. But is Google any better with the way Android apps behave? We asked the app experts.

Apple Consumers Play Role in Suppliers' Labor Practices

Apple's announcement that it's asking for an outside audit of how workers are treated at Chinese factories that produce its products is a potentialy good first step towards possibly reforming labor practices. The truth is, though, the only way those factories will treat their workers properly is if you're willing to pay more for products from Apple and many other electronics makers.

iPads Snatched by Chinese Authorities, Trademark Dispute Turns Tactical

Will Apple's iPad be able to keep its name in China? Will the iPad 3 end up being called the something-else-Pad when it debuts? The bigger question today: Will Apple be able to keep selling its tablet at all if, as it seems, doing so violates Chinese law?

Steve Jobs Gets Posthumous Grammy

Steve Jobs was awarded a Grammy Trustees Award over the weekend for his role in creating products that transformed the entertainment industry.

The award didn't come as a surprise as it had been announced that Jobs would receive an honorary Grammy in December last year.

New Rumors Tip Early March Launch for iPad 3

A couple of clues are making the rounds this week that point to a March release for Apple's new iPad.Citing unnamed sources, AllThingsD reported today that Apple will hold an event in the first week of March to announce the next-gen tablet. The event will be hosted in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Apple's location of choice for big announcements, AllThingsD said.

IPad 3: Predictions and Challenges From iFixit

Kyle Wiens of iFixit, a Web site that provides free repair manuals and advice forums, has been a reliable prognosticator of everything Apple. With the next iPad expected to come out in March, Wiens recently gazed into his crystal ball.

On the eve of other major Apple unveilings, Wiens rightly predicted that the iPhone 4S would not run on 4G networks because the 4G chipsets were woefully power-inefficient. He predicted that the iPad 2 would have more RAM and a dual-core chip, but not higher resolution.

Apple Pulls Ripoff Apps from its Walled Garden

Apple perhaps knows better than any company that app ripoffs are everywhere.

The consumer electronics powerhouse has been pulling several fake apps from its store as plagiarized apps have been a hot topic in recent days.

Here are some quick tips to help you protect yourself and separate the real from the fake.

• You should always be discerning when it comes to what applications you install on your computing devices, even if they come from the Apple App Store. Even malicious code has made it in.
• Before downloading anything from Apple or the Android Market, take a good look at the reviews other users are giving. Since disgruntled mobile users are usually quick to give feedback on apps, don't ever download anything with a one- or two-star rating.

While Apple is known for screening apps before they are allowed to sprout up in its walled garden, clearly fake apps do get in. Once they do, getting them out depends on developers who raise a fuss. In the meantime, some consumers get confused and shell out money thinking they're getting the real app, when they're actually buying a counterfeit.

Censored: Apple Content Filtering Needs Work

Censorship is a bad word in the United States. We enjoy our freedoms, and don’t like the idea of someone choosing what we can or can’t see. Yet, censorship occurs all the time in the form of content filtering based on what is "age appropriate", and somehow that is perfectly acceptable. A recent Apple App Store rejection, though, highlights the capricious nature of censoring content.

A story from Gizmodo reports that Apple is apparently OK with 12 year olds reading about g-spots, or the 50 kinky sex moves men love, but a scientific article about the penis was rejected as inappropriate for the same audience.

Apple Scraps Controversial Terms in iBook Author EULA Agreement

Some controversial provisions in the agreement governing the use of Apple's iBook authoring software has been modified after coming under intense criticism from authors and publishers. As originally written, the agreement required any book created with Apple's iBook Author software to be sold through Apple. That set off a powder keg of controversy, as authors and publishers protested that Apple was trying to control the content they created.

"I find that clause unacceptable and ridiculous," declared author Liz Castro in her blog. "If I create a book, I want to be able to sell it anywhere I want, not only through Apple. I no more want to restrict my sales to their store than I want to restrict them on Amazon or anywhere else."

Apple iTunes Match Glitch Replaces Explicit Lyric Songs With Censored Versions

Explicit lyrics might not bother you, but at the moment, they're a problem for Apple's iTunes Match service. When users try to re-download certain songs containing explicit lyrics through iTunes Match, a glitch causes the service to download a censored version of the track instead. Cult of Mac has confirmed four tracks that are being cleaned up, including “Hell of a Life” and “Power” by Kanye West, “Can I Live” by Jay-Z and “Jack N The Box” by Ice Cube.

Apple has been investigating the issue and working on a fix since a couple weeks ago, when a9to5Mac reader reported the issue to Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet software and services. In the meantime, there's no workaround.

Apple Security Update Patches Mac OS X

Apple this week patched 51 vulnerabilities in Mac OS X, most of them critical, in 2012's first security update.Both Mac OS X 10.7, also known as Lion, and 10.6, better known as Snow Leopard, were updated with fixes. The two operating systems were last updated in mid-October 2011.

Some Lion users reported post-update catastrophes. In a quickly-growing thread on the Apple support forum, users said that after updating, every application crashed when launched.

Among the patches were a pair that addressed a vulnerability in SSL (secure socket layer) 3.0 and TLS (transport layer security) 1.0 that was demonstrated last September by researchers who crafted a hacking tool dubbed BEAST, for "Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS."

Apple had previously patched the same bug in iOS and other vendors, including Microsoft and Mozilla, had also beat Apple to this patch punch.

Court Snubs Apple, Okays Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1N, Nexus Smartphone Sales

You win some, you lose some: Apple's attempt to secure a preliminary ban on Samsung's Galaxy 10.1N and Galaxy Nexus in Germany has apparently failed. A regional court in Munich gave Apple's motion to block sales of Samsung's tablet and smartphone the big thumbs down Thursday. The reason, says the court: Apple patents for touch screen tablet and smartphone tech aren't long for this world.

“Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for

Apple TV Set: What We Know So Far

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster claims that a major television component maker has revealed that Apple has made inquiries about the capabilities of its display products. You know what that means--Apple TV sets! Maybe. This is proof that an Apple TV set will soon be a reality, Munster told CNNMoney. However, Munster is unsure of when the TV will appear on the market--at least he's less sure than he has been in the past.

A few years ago, seasoned Apple-watcher Munster predicted Apple would sell 6.6 million set-top boxes in 2009 and have a TV set on the market by 2011. Though Apple's set-top box, the Apple TVrecently had one of its best holiday seasons ever (selling 1.4 million units),

Apple Boycott Urged Over Foxconn Investigation

Several high-profile media outlets are calling for a boycott of Apple products, amid new reports of mistreatment of workers at the company's manufacturing chain in China.

The New York Times first ignited media interest last week with a series of articles describing terrible working conditions at factories belonging to Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn. The company has several factories in mainland China where it produces components for an array electronic devices, including the Apple iPad.

The newspaper described conditions resembling bonded labor, with employees being forced to work obscenely long shifts in unhealthy

Apple Passes HP in "PC" Shipments--or Did It?

Apple knocked HP off the throne as number one PC maker during the last three months of 2011, according to a report by market watcher Canalys. The firm reported that 120 million PCs were shipped globally during that period--17 percent of them made by Apple. However, most of those Apple "PCs" were iPads. Of the 20 million PCs Canalys says Apple shipped at the end of 2011, 15 million were tablets and five million were Macs.

Only Apple and Lenovo had increases in market share during the time frame, the marketing firm reported. But even Apple would have seen a decline in market share of 0.4 percent if tablets were removed from its shipment numbers.

Lenovo's market share gains during the period were two percent; Apple's, six percent.