If you thought last weeks news that you can now buy Starbucks coffee with an iPhone was cool, this is even cooler. According to Bloomberg, iPhone 5 and iPad 2 will both feature “Near-Field Communications” technology that allows the devices to become a digital wallet. Thanks to the built-in NFC chip, your iPhone will be able to access credit cards, bank accounts, and gift card balances already on file with Apple, allowing you to make any purchase directly from the phone.

In terms of the timeline, Bloomberg says the technology is “due to be embedded in the next iteration of the iPhone for AT&T Inc. and the iPad 2” and that “Both products are likely to be introduced this year… citing engineers who are working on hardware for the Apple project.”

Most rumors put the iPad 2 release in April and iPhone 5 in June, keeping in line with Apple’s past release schedules, but what about in-store infrastructure? According to the report, Apple has already created prototype NFC payment terminals that they may subsidize to encourage rapid nationwide adoption of the technology.

I’m wondering if the NFC data will be accessible for third party app developers, if so, this could completely change the face of mobile banking, transactions, gift cards, and so much more. Owe your friend $5? Imagine being able to send it directly to his bank account with a few taps on your phone. Consider this all a rumor for now, but hopefully Bloomberg is right about this one.

Hoping to further distance itself from rival AT&T, Verizon will offer an unlimited data plan for $30 to new iPhone 4 customers. This would make Verizon the only US carrier that offers unlimited data for the iPhone, since AT&T removed the unlimited plan in favor of a 2GB limit.

But there’s a catch; the unlimited data plan will only be available temporarily before all Verizon plans are moved onto a tiered data plan like AT&T’s, according to the Wall Street Journal. The pricing and data allowances of the tiered system are currently unknown.

It still remains to be seen what, if anything, Verizon and AT&T will charge to use the much desired wireless hotspot feature in iOS 4.3. Depending on the associated fees, it may be more cost effective to sign onto the unlimited data plan and then jailbreak the iPhone into a wireless hotspot.

If you’ve ever accidentally shut down your Mac, you’re not alone. That dreaded feeling when everything starts closing when you didn’t mean to reboot, ahh! But don’t freak out, there’s an incredibly simple way to stop the shut down process in OS X!

All you need to do to stop a Mac shutdown is immediately launch an OS X app. You have to act quick because a reboot happens fast, so move fast and just pick any app in your Dock and launch away.

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This deal is hot. For a limited time, you can buy a Crucial 8GB 204-PIN PC3-8500 SODIMM DDR3 RAM upgrade kit for $75 from Amazon, the price includes free shipping.

Crucial is widely considered to be one of the better brands of RAM on the market. This is an extraordinary deal for an 8GB RAM upgrade and without a doubt the cheapest price I’ve seen for such a kit. Part of the reason it’s so cheap is that there’s a $15 instant rebate that is valid on Amazon until 1/27/2011… in other words you have three days to get the low price.

• Crucial 8GB 204-PIN PC3-8500 DDR3 RAM Upgrade Kit – $75 with free shipping

For comparison, I paid $115 for 8GB just a few months ago, you can read my MacBook Pro 8GB RAM upgrade review if you missed it. In short, if you’re a power user or intense multi-tasker, you’ll really appreciate the extra memory.

The upgrade kit should work with any of the newer MacBook Pro, MacBook, Mac Mini, and iMac models, but you’ll want to double-check that your Mac supports it. If you aren’t sure whether you’d benefit from more memory, check out Does my Mac need more RAM?

The latest iPhone 4 commercial shows off two iPhones using AT&T and Verizon side by side, to the tune of the famous song “The Blue Danube” waltz by Johann Strauss II. The commercial appropriately ends with a “Two is better than one” message, and some fine print reminding us that some features vary per carrier.

Both AT&T and Verizon iPhone 4 cost $200 with a two year contract, although if you’re buying the phone outright it’ll cost you $50 more at Verizon for some reason.

Xcode has a lot of keyboard shortcuts available, wouldn’t it be nice to have a handy reference chart for them all?

You’re in luck if you have thought that same thing, because Colin Wheeler is a Cocoa Developer that has created a really handy XCode keyboard shortcut cheatsheet, it’s a great resource for anyone who is interested in improving their XCode workflow.

The file is way too large and detailed to give it an appropriate thumbnail here, so check it out directly by clicking the link below to open as a PDF file:

• Direct link to (large) PDF of Xcode keyboard shortcuts here

The cheatsheet is made available under the Creative Commons license, so you can do what you want with it as long as you include attribution to the creator (1729.us and what is visible on the PDF itself).

Unfortunately it’s not black text on white background so it’s not the most printer friendly, but save it to the Mac and enjoy!

Happy Birthday to the Mac! Apple introduced the very first Macintosh on January 24, 1984, beginning an era that is still going strong 27 years later.

Here are some fun facts about the first ever Mac, known as the Macintosh 128k:

• It ran Mac OS System 1.0 (if you’re already nostalgic you can run classic Mac OS on your iPhone today)
• It featured an 8 MHz processor, 128kb of RAM, 9″ black and white display with a 512×342 resolution, and a 3.5″ disk drive
• The base price started at $2,495, which is $5,095 in todays inflation adjusted dollars, an additional external disk drive was another $495
• The first Mac shipped with two pieces of software, MacWrite and MacPaint, these apps were chosen to emphasize the operating systems revolutionary Graphical User Interface
• Apple’s obsession with reducing hardware noise started at the very beginning, with the original Mac not including a fan in order to insure quiet operation
• The original Mac 128k was not considered to be upgradeable, any upgrades required an entirely new motherboard
• The Mac 128k had the signatures of Apple’s Macintosh division engraved on the inside of the case (see picture below)
• Although it was announced several months prior, most people first heard of the Mac upon airing of the now famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial (shown below)

These are the Macintosh teams signatures inside the Mac 128k case, Steve Jobs and Woz are included:
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Want a humorous consideration for the iPad camera?

With rumors swirling about iPad updates, nobody knows for sure what features the iPad 2 will have, although a camera is almost certain.

The rumormill is currently going both directions on this iPad camera possibility, some iPad 2 rumors suggest that it will have dual cameras, perhaps both HD, and others say it will be 1 megapixel like the latest generation iPod touch.

But while many want an HD camera on the iPad 2, this picture above shows why that might be impractical.

Can you imagine people holding up the relatively large iPad to take pictures?

Looks a little silly doesn’t it?

This is obviously a joke, but it does make a valid point in a goofy way… this will certainly be a change from regular camera use that are typically small and pocket size.

Thanks to Patrick for sending in the above image! Get ready for the day where tons of people are walking around with large tablets and snapping pictures with them!

As the saying goes, the best camera is the camera you have with you… right? Whether that is on an iPhone or iPad, as long as it has a camera, snap away and enjoy your photography!

Buying the iPhone 4 with a two year commitment agreement from Verizon is the same cost as AT&T’s, but Verizon’s option to pay the full price, presumably without contract, costs $50 more. Here is the pricing information from Verizon:

Verizon iPhone 4 Price with Contract

If you sign a 2-year contract, the price of the Verizon iPhone 4 is the same as AT&T’s offer:

• iPhone 4 16GB: $199.99
• iPhone 4 32GB: $299.99

Verizon iPhone 4 Price without Contract

Verizon is charging $50 more for the iPhone 4 than AT&T’s contract-free price:

• iPhone 4 16GB: $649.99
• iPhone 4 32GB: $749.99

These prices come directly from the Verizon iPhone 4 FAQ page. There may be a reason for the cost increase, but the only known difference thus far is the Verizon iPhone has CDMA network compatibility. As usual in the USA smartphone market, the CDMA iPhone will almost certainly be carrier locked to the Verizon network.

Is there really an advantage to paying more to buy the iPhone outright when it is carrier locked anyway? This depends, but in my view the only reason to buy an off-contract iPhone is to unlock it for use on other network carriers. With no CDMA compatible iPhone in the wild yet, it is unknown if there will be a carrier unlock that works with the device, so if you are hoping for an unlocked CDMA device you may need to shop outside of the USA.

If you’re thinking about releasing an iOS app, you probably already know that iOS development costs are quite high, so you want to be sure you get the most bang for your buck.

With that in mind there’s a detailed and extremely helpful iOS development and marketing checklist from the experienced developer MindJuice. It’s focused heavily on marketing and touches on the five major phases of the development and release process that is relevant to any app developer. These are:

• Design Phase – things that you need to include in your app from the start, including social media features, ability to get direct feedback, etc
• Implementation Phase – keep a development blog and organize beta testers
• Testing and Pre-Launch Phase – setup Ad Hoc installations for easy beta testing, contact review sites for early access to your app, etc
• Launch Phase – choosing an app category, creating a good icon, refining the app description and picking good screenshots, having an app webpage, engage user forums and app review sites, sending out press releases, and creating video demos
• Post Launch Phase – keeping an eye on how things are going, this one is a work in progress

You can read the full extensive list at MindJuice’s blog.

If you notice there’s one key element that underlines each phase, and that is engagement with users from initial design to product launch. Some of the more successful apps (Angry Birds, Instapaper, etc) also have some of the more active developers in social media, and this is not a coincidence – developers must cultivate their userbase and respond to user feedback.

While this list is specifically geared towards iOS and the iTunes App Store, there’s no reason you couldn’t apply the same principles to Mac software and the Mac App Store. Whether you’re an active developer or just inspiring to be, it’s worth a look.

Using a Terminal command, you can turn any screensaver into your background wallpaper on the Mac. In the screenshot above I have the iTunes Album Art screensaver running as the Mac OS X desktop, but you can choose any screensaver you want. Here’s how to do this:

• Launch System Preferences
• Click on Desktop & Screen Saver and choose the screensaver you want to set as the background
• Open Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities/) and paste in the following command:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background

Hit the Return key to execute the command string, this will start the screen saver in the background immediately.

As long as this command is running, the screen saver will be active. If you close the Terminal window, the screen saver will end and your Macs wallpaper will return to whatever you had previously.

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This awesome Mac setup from features a 27″ iMac, Apple Cinema Display, a MacBook Pro, and on the far right a Wacom Cintik 21″ tablet screen that lets you draw directly on the display. I guess that tablet is about as close as you can get to a touchscreen Mac at the moment.

Picture from Flickr.

The excellent media center software XBMC has finally come to Apple TV 2, but beyond being a great media center, if you’re wondering why else you should care I’ll sum it up in one word: 1080p. Yes, using XBMC, you can unleash 1080p video playback on the $99 Apple TV2… the playback suffers from occasional choppiness on uncompressed bluray video, but hey it’s the first release, and could make the ATV2 the cheapest 1080p video playback device on the market.

You’ll need the following to get started:

• Apple TV 2 (Amazon link) running iOS 4.1, iOS 4.2.1, or later
• Seas0npass to jailbreak the Apple TV 2 (Instructions to jailbreak are below)
• A micro-USB cable (this is used for the jailbreak and tethered boot)
• The IP address of your AppleTV

We’ll now walk through the process of both jailbreaking the AppleTV2 and installing XBMC:
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There are several steps to password protect a Mac, we’ll cover the essentials so that if someone is to turn on your Mac, wake it from a screensaver, or wake from sleep, they will be required to enter a password in order to use the computer.

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The first Verizon iPhone commercial has been released. The commercial is intriguing and features several clocks ticking before the message “To our millions of customers, who never stopped believing this day would come… Thank you” before finally flashing the Apple iPhone 4 logo, the Verizon swoosh, and the release date of February 10th.

It might not have the excitement of some of the other Apple commercials but I like it overall.

Two new patents have surfaced that may provide a look into the future of Mac input devices.

The first is for a Magic Mouse that has an integrated touch screen, which could adjust to display things like virtual buttons, keys, menus, text, and video. The patent application shows a diagram of the Magic Mouse displaying a virtual numeric keypad, but when you consider the Magic Mouse is nearly the size of an iPhone or iPod touch, the possibilities are wide open.

The second patent shows a Virtual Keyboard that includes a haptic feedback system, which would give a user the perception that the virtual keyboard is a regular keyboard by providing a vibratory response to touch. As PatentlyApple notes, a virtual keyboard has the potential to morph into another input device entirely, such as a game pad or musical keyboard.

Apple is clearly interested in further developing touch input across the Mac product line. Previous patents have shown a touch screen MacBook, a convertible touchscreen iMac that runs both iOS and Mac OS X, and a convertible MacBook tablet that may function in a similar manner as the aforementioned iMac.

Both of the new patents were discovered by PatentlyApple, you can read more about the Magic Mouse and the Virtual Keyboard over there.

You can check your entire print history in Mac OS X by accessing the browser based CUPS utility. This is a very helpful tool for managing printing as well as tracking down origins of printed items, and it works on all versions of Mac with all printers.

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iOS 4.3 Beta 2 has just been made available for download as build 8F5153d. Just as the previous release of the iOS 4.3 beta, this release supports iPad, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and iPod touch 3G and 4G. Older iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2G models are left behind and not supported for the update.

On the developer download site, Apple reminds users that once a device has been updated to iOS 4.3 beta, the OS can not be restored to a previous iOS version, but they will be able to upgrade to future versions of the beta and the final version of iOS 4.3.

You can download iOS 4.3 beta 2 right now if you’re a developer from the iOS Dev Center