We're back after an extended two-week absence for the holidays, and while there were plenty of Apple-related stories going on during our vacation, we distilled them down into a handful of items that may have slipped through the cracks. Now that the Christmas tree has hit the curb and the leftovers are finally gone, sit back and catch up on a few stories you might have missed while you spent time with the family...
2012 came to an abrupt close for Hackulous, a community of scoundrels who made it possible for jailbroken iOS devices to run App Store apps without digital rights management. According to AppleInsider, the service came to an abrupt end with claims that the Hackulous community had become "stagnant" in recent months, referring to the forums that kept pirated software going as "a bit of a ghost town." The move was immediately hailed by iOS developers, and for good reason -- pirated apps create no revenue for them, and plenty of support headaches. It remains to be seen what kind of impact the closure of Hackulous may have on jailbreaking in general, which still has plenty of legitimate uses.
The Next Web is reporting that Apple's 2013 Mac line may get a nice Wi-Fi boost thanks to a rumored deal with Broadcom to bring the company's 802.11ac networking chips onto its hardware. The technology, also known as 5G Wi-Fi, has the potential to be three times faster than 802.11n, with 1.3Gbps throughput compared to the current speed champ's pokier 450Mbps. Of course, that likely means Cupertino will also need to implement the technology into its Airport base station line, but no need to break the credit cards out of that ice block quite yet -- the same rumor rippled across the internet last year, too.
Stop us if you've heard this one before: The clock turns to a new year and iOS chokes. This time, however, it's not alarms but rather the iOS 6 Do Not Disturb feature, which plagued many users last week after the calendar turned to 2013. According to an Apple tech support note, iOS 6 users who find Do Not Disturb stay on past its scheduled time should now be in the clear -- the feature apparently will "resume normal functionality after January 7, 2013," which is today. In the meantime, Apple suggests manually turning the feature on or off. Here's looking forward to next year's time and date-oriented bug!
Following CEO Tim Cook's announcement last month that Apple would be investing more than $100 million into U.S.-based production of a single Mac line this year, speculation ran rampant that the long-ignored Mac Pro may be the "made in USA" model. Not so fast, says AppleInsider -- it's more likely to be the Mac mini instead, according to "upstream supply chain sources" whispering to the hit-or-miss Taiwanese trade website DigiTimes. That would make more sense given the lower cost and higher volume, with the Mac mini expected to increase year-over-year sales by 30 percent in 2013 to 1.8 million units.
Love him or hate him, Ashton Kutcher's cinematic interpretation of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs will be hitting movie theaters this year. As a matter of fact, we won't have all that long to wait, with Deadline reporting that Open Road Films and Five Star Feature Films have announced that the poorly-titled jOBS biopic will follow up its premiere as the closing night film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival this month with an official theatrical release in April. Given the vagaries of the movie business, that doesn't necessarily mean we'll be seeing Kutcher-as-Jobs on screens from coast to coast, but a digital and disc release won't be far behind so everyone can join in the fun.
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