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Apple TV just keeps getting better. On Monday we reported that iTunes Radio and a new "conference room" display had hit the beta for the little black box, but Apple today announced that the existing version now supports popular third party apps such as HBO GO, WatchESPN, along with a couple of other content generators.

Also included in the update are apps or the UK's Sky News, anime fan site Crunchyroll, and Quello, which focuses on delivering concert footage and documentaries about bands and musicians. Apple also used the release to announce some updated statistics regarding video purchase on iTunes, specifically that iTunes users have bought in excess of a billion TV episodes and 380 million movies. According to Apple, users download over 350,000 movies and 800,000 TV episodes per day.

But for the end user of Apple TV, the biggest news is likely the inclusion of HBO Go. Users have been clamoring for it almost since it was announced, and HBO itself fought hard to get on Apple's diminutive device. Eric Kessler, president and COO of HBO, said as much back in February to AllThingsD: "We will get on Apple TV, as we’ve said all along."

Unfortunately, both HBO Go and WatchESPN both require cable subscriptions to use them, which (as with similar announcement for the Xbox 360 and PS3 gaming systems) renders the announcement sort of bittersweet. This, indeed, marks the first time that Apple's allowed services on the device that need tethering to an outside service.

Also noticeably absent from the significant update was Amazon's Instant Video app, which claims several exclusive streaming rights for favorites like Downton Abbey and Justified.

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If you've been buying ATG-branded replacement batteries for the MacBook Pro from Best Buy either directly or via the Geek Squad, you might want to check if any third-party batteries you've bought there have been getting a little too hot lately. Best Buy announced a recall today on 5,100 third-party replacement batteries for Apple's popular notebook after the Consumer Product Safety Commission reported 13 incidents in which the batteries went up in flames. In one case, the fires even caused serious leg injury.

The affected batteries were all sold between September 2008 and June of 2012. You can check to see if you have one of the volatile batteries by checking the model number. Black versions of the ATG lithium-ion replacement batteries will have the model number MC-MBOOK13B; the white ones will read MC-BOOK13W. Both should have the ATG logo.

Best Buy announced that they'll contact their customers and inform them of the recall, in addition to offering a gift card to anyone affected. Keep in mind, however, that Best Buy wasn't the only supplier of ATG replacements, so it's probably a good idea to check your laptop anyway.

Best Buy contacted Cult of Mac concerning this issue and released this statement: "After receiving reports from customers of these lithium ion batteries overheating when charging, we believe the right thing to do is to contact our customers and ask them to return the product for replacement or for a Best Buy gift card. While we are only one of many companies that may have sold these batteries, we feel they are a potential fire and burn hazard and want to keep our customers safe."

(Battery image via Popscreen.)

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As the Department of Justice eBook trial against Apple enters it's third, and likely final, week, two themes consistently emerge: one, the entire DOJ case seems built on a flimsy house of cards that continues to get knocked down; and two, Amazon was a major player in making this lawsuit happen. It seems reasonable to many that Apple will walk away from this case vindicated and victorious. Maybe. Will Apple prevail and, if not, what happens next? Read on.

DOJ vs. Apple

This case, which we've already labeled as bizarre, has just moved to a deeper circle of cray cray. 

In the past week, the prosecution brought their most damning witness to the stand, Apple senior vice president Eddie Cue, only to have him completely shred every one of their arguments. The DOJ spent three hours attempting to pin him down as the "ringmaster" but ultimately was unable to shake the unflappable Cue. After establishing himself quickly as a calm and credible witness, Cue repeatedly stated, "No, that is not correct." to government accusations, and then clearly stated the correct version. By the end of the questioning, the prosecution was frustrated.

Then, the prosecution spent a day and half dissecting a "smoking gun" email from Steve Jobs to Eddie Cue, only to be forced to admit that the email was never sent to anyone. Ultimately, even Judge Cote was joking about the absurdity of the testimony, and the relevancy of the devastating email was seriously called into question.

Finally, Apple brought the maker of a competing tablet to the stand as a witness. Barnes & Noble's VP of digital content, Theresa Horner, testified on behalf of Apple that before Apple, the eBook market was a hot mess; under Amazon's wholesale model, Amazon would pay $13 per eBook and sell them for $9.99, absorbing the loss as a way to encourage more Kindle sales. Horner stated that this model became quickly unsustainable for anyone but Amazon, and that B&N was already pitching an "agency model" months before Apple came onto the scene. This dovetailed nicely with Eddie Cue's previous testimony that Amazon's agency model never would have worked for Cupertino because "Apple doesn't go into new businesses to lose money."

When you consider these developments alongside earlier testimony in this case from Amazon, testimony that detailed how it was Amazon that wrote the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Apple in the first place because it did not want to move from wholesale pricing to agency pricing (and then switched to agency pricing anyway), you have to wonder if the right company has been on trial here all along. 

Eddie Cue, leaving the courtroom, where he can't be faded. (image/LA Times)

Either way, it seems like the DOJ has been outclassed and should seek a quick exit strategy, right? Not so fast, kemosabe. Judge Cote gets to rule on this case without a jury, and could easily rule for the DOJ for a number of reasons that don't make sense to anyone but her.

If that happens, you should expect this issue to become a high-profile case before the Supreme Court. For better or worse, SCOTUS is a very business-friendly court, and the likelihood of a Cupertino win on the big stage is strong. Regardless of what happens in this trial, certain facts can no longer be denied: Amazon's old model of selling eBooks was crushing the industry and led to a 90 percent market share; other eBook readers were pursing this "agency model" before Apple; Amazon itself switched to the agency model; the eBook market is significantly more robust with more consumer choice today than ever.

If Judge Cote chooses to ignore these facts and gift-wraps Amazon the ruling they are wish-listing for, Apple will be more than happy to make the same arguments to the Supreme Court. On Thursday Apple will be making summations, and then we'll just have to wait and see exactly how Judge Cote decides to rule.

Follow this writer, Adrian Hoppel, on Twitter and App.net as @aphoppel.

Yesterday afternoon the L.A. Times reported that Apple had snagged a $30 million deal to supply iPads to 30,000 students across 47 schools in Los Angeles beginning this fall. A press release issued by Apple this morning confirmed the report. You kind of have to admire the accidental timing--the announcement came right on the heels of the discovery that Microsoft had started selling its Surface RT tablet to educational institutions for $199.

According to Jaime Aquino, the deputy superintendent of instruction at the Los Angeles Unified School District, the decision was unanimous. Of the tablets Aquino and the LAUSD tested prior to the decision, Aquino said, the iPad "rated the best in quality, was the least expensive option and received the highest scoring by the review panel that included students and teachers." By 2014, LAUSD--the nation's second largest school district--hopes to have iPads in the hands of every one of their students. By agreeing to the deal, LAUSD tacitly acknowledges that it'll be sending more money Apple's way in the coming years.

Microsoft's recent news about their Surface RT casts Aquino's comments about the iPad being the least expensive in a curious light, but it's not so surprising when quality and the total package is factored in. All total, according to the L.A. Times, each iPad LAUSD buys will cost $678--that's more than most store-bought versions--but they'll come loaded with an app for the Pearson Common Core System of Courses, in addition to Apple’s iWork (including Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) and iLife (including iPhoto, iVideo, GarageBand). Numerous unspecified third-person apps will also be installed on each iPad, and each one comes with a three-year warranty.

Apple, too, took advantage of the huge win to play up their role in education. "Education is in Apple’s DNA and we're thrilled to work with Los Angeles Unified public schools on this major initiative as they plan to roll out iPads to every student across 47 campuses this fall," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in the press release. "Schools around the world have embraced the engaging and interactive quality of iPad with nearly 10 million iPads already in schools today."

Impressively, the vote passed unanimously even after two attendees with Apple stock--Bennett Kayser and general counsel David Holmquist--left the room for the voting.

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[This is an advertorial. Maclife gets a portion of each unit sold.]

The iPad is the perfect display to view your favorite photos on. It presents them in a crystal clear way and allows you to effortlessly browse through and pull up your favorite shots. But not all your favorite photos are housed on your iPad. Some of them may still be on memory cards or on the camera. You can still pull them up on your tablet thanks to the 3-in-1 Camera Connection Kit for iPad. It's on sale in our latest Deal.

Importing and viewing your photos on your iPad has never been easier than with the 3-in-1 iPad Camera Connection Kit. It allows you to have immediate access to content stored on USB, SD cards, or MicroSD cards. This device will bridge the gap between your camera and your iPad and will make it easy to plug in any camera or data storage option straight to your tablet.

The 3-in-1 Camera Connection Kit for iPad usually retails for $39. If you head to our Deals tab right now, you can save a full 51% off that price. That means you'll pay just $19 for this must have accessory. 

Are you a leader or a follower? The answer to that question may determine how much use you'll get out of Poutsch, a free iPhone app that offers the answers to life's questions from the palm of your hand.

Proving that there is truly an app for everything, Poutsch Corp. announced the release of a free iPhone app this week that allows users to get instant opinions from those around you, and even create polls to engage others as well.

"Knowing the opinion of people around you is useful!" the company's website explains. "If you are trying to decide with your friends which present to buy for a birthday, wondering whether people like your new project or figuring out what percentage of people support a gun plan, you’re stuck. There is no free and powerful app to create polls on the go."

That is, until now: Poutsch is a new kind of social network for creating public or private polls where the user is in complete control. If there's any doubt about another user's opinion, an "Optimatch" score on their profile will let you know just how compatible you are with them.

Poutsch for iPhone or iPod touch is now available from the App Store as a free download and requires iOS 5.1 or later.

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter

Don't panic, but the next time you head out and decide to flip on the Personal Hotspot feature on your iOS device, you might want to think about changing the password to something else.

ZDNet reported Tuesday that the seemingly random passwords iOS generates for the Personal Hotspot feature may not be quite as secure as users might expect.

In fact, researchers at Germany's University of Erlangen were able to crack the passwords in less than a minute, all because Apple's defaults use a combination of a "short dictionary word followed by a series of random numbers."

The problem stems from the limited number of words being used -- and where they originate from.

"This list consists of around 52,500 entries, and was originated from an open-source Scrabble crossword game," the researchers reveal. "Using this unofficial Scrabble word list within offline dictionary attacks, we already had a 100 percent success rate of cracking any arbitrary iOS hotspot default password."

While the actual dictionary word can be cracked in under a minute, it took another 49 minutes to brute force the remainder of the password -- by which time many users may have finished their latte and headed home anyway.

Curiously, iOS appears to be using only a small subset of the 52,500 dictionary entries available to it, instead basing the temporary password on only 1,842 words, which makes hacking your Personal Hotspot easier than it should be.

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter

(Image courtesy of AppleHeadlines.com)

Monday's release of Creative Cloud 2.0 was not some random date on the calendar -- it preceded the announcement of Adobe's second-quarter financial results, which show that subscription-based software is growing quickly.

Adobe Systems Inc. announced Tuesday that the company ended its fiscal Q2 2013 on May 31 with more than 700,000 paid Creative Cloud subscriptions, an increase of 221,000 from the prior quarter.

Overall, Adobe fell on the higher end of its quarterly estimates, with $1.011 billion in revenue and net income of $76.5 million, suggesting the transition to Creative Cloud -- along with the company's Marketing Cloud initiative, which grew by more than 25 percent to $229.6 million for the quarter -- were succeeding.

“Our Q2 results reflect our leadership position in Digital Media and Digital Marketing,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer, Adobe. “Creative Cloud is revolutionizing the creative process, and Adobe Marketing Cloud is quickly becoming the platform of choice for the world's leading brands, advertising agencies and media companies.”

Adobe Creative Cloud brings together all of the company's core creative products and services in a $49.99 per month, subscription-based package for Mac and Windows users. Monday saw the release of the company's first major update, and a shift away from the old business model of selling packaged software.

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter

If you're a parent, you probably have either a Netflix or Amazon Instant Video subscription (or maybe even both) to keep the kiddies entertained. America's top two streaming providers are stepping up efforts to cater to parents which is great, but makes it hard for parents to stick with one service or the other, especially as the little ones change their taste so quickly. Read on to find out how Netflix and Amazon are duking it out for your dough in today's recap.

Chatology for Mac Superpowers iMessages

Mac users love Messages (formerly known as iChat), but now that it includes mobile messages, things can get pretty confusing when it comes time to search through all of those chats. Enter Fantastical creator Flexibits with the new $19.99 Chatology for Mac, which makes it easy to find messages from any date range or even isolate images and other links. Even better, Chatology can be invoked by using the Command-F key from either Messages or iChat just by toggling on a preference setting, making it about as convenient as you'd ever want. Chatology requires OS X Lion 10.7 or above, and is available as a free download to put it through its paces before buying.

Netflix, Amazon Spar Over Family-Oriented Programming

TechCrunch reported Tuesday that both Netflix and Amazon are stepping up efforts to grab hard-earned cash from parents coast to coast with new initiatives aimed at families. The former launched the aptly-named Netflix Families, a web portal to promote the streaming company's kiddie fare with recommendations and tips on how to view content, as well as a new original content deal with DreamWorks Animation, who will release new content from characters such as Shrek and Kung Fu Panda exclusively on Netflix. Meanwhile, Amazon followed up its recent Nickelodeon pickups with an update on Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, an optional service aimed parents with kids between the ages of three and eight that offers rich parental controls and a host of books, games, educational apps, movies and TVs for only $2.99 per child or $6.99 per family.

Video: Neat Releases Updated Mobile App

As teased in an email to users last week, Neat officially announced version 2.0 of its free, universal mobile app for iOS, rebuilt "from the ground up for a whole new experience." The app requires a NeatCloud subscription, which allows users to capture receipts and other documents and push them to the cloud, where they can be synced back to the Mac or Windows version. The new app claims 4x performance over the previous version and now allows files to be edited and reorganized right from a mobile device, and both files and folders can be easily shared with others. Curious what it's all about? Check out the embedded video below to find out more.

Apple's Jonathan Ive Now Simply VP of Design

Apple is known for making things smaller and more simple, and that apparently even applies to executive titles now. According to 9to5Mac, Sir Jonathan Ive's previous Senior Vice President, Industrial Design title shortened to simply Senior Vice President, Design following his promotion last fall as head of both hardware and software design. Curiously, the title switch only occurred last week, perhaps to correspond with WWDC 2013's introduction of iOS 7, which Ive is said to be lending his artistic flair to.

AT&T LTE Again Found Fastest, While Verizon is Most Reliable

Now that's dedication! For the fourth year in a row, PCMag hit the road and racked up more than 20,000 miles across the United States to find out which carrier had the fastest mobile network this year. Using eight identical Samsung-branded devices, the testers found that AT&T was once again the fastest out of the four big carriers. However, if you're looking for reliability, national leader Verizon Wireless appears to have done a great job blanketing the country with coverage. While Sprint again failed to win any of the cities tested, T-Mobile's rapidly expanding LTE network looks promising, and its current HSPA+ network was considered the best fallback available. Check out the full results of the testing on the website!

Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter

Deep educational discounts have been Apple's thing for ages, but now Microsoft's looking to cut into the Cupertino giant's market by temporarily offering its beleaguered Surface RT for students and staff at universities and schools for $199. As ZDNet reports, the price only accounts for the tablet without a keyboard, although tossing in either of the two keyboard options still falls well short of Apple's asking price of $399 for students.

According to Microsoft's original announcement (which has since been taken down, although ZDNet learned that the offer's still valid), the limited-time offer is available in many countries between June 17 and August 31. With the special offer, students can pick up the device for less than half of its normal retail price of $599. It gets better when you toss in the keyboards. Buy one with the touch keyboard, and the whole package is available for $249, down from the normal retail price of $599; buy the better type keyboard, and it's $289, down from $629. That's a full computer containing Microsoft Office selling for less than the price of Office itself. At that price, it almost seems as though Microsoft just wants to give them away.

Perhaps they do. Earlier Microsoft announced that they'd be giving away 10,000 tablets to teachers at a conference in San Antonio later this month, and rumors are already flying about that Microsoft's looking to release a better version of the device. These actions provide an easy way to clear out inventory, but part of the problem for Microsoft, though, is that there's a lot of inventory. Back in March, Bloomberg reported via Twitter that Microsoft had only sold around 1 million Surface RTs since its release last October, despite having produced more than 3 million units of the iPad alternative.

On the plus side (for Microsoft), educational discounts have always helped to introduce people to Apple products, but if Microsoft can't entice consumers with cuts this deep, the outlook for its success in the tablet arena won't look good at all.

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