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Over at 9to5Mac, Mark Gurman has pulled a nice little early Christmas present out of the new iOS 5.1 beta: four brand new wallpapers that Apple will roll out to customers with the update’s official release.

They’re really beautiful, although my personal favorite is the one with beads of dew on blades of grass. After the jump, we’ve put the iPad versions of the new wallpaper for your perusal, but if you’ve got an iPhone or iPod touch, head on over to 9to5Mac to grab the higher quality PNGs or their equally well-done resized versions of the same images, perfect for a smaller display. Great work, guys.

Yesterday, Apple began rolling out iTunes Match to over a dozen new countries, but as with the U.S. rollout, demand has temporarily exceeded capacity, and so Apple has halted new subscriber sign-up for iTunes Match until some of the initial crush peters out.

Not a big deal, honestly. This happened a couple times with the U.S. rollout, and frankly, iTunes Match can take an awfully long time even in the best of times to match a large collection, let alone when the servers are being hammered. You’re probably better off waiting a few days to sign up, anyway.

[via MacRumors]

It’s been a huge year for Apple. They’ve released a dizzying array of new products and services this year: two new operating systems, two new iPhones, major updates to their entire computer line, a revolutionary new voice control system, a new I/O interface that looks likely to steal the crown from USB 3.0, and even a greeting card app. All of this while dealing with the death of Steve Jobs, the design of a new, futuristic spaceship HQ, and a brand new CEO.

By any measure, it was an amazing year. Still, if you had to pick just one, what do you think was Apple’s best new product this year? Vote in our poll below, and next week we’ll declare the best Apple products of the year as voted by you, the readers.

Samsung dropped its lawsuit against Apple in Germany after discovering a Qualcomm licensing agreement could shield the iPhone 4S from 3G patent-infringement charges. The South Korean smartphone maker later denied it was letting Apple completely off the hook.

It’s always seemed like such a simple tweak, but SBSettings has turned out to be the jailbreak tweak I have the hardest time living without: a simple interface for turning on or off the most common iPhone or iPad settings with a single button press, opened by simply swiping your finger across your iOS’s status bar.

Now that Siri’s here, though, wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to just tell your iPhone to do the things SBSettings does? Turn Bluetooth On or Off, for instance, or go into Airplane Mode.

Apple mysteriously left the ability to use Siri to toggle system preferences out of iOS 5, but the functionality’s reportedly on the way thanks to a new app called Toggles. The only problem? We’ll have to wait for an iPhone 4S jailbreak first.

As Research In Motion circles the smartphone drain, its two CEOs cut their pay to $1. The Steve Jobs-like maneuver may not be enough to save a company that lost 70 percent of its profit to Apple and Android. The only question left: Are the BlackBerry maker’s leaders even worth a buck?

Can’t get enough of Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography? Apparently neither can he. Isaacson is now saying he plans to expand the Steve Jobs bio to include annotations and new addendums.

Did you wait until the very last minute to do your Christmas shopping? Well, thanks to a swank new addition to Wolfram Alpha, Siri can now help you find the best deals going on electronics over at Best Buy.

A special edition of James Cameron’s Avatar is set to hit the iTunes Store on December 20, and for fans of the film it is not to be missed. In addition to an original screenplay by Cameron, it features over 1,700 images and allows fans to “deconstruct some of the movie’s most memorable scenes.”

In 1985, after a power struggle developed between Steve Jobs and John Sculley, Apple Computer’s charismatic co-founder was forced out of the company his vision had created. For the next twelve years, the company foundered, lost marketshare hand over fist and almost went bankrupt before Jobs returned to the company in 1997 to put things right.

We all know that story. Still, it’s amazing how just one item from the dark years can hilariously put the disconnect between pre- and post-Jobs Apple in sharp relief. Could anything better exemplify the now-amusing differences in vision between Apple under Jobs and Apple under Sculley than this 1987 relic, The Apple Catalogue?

We’ve seen this magnificent mod for the iPhone 4 before, from a U.K.-based iPhone repair specialist, but the best thing about this one from K.O. Store is that it’s available to purchase right now! The kit allows you to easily replace the rear panel of your iPhone 4 with one that features an illuminating Apple logo.

But you’ll have to be quick — it’s only on sale for two days, and could be pulled sooner if Apple steps in.

If BlackBerry maker Research in Motion were going to dinner, it would arrive five hours late, finding Apple and Google had already eaten, told the best jokes and gone home with all the good-looking women. That’s the image analysts are offering in the wake of RIM announcing yet another delay entering the smartphone market.

Mariner Software just updated veteran writing/blogging app MacJournal to version 6, with a double helping of new features thrown in.

We’re all familiar with how costly data can be on our iOS devices if we’re using them to get on the internet abroad with no access to a Wi-Fi hotspot. To prevent nasty charges, most of us turn off data roaming and avoid using our devices for the internet.

However, there’s a nasty bug in Apple’s iOS operating system that could cost you a fortune while you’re on vacation by allowing you to download apps over a 3G data network even with the feature turned off.

For all of the talk of Foxconn opening a factory in Brazil to churn out iPhones and iPads, here’s the big, overlooked reason that Brazilian Apple fans need their devices to be built locally: 46.76% of any Apple device’s cost in Brazil is made up of crazy import taxes.

Ah, wonderful. Imagine the comic opportunities that lie ahead now that Dilbert characters carry talking smartphones.

Somehow, you can tell this is probably just part of Dogbert’s masterplan for the company anyway.

New tablets from booksellers Amazon and Barnes & Noble are chipping away at the iPad’s commanding lead of the market. The Kindle Fire is expected to be the strongest challenger, dropping Apple’s market share below 60 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, analysts write today.

While most of the components crammed inside your iOS devices are built by low-cost Asian manufacturers, its dual-core A5 processor is actually built a little closer to home — at Samsung’s new factory in Austin, Texas.

That’s right — rumors surrounding an “iPad mini” have been resurrected by DigiTimes, which claims Apple is really going to give Amazon’s Kindle Fire something to worry about next year with an 7.85-inch model of it’s hugely successful tablet.

Siri is by far the iPhone 4S’s most-desired feature, and many non-4S users have been clamoring for hackers to make the voice assistant available on older iOS devices. While Siri ports have been demoed to the public before, it’s been made clear that public distribution is not possibile at this time due to legal issues.

Apple has made a Siri port legally possible with today’s iOS 5.0.1 revision by offering wide-open access to system files that were previously encrypted.

With Apple expected to release its successor to the iPad 2 in early-2012, alleged iPad 3 parts have leaked out into the wild. The parts suggest that Apple is ready to introduce a revolutionary new design for its upcoming tablet, as the device’s internals appear to be arranged way differently.

The iPad 3’s dock connector and ribbon cable leaked a couple months ago. These new microphone parts are currently available for purchase from a Chinese retailer.

Apple has released two minor software updates today. A tweaked version of iOS 5.0.1 (Build 9A406) for the iPhone 4S has been pushed for users who haven’t yet upgraded to the latest firmware (essentially replacing the current 5.0.1 build).

The second-generation Apple TV has been updated to version 4.4.4 (Build 9A406a) and features small bug fixes and stability improvements. Both updates can be downloaded now.

The internet sounded the bell a little prematurely last night, but it now appears that iTunes Match is indeed rolling out to international customers. While we all thought the service had been rolled out to most of Europe and Australia yesterday, it was later confirmed that the launch was an error, with Apple emailing apologizes to international customers and handing out refunds.

Now it appears that many countries, including Australia, U.K., Canada, Mexico, and others, are now able to access iTunes Match from the iTunes Store.

Some Columbia University students were recently robbed in upper Manhattan. While robberies happen on the streets of New York City every day, this particular instance was an interesting case of smartphone theft.

The pair of bandits ambushed three students and demanded that they hand over their iPhones. Not only did the robbers demand iPhones specifically, but they also refused to steal Droid or Blackberry phones. Ouch.

Amazon, known for its shyness about sales figures, made a bit of a splash today, announcing it had sold 1 million Kindles per week for the past three weeks. Sure, that isn’t much to go on, but it prompted some to wonder whether the No. 2 tablet maker is about to overtake the iPad.