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This week, Consumer Reports published the results of their latest tech support survey, and no surprise here: Apple came out as the number one company in both laptops and desktops.

As usual, Consumer Reports asked 7,000 subscribers about their satisfaction with tech related dealings with various companies. At the end of the day, Apple scored 86 points out of 100 in laptops, and 87 points out of 100 in desktops. What’s amazing is that second place didn’t even come close to challenging Apple’s tech support dominance: in the laptops category, Lenovo was 23 points behind, and in the desktops category, Dell was 55 points behind.

Good for Apple, but if anything, this is just confirmation of what we knew already: if you control both your hardware and your software, you’re going to have better luck responding to customer problems.

U.S. bookseller Barnes & Noble claims to be unconcerned about the iPad’s threat against their own e-reader, the Nook. Indeed, they are so excited about the possibilities of the iPad that they are now promising iPad owners that they can expect to download their own free Barnes & Noble e-reading software just around the time of the iPad’s launch, which will allow individuals to buy any of more than a million eBooks as an in-app purchase.

In truth, it makes sense: the Nook’s not really doing much business, and the iPad is going to be huge. Unlike the closed ecosystems of other e-readers, Barnes & Noble can launch all feet in and essentially parasite off of the iPad’s success.

The question is: will Apple allow Barnes & Noble and Amazon to open competing e-book stores? I tend to doubt it: Apple’s taken strong stances in the past against the duplication of functionality, and they are going to want to keep a stranglehold on the iPad e-book marketplace, the same way they control the iPod’s music and video marketplace. The more booksellers on the iPad, the better from a consumer perspective… but I really worry that Apple’s going to stamp down hard not just on commercial e-reader apps, but fantastic existing apps like Stanza.

Did you buy an iPad when Apple began pre-sales this morning? If so, you weren’t alone. Indeed, Apple may have sold 20,000 iPads per hour, leading one commentator to suggest the Cupertino, Calif. company was earning $10 million per hour on its new tablet device.

The estimate comes from Andrew Erlichson, CEO of Phanfare, a photo share site. Erlichson said he purchased two iPads and noted the order IDs.

Still confused about which iPad to pre-order? In collaboration with handsome Wilson Rothman, Gizmodo’s lovely own Rosa Golijan put together this handy, haiku-ified iPad buying guide which — while thoroughly tongue in cheek — more or less lines up with my own feelings on the matter: if you’re buying the iPad WiFi, there’s little reason to invest in more than the base model, while the 32GB iPad 3G will likely be the least regrettable purchase in the tablet’s first generation over the long term.

For years, the letter ‘i’ has been a goldmine for Apple; apply the letter to an ordinary object and you have lines outside your door waiting to buy the gadget. Apple may have to find another letter now that an Australian trade court sided with a handbag maker.

IP Australia, the government board that watches over trademarks, rejected Apple’s claim on the letter, noting the Cupertino, Calif. company didn’t prove “a person of ordinary intelligence and memory” would assume that just because a product carries the letter “i”, it was the brainchild of Steve Jobs. Although the case revolved around a laptop bag named DOPi — iPod backwards — the IP Australia judge, or registrar Michael Kirov (a self-proclaimed Apple fan) said that wasn’t enough to block sales.

The outcome of Apple and Nokia’s dueling patent infringement lawsuits could wait until mid-2012 for a verdict from the international trade court. The two companies swapped lawsuits in 2009, alleging the other with infringing key technologies.

The three-year timespan for the U.S. International Trade Commission sets the stage for what Reuters has characterized as “the spectre of a prolonged legal struggle.” In January, when the ITC launched a probe of Apple practices, CoM noted the legal battle could span three years. A month later, the ITC announced it had begun investigating Apple’s claims against the Finnish cell phone giant.

As we predicted, the iPad went on pre-order in the US this morning in the Apple store after a nail-biting world blackout.

Are you going to reserve yours today or wait? Which one are you getting? Buying your customer limit (2) at once?

Let us know the whys and wherefores of your purchasing decisions in the comments.

[polldaddy poll=”2841120″]

The Apple store went down at 11:01AM GMT. We’ll post an update when it’s back online. If our crystal ball readings from the past are reliable, when it goes back on line, you could be the first to pre-order an iPad.

In the mean time, wild speculation abounds — since it looks like Apple stores worldwide are all down and only US customers can order iPads — add yours in the comments.

Via isapplestoredown

There must be a special space reserved at the table in Valhalla for any designer able to make a fat brick look hot; if that’s true, then there’s a seat reserved right next to Jonny Ive’s for the Vers 1.5R’s designer (and yes, both design heaven and design hell are Scandinavian. Don’t believe me? Take a look at an IKEA catalog; now, go experience a 1980s-era Saab).

Update 2: Apple is sending out emails confirming the 5.30 AM PST/8.30 AM EST time, according to TidBits and others. Emails were sent to customers who signed up for pre-order info (I signed up but didn’t get the message for some reason).

Update: Reader Bob Penn says the staff at his local Apple store insists that pre-orders begin at midnight. I for one will be staying up until the witching hour just to see.

Pre-oders for the iPad start at 5.30 AM PST on Friday March 12, Apple PR told TUAW. That’s 8.30 AM for East Coasters.

Better set your alarm clocks.

All models of the iPad will be available for pre-order, but only the Wi-Fi model will ship on April 3. The 3G model won’t be available until late April.

At long last, the Welcome to MacIntosh documentary (which we’ve mentioned here a few times) is now available to watch online, for free. .

UPDATE: Seth at 9to5Mac is now backtracking. While he says he’s received multiple tips that Mac Pros will be updated, he thinks the MacBook Pros tip might have been fake. “Shame on us,” he says.

Our friend Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac thinks MacBooks and Mac Pros will be updated within a week. Seth received a tip that Apple’s pro desktop and portable line are being refreshed in the next few days — maybe as early as tomorrow, but more likely next Tuesday.

A refresh of the Mac Pros is already widely-rumored. The desktops are expected to be refreshed next week with the Intel Core i7-980x, a six-core screamer. But maybe new MacBooks are in line also? The new MacBook Pros will get Intel i5 and i7 processors, just like the current line of higher-end iMacs. The basic 13-inch MacBook Pro will have an Intel i5 processor, while the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBooks will have quad-core i7 processors.

If true, these machines will be screamers.

In February, MacRumors readers claimed to have found a GeekBench benchmark from a Core-i7  M620 MacBook Pro running an unreleased version of Mac OS 10.6.2. Current MacBook Pros score in the 3700-4000 range. However, this result is to be taken with a very large pinch of salt: forum readers say they’ve been planting fakes.

Either way, DO NOT BUY A MacBook Pro or Mac Pro for a while: updates are imminent.

We near the end of the week with a number of Mac-related deals. First up is a Mac Pro Quad-Core Xeon running at 2.66GHz for $2,149. Next up is a passel of newly reduced App Store items, including our favorite: “Where’s Waldo? The Fantastic Journey.” Finally, we wrap up our top trio with a 64-inch Sharp AQUOS 65-inch LCD HDTV.

As usual, details on these and many other deals (like the 24-inch Apple Cinema Display) are available from the CoM “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

As a Mac gamer, I thought the recent announcement of the Steam digital games delivery service coming to Mac was very exciting. Even if Steam never becomes as popular on the Mac as it is on the PC, it will bring us, at the very least, some great Valve titles like Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead and Portal.

But best case scenario? Steam on Mac gets just the same vibrant games economy that the PC version enjoyed. But to do that, developers need to be on board.

Luckily, it looks like at least two game developing studios are going to take the plunge. Gas Powered Games, who created Supreme Commander 2 and Dungeon Siege, plan to develop for Mac in all products going forward, saying that porting games to the Mac is relatively easy since they’ve got identical internal architectures, unlike the PowerPC days. Unfortunately, that sounds to me like they’re talking about using CrossOver to make their ports. DICE is also now talking more seriously about bringing their Battlefield series of games to the Mac as well.

The big risk here is that developers will choose to use CrossOver or other DirectX wrappers to do their ports, which is the last thing the Mac gaming scene needs. I hope Steam leads to developers seriously devoting time and resources to OS X game development… not just an expansion of the lazy porting we’ve seen over the last few years.

Birdfeed has long been one of the best Twitter clients available on the App Store, but it was expensive for a Twitter app ($5), which limited the number of people using it. So while existing customers might be sad at first to note that Birdfeed has been pulled from the App Store, it’s actually good news all arond: the app was actually just aquired by Thing Labs and rebranded as the excellent and totally free Brizzly for iPhone app.

Brizzly is a neat little web service that integrates Facebook and Twitter into one interface. Using Brizzly on your iPhone will require you to sign up for the free Brizzly service, but like the recent release of the Meebo app, once you sign up you never need to worry about it again.

Otherwise, Brizzly builds upon Birdfeed’s foundation, keeping some of the best features of that client including the helpful character countdown widget and a simple and intuitive user interface, while introducing new features of its own like lists, a pull-down refresh feature borrowed from Tweetie 2, and the Brizzly Guide which allows you to edit and add explanations to Twitter trends. The other usual features are all there too: support for multiple Twitter accounts, photo support, saved searches, custom tabs and so on.

If you’re looking for a good free Twitter app, Brizzly looks like a very safe bet. You can download it now over at the iTunes App Store.

It was as recently as December that Apple quietly bumped the specs of their Mac Pro line to use 3.33Ghz quad-core Xeon CPUs, but if ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes and his sources are to be believed, we could see the next Mac Pro as soon as next Tuesday, March 16th.

According to Kingsley-Hughes, the next Mac Pro will pack the Intel Core i7-980x CPU… which jives with a rumor we heard late last year, which also hinted a March release.

The Intel Core i7-980X is a 32nm chip, maxing out at 3.33GHz but packing six cores and twelve threads per chip… which could ultimately result in a dual-core Mac Pro boasting twelve physical and twenty four logical cores. Each Core i7-980X CPU also has 128MB of Intel Smart Cache, hyperthreading support, an integrated memory controller and supports DDR1066MHz memor. In other words, Mac Pros built on the Core i7-980x processor will see a huge performance boost over the current model.

Unfortunately, Kingsley-Hughes doesn’t have anything to report on the other high-end, pro-level Mac waiting for an Intel Core iX upgrade: the MacBook Pro. I think we can all take it as read that it’s coming, though: we’ll just have to bide our time patiently in the meanwhile.

As the first example of what will likely be a growing trend, Google — always a progressive front runner in getting their products on Apple’s devices as soon as humanly possible — have just revealed an iPad-friendly version of Google Reader called Google Reader Play.

Google Reader Play makes RSS feeds more accessible to tablet users by treating each news feed like a Flickr slideshow. Only one news item is shown at a time: each is recommended based on what a subscriber has previously liked. It also pulls items and shared articles from a subscriber’s own Google Reader account.

It’s not quite iPad ready just yet — load Google Reader Play up on your iPhone and you’ll quickly discover you can’t swipe to flip to the next item, which is an obligatory interface feature for the iPhone OS — but I’d expect all of these tablet-specific problems to be resolved by April 3rd.

[via Gadget Lab]

Apple’s done such a great job with multitouch that every time a new iPhone OS update adds a fresh polydigital shortcut to the mix, my only real surprise is that it wasn’t there already.

It looks like the iPhone OS 3.2 update will be no different. According to Beta 4 SDK spelunkers over at 9 to 5 Mac, two new files called “3Tap.plist” and “LongPress.plist” are now located in the “gestures” library folder and are new to the iPhone OS SDK.

Three fingered tap is apparently undefined in iPhone OS, which is news to me, although long press brings up the context menu to cut, copy and paste, so its sudden addition to the gesture library could indicate some change to the functionality in the future.

Anyway, we may not get these new multitouch gestures in time for iPhone OS 3.2, but take heart: clearly, Apple’s got the fulfillment of all your triple-digit tapping desires well within their sites.

Steve Jobs may be one of the most admired CEOs in the tech industry even if he’s not the richest.

Jobs ranked 136 — down from up 43 spots since last year — in the annual Forbes list of billionaires, far behind Bill Gates (no. 2), Larry Ellison (6), Google founder Sergey Brin (24), Steve Ballmer (33) and Michael Dell who came in at no. 37.

Here’s how they explained his ranking:

“Following months of rumor and speculation, cultish king of the iGeeks presented the highly anticipated iPad in January; ten-inch, multi-touch computer intended to fill gap between smartphone and laptop. Delighted: nerds everywhere. Scared to death: newspaper and magazine publishers. Also unveiled new iBookstore and iBooks application in direct challenge to Amazon’s Kindle; several book publishers have committed to content agreements. Apple shares up 100% in past 12 months. Reed College dropout founded Apple in 1976. Revolutionized music industry with iTunes, iPod. Best investment: bought Pixar from George Lucas in 1986 for $10 million. Created string of hits (Finding Nemo, Toy Story); sold to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion in stock. Today is Disney’s largest shareholder; stake worth $4.2 billion.”

Via Softpedia

With just a few weeks to go before the iPad hits stores, here’s the best way to ensure you’re at the head of the line to get one (or three).

If history is any indication, the iPad will be in short supply when it goes on sale April 3. Plus there are rumors of production delays that may further constrain supply.

The best way to get one is to place an advance order on Apple’s online store the minute Apple starts accepting them on Friday March 12.

Trouble is, no one knows what time Apple will update its online store. But there’s a way to get alerted.

Thanks to a bunch of nerds in Berlin, you can be pinged the minute the store is taken offline and, more importantly, when it comes back up.

AppleStoreCheck.com constantly monitors Apple’s online store for changes. Sign up, and the service will alert you by email, RSS or Twitter the minute Apple starts taking iPad pre-orders.

As AppleStoreCheck says: “We’ll check the Apple Store for new products and changes – so you don’t have to.”

iPad pre-orders will initially be limited to US customers, but includes both iPad Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi+3G models, which will ship later. The iPad will be available to pick up from the Apple Retail stores on April 3, or delivery through the mail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODKbpiWbyUA

It’s not like director Tom De Nolf doesn’t have 35mm film cameras and a bunch of other video-making tech at his disposal; no, De Nolf was so surprised by the video capability of his recently purchased 3GS that he chose to shoot the above music video using just three iPhones.

HP and ARM are ganging-up on Apple’s iPad, introducing new videos highlighting the tablet’s lack of Flash support and warning the Cupertino, Calif. company may not have the stage to itself much longer. Indeed, the chipmaker says there could be at least 50 iPad-like tablets introduced just this year.

HP’s “slate” device, with Windows 7, will be able to display the “complete Internet — including Flash,” the PC maker announced this week. The company also introduced a number of videos highlighting its device’s compatibility with Adobe’s Flash.

Digital Americana has just popped up out of nowhere, claiming to be “the first literary & culture magazine developed especially for the interactive tablet experience.”

Or to put it another way, it will be “a new interactive magazine made exclusively for the Apple iPad”. And anyone can contribute.

There’s been a tremendous amount of peek-a-boo over racy apps in the iTunes store lately. Following a purge of apps with names like Epic Boobs — which once squeezed their way past censors — some of them were re-instated.

Most of the offending apps, however, were produced by small shops. The hotties available on the iTunes store from big franchises — like Playboy and Sports Illustrated — were left untouched.

In this now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t fest, Apple, however, seems to have ignored an implicit gentleman’s agreement with German publisher Springer.

Springer owns tabloid Bild whose “Shake the Bild Girl” app undresses women with a shake of the device, leaving them naked, like the babes featured in the print edition.

Apple now wants them to remove the Teutonic ta-tas from the app — leaving the women in bikinis — raising the ire of the publisher. Springer reportedly sold 100,000 downloads of the app which costs €1.59 a month ($2.15, circa), also available with a PDF edition of the print tab for €3.99 ($5,40)  a month.

“Today they censor nipples, tomorrow editorial content,” Bild Digital CEO Donata Hopfen told local media.

The issue has raised enough ire that the Association of German Magazine Publishers (VDZ) asked The International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP) last week to approach Apple over the issue.

More to come.

Via the Guardian

Apple has told its Taiwan suppliers to produce around 5 million iPads by mid-year, one analyst said Tuesday, citing unnamed sources. FBR Capital Markets analyst Craig Berger called talk of production delays “just false alarms” after Apple recently announced an April 3 U.S. availability date for the first iPads.

If correct, Berger’s projection would be a bit higher than previous expectations of between 4 million to 5 million of the tablet devices. Late last month, China-based Foxconn Electronics, Apple’s chief supplier in the region, denied reports of a “manufacturing bottleneck” and estimated 1 million iPads would ship in April.