Dealing with customer service representatives can be one of the world’s most torturous experiences. Apple isn’t perfect, but they usually give customers the best experience possible, no matter. Proving that point, earlier today a story surfaced of Tim Cook stepping in and forcing AT&T to make a special exception to a request the deny to most customers.

When third-place carrier Sprint first got the iPhone 4S, it quickly became clear that they had literally bet the company on the notion that Apple’s popular handset could save them from being steamrolled by AT&T and Verizon. In fact, Sprint agreed to pay Apple $20 billion over the next four years just to secure rights to the iPhone, whether they can sell them or no. The whole company is riding on the iPhone.

That could have turned out to be a big mistake suggests a new report today, which says that the nation’s third largest carrier is on the verge of going bankrupt. And what bankrupted them? The iPhone.

In a response to reports that the new iPad can get pretty toasty when compared with the iPad 2’s heat output, Apple has responded with an official comment telling everyone to take a chill pill. According to Apple, the new iPad operates “well within our thermal specification” and there shouldn’t be a cause for concern.

Full response from Apple:

Carriers are constantly talking about the limited spectrum available for mobile devices. That’s the reason that give for instituting data caps and throttling heavy users. It’s reasonable to assume that carriers exaggerate the real issues somewhat when the trot this argument out as a case for data caps and tiered data pricing (they make a lot of money that way), but it is true that radio spectrum is a finite resource. With Cisco predicting an 39-fold increase mobile traffic use will over the next four years, carriers will need to find creative ways to manage the slices of spectrum that they have.

One option is to offload service to Wi-Fi networks. All iPhone (or other smartphone) users do this already to some extent when we connect our iPhones to our home networks. They deliver better performance and let use as much data as we want without having to worry about it impacting our next bill. Two mobile trade groups are looking to turn this same offloading model into a large scale option for carriers to deliver better mobile broadband while taking the load off their 3G or 4G networks.

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iPad-owning guitarists are going to love the Digitech iPB-10 Programable Pedalboard. It’s a stompbox with ten stud switches and a wah pedal on the side, all of which work with your iPad to give a range of music effects that you’d normally need a whole case of pedals to create.

Do you know anyone that owns an Android tablet? I sure as heck don’t, but they have to exist out there in the wild just like the rare and fabled Sumatran white rhinoceros, which native legend has supposedly living deep in the Indian rain forests. Which is rarer? But I digress. My point is that right now, Apple’s iPad is pretty much the only tablet you’ll see other people using because Apple is beating the pulp out of Android tablets with their massive sales numbers, and Apple maintains the momentum from the launch of the new iPad nothing will stop them.

Analysts predict that Apple’s new iPad, which has already sold over 3 million units, is shaping up to boost sales of the device by a whopping 156% year-over-year. The tablet is expected to become “measurably larger” that the entire PC market.

Indie musicians have long had a difficult time getting accepted into iTunes, but it’s possible that’s coming to an end. Apple has just released it’s iTunes Producer 2.6.0 software update to a number of users, despite the fact that it has historically only been available to musicians, record labels and other partners of Apple’s iTunes Connect portal.

It’s been an expensive month for many the Apple fan. The new iPad isn’t cheap, and after spending between $500 and $830 on a new top-of-the-line tablet, it might be hard to scrape enough money together to actually furnish your iPad with apps, music or movies.

Don’t worry, we got you covered. Here’s how to save 20% off all App Store or iTunes purchases.

One of the feature on the new iPad is its dictation capabilities, a feature also available on the iPhone 4S (which also boasts Apple’s Siri virtual assistant feature). There are quite a few ways that high quality dictation and other speech to text capabilities could useful to professionals in many fields.

The problem is that in order to get that high quality dictation functionality, the new iPad and the iPhone 4S rely on Apple’s servers to do much of the work in turning your speech into text. More importantly, it isn’t just snippets of voice recordings that get sent to Apple. Personal data from your iPad or iPhone 4S gets uploaded as well and much of it remains associated with you and your device. That’s a general concern for most of us, but for professionals in regulated industries like healthcare or fields that require confidentiality like finance and legal professions, it becomes a critical privacy concern and may even break the law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iox5Q2nWi-Q

The staggering difference in quality of the new iPad’s display isn’t hype, it’s real. It’s a jaw-dropping difference, one that finally turns the iPad into the promise of its potential: a living, breathing page through which the wide world can be explored. The new iPad is the best consumer display on the market at almost any price, period…

Which makes it completely befuddling that in a blind test, a surprising amount of Apple Store customers couldn’t tell the difference between the iPad 2 and the new iPad.

Stick with photography long enough, and eventually you’ll need a a camera remote so you can trigger your DSLR without touching it.

Trigger Happy, an applaud-worthy idea currently on Kickstarter, let’s you do just that, but with your iPhone and one simple cable instead of one of those expensive, camera-specific triggers.

Apple’s new iPad has been available to purchase in the U.S. and nine other countries for just four days, but over 200,000 units have already been smuggled into China for sale on the grey market. Natives are reportedly importing the device into the city of Shenzhen, a city that borders Hong Kong, for a profit of around $20 on each device.

I never thought I’d get excited about boring credit cards, but Geode is an incredibly neat little kit which turns your iPhone into a payment system that can be used anywhere. And not some fancy NFC-style POS terminals, either. The Geode works anywhere you can use a regular credit card.

Your MacBook Air might be the fastest, lightest, portable-est Mac you ever owned, but it is likely also one of the most storage-deficient Macs you have ever owned, in modern times at least. That will all be solved when bus-powered Thunderbolt drives start to show up, but in the meantime, take a look at Western Digital’s new 2TB My Passport USB drives.

Here’s a fun trick with stacks, OS X’s answer to the original rainbow Apple menu functionality, which used to feature recent documents and the ability to place folders in it for quick and easy access to them. This was replaced in Mac OS X with stacks, a visual way to do a similar thing, but from the Dock. Today, we’ll use Terminal to make a Stack that shows the recent items from your Mac. Fun!

Having slipped to 2-3 weeks last week, shipping times for the new iPad through Apple’s online store have already eased to just 1-2 weeks.

Free apps that display in-app advertising are sucking the life out of your cellphone’s battery. A team led by Abhinav Pathak, a computer boffin at Purdue University, Indiana, found that around “65%-75% of energy in free apps is spent in third-party advertising modules.”

Translation: Free apps like Angry Birds and Facebook may actually cost you more than paid apps in the end.

Yesterday we reported that a number of new iPad adopters are taking to Apple’s Support Communities forum to voice their concerns about its operating temperature. Many feel the new slate gets a little too warm during prolonged use, and they’re concerned it’s a serious issue.

Thermal imaging has now confirmed that the third-generation iPad does indeed get around 10° Fahrenheit warmer than the iPad 2, but it’s really nothing to worry about.

Blizzard, the company behind the hugely popular MMO World of Warcraft, has revealed that is constantly looking at ways in which it can bring its title to the iPhone, and admits that it would be “foolish” not to explore the possibility. It promises that as soon as it has perfected the mobile experience, we’ll know about it.

In our new Apple-inspired graphic tee, Cult Of Mac reached back into the year 1983 to breathe new life into this classic Steve Jobs creation.

The Apple Lisa computer debuted with a mere $10,000 price tag, but her epic cost left her lonely with nary a desk to sit upon. We liked her sexy style and vintage look though, so partnered with Seattle indie brand Might Tees to make her sexy-curves available again on our new In Love With Lisa graphic tee.

But here’s the best part: this new tee is finely crafted and printed right here in the beautiful USA, ships worldwide, and is available now for just $25 — only .0025% her original selling price!

The numbers basically say everything. AAPL closed at over $600 per share for the first time in Apple’s history today, and it’s only fitting considering what was just announced. The new iPad sold a jaw-dropping 3 million units since its launch 4 days ago, making it the most successful iPad launch ever by a long shot. Not only that, but Apple announced shareholder dividends this morning — a decision that obviously pleased Wall Street.

When does it stop? That’s the question one has to ask when faced with the overwhelming success Apple is continuing to see with every new product. The Cupertino company’s earnings have been growing exponentially with ever business quarter, and Apple is already the most valuable company on earth. Absolute craziness.

It spits out the bullets, laughs in your face, rips out your heart, consumes it as it steams and then, without drawing in a single breath, screams a primal scream as it stares, unblinking, directly into the sun.

No, just kidding. Gorilla glass or not, it turns into Swiss Cheese. Still, beats those stupid drop tests, doesn’t it?

Can’t watch the video above? Click here.

Earlier today, Tim Cook played coy with how many new iPads they had sold opening weekend, but a mere eight hours later, the numbers are in, and it’s a record setting weekend indeed: Apple sold 3 million iPads in the first weekend of sales alone. That’s three times as many as last year… and with plenty to go around for everyone. Press release after the jump.

Even though the iPad has been around for two years at this point and has proven itself in a vast array of business settings, there are companies that haven’t yet needed to consider how to support or even officially allow iPads on their networks.

If you’re a IT professional at one of those companies, it’s pretty likely that you’ll eventually need to formulate a strategy – and after last week’s record breaking launch of the newest iPad, you’ll most likely need to come up with a plan sooner rather than later. You may already have new iPad owners lining up outside your office wanting to use their new latest and greatest iPad at work.

It can be a daunting prospect to figure out to integrate the new iPad (or even the original iPad or iPad 2) into your environment, especially if you’re under the gun to get the iPad into service as quickly as possible. Breaking that integration down into immediate needs and eventual goals is the best way to get started and it often starts with these five questions.