Do you remember Microsoft’s top secret Couriet tablet project? It was a dual screen, book-like tablet first leaked well before Apple unveiled the iPad, created by J. Allard, the mind behind Microsoft’s fantastic Xbox console.

It’s a concept that has aged well, mostly because it’s one of the only tablet designs around that isn’t just trying to rip off Apple’s idea of what a tablet should be wholesale. It’s still, in fact, brought up as an example of how Microsoft could have competed with Apple in the tablet market from the get go.

So what happened to the Courier? Why wasn’t it released? It all came down to the fact that Bill Gates had an “allergic reaction” to the project because it didn’t run Outlook.

GarageBand is one of the best apps you can show off on your iPad 2 to convince even the most ornery skeptic, and it just got even better: with the 1.1 update, GarageBand is now a $4.99 universal app, and can run on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

Today Apple announced that it will begin selling the iPhone 4S in 15 more countries starting on November 11th, including Hong Kong and South Korea. The news is part of an aggressive roll-out by the tech giant, which hopes to have the iconic smartphone in 70 countries by the end of December.

Apple has seemingly missed its iTunes Match launch date after promising at its ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ event early last month that the new service would be up and running in the United States at the “end of October.” Developers who have been testing the service in beta are discovering today that the iTunes 10.5.1 beta has now ended, with no replacement in sight.

Oh, this is slick. The PlugBug by TwelveSouth is an accessory for your MacBook that solves the problem of how to charge an iPad 2 and your laptop at the same time from a single outlet, and it does so pretty damn ingeniously if you ask me.

So here’s the deal. Apple’s got their MagSafe power bricks so protected by patents that it’s impossible to sell, say, an aftermarket MagSafe brick that charges a MacBook and iPad from the same bifurcating cable.

TwelveSouth got around this restriction in a pretty clever way. At the top of every MacBook power brick is a removable wall socket adapter, which you can even plug standard laptop power cables into. The PlugBug just snaps into the power brick adapter slot and offers a 10W USB port to simultaneously charge your iPad and MacBook at the same time.

I love it. Heck, I’m putting in my order now. If you want to do the same, it’ll cost you just $34.99 with free shipping in the US.

Samsung is currently drafting up a crafty plan to get Apple’s new iPhone 4S banned from Australia, and to help its case it is requesting “the source code for the iPhone 4S firmware” and details of the company’s subsidy agreements with carriers Down Under.

Although the gap between Apple and Android appears to be shrinking in terms of overall market share, it’s bigger than ever when it comes to the share of the web. In October, web-connected iOS devices rose to 61.6 percent. By comparison, online Android devices comprise 18.9 percent, a paltry sliver of Google’s overall mobile market share.

Despite reports that Bitcoins are near enough dead, hackers have created another Mac Trojan that attacks your computer’s GPU in a bid to generate the digital dollars, as well as your precious personal information.

Over the weekend, we showed off Siri running on a jailbroken iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G thanks to the tireless efforts of iPhone hackers chpwn and Steve Troughton.

Clearly, Siri works just fine on lesser devices like the iPhone 4 and iPod touch, but despite this, chpwn and Troughton warned that we wouldn’t see an authorized release anytime soon. Now chpwn is clarifying why, and it’s just as the Dev Team warned us: Siri on non-iPhone 4S devices require piracy.

A third-party app allowing iOS devices to stream music via Amazon’s Cloud Drive has been yanked from the App Store amid reported legal concerns, and that’s not all: the developer says Apple is delaying approving an update for another music app that streams music from Google’s similar cloud music service.

With a cough of dust and a slithering of centipedes, The Who’s Peter Townshend has once more fallen out of his coffin to roam the world. This time, rock and roll’s elder statesmummy has emerged from his tomb with a purpose: to call Apple and iTunes a “digital vampire” that “bleeds artists.”

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Retail Operations, Ron Johnson, has officially left the Cupertino company to become CEO of JC Penney. His biography was removed from Apple’s website today and a successor is yet to be announced.

The App Store is yet to offer any third-party email clients, but that’s all about to change thanks to Google. The company is reportedly “on the verge” of launching a “fantastic” Gmail app for the iPhone that may have already been submitted to Apple for approval.

It appears that Apple has had a Hulu Plus app for the Apple TV cooking in Cupertino for over a month, and the app is running on prototype Apple TV units inside Apple’s headquarters.

According to 9to5Mac’s sources, a Hulu Plus app is “ready to roll out” to current Apple TV users right now. Apple hasn’t pulled the trigger yet due to “political” reasons, like the fact that Hulu Plus directly competes with the TV section of iTunes.

There are a few red faces over at the Veteran’s Affairs Department headquarters in Washington. The day after they unboxed iPads for a pilot program, one of the tablet computers was already missing.

The iPad had not been issued to an employee and did not have any apps or information loaded on it, according to VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker.

It sounds as if the thief seized an opportunity: Baker said that if the iPad had been formatted, the $50 million department-developed cyber security app would’ve been able to find it.  The data service plan was cancelled as soon as it was discovered missing. Security footage hasn’t yielded any info about the theft that included another 21 computers.

Blog Next Gov reported the iPads will be loaded with an app of patient records as well as other apps. Those records will be downloaded only by doctors in encrypted form.

The hiccup is a small one in a 1,000 iPad-deployment. Baker said that while there are currently only 500 Apple devices (iPads and iPhones) in use at the VA, he expects the number of iPads to mushroom to a thousand and eventually tens of thousands. The VA has plans to roll out 100,000 tablet computers (Android and Apple) and in line with the U.S. CIO’s recently unveiled “Future First” plan to move to cloud computing.

Via Next Gov

Spotted by 9to5Mac, artist Guilherme M. Schasiepen has posted a gallery of concept iTV images. The images depict a multi-touch TV set with 3D that doesn’t require glasses.

Color us skeptical, but the idea of a touch-screen television seems absolutely unrealistic. This concept is still pretty gorgeous, however.

Last week’s three-month minimum delay to their Xeon-class Sandy Bridge processors may be the final nail in the Mac Pro coffin, inside sources are now reporting.

Apple is finally unveiling its seamless glass cube entrance to the Fifth Avenue store on Friday, according to MacRumors. Apple’s Fifth Avenue retail store is one of the most recognized Apple stores in the world and a main tourist attraction in New York City.

$6.6. million in renovations to the Fifth Avenue store will finally be revealed to the public on Friday, November 4th. Since June, there have been a series of temporary walls hiding the work that has now been done to the glass cube entrance of the store.

Lion has introduced some new yet basic privacy settings. The new settings control how you share your location and collect usage data to send to Apple. Although now it seems to be fairly basic I think it is still important to know what if any apps on your Mac are accessing location services on Mac OS X.

I’ll show you how to find out if they are or not in this tip.

If you find yourself in a quiet environment like a meeting or at the doctor’s office you’ll usually silence the ringer on your iPhone. The iPhone will then vibrate when you get incoming calls.

Although that sounds great, the iPhone will vibrate the same way for every caller. But it doesn’t have to do that. You can actually create a customized vibration pattern for every contact in your address book.

What’s this? Looks like a unibody MacBook Air, right? Don’t bet a kidney on it: Shenzhen’s Evil Confederacy of Mad Scientist Cloners have managed to almost perfectly rip off the feel of Apple’s bestselling MacBook Air, including unibody enclosure, for under half the price of Apple’s ultraportable.

And you know what? For a piece-of-$%@! netbook dumped into a MacBook Air-like shell, it’s not a bad machine for the sub-$500 price.

Last night, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates was on ABC News to discuss continuing foreign aid as well as his philanthropy work. During the interview, he was asked about Steve Jobs’s less than kind words about him in Walter Isaacson’s bio: specifically, the part where Jobs (unfairly) says that Bill Gates had no original ideas and got rich just by ripping other people off.

Gates’s response is gracious enough. He says that Steve Jobs and he had a long history with each other, and their relationship as colleagues-turned-competitors was complicated, but that he doesn’t fault Steve for anything he said about him.

For me, though, the weird part is when Bill Gates says he helped create the original Mac. Maybe Gates doesn’t spend all his time ripping off other people’s ideas, but he sure seems to like ripping off posthumous credit for them.

Over the weekend, Apple launched three new iPhone 4S ads: one for the iPhone 4S’s incredible new 8MP camera and iOS 5’s Photo Editing abilities, one for iCloud and one for Siri. They all really speak for themselves, but even so, this is Apple advertising at its finest.

You can find the other two ads embedded below.

Apple’s massive new solar farm and their next-gen spaceship campus will boost the tech giant’s 2012 expense to $8 billion — a 73% hike over this year, one analyst told investors Monday.

When I, through sheer exertion of will, lift this moribund pile of musky flab out of the desk chair to which it transhumanistically is trying to absorb, put on my sweatbands and take myself out for a wheezing, gasping “jog”, RunKeeper is my preferred app for tracking the whole ordeal.

The free app is already pretty great. It uses your iPhone’s GPS sensors to track your running speed, distance and route; additionally, it allows you to program different run templates, calculate calories burned and share your favorite runs with other users.

But today’s update makes RunKeeper even better, with a host of new features that widen the distance between all the other jog-tracking apps out there.