Late yesterday I reported that Parallels Desktop 7 users were experiencing a mysterious problem that required them to log into and restart their Mac notebooks twice before being able to use the Finder Desktop. Parallels has released an update that resolves this really annoying problem. So if you haven’t installed it yet launch Parallels Desktop 7 and run a Check for Updates from the Parallels apps menu. Install the update and you will be good to go – no reason to log in twice now!

This fantastic infographic divvies up exactly how much of Apple’s sales comes from each branch on its tree of devices: iPhone, Mac, iPod and iPad. I’m astonished by how big the iPad has grown practically overnight from a twig to a branch: it’s about to overtake Mac sales, and doubtlessly will by the iPad 3 at latest.

The infographic appeared originally in the September 12th issue of Time Magazine. Thanks to Obama Pacman for the heads up.

Self Control is a tiny little app for people who just don’t have any. Self control, that is.

Although the iPad began as a “magical” device for consumers, Apple’s tablet is quickly finding a place in business. From do-it-yourself meccas such as Lowe’s to the glamorous Gucci, retailers are learning how the iPad attracts, retains and increases customers. Indeed, 25 percent of iPads sold in 2011 will go to businesses, according to New York consulting firm Deloitte.

Mirroring the adoption of smartphones and PDAs before it, the explosive growth of the iPad in business can be attributed almost entirely to employees’ obsession with Apple’s “magical” tablet.

The iPad’s transformation from consumer gadget to enterprise tool points the way to an employee-driven tech future in which users — not IT departments — get to choose their own gear and applications.

IT managers are learning how to adapt, fast.

Read the rest of the post here.

We’re all probably getting sick of iPhone 5 case leaks at this point, but this is a juicy one. Earlier this morning, a Case-Mate product page briefly bubbled up on the official web site showing six different case designs for the next iPhone. If you blinked, you missed it, though. It’s now gone.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Tkj8SIHMU&feature=player_embedded#!

This is a pretty wonderful video. Soul king and all around beautiful person Stevie Wonder made an appearance last week at a nightclub in Los Angeles and gave a little speech on helping people with disabilities.

One company that Stevie Wonder specifically highlighted? Apple. Wonder personally thanks Steve Jobs and Apple for making the technology of their iOS devices accessible for everyone, saying “There is nothing that you can do on the iPhone or iPad that I can’t do.”

If you ordered yourself one of Apple’s 27-inch Thunderbolt Cinema Displays many moons ago in some kingdom by the sea, great news, Annabel: following the release of up to date Mac firmware, Apple’s started pumping Thunderbolt displays out of its shipping warehouses this morning. So expect to soon get your grubby mitts on one, if you’re so inclined.

Just how important was Steve Jobs’ departure as Apple CEO to sales of the iPad? Very little, according to a survey indicating consumers were prepared for Apple’s co-founder to step down.

Personally, we’re pretty impressed by Windows 8 — at least the Metro parts — but we’ve got to admit, we snickered.

We’re not quite sure where this came from, so if you know, let us know so we can give proper credit.

Could Broadcom be the reason Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced a boost in business from “rush orders.” Some Wall Street analysts point to the Apple supplier needing parts to meet unexpected iPhone demand. In a bit of sleuthing, experts say Broadcom’s stable revenue in an otherwise faltering economy makes the most sense.

Now that Nintendo’s lucky anthropomorphic Mario star is fading, there’s been a lot of talk about the game maker looking for Princess Peach in another castle: the iOS App Store.

To speak more plainly, since Nintendo’s 3DS console is a bust, and since Apple’s App Store is such a phenomenon, there’ve been consistent rumors and shareholder insistence that Nintendo should take their cherished game properties to an iPhone near you.

Will it happen? Fat chance, Nintendo says.

The long-running dispute between Apple and Samsung has erupted again, this time in an unrelated insider-trading trial. The former manager of Samsung’s U.S. division told a New York City court he leaked shipment data of LCD screens destined for the iPad to a Calif. financial analyst.

For a number of reasons, mainly its long list of stability issues and its unquenchable thirst for any power your system may have, Apple will ensure we never see Adobe Flash on the iPad. And while the company has been criticized by competition for this decision in the past, it’s not the only one turning its back on the aging technology: Microsoft has also announced that Flash player will not feature in Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8 tablets.

As part of their much ballyhooed deal with Facebook from a couple of months back, Skype has just rolled out a new version of their worse-by-the-point-release VoIP client for Mac… and what do you know, the new v5.4 beta brings Facebook support to the mix!

Depending on exactly how entangled you are in Zuckerberg’s viscous social afterbirth, that might be appealing to you. But less appealing, no doubt? Ads!

China Mobile’s chairman, Wang Jianzhou, revealed in an interview today that Apple has given the carrier a “positive answer” to its request for an iPhone compatible with 4G LTE networks.

In the current wave of patent wars, Google has become an arms supplier, buying technology from other firms to increase Android’s ability to fight back against Apple. In its latest purchase in the Silicon Valley’s version of an arms bazaar, the Internet giant snapped up 1,023 IBM patents.

I love the Internet Archive, it’s one of the best online projects there’s ever been.

I knew it archived a lot of stuff, but until this week I had no idea that the collection included scanned magazines of old. Jason Scott, of textfiles.com fame, now works for the Archive and wrote a blog post about some of the latest additions – dozens of tech magazines from the dawn of personal computing.

At first glance, you won’t see anything Mac-specific on the list. But you need to delve a little deeper. Remember, in those days Apple was just one of dozens of new arrivals, all of them jostling for position in a brand new consumer market.

Iomega’s new Helium Portable Hard Drive is a compact little brick of data storage. Encased in a hard aluminum shell, the Helium Drive is perfect for Time Machine backups or supplementing the memory of a MacBook Air.

Whatever it’s used for, the data will always be safe, even if the drive is lost or stolen. The Helium has built-in hardware encryption, which means no one can ever peek at your files. That also makes it a good place to stash files you don’t want anyone to see…

There have been a some reports that followed the release of Mac OS X Lion from iMac users complaining about graphic or video problems.

One user reports that he’s been experiencing video artifacts on his 2011 27-inch iMac configured with a 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 and AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics processor with 1GB of GDDR5 memory. It’s been fairly intermittent and it always disappears for a while after a restart.

Today the problem was so different and a lot worse than usual that they finally decided to call AppleCare.

Apple has included a nice app in Mac OS X Lion that you can use to gather all kinds of diagnostic information from your wireless network. The app provides really technical information about the network that most users might find puzzling perhaps that is why Apple decided to hide it. Today’s tip will show you how to uncover this handy wireless network utility.

This screen protector, supposedly built for Apple’s much-anticipated iPhone 5, indicates the new device will indeed boast that fancy redesign we’ve all been longing for — with a larger screen and an all-new home button.

I’m sure you’ve already heard a lot about Facebook’s latest iPhone application, Facebook Messenger. However, unless you live in the U.S. or Canada, you’ve been unable to download it… until now! Facebook Messenger has gone global, and is now available to download from App Stores worldwide.

Following the release of an EFI firmware update for its latest MacBook Air earlier this week, Apple has also prepared its Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook Pro and Mac mini with an EFI firmware update of their own. Now available through Software Update, the updates resolves issues with the upcoming Thunderbolt Display, and signals its release isn’t far away.

MacBook users are reporting that they are experiencing an issue after installing full disk encryption using File Vault. The problem manifests itself by automatically restarting the MacBook after it is turned on and restarted once already forcing the user to login twice before actually reaching their desk top.