We close out another week of deals with probably one of the most-awaited items on the recent past: the iPad 2. The next-generation Apple tablet is said to improve on the original device, released last year. Apple is selling a 16GB Wi-Fi version of the tablet for $499. Online sales are already underway, while brick-and-mortar retailers will offer the gadget later today.

Also on tap: a 1.33GHz iBook G4 laptop for just $240. Finally, whether your own an iPad, an iBook or other Apple computer, they all need some maintenance and optimization. MacUpdate.com has a deal on Coctail 4, a software toolkit to get or keep your Mac in tip-top shape. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

The president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank came under fire after a comment that sounds oddly like the 2.0 version of “Let them eat cake.”

President William Dudley was peppered with questions about food prices from the public during a meet-and-greet session with business leaders in Flushing, Queens. As they asked him about issues of the day, ranging from oil prices to employment forecasts, they began to accuse him of being out of touch.

As he tried to explain how rising commodity prices translate into supermarket sticker shock, the audience asked him when he actually did his own food shopping last.

In a few short hours, the iPad 2 will go on sale at Apple Stores and approved retailers across the country, and if you’re anything like us, you’re probably discouraged by the up to three week wait times on online orders. Maybe you’re even considering dropping by an Apple Store after work and seeing if you can’t pick up an iPad 2 then. What are the lines like, though?

Short answer: it’s all over the place, but in front of most Apple Stores, there are lines, often substantial ones. New York’s Apple Store lines are reportedly crazy, and even at lesser known Apple Store locations like this one in Indianapolis, people have been reportedly lining up since 4am.

Where there don’t seem to be as many lines is at the big box retailers selling iPads: Wal-Marts, Best Buys, AT&T Stores and the like. Searching Twitter, it appears that at a lot of big box retailers, there are no lines at all… even where a line waiting area has been set up for the iPad 2.

All of this is anecdotal though. What about you guys? Where are you seeing lines for the iPad 2, and how long are they? Please drop us a comment if you’ve seen a line (or a conspicuous lack of one). At the very least, you might be able to help a fellow Apple fan out.

The UK-based ARM Holdings, which produces chips for about 95 percent of the tablet market, would seem to be nervously biting its corporate fingernails on chatter that Apple’s supreme dominance of the sector could leave component manufacturers for competing devices high-and-dry. Instead, the company’s stock is up on analyst comments dismissing the concern.

Recently, JPMorgan Research warned investors rival tablet makers could see almost 50 percent of their devices unsold amid Apple’s dominant market position. Such talk naturally spurred worries in the component manufacturing arena potentially producing parts for devices that won’t sell. Pshaw, replied an RBS analyst Friday.

Although online sales began just a few hours ago and brick-and-mortar sales of the iPad 2 are set for later Friday, analysts already are expecting Apple’s new tablet to outsell the original device. The Cupertino, Calif. company could sell 600,000 iPad 2s this weekend – double the 300,000 first-generation iPads sold during its first 24-hours of availability.

“Apple has such a huge lead,” Creative Strategies’ analyst Tim Bajarin told Bloomberg News early today. “Competitors are going to be chasing Apple for many years,” he adds.

The only way to ensure that you have an iPad 2 today is to buy one from one of the many retail outlets. However, all retailers are not treated equally, so I’ll be giving you the run down on the best places to purchase your iPad 2 from.

Your best, hassle-free bet is to pick one up from an Apple Specialist. Here’s why:

Boom. A mere three hours after it first went up for order, iPad 2 shipping times have already slipped from 3-5 business days to 5-7 business days.

What does this mean? Exactly what we thought it meant when Apple refused to take preorders before release to begin with: Apple knew they couldn’t satisfy demand for a nine day preorder. They’ve got constrained supply.

If you want an iPad 2, either prepare to get in line or order it now. That shipping time is only going to rise as the day goes on… I wouldn’t be surprised to see it hit 2-4 weeks by the end of the day.

Edit: As of 8:38am, it’s now 2-3 weeks shipping date. Hope you got your order in, guys.

Apple’s obsession with thinness is well-known, but its latest patents might be one of the company’s most interesting pursuits of that obsession yet: they describe Apple’s attempts to make an iPod thinner than the headphone jack you have to plug into it.

The patents describe various ways to make this idea work. For example, one patent describes an audio socket that’s less than fully circular, allowing a portion of the jack to actually protrude from the socket. Another mention a flexible material covering the opening of a semi-circular socket that would expand when a jack was inserted. The last method uses a hinged housing, or two doors that swing open, when a jack is inserted.

This isn’t the first patent we’ve seen from Apple for smaller audio jacks. In September of last year, we reported on an apple patent that used deflectable pogo pins instead of cantilever beams inside of a headphone socket, making it even smaller. At the time, we lamented that Apple’s efforts in miniaturizing the headphone socket were necessarily limited by the size of the headphone jack itself… but it looks like Apple’s figured out a way around even that.

Applejack is a command-line application for rescuing your computer when disaster strikes, or threatens to strike.

Don’t let the “command-line” bit frighten you off. Applejack is probably the easiest-to-use command-line application I’ve ever seen. It was built for ordinary people to use, and won’t bamboozle you with geekspeak.

The popular Flipboard app was updated on Wednesday, adding Instagram support and search across social networks. But it also included a surprise for users with jailbroken iPads.

Is this the iPhone 5? iDealsChina sure seems to think so. They say this is an engineering diagram of the next-generation iPhone, and while it shares the same form factor as the iPhone 4, there’s one obvious difference: a larger display made possible by shaving the side bezels down to the thickness of a razor blade.

Writer’s notes: this handy dandy guide was made with love to help you with your purchase of the iPad 2. If you’re looking to buy “the new iPad” which will be released on March 16th, 2012, click this pretty link for our updated guide.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions from readers and friends over which iPad 2 you should buy. Should you go with WiFi only, or the 3G version for when you’re not around a hotspot? How much storage do you need? And most importantly, how do you choose between black or white?

The answer is that you should get the 16GB WiFi-only model in black. Here’s why:

iMovie and GarageBand — two of the most exciting new applications for the iPad — went live in the App Store yesterday, and although GarageBand is supported on the first-generation iPad, iMovie unfortunately isn’t. There is a workaround, however, and you don’t need to jailbreak!

Just a few minutes ago, after a nine day wait, the iPad 2 went up for order… and even if you dropped you order within seconds of them becoming available, Apple’s estimated shipping delay was between 3-5 business days. Worse, free shipping is your only option with the iPad 2: there’s no way to overnight it.

For a guy like me, the fact that the iPad 2 won’t be shipping out for almost another week was a problem. I have an obvious professional interest in having an iPad 2 as quickly as possible. Yet as I considered my options, I ended up hitting the order button anyway, because I just don’t think I can be part of the Apple Store launch day spectacle this time.

If you’re up right this second, there can only be one possible reason: to order the iPad 2. As you can see from the image above, iPad 2’s went up for order a little before 1AM PT / 4AM ET. All models came with an estimated 3-5 business days shipping delay, and there is no option to get overnight shipping: free shipping is the only option.

The only problem? Seconds after making the above order, the order page appears to be down again. Was 3-5 business days delivery just a technical blip, and will the iPad 2 come back up sometime soon with a more aggressive shipping date? Or is Apple already sold out? (Edit: Nope! Back up again, with the same 3-5 business days estimate!)

We’ll keep you updated. Anyone grab their iPad 2 yet? Which one’d you end up ordering and why?

Steve Jobs has jumped almost 40 places on Forbes’ list of the World’s Billionaires. He is the 43 ^rd richest person in the U.S. and the 110^th richest in the world.

Jobs’ net worth has jumped almost $2 billion in one year, from $5.5 to $8.3 billion, Forbes estimated. The leap is thanks to Apple’s surging stock, bouyed by a successful year of iPads and iPhone 4s. Jobs has been on Forbes’ 400 list for the last 11 years. He’s grown his net worth more than 500%. Not bad for a college dropout.

Here’s Jobs’ profile on Forbes, and the annual list of filthy rich.

New beta Release Candidates of Lightroom 3.4 and Camera Raw 6.4 are available for immediate download on Adobe Labs.

Adobe:

The Release Candidates bring raw file support to seven popular camera models including Canon EOS Rebel T3i and Olympus E-PL1s, improve on lens correction profiles introduced in the Lightroom 3.3 and Camera Raw 6.3 releases, and add over 10 new lens profiles to help photographers automatically correct unwanted distortion and chromatic aberration.

Lightroom 3.4 RC is a free download for Lightroom 3 customers, and Camera Raw 6.4 RC is free for Photoshop CS5 customers. More information at Adobe Labs.

Her’s the list of newly supported cameras:

An astonishing 82% of consumers plan to buy an iPad despite the dozens of competing tablets due this year, a ChangeWave survey found.

There’s a caveat: that’s 82% of consumers who plan to buy a tablet in the next 90 days, which is only 5% of the 3,091 consumers surveyed in February – before Apple showed off the iPad 2.

Still, it’s a huge percentage. Only 4% plan to buy the Motorola Xoom; and 3% plan to buy RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab.

Further out, almost 30% said they will be buying a tablet in the future — also an amazingly high number. Not surprisingly, these tablets will cannibalize sales of netbooks, eReaders and even traditional notebooks.

Yesterday’s update to the iOS 4.3 includes a requirement that buyers must enter their passwords for each purchase in iTunes.

The move comes after parents and legislators squawked that kids were making too many accidental buys in “credit-card bait games” in part because passwords stayed active for a 15-minute grace period.

“We are proud to have industry-leading parental controls with iOS,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told the Washington Post. “With iOS 4.3, in addition to a password being required to purchase an app on the App Store, a reentry of your password is now required when making an in-app purchase.”

What do you think about the new requirement?

And do you think it will stop these games targeting kids?

We start another day of dealing with the MacBook Pro. Expercom is offering a bundle that includes a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 13-inch screen, plus a three-year AppleCare license for $1,268. Next we have several iPod touch units, including an 8GB version for just $149. Finally, if you are curious how the Google TV stacks up against Apple TV, there is a deal on the Logitech Revue unit that includes a wireless keyboard, remote and 802.11n wireless for $220.

Along the way, we check out other Mac-related devices, such as the XtremeMac InCharger to power up your iPhone, iPad or iPod. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Half of all people using mobile devices for business transfer “sensitive” data over smartphones and tablets, according to a Harris Poll released Thursday. Results of the survey, compiled from the responses of more than 2300 Americans in late January 2011 indicate tablets such as Apple’s iPad may herald a post-PC society, with men and younger audiences more likely to trust the security of their mobile data.

FuzeBox, developers of collaboration solutions for desktop and mobile installations, commissioned the survey, which found that sensitive data transfers appear to be increasing in the mobile universe as professionals begin to adopt tablets in larger numbers, and that tablets, generally, increase the likelihood of transferring sensitive and private information.

Want an iPad 2 but don’t have the cash?

Here’s a random round-up of contests we’ve found offering the latest iPad as the prize.

Just about all are no-brainers that ask you to tweet or give your details in exchange for the chance to win, although some have age and geographical restrictions.

Apple’s next retail location may be Austin, Texas. The tech giant is using the annual South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSW) to test a 5,000-square-foot popup store. The concept, already a practice with other retailers, will be used by the tech giant to hawk its iPad and test the city’s reception toward a more permanent outpost.

Apple Monday picked the Art Deco-look of the Scarbrough Building on Austin’s downtown Congress Avenue. After a “quick tour” of locations, the tech giant reportedly is now hard at work putting the finishing touches on the location. Starting Friday, Apple will use its temporary two-week presence to hawk iPads to those attending the event known for computers, movies and music.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) reports an ongoing boom with tablet computers, with Apple’s iPad still kicking competitors to the curb.

They counted about twice as many “media tablets” sold in fourth quarter 2010 as the previous quarter – some 10 million computers.

Apple still has 73% share of the market – down from 93% Q42010 — but analysts expect them to keep that strong hold over competitors.

Apple is building on its strong 2010 first-generation iPad launch with the iPad 2, which will ship this month, before most competitors come to market with first generation media tablets. Although more competing devices will be launched this year, IDC expects Apple to maintain a 70-80% share of the market.

IDC defines media tablets as devices with color displays between 5-and 14-inches which run lightweight operating systems (such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android OS) and can be based on either x86 or ARM processors. Tablets, for the purposes of this research, are defined as tablet PCs run full PC operating systems and are based on x86 processors.

Just about 90% of all media tablets were shipped to the US, Western Europe and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) in Q42010.

Via IDC

Apple has just announced when its iPad 2 tablet will be available Friday. Depending how quickly you want to lay hands on the device, you can stay up till 1 a.m. Friday morning and grab the tablet online, or wait until 5 p.m Friday local time and pick up the device at a number of participating retailers.

Along with 236 Apple retail locations, AT&T, Verizon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target and other stores will have the iPad 2, which has met with mixed early reviews. Others have speculated why there were no pre-sales of the device, instead requiring fans wait until the opening day.