You may want to clear your schedule for February 3. That could be the day Verizon begins selling the iPhone — at least figures one blogger. Why pick that day? Turns out it wasn’t selected out of a hat, but based on several factors.

The Cupertino, Calif. tech giant has “blacked-out” Thursday, Feb. 3rd through Sunday, February 6th, denying any retail employee vacation requests, according to the blog, citing “a source close to Apple.” Earlier this week, a report surfaced that the iPhone maker was canceling vacations for retail workers sometime between late January and stretching into February. The move was seen as indicating a major product announcement was planned.

Seton Hill University in Greensberg, Pennsylvania was one of the first to announce it would hand out iPads to students – launching the program before the device was even available — now it’s the first enter into legal action against a student over one.

Michael Sellers, 18, enrolled in Seton Hill and was handed his school-mandated iPad and MacBook. He left school shortly afterwards for unspecified reasons.

“On Aug. 18, Michael Sellers signed a contract with Seton Hill University that if he left the university … he would return the iPad within 10 days,” along with the MacBook, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2011 — Mophie’s newest case, launched yesterday, incorporates a credit-card reader and allows business owners to process physical credit card transactions through the iPhone. To interface with the case’s reader, Mophie recruited Intuit’s free GoPayment app, which is compatible with Inuit’s flagship QuickBooks small business accounting package.

Even considering Mophie’s reputation for cutting-edge iPhone cases, this one is pretty remarkable — and a challenge to products like Square’s credit card reader for iPhone. The case is available now, and sells for $180.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2011 — In a world grown tired of identical iPod speaker systems, TDK has dared to think different.

Here at CES the company debuted three iPod boomboxes that dispense with the ubiquitous speaker dock in favor of a simple USB port at the back. That means the boomboxes are still iPod/iPhone compatible (via the standard USB cable), but aren’t dominated by a dock on top or up front.

So why dispense with the dock?

“The iPod really dictates the design,” explained TDK spokesman Tren Blankenship. “You have to put it front and center. Losing the iPod allowed us to make something nice and clean.”

The show floors of CES this year seem to be filled with iPad 2 mock-ups being used to showcase new docking and speaker systems, as well as new cases.

Here’s another one that iLounge, who write:

The shell, which has been marked by developer Gopod Mobile with “iPad 2” and “128GB” logos that would not appear on the actual device, is being shown paired with an iPad 2-specific foldable rechargeable battery pack developed by the company, and depicts the revised device’s redesigned curves, ports, and cameras; it is said by Gopod to represent the actual appearance of the as-yet-unreleased thinner and slightly smaller iPad.

I’m starting to think this actually will be the design of the next iPad: Asian case and dock makers seem uniform in their agreement that the rumors of a slimmer iPad with FaceTime, a back speaker and new ports are true. You’d expect there to be more variation, more disagreement if the rumors we’ve heard about the iPad 2 were completely unfounded.

Apple’s new Mac App Store had more than 1 million downloads on its first day, the company announced Friday. Joining App Stores for the iPod, iPhone and iPad, this latest online venue for Mac applications was rolled into the Mac OS X 10.6.6 released for Snow Leopard users.

“We’re amazed at the incredible response the Mac App Store is getting,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. “Developers have done a great job bringing apps to the store and users are loving how easy and fun the Mac App Store is,” Jobs adds.

There’s still some confusion regarding the new Mac App Store, and how it works with applications you already own.

The App Store software tries hard to spot which applications you already have installed, but it doesn’t always get this right.

The result is that sometimes the Store will show you an “Installed” icon, but sometimes it won’t even when it ought to. In which case, it will offer you the chance to buy an app, even if you already own it.

As far as I can see, there are several likely scenarios…

If you think 2011 is going to be the year that Intel’s Light Peak standard homogenizes the connections of your iMac into one tidy standard, think again… according to LaCie, it’snot even close to being ready for prime time.

“Intel has been the driving force for this technology. What we know for sure about Light Peak is that we know how to spell it,” LaCie’s senior engineer Mike Mihalik told PC World. “And that it’s intended to be a high-speed interface and it will support almost any protocol for transferring information from A to B.”

What;s the problem? Well, even though Light Peak will, in theory, obviate all other types of connections, including USB 3.0, it’s still just a lab experiment… despite the fact that Intel said it’d be in shipping products this year.

“Development needs to continue and we need to debug before we can turn the technology into a product,” reports Mihalik.

This is depressing news to guys like me, who assumed Apple’s reluctance to embrace USB 3.0 was due to their intent to leap frog directly to the more flexible Light Peak standard. They may still do just that, but it looks like we’ve got a couple years yet before we see it.

You might want to check your iTunes receipts: according to the AFP, hacked iTunes accounts — possibly yours! — are available for sale all over China for prices as low as just a few bucks.

The Mac App Store has been live for less than a day, but already pirates have figured out how to circumvent its DRM to install and run unauthorized paid apps. It’s not Apple’s fault, though: instead, it looks like developers just haven’t been paying attention to Apple’s own app validation advice.

Apple reportedly is looking for a new a new finance chief. Although the tech giant denies it is shopping to replace current CFO Peter Oppenheimer, a Thursday news report suggests the Cupertino, Calif. company is seeking someone with more experience acquiring other firms.

Laurence Tosi, Oppenheimer’s counterpart at private equity firm Blackstone Group was approached by Apple, but has turned down the offer, according to Bloomberg News, citing “three people with knowledge of the matter.” Blackstone is the largest private equity firm, purchasing 30 companies in 2010.

Part the storied mists of time and gaze back far enough and you might remember that MacHeist once promised bundle-buyers the option to play around with Tweetie 2 before release, and even get a copy for free when it finally came out.

Needless to say, that promise came back to haunt MacHeist, as Tweetie was bought by Twitter and Tweetie 2 became the official Twitter for Mac client, which debuted yesterday as a free download on the Mac App Store.

MacHeist hasn’t let us bundlers down, though, as the new Twitter for Mac client has some secret easter eggs that are only available to MacHeist buyers… or anyone who doesn’t feel bashful around a terminal prompt.

Working as a Mac consultant brings me in contact with several dozen different Macintosh systems every month. Many needs and tasks are common – OS upgrades, backups, system slowdowns, troubleshooting startup or WiFi problems. Like any good mechanic there are a few items in my toolbox which I favor above others. From built-in tools like Disk Utility, Network Utility and Console to third-party tools like DiskWarrior, FileSalvage and iStumbler, these items help get the job done.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2011 — Here’s a sneak peek at Boxee’s upcoming iPad app from the show floor of CES.

Boxee is the super-slick video software that makes online video easy and social. It’s the single best reason to own an older Apple TV: you hack it to run Boxee, and suddenly it’s useful because it can play local video files, no matter what the encoding format.

The iPad app is just like Boxee on a Mac or Apple TV: it makes it easy to find and share online video on your iPad. You can even stream video from your iPad to your TV (a la AirPlay). Best of all, the app will come with a media server (Mac and PC) that will transcode video files on the fly and stream them to the iPad app.

Should be available before the end of the quarter. Free, of course.

Update – Andrew from Boxee wanted us to know that the expected arrival date is actually Q2, not Q1 as Avner says.

I’ve been exploring the Mac App Store and discovered another little tidbit that might pose a problem for some frugally minded people – like me. I was looking for apps that I already owned that might be in the App Store and I found one called RapidWeaver.

I was about to purchase it in the Mac App Store until I found out it would cost more to do so. Why did it cost more? The answer is simple – sales taxes and that is what led me to halt one Mac App Store application purchase this evening.

Apple has opened the Mac App Store today ushering a new era for Mac software distribution. It is an interesting new way to get software for your Mac in a way many of you are already used to using for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

It’s not perfect, but neither was the iTunes App Store for iOS. I’m sure that it will improve with time. I took a look through the Mac App Store today and I want to share some things about the new Mac App Store that you may have missed.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2011 — What’s one of the biggest problems preventing big companies from adopting the iPad in massive numbers?

The ability to stop employees from stealing them, says Absolute Software. Plus remotely locking and wiping lost devices.

I just tried a quick Mac App Store experiment.

One of the more tempting offerings on offer there is TextWrangler, the excellent all-purpose text editor from Bare Bones software. It’s been free on the web for years, and now it’s free on the store.

I already had a copy installed, but on closer inspection, my existing version was 3.1, and the one in the App Store was 3.5. What would happen, I wondered, if I clicked the “Install” button? Would the App Store version be installed separately? Would there be some kind of conflict? Or would it Just Work?

AT&T announced Thursday it will begin selling 8GB iPhone 3GS phones to new and upgrade-eligible customers for $49 starting Friday, January 7. The third generation Apple smartphones continue to be priced at $99 when purchased directly from Apple, while AT&T’s discounted offer will be available online and at its more than 2000 US retail stores.

The price drop has predictably led to much speculation among mobile phone watchers as to both AT&T’s motivation (given there’s no indication Apple has cut its prices to the carrier) and Apple’s plans to announce new phones and possibly new carrier agreements in the coming year.

An obvious key to the unknowns is that new and upgrade-eligible AT&T customers will be required to sign on for new two year contracts with the carrier in order to get the 3GS discounted price. AT&T has been widely derided among iPhone users in the past couple of years for its spotty service, which has in turn led to rampant speculation that Apple could make its phones available to other mobile carriers as early as the 1st quarter of 2011.

AT&T’s pricing move is a strong signal that iPhones are coming soon to another carrier — Verizon appears the odds-on favorite among many with an opinion on the matter — and it’s clearly an aggressive attempt to head off a flood of defectors from its network should such an opening occur.

We start the day with deals on applications for the iPad and iPhone. First up is a new crop of price cuts on select iPad apps, including “Spider-Man HD.” Next is a group of free iPhone apps from the App Store, including “Text Nanny,” a text-scheduling service. We wrap up our deal spotlight with a bargain on 8GB iPhone 3GS handsets. AT&T Friday begins offering the devices for $49 plus a two-year plan.

Along the way, we also take a look at an eMac G4 for just $150, plus a number of software packages for the Mac. As usual, details on these and many more items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

The ever-lovable China-based MICgadget blog waved a red flag at everyone drooling over new and possibly never-to-be-released gadgetry on the CES showfloor in Las Vegas Thursday, teasing web surfers with a headline about leaked photos of the much-anticipated iPad2.

These are pretty clearly mock-ups but with CES in full swing and an Apple vacation black-out in place, they signal a revving of the hype machine and ramping of new-gadget lust that ought to be at a near fever pitch by the time Apple announces a “special event” sometime in late January/early February.

What do you think Apple has in store for us in 1Q11?

I’ve just spent some time poking around the shiny new Mac App Store and there’s only one feature I expected to see, but can’t: an official way to uninstall what you’ve installed.

The traditional way of removing apps does still work. Go to the Applications folder, select the app, and move it to the Trash.

With any other application, that’s it, job done. But with apps installed via the App Store, you are asked for your system password before the trashing can commence.

I’m not complaining, and I don’t think this is a particularly big deal. But I did expect to see some kind of Uninstall control available somewhere (perhaps on the page that lists all your purchases), and as far as I can see, there isn’t one. Not yet, anyway. I suspect this is something that will be fixed in a future update.

Got your App Store installed yet? What do you make of it? Is this the future?

Research in Motion’s answer to the 3G Apple iPad tablet now has a release date and carrier: this summer and Sprint. At “under $500 a pop, the PlayBook 4G already has potentially “tens of thousands” of corporate customers, according to a RIM senior vice president.

The tablet was demonstrated Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show. The device “performed smoothly as it went through its paces,” according to one report. RIM took the time to denounced as “absurd generalizations” talk that Adobe Flash cutting battery lifetime. The retort follows reports RIM may need to delay the PlayBook after an analyst claimed the tablet had only “a few hours” of battery life.

LAS VEGAS, CES 2011 — The very next time I hear the term “iPhone-killer,”  I will go absolutely Looney-Tunes nuts. I will tear up telephone books, gargle with raw eggs and Marmite, the whole bit. Seriously.

On the other hand, Samsung really does seem to be taking precise aim at the iPhone 4 with their new Infuse 4G Android smartphone announced yesterday. They’re claiming that, when (if) released, it’ll be the lightest, thinnest phone on the market, and it’ll be equipped with oodles of goodies: a 4.5-inch, “next-generation” Super AMOLED screen (which they say will have better readability in bright sunlight) and a snappy 1.2 ghz processor. And get this — it’ll sit exclusively in the AT&T stable.

If you are looking for Apple to introduce a new product, a good time period may be between the last week of January and the first half of February. The Cupertino, Calif. company reportedly has cancelled vacations for its retail employees during that period, a possible signal a new product launch is imminent.

Apple has ordered the so-called vacation “black-out” period of three weeks after retail managers began expressing “reluctance” to grant employee requests for days off for January, according to a blog citing “people familiar” with the firm’s retail plans.