Apple has squeaked by RIM’s BlackBerry, giving the iPhone 27.9 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, versus 27.4 percent for the Canadian handset maker, according to Nielsen Company researchers. Meanwhile, Google’s Android platform has 22.7 percent of the American market, with Microsoft Windows Mobile hanging on in third place with 14 percent.

Earlier this month, RIM’s CEO blamed “Apple’s distortion field” for talk that the BlackBerry maker had fallen behind the Cupertino, Calif. firm lead by CEO Steve Jobs. “We’ve now passed RIM, and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future,” Jobs had remarked.

Bryan Shlager bought an iPad from Best Buy in Dorchester, Massachusetts that he suspects is a fake – and says also claims the store knows there are at least five or six other fakes sold from the same store.

Neither he nor his college freshman son, for whom it was a gift, could get the iPad to turn on.

Shlager took it back to a Best Buy near his son’s Florida campus – where he says Geek Squad employees told him it wouldn’t work because it was a fake.

Punch drunk Adobe has just released the latest beta of their Flash Player for Mac, and while we wouldn’t be caught dead installing it on our new Airs, for the rest of Mac owners, it may very well represent a substantial performance improvement over Flash Player 10.1.

The biggest new feature in Flash Player 10.2 is “Stage Video” which Adobe claims will allow for high-performance video playback while using “just over 0 percent CPU usage.” Basically, Stage Video is a full embrace of the GPU, offloading the entirety of the video rendering pipeline — from H.264 decoding to color conversion and scaling — to your Mac’s graphics chip.

Unfortunately, Stage Video has a hitch: it’s not backwards compatible, so websites will have to update to use the latest APIs for their video players before you see any improvement using Stage Video.

If you’re interested in giving the latest Beta a try, it can be downloaded here.

Search engine ask.com may have its days numbered, but in 2010 people who used it to ask burning questions about tech had questions about Apple.

Three of the top five questions were about Apple products:

What is the best online game for iPod Touch?

What is the best iPhone app?

Is Apple coming out with the iPhone 5?

The answers?

According to the search engine, the best online game is old school arcade favorite Bomber Online and the best iPhone app is either game Trace, photography app Infinicam – described as a Hipstamatic killer — or iFart Mobile. On the release of the iPhone 5, the search engine isn’t much help: the first answer is July 2010.

Though it doesn’t have a rep for being the favored search engine of geeks, the Ask.com community ask and answer section named nerd-com “The Big Bang Theory” as this year’s best new TV show.

Via Yahoo

Despite wild speculation and user interest, Apple has yet to launch any cloud-storage and streaming functionality to iTunes, but that’s not to say you’re completely out of luck if you want to access your music no matter where you are: a new cloud-based streaming site named Mougg has just launched, and best of all, it’s free to try out.

The iPad is eating into the Kindle’s market, prompting analysts Tuesday to announce the Amazon e-reader has a “rapidly diminishing lead” over the Apple tablet. The iPad’s e-reader market share doubled between August and November, while the Kindle’s 62 percent fell tpo 47 percent over the same time.

In a poll of consumers, ChangeWave found the iPad’s market share rose from 16 percent in August to 32 percent in November. At the same time, 75 percent of iPad owners said they are “very satisfied” with the tablet, versus 54 percent for the Kindle.

Steve Jobs has made no bones about being skeptical in regards to multitouch displays on desktop and notebook Macs, observing that multitouch works best when a display is horizontal: anything else just leads to gorilla arm.

Right now, that means that Macs’ multitouch options are limited to accessories like the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad, but given the iPad’s success, it’s natural Apple is trying to find a more directly interactive approach to horizontal multitouch, in which the display can convert flush with a lap or a desk when it’s in touch mode.

Now a bevy of new patents have been awarded to Apple, most interestingly in a convertible MacBook-to-iPad-like device, spotted by Patently Apple.

Has your iPhone’s battery been lasting longer through the day since you updated to iOS 4.2.1? There may be a reason for that: Apple’s using network-controlled fast dormancy in iOS 4.2 to better optimize the way in which the iPhone connects to the cell network, which results in a noticeable bump in battery life.

Sometimes a story seems too good to be true.  Last month we reported about a charming Geek Wedding Proposal Video, presumably made by Frank when proposed to his girlfriend Kasey on a bridge in Central Park.  A band played her favorite song, Frank appeared in a rowboat under the bridge, and a perfectly executed ring-toss was made to his fiancé-to-be – all captured by four synchronized iPhones and a MacBook Pro.

It appears The Cult and the video’s viewers were the victims of a hoax. According to Mashable, it was made to promote a new business venture that specializes on mining the marketing potential of viral videos.

Google’s much-delayed entry into the e-book market, Google Editions, is set to launch by the end of 2010, according to today’s Wall Street Journal. If Editions does appear, the e-bookstore could rival those now offered by Apple and Amazon.

The competing e-bookstore will arrive in the U.S. by the “end of the month and internationally in the first quarter of next year,” the report quotes Google product management director Scott Dougall. Google Editions would differ from both Apple and Amazon by allowing access to e-books through almost any Web browser, rather than connected to specific devices, such as the iPad, iPhone or Kindle.

The Ballistic HC iPhone 4 case is made for ruffians. Even if pink is their favorite color. Personally I’ll stick to black and that’s the color of the case I tested for this review.

The Ballistic HC case is the most heavy-duty iPhone case I’ve ever used or more accurately ever had on any cell phone. The case wraps your iPhone 4 in four layers of protection. The beautiful iPhone 4 disappears and becomes a rugged, rough and tumble cell phone suitable for, but not limited to very active people, a rodeo bull rider, Ninjas, or public safety professionals.

Silvio Rizzi had a damn good day. Not only did the Swiss creator of Reeder, the must-have Google Reader, um, reader for iOS, pushed out version 2.2 for iPhone, adding Facebook integration and a one-swipe gesture to send an article to Instapaper, but he also released Reeder for Mac Draft 1, a beta but still extremely polished RSS for everyone’s favorite non-touch OS.

Wall Street investment banking icon JPMorgan Chase & Co. is giving iPads to every associate in its global investment banking division, according to a company e-mail obtained by Bloomberg News. Employees receiving the devices will get to keep them free of charge as long as they remain at the unit until the pilot program ends on May 1, 2011, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Industry analysts viewed the move as a significant victory for Apple in its quest to wrest control of the Enterprise communications submarket away from Research in Motion, Ltd., whose Blackberry handheld devices have been a ubiquitous companion of “serious businesspeople” for more than a decade.

Redsn0w by DevTeam allows you to jailbreak your iPhone 3G/3GS device, to get complete control over it (see why you should jailbreak here). Currently, redsn0w version 0.9.6b5 allows you to perform a tethered jailbreak to your device that has already been upgraded to firmware 4.2.1, which means you need to use redsn0w every time you boot the device, otherwise all your jailbreak data gets wiped.

In order to unlock, you must upgrade to an earlier iPad baseband, which would mean that you can update/restore using a custom firmware file only and not a stock firmware file, otherwise, the restore will simply fail. Also, it’s not reversible and by doing this, you will be voiding the device’ warranty.

Please note that this tool will NOT work if you older iPhone 3GS, unless you use the unofficial Pwnage bundle first. (On the older iPhone 3GS, serial number, fourth and fifth digit should be either 40 or less.)

Ultrasn0w is a full fledged software unlock solution for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS having baseband version 04.26.08, 05.11.07, 05.12.01, 05.13.04 or 06.15.00 and iPhone 4 having baseband version 01.59.00 (check Modem Firmware version under Settings –> General –> About). Unlocking the phone enables you to use it with any carrier in the world.

This means if you have older firmware, you can now upgrade to a stock 4.2.1, jailbreak using redsn0w or upgrade to a custom 4.2.1 using Pwnage Tool and still have the ability to remain unlocked.

Redsn0w by DevTeam allows you to jailbreak your iPhone 4 device, to get complete control over it (see why you should jailbreak here). Currently, redsn0w version 0.9.6b5 allows you to perform a tethered jailbreak to your device that has already been upgraded to firmware 4.2.1, which means you need to use redsn0w every time you boot the device, otherwise all your jailbreak data gets wiped. However, it will NOT unlock the device, enabling it to be used with different GSM carriers worldwide.

The flocks of kids I always see clustered around iPads whenever I walk into an Apple Store suggest that kid + iPad = best new toy ever. Only problem is,  really young kid + iPad also = anxious parent.

Griffin thinks it has a case + app combo to fix that. LightBoard is a shatter-resistant polycarbonate case that fully encloses the iPad (Including the screen, but with cutouts for the speaker and headphone jack) and doubles as a table. Then the free LightBoard Trace app superimposes traceable drawings through a piece of paper laid over the screen and held in place by a clip on the case.

LightBoard is available through Griffin’s website for $40.

For Mac users awash in social networking (and that’s like saying “for NASCAR drivers with the ability to make left turns”), today’s release of Flock‘s completely revamped browser — which, like its predecessor, is heavily integrated with social networking sites — should be exciting news.

It’s been a long wait for Mac users, as the browser completed its transformation from a Mozilla to a Chromium 7 skeleton. The new Flock arrived on Windows last summer, and Flock’s blog claimed an October release for the Mac version, with no word since then. But it’s here, it easily integrates major social networks right out of the box (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even LinkedIn) — and it’s fast.

We’ll take a closer look at Flock in our upcoming browser comparo. Stay tuned.

Will the iPad kill — or save — the newspaper? Countless observers have argued both cases. I come to bury these notions, not to praise them.

The newspaper industry is suffering through a painful transition, characterized by layoffs, closures, mergers and the abandonment of mission and even dignity in the quest to maintain relevance to advertisers.

The “iPad-will-destroy-newspapers” crowd assumes that paper is the problem. Paper is expensive, slow and bad for the environment. Because the iPad delivers news cheap, fast and without the conversion of trees into trash, the public will choose iPad-based news, which will kill off newspapers.

The “iPad-will-save-newspapers” people, on the other hand, see the wide range of news-reading apps as the newspaper’s salvation. There’s some logic to this, given that the iPad is a theoretically superior advertising platform. But that’s not going to happen.

We start off with a deal on an Otterbox Commuter Case for the iPad. The case, in black, includes access to all the tablet’s buttons ad ports plus features a screen protector. Next is an iMac Core i7 bundle, that includes a 2.8GHz quad desktop computer with 27-inch screen and three years of AppleCare. We wrap up our spotlight deals with the latest batch of freebies from the App Store, including “Orient,” a location orientation assistant.

Along the way, we’ll also check out a 93 percent off deal on iPhone 4 cases, a 50 percent off deal from ZAGG.com, and more. As always, details on these and many other items can be found at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Only Apple knows what new hardware features the iPad 2 will boast when it comes out in April 2011, but one thing everyone can agree on is that it will have FaceTime support by way of at least one camera module.

Now Digitimes is claiming that they know who is going to provide the lens modules for the iPad 2, and no shocks here: they say it’s Largan Precision, who also apparently supply the 5-megapixel lens module in the iPhone 4.

This fleshes out an earlier report that Omnivision would be providing the actual camera sensors, as well as another Digitimes report on the iPad 2 from last week, which rather improbably claimed the iPad 2 would have a USB port and a Retina Display… neither of which are likely.

Although it pays off in compactness, the MacBook Air’s locked down, proprietary construction makes it one of the least self-serviceable or upgradeable computers out there. Heck, you can’t even upgrade the RAM: it’s soldered onto the motherboard.

If you’re brave enough to crack open your Air, about the only thing that will actually prove replaceable to most mortals will be the Toshiba SSD drives, which is what prompted Taiwanese company Photofast to start selling 256GB SSD modules that offered a 30% boost to your Air’s read and write speeds.

Unfortunately, it looks like Photofast’s MacBook Air SSD business has been shut down by Apple, who apparently threatened the company’s >a jref=”https://www.9to5mac.com/38937/apple-makes-photofast-stop-sales-of-speedy-256-gb-macbook-air-ssds?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+9To5Mac-MacAllDay+(9+to+5+Mac+-+Apple+Intelligence)”>standing as a member of Apple’s own MFi program, which allows them to make officially licensed Apple accessories.

It’s sucky, especially if you wanted to double your 11-inch Air’s for cheap (as I did), but in all honesty, my butter fingers are probably better off not cracking open my Air’s guts. Apple’s probably done me a favor here.

To help spread the word about God, a Christian group is now appealing to Steve Jobs.

Apple pulled an app called the Manhattan Declaration from the iTunes store last week after outcry and over  7,000 signatures on an online poll that the content was an anti-gay and hate-mongering.

The Manhattan Declaration is an over 4,000-word statement of beliefs signed by over 400,000 people described as “a call to Christian conscience” crafted in 2009. The app version, which includes a four-question poll on same sex marriage and abortion, launched in mid-October.

Apple products scored highly in a computer magazine’s annual reliability survey, “smoking the competition” in all categories, including desktops, notebooks and smartphones. RIM was the cellar-dweller in the handset category, scoring “worse than average” on every ease of use question.

“Can Apple do no wrong?” asked PCWorld, on releasing the results of the Reliability and Service Survey. “Indeed, 2010 was a remarkable year for the world’s highest-valued tech company,” the magazine declared.

Is the iPhone becoming passe? That’s the belief of one analyst predicting Google’s Android will surpass both Apple’s handset and Nokia in 2011. “The iPhone was last year’s device and now people are looking for something different,” the IDC analyst told Bloomberg.

Android’s move shouldn’t come as a surprise; Apple’s handset had just a one percent lead (24 percent versus 23 percent) over the Android platform in the third quarter of 2010. The Samsung Galaxy S, with 14 percent of all Android-based shipments, is seen as delivering an iPhone-like experience with a lower price, according to the research firm’s Francisco Jeronimo.