With more and more consumers consumers cleaving themselves from the fetid macro-organism of biomassed holiday shopping flesh and doing all of their Christmas shopping online, online customers satisfaction polls are more important than ever. No surprise, though, at the latest polls, courtesy of ForeSee Results: Apple’s simple, pleasant and spartan store did well in consumer’s lists of the best online shopping experience of 2009.

Surveying more than 10,000 visitors to the top forty retail web sites, Apple ranked 82% in customer satisfaction, which is four percentage points higher than their 2008 ranking. Following in Apple’s wake was Newegg.com (8!5), TigerDirect.com (80%), Dell.com (78%), HP (79%) and Circuit City (73%).

That’s not to say that Apple totally destroyed the competition, though. Amazon.com, which is still about the best online shopping experience around, rubbed Apple’s nose in its mess with an astonishing 87% customer satisfaction rating. The reliably stalwart Netflx also did well at 86%, although not being a home television shopper myself, I’m a bit mystified by QVC.com’s impressive 83% rating.

[via ComputerWorld]

Having wrapped up the fairly well-thought-out and fairly grounded predictions for 2010, we thought it would be a good idea to try to take a look further in to the future of Apple. Now, before you proceed, you should be aware that looking beyond a one-year outlook is notoriously difficult. After all, at this point 10 years ago, Apple was more than a year away from shipping iTunes software, let alone making iPods and disrupting the mobile phone industry. So you should be aware that I refuse to stand by any of these five predictions over the long haul and expect to be wrong. With that, let’s take a look into the far future. All the way past the year 2000.

In the Year 2012, Apple Will Buy Both Yahoo! and TBWA/Chiat Day, Simultaneous Entering Both the Internet Services and Ad Industries at the Same Time. I actually don’t think this one’s insane. Yahoo! continues to struggle against Google, the ad industry is in need of grounds-up reinvention, and Apple has more cash on hand than pretty much anyone else. At this point, Steve Jobs is running out of challenges in both Apple’s existing and immediately adjacent businesses. To cement his reputation as the best CEO of the next decade, he should create a juggernaut capable of challenging Google.

Apple has a ridiculously good run over the past ten years. But in true Apple fashion, I’m not here to rest on the laurels of the past but to look into the future. So sit back, relax, and take a daring look all the way into the year 2010. Here are the five things that Apple must do to thrive in 2010.

Virtually every geek has spent, at one time or another in their lives, a lot of time playing with Lego bricks. They’re basically the single greatest creativity toy ever developed. And it’s been fun to see the world of Lego make a variety of appearances on the iPhone.

The newest app from Billund, Denmark is Lego Photo, which transforms your pictures into creative brick assemblages that are the perfect way to hide just how hungover you look in all your New Year’s photos.

See? Here’s my impression of what most people will look like tomorrow morning:

See? It’s “artistic”!

Free download, so check it out here (iTunes link). /via Gizmodo

This could be your last chance to buy a Mac for another year. Sure, it’s just one day, but can you wait that long when there are deals awaitin’? If you are one of the few souls left on the planet without an iPod touch, Apple has a 16GB version for $199. Maybe you’ve longed for one of the new large-screen iMacs, but the price left a sour taste in your mouth? The Mother Ship has 3.06GHz C2D 27-inch iMacs for $1,449. If laptops are more your style, but you like the oomph of a 3.06GHz machine, there’s a deal on MacBook Pros for $2,699.

Maybe your wallet is hiding and your credit card is still smoking from all the use during the holidays. Well, there are always App freebies and we have a new batch of them. For details, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Apple has updated its patent for Wii-like “Wand” remote control, providing a magnetic compass and accelerometer for better control and precision. Apple TV is one potential beneficiary, reports suggested Thursday.

The Cupertino, Calif. company initially filed the “Wand” application in mod-2009, including an accelerometer like the Wii. The update, filed on the last day of 2009, describes the wand’s operations:

Not all boats float on a rising tide. That seems to be the lesson Apple is learning with its Apple TV, a device analysts say has not benefited from increased sales of the company’s other products, including iMacs and iPods and even the lowly Magic Mouse. Apple TV sales rose just 10 percent in 2009, despite an upgraded Apple TV 3.0 OS.

The minor growth was likely due to 2008 being a slow year, not because the streaming device made any inroads into a hard-to-define market, NPD Group vice president of industry analysis Steven Baker said.

Keeping New Year’s resolutions is hard. Who has the willpower? Here’s 10 iPhone apps that might help.

Confirming last week’s Financial Times report that Apple has rented out the Yerba Buene Center for the Arts in San Francisco for a January 26th event, Clayton Morris over at Fox News is now reporting that the January event will be “big” and focus on the “mobility space.”

Quoth Morris:

I’ve spoken to a source inside Apple who confirmed a “big” event for January.

While nothing official has been handed down from the notoriously tight-lipped company, my source took the Financial Times report one step further by saying this event will focus on the mobility space, meaning we’ll see something related to the iPhone/iPod touch product line.

Since iPhone and iPod Touch announcements are usually made in June, that means this event is going to focus on something like the iPhone, but a wholly new product. *cough* Apple Tablet. *cough cough*

[via TUAW]

If recent CNBC listings are anything to go by, someone in their programming department got wind that there is set to be an exciting new Apple product announced next month. Hot on the heels of news about CNBC’s planned airing of the Welcome to Macintosh documentary on January 4th comes word that that the 60 minute documentary MacHEADS will air a day later on January 5th, 2010 at 10PM ET.

Like Welcome to Macintosh, this isn’t a documentary I’ve seen yet, but the official site describes the documentary as an exploration of “the loyalty of Apple fanatics and their obsession with the company and its products. The documentary takes an in-depth examination of just what makes the Mac, the iPhone, and Apple’s other products seem like cultural phenomena rather than just consumer electronics.”

If you don’t have a Tivo or have pressing engagements on January 5th, it will also be airing on January 6th at 1AM ET, January 7th at 9PM ET, January 8th at 12AM ET, January 9th at 7PM ET and January 10th at 10PM ET. CNBC’s getting a lot of mileage out of this one.

If you’re interested in checking MacHEADS out, you can see the official trailer here.

The popularity of the iPod doesn’t make it immune to accusations of being the cause of society’s ills, and for the last few years, Apple has faced numerous complaints that the iPod promotes hearing loss. The complaints have been taken seriously enough by some to prompt the European Union to consider introducing legislation that would limit iPods and other portable media players to a maximum output of 85db.

Luckily, common sense seems to be prevailing in the American iPod hearing loss debate. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just affirmed a 2008 ruling that dismissed a case brought against Apple that claimed the iPod promoted hearing loss.

The original suit was brought against Apple by a Louisiana man, who hoped to escalate it to class action status. The suit claimed that the iPod had the potential to cause irreparable hearing loss, thanks to the lack of external volume meters on the iPod itself and the design of the ear buds encouraging too-deep placement. The suit was dismissed because the judge wryly noted that the lawsuit didn’t actually prove that the iPod was dangerous, but was instead just a long list of how it could possibly be made safer.

It wasn’t a suit with much merit, and it’s good to see it dismissed. Although it’s certainly conscientious to make a device safer, I hope most people realize that keeping your iPod’s volume at an acceptable level and not cramming your ear buds down into your cochleas with your thumbs are the user’s responsibility.

Former Quicktime guru Steve Perlman has been flogging his latest startup, OnLive, for awhile now. He’s hawking a thin client for gaming, which requires a bit of explanation: think of gaming in the cloud. Instead of installing an MMORPG or FPS on your Mac, you instead logon to a central server with beefy hardware, which pumps out the game to you over the Internet.

In very loose theory, that means that you can play the hottest and most technically advanced games on even the lowest-specced computers or handheld devices: the server does all the rendering, and basically streams to the user a live video of the game being played according to his or her button and mouse clicks. In even looser theory, you could play even the most graphically demanding PC games on your iPhone.

Last week, Perlman demonstrated the OnLive technology to his alma mater, Columbia University. It’s an impressive demonstration, but there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical of Perlman’s claims.

It’s less than twenty four hours until 2010, and at a time when most of us will be confronting a numb, vacant hole where our sobriety used to be tomorrow morning, it’ll be easy to overlook another hole in our day-to-day Mac lives: official Boot Camp support for Microsoft’s excellent new update to their Windows operating system, Windows 7.

You might recall that in October, Apple promised in a support document to roll-out Windows 7 support to Boot Camp before the end of 2009.

“Apple will support Microsoft Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate) with Boot Camp in Mac OS X Snow Leopard before the end of the year,” the support document notes. “This support will require a software update to Boot Camp.”

With the clock ticking, Apple Insider sought out an Apple support representative fielding Boot Camp related questions for a statement. He said that his division had still been given no update on Windows 7 Boot Camp support, and his belief was that the update was still undergoing tests, adding that it was unlikely that the update would surface anytime before the drop of the ball.

Of course, Windows 7 already runs in Boot Camp, with a few driver hiccups, so you don’t really have to wait for Apple if you don’t want to. Still, let’s look forward to completely painless Windows 7 Boot Camp support in 2010, eh? The earlier, the better.

More tantalizing hints on Apple’s forthcoming tablet come their way to us today from China, where former Google China president Ka-ifu Lee has posted alleged hands-on impressions of the device on his sina.com.cn microblog.

As we near the end of the 2009, our minds tend to turn to time: the past and future. Here on the “Daily Deals” desk, the end of the year also means savings. Are you looking to save some time looking for a MacBook? The Apple Store has a $849 2.26GHz MacBook with 13.3-inch screen. Maybe your thought also include saving some cash. In that case, we have a new batch of price drops for the App Store. Although it won’t let you return to those glory years, Apple’s 1TB Time Capsule could save your digital life – for $260.

Along the way, we check out a 50 percent off deal on iPod touch accessories from the PC Micro Store, bargains on AppleCare for your favorite gadget, plus assorting money saving opportunities. As always, for details on any of the items mentioned (and many more), check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

What a difference a year makes. That seems to be the take-away from new retail analysis showing a 50 percent increase in sales of iWork 2009 over iWork 2008. In the first 11 months it was available, iWork 2009 sold 50 percent more copies than iWork 2008, according to NPD Group.

Much of the credit appears to go to the popularity of Mac OS X 10.6, known as “Snow Leopard”. iWork and iLife comes bundled with the box upgrade. A single-user version costs $169 and a family-version costs $229.

There have been times when I’ve wanted to slit a throat over the altar of Word to keep a buggy file from crashing but wonder if this is some kind of divine castigation for downloaders?

Via Digg

Apple will have a ‘blowout’ December quarter, selling 9.5 million iPhones with strong Mac and iPod demand creating $12.4 billion in revenue for the Cupertino, Calif. company, an analyst told investors Wednesday.

“Despite strong macroeconomic headwinds and ever rising investor expectations, we anticipate Apple could post material upside to recently raised consensus estimates,” wrote Kaufman Brothers analyst Shaw Wu. The company appears to be firing on all cyclinders, its iPhone, iPod and Mac units viewed as fueling the optimism.

Even when they’re dead, Apple products are still timely  — like the iPod clock or the G4 timepiece.

Here’s a nice step-by-step transformation of a defunct Power Mac G5 into a sleek wall clock.

It’s the handiwork of Japanese Apple fan NOBON — the same one who “printed” Fuji apples with the Apple logo.

Via NOBON

Finnish cell phone giant Nokia Tuesday told a U.S. trade court “virtually all” of Apple products, including the iPhone, iPod and Mac, infringe its patents. The move seeks to halt imports of Apple products.

The seven patents named “allow better user experience, lower manufacturing costs, smaller size and longer battery life for Nokia products.” Nokia said its complaint filed before the U.S. International Trade Commission “is about protecting the results of such pioneering development.”

It’s nice to see good work pay off. While Steve Jobs walked home with his customary $1 salary and $1 bonus for 2009 Apple COO Tim Cook — who stepped into Jobs’ shoes for five months while Steve Jobs underwent a liver transplant — made out much better: his year end renumeration for 2009 was a cool $14 million.

The vast majority of that money went to Cook in the form of $12.3 million worth of Apple stocks… a significant jump from his 2007 and 2008 stock awards of $7 million and $6 million, respectively. Cook also got a $100,000 salary raise, up to $800,000, and a cash bonus of $800,000 to match.

Don’t feel bad for Jobs, though: although that two bucks he earned in 2009 won’t even pay for a cup of coffee, his 5.5 million shares of Apple stock are currently valued at $1,163,855,000.

[via TUAW]

This is likely just a traffic grab, but according to the Quick PWN blog reporting “inside sources”, Apple’s forthcoming tablet will indeed be called the iSlate, but it won’t be a tablet computer: it’ll be an eBook reader, and positioned to go head-to-head with the likes of the Kindle and Nook.

‘Tis the season to get and give presents, and with prices through the floor, many will have gotten new digital cameras this year. If you’re one of the lucky ones who received a nice shiny new SLR camera, here are 10 tips that will help you become the next Ansel Adams.

You might have missed Welcome to Macintosh when it debuted at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco earlier this year, and you may have chosen to save $15 by not picking it up on iTunes, but no need to fret : the indie documentary that intimately examines the history of Apple will be airing next Monday.

The documentary, which features interviews from Andry Hertzfeld, Guy Kawasaki, Jim Reekes and Ron Wayne, will air on CNBC on January 4th, 2010 at 9:30PM ET. Woz isn’t in it, but he liked it, describing it as “on the mark” and the best indepent film regarding Apple that he has seen. He also said how much he appreciated how “unbelievable” it was to see people “say that great of things about me.”

Ars Technica also liked Welcome to Macintosh: “”If you liked Pirates of Silicon Valley or read Revolution in the Valley, then this film is for you.”

So gentlemen, set your Tivos, then let me know if it’s worth the rent: we don’t exactly get CNBC over here in Germany.

[via TUAW, image via Thomas Marban]

If your New Year’s Resolution, like mine, is to budget more frugally, thus sparing your kneecaps another loan shark shattering, you might want to download the App Store Expense Monitor.

if you spend as much on apps as I do, you might not: I had previously been unaware that mere numbers could punch their way through my solar plexus.

What the App Store Expense Monitor does is scrutinize your iTunes library, locating all of the apps you bought through all of the iTunes accounts on your computer, and then adds up the total based upon their current price. If the current price isn’t the same as what you paid for it, you have the option to edit the prices, which is a nice feature.

A handy if depressing little program. I had no idea how much all of those little $0.99 cents purchases could add up. Apparently, if I’d never bought an iPhone at all, I could have afforded to pick up that kidney transplant I had my eye on… and that was just in 2009.

[via Lifehacker]