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UPDATE: Seth at 9to5Mac is now backtracking. While he says he’s received multiple tips that Mac Pros will be updated, he thinks the MacBook Pros tip might have been fake. “Shame on us,” he says.

Our friend Seth Weintraub at 9to5Mac thinks MacBooks and Mac Pros will be updated within a week. Seth received a tip that Apple’s pro desktop and portable line are being refreshed in the next few days — maybe as early as tomorrow, but more likely next Tuesday.

A refresh of the Mac Pros is already widely-rumored. The desktops are expected to be refreshed next week with the Intel Core i7-980x, a six-core screamer. But maybe new MacBooks are in line also? The new MacBook Pros will get Intel i5 and i7 processors, just like the current line of higher-end iMacs. The basic 13-inch MacBook Pro will have an Intel i5 processor, while the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBooks will have quad-core i7 processors.

If true, these machines will be screamers.

In February, MacRumors readers claimed to have found a GeekBench benchmark from a Core-i7  M620 MacBook Pro running an unreleased version of Mac OS 10.6.2. Current MacBook Pros score in the 3700-4000 range. However, this result is to be taken with a very large pinch of salt: forum readers say they’ve been planting fakes.

Either way, DO NOT BUY A MacBook Pro or Mac Pro for a while: updates are imminent.

Steve Jobs may be one of the most admired CEOs in the tech industry even if he’s not the richest.

Jobs ranked 136 — down from up 43 spots since last year — in the annual Forbes list of billionaires, far behind Bill Gates (no. 2), Larry Ellison (6), Google founder Sergey Brin (24), Steve Ballmer (33) and Michael Dell who came in at no. 37.

Here’s how they explained his ranking:

“Following months of rumor and speculation, cultish king of the iGeeks presented the highly anticipated iPad in January; ten-inch, multi-touch computer intended to fill gap between smartphone and laptop. Delighted: nerds everywhere. Scared to death: newspaper and magazine publishers. Also unveiled new iBookstore and iBooks application in direct challenge to Amazon’s Kindle; several book publishers have committed to content agreements. Apple shares up 100% in past 12 months. Reed College dropout founded Apple in 1976. Revolutionized music industry with iTunes, iPod. Best investment: bought Pixar from George Lucas in 1986 for $10 million. Created string of hits (Finding Nemo, Toy Story); sold to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion in stock. Today is Disney’s largest shareholder; stake worth $4.2 billion.”

Via Softpedia

With just a few weeks to go before the iPad hits stores, here’s the best way to ensure you’re at the head of the line to get one (or three).

If history is any indication, the iPad will be in short supply when it goes on sale April 3. Plus there are rumors of production delays that may further constrain supply.

The best way to get one is to place an advance order on Apple’s online store the minute Apple starts accepting them on Friday March 12.

Trouble is, no one knows what time Apple will update its online store. But there’s a way to get alerted.

Thanks to a bunch of nerds in Berlin, you can be pinged the minute the store is taken offline and, more importantly, when it comes back up.

AppleStoreCheck.com constantly monitors Apple’s online store for changes. Sign up, and the service will alert you by email, RSS or Twitter the minute Apple starts taking iPad pre-orders.

As AppleStoreCheck says: “We’ll check the Apple Store for new products and changes – so you don’t have to.”

iPad pre-orders will initially be limited to US customers, but includes both iPad Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi+3G models, which will ship later. The iPad will be available to pick up from the Apple Retail stores on April 3, or delivery through the mail.

Digital Americana has just popped up out of nowhere, claiming to be “the first literary & culture magazine developed especially for the interactive tablet experience.”

Or to put it another way, it will be “a new interactive magazine made exclusively for the Apple iPad”. And anyone can contribute.

Just days after we reported on the launch of Alfred for OS X, along comes yet another keyboard-centric file and application launcher: Launchy.

Launchy has a long history as an open source Windows application, doing much the same on that platform that Quicksilver did on OS X. It too supports plugins that greatly boost its usefulness.

Right now, though, you can download a Mac beta and see what you think.

Here’s Homer Simpson’s iPhone. Pretty dull, actually. Only one page of apps, and most of them look like the defaults. No iFart? No iBeer? No iDoh?

Wait – what’s that app there? Third row down, third from left?

Ah! Couch Gag! Yeah, one of my favorite apps.

Funny, it never does that when I use it.

It’s official! After a month and a half of eager anticipation, Apple has announced the U.S. launch date of the iPad.

You’ll be able to pick up the iPad WiFi on April 3rd, with the iPad 3G coming later in the month.

Pre-orders start next Friday on March 12th through Apple’s online store.

International roll-out in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK of both the iPad WiFi and iPad 3G will happen in late April.

Hurrah! The end is in sight! So much for those rumored delays: this puts the iPad launch exactly within the 60-90 day launch window Steve Jobs promised on January 27th.

Who else will be compulsively refreshing Apple.com on March 12th along with me?

Press release after the fold.

Oh. My. God.

Forget the iPad, kids, just forget it forever. You don’t need one anymore. Because the guys at E4 have created… ePad. It’s more than amazing. It’s amazinger.

Don’t just take my word for it. Watch this video for the full details.

One of the greatest things about App Store games is that they’ve broken the seemingly relentless escalation of costs for developers and price-increases for end users. In a sense, many of the games on the store return us to the halcyon days of 8-bit games—playable, quickfire efforts that innovated and packed in plenty of personality.

Over at creature24.com, three guys are about to take this idea to the extreme, taking a skeleton idea for an iPhone game through to App Store submission—all in just 24 hours. Progress will be shown live on the website on March 6, starting at 9:00am EST, and the trio of devs say comments from visitors might even be integrated into the game. I caught up with one of the three crazy game creators, Binary Hammer‘s Bob Koon, to find out more.

Pulling a stunt worthy of Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible,”  thieves cut a hole in the roof of a Best Buy then dropped down 16-feet to snatch up 20 Apple laptops. Then they climbed back up, escaping with $26,000 of merchandise without ever touching the floor.

Touching ground would have set off the store’s burglar alarm. And the two or three person crew were too clever to get caught on tape: they cut the roof hole in a spot where security cameras are blocked by ad  banners.

The cinematic caper took place in South Brunswick, New Jersey leaving police to marvel at their handiwork:

“(This was a) high level of sophistication,” said Detective James Ryan, a police department spokesman told NJ.com “They never set off any motion sensors. They never touched the floor. They rappelled in and rappelled out.”

Via NJ.com

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdExukJVUGI

We’ve already got a good handle on how periodical publishers intend on using the iPad to revitalize their businesses, but what about book publishers? Outside of just having another e-book platform to publish for, how can the iPad’s incredible multimedia and interactive capabilities be leveraged to transform the way we experience literature?

On Tuesday, Penguin Books’ CEO John Makinson tried to answer just those questions, demonstrating some upcoming books that will be coming to the iPad. Perhaps the most impressive demo was for the iPad version of the beloved children’s book, Where’s Spot? which has been transformed into an adorable interactive learning app. Penguin’s not stopping there: their Vampire Academy e-book is “an online community for vampire lovers” that features live chat between readers (a nice touch, but parents might get their heckles up at the idea of a real-life Edward Cullen prowling for pre-teens in the pages of their cildren’s book) , while a Paris travel guide switches to street map view when it’s put on a table.

We already knew Valve was bringing its popular Steam games delivery service to OS X thanks to some Mac-specific files floating around the latest PC beta, but you can now pretty much take it as read: the Half-Life 2 developer has been releasing a slew of images slathering the Apple coating across their most popular gaming franchise.

So far, Valve has released images of Half-Life 2‘s Gordon Freeman wearing an iMacified HEV suit, replete with Apple logo instead of the Black Mesa Lambda symbol; the Team Fortress 2 Heavy eating a sandwich in the style of the dancing silhouette iPod ads; turrets from both Team Fortress 2 and Portal (a game which boasts a very Mac-inspired visual design scheme) doing the “I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” dance; Left 4 Dead’s Francis mocking the iconic “Think Different” series of ads; a Steam-specific take-off of the first “Introducing Macintosh” advertisement (courtesy of RPS); and Half-Life 2’s Alyx transported into the famous “1984” commercial (via Macworld).

We’ve got all the images after the jump, At the barest minimum, though, OS X is about to get a proper digital delivery platform for games, and native ports of Valve’s greatest games. Rare good news indeed for the dedicated Mac gamer.

The world’s most advanced music AI runs on a rickety old Power Mac 7500.

Called Emily Howell by its creator, music professor David Cope, the program just released “her” first album, From Darkness, Light, in January.

Having purged the App Store of porn, it looks as though Apple is now clearing the App Store of Wi-Fi finders.

On Wednesday, it appears that Apple removed several popular Wi-Fi stumbers from the App Store, including WiFi-Where, WiFiFoFum and yFy Network Finder.

Apple sent a note to the developer of WiFi-Where on Wednesday saying their app has been removed because it uses “a private framework to access wifi information.”

The best ideas are always the simplest. This is a fantastic tip from one of the team at Massive Studios, who needed a stand to rest a MacBook on.

Why bother spending money on something made of metal or plastic, when everything you need came in the box, wrapped around the MacBook?

Some Instructables are complicated but this one’s dead simple. All you need provide is a couple of screws – yep, screw them right into the styrofoam, apparently it works just fine – and a blade to slice the foam in the first place, and that’s it.

And if you’re wondering whether someone’s thought of turning an iPhone box into an iPhone dock, the answer is most certainly yes.

Yesterday, Cupertino surprised everyone by throwing a bonafide legal temper tantrum about rival handset maker HTC’s alleged infringement on up to 20 Apple patents.

Although Apple is targeting HTC, the takeaway here is clear: Apple’s going after Android, HTC’s bread-and-butter. Google recognizes this, and is standing in solidarity with HTC.

As Apple fans, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture here. Competition is good for the consumer, and Android becoming a credible threat to the iPhone’s dominance will only make the iPhone cheaper and better for consumers in the long run.

There’s other aspects that make this sort of patent battle bad news for consumers though. The New York Times Bits blog asked some IP experts on the possible ramifications of the Apple-HTC patent dispute, and according to Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain, if Apple wins, we could see the courts order HTC to hit the kill switch on their Android phones, just like what happened in the TiVo/EchoStar lawsuit of 2004.

For hardcore users, the iPad’s WiFi-only SKUs may seem like “why bother” affairs… especially given the $30 month-by-month data plan AT&T is offering to customers who pick up the marginally more expensive 3G version.

But AT&T doesn’t see it that way at all: in fact, speaking in a financial conference call this week, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has flat-out warned Ma Bell investors that they shouldn’t expect a huge upswing in new subscribers when the iPad launches.

This is absolutely great. Film critic Roger Ebert is premiering his new computer voice on Oprah this afternoon. Below is a sneak peek. His new voice — spoken by his MacBook — actually sounds like him. He looks really delighted with it.

“In first grade they said I talked too much, and now I still can,” he says, grinning.

Ebert lost his voice box after years of cancer treatments. He used to speak with “Alex,” the robotic voice built into OS X.  His new voice was created by CereProc, a company in Scotland that recreated it from hours of Ebert’s TV shows and DVD commentaries.

Via Videogum and Daring Fireball.

So the architecture isn’t spectacular like some bucket-list worthy Apple stores, but the iLounge looks like a good excuse to check your email or harass expert staff about flash cookies while on vacation.

This is a rendered first look at what will be rolling out on Celebrity Cruises fleet launching in April: funky retro carpet, comfy armchairs and workstations with bar stools and more comfortable-looking work benches.

This new seafaring iLounge is an Authorized Apple Reseller where cruisers can check out the latest MacBooks, iPods and accessories. (No word on whether it will also have iPad, yet). It also has a classroom plus an “enrichment center” where trained staff offers tips.

I’m a long-time fan of territory games. Civilization sucked me in on the Amiga and its sequel appealed on the Mac. For quicker games in a similar vein, various Risk clones for the Mac (such as iConquer) once took up numerous tiny chunks of my day. But when I discovered Galcon for iPhone, the others vanished. Here was a crazy real-time Risk/stripped-down Civ, with brutally fast gameplay and land-grabbing. In single-player mode, it was compelling, and against online opposition, a joy.

Creator Phil Hassey announced this week Galcon Fusion for desktop platforms. A semi-sequel to Classic Galcon and incorporating modes and ideas from Galcon Labs for iPhone, Galcon Fusion is available for $9.99 from galcon.com.

I caught up with Phil to find out more about his game, cross-platform development, and why iPhone Galcon fans should take a risk on the desktop game.

Humorously pitting herbology against zombology, Popcap’s superb tower defense game Plants vs. Zombies was a long time coming to the iPhone… but once it the excellent port finally hit, it was destined to be a success.

I doubt even Popcap, though, realized exactly how much of a runaway hit they had on their hands, though. They’ve just issued a press release, announcing (with just a hint of stupefaction) that Plants vs. Zombies sold over 300,000 copies in its first nine days.

Costing just $2.99 on the App Store, that means that they’ve brought in just a little under a million dollars on the game since its release. Popcap’s a big name in casual indie gaming, sure, but even so: that’s real walking around money.

They deserve the success. Plants vs. Zombies for the iPhone is such an excellent port that it’s actually easy to forget it hits desktop machines first: playing it on an iPhone just feels like how it was always meant to be played.

I only hope the success of Plants vs. Zombies galvanizes Popcap to continue to add some of the desktop version’s excellent minigames, puzzles and survival modes to the iPhone version, perhaps as in-app purchases. Once you hit a certain skill level in Plants vs. Zombies, Endless Survival is just the only way to play, and I’d easily drop another $5 on PvZ if Popcap gave me the option to do so.

With limited space on the home screen of my iPhone, only the best apps get any real estate. Well, Apple’s Camera app has had its spot officially usurped by Camera Genius ($1.99). And for good reason.

Published by CodeGoo, Camera Genius is full of extra camera features that leave you wondering, why didn’t Apple think of these? Notable favorites include digital zoom, six different line guides, a timed shutter, and most useful, a feature dubbed “Big Button” that turns your entire screen into a shutter button―super useful when you’re trying to take a self portrait with your friends or significant other. Other cool features include a burst mode, sound activated shutter, and anti-shake.

At least with this iPhone you don’t have to worry about managing or forgetting its cookies.  A Japanese bakery called Green Gables whips up these handmade smart cookies — the “camera” on the back is an especially nice touch — but fortunately they spared us the glossy black frosting and made them out of what looks like gingerbread instead.

If you’re looking for a more slavish copy to sink your teeth into, there are other options.

When or if Apple will unveil a refreshed MacBook Pro line is the latest parlor game among Apple owners. Along with watching for unreleased Intel procesors and checking Best Buy’s inventory, fans may have to wait until March or April for a new MacBook Pro, one analyst is suggesting.

A new MacBook Pro could be unveiled in late March, the end of the current quarter, or in April, when the next quarter begins, says Kaufman Brothers analyst Shaw Wu. Wu bases his claim on low inventories of the MacBook.

Philip Elmer-Dewitt of Fortune has a mole at the Apple shareholders’ meeting today. Not much to report, other than that Steve is in good spirits and cracking jokes, but there is one piece of pretty huge news: Apple is planning to open 25 stores in China, signs that the company sees a lot of untapped growth potential in Asia, where it currently has a retail presence in Japan and one store in Beijing so far. The iPhone launch has been regarded as disappointing in China, but this could good go some way to changing things.

Inside Apple’s Shareholder Meeting (Apple 2.0)