Apple Planning San Francisco Event in January

Apple has something planned for Late January at a venue in San Francisco and the general consensus among speculators and rumor mongers is that it has something to do with the long rumored tablet device it has been working on. Reuters is reporting that the company behind the iPhone and iPod touch
has reserved space in late January at a venue in San Francisco in advance of a planned product announcement. this report is based on information gleaned for a Financial Times story that ran on Wednesday.

Apple has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and is rumored to be making a “major product announcement” on January 26. Apple would neither confirm nor deny the rumors. Apple used the Yerba Buena Center last September when it hosted an iPod event that featured the first public appearance by Chief Executive Steve Jobs following his return from a lengthy medical leave. In other words, this is one of Apple’s favorite venues for revealing or hosting very big things for the company.

The excitement surrounding a long rumored tablet computer is helping to fan the flames of this story no doubt, but apple has never officially confirmed that it is working on such a device. The speculation is that this device will resemble a larger version of its iPhone or iPod touch devices. While there has never been any confirmation on this device, analysts believe it to be true and predict that the device will launch in the Spring of 2010 – possibly March.

Apple Builds Product Loyalty With iPod Touch

Apple has not become a successful company by accident. Its latest marketing strategy – using the iPod Touch to build product loyalty amongst kids, hoping to graduate them to iPhones – is nothing short of brilliant.

The iPod Touch was an extremely popular gift this Christmas season. Two different models of the popular music player were second and third place on Amazon’s list of bestselling electronics. On Christmas Day, downloads for the iPod Touch soared, passing downloads for the iPhone by 172 percent. Downloads for all generations of the iPod Touch increased by over 1000 percent on Christmas Day, and by over 900 percent for the 3G iPod Touch.

The iPod Touch is popular with kids because it is not just a music player; it also has the App store, which opens up a world of possibilities. Parents like the iPod Touch because it doesn’t require an expensive monthly contract like the iPhone does.

Apple likes the iPod Touch because it gets an entire generation of kids to want more Apple products, particularly the iPhone. When these kids are old enough for cell phones (or better cell phones than they have now), they will be ready for the iPhone, so to speak, because of their familiarity with the interface on the iPod Touch.

iPod Touch with camera in 2010: rumours reignite

Apple’s iPod Touch may still be in line for a camera, according to renewed rumours online. We heard rumours of Apple working on a camera-toting iPod Touch in September but now the whispers are back…

According to an “inside source”, who spoke to the LA Gadgets Examiner, Apple did plan to launch an iPod Touch with a camera in September. However, quality control issues allegedly nixed its arrival.

iPod Touch teardown shots have already shown that the device has space for a camera in amongst its digital guts so this speculation sounds convincing. But, of course, it’s easy to claim an “inside source” as Apple never comments on speculation.

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The rumours suggest that the next generation of the iPod Touch will include the same camera as the iPod Nano. We’re not so sure about that. Will Apple restrict the iPod Touch to video recording as it has done with the iPod Nano?

Windows 7 Gains In Market Share Race Over Mac OS X

As per the weekend reports, the latest operating system Windows 7 has fared better in market share than Apple’s Mac OS X. Net Applications has reported that Windows 7 has passed the 5% market share, which is more than the total market share of all versions of Apple's Mac OS X.

The internet metrics firm has also reported that, the Windows 7 has achieved the distinction of getting a constant 5% and 5.14% throughout the last week between Nov 15-21. The statistics also showed that its 5.07% for two-day average was also higher than the Mac OS X during that period.

"It's safe to say that Windows 7's daily share did peak above Mac's weekly share," said Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president at Net Applications.

According to Vizzaccaro, his company has not yet compiled daily averages for Mac OS X, but they are confident that Windows 7 will fare well for a long stretch.

"Certainly, the trend line shows Windows 7 will surpass Mac share soon," he predicted.

Statistics also shows that, Windows has done better than the previous share of 92.54% in October. Earlier, it had gained 0.28% in March 2008, the largest gain till now.

 "We may be seeing an uptick in overall Windows share this month," Vizzaccaro confirmed.

 "This isn't too rare, but if we see three or four months in a row of Windows regaining market share, that would be a significant trend change," he added.

It has been noticed that Windows 7’s market share is growing steadily since Oct 22 and soon it has also climbed up to 2.7% in OS sales. Its fourth week sale in October stood at 3.7%. So at the current pace of selling the new OS would cross 4% in market share gains.

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App-struments: Musicians make sweet music on iPhone and iPod Touch

More and more musicians are turning to alternative outlets to get their work noticed, and they've expanded the media they're using in the process. The iPhone is a prime example - and it's inspired some great apps, from established artists and indie unknowns alike, that use technology to trump tradition.

Hi, How Are You : Ever heard of Daniel Johnston? Neither had we. But we know him now, having gotten hooked on this fun platformer/puzzle game hybrid that not only features the cult songwriter's music but also a series of cartoon characters he's developed over the years. Johnston didn't make the app - he let developers Dr. Fun Fun and Smashing Studios do that (they're big fans, no doubt) - but by lending his aesthetic to the game, he pleases diehards and newbies alike, who can sing along to his songs as they play. After a few repetitions of "Favorite Darling Girl" as we meandered our way through the first few levels, we found ourselves plunking down another 99 cents for the song on iTunes.

Bloom : The first in an ongoing series of apps from ambient music icon Brian Eno and partners is part mission statement, part stress-buster. Tap the screen to form raindrops of color and create tonal patterns that repeat and slowly fade, or choose a mood and let the app perform for you. It's a song, an album, a musical instrument and an interactive art exhibit, all in one.

I Am T-Pain : Auto-Tune has either ruined pop music or revolutionized it, depending on your perspective. Either way, the software that makes singing voices pitch-perfect - and a tinge robotic - is a heck of a lot of fun, especially when you can use it to sing along with exclusive backing tracks from the MC of Auto-Tune himself, hip-hopper T-Pain. And you can share your recordings via e-mail and Facebook.

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Want to make your own sweet music? There are apps for that. Here are our picks for Best and Worst app-struments.

GRAB IT: LaDiDa : If you're serious about music, there are inside-baseball iPhone apps for recording and editing songs that go way over our heads. But for writing dumb ditties to annoy your little sister, LaDiDa is perfect. Just pick a style and tempo, sing into the mic and the app automatically loops in the backing track after you've finished recording. Think Microsoft Songsmith in your pocket.

SKIP IT: More Cowbell : For every groundbreaking app, there's a novelty app that's fun for about 15 seconds ... then makes you wonder if you could've put your dollar to better use. More Cowbell keeps the "SNL" joke alive, letting you tap a cowbell along with your iTunes library. It's amusing, but when will you ever use it?

Microsoft boosted as Windows 7 sales outpace Vista

Ballmer: sales have been 'fantastic' Photograph: Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Early sales of Windows 7 suggest that shoppers are switching toMicrosoft's new operating system in their droves, shrugging off the cloud cast by its predecessor, Windows Vista.

Analysis of sales figures by research firm NPD Group suggested that sales of Windows 7 in the United States were 234% higher than when Vista launched in January 2007.

"In a slow environment for packaged software Windows 7 brought a large number of customers into the software aisles"," said Stephen Baker, a vice president at NPD. "Vista had a slight advantage at launch, as January traditionally has a bigger sales footprint than October."

The positive news was backed up by comments yesterday from Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, who said that sales had been "fantastic".

High interest in the launch was already clear when Windows 7 hit shops on October 22nd, with Amazon UK saying that the software was thebiggest pre-order in the its history, outstripping phenomenally popular books such as Harry Potter and Dan Brown.

Ballmer also suggested that the surge of interest in Windows 7 had breathed some life into the troubled PC market.

"People don't buy operating systems, they buy computers with operating systems on them," he told an audience in Japan.

NPD's figures suggested that the system's launch had created an initial 49% surge in computer sales compared to the same point last year - a figure that is lower than the equivalent boost created by the release of Vista, though the disparity could be partly attributed to the slowdown in computer sales caused by the recession.

Figures from another research firm, IDC, suggested that computer sales had increased by 2.3% in the third quarter of the year - but most industry executives expect that number to increase significantly as customers consider buying new Windows 7 PCs in the run-up to Christmas.

Whatever the case, the numbers will come as a relief to Microsoft, which recently announced another problematic financial quarter and announced that it was cutting 800 jobs earlier this week.

The Apple iPod touch you can't buy

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12 November 2009 23:03 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Apple has started rolling out its tricked out iPod touch to its stores, to allow its salespeople to swipe your credit card regardless of where you are in the store.

The iPod touch-based point of sale (POS) systems includes an add-on scanner that lets employees scan multiple barcodes at the same time.

In addition to being able to show off Apple technology, switching to an iPod touch-based POS means employees won't have to rely on the Windows-based EasyPay devices they used to use and allows Apple to banish Microsoft from store all together (apart from software they actually sell).

Experienced first hand, the sales clerk was able to process our order, have a receipt sent to our address and move on to the next customer within a matter of minutes.

The Apple salesperson wasn't overly keen on letting us snap the shot so we promised not to mention which store we were in.

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The Fight over the Web Browsers

It's probably the most important and debated piece of software on the modern computer. See how your fellow readers get around the net, and vote for your favorite web browser, in this week's Hive Five.

Picture background created with WEB2DNA Art Project.

The only proper way to follow up on the passionate flurry of voting that last week's Hive Five Best Linux Distributions created was to ask you about your favorite web browser. You didn't disappoint—Lifehacker readers came out in force, logging nearly a thousand votes to support their favorite browsers. We've tallied up the votes and we're here to share the top five browsers.

Chrome

Windows only (for practical purposes, but soon on Mac and Linux, if we're lucky): Some browsers have roots going back to the early 1990s—Chrome, on the other hand, is the new kid on the block. Although Chrome has a distant relationship to Konqueror and is a cousin to the Safari web browser—both share the speedy WebKit rendering engine—Google's browser is less than a year old. Despite its youth, it's already garnered praise for its minimalist interface and snappy page rendering. Chrome also handles site errors and quirks well, and each individual tab is a unique process, so a crash or lag in one shouldn't pull down or crash the others. In general, though, Chrome has caught attention for running a performance-focused JavaScript engine in a lightweight GUI. Also worth noting, Chrome has been holding its own in the recent Pwn2Own security challenge, with the distinction of being the only browser left standing after the first day of security exploits and attacks. For a closer look at Chrome, check out our screenshot tour.

Opera

Windows/Mac/Linux: Opera is a rock-solid browser with roots stretching back to 1994. Many of the features baked right into Opera are either not implemented in other browsers, or require multiple extensions at the cost of system resources—navigation by mouse gestures is one of the flashier examples. Despite being feature-packed, Opera has a fairly small market share, due largely in part to being trialware up until 2000 and advertisement-supported until 2005—many people were turned off by the expense, if not the ads. Still, Opera proponents have long claimed that Opera beats Internet Explorer and Firefox when it comes to speedy rendering. Another selling point for Opera is the quality of the built-in tools. For many users, the built-in RSS reader, email client, and BitTorrent client do their jobs admirably, cutting down on the number applications they need running at once. Opera is extensible, but the pool of available extensions is radically smaller than that available for Firefox. More screenshots and details on Opera's features are available here.

Firefox

Windows/Mac/Linux: Firefox is the grandchild of the venerable Mosaic browser and free-roaming son of Netscape. Although Firefox has a myriad of user-friendly, forward-thinking features, a decently secure framework, and an open-source ideology, its most prominent is extensibility. When convincing a Firefox user to abandon Firefox for anything else, even temporarily, you won't have to fight them over giving up the AwesomeBar or about:config tweaks—you'll hear a common, understandable refrain: "What about my extensions?" The repository of extensions maintained by Mozilla currently has over 6,000 entries, covering everything from blocking advertisements, to managing your clipboard, to allowing you to further customize your browsing experience with scripts a la Greasemonkey (here's 10 of our must-have picks). Combine the passion people have for extensions and the ability tosync those extensions across multiple computers and portable installations, and you've got a force to be contended with. For a closer look at Firefox, make sure to check out our power user's guide to Firefox 3 and the top 10 Firefox 3 features.

Internet Explorer

Windows only: Internet Explorer still commands a healthy chunk of the browser market, mostly because it ships with the most popular operating system on Earth and fits, if not exactly elegantly, into corporate computer plans. While many or most IE users stick with it for lack of wanting to try something else, Lifehacker readers definitely don't fall into that crowd—the majority of readers who voted in favor of Internet Explorer are sporting Internet Explorer 8. By contrast, nearly 20 percent of those surfing the web right now are using Internet Explorer 6, which had its initial release in 2001. Version 8 could mark a resurgence for the brand, though. It's the first version of Internet Explorer to have a strong focus on web standards compliance, as well as increasing rendering speed. And like Chrome, Internet Explorer 8 maintains a separate process for each tab to increase stability and security. Internet Explorer 8 has also beefed up its security measures from previous versions, including active filtering against malicious cross-site scripting and ActiveX isolation from the core of the browser. For more information about what's new in Internet Explorer 8 check out our screenshot tour and overview.

Safari

Windows/Mac: Safari is Apple's contribution to the web browsing world, built originally to fit snugly inside OS X. Like Chrome, Safari runs the speedy WebKit rendering engine for snappy page loads. In addition to its WebKit core, Safari also has the Nitro JavaScript engine, which lays claim to radically faster JavaScript execution than Internet Explorer and Firefox (in its own testing reports, anyways). Safari sports Apple's Cover Flow browser for perusing your history and bookmarks and an eye-catching display of the top 24 sites you've visited as the default page when Safari is loaded. For more features, check out ourscreenshot tour.

     Internet Explorer (64.66%; Usage by version number)     Mozilla Firefox (26.08%)     Safari (3.74%)     Google Chrome (3.17%)     Opera (1.53%)     Other (0.82%)

Modern Warfare 2 PC fans - Will Not be Happy

Some of you may have already seen the news but for those of you who haven’t you may want to take a look at this. That’s right kids, IW just took a massive pile of crap on you. Robert Bowlinig confirmed the following details recently:

According to the latest BASHandSlash recorded webcast (skip to the 1hour, 39minute mark for MW2), a number of very interesting bits of information have started to make their way onto the internet.

Robert Bowling has confirmed that the PC version of Call of Duty is essentially ruined as far as multiplayer and customization goes. Let’s get a quick rundown here of what Bowling said on the webcast.

• IW has control of the game
• IWnet servers will host multiplayer
• DLC will be a charged item for PC
• No dedicated servers <– WTF?
• Matchmaking system used to play with similarly ranked players
• VAC instead of PB
• Semi-capable password servers
• Semi-capable ad-hoc servers
• Competitive play is dead <– good job IW, idiots.
• MW2 mods would not be possible
• Full integration into Steam

I haven’t pre-ordered the game myself because when I pre-orderd COD5|WaW I ended up buying the game twice because the shipping was messed up. But you can be damn sure I won’t be spending $60 on a crippled piece of crap like this. If I wanted to have lame graphics, no mods, and no dedicated servers then I’d just go play on console. Not to mention controllers are a joke.

This news has really reuined my entire weekend, I was so excited for MW2 and now they just rip the dream away. I’ve been waiting for MW2 release for months and IW just took a huge steaming pile of shit on my dreams. I’m going to be stuck on COD4 until I’m 50 years old.

For those of you who have pre-ordered I encorage you to cancel your pre-orders. Do not let these assholes ruin MW2 for the PC community.

Here are some links for you to check out where you can join in the rioting:

• RAGE ON STEAM FORUMS
• RAGE ON CSNATION
• RAGE ON BASHANDSLASH
• SIGN THE PETITION HERE

For all you console gamers out there please understand where PC gamers are coming from. Yes, I know that these things are the way the game has been for you since the start but for us, it hasn’t. We pay lots of money to keep our gaming computers up to date with the latest hardware. We take great pride in our mods and competitive play. What IW has basically done here is kill it all off in the hopes they can make a few extra dollars from us. I really don’t know how to explain it to console gamers who have never played PC or know anything about PC gaming. If you’re a casual/weekend only gamer then the latest news about this means pretty much nothing to you. If you’re like me and many others who play Call of Duty daily or almost daily this news completely kills everything about MW2 and basically locks us into COD4 all so IW can try and make a few bucks off map packs and other downloaded content. I really expected better than this from IW, I am VERY disappointed.

I for one am TIRED of COD4 and I was really excited about MW2 and now this. I encorage everyone who has MW2 pre-ordered to cancel their order to make a statement.