We still don't know what the fabled Apple Tablet actually looks like, or if it even exists, really, but this concept magazine reader from Condé Nast gives us a glimpse at what to expect from tablet apps.

Turn down your volume before hitting play, loud techno music awaits. Down? OK, good. Now let's look at what we've got here. It's about what you would expect from a tablet magazine reader. The big screen lets you soak in the magazine layout without zooming, and the graphics are big and interactive. In a nutshell, it looks like a hi-res iPhone app.

According to the source, Condé Nast doesn't want to take any chances, and the app is a precautionary measure to make sure they're ready if/when the device comes out. So don't take this to mean that launch is imminent. Take it as a sign that even if the tablet doesn't exist, it should, because a lot of huge publishing companies are more than willing to throw their weight behind it. [Wired]

Apple Patent Describes iPod UI "Pushed" to Other Devices...Philips Announces Very Pretty Pro LCD Line...NYTimes Columnist Proposes Boycott of "Pro-Communist China" Bing...Ooma Adds New Handsets and International Plan...

Apple Patent Describes iPod UI "Pushed" to Other Devices

An Apple patent filed in May 2008 describes a way of pushing whatever UI Apple wants to non-Apple hardware, for consistency's sake. That non-Apple hardware could include car stereos or something like the Chumby One (which has iPod functionality, but with a lookalike UI). It's a nice idea for Apple, but could be tricky given the myriad different hardware that might want to take advantage. What if the hardware has a resistive touchscreen, or a shitty processor? Might it just be better to use a custom interface for iPod integration? Regardless, it's in Remainders because it's not really that unexpected or interesting in its implications. [MacRumors]

Philips Announces Very Pretty Pro LCD Line

Philips' new high-end LCD line looks pretty fantastic, with two important caveats. First, let's drool a little: The two models (40- and 46-inch) have a 5,000,000:1 contrast ratio, 1ms response time, 5 HDMI ports (not sure why you'd need that many, but whatever) and a 200Hz refresh rate, with a nice brushed-aluminum look. Now, the caveats. First, they're UK only, and second, they're prohibitively expensive at about $3,000 and $4,100, respectively. Still, drool-worthy. [Engadget]

NYTimes Columnist Proposes Boycott of "Pro-Communist China" Bing

NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has proposed a boycott of Microsoft's Bing search engine due to its supposed pro-Chinese-government censorship of search terms like "Dalai Lama" and "Tienanmen" when searched in simplified Chinese characters. In English and other non-Chinese languages, the results you'd expect from "Tienanmen" show up, but in Chinese, apparently it returns sanitized results (no massacre, in that case). Since I'm not really sure how to type simplified Chinese characters on an all-Amurrican MacBook Pro keyboard, I haven't tested it myself—but if true, it's a little underhanded on Microsoft's part, although certainly paling in comparison to, you know, the Chinese government. What's odd is that Google's Chinese search also returns censored results, but "to a much lesser extent," so I guess it's okay. Weird stuff. [TechFlash]

Ooma Adds New Handsets and International Plan

Internet phone company Ooma began shipping its new Telo handset as well as offering a very cheap international calling plan (500 minutes for $5 per month). Ooma, for those who don't know (I assume this includes everyone) varies from other VoIP services like Vonage by cutting out the monthly fees, instead packing them into a fairly expensive set-top box, at $250. So this international plan requiring a monthly fee is a big deal for them, but it winds up in Remainders because I honestly had not even heard of Ooma until this morning. Oops. [Electronista]

To whom it may concern: Applebee's gift cards, while appropriately monolithic, are not redeemable at Apple Stores or on iTunes. [Thanks Nicholas!]

I get that this Flo TV iPhone demo is just a proof of concept. That's fine! I'm just a little confused as to what the concept is.

Is it just what they're showing us? A Flo TV app, that requires some kind of accessory to tune into broadcasts? That's possible, but given how well the iPhone can stream video over 3G, it'd be a hard sell, even with Flo TV's cable-like channel selection. It would also help if said accessory wasn't larger than the actual iPhone.

Or is it to foster excitement over the idea of native Flo TV hardware support in the iPhone, like in the HTC Imagio? Because that will never, ever happen. So again, why? [Electric Pig]

newVideoPlayer("/gizmodo-voices.flv", 500, 375,""); In 2007 I whined and whined asking for an iPhone Software Developer's Kit. Back then, I asked for five apps. It took two years, but today I've got them all. The last one just came in yesterday.

It's not Voice Candy, but Voices looks as good, if not better: Retro tape recorder and microphone, cute icons, simple touch interface, and sharing via Twitter, Facebook, and eMail, so you can spook everyone with that infernal Reverse Voice effect. For $1, it's impossible to resist.

gawkerGallery(5409221,5,'Voices Gallery');

[iTunes App Store—Thanks Juanlu and Lisa Bettany, who stars in the Voices' promo video]

Now that I think about it, most of the apps I pasted in this graphic are now in the iPhone in one form or another.

Are you still missing a favorite?

Also known as the entire technology press amirite? Ha? In all seriousness though—Maclife asked various bloggers, journalists and tech personalities what their dream Apple products would be, and mocked them all up in detailed renders. Here's what happened:

Veronica Belmont, of Tekzilla/Mahalo/BOL fame/general video on the internet fame, sees Apple finally going ahead with that Courier concept Microsoft keeps dragging their feet on. Or, Apple subsumes Microsoft entirely. What do you know, Belmont?

BoingBoing's/MAKE's Mark Frauenfelder goes as DIY-y as is humanly possible, and projects a future in which Apple is just a bunch of dudes with Arduinos and a pair of pliers. You see, we'll just buy Apple's designs, and your iMake object printer will print them out.

Brian Lam, Man With Hat, just wants his iPhone to get reception in San Francisco, for once. Hence, bunny ears.

There are a couple more, and they're all in the same whimsical, not-quite-serious vein. Check them out at [Maclife]

This year's Microsoft shareholder meeting wasn't a lot of fun for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Chairman Bill Gates, thanks to shareholders grilling him about Apple and the iPhone with questions like the above. Ballmer smacked him right back:

There's certainly always opportunities for improvement. There is a group of people with whom our market share is less. You take any country, including this one, and you say, how are we doing? The truth of the matter is, we do quite well. Even among college students, we do quite well. Do we have an opportunity for improvement? We do. Some of that is marketing some of that is phase of life.

It is important to remember that 96 times out of 100 worldwide, people choose a PC with Windows, that's a good thing. Even in the toughest market, which would be the high end of the consumer market here in the U.S., 83 times out of 100 people choose a Windows PC over a Mac.

Ballmer also remarked that Apple has gained a few "couple of tenths of a percent of market share," but when the audience chuckled, he was prompt to say correct them:

Every couple of tenths matter. They matter when we're increasing our Bing market share, too.

Ooooooh, you are good, Mr Ballmer, you are good. There were many other piercing questions about the iPhone, Android. Check them out at [Techflash]

The 10.6.2 update for Snow Leopard didn't include Atom chipset support, so it wouldn't work on hackintoshes—but didn't keep enterprising hackers from finding a workaround. They promised it last week, and now they've delivered: Atom support is back, although apparently implementing the fix isn't the easiest project. Still, the ball's in Apple's court now. Is this going to turn into a Palm Pre-iTunes thing, or will Apple just let it lie? [Yahoo]

Trade in Your DVDs, Plus a Couple Bucks, and Get the Blu-ray Versions...Steve Ballmer Acknowledges Apple's Gains, Remains Cocky...Sanyo to Build Houses Powered by Solar Energy and Li-Ion Batteries...Sony Announces Vague "iTunes-Like" Store on PlayStation Network for Books, Movies, Music...

Trade in Your DVDs, Plus a Couple Bucks, and Get the Blu-ray Versions

Warner set up a DVD to Blu-ray exchange program called, appropriately enough, DVD2Blu, as sort of a more-tempting version of its HD-DVD to Blu-ray version. The problem is, it's not actually that great of a deal; you're limited to Warner movies, obviously, but it also costs $8-10 per DVD, plus $5 shipping, for the exchange. You might actually be better off just hitting Best Buy or Walmart or whatever and looking for sales, since DVD2Blu could cost you 18 bucks plus the agony of waiting for your new HD copy of The Wedding Singer: Totally Awesome Edition to arrive. [Engadget]

Steve Ballmer Acknowledges Apple's Gains, Remains Cocky

Microsoft held a shareholder's meeting this morning, led by the always-dynamic Steve Ballmer, and an interesting question came up: Why does Microsoft have such a lousy reputation among certain demographics, like, say, upper-middle-class college kids? Ballmer admitted that Apple's been seeing some gains that, while small, are a clear sign that Microsoft has room for improvement, either in marketing or product positioning. It's a pretty clear-headed statement from Ballmer—after all, he notes, Microsoft still has an insane marketshare, even in the high-end consumer demo, so despite Apple's visibility, Microsoft doesn't exactly have cause for concern. That level-headedness is why this story's in Remainders: Where's the explosive, frothing-at-the-mouth, prone to Bidenesque gaffes Ballmer we all know and, um, know? [TechFlash]

Sanyo to Build Houses Powered by Solar Energy and Li-Ion Batteries

Sanyo, considered Japan's "greenest" electronics manufacturer (sort of like being the best-dressed homeless person), is about to start building solar-powered, lithium-ion-based homes in its native country. The houses are all equipped with LED lighting, solar-powered water heater, all that stuff. They'll be a little pricey, at around $355,000—an equivalent non-green house would cost $62,000 less, although the Sanyo houses come with a $30,000 government subsidy. It's in Remainders because it's Japan only, and because I don't understand enough Japanese to learn any more about it. [Crunchgear]

Sony Announces Vague "iTunes-Like" Store on PlayStation Network for Books, Movies, Music

Sony announced the tentatively named Sony Online Service today—it's described as an "iTunes-like" service on the PlayStation Network, offering movies, music, and books, all media for which Sony also sells accompanying hardware. It'll also allow users to upload their own video, and will probably have support for independent app development later on down the road. We don't really know much else, like, say, a launch date or pricing (or even a final name), so it winds up here, alone in the dark corner of Gizmodo we call Remainders. [AppleInsider via Engadget]

There are loads of Apple haters out there (even some among our commenters), and they deserve great tech gifts just as much as that guy who thinks all PMPs are called iPods. Here are some very un-Apple gift ideas.

BTW, if you hate the gallery format as much as the Grinch hated Christmas, click here.

Zune HD + ZunePass and HD Dock: If your Apple hater is in the market for a PMP, there's no better option than the Zune HD—in terms of media capabilities, it kicks the iPod Touch's standard-def ass with HD radio, 720p video output, a killer OLED screen and a gorgeous, media-centric UI. It'll play any file your iPod can (that aren't iTunes protected), and can also handle video up to 720p. (iPods can't go there yet.) The ZunePass, which gives unlimited music downloads for $15 a month, is a killer supplement, and the HD dock, which outputs high-def video to TVs, is a must-have add-on. Put them together and you will bestow your Apple hater with bragging rights over those poor, deprived iPod owners. $290, $70 (dock), $15/month (ZunePass). [Link; Zune HD, HD Dock, ZunePass]

HP TouchSmart 600: The new iMac is nice and all, but try poking it in the face and see what happens. Here, I'll spoil it for you: Nothing. The HP TouchSmart 600 isn't perfect, but its multitouch media capabilities offer a wow factor no Mac desktop can boast. And that's what it is now—there's no telling what developers will do with Windows 7's integrated touch. Plus, it's comparatively cheaper, spec for spec, than the iMac, and you can get a Blu-ray drive built-in, with no philosophical kerfuffle from Apple about the future of digital media. You want to watch Planet Earth in HD on Blu-ray right now, dammit, and you shouldn't have to wait for the HD stream to trickle in. $1,110. [Link; Amazon]

Whatever the Hot PC Game Is Right Now: I don't play videogames that don't feature Mario prominently, but even I know that anyone with a passing interest in computer gaming has to have a Windows PC. Apple haters will love a copy of Dragon Age: Origins or Left 4 Dead 2 on PC, not just because they're great games (or so I hear—thanks Will!) but also because you can't play 'em on the Mac OS. $40 each. [Dragon Age: Origins, Left 4 Dead 2]

Motorola Droid: Sure, Matt may have called the Droid "the second best smartphone you can buy," the best being the iPhone 3GS, but Apple haters will find plenty to love about the Droid—and plenty to loathe about the iPhone. I won't rehash our review (or Verizon's intimidating "Droid Does" ad campaign), but anybody who's into tech enough to hate Apple will really be into the distinctly un-Apple Droid. Multitasking, open-source, a ballsy industrial design, and a hardware keyboard: Droid's got it, iPhone doesn't. $200. [Link; Verizon]

Logitech Performance MX Mouse: I don't care if Apple's Magic Mouse is the best Apple mouse ever—in my opinion, one shared among Apple lovers and haters alike, Apple's mouse pedigree is nothing to be proud of. Style over ergonomics, awkward touch scrolling, high price—the Magic Mouse is an easy gadget to hate. The Logitech Performance MX isn't. Logitech crammed in an amazing new laser technology that even works on glass, it fits comfortably in the hand and has real buttons, dammit, like in the good old days. If you're not desperate for something to match your Mac, and certainly your Apple hater is not, the Logitech Performance MX is the right choice. $80. [Link; Amazon]

Acer Aspire One: Apple doesn't think netbooks match up with their premium brand reputation, but the public doesn't care—netbooks are huge sellers, and the Acer Aspire One AOD250 is one of the most interesting yet. It dual-boots not one but two non-Apple OSes (Android and XP), offers a whopping nine hours of battery life, and its diminutive 10.1-inch size is just right for travel—perfect for somebody who wants to point out the gaping 8-to-12-inch hole in Apple's lineup. $330. [Link; Amazon]

Note: In an earlier version of this post, I accidentally described a not-yet-released notebook from Asus, not this sweet little netbook. Sorry for the confusion.

Tickets to a Girl Talk Show: Aside from putting on a damn fun show, mash-up artist Girl Talk (real name Gregg Gillis) is not only one of the most prominent electronic musicians working today but the only exclusive Windows user in that genre who comes to mind. Plus, a major part of his shows, since there's no, you know, band, or anything, is inviting the crowd up on stage in a sweaty, hipstery, dancey mass while he mixes music live on his PC—with Saran Wrap taped all over it, for protection against flying perspiration. Girl Talk proves that Apple doesn't have a monopoly on music production, and your Apple hater will have a great time to boot. $15-25. [Link; Girl Talk, Image from Pedestrian.tv]

DON'T BUY HP Envy 13: But why not buy this well-reviewed, recently released, Windows-7-running laptop? I'll tell you why. The HP Envy 13 is a photocopy of a photocopy of the 13-inch MacBook Pro—same aluminum case, same black bezel around the screen, same chiclet keyboard with reversed Fn keys, same multitouch clicking trackpad. It's definitely not a bad laptop, and does have a few advantages over the MacBook Pro (like a better screen and crazy battery life) but it's also got weaknesses: No optical drive, for one, but also an unforgivably high price. The Envy 13 starts at $1700, $500 more than the MacBook Pro. Although if it were one day given the Hackintosh treatment, it would be the creepiest Mac clone ever, it's currently quite un-Hackintoshable (if that's a term). [Link; HP]

Don't forget to recommend your own favorite Apple-hating gifts in comments—include pics and pricing if possible.

All Giz Wants is our annual round-up of favorite gift ideas, including amazing attainable objects and a few far-out fantasies. We'll be popping guides catered to different interests several times per day for the next week, so keep checking back.

Apple told The Little App Factory to change the name of their popular app iPodRip, as it had the word iPod in it. The CEO sent a passionate letter to Steve Jobs, and he got a response.

Here's the letter he sent:

Dear Mr. Jobs,

My name is John Devor and I'm the co-owner of a small Mac shareware company named The Little App Factory and a long-term Apple customer and shareholder. I doubt you're aware but we recently received a letter from a law firm working on Apple's behalf instructing us that we had violated several of Apple's trademarks in our application iPodRip and asking us to cease using the name and Apple trademarks in our icons.

We have been distributing iPodRip since 2003 with the aim of providing a method to recover music, movies and photos from iPods and iPhones in the event of a serious hardware failure on their Mac which leads to data loss. Our goal has been to provide the highest quality product coupled with the highest quality service in a bid to resolve some of the angst that is generated by such an ordeal; service befitting of an Apple product. In this department we think we have succeeded as we have approximately 6 million customers, many Apple employees, music artists and other notable people in society. In fact I'd argue that our customer service is the best of all competing applications in our niche as many of them are scams and frauds that leave Apple customers with a terrible taste in their collective mouths. We fear very much that tens of thousands of Apple customers looking to recover their own music and having heard of our product via word-of-mouth or otherwise, will instead find a product produced by one of our competitors, and will wind up the victim of a scam (one closely-named competitor charges a hidden monthly fee, for instance).

It is quite obvious that we mean Apple no harm with the use of the name iPodRip, or of the inclusion of trademarked items in our icons, and in fact I believe that we have been providing an excellent secondary service to Apple customers that has potentially caused you many repeat clients. In fact, we are quite aware that Apple support and store staff have recommended our software on numerous occasions as far back as 2004 so we have felt that we were doing something right!

With this in mind, we are in desperate need of some assistance and we beseech you to help us to protect our product and our shareware company, both of which we have put thousands upon thousands of hours of work into. Our company goal is to create Mac software of the highest quality with the best user experience possible. I myself dropped out of school recently to pursue a path in the Mac software industry, and you yourself have been a consistent inspiration for me.

If there is anything at all you can do with regards to this matter, we would be most grateful.

Best,

John Devor

And Steve replied:

Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

So they changed the name of their app to iRip. Fair enough! [CrunchGear]

Every time I receive an emailed loan agreement for a product review, the process of signing it becomes a complete pain. I either have to print, sign and scan the document, or paste a signature in Photoshop. No more!

Zosh is a $3 app that allows you to sign attached documents on your iPhone. Basically, you forward the emailed document to Zosh from the iPhone's mail app, then you open the Zosh app to sign it (plus you can add a date and stuff).

Testing the app, the signing process actually work pretty well. Maybe the neatest component of the interface is that the signature line auto tracks your finger, meaning that if your signature goes larger than the iPhone's screen, it'll just pan over.

However, there's one MASSIVE catch. You can only sign PDFs at the moment, not text files like .docs. For me, that's a dealbreaker (ladies), and hopefully one that will be remedied (through simple auto-conversion or something) in later versions. [Zosh]

Senior Apple Exec Jeff Dauber's passion for technology is matched only by his passion for contemporary art, which is why he called on architect Thom Faulders to build him a backyard deck that is a mind-bending combination of both.

gawkerGallery(5408452,3,'Apple Puke Deck');

The Japanese maple in Jeff Dauber's San Francisco backyard is not at the center of a carbon-sucking vortex. Sorry, sci-fi fans, but the Berkeley-based architect Thom Faulders's perfectly flat deck only looks like its far corner has its own warped gravity. Ever since Francesco Borromini's Gallery Spada, in Rome, forced perspectives and architectural patronage have gone hand in hand, but whereas the Renaissance architect employed a mathematician to make that arcade seem longer through foreshortening, Faulders used 3-D–modeling software to achieve Deformscape's dipping effect.

"I wanted someone to barf when they look at it," says Dauber

So Dauber serves guests burgers on the built-in grill only to get a perverse satisfaction when they puke it up later on. Nice. But the weirdness doesn't end there. Faulders also designed much of the interior space of the home, turning it into a bachelor pad/art gallery with crazy walls and ceilings that appear to undulate. Needless to say, if you suffer from motion sickness don't hang out with this man. [Metropolis via Fast Company]

Everyone's making money off the iPhone, so that might as well include George Lucas. $30 this December. [StarWarsShop via ChipChick]

That crazy DigiTimes—purveyors of always-failed-Apple rumors—now says that its manufacturer "sources" believe that there will be two Apple tablet models: a 9.7-incher with OLED screen made by LG, and the 10.6-inch version everyone has heard about.

DigiTimes says that the 9.7-inch OLED panels are priced at about $500 bucks today, and the screen would account for about 30 percent of the device's $1500 to $1700 cost when it arrives in the second quarter of next year. OLED prices are expected to fall over the next couple of years, though. As for the 10.6-incher, that's still said to be in the $800 to $1000 ballpark.

No word yet from them on the rumored matter synthesizer and teleporter module, but give it a couple more months, and they will spill it all out. [DigiTimes]

Within seconds of installing CatPaint, I felt like the Matisse of adding cats to photos. Within minutes, I was Leonardo da goddamn Vinci.

Sometimes the best apps are the simplest, and CatPaint is nothing if not simple. Cats can be added to preexisting photos or cat-scarce shots from the iPhone's camera, and either saved to your camera roll or sent via email. Using it takes a while to get used to: Once you've selected a cat from the app's animal palette and set the slider for size, each tap on the photo instantly splashes a new cat at the point of contact, which can't be edited, save for a temperamental shake-to-delete function. But seriously, not the point:

gawkerGallery(5407803,6,'');

See?!? A dollar. [iTunes via Macworld]

Although it'll be awkward to have this iPetals solar charger out on the street, taking advantage of the sun to keep your phone charged is just smart.

gawkerGallery(5407576,3,'');

Only a concept now, but this charger-that's-also-a-iPhone-stand is easy enough that some Chinese company could quickly put out a solution in a few months. [Petit Invention via Into Mobile]

Our iMac review included a 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo chip inside, but we received the top-of-the-line iMac housing the more promising 2.8GHz Core i7 processor. Do more cores make up for lower clock speeds? Yes. Often 2X to 3X.

The Basic Differences in Chips

First off, I should note that the Core i7 chip has what Intel calls a "turbo mode." That is, when it's not utilizing all of its cores, it can dynamically overclock itself up to 3.4GHz on whatever single core is in use. It can, as shown in this video, work in steps. So you get the turbo benefit when using some of the four cores in this iMac's chip, but you also get it when all cores are being partially used. For example, if four cores are running but only at a fraction of their total capacity (less then 100%), the cores can use that electrical/thermal overhead to overclock to varying degrees. This should theoretically make up for the difference between the two-core 3.06GHz chip and the hyperthreaded quad core chip at a base of 2.8GHz.

The other thing to realize about these newer Core i7 chips are that they have no northbridge—or bus—between the memory and CPU. The memory controller is built right into the processor, and there's a new tech called QuickPath interconnect which connects the cores in a point-to-point architecture. Core i7 supports triple-channel memory (which would use three banks at once), but this iMac only came loaded with two banks of RAM filled. Like our other iMac, that's a 2GB + 2GB arrangement.

Matt explains more about i7 here. (And yes, there are differences between i7 and i5, besides clock speed.)

*Note that this machine also had a faster ATI Radeon 4850 video card with 512MB of RAM (versus the 4670 card in the other iMac) which may have impacted performance in several apps. I have no idea which of these apps uses the GPU to accelerate its tasks under Snow Leopard. (For example, Preview may use it to help render JPGs faster, or it may not. Apple could not tell me. In Adobe After Effects, the Radeon series of cards apparently is not supported for OpenCL acceleration. )

Performance with Multithreaded Apps

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In short, any task we tried that expressly was written to either a) take advantage of multiple cores, or, b) take advantage of multiple cores through Snow Leopard's multicore middleware, Grand Central Dispatch, were 2 to 3 times faster. (More on that here.) These results include:

• 64-bit versions of Geekbench, which focus on CPU and memory tests.
• Adobe After Effects benchmarks
• Opening 20 images of Tokyo Tower that are 2000x2000 pixels and 35MB each.

Impressive stuff, but honestly, those tests were kind of uninteresting to me. I mean, those tests don't really have any correlation to my daily computing use. So on a whim, after benchmarking, I tested Handbrake, the DVD ripping software I love. It, too, was freaking fast.

I know the app is multithreaded, but I did not know what level of optimization it was written for. I was blown away by a 3x speed multiplier with the i7. On the Core i7 iMac, it took 43 minutes to rip a DVD, Storm Riders, a surfing film from the '70s featuring Gerry Lopez (my favorite) and others. On the Core 2 Duo machine, it took 147 minutes! I know this is basically a DVD read test coupled with decoding and video conversion, but the results have me excited because this is a real task that takes my computer a long time to do, performed by a program that hasn't been revised in a year.

Performance With Single-Core Optimized Apps (Otherwise Known as Reality)

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Unfortunately, there are still very few applications that take advantage of multiple cores directly or via Snow Leopard's GCD, not even video-based, let alone general purpose computing.

Photoshop CS4 on the Mac, which is not set up to handle multicore processors, showed almost less than a 3% improvement using the Driver Heaven benchmark. Basic tasks, like booting and shutdown, saw virtually none. Playing the 1080p Quicktime trailer of Avatar consistently showed that the i7 was using 3% less of its total CPU than the Core2Duo, but I wonder if that's a result of the faster graphics card kicking in using CoreCL. Xbench, the old program that does a more comprehensive job of benchmarking a system from disks to processors, showed almost no difference.

I think Xbench, which hasn't been updated in years, is a solid benchmark for that old program that you depend on but has been long abandoned or at least ignored by its developer.

These scores, again, are in relation to the top line 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo iMac we tested. Some benchmarks have come in from the web comparing the i7 to the i5. Here's one that claims a 30% jump using Geekbench. Now we know Geekbench likes and does well with more cores and is a synthetic CPU test. But if the i5 is 30% slower, and the i7 pulls even with the 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo chip in single threaded activity—most day to day activity—does that mean the i5 is slower than the cheaper Core 2 Duo? Maybe. Probably not 30%, since Geekbench is strictly CPU/memory and likes more cores, and this stuff does not translate so literally in the real world. But we can assume the i5 will have 30% less jump from the top tier Core 2 Duos, translating into a mere 1.3X to 2X speed increase from last gen chips on programs that like cores.

Value

For the most part, in our review, I said that you should stick to the preconfigured options, upgrading to Apple's next recommended config before considering upgrades to the lower tier models. How does that advice change now that we've seen the i7? I don't know! I guess it depends if you're a betting man. If you think programs for Snow Leopard using GCD are coming, paying $200 to $500 bucks more from the top line Core 2 Duo chip for an i5 or i7 might make sense. The probability of you getting programs that can use those extra cores goes up if you are a graphics or video professional who expects to see support from Adobe, Apple, etc. (Apple already claims big jumps in Aperture that we weren't able to test.) Or if you rip a lot of DVDs! The rest of you? The Core 2 Duo stuff could be fine for today and fine for tomorrow. But the Core i7 is not worse for today and will definitely be faster tomorrow. It just costs more.

Me personally? I'd opt for the Core i7. I just might wait til the new iMacs refresh a bump and the i7 is cheaper and part of a standard build. But I'm patient like that.

[iMac Review]

At last, after being blowed a billion times, it's the iPhone's turn. Believe it or not, there's a new application for the iPhone that uses its speaker to blow air. No peripherals. No attachments. Check the video for yourself.

The developers say that you can use it to "blow out candles, herbs, and refresh your skin during hot summer nights." I wonder how many birthdays you can go through before your speaker breaks from all the vibration. [iTunes App Store via Krapps]

AT&T's 3G Network Sees 2,000% Increase Since iPhone 3G Release...Droid Camera Fixed, Without Explanation?...Genius Bar App Won't Help if Your iPhone Is Broken...Samsung Beats out Vizio for Top LCD Seller...

AT&T's 3G Network Sees 2,000% Increase Since iPhone 3G Release

In the wake of a big $65 million upgrade to its network here in the San Francisco Bay Area, AT&T revealed that the improvement was due to 3G usage being up 2,000% after the release of the iPhone 3G last year. That sounds like a crazy number for which the iPhone deserves all kinds of high fives, but it's really not surprising—how many AT&T 3G phones were there before the iPhone 3G, even? And of course 3G use across the board is up in crazy numbers, since smartphones have really started taking off in the last year or so—so to be honest, the number doesn't really mean all that much. Hence its ending up here in the sad pit of Remainders. [All Things D]

Droid Camera Fixed, Without Explanation?

The Motorola Droid camera is a serious problem. I can't compete with Matt's angry poetry on the subject, so here it is, clipped from his review:

The camera is complete garbage. It takes 10 years to start up, 2 to focus, and another 4 to actually take the goddamn picture. And there's no distinct visual feedback to let you know a photo's been snapped. And the photos suck. That pumpkin shot, in decent lighting, is as good as it gets. Like I said in the Android 2.0 review, I don't know if it's the hardware or the software, but it's inexcusably bad.

Yow. But users have spontaneously been reporting that the camera, all of a sudden, has stopped sucking—what's the deal? Apparently there was some kind of bug wherein a particular state of the clock (meaning, time of day) screws with the Droid's autofocusing, which sounds insane to me, but what do I know? Apparently it should work okay now, and while it's temporary, the incoming Dec. 11th bug fix should take care of things. [Electronista]

Genius Bar App Won't Help if Your iPhone Is Broken

Rumor has it that Apple is planning to add a Genius Bar app to the App Store (appappappapp) that will let you make appointments, track your place in line, and curse the world when you realize you can't use the app because your iPhone is broken, which is the whole reason you need to make the appointment in the first place. Catch 22 apps are the very best kind of apps. [TUAW]

Samsung Beats out Vizio for Top LCD Seller

I bet you've been waiting by your computer, eager to see who managed to eke out the top spot in the LCD sales wars this fiscal quarter. Will it be Vizio, the low-priced upstart who took the LCD world by storm? Or Samsung, the crafty veteran with the quality sets and sleek design? Looks like this quarter, Samsung took the prize—and it's in Remainders because honestly who cares, at all. [CrunchGear]