According to various reports (including the Financial Times) Apple is due to announce the Mac Tablet device sooner than any of us thought…. in just a few weeks time! Although its reported that Apple will announce the device in January, its thought by many that it won’t become available to buy until later in the year. The report in the FT says that mass production will commence in February, so when it will exactly become available online and in the Apple Store is anyone’s guess.

As to specification, there seems to be some disagreement, with some reports saying the device will be a super-sized iTouch with something like a 7″ screen, whilst others talk of something with a 10″ screen and a proper OS, rather than a version of the iPhone OS. According to eWeek Europe; “Earlier this month, Oppenheimer & Co. financial analyst Yair Reiner released a research note claiming the Apple device will include a 10.1-inch touch screen.”

eWeek is also reporting that the launch event will be on January 26th at Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts in San Francisco.

Speculation is rife that the device will have a mobile data feature included, though who would provide the 3G service is unclear. There is also the suggestion that whoever it is will subsidise the device to bring the upfront cost down.

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• My Tablet Lust May Soon Be Sated – but Not By Apple (geardiary.com)
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• Apple tablet may finally arrive in January (venturebeat.com)
• WSJ Puts Apple Tablet Launch at End of March (iphonesavior.com)
• Will we see the famed Apple tablet next month? (macworld.com)
• Apple Tablet Announcement In Jan 2010? (ubergizmo.com)
• Jobs “extremely happy” with tablet (brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com)
• Apple Books Yerba Buena Center for January 26th (iphonesavior.com)
• How Big Should a Tablet Be? (technologizer.com)

For the second year in a row, Apple is running their 12 Days of Christmas promotion for UK residents. From December 26 to January 6 anyone with a UK iTunes account can download a free song, music video, app, television show, or film from ’some of the biggest star performers’ on iTunes. Each free download is only available for 24 hours, so be sure to sign up for their email alerts to be notified of the new daily download.

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Reports are in the wild that Apple has struck a deal with music-streaming service Lala. Opinions vary as to whether its a total buyout or some other deal. Speculation is that Apple will be introducing a streaming service to iTunes (a la Spotify and others).

Lala’s co-founder Bill Nguyen demoed an iPhone app in October that allowed ‘intelligently cached’ songs to be streamed to your iPhone. Also, the Lala model for music streaming and their Lala’s bundle-payment setup, where users buy stream credits are attractive one to Apple as they could save them millions in credit card processing fees.

Greg Sandoval at CNET and the Wall Street Journal and the NY Times are all confirming that Apple has done the deal, so we wait with anticipation to see what comes of it.

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Apple sometimes makes a show of updates to its hardware range, and then sometimes it doesn’t. This is ne of the latter. They have upgraded the optiosn available, so you can now specify your single-chip Mac pro with a 3.33 GHz Quad-core Xeon, compared to the max 2.93GHz one available on the dual-chip model.

Xserve can now accept 4GB memory modules, recognising up to a 24GB in total in the single-chip version and up to a whopping 48GB in the dual-chip model.

In addition, you can now configure your choice with 2TB drives, meaning you can have up to 8TB in your Mac Pro or 6TB in your Xserve. However, non of these options come cheap, unsurprisingly as Apple is well-know for charging top dollar for Ram. AS of now the UK Apple site hasn’t been updated to reflect these upgrades, so we will have to wait for UK prices.

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If you don’t yet have a contract or an unlocked iPhone, don’t sign up just yet! Now that Orange and Vodaphone are confirmed to have the iPhone on their UK networks (Orange is already offering the iPhone, Vodaphone comes in the New Year) there was a general expectation that we would see price cuts. So far, this hasn’t happened and generally speaking lots of range customers are pretty pissed off about it.

However, that may soon be abut to change. The word is out that Tesco are to sell the iPhone and rumours are that they will have it availble for Christmas. With their reputation for cutting costs and their ambition to expand their mobile phone netwotk presence, we could be abut to see a price war… good news for the consumer and something that will no doubt upset the big network players, especially Vodaphone who will, in effect, be trumped by a supermarket chain, ouch!

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MacGraPhoto has a limited offer where you can get 7 great graphics apps for the Mac for only $39.99. Hurry now though as the offer expires on just over 11 days (30 Nov 2009).

Similar to the MacHeist bundles, this is a fantastic way of getting hold of some great apps at a knockdown price. The apps are:

Priced at $29.95 for a family license or $49.95 for a commercial license, there is currently an offer of $10 discount using the code CCINTRO10D.

Head over now to www.macgraphoto.com before you miss this great offer!

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The Square Trade study showed Apple’s laptops to be more reliable than those from Dell, Lenovo, Acer and HP. It also shows that they were only marginally behind the most reliable brands, namely Asus, Toshiba and Sony (see chart above).

Based on over 30,000 new laptops and netbooks the study shows that on average (over the whole market) 1 in 3 laptops fail within 3 years. Netbooks are also 20% more unreliable than other laptops. All in all, a pretty poor showing for the industry. You can download the study as a pdf from http://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf

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Macworld is the world’s most comprehensive Macintosh OS event, showcasing products and services for professionals involved in media and creative content development for corporate and home applications, as well as for consumers using the Mac at home.

Its happening 9th to 13th February 2010 in San Francisco.big> Macworld 2010 is a five day celebration that will educate, entertain, and immerse you in the Mac community. Macworld offers access to hundreds of Mac products and services, paired with expert advice, demonstrations and instruction. Macworld conference programs feature industry leading minds, presenting cutting edge product training on the topics you most want to see. Whether you are a creative professional or a Mac IT pro, Macworld has the conference content, special presentations, exhibit hall highlights and experiences that meet your special Mac needs.

Although the final list of exhibitors has yet to be confirmed, currently listed on the Macworld 2010: Expo site include Apogee, Codeweavers, Eye-Fi, HP, Houdah Software, Livescribe, Logos Bible Software, MacSpeech, Rogue Amoeba, Targus and Xerox.

Read more and keep up to date with announcements at http://www.macworldexpo.com/home

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