The deal with Starz that gives Netflix (and us) streaming access to newer movies apparently arched a lot of eyebrows, and even Netflix admitted it's gonna have to start getting permission directly for studios—probably paying more for the movies. It's also gotta fight the entrenched window system, the strange path a movie follows from theatrical release to DVD to HBO to cable, which is how movie studios continue to pull profits out of a movie long after it leaves the big screen.

BusinessWeek makes it clear it's not gonna be easy. But that just means I'll be watching fewer movies. [BW]

Even though engineers are obviously highly prized by terrorist recruiters for their skills, the reason, according to Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog writing in New Scientist is that they tend to have a more rigid, conservative mindset, and at least in Middle Eastern countries, there've been fewer jobs for them, so more of them have gone radical.

All of the engineers I know are just alcoholics. [Sphere]

[Patently Apple via 9to5Mac]

With free shipping if you're patient and no sales tax in most states, Amazon can undercut almost anybody by at least 5 percent—I know it's why I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon. The problem Best Buy—and every other brick & mortar store—has is that if you have a physical presence in a state, you have to to collect sales taxes. (Theoretically, we're supposed to calculate the taxes on stuff we buy online, and send it to the state ourselves.) Knowing not charging sales tax is a huge competitive advantage, Amazon studiously avoids them.

For instance, the entire reason it was founded in Washington, not California, was so it didn't have to charge CA residents sales taxes. And it only charges sales tax in 6 states (like Kansas) despite having some kind of presence in 14 of them, by putting portions of its business under wholly owned subsidiaries so it doesn't have to collect tax for them. In NY, it's still fighting the "Amazon tax" bill forcing it to collect tax in NY.

What's funny is that Netflix actually does charge sales tax—its discs count as a physical presence in every state, which seems utterly perverse—but rolls it into the general cost of your subscription. Given that Amazon is a $20 billion-a-year internet monolith and state governments could sure use the cash, they'll wake up to the whole internet thing eventually, so enjoy that 5 percent freebie while it lasts. I sure am! [NYT]

Or, even worse than a delay: New MacBooks could have worse graphic than older MacBooks.

Here's the story: Starting with the unibody MacBook Pros in Oct. 2008, Apple dumped Intel's own chipset and integrated graphics for Nvidia's GeForce 9400M as a combined GPU/chipset, since it wildly outperforms the Intel's integrated garbage, which had hampered previous MacBooks. Since the 9400M is in basically every Mac now, there's a baseline of graphics performance across every Mac—nothing has crappier graphics than the 9400M. Important, because the OpenCL tech in Snow Leopard leverages your graphics card for extra processing power.

Since Oct. 2008, Intel's introduced its blazing fast Core i7 and i5 processors, which use the Nehalem microarchitecture. The problem is that Nvidia can't make compatible chipsets for it. Intel claims that Nvidia's license to make chipsets for its processors doesn't apply to any current or future processor with an integrated memory controller, which all Nehalem and Westmere—the 32nm die shrink of Nehalem—processors do. Nvidia sued and is pulling out of chipsets entirely, at least at the desktop level. (Intel's also cut them off at the Atom level, making what the Ion 2 will look like something of a mystery as well.)

Which produces a question: What are the next set of MacBook guts going to be? The Arrandale Core i5 mobile processors Intel is expected to announce at CES don't just have integrated memory controllers, they have integrated graphics, built right onto the die, too. If the MacBooks were upgraded to off-the-shelf Arrandale processors, it can't, on the face of it, use an Nvidia chipset or more to the point, Nvidia's superior integrated graphics. Intel's integrated graphics still suck. So there are a couple of possibilities from here, it looks like.

• Possibility 1: Some kind of discrete or separate graphics cards for all MacBook Pros. Pre-unibody MacBook Pros, and even the 12-inch PowerBook G4, had discrete graphics cards only. The problem is that it's more expensive, and that now-famed 6-8 hour battery life would take a hit. It's how the latest iMac got away with using a Core i7 on with an Intel chipset, though.

Or maybe Apple will put discrete graphics cards in every MacBook Pro, but use Intel integrated graphics as a battery-saving fallback. Which is sort of the way all but the low-end MacBook Pros work now, with both integrated and discrete graphics. (Though the Nvidia integrated graphics are good enough to be the default option on current MacBooks.) It would rock the boat the least.

• Possibility 2: Suffer the crappier graphics on lower end models. A problem, given that any machine using Intel integrated graphics would result in worse graphics performance than the current MacBook or MacBook Pros. Which sounds counterproductive, given Apple's obvious bet on graphics cards for processing juice with OpenCL.

• Possibility 3: A customized set of hardware of some kind from Intel, either on the processor or chipset level that would let the next MacBooks match the power consumption and graphics capabilities of current models. It wouldn't be unprecedented: Apple asked for and received essentially custom chips from Intel before, for the MacBook Air. (Though Intel later let everybody else play ball with other chips meant for really skinny laptops.)

• Possibility 4: Apple's gonna wait on something else before upgrading from Core 2 Duos. Will people have to wait longer for blazing new silicon in MacBooks than in PC notebooks? Sometimes they do, yes, but sometimes Apple gets Intel's latest first—Nehalem Xeons in Mac Pros, and the ultramobile chip in the MacBook Air.

Something else to consider is that for the first time in a long time, if Apple wants to push new guts soon, it could switch to ATI graphics (which it's using in the iMac) for notebooks because of delays in Nvidia's Fermi architecture that push their truly new graphics cards out until Spring 2010. ATI's got a solid 4 months where it's got the newest graphics silicon around.

Whatever happens, it's a mystery for now. Which is kind of a fascinating point, actually, given that Macs run on PC guts now, yet it's still trying to do something different on the hardware level.

Did a Genius drop your MacBook and explode it into a thousand pieces? Try to exorbitantly charge you for a repair that should've been free? Or just act like a total bastard?

The most horrific true story wins free pizza as a consolation to sop up your tears. Leave 'em in the comments or email me with the subject "Genius Bar Horror Stories."

Price

It's $90, both MSRP and on Amazon.

Verdict

I generally don't like ambidextrous mice. SteelSeries says they spent three years researching the ergonomics on Xai, and while it sounds crazy, it worked. The form factor is so good it feels almost like an ergonomic mouse. Bucking the trend of growing fatter and more bulbous (have you seen some of Microsoft's mice lately?) for a more streamlined, average form factor, it's an amorphous enough shape that most people will like, and no one will hate (or, conversely, truly love). The one flaw is that you're going to hit the two periphery buttons that are on the opposite side of your thumb whenever you pick up the mouse to move it, so I wound up disabling them altogether.

Xai has a monochrome LCD carved into the bottom of its ass, which sounds excessive, but it's actually quite functional: You can adjust any setting, and any of your five on-board stored profiles (which includes macros, CPI settings, etc.), directly on the mouse (bye bye, crappy mouse software). It's supremely useful. Though if you're doing more than switching from one profile to the next, you'll want to wait until you're in between matches, otherwise you're gonna get killed since the whole process of saying, changing your CPI count to slow down or speed up the mouse can take up to 30 seconds.

An issue, though, is that you only have immediate access to two CPI settings—the triangle on top flips between two alternate CPIs per profile, meaning if you want to cycle through several different speeds, you've gotta turn the mouse over and switch to a whole different profile, so if you're an aggressive mouse speed switcher (like if you're a serious sniper), that could be a dealbreaker.

There is a certain amount of spec horseshit you're swallowing with all gaming mice, most commonly couched in terms of dots per inch. SteelSeries attempts to differentiate by more precisely referring to counts per inch, which is basically the same thing—the number of increments the mouse can read in one inch of movement. Real world—well in gaming anyway—it basically translates into how fast you can turn or move your cursor, which speeds up as you ramp up the CPI. As you can imagine, the speed gets progressively more pointless, with the current "standard" of 4000DPI being about as useful as tits on a boar. Xai's money spec, if you will, is that it processes 12,000 frames a second at 5,001 CPI at movement speeds of 150 inches a second using a 10.8MP "high definition" sensor.

Guess what? I didn't test that while playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2 or Team Fortress 2, because no one moves their arm 150 inches a second. I will say, though, it tracks as well as—though not noticeably better than—any current generation gaming mouse, both on regular pads, and the 9HD special "HD" gaming pad SteelSeries has released for it.

If you want a gaming mouse you can use with either hand, I'd say you can't do better than Xai, though I might wait until it's a little bit cheaper. Also, I wish they'd drop the stupid, meaningless "HD" spiel. It's a mouse, not a TV.

Awesome ergonomics for an ambidextrous mouse
You can change any setting directly on the mouse
Changing settings on the mouse is a little slow
It's $90!
The HD thing is dumb

[SteelSeries]

From Technologizer's round-up of pre-iPhone iPhone coverage, here's some of the most of tragicomically wrong specurumorbobulation:

• An Apple phone's functions could be accessed hassle-free with the iPod's scroll wheel, and the numbers could work with a slide-out keyboard or a simple touchpad system on the screen.

• The click-wheel is closer to the bottom of the device with the screen taking a vertical orientation. The click-wheel portion of the device reportedly slides down to reveal a traditional numeric dial-pad underneath. The front is black, while the back is chrome like the current iPod.

• Two battery design (with single charger) - one for playing music, the other for phone functions.

• The first will be little more than an iPod Nano with basic phone capabilities while the latter will boast more advanced smartphone functions including real-time IM using Apple's iChat platform (and by proxy, AOL and Jabber).

• AppleBerry–a combination iPod/BlackBerry: Apple Computer and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion might be working on a product together based on the advice of their common partner, Intel. The pairing combines Apple's design expertise with RIM's relationships with carriers and handset makers.

Okay, altogether now: Ahahahaha.

But wait. Check out these bits from a piece by NYT's John Markoff from 2002:

And now come signs that Mr. Jobs means to take Apple back to the land of the handhelds, but this time with a device that would combine elements of a cellphone and a Palm-like personal digital assistant.

But industry analysts see evidence that Apple is contemplating what inside the company is being called an "iPhone."

But analysts and people close to the company say that the plan is under way and that the evidence is manifest in the features and elements of the new version of the Macintosh operating system.

He didn't just report the iPhone would be called the iPhone and be a real smartphone, he even got that it would use part of OS X. (Update: I misread, and gave him just a little bit too much credit.) Five years before it was announced. Whoa, right?

The broader point of all is this one I made rounding up all of the current Apple Tablet rumors. We all might've "known" the iPhone was coming, but nobody had any idea what it was really like, which turned out to be a good thing—an iPodphone doesn't sound all that great. Maybe it'll be the same story with the tablet. I hope so, I like surprises. [Technologizer, Image: © 2004 eye//candy]

The couple got trapped in the snow for three days in the Winema-Fremont National Forest after their SUV's navigator told them to follow Forest Service Road 28—35 miles down the remote road, they got stuck in a foot-and-a-half of snow. They would've frozen to death, except they had packed a bunch of winter clothes.

On the third day, the "atmospheric conditions" changed enough that their cellphone's GPS was able to put out a tiny signal that led 911 dispatchers to the couple's location.

And that's why you should still learn to navigate using the stars. [Yahoo]

Lyons: Do you think that the ink-on-paper book will eventually go away?

Bezos: I do. I don't know how long it will take. You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world. That's not going to go away; that's going to thrive. But the physical book really has had a 500-year run. It's probably the most successful technology ever. It's hard to come up with things that have had a longer run. If Gutenberg were alive today, he would recognize the physical book and know how to operate it immediately. Given how much change there has been everywhere else, what's remarkable is how stable the book has been for so long. But no technology, not even one as elegant as the book, lasts forever.

Also, Bezos isn't afraid of the Apple tablet, even if it does do all that stuff everybody thinks it will, because the Kindle's so darn good at the book thing. A dedicated device for reading? Sounds like a shorter shelf life than books. [Slate]

The Big Money's history of gift cards is a fascinating timeline of how they spread like a virus, infecting every gift-giving tradition we hold dear: Neiman Marcus actually was the first to sell gift cards, in 1994, but because the retailer didn't quite understand their potential, the cards were kept out of sight and sold only as a novelty item. Blockbuster was the first to display them, starting in 1995, which was the true beginning of the gift card revolution.

Starbucks was the next major innovator, in 2001, with gift cards that worked more than once, so you'd have to keep going back. (Today, one out of seven purchases is made with a gift card at Starbucks in the US.) Which brings us to the present, with gimmick cards like Best Buy's tiny speaker or Target's little camera, or purely electronic ones, like for Steam and Amazon.

Did your Christmas feel more empty and hollow this year? Did you give or receive a gift card? Bingo. Gift cards are the most cynical of all presents, lower than cash. They lock the receiver into a particular store or service, while relieving the giver of any responsibility, thought or feeling. If someone gives you a gift card, they don't care about you. In fact, they're trying to trick you, and make you think that they do, because they took the time to select a store to purchase your piece of plastic from. That is a lie—the effort went into the ruse, not your gift.

Of course, stores love gift cards, a pure token that holds no value after it's purchased, except that which the merchant dictates. Odds are, when somebody comes in to spend a gift card, they'll use to buy something more expensive. Even if the gift card is never used, the store still keeps the money—and most unused gift cards lose value over time, withering with the seasons. It's an $87 billion con by the retail industry, and Americans, obsessed with convenience, have eaten it up.

If you're thinking about buying somebody a gift card because you can't be bothered to pick out a real present, don't. Give them cash. Sure, you might feel like an asshole—well, you kind of are—but I promise you, the person receiving the wad will like it a whole lot more than any gift card. Cash can be spent, anytime, anywhere, and it won't expire in a year (unless the economy completely collapses, then we've got bigger problems than declining gift standards).

Update: I forgot to make the important exception for independent and local specialty stores, like record shops. Gift cards are okay in that case (small businesses need money, speciality stores require some consideration).

Here's a question that's quickly becoming a dilemma, though. What's a better (worse?) gift, cash or digital media? [The Big Money]

The Kindle and Nook are tied to Amazon and Barnes & Noble's respective bookstores, meaning every purchase and every book search is recorded. Amazon's license agreement for the Kindle, for instance, notes that the Kindle's software "will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service...and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device)."

The Nook is obviously capable of phoning home in a similar manner, but it's unknown whether or not it does, at least for now. With Google Books, it's clear that what you're actually reading is logged, down to the specific page.

On the other hand, since Sony's Reader lacks 3G for a constant connection and isn't as tightly integrated with their ebook store, there's less opportunity for data collection, particularly if you stick w/ sideloaded books. Better still, says the EFF is the open-source FBReader. But you can't download books from anywhere in 3 seconds over 3G, and the experience isn't as nice.

It's the classic tradeoff: Less privacy for more convenience and a better experience, or greater privacy for a bigger hassle. What side are you on? [EFF]

Uh, What's It Called?

The iPhone was called the iPhone years before Steve Jobs ever took the stage to announce it. We don't have the luxury of such clarity here. I would think the name has no more than two syllables, personally.

Overwhelmingly what "evidence" there is points to some form of Slate. Not only did Apple register the domain iSlate.com through an intermediary to keep it a secret (discovered by Mark Gurman), they've trademarked it through a shell company called Slate Computing (signed for by Apple's Senior Trademark Specialist) and registered domains and trademarks in Europe through their usual IP law firm, utilizing their standard secret trademark practices, last used with the iPhone. They've also registered "Magic Slate" through the same company. And, while we initially blew off NYT editor Bill Keller referencing an "Apple Slate" in a speech as meaningless, it's a whole lot curiouser now.

Update 12/29/2009: Another shell company, iGuide Media—using Apple Senior Trademark Specialist Regina Porter as the signatory—applied for a trademark on iGuide, which seems, from the trademark description, to a be service less so than a piece of hardware:

Downloadable electronic publications in the nature of books, magazines, newsletters, journals, and blogs in the fields of entertainment, sports, science, history, culture, celebrities, news, current events, politics, technology, and education

Borders referenced an "Apple iPAD" in a survey, but it sounds like the sad invention of a survey copywriter who hit caps lock instead of shift, not to mention a digital feminine hygiene product. Apple also registered a trademark for TabletMac, but most likely to protect the Mac brand name from modders (it sounds unwieldy and gross).

Apple's put a lot of effort into iSlate it seems. Is that the name of the Apple Tablet?

When's It Coming?

Well, obviously everybody who picked a day before today is wrong. Which leaves everyday after today! The overall consensus is that's being announced in late January—note, though, that a lot of the people who're part of the new January cabal were the same people convinced it was coming in the fall.

iLounge predicted awfully specifically back in September that "Apple is currently planning to announce it on or before January 19, 2010." The Financial Times
said two days ago that Apple is expected "make a major product announcement on Tuesday, January 26th" at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, where Apple's rented a stage for "several days." Silicon Alley Insider says that Apple is going to demo a tablet in January.

But when can you actually hold one? From most to least specific: The Wall Street Journal says the tablet is actually going to ship in March, and an analyst said it's coming in March or April. iLounge says it'll hit stores in May or June, like the iPhone. Digitimes reported Foxconn is supposed to have almost half a million of 'em shipped by April. Little emperor of Apple analysts Gene Munster says the first half of 2010. A bunch of connected Mac people just say 2010.

Everybody from the WSJ to Apple fan sites are convinced the tablet is being announced sometime late next month, shipping 2-6 months afterward, so hype and development can bloom, like the iPhone. (Though most of 'em were wrong three months ago.)

How Much Is It Gonna Cost?

The iPhone was $600. Then sales stopped being a-mazing and it dropped to $400. When the iPhone 3G came out, it went to $200 and everybody bought one. So, uh, how much is the tablet gonna be?

Everybody says roughly the same thing: AppleInsider has said it's "expected to retail for somewhere between the cost of a high-end iPhone and Apple's most affordable Mac notebook." Our insider told us it would "cost $700 to $900," or "more than twice as much as a netbook." Taiwan Economic Times says it's between $800 and $1000. China Times, while they got the date pegged to the price horribly wrong, said 800 bucks. And then there's DigiTimes, who says the whole reason the tablet was "delayed" was because it was getting an OLED upgrade, so it'd be a whopping $1500 to $1700. The final word comes from Steve Jobs who said "we don't know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk."

Survey—and logic—says it'll be pricier than an iPhone and more expensive than a MacBook. Which doesn't say a lot. If you had to pick a number, $800ish seems like the safest bet.

How Big Is It?

The most important spec—and maybe the biggest mystery—is, well, how big the tablet is. Three sizes dominate rumors, tied to the size of panels produced by display manufacturers: 7 inches, 9.6 (or 9.7) inches, and 10.6 inches.

Let's go from least to most specific. Apple reportedly told publishers it's "small enough to carry in a handbag but too big to fit in a pocket." A company discovered in its traffic logs an "unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook," reported the NYT. The WSJ reported it's "smaller than [Apple's] current laptop computers but bigger than the iPhone or iPod Touch."

Apple analyst king of the dweebs Gene Munster, after speaking to "component contacts" in Asia, says it's between 7 and 10 inches. TechCrunch says it's 7 or 9 inches. Digitimes says there's two tablets, one that's 9.6 inches (with OLED) and another that's 10.6 inches. Taiwan Economic News says 9.6 inches too. Actually respectable news organization Dow Jones says Apple ordered displays from Wintek that are "between 9.7 and 10 inches." Oh, and there might be ginormous tablets somewhere out there.

The Financial Times and Reuters both say it's 10 inches. So does our insider.

iLounge presents a unified theory of the tablet universe that would explain the multiplicity of sizes: There have been three prototypes, and the initial one had a 7-inch screen, which was too small, so the latest version is 10.7 inches. Whatever the exact size, they say, it has "7x the touchable surface area" as the iPhone

Let's just stick with bigger than an iPhone, but smaller than a MacBook.

What's Inside

There's been surprisingly little discussion of the actual specs beyond the size of the screen—storage, memory, processor, etc. Most of what little talk there has been has revolved around the networking capabilities.

There could be versions with 3G and without. Specifically, HSDPA (meaning it would only work on AT&T or T-Mobile in the US). Oh look, a SIM card tray! But maybe it'll be on Verizon said BusinessWeek. Hey, maybe even Verizon LTE 4G wireless!

As for the processor, Intel Germany CEO passed gas about a bigger "version of the iPhone" powered by Atom. Dean Takahashi says that the tablet will be the first device using chips that Apple's designed in-house through PA Semi, the chip company Apple bought a while ago, and that the chips are possibly ARM-based.

Aaaaaannnd it coooooooould have an OLED screen, if it cost 1500 bucks.

A 3G option seems very possible, as does a secret-sauce processor, but who knows?

Who's Involved?

Um, Steve Jobs, duh. A whole bunch of new multitouch engineers. Oh, and the Newton guy is back.

Quanta might be making it. Or Foxconn (who makes the iPhone and got a guy killed over a leaked prototype). With a display made by LG (who makes the gorgeous, if flaky, panel inside the 27-inch iMac.) Or maybe the display's from Wintek, according to Reuters and Dow Jones. The battery might be made by Dynapack.

Besides Apple, again, who knows?

Patent Soup

The thing about patents is that, besides the fact they're patenting something, they don't say a whole lot, at least not about actual products. But here's a few interesting ones pertaining to a tablet.

This patent for a "display housing for a computing device" sure sounds like a tablet, which might fit into the tablet docking station in this patent, and you might use two hands, as shown in this patent, to interact with a multitouchable OS X, generously illustrated in this patent, unless you use a pen (ha ha ha). And it might be bumpy, in a cool way.

Patents don't mean a whole lot, so don't expect any of them to actually make it into a tablet. They could, though.

The Backstory

It's fairly well known the iPhone was born from efforts to develop a touchscreen tablet computer. It was simply miniaturized, and uses tech from FingerWorks, a touch interface company Apple bought. The NYT reported Apple's been working on it since 2003, when they built several prototypes using a battery-slaying PowerPC processor. Our insider said that Apple's been working on it for 4-6 years, and that the first prototype of the current version was developed in 2008. Steve Jobs killed the PowerPC tablet, according to the NYT, because Jobs asked what tablets were good for besides surfing the web while sitting on the toilet. The WSJ reported he's killed it twice already.

What's It Going to Do?

Perhaps the most important question of all: What's it actually like?

Well, it depends on the OS. iPhone OS 3.1 had clear traces of new Apple iProducts, and some people say it's a bigass iPod touch, or at least running iPhone OS, which sorta fits with iPhone app developers supposedly being asked to make higher res versions of their apps for demonstration. It apparently fits in with the iTunes remodeling Apple's got going on.

The NYT reported "You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet," whatever that will come to mean. As much as Steve Jobs saying they've got some "interesting ideas" about small computers, presumably. Martha Stewart is hyped about it, maybe 'cause it has something to do with diners.

Most of the excitement lately is that it's going to redefine newspapers, books and magazines, which we heard from some publishers, and maybe textbooks, which an insider told us. We're not the only ones who've heard it's got an ebook bent.

Everybody pre-conceived the iPhone based on the iPod and, to a lesser extent, the Newton. Everybody was wrong. Today, most everybody is pre-conceiving the tablet based on the iPhone. Maybe we're all wrong again, or maybe the leaks are better this time.

Your Turn

You know our mantra about rumors: Never trust them. But putting all of them together, we've definitely got some ideas now.

If there's any rumor we missed—or you have a tip (we're good at keeping secret identities)—let us know.

Regina Porter most recently signed for the "iSlate" trademark for Slate Computing this past August—showing Apple's continued with "slate" beyond its initial registration for iSlate.com and the "iSlate" trademark in 2006. In Europe, a law firm Apple typically uses to register trademarks has also filed for major domains containing "iSlate," while another they use has filed for a trademark on ISlate in the European Union, registered to a corporation in Trinidad & Tobago, a country Apple's used to register European trademarks before, including for the iPhone.

Curiously, another trademark registered by Slate Computing in the US is "Magic Slate," which follows the same naming convention as Magic Mouse, obviously. MacRumors wonders if it might be something like a multitouch trackpad for computers, like with a screen (which we've wanted for a long time).

Whatever's going on, Apple's obviously gone through a lot of work to discreetly register a whole lot of "slate" stuff, which seems like a ton of effort for nothing, or simply a ruse to throw people off. It's funny, actually, that everybody "knew" what the iPhone was going to be called years before Steve Jobs took the stage to announce it, but no one really knows the tablet's name. I've always figured that, whatever it is, it'll have just two syllables. iSlate fits the bill. And for now, it's the only one with any evidence. [MacRumors, TechCrunch]

Photography

What Everybody Should Know About Cameras
The essentials of digital camera knowledge, from all the different types of cameras to image sensors to jargon like ISO, all in one epic spot.

Why Lenses Are the Real Key to Stunning Photos
Despite what stupid spec wars would have you believe, a fancy slice of glass is just as important as silicon to taking a stunning photo.

When (Not) To Use Your Camera's Flash
What is photography's greatest scourge? Cellphone cameras? MySpace self-portraiture? No, it's that dratted flash—here's when and how you should-and more importantly, shouldn't-use it.

Why More Megapixels Isn't Always Better
In short, twelve megapixels stuffed onto a tiny ass sensor looks like crap. Twelve megapixels with plenty of a room on a full-frame sensor can look pretty great.

Television

The Ultimate HDTV Cheat Sheet and Buying Guide
Read this before you go buy and HDTV, and you'll have the Best Buy employee spinning in circles. Or at least, he won't be able to take you for a spin.

The Difference Between a $600 TV and a $6000 TV
There is a difference, and it goes way beyond the logo sitting front and center. How much do all those extra inches cost? What about 120Hz, or hell 240Hz? The cost of a fancy ass TV, broken down.

What's So Great About LED-Backlit LCDs
Any LCD display worth its salt—especially when it comes to laptops—is lit up by a bunch of LEDs, not the fluorescent bulbs that light up high school cafeterias. But, not all LED displays are created equal.

Audio

Why You Can't Get Decent Headphones for Under $100
Building truly great in-ear headphones is hard. Which means it's expensive. We got an earful of the secret sauce that goes into the pricey headphones that sound oh-so-delicious, and why you can't buy 'em for a song.

The Difference Between $100 and $100,000 Speakers
Well the title really says it all, don't it?

Why Analog Audio Cables Really Aren't All the Same
Yes, there really is a difference between analog cables. And you want there to be.

Computers and Software

Why Quantum Computing Is the Future, But a Distant One
Computing with quantum physics! It's as crazy as it sounds, so we'll let quantum physicists explain it.

Why Stuff Crashes, and Why It Happens Less Often Now
Ever wondered what causes a BSOD or kernel panic? Notice how it happens a less often than it used to? (Though Firefox crashing every five minutes seems to make up for it.)

Android and How It Will Take Over the World
No, it's not because of the mysterious Nexus One. The true nature of Android is a little more complex than you might realize, able to run everything from phones to nooks to set-top boxes. And Google's giving it away for free.

GPGPU Computing and Why It'll Melt Your Face Off
Graphics cards, they're not just for PC gametards anymore. Thanks to new programming standards they'll be accelerating everything on a computer that can take advantage of oodles of processing cores.

How Apple Affects Your Tech World Through Standards (Even You, Windows Guy)
The easy way to have power over technology and people outside of your own little domain: Create tech standards. Here's a few Apple's been instrumental in getting out there.

Microsoft and Standards
The flip side to how Apple plays with industry-wide standards, Microsoft just establishes them de facto, when it can. Here's some of the bigger ones they're responsible for.

Cellphones

How Cell Towers Work
Until Wilson explained how cell towers work, I always thought Stormtrooper fairies carried the signals from my phone to the Death Star and then to my mom's cellphone.

Why WiMax and LTE Wireless 4G Data Will Blow Your Mind
WiMax is really here (at least in some places) and LTE from Verizon and AT&T will be ramping in short order. The days of ubiquitous wireless broadband are very nearly here. Exciting, and scary.

Bill Nye Explains Oleophobic Screens
Uh, Bill Nye. Explaining stuff. Do I need to say anymore?

Electricity

Why Every Country Has a Different F#$%ing Plug
There actually are reasons there's like a billion different types of power plugs scattered across the world. I know you want to know why.

How Electrocution Really Kills You (With Adam Savage)
MythBuster Adam Savage tells us how electricity really kills you—surprisingly, it's not by poaching your brains inside of your skull.

Coffee

How to Actually Make Coffee
Odds are, you're doin' it wrong. Here's most of the major ways to make delicious coffee, with advice from our friends at Ninth St. Espresso, Intelligentsia Coffee and La Marzocco.

Still something you still wanna know? Send any questions about cameras, processors, or anything else crazy complicated to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

1. Check Out Snow Leopard's Interface Tweaks: They're not life-altering, but Apple's spiffed up the OS X interface in a couple of ways in Snow Leopard. Notably, there's Dock Expose (which works like Windows 7's Aero Peek) to show you all the windows of open app by clicking and holding on its icon in the dock. Also, giant, scalable thumbnail previews.

2. Move All Your Stuff: The funny thing about switching OSes or moving to a new one is that it's really not hard anymore, since so much of the stuff we do is online. The most complicated gambit for most people, I'd wager, is moving your iTunes library to a new machine—especially going from Windows to Mac—since organizing that stuff (if you're anal about it like me) takes forever. Luckily, there's a hack for that. And if you're going from old Mac to new Mac, well it's pretty easy to move all your crap with the built-in Migration Assistant.

3. Learn What's Actually Under the Hood of Snow Leopard: Apple says a lot of the magic of Snow Leopard is actually under the hood, so you can't see it, like Grand Central Dispatch, which promises in the future to make applications use all of those cores in your machine that much better to become superfaster. Or OpenCL, which uses your graphics card for non-graphics applications to go more fasterer. And there's a whole bunch of other standards Apple's real big on too.

4. Don't Buy MobileMe, Sync Your Stuff With Yahoo or Google: Don't buy MobileMe. Instead, sync your contacts with Google, straight from Address Book, and use Google Sync to deliver 'em to your phone. Same deal with calendars—use the open standard CalDAV to sync iCal with Google or Yahoo, which is as simple as putting in your account info now. And you can upload photos to Flickr directly from iPhoto. Online storage? That's free too.

5. Install Windows: Whether you do it through Boot Camp so you can play PC games ('cause gaming on a Mac sucks, at best) or use Parallels or Fusions to virtualize it and run alongside your Mac apps, with Windows 7 being $30 with a valid .edu address, there's no reason not to. It's even easier to move your Windows apps and files over that you wanna keep if you're making the slow transition, with Parallels Switch edition, which has a handy USB transfer tool.

6. Back Up to Any NAS With Time Machine: Time Machine, OS X's built-in backup, is indispensable. Unfortunately, if you wanna do it over the network, it's kinda limited, unless you know what you're doing. After you figure out your network storage of choice (HP's Windows Home Server with Time Machine compatibility is a damn good option; and for those on a budget, there's Iomega's ix2 200), it takes just a few minutes a couple of lines of code in Terminal to get your Time Machine backup going on any NAS you please.

7. Make It Play Nice With PCs On Your Network: If you get a NAS, you obviously don't have to worry about moving crap back and forth directly between your Macs and PCs, but if you want a method that will work every single time, this is how to do it. It's progressively easier with newer versions of Windows—stuff seems to just work more often.

8. Forget Apple TV, Stream to Your Xbox or PS3: If you've already got an Xbox 360 or PS3 (who doesn't?) there's no reason to bother with another media streamer, even if you're ditching Windows. The programs Connect 360 and Rivet will stream music, movies and photos from your Mac to your Xbox for $20. For the PS3, there's MediaLink, from the guys who make Connect 360, which does pretty much the same deal, but with slightly better integration with iTunes and iPhoto. The P2P app Vuze—which is free—also streams videos to Xbox 360 and PS3 from any OS it runs on, but obviously it's a little less feature-rich.

9. Download the Best Free Software: At first, there seems to be less freeware on a Mac, but you just need to know where to look. Lifehacker's essential free apps has you covered on everything from the best IM app (Adium) to better disc burning (Burn) to video playback (VLC, of course).

10. Remote Control It: Sure, you could shell out for MobileMe to use Back to My Mac—except, you shouldn't—but why bother when you do the same thing and remote control your computer from anywhere with VNC? An afternoon and you're done.

That's it from us. Share your own tips and tricks in the comments, and Merry Christmas!

1. Take a Spin Around the New Interface: Still glassy, glossy and damn near glittery, the Windows 7 interface is actually a major progression for Microsoft: It's not just easy to use, it's a whole new paradigm with the revamped taskbar and Aero Peek making multitasking with multiple windows more natural than ever.

2. Turn Off Everything You Don't Need: While Windows 7 is missing some odd things, like a mail application, the flip side is that you can turn off pretty much every major feature you don't want. Internet Exploder 8? Gone. Windows Media Player? Poof. And if you're used to tweaking the crap out of Windows, you still can—a lot of the old tricks, like for manipulating context menus, still work.

3. Move All Your Crap from Your Old Machine: Windows 7 actually has pretty decent built-in powers for moving all your crap from your old and busted PC to your new pride and joy, though you need to download Windows Easy Transfer separately onto XP if you're pulling stuff from that.

4. Master All of the New Keyboard Shortcuts: Why deal with flipping around a mouse or scribbling on a trackpad when you do the same thing in a tenth of a second with a keyboard combo? The Start key (oh sorry, Windows key), which I've always neglected as a useless monotasker, is supremely useful in Windows 7, as the underpinning for a metric ton of keyboard shortcuts.

5. Get It to Play Nice With All of Your Gadgets: The good news about Windows 7 is that, unlike Vista, most of your gear that worked with your computer a couple years ago with Windows should still work. And newer gear interacts with Windows in a fancy new way with a big ol' splash graphic and easy access to all the stuff you'd wanna do with it. While even simple things, like adding a second monitor, are more straightforward now, here's a device-by-device breakdown on getting everything to touch Windows 7 appropriately.

6. Share Stuff With Your Other Computers, 'Cause It's Easier Now: The networking UI hasn't just gotten a facelift to make it more accessible, it's actually easier to use with HomeGroups—join a HomeGroup, and all of the stuff you want to share with other computers spreads like herpes to the rest of the HomeGroup, no arduous networking required. Also, network in general—like with Macs—seems to just work better with Windows 7.

7. Stream Your Music and Videos Everywhere: Connecting your PC to a TV sounds so 1999. Well, you might not know this, but your Windows 7 PC is a badass music and video streamer, DVR, photo viewer, video aggregator and everything else you'd want out of a multimedia box, all thanks to Windows Media Center. The living room PC is legit now. Not to mention Play To, which beams music (and video and photos) to any compatible device on your network, no setup required (really!). All it takes it a right-click, and those Sonos speakers on the other side of your house will magically start yelling the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

8. Upgrade Your Netbook to Windows 7 Home Premium: If you got a Windows 7 netbook, there's a good chance you got stuck with the artificially gimped out Starter edition, which sucks. The cheapest way to fix this is to buy Windows 7 for $30 using a valid .edu email address, then follow our guide to installing Windows 7 on any netbook.

9. Set Up Some Network Storage: A fresh computer is a fresh start—meaning it's a perfect time to start a new life with fully networked storage for backup, especially if you're using your machine as a DVR with Windows Media Center. (But skip on faster drives.) One awesome option? A Windows Home Server machine, which can do backups and stream out media to all of your computers.

10. Remote Control It From Anywhere with VNC: While diving deep into the system and futzing with your network at the same time, you might as well set up a VNC server so you can control your computer from anywhere, whether it's to pull files or schedule downloads.

That's it from us. Share your own tips and tricks in the comments, and Merry Christmas!