The top three tech products of 2008 are Hulu, the iPhone and Facebook. Since the new version of the iPhone hasn't come out or been announced yet, I assume they mean the first version, which came out last year. Hulu was in beta for the last couple months of 2007, and Facebook has been around for years. So apparently the best tech of 2008 didn't come out in 2008.

The list is full of boring, predictable choices that are years old, such as Photoshop, Flickr, Gmail, Leopard and the Wii. I honestly have no idea why they made this list or what a product had to do to be included other than existing. And the fact that it's claiming to be the best of 2008 so early in the year means they already missed out on some great 2008 products, such as the Netflix set-top box, making the list look outdated and misinformed already. [PC World]

No wonder so many users are clinging to XP like shipwrecked sailors to a life raft, while others who made the upgrade are switching back. And when the fastest Vista notebook PC World has ever tested is an Apple MacBook Pro, there's something deeply wrong with the universe.

And why should they? XP just got a major speed bump in its latest Service Pack update. [pcworld]

Oh, and a note to people mad about the Mac joke, the iPhone came in at #5.

Don't believe everything you read, especially when it's coming from Cupertino. [PC World (MacBook Pro), and PC World (Eurocom D900C Phantom-X), via Joe's Blog]

But really, PC World had no choice. After 16 years of service to IDG, and the this current episode highlighting his integrity, the magazine couldn't really move forward without looking like editorial corruption was in place. Unless Harry came back.

His conditions? That "editors were allowed to be editors." He made no comment about whether or not Colin's reshuffled position were the terms of his return.

IDG is going start a search for a CEO for both PC World and Macworld, two magazines that Colin Crawford used to be the CEO of. Our thoughts? All the reader outrage online after the story first broke is what caused the sudden 180. Or, we suppose it's probably more of a 540 since PCWorld actually went ahead and published a tame 10 Things We Hate About Apple anyway.

As an aside, I think it could have been better to have PC World write the "Apple Love" piece, and Macworld write the "Apple Hate" piece. Nothing better than to provide surprising thoughts to your already hypnotized user base.– Jason Chen and Brian Lam

Editor in Chief Harry McCracken Returns to PC World [PCWorld]

After reading it, we wondered if this was the actual story Harry resigned over—it's quite tame. Complaints about Apple being really secretive, the "i" monicker, lack of Blu-ray, mis-managed hardware like the Puck Mouse or the Toilet Seat iBook, lack of gaming and limited selection has been said and re-said for years. What gives? Was the story de-fanged?

Also, in all the talk last week, there was no mention of a sister article entitled "10 Things We Love About Apple". Was this one thrown together after the fuss in order to both justify the posting of the "hate" article and to soften the blow? We have no idea.

Plus, on the top of both articles there's a link to an editorial note with zero reference to Harry's leaving, the editorial fiddling by the CEO, or any of the controversy itself. They also claim that these pieces were supposed to be "conversation starters" and "not weighty journalism".

In any case, we still wish Harry good luck wherever he ends up next. We also wish the staffers at PC World good luck as well, since it looks like an uphill battle with your new CEO. – Jason Chen

10 Things We Hate About Apple [PC World]

10 Things We Love About Apple [PC World]

But then a statement from IDG's Howard Sholkin: "The reason is that Colin and Harry had a disagreement on one opinion piece related to Apple and they could not come to a settlement as to how the differences should be resolved so Harry felt that necessitated him resigning." Hello IDG knuckleheads: The fact that management even has a say in editorial matters is wrong.

Crawford simply doesn't have the damn right, and this isn't a tiny little trade mag struggling to survive. Crawford claims the magazine is doing well enough this year, and that sort of financial breathing room should allow for even higher levels of integrity, not less. In the long run, selling out editorial will not lead to financial strength. Get your hands out of the pot, Crawford!

Epicenter's sources paint a picture of a staff meeting where he declares the opposite, though:

Will the next editor-in-chief have last-call on what goes in the magazine or will Crawford, essentially, always be asserting his rank over editors?

"And the answer was no, I'm going to have last call," the source said Crawford told them. "The response, essentially, was that the same damn thing would happen again (if someone clashed with him)."

I've known plenty of great PC World editors over the years, and I respect them all. Personally, I'm sorry they have to work under these conditions. – Brian Lam

PC World Update [Wired Epicenter]

You see, CEO Crawford apparently told editors that their reviews and articles were too critical of the vendors—the same vendors who advertise in their magazine. Hence, the order came down that they "had to start being nicer to advertisers."

Another reason why it's interesting: according to Wired, the newly minted CEO of PC World, Colin Crawford, used to be CEO of MacWorld. When Colin was at his former job, Steve Jobs would call him up any time the Apple CEO had a problem with a story MacWorld was working on. The two mags, MacWorld and PC World, are owned by the parent company IDG.

Any time ad dollars influence reviews is a bad thing, but when the CEO issues an order directly, well, that's just bad news bears. Maybe the CEO thinks he's helping the company make money, but when no one is buying mags or reading editorial because the CEO's padding the review with ad money, that's going to be pretty bad for business.

When reached for comment, Harry had this to say:

...I resigned yesterday over a disagreement about editorial stuff, and I'm not angry at anyone, and continue to admire IDG and PC World. This company has been very, very good to me—and I have many friends here who I know will continue to do top-notch work. (I'll probably continue to do some writing for PCW, too.)

To Crawford: If you want to make a ton of money, keep editorial sacred, bring back Harry with a raise, apologize to him and the staff, and try to understand that no one wants to read corrupt editorial.

It couldn't have been a decision Harry made lightly, but he made it without hesitation and we commend him for it. And we'd like to take this minute to reiterate that no matter where Gizmodo's ad dollars are coming from, it will in no way affect our reviews. Nobody can pay for pantsworthiness. – Jason Chen and Brian Lam

But that's nothing you couldn't get here. When you go to the trouble of reading PC mags of old, you want the kind of depth we saw in PC Magazine's gonzo 10,000 word article. Then again, if you must have the most concise Windows Lover's standpoint:

Reviewer Edward Albro starts out characterizing the box as a big fish in a small pond:

"To say that Apple TV is the world's best media streaming device could be considered faint praise, the tech equivalent of calling someone the world's tallest midget. After all, most previous versions of these devices, have been unreliable, hard to use and generally shunned by the buying public."

Review: Apple TV Just Plain Works [PC World]

It also features Triple Quad to operate Quad CPU, Quad Core, Quad Graphics and even 24 drives simultaneously.

The rest of the machine, from its Xeons, Dual Verto Geforce 8800 GTX GPUs, and CPUs are after the jump, if you must know. Did I mention they're giving it all away?

CPU: Two 2.67-GHz quad-core Xeons (meant for servers)

MOTHERBOARD: A Tyan Tempest i5000XL workstation model

RAM: 4GB of fully-buffered, dual-channel Corsair DIMMs

GRAPHICS: Two PNY Verto Geforce 8800 GTX cards, each based on the DirectX 10-supporting Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX GPU

HARD DISK: Nine (!) drives, with a total of 4.3 terabytes (!!) of space

Höllenmaschine II [PCWorld Blog]

We use a color analyzer to choose the preset color temperature setting that most closely matches the recommended setting of 6500K.

What, you don't have a color analyzer? Silly Eggheads — OMG, no one has a color analyzer at home! Likewise, Archnemesis PC Magazine at Ziff Davis has their own HDTV testing lab. So, who has the bigger test bench? – Brian Lam

How We Test HDTVs [ PC World ]