Apple to show off 7- to 10-inch multi-touch tablet in January with full screen apps

Have you ever noticed? The harder someone tries to keep something important secret, the bigger and better it gets with each time rumors spark. This is exactly what's happening with Apple's forthcoming touchscreen tablet, which continues to pique the interest of many even though it may as well be inexistent vaporware.

Apple has continued to stay mum about the much-awaited product, declining to comment about it in interviews and other news stories, but somehow people still seem to believe that it is indeed coming, like an all-important Messiah of the 21st century.

If it is real, prepare to see its first appearance some time in January, as several online reports have it that Apple plans to showcase the device and its full-screen apps that are already being worked on by a few select developers. At this point I still think it's nothing more than wild fanboy speculation (laced with drool, no less), but if the rumors prove true then we'll all be in for damn good show when this thing shows up.

Sources: [Silicon Alley Insider, Financial Times, Boy Genius Report]

Chi Mei Optoelectronics pleads guilty to LCD price fixing with five other unnamed companies

TFT-LCD maker Chi Mei Optoelectronics has plead guilty to LCD price fixing and has been ordered to pay a $220 million fine by the U.S. Department of Justice. Chi Mei conspired with five other unnamed companies to fix the prices of TFT-LCD panels during a five-year long period from Sept. 14, 2001, to Dec. 1, 2006. According to the DOJ, the total value of the TFT-LCD market was $70 billion after the price fixing period ended. The market sure grew a lot during the five years this went on unnoticed.

Source: [eWeek]

Apple's Core i7-equipped iMacs having serious quality and performance issues

A lot of people usually equate the word quality with Apple and its computers, so news of the new i7-powered iMacs having performance and quality issues is sort of a big thing. Well, to a lot of fanboys swimming in Steve Jobs's famed reality distortion field, maybe, but in reality, it's nothing new. More often than not, the first batch or shipments of any Apple product ever released has major flaws, the kind of thing that would drive anyone who paid upwards of $1000 USD expecting top-notch quality insane.

New Core i7-based iMacs benchmarked and seen to be better than counterparts, surprises no one

Apple recently unveiled new models of the iMac which use Intel's Core i7 and Core i5 processors. I don't know why anyone would need benchmarks and "hard data" to know that these are quite a bit faster than the other available iMac models using Core 2 Duo processors, but in case you do, here's a shot of tabulated Geekbench scores showing exactly what anyone with half a brain would already expect: the i5 and i7-based iMacs are a lot faster! I'd like to get upset about people who look at these scores and think, "Wow, the iMac is really the best computer out there right now," but that would be childish. So, I'll just leave the fanboys swimming in their own drool looking at this so they can enjoy Apple's "new" innovation.

Source: [Timon Royer]