Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be asking you to submit your ideas on one of several different social networks in order for the whole world to advance in the world of tiny computing. It’s one big brainstorming session for the WIMM One Android-based platform device, and you’re invited. For this first week’s session, we simply ask that you do the following:

1. “like” us on Facebook: /SlashGear
2. Leave a comment in this thread with your idea for a Micro App the WIMM would work great with in the future.
3. We’ll pick a set of our favorites and select a random winner every 24 hours starting on the 14th of February!

It’s just that simple! You may only submit ONCE, and only ONE idea of yours will be considered for the random pull if it’s good enough to get into the hat in the first place!

Development tools (SDK) are available to registered WIMM developers. Sign up here.

Get out your thinking caps and get to it!

Here’s the full rules as well, if you’re wondering about all the legalities of the situation:

Giveaway begins February 14, 12:01AM PST, and ends February 24, 12:01AM PST barring any complications finding winners. A winner will be announced every 24 hours here in the main news feed and at our official Facebook page.

WINNERS will be given the opportunity to submit a review of their WIMM One unit and have it posted on the front page of SlashGear or AndroidCommunity.com! *Reviews may be edited or modified before publication and are considered works for hire under the 1976 Copyright Act. Submissions will be ineligible for payment or remuneration.

Competition is open to residents of the US over the age of 18. One entry per giveaway per person. Family members of Google and SlashGear/Android Community are not permitted to enter. Competition entries are only accepted via the specified SlashGear Facebook page; entries left in the comments section of this or any other post will not be recognized.

The winners will be contacted by a SlashGear or Android Community staff member upon being selected and will be expected to respond to that staff member; they will be expected to respond within 24 hours else their prize may be forfeit and another winner selected. Editors decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Winner agrees that their name and details of their entry may be used for promotional purposes by, but not limited to, WIMM, SlashGear, and Android Community.

Prize consists of 10 WIMM One developer units to be given out over the 10 days between February 14th and February 24th. One prize per winner. There is no cash alternative or any other alternative for prize winners unless this prize should become unavailable, in which case SlashGear and WIMM reserve the right to substitute another prize of equal or greater value.

Giveaway provided by SlashGear/Android Community. Prizes provided by WIMM. Any questions regarding this giveaway should be directed to Giveaway@SlashGear.com

But just because the PlayStation Vita seems attractive, it doesn’t mean that it’ll be a winner. In fact, I’m a firm believer that the Vita will be Sony’s last portable, and the device that could very well put an end to the company’s entire mobile-gaming division.

Believe it or not, that anticipated decline has nothing to do with Sony’s own strategy. The company is doing just what it should — delivering a top-notch portable that serious gamers can enjoy.

However, that serious gamer is changing his or her mind on what they’re looking for in portables. There was a time when only companies like Nintendo or Sony could deliver what they wanted. But with iPhones and Android-based smartphones becoming increasingly popular, and developers creating high-quality games for those platforms, the need for a standalone portable has declined significantly.

It’s also not a good idea on any company’s part nowadays to focus solely on the so-called “hardcore” gamer. The hardcore segment once drove much of the game revenue the industry generated, but it’s now a small portion of the entire market. In order for a console or portable device to become popular, it’ll need the mainstream’s help. And right now, the mainstream has no interest in buying a portable gaming device.

I’m also concerned about the PlayStation Vita’s price. Yes, $250 is the sweet spot in the mobile space right now, but that’s only for devices that do much, much more than Sony’s portable. Worst of all, the most popular smartphone on the market — Apple’s iPhone — comes in at just $199 to start, making just about anyone wonder why they should be spending $50 more to get a device that does less than their smartphone.

Sony also hasn’t made a convincing argument for getting consumers to opt for the PlayStation Vita over the Nintendo 3DS. For years now, Sony has been trying to catch up to Nintendo, and so far, the company hasn’t been able to do so. Remember the mainstream I was talking about? It loves Nintendo. And based on PlayStation Portable sales, it appears it wasn’t as fond of Sony’s device over the years.

At the end of the day, I think the PlayStation Vita will be Sony’s last portable. The company was late to understand the mainstream, its new device can’t compete against smartphones, and eventually its incoming CEO Kaz Hirai will realize that focusing solely on consoles is the way to go.

For major game companies, portable gaming is a toxic market. Microsoft knows it. Nintendo is realizing it. And Sony will soon be a victim to it.

Luckily, though, I accessed my favorite shows on my DVR and TiVo. Whenever I had a chance to check out an episode, I did. And when I realized that what I was watching was really not worth it, I deleted it and moved on. Best of all, I didn’t have to watch a single commercial.

[Image credit: Leo Reynolds]

My DVR experience over the last several weeks has solidified my belief that a world without the DVR is one that I don’t want to live in. In fact, I think it would be a crying shame if we were forced to go back to a time when the DVR wouldn’t be available.

I realize that there are many people that don’t have DVRs and they’re just fine without them. They sit down at a specified time each night to watch their favorite shows, and they might even enjoy watching commercials. It’s a ritual of sorts that they’ve grown comfortable with. And it’s something that those people wouldn’t want to lose.

But I have a different take on it. I’m one of those people that can’t stand online ads, commercials, or any other advertising initiative that distracts me from what I’m trying to enjoy. So, when I have the chance to skip commercials, I can’t wait to take advantage.

There’s also the issue of watching all the many shows I want to to watch. At any given time, I might have two or three shows on that I would really like to watch. Rather than pick one, DVRs afford me the opportunity to not miss either show. It’s a great option that I think far too many people look past when they’re deciding against buying a TiVo or paying just a few bucks a month for their cable company-provided DVR.

Of course, I realize I’m not covering new ground by saying DVRs are a fine option for the living room. And I’m sure the vast majority of you out there agree with everything I’m saying. But I wonder — given TiVo’s history and the sub-par quality of standard DVRs — if enough people see value in them. TiVos aren’t exactly flying off store shelves, and I’m still shocked by the number of people in my life who aren’t using DVRs — and see no reason to do so.

There appears to be a divide among those who are DVR owners and those who are not. One group couldn’t live without DVRs, and another can’t see a reason to live with them. Whereas some say they’re worth the cost, others say that they aren’t. And although there are some folks who say DVRs give us more time to do other, healthier things in our lives, like read a book or take a walk, detractors say they keep us tied to our couch.

So, what’s the truth? At the end of the day, it all depends on the individual. But as far as I’m concerned, DVRs offer a host of benefits — and very little, if any, downside.

Windows 8 ARM will be available at retail at the same time as Windows 8 x86. Or at least Microsoft hopes to make this the case. No doubt about it, Microsoft understands that low-power and mostly mobile devices are critical to their future, and don’t want to waste any time making inroads into this section of the market. There’s no guarantees here, but even if the date for WOA slips, it shouldn’t be by more than a couple of months.

Windows 8 ARM will retain a standard Windows desktop interface and programs. Despite a focus on the new Metro interface, Microsoft has assured its current users that the Windows desktop and core experience apps like Internet Explorer, File Explorer and the like will remain a central part of Windows. Of course, they’re going to need a lot of tweaking, including a lot more of the Ribbon interface (love it or hate it) and possibly the complete removal of the Start button. The next version of Microsoft Office, which they’re calling Office 15, will work on WOA.

You can’t run x86 or x64 software on Windows 8 ARM, but Metro apps will run on both. It’s a fairly obvious point, but bears repeating: with a shift to a completely different architecture, developers will have to work within the boundries of the ARM system-on-a-chip. Current programs just won’t work on ARM machines. However, applications built to Micrrosoft’s Metro standards (and published to the Windows Store) will work on both x86 and ARM-based hardware, and can access standard stored resources. And speaking of Metro…

New Windows 8 ARM software can only be downloaded from the Windows Store. Yup, Microsoft’s going full integrated in WOA, not unlike their similar moves with Windows Phone 7. In keeping with the integrated platform vibe, you won’t be able to just download an EXE file and install it – paid or free, every new app, Metro interface or not, will have to come through the Windows Store. By the way, expect this to be cracked and circumvented roughly twenty minutes after the first WOA machine is sold. Even new driver downloads will come through the Windows Store. x86/x64 Windows will still operate the way it does now.

Windows 8 ARM will be labelled clearly and separately from Windows 8 x86/x64. Remember the fiasco that was the “Vista Ready” program? Now imagine that with two separate code bases and a a dozen or so form factors. Microsoft doesn’t want to repeat that, so they plan on making the differences between W8 and WOA completely transparent. Of course, it doesn’t help that they’re both called “Windows 8″, and around the same time Windows Phone 8 may be coming out. So yeah, expect massive confusion from the Best Buy crowd, and lots of cries for help from your relatives.

You can’t buy Windows 8 ARM. Not as a consumer, anyway: the ARM division of Microsoft and Windows is going to focus on completely integrated devices, not unlike regular smartphones and tablets today. WOA will be sold as a consumer electronics device, not a traditional PC. If you want a WOA machine, you’ll have to buy one from a hardware partner. That said, keeping modders from doing their thing is nigh impossible, and various hacks from published versions of WOA and developer builds should make for some interesting projects. It should be possible, if not entirely practical, to run WOA on some current Android tablets. We can’t wait to see what comes out of the modder crowd.

Most of your peripherals will work with Windows 8 ARM. WOA includes basic plug-and-play functionality for most of the basic add-ons out there, so adding a mouse and keyboard, external hard dives, card readers, et cetera should work just fine.  As usual more esoteric hardware, like the shortcut buttons on your keyboard, will need specific drivers. These may be downloaded from the Windows Store if the accessory manufacturer supplies them. More complicated hardware add-ons, like TV tuners or graphics tablets, will probably need entirely new drivers. There’s no word on external displays, but most ARM licensees have at least some support for HDMI-out already on the market, so it’s probably coming along for the ride.

Windows 8 ARM will support DirectX 10 gaming. And hardware acceleration in the browser and general UI too, but what you want to know about is gaming. There have been some impressive gains in ARM-based graphics cards lately, and getting DirectX support in WOA is a major accomplishment. This doesn’t mean that your current Windows games will work with WOA (because of the architecture – see above) but the tools are there. Developers should be able to get some very impressive graphical oomph out of Windows 8 ARM hardware, and maybe soon after launch ARM downloads from indie and then major publishers will start appearing in the Windows Store.

Windows 8 ARM beta is coming soon, and you can’t have it. At the same time as the next milestone release for Windows 8 x86/x64, Microsoft will be starting a closed beta program for Windows 8 on ARM. A limited number of developers will be given access to WOA hardware and software. There’s no word of a public beta for Windows 8 ARM at all. For some good news, the Windows 8 x86/x64 Consumer Preview will be available in late February. The closed ARM beta will start at this time.

There you have it – just about everything we know about Windows 8 ARM from a consumer standpoint. Developers, you really should go and read the full post at MSDN – just make sure you don’t have anything else planned for this evening. If Microsoft is true to their word, manufacturers should have WOA devices hitting shelves in late 2012, with internals from Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and Nvidia. This is all very far out, as Microsoft keeps reminding us – nothing’s set in stone yet.

For appliances that are unable to connect to Wi-fi, the folks at Google have designed an open wireless protocol that allows Android devices to talk to them. This protocol is designed to offer low-cost connectivity to everything electrical in the home. Lights, alarm clocks, thermostats, and more are included in the first iteration of this connectivity protocol – Google wants to think of every single appliance in your home as a potential piece of the puzzle in this Android@Home framework, ready to work with Android apps.

Lights and Appliances

In the original presentation of Android@Home, an app with four off/on switches was presented with data flowing to the right on a Motorola XOOM tablet’s display. This app connected with a set of four lamps, each simply controlled by the app and connected with the protocol written for Android@Home. Very simple stuff. The next example was an app that connected to your alarm clock/stereo and your lights throughout a room – this app gradually raising the brightness of the lights and turning up the sound on your stereo as the time for your awakening in the morning approaches.

Another example given by Google was an app connected to your home’s irrigation system, this bringing you a “real world Farmville app” so to speak, watering your plants and grass whenever you tap a button or on a set schedule. A game connection was shown on stage at I/O 2011 with the game Quake being played on the Motorola XOOM Android tablet – as shots were fired and enemies were killed, the lights connected with the app flickered and dimmed – no more life, no more light.

Google has partnered with several industry groups on this project, one of these being Lighting Science – a leading LED lighting manufacturer. This group will be the first to sell LED lighting and switches directly tied to the Android@Home environment. You can check out the bulb held up and demoed at the event over at Lighting Science but good luck getting much information out of them on how they’re doing with the Android@Home project now – mum’s the word!

Project Tungston / Android@Home Hub

The Android@Home Hub is a “totally new kind of Android device” as they said at Google I/O 2011 and combines a standalone Google Music endpoint and a bridge to the Android@Home network. This project was code-named Project Tungston. At the first introduction to the project, they had a couple of Tungston devices – both of them ran the Android operating system as well as the Android@Home software framework. Both of these devices were “always powered on” and always connected to the cloud. They have Audio Out and can connect to either 3rd party speakers or your home stereo system (aka wirelessly or wired). These Tungston devices connected with what we now know as Google Music – all your music in the cloud and available for purchase on command.

The control device, aka the one that looks like a leaning box here with lights flashing in its seams, is controlled by your Android smartphone or tablet. In the interface on Google Music you’re able to see which devices you’re connected to, and in this case you’ve got “Stage Left” and “Stage Right”, the names of the two Tungston controllers connected to speakers.

All of this connectivity and functionality is, like Android itself, based on an open source code. Developers will be able to create their own apps based on the code freely and without cost. Another “Tungston” device was demonstrated on stage at I/O 2011 that looked more like a sphere than a box. This device was able to read NFC tags that were “activated when the packaging was taken off of the case” of a CD. When you opened your CD case up and tapped it to the sphere, it would read the tag inside and the music was immediately added to your Google Music library in digital form. Touching the sphere with the CD case once the music was added started playing the music from the first track instantly.

Google I/O 2011 Presentation

Head to about 43 minutes into the video here to see the entire presentation on Android@Home or watch the full video to see everything presented on the first day at Google I/O 2011 – it’s Ice Cream Sandwich fantastic!

What we expect soon

Android@Home is likely to pop up again here in the Spring of 2012 as the Google Home Entertainment Device we’ve been hearing whispered tips about for the past week. We’re thinking that the open protocol and codes galore for developers will be formally passed on soon, and that a device may well be developed by Google to show the functional power of Android@Home off to the world, much like an Android Nexus device would. Let’s get connected at home in 2012!

Inside the box here you’ll find the usual – that being the device itself, a microSIM card already installed for us, and a power cord and adapter. This device uses a microUSB cord like the past few years of DROID devices have, and it’s running Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, the newest edition before Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This device is set on Motorola’s timeline to be updated to Ice Cream Sandwich before the year is over, and it’s looking more and more likely that the change will be coming sooner than later – hopefully inside the first half of the year.

This device includes Government-grade encryption (FIPS 140-2) for all of your ever-loving typing needs, that being email, calendar, and contacts, and you’ll be able to use Webtop like the rest of the Motorola line from 2011. Plug it on in to the full suit of Motorola-made accessories at Verizon right this second! You’ve got Citrix Receiver on Webtop right out of the box as well for full desktop virtualization and access – how kind!

This device has a front-facing camera for video chat, a back-facing 8 megapixel camera with 1080p video, and the whole device is set for full 4G LTE access at what Verizon continues to note is 2 to 5 Mbps right here in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. We’ll be giving this device a full rundown soon – for now check out the video and the photos below. And be sure to ask any and all questions in the comments – we’re waiting to work for you!

Like the white Nokia N9 before it, the white version of the Lumia 800 is gloss-finish rather than matte. That makes it a little more slippery to hold, though it’s still compact enough to grip neatly in one hand. Glossy phones are usually fingerprint magnets, but the white Nokia manages to hide them reasonably well.

Otherwise it’s the same Lumia 800 we know from before, so you get a 3.7-inch WVGA ClearBlack display, 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with 720p HD video recording, and a 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm processor. OS is Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, and Nokia preloads its Nokia Drive app for free turn-by-turn navigation, along with Nokia Music for free streaming music.

Nokia Lumia 800 White hands-on:

We asked Nokia whether the white Lumia 800 – and the which N9 before it – meant the company had a white version of the Lumia 900 in the pipeline, though it wouldn’t comment. Still, with the production process so similar for the slightly larger, LTE-equipped device, we really wouldn’t be surprised to see a white Lumia 900 show up later in 2012.

Until then, we’ll have to make do with the white 800, though that’s no great hardship. It’s set to go on sale sometime in February, country and network depending.

The software on the two devices we’re looking at here is the most updated version from either software group, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich from Google, and iOS 5 from Apple. The devices we’re looking at are the iPhone 4S from Apple and the Galaxy Nexus from Samsung. The iPhone 4S is the same as each iPhone before it in that Apple uses it as a hero device for its software, while the Galaxy Nexus is a special case for Google because they do not currently produce their own hardware, this one produced with Samsung to be the hero for Google’s software. In this way these two devices are the best examples for Apple and Google’s Android for this feature story.

Applications

Both Android and iOS are built with a basic user interface which includes a grid of icons, each icon connected to an app. All Android devices you’re going to purchase from a carrier here in the United States and the iPhone are connected to app stores where apps can be purchased or download free. If you switch from Android to iOS or back the other way around, you will need to download a whole new set of applications. This is true of any switching between devices, but if you stick with one software, like switching from Android to Android, you wont have to re-purchase applications like you would when switching from iOS to Android and back again.

Multi-tasking

The question of multi-tasking is one we’ve been writing about and hearing about for years, ever since the birth of this mobile environment in smartphones. The newest versions of Android and iOS both have a very basic but fairly effective means of switching back and forth between apps. For the iPhone you’ll be double-tapping on your home button and a row of applications will appear at the bottom of your display – each of these are able to be opened or, if you hold down on one of them, closed entirely. A similar situation happens with Android 4.0 when you tap the “Recent Apps” icon, this being the double rectangle on the far right – the applications pop up here with a preview and an icon, each able to be opened, closed entirely, or have its App Info accessed.

Pull-down Menu

Both Android and iOS now have a pull-down menu that can be accessed by sliding your finger down from the top of the display. Both have status updates from applications and are organized a bit differently from on another, and Apple’s version has a couple of widget-like selections at the moment not unlike what Android has on its several home-screens. Both menus’s individual updates can be tapped to access and can also be closed with a simple action: an x-out or a push to the left.

Home Screens

Android has two layers to its containment of applications, while Apple’s iOS has one. Android has a set of home-screens where you can add apps as well as a wide variety of widgets, widgets being anything from a simple picture frame to a stock-ticker like you’re seeing in the pull-down menu on iOS. Android also has an App Drawer where applications are placed in a basic grid and can be pulled up and out to Android’s home screens. Apple’s iOS has home screens which are essentially the same as Android’s App Drawer. Both operating systems have the ability to pack several apps in one app’s grid spot in a “drawer” for a simplified way of organizing, both having this feature on home screens.

Taking Photos and Video

The photo-taking experience on Android and iOS is basically the same. You’ve got a viewfinder that’s nearly the whole display large, you’ve got one button that takes the photo or the video, and there’s are at least a few options on both interfaces. The camera on iOS 5 has options for your flash or lamp (for video), tap to focus, and have a single button to flip between front and back cameras.

Android has the same set of options but also has a selection of special effects here on the Galaxy Nexus, including a panoramic mode for long photos. As far as the devices we’re looking at here, the iPhone 4S has the better ability to take fabulous photos as its 8 megapixels strong over the Galaxy Nexus’ 5 megapixels. Both devices claim to have the fastest shutter speed in the west, but the iPhone 4S has a much better shot-to-keeper ratio from what you humble narrator has experienced.

Sharing Photos and Video

The iPhone is limited in its capability to share a photo or a video directly from the gallery – if you open a photo and want to share it, you can email it, tweet it, text message it, assign it to a contact, make it your wallpaper, or print it. With Android, you can do all of these things plus more – Android connects your gallery to any and all applications that are able to share images. For iOS you’ve got to go into each of those applications outside the gallery to share. This simple difference will drive you nuts when switching from Android to iOS if you’re a big sharing sort of person.

Settings

Bot operating systems have a basic Settings menu, both of them able to work with items like Wifi, screen brightness, and settings for your main account – or multiple accounts with Android. With the Android version here specifically on the Nexus device you’ve got a set of developer options you wont get with any other Android device. Both operating systems have access to individual app settings, but only iOS has the ability to access GPS settings for each individual app. When switching back and forth between operating systems, you’ll definitely have to do a bit of searching before you find each of the bits you’re used to working with, but it’s all there for the most part between the two.

Ecosystems

There are massive followings surrounding both the iPhone and Android devices, with the Android Community being both a developer and a hacker group and Apple’s being just one gigantic set of people of all types. When you need support for an iPhone, you’re going to want to head to an Apple store. When you want support for an Android device, you’ll be encouraged to go to your carrier. Both choices have a big online support community comprised of users from around the world that want to help out their fellow compatriots with problems big and small.

Wrap-Up

A few years ago I’d have said that the iPhone had a much more massive and impressive developer base for applications than Android, and you know I’d have been right. At this time both groups have an ever-expanding world-sized set of developers working for them. You absolutely cannot judge one device over the other based on this simple factor, nor should you choose one over the other trying to compare them based on one specification. The whole package is what you’re going to want to see here.

I’m going to continue using the iPhone 4S as one of two daily devices. I’m in a unique place here as a tech writer and reviewer of devices where I don’t have to drop hundreds of dollars down a month to have service and new devices, and as it’s my job to stay updated on the trends of the day, I’ll also need to keep an Android on hand. I’ll continue to watch and review the other operating systems as well, but at the moment it’s not quite as important for me to carry one along at all times. The app, case, skin, and service reviews and hands-on for the iPhone 4S will continue into the future right here on SlashGear courtesy of yours truly.

My issues with motion gaming have prompted me to turn my back on the Wii. In fact, I haven’t even seen my Wii in well over a year, since it’s been sitting in my closet with the rest of the obsolete and boring consoles I’ve bought over the years.

[Image credit: Cha già José]

Sony’s PlayStation Move is similarly useless to me. The wands add no value to my gaming experience and as far as I’m concerned, should be relegated to the junk heap in the PlayStation 4.

And now, we move to the Kinect. I’ve said here before that while the Kinect comes with a really cool technology, I’m not a fan of the peripheral. I do, however, acknowledge — like the Wii — that there are some people out there that see some value in a product like the Kinect.

But what saddens me is that Microsoft’s motion-gaming peripheral is, well, the next big thing in gaming.

Microsoft is doubling down on the Kinect. A software development kit that allows PC software developers to take advantage of the device’s technology is in the wild, and there is a very good chance that it might also become the go-to device for laptops.

In the beginning, that might mean PC gaming will be enhanced, but I can also see the device becoming a useful accessory for those developing other programs across a wide array of industries, including medical, manufacturing, and retail.

But it’s that gaming element that keeps holding me up.

According to the latest rumors, it’s possible Microsoft will launch the Xbox 720 with a Kinect camera built into the console. What’s more, there is some speculation that Sony might try to find a way to come close to matching the Kinect’s controller-less functionality.

Add that to the fact that the Kinect is selling exceedingly well and it quickly becomes clear that it could very well be Microsoft’s ticket to gaming dominance in the coming years.

I hate to say it, but the Microsoft Kinect is the next big thing in gaming. It’s already changed how console makers think, and it’s well on its way to transforming Windows PCs. But it’s the fact that it might play an even greater role in the next generation that’s enough to make me cringe.

Just when I hoped you would be out of my life, Kinect, you’ve found a way to become a part of it for the next several years.

Maybe it’s a good thing I own a Mac, eh?

You’ll find not only a full guide of the interior of the stadium, but a full guide to the city as well. Want to park your car and mark the GPS location? Go for it here! Want to find a place to eat, drink, and be merry? That’s here too. Plan your day before the game and after the game if you like, and find your seat when it’s time to sit! This app has been developed with the NFL to provide you a map not only from your car to the stadium, but from the stadium front door to your seat as well.

This app is good for everyone not actually attending the Super Bowl with all sorts of social feeds from Twitter and official NFL sites. In addition you’ll find that your vision will be increased should you like to tap into player info, trends in talks on any manner of topics surrounding the game, and more! This app is free for both iOS and Android, available now on the Android Market and in the iTunes App Store.

Note that we’ve had a little bit of trouble getting the app to work on some Android devices but have found no common factor in what makes the app unable to run. That said, both the iPad and the iPhone apps work great, and if you have the choice, this app looks best on a tablet. Get into it all right this second!

But lost amid all that talk was Apple’s iPod. That device, which once meant nearly everything to the company’s success or failure, actually saw sales decline 21 percent to 15.4 million units sold worldwide. Over the last several quarters, similar scenarios have played out as consumers increasingly turn to Apple’s iPad and iPhone and turn their backs on the iPod.

Those sales declines make sense. Apple’s iPod has been on store shelves for over a decade now, and the vast majority of consumers who wanted a music player bought one of Apple’s devices long ago; the number of people who actually need an iPod has dwindled.

What’s more, Apple has incorporated iPod functionality into its iPhone and iPad, making the need to carry two devices to place calls and listen to music all but obsolete.

Given that, and considering iPod sales are on the decline, I can’t help but wonder: do we really still need an iPod?

If Apple’s sales last quarter is any indication, there are many of you out there that believes the iPod is still a worthy buy. And to some extent, I can understand that logic. After all, it’s nice to just bring the iPod Nano with you on a long run, rather than strap the iPhone to your shoulder. And getting away from e-mail to enjoy some music every now and then isn’t such a bad thing.

But for the rest of us that don’t necessarily want to get away from work or want all the functionality we need might find little value in iPods nowadays.

Every single Apple music player falls short from a feature perspective when it’s put up against the iPhone. Even the iPod Touch, which delivers all kinds of functionality, doesn’t support wireless calling, making it less-desirable to mobile customers.

Plus, there’s the issue of pricing. In today’s world of high unemployment, skyrocketing credit card bills, and tight budgets, most of us just aren’t willing to spend hundreds of dollars on two devices that can do pretty much the same thing.

Consider this: if you want to buy an iPhone 4S right now, you can get it for as little as $199 with a two-year contract. The 8GB iPod Touch has the exact same price. Even the 8GB iPod Nano is $129.

In other words, for those of us trying to save some cash, buying an iPod doesn’t necessarily make much sense.

As a person who owns three iPods, I can appreciate that many consumers out there don’t want to turn their backs on their favored music players just yet. But I think it’s time we do just that.

The iPod was great in the old days. But now, it’s just another device we care little about.

[Image credit: Trey Ratcliff]

Nowadays, there’s only one brick-and-mortar electronics store I visit on a regular basis: the Apple Store. As for Best Buy? Well, I see no reason to go there, and judging by the company’s recent disappointing quarters, it appears many folks agree.

But I’ll take it one step further. At some point in the next several years, Best Buy will fail just as the many companies that came before it have. And Apple Stores will be the only electronics store left standing.

Now, I’m sure there are some of you who will say that retailers like Best Buy need to exist. You might reason that many folks still need to head to retail stores to research products or get accessories when in a pinch. But with Amazon and others shipping products to homes in just a day and the ability to return those products without any financial recourse, I’m not so sure I agree with that logic.

Others might question why I believe Apple Stores will succeed where other companies are destined to fail. It’s simple: Apple’s retail stores offer a different, more-rewarding experience.

Whenever you go to an Apple Store, you’re immediately welcomed to a different environment. You have the ability to surf the Web, check your e-mail, or quickly charge your iPhone without worry of the salespeople stopping you. And if at that point you decide to walk out the door without even considering buying something, that’s just fine.

What’s more, the stores double as technical support locations, educational areas for those who are new to Apple products, and even fun places to bring the kids to try out the iPod Touch. Apple’s stores are about an experience — not just shopping.

Beyond that, I think Apple’s success will only further the company’s chances of succeeding in the brick-and-mortar. Consumers want to use the firm’s products, and they want to try them out as soon as they’re announced. There’s also a camaraderie that develops each year when consumers wait in line for hours just to be among the first people to have an iPhone or iPad.

Apple’s stores are, well, special.

So, as the chorus of critics who say that brick-and-mortar electronics stores will eventually die grows louder, it’s important to point out that Apple won’t be one of the victims.

You cay say what you want about Apple and what its current success represents to the industry, but if there’s one thing you can’t say about the iPhone maker, it’s that it doesn’t understand retail. As the last few years have shown, Apple understands it quite well. And the company will for the foreseeable future.

This smartphone came into my hands more than once before this week began, the iPhone 4 model being essentially the same I can safely say that I’ve seen and played around with this particular iPhone iteration in the past. This week represents your humble narrator’s first real extended hands-on look at the iPhone 4S. Here we’re looking at the device so close that the human eye wouldn’t likely have picked up such a collection of nuances. To get this close to a device is to know it all too well, and not many devices would hold up to such scrutiny.

At the top of the device is the power button, also functioning as the lock button when you’d like to shut the display off without powering the device down entirely. This button is one of several that sticks above the fold, just enough that you’re able to feel it with your finger to activate or de-activate your phone with ease. Similarly the two volume buttons and the screen orientation lock/volume lock switch are raised about the metal surrounding the device at precisely the same level. The volume buttons are marked with as simple a set of icons as possible: one + and one -, while the volume lock/screen orientation lock is marked only when activated by a small orange embedded mark.

The power button on the front of the device is depressed so that it allows your thumb to move into it with ease, and pressing the button does not reveal any open spaces even though it does remain a physical, moving piece of the machine. The square here remains another one of the simplest marks in the mobile world, a rounded-corner nondescript shape which signifies a return to the source from wherever you are in the device’s interface.

Near the home button at the bottom of the device is the Apple connector port in the middle of two screws and two speaker grills. These grills are below the surface of the metal and, along with the port for the Apple connector, are amongst the biggest dust-attractors on the device. These areas are ripe for collecting the nastiest bits of grime from your pocket and make a great case for picking up a cover for your device lest its beauty be lost to your own daily use of it. The close-up shots you see in this post were taken after I did a basic cleaning of the whole device – getting rid of the entirety of the dust on this device is essentially impossible.

The glass on the front and the back of the device is not just a flat piece cut in one – it’s got curves around its corners, rounded edges around their entirety, and have an added bump and platform before they go flat. This device is the first to take the number one flag away from my favorite glass treatment on a device of all time: the LG G2X. The curves on the glass of that device are nice, here the precision is completely unmatched.

The back of the device has the Apple logo, some information on the design and model, and all of it sits below the glass in reflective chrome printing so that it’ll never, ever get worn off. Also below the glass is the camera’s flash, and surrounded by a tiny silver ring next to the flash is another individually cut piece of glass in front of the camera. The camera itself is highly visible even without a macro view – but take a look at that perfect set of rings!

Up top of the device where we began this journey you’ll find one microphone hole and one headphone jack. When you get in close enough to see the details in the rings, you’ll find that each hole has been cut with tools so small it’ll make your eyeballs spin. Tiny instruments for perfect little holes.

There’s nothing like this in the smartphone world right now outside the iPhone 4S. This is but one of our explorations of the device, the display, the software, and the rest sitting in the rest of our week of hands-on looks at this device. When you hold an iPhone 4S, you know that it sits in a Sweet Spot, perfectly suited for an adult hand, your thumb able to access the entirety of the display without you needing to hold the device aside with two hands, the bulk of the device heavy enough that you know it’s high quality, not too light that you’ll accidentally toss it out with the newspaper.

This device is smaller than the bulk of the high-end smartphones on the market today, and Apple’s competitors have made no secret about touting that fact. A lesser company would falter under the pressure of having one phone size throughout their history – Apple will more than likely keep this size until the lines go down at the stores. The iPhone remains the world’s most popular smartphone for years and years running not least of all because its outer hardware is so precise. Follow the rest of this “I’m switching to iPhone 4S for a week” in the timeline below, and stick to the SlashGear main news feed for updates as they appear!

If you do no like the Timeline feature on Facebook, you can snap out the bits and pieces you do not like by heading to your security features or by deleting everything you’re ashamed of in your past piece-by-piece. What you can’t do is get rid of Timeline entirely. If you see an offer on Facebook (or outside of Facebook, for that matter) to get rid of Timeline in one way or another, you’re being scammed. Please do not fall for these fool’s errands by entering your email, downloading software, hitting the Like to activate, and a whole lot more.

For those of you wishing to report sites and Facebook entities that attempt to scam you with such offers, either report them straight from their page in the upper right-hand corner under the gear icon or head here: Facebook Security Page. Facebook does have one whole heck of a lot of security in place, but cannot realistically police the entirety of its own realm. If you can help cut down on scamming across the board, you benefit everyone.

What we’re going to explore here is how I work with the iPhone and react to it. Myself being a person who uses many different smartphones on a regular basis, most of them Android, some of them Windows Phone, but all of them consisting of the newest consumer technology in the world at any given time, this ought to be fuel for some interesting conversation. This first installment will explore in brief the 10 applications I felt necessary to install first, listing each reason and the apps functionality as I do so.

SlashGear

Like all good tech and gadget lovers do, I made sure to download the SlashGear app first. While I’ll suggest all new iPhone users to download this to check out the news that I and my coworkers dedicate ourselves to on a daily basis, I grab it for an entirely different reason. I need to keep up with the news so that I can see the many different ways the stories are published, assuring you the readers an optimal experience no matter where you choose to view SlashGear content. And it’s free, so no need to sit and think about this one. [Download SlashGear]

Intoxicase

One of the first cases I agreed to get sent for review after I found out I’d be doing this trial with the iPhone 4S was the Intoxicase. I’ve got both the regular and the slightly higher-grade model sitting here on my desk, and I had to make sure I had the app to go with them. What this app does is to add a counter to its list each time you open a new beer, this getting specific with a gigantic list of brews in addition to allowing you to add your own specific names. The cases are nice too, I’ll be reviewing them this week. [Download Intoxicase]

Netflix

I was going to wait to get Netflix because I’ve already got it on the iPad and probably wouldn’t be needing to connect the iPhone to my HDTV for movie watching, but I couldn’t resist. I know they’ve got Tron: Legacy in there and I had to see how quality the streaming was going to be on the ultra sharp iPhone 4S display. As it turns out, it’s all pretty darn good, believe it or not. Netflix seems a bit squished then you get down to a smartphone-sized interface, but it works just fine nonetheless. [Download Netflix]

KRINK

I had this application for about a week on my iPad 2 and can’t get enough of it. You get a wide selection of KRINK-brand graffiti paints with tips to match and are able to paint on a canvas on your device. The iPad version is a bit more fun because this sort of app lends itself to a larger display, but in that I can create lovely drippy images with ease here, I’ll be keeping the app around for the long haul. Also it has the ability to share strait to Facebook, so that’s nice. [Download KRINK]

Smartr Contacts

Like KRINK, I’d downloaded Smartr Contacts previously for the iPad, realizing fully that I’d have to be working with either a tiny or pixelated interface on that device. I got it all the same, signed up with it and my several contact-heavy accounts (google accounts galore, twitter, etc) and knew that since I’d already done all the work back then, all I’d have to do here is sign in and all my contacts would be instantly imported. [Download Smartr Contacts]

Press Reader

The folks behind Press Reader were nice enough to provide your humble narrator with a full account for a few months here on this awesome newspaper subscription service. Like the artwork app listed above, this app lends itself better to a larger screen, but I’m still grateful to be reading my local newspaper from my iPhone with ease, this including new editions delivered automatically each day. Who knew it’d take a smartphone to get me reading the newspaper again? [Download PressReader]

Twitter

I wouldn’t have downloaded Twitter if the iPhone itself hadn’t suggested it. Right out of the box you’ve got Twitter showing up in settings, so I decided there was no better time than the present to get re-invested in the ticking timebomb that is the tiny blue bird. We’ll see how long this lasts – probably pretty long since the stock camera and gallery allow sharing directly to a Tweet. My first big thumbs down to iOS (currently in version 5.0.1 here on this iPhone 4S) is that I’m not instantly connected to each app that’s capable of sharing an image straight from the gallery. We’ll see about that sooner than later. [Download Twitter]

Google+

One of the reasons I love Google+ in its application form so much is its ability to instantly upload all of your photos to itself (through Picasa) as you take them. The iPhone app has turned up a bit different from the Android app in that this function is simply non-existent here in iOS. The rest of the Google+ app works tops though, moving swiftly and having just as nice an interface as the Android version. [Download Google+]

TourWrist

I heard about this app earlier this week as it’s been popping up on the lips of MacWorld 2012 | iWorld 2012 attendees galore. You can explore environments through a virtual window here that is your iPhone, people capturing spaces by taking a complete 360 degree photograph that appears perfectly aligned with your iPhone as you move it about inside. In the very near future I’m going to be capturing some basic spaces for myself so I can go for the gold at Mobile World Congress 2012 for all of you – welcome to the panoramic future, I hope! [Download TourWrist]

Slayer Pinball Rocks HD

Since I first got my iPod Touch several years ago, this game has been my favorite. I downloaded it for my iPad 2 when I got it then, so too must I have downloaded it for this iPhone 4S because it’s impossibly good. There’s no drawbacks to this game. It’s got the heaviest metal, the most excellent interface for a virtual pinball machine (made by Gameprom, the same folks who also bring you Pinball HD and AC/DC Pinball), and it’s one whole heck of a lot of fun. This is what mobile devices were invented for. If I had a choice of only one app on this whole device, I’d choose Slayer HD Pinball over the basic phone app. It’s that fantastic. [Download Slayer Pinball Rocks HD]

Wrap-Up

Most of the applications above are free, so go ahead and access them and download them yourself because they’re worth peeking at, each and every one of them. As I move through this week with handfuls of explorations and reports back to you on my findings, please feel free to ask questions and make suggestions. This week can be just as interactive as you want it to be: I’m here with this iPhone 4S for you!

It’s not my job to promote this device, as it’s certainly doing well enough on it’s own at this point, but I’m not going to trash it where it doesn’t deserve to be trashed, either. Before I made this switch this weekend, I’d been using the Galaxy Nexus, that being the Samsung-made hero device for Google featuring the newest Android version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The switch has been somewhat dramatic in how different it is to be using iOS 5, but much more so in the hardware: Apple has created a hero in this phone that they’re certainly proud of here, but can look forward to being proud of far into the future.

Take for example the original iPod: such a classic design that they still use a stylized version of it to describe an MP3 player not only in Apple products, but in other branded objects throughout our vast gadget kingdom. There’s no gigantic click-wheel to feel iconic with here, but the perfectly ideal nature of the device itself lends to an unforgettable experience in daily use. Google has attained this somewhat in each of its hero collaborations with groups like HTC and Samsung in their Nexus line as well, to a degree – the Nexus S is still one of my favorite Android devices hands-down.

I also own a third generation iPod Touch as well as an iPad 2, so iOS isn’t a brand new experience for me, but as I’ve still not upgraded the former to iOS 5, the smartphone experience really is a first for me here. I find iOS 5 to be strikingly similar to Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The pull-down menu for notifications, the dock of icons below the homescreens, the look of the icons themselves, and the settings menu all lend themselves to an easy learning experience back and forth between the two operating systems. For those of you that’ve never used a smartphone before, it’s nearly comparable to when Mac OS and Windows were first in contention: they’re technically not the same, but let’s be honest: they’re the same.

The first big difference here is the fact that because iPhone is so ubiquitous, developers are clearly able to have a much more one-on-one experience with the device itself rather than the operating system first, then the individual devices galore*. *This is true on essentially every other mobile operating system out there, as I’m sure you developers are well aware. Many apps are developed for iPhone first, then the rest of the operating systems out there simply because the user base on this same piece of hardware is so gigantic compared to any other setup.

The second big difference between the iPhone 4S and the rest of the smartphone world is in the all-powerful iPhone 4S camera. I had high hopes for the Galaxy Nexus and the supposedly awesomely powerful camera it had with instant shutter speed, but no such luck. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus has a 5 megapixel camera which has the ability to create some excellent photos if you’re in a position to stay still or have essentially awesome lighting conditions, but for the everyday photographer who just wants fantastic photos basically every single time one is shot, the iPhone 4S is such a winner that it’s unbelievable. Apple’s understanding that the camera can and should be one of the centers of the smartphone experience is perfectly displayed here, quite obviously.

The oneness of the device, the way I find myself using it each day, and the applications and hardware that I test with the iPhone 4S this week will all be included in write-ups for all to see throughout the week here on SlashGear. I’ll be exploring everything from the first 10 apps I download to how much I trust the device to do my daily work, work I cannot afford not to do lest I be tossed on the street. Please feel free to ask questions of me and/or the device as the week goes on, as this is also essentially my vast review of the device as it exists several months after its initial release. This is the first of many hands-on explorations, with a special emphasis being placed on switching specifically from Android over to iPhone.

Welcome to the iPhone 4S experience as seen through an Android-loving tech writer by the name of Chris Burns. Any and all suggestions, love, and hate-mail will be read and considered accordingly!

iPhone apps

First have a peek at the mobile application. Though we do not have a fully working model here in person, we’ve got all the functionality built-in to this setup anyway. First you’ll get a glimpse of the smartphone-based out-of-car controls, then we’ll step into the vehicle for another connection. Here you’ll get a taste of what connecting your car directly to your iPhone for a fully immersive and interactive experience in intelligent console computing feels like.

Built-in Facebook app

Next have a peek at a couple of apps that will be working with mbrace2 aside from the smartphone experience. First you’ll get a peek at Facebook, fully operational with your in-car dial and able to update your status on the fly. Pay special attention to how smooth the operation already is even though we’re still in a bit of a pre-release phase here. This is but one of a collection of apps you’ll have built-in with mbrace2.

Built-in Google Local Search app

Next there’s Google Local Search, this also built-in to mbrace2 and ready for some search and map action. The unique thing about this build of Google’s search and mapping system is that no other group currently has street view and panoramic view from the vehicle. This will prove quite valuable to you when you’re hunting for that one tiny sandwich shop amongst hundreds of buildings in your own gigantic city.

mbrace2 Control Module

Finally take a look at the mbrace2 Control Module. It’s through this that you’ll have the connectivity for everything you’ve seen above, be it the iPhone-connected interface or the built-in applications. This bit is built-in to the car and you’ll never physically see it, but it’s a comfort to know what it looks like nonetheless. This technology is built by Continental and has its own chip, internal Bluetooth connectivity, cellular connections, and GPS connector antenna.

This whole technology suite will be hitting Mercedes-Benz vehicles in spring of 2012. Look for it at your local dealer’s lot relatively soon!

We got the opportunity to take a ride in the vehicle as a Mercedes-Benz assistant helped us along. Your humble narrator was shown how the front screen and the control scheme worked together to create a fully immersive experience for the driver. You’ll see in the video how menus sat on carrousels, selections were made with a push forward on the atmosphere in front of one’s hand, and at no point was there any doubt that the car was attempting to think with the person controlling it. Though the controls weren’t exactly simply to work with, as the sensor technology wasn’t perfect, this certainly stuck with us as one of the most amazing shows of power at the convention.

While the dashboard shows off menus that included media, social, and places, each of them able to control what you’re hearing and seeing around you, who you’re contacting from the vehicle, and mapping where you want to go, it was the windshield that really showed off the state of the future. In the windshield you were able to see not only the turn-by-turn directions you’d pushed up from the dashboard so that you could experience them in a less distracting way, but landmarks were pointed out and were able to be collected as you drove. Incoming calls appeared on the display as images of the people calling, and all of this could be pulled down into your dashboard for safe keeping.

Have a look at what’s going to be possible someday, courtesy of Mercedes-Benz, and let us know what you think. I certainly wouldn’t mind having something like this working in my vehicle in the next few years. Unfortunately there may be a few legal hurdles to cross before allowing on-windshield displays, even IF they’re perfectly excellent like this one was. Mercedes-Benz, bring us the future right now!

With AllJoyn, most of the work is done by developers before you, the user, ever gets it in your hands – this is part of what makes AllJoyn so excellent – you barely even need to know it’s there! The next thing that makes AllJoyn so enticing is its ability to connect devices together without a middle-man – you’ll see several different examples of ways this is happening in the videos below. Then there’s the support developers get from Qualcomm when developing with AllJoyn – there’s nothing like having an ultra-pro group of technical specialists there to help you when you’re working with a new technology, especially when you’re a developer on the rise.

Namco’s Pacman Kart

First peek at a presentation of Pacman Kart from Namco working on a pair of Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphones. Here you’ll hear how when both devices are connected to one another directly with AllJoyn – pay special attention to the end of the video where we speak on how these devices could be connected with their Wi-fi radios or their built-in bluetooth, AllJoyn not needing you to choose between them – it just works!

Phunware on a tablet connected to smart TV

Next take a look at a set of apps created by Phunware to work on a Qualcomm-powered tablet (an HTC Jetstream for those of you wondering) communicating with a Qualcomm-powered smart tv (powered by an S3 chip). You’ll find that the connection between the tablet and the television is in-sync because AllJoyn is communicating between the two devices with the radios built-in to either. The first example has an interactive trivia game controlled by the tablet. The next example has video playing on the television while related links and images appear on the tablet. The final example has a karaoke game that uses the tablet as a microphone, able then to play the song back with the voice you recorded the song in on the television immediately after you sang it.

JamJoyn music

JamJoyn is shown next, this an application custom-made for AllJoyn in which music is able to be controlled by several different devices all working with the same stereo. The devices used here are the HTC Thunderbolt and the HTC Nexus One (both running Snapdragon processors, of course) working with a Jawbone JAMBOX, each of them able to control the music by switching tracks, adding to a single playlist, and more. In this use case you’ll find the list of songs sitting below a control panel on both devices – the JAMBOX is connected to the Thunderbolt with an audio output cord, but both devices can control the jams.

Whiteboard

AllJoyn shows its power again with an app by the name of Whiteboard in which regardless of how many devices you’ve got open with the same canvas, anyone can draw and the canvas will be modified accordingly. Imagine the use of such a tool in an educational setting – especially in an art class! You could have a set of tablets all showing off the same piece of artwork with each one able to modify the rest – brilliant!

Fight Game: Heroes

We also got the chance to play the brand new mobile game Fight Game Heroes connected with AllJoyn on Qualcomm MSM8960 developer platform tablets. It was your humble narrator versus Cory Gunther and, believe it or not, I get knocked out in no time flat. Have a peek and see how versatile this system is on a couple of tablets made for developers only!

We’ll certainly continue to keep you updated on Qualcomm’s work with AllJoyn and will continue to bring you use-case scenarios as they appear on the mass market. Exciting stuff coming from a group that brings you not just the processor, but a network of finely tuned hardware in every device they work with. Developers get your thinking caps out!

This is the first of perhaps several wars between similar cases, stands, and skins for devices such as the iPad and the iPhone – two products that have more accessories than Mrs. Wayans has kids. This first war is a selection between some products that have quite different aims but have all been utilized to their maximum potential by your humble narrator. As it turns out, each of these units works rather well when you’re using your iPad 2 as a control unit for video viewing – either right on the device or feeding out through your HDMI converter to your HDTV.

Cygnett Platform Universal Tablet Stand

This stand was shown off at CES 2012 and we got an advanced look at it here, it being made entirely of metal save for the rubber-covered brackets and non-slip rubber cradle and coming in at $39.99 when it gets released. Unlike the other units in this battle, this stand can be used for any and all tablets you might have, including your Android, Windows, BlackBerry, and webOS devices all the same. You’ll be able to purchase this monster straight from Cygnett when the time is ripe (inside the next couple of months) in their online store.

Logitech Fold-Up Keyboard

This product works with the iPad 2 specifically and is certainly a cool customer when it comes to showing off its abilities to your pals. Folded down this unit simply makes your iPad look like a thick industrial-sized tablet made mostly of plastic. When you want a keyboard, on the other hand, you’ve only to hit the button that unlocks the unit and pull your iPad 2 up – swoop come the two sides of the keyboard, meeting in the middle for one big complete show! This device connects to your iPad 2 via Bluetooth and does need to be recharged from time to time, but makes typing one whole heck of a lot easier so long as you’ve got a flat surface to put it on. This unit is currently out of stock at Logitech but will cost you right around $129.99 wherever you end up finding it.

Speck HandyShell

This case made by Speck is by far one of the simplest case and stand all-in-one units I’ve ever seen. It’s got a reinforced one-piece construction for the case part and a flip-out handle on the back that’s got a tension that allows for it to stand at nearly any angle. This case is the only one of the three that does not allow for the usage of your Apple-made Smart Cover, but given that you’ll be using your device for a video and/or living photo frame from now on anyway, who cares? This shell is available right this second in Speck’s online shop for a cool $54.95 and is one of about a billion different cases the group offers.

The Winner

When you take all the instances in the world that I use the iPad 2 for on a daily basis, there’s more than one answer for which case wins this war. Though I’m certain the Logitech unit has its uses for those of you that use your iPad to blog, write lots of emails, and network socially, I’ve not had enough real-world use cases to be able to suggest it as the all-out winner. The HandyShell has proven itself time and time again not only as a stand for hands-off usage of the iPad 2, the handle keeps showing off its uses each time I play a game with the unit – at $54.95, it’s worth the money all day long. Finally the Cygnett Platform Universal Tablet Stand is a perfectly excellent stand for home or business use – it’s certainly not a good choice for traveling anywhere since it doesn’t fold down at all, but just sitting in one place it can’t be beat!

Remember back when Apple first introduced the Apple TV, and the company said that it was designed to be a hobby device? Well, in 2010, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, after unveiling a new version of the device, said it was no longer a hobby. Now, though, it appears it is again, since Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook said earlier this week that the device is still — wait for it — a hobby.

I’m sure there are some out there that would disagree with Cook and say that the Apple TV is a full-featured device that shouldn’t be classified as a hobby. And I’m sure they might be able to make that argument quite effectively.

But I’m here to tell those folks, and all those that aren’t quite sure if the Apple TV is a hobby or not, that it is, in fact, a hobby.

Luckily, though, I have some solutions for addressing that problem.

First and foremost, Apple should stop playing the streaming-only game with the Apple TV. As much as Apple might not want to admit it, today’s consumers still need local storage. We want to be able to put movies on the device, access games, and have ready access to our content whenever the Internet is down in our homes. The Internet is great and all, but there’s still something to be said for offline access.

What’s more, Apple should be bringing App Store support to the device. Apps have become a key reason we buy iPhones and iPads, and to not have access to it on a device that connects to a television — a place many people are using sub-par applications right now — is a real issue.

That idea dovetails on my next point: if Apple wants to make the Apple TV a serious device, it’ll need to take down Google TV.

At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, a host of vendors showed off products featuring Google TV. The service will be bundled in televisions and other products, and most importantly, feature applications people want to use. Call me crazy, but I think Google TV might actually have a shot this year. And if it succeeds, Apple’s hobby will be pushed aside.

Finally, Apple needs to realize that gaming is an integral component in the success or failure of set-top boxes today. Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 are popular not only for their gaming, but for their additional content. Apple has all that additional content, but lacks the gaming.

Luckily for Apple, it wouldn’t necessarily need to go too far with bringing gaming to the Apple TV. I don’t think the mainstream consumer wants Modern Warfare 3-like graphics on an Apple TV, and would instead be content with playing the casual titles they already access on their iPhones and iPads. Even better, the iPhone and iPad could be used as a controller, which means Apple wouldn’t need to invest in additional accessories.

It’s about time Apple removes the Apple TV from the hobby box and brings it into the living room to be a serious competitor to all the other solutions out there. By doing so, Apple could go a long way in proving it has what it takes to be successful in yet another market.

I’m not really sure where to start here because the new RAZR MAXX is exactly the same as the original DROID RAZR we reviewed back in November (links below), except for the bigger battery as I mention a few times in our hands-on video below. It features the same impressively thin design — although no longer RAZR thin. It boasts a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 8MP camera, 32GB of storage and that crisp 4.3″ qHD 960 x 540 AMOLED display. So what gives? a 3,300 mAh battery that is almost twice the size as the original, and about 2mm of extra fat included.

Now I don’t want to rant here but following up one of their biggest handsets (with the powerful name to go along with it) with an equally impressive, near identical phone yet almost double the battery life all for the same price — that is a crazy move. I understand giving users a great 4G LTE experience but what about the hundreds of thousands that bought the original just 2 months ago, or even last week? Our own Chris Burns wrote a nice column about this same subject and thinks this is a slap in consumers faces — and I’d have to agree.

Not everything is bad here though. The Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX is also extremely good for the community and smartphone atmosphere as a whole. This has pushed the boundaries far higher than any other phone has thus far. Showing consumers that yes, we can fit these huge batteries inside our phones and make them last more than half a day. Others like Samsung and HTC will now have to combat this with something similar. I’m hoping we start to see 2,000 mAh+ batteries as a standard moving forward.

Moving on. This should be an excellent phone, building on everything the original has going for it except the MAXX will last twice as long. Sounds like a deal to me. Verizon has been stating this new phone will last longer than any 4G LTE smartphone on the planet, and I’m pretty sure that will be an accurate assessment. They’ve claimed well over 20 hours of usage with ease on all America’s fastest and biggest 4G LTE network.

With a sleek design, amazing battery life, blazing fast speeds, and Kevlar coating on the back for extreme durability this is about as good as it gets. Sadly it comes out of the box with Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread but Motorola’s made it clear that 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich should be here soon.

For now check out the hands-on video below of the new RAZR MAXX by Motorola and expect a mini review coming soon with full battery rundown tests and more.

Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX hands-on

This smartphone is both light and powerful, it rolling out with the most high-clocked dual-core processor on the market and a collection of applications right out of the box that will have your head spinning. There’s ESPN ScoreCenter for your sports needs, it connected to the NFL, the MLB, and NASCAR to name a few. You’ll notice that this and other apps are collected cleanly in the apps drawer which has a unique face, it being part of LG’s own custom user interface over Android.

While you’re watching the hands-on video for this device, please feel free to write down any and all questions you’ve got on its technology or its build. We’ll be giving this smartphone a full review by the end of the week, and we want you to have all the information you need on what’s going on here! Wouldn’t want to buy a phone unless you had the full story, yes? Have a peek at the sharpness for now!

Regardless, I now have HBO Go. And after using it for the past several days for more hours than I’d like to count, I can say now, with certainty, that HBO Go has a strong chance of becoming the next Netflix.

Now, I’ll freely admit that there are some major differences between HBO Go and Netflix, the most notable being that HBO’s service only offers its own content. What’s more, it’s only available to HBO subscribers, which could stunt its growth a bit.

But beyond that, I’m seeing nothing but good things from HBO Go. The service works exceptionally well, and offers all the episodes of all the shows the network has aired in recent years. What’s more, it also includes movies, documentaries, and HBO’s stellar sports series, making it the complete package, in my book.

Would it be nice to have content from other services? Sure. But you know what? HBO’s series lineup is so good, I don’t quite miss access to, say, “The Office” or “How I Met Your Mother.” I’m more than content watching “The Sopranos,” “Entourage,” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

In the coming years, I think HBO, with the right strategy, could make its service far better than Netflix. Time Warner has strong ties with Hollywood studios, automatically putting it ahead of the game against Netflix. And if it can start bringing the service to more devices, including game consoles and set-top boxes — its Achilles heel right now — I could see HBO Go’s adoption skyrocketing.

Whereas Netflix has quickly become a TV-focused service that comes with outdated movies for everyone else, HBO Go has the potential to become the go-to place for movie content. With the right content deals, I just don’t see any way Time Warner won’t be able to add many more films to the service to round out what is already a content-heavy solution.

So, I see nothing but potential for HBO Go. I was skeptical of its value initially, but after getting to try the service out, it’s clear now that my concerns were unwarranted. Are there limitations to its focus that could hold it back from realizing its full potential? Sure. Might HBO try to stick with its current business model and fail to achieve the kind of results it could? Of course.

But if the company plays its cards right, I think there’s a real chance HBO Go becomes a better — and more-desired — destination than Netflix.

This little wrapper comes in a burrito bag, and better yet it comes in a package from Photojojo with a Dinosaur toy in it if you’re lucky – but notably, it is packaged like the food it represents. All you do is unwrap it, click back the protective wrap strip embedded inside the wrap, and place your lens inside. This wrap is made to protect lenses that are big enough to be the representation of a burrito filling, but you can be that smaller lenses will do fine here as well.

This little beast will cost you a cool $20 from Photojojo today, and I reccomend you pick yourself up a couple. The craftsmanship is tops, the protection is real, and you’ll be baffling your friends in no time. The wrap is made of Tyvek, that being the same material that your best pal the hazmat suit is made of, so as Photojojo says, your lens will be safe even if you “drop your bag off a cliff, get attacked by a pack of wild honeybadgers, or get bored and need something to toss around.” It’s great, really!

Grab the Photorito Lens Wrap from the online Photojojo store right this minute, or forever hold your hamburger.

[Image credit: Tai Chiem]

Therefore, many people reason, Sony will be offering up its console within the next 24 months.

I hate to be the guy who comes in and gives those hopeful folks the bad news, but I just don’t see that happening. Sure, Nintendo is launching the Wii U this year and there’s a good chance it’ll appeal to many consumers, but that device is far more of a catch-up product to match the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, rather than a console that can set a new standard in gameplay.

What’s more, if we examine Sony’s sales over the last several years, it becomes abundantly clear that the company’s claim that the console really is a ten-year device might just hold up.

Sony has seen console sales grow year-over-year since the PlayStation 3 first launched. What’s more, with nearly 60 million consoles sold worldwide, there’s a strong possibility that Sony’s device could surpass the Xbox 360 in total sales within the next year.

Those that have been watching NPD release their sales figures each month with Microsoft’s hardware in the lead might find that surprising. However, it’s important to note that NPD’s figures are U.S.-only, making them a sub-par barometer of how all gamers actually feel about the consoles. Elsewhere around the world, especially in Japan, the PlayStation 3 is dominating the Xbox 360.

But that’s just sales. The fact is, the PlayStation 3 is still one of the best Blu-ray players on the market, and its graphical prowess is top-notch. As always, gamers would like to see even better graphics, but at this point, I’m not quite sure how much of an improvement we could actually get if Sony launches a new console this year or next.

So, I think it’s time we acknowledge that the PlayStation 3, while not perfect by any means, doesn’t need to be replaced anytime soon. The console is still commercially viable, it’s still delivering high-quality experiences, and it’s priced right for consumers. Stunting its growth now would be a mistake of epic proportions.

Don’t even think about launching a new PlayStation this year or next, Sony. You have something solid already in place — and you shouldn’t want to mess that up.

Starting today students will be able to easily access digital textbooks from their iPads, the star device of Apple’s education revolution. Apple unveiled the iBooks 2 app that now includes a section for textbooks and an overall improved user experience. Be sure to check out our hands-on with the new iBooks.

The textbooks to be offered in the iBookstore will cost only $14.99 or less. These digital textbooks will always be up to date and can be easily purchase with one click. Publishing partners include Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and McGraw Hill, which make up about 90 percent of all textbooks in the US. The first to be available will be high school textbooks.

And to create the interactive digital textbooks, Apple is offering a new tool called iBooks Author, which was rumored to be like a “GarageBand for eBooks.” Well, from our hands-on with the app, it seems even more intuitive, letting you easily create interactive e-books through templates and a drag-and-drop interface. And perhaps most amazing of all is that the app is free and is available starting today from the Mac App Store.

Additionally, Apple revealed a new iTunes U app, which lets teachers create custom classroom experiences, give assignments, and interact with students. The app works with iBooks 2, for notes, full courses with videos, documents, apps, and textbooks from the iBookstore. The app made for iPads is available to download for free. Check out our hands-on with iTunes U.

If you still want to know more, Apple has posted the full event video here.

You get a lot for a free app, especially one in its first iteration. Early leaks described the rumored tool as “GarageBand for eBooks” but in fact we found it even easy to dig into: load the app, pick one of the basic templates, and then begin dropping in content. Pages are easily managed in a column down the side, similar to Keynote.

Text can be typed in directly, with the usual choice of fonts and styles, or imported wholesale by dropping a Word document into the editor. Similarly videos and images can be dragged in, and Keynote presentations automatically covert into interactive clipboards. What stands out the most is the speed at which content renders and is ready; Apple was demonstrating iBooks Author on some high-spec iMacs, which will give it an edge of course, but there’s little in the way of sitting round waiting for video to import or graphics to be crunched.

Those readers using VoiceOver on their iPad are catered for as well, with optional accessibility descriptions, and pagination, captions and footnotes are handled automatically. Apple’s event today was focused on textbooks, but any type of ebook can be created, with the complexity entirely up to the user: you can go for basic text and a few photos, or the whole way with multimedia, animations and more.

The downside will be exactly how you can export ebooks created with the tool: PDF and TXT are options, along with Apple’s own IBOOKS format, but interactive books exported as .ibooks – which they’ll need to be for all the multimedia support – will only open on the iPad. Even iPhone users are currently left out in the cold.

Our guess is that Apple is looking to change that – after all, iTunes U supports cross-device sync using iCloud, and textbooks are going to be a big part of that – but for the moment the iPad is where it’s at. We can’t particularly fault them on an eye-candy level, as the output iBooks Author is capable of looks its best on the iPad’s bigger screen.

iBooks Author is obviously a far deeper app than our brief hands-on post-keynote gave us time to get to grips with, but the good news is that not only is it available to download now, but it’s free. You’ll need OS X 10.7.2 Lion and, obviously, a Mac in order to use iBooks Author.

The layout feels much like a paper planner, with individual courses represented iBooks-style and then opening up to a virtual spiral-bound book. We’ve seen textbooks before, though – from Apple today, in fact – but this goes several steps further, integrating with an educational to-do list for an e-course.

As you might expect, everything is tightly interlinked. Video content required for a certain lesson takes you not just to the clip itself, but the exact point referenced. That also gives Apple an opportunity to leverage the free iTunes U content into making schools and universities – along with itself – some money, linking purchases of apps and other textbooks in with one-click ease. All notes taken get pulled into the central iTunes U “My Notes” section, and clipping out portions – as well as changing color and the like – is tap-and-drag simple. iCloud is used to sync bookmarks and notes across multiple devices.

It’s potentially homeschoolers that could be the most impacted by iTunes U, especially when K-12 content begins to flood the app. All of a sudden, parents taking direct responsibility for their childrens’ education will have a full portfolio of lessons with which to work from. Even those in the traditional schooling system should find appeal here, though, with fewer of those “I don’t know how to help them learn” moments.

You can download the iTunes U app yourself from the App Store; let us know what you think in the comments!

Books at every level of education have been revealed in the iBookstore this week, Textbooks with full interactive abilities and workings for the iPad specifically. What Apple is attempting to do here is to take the “dark ages” of education and turn them into a full future-headed world where interactive elements are the norm and you only need one device in the classroom: the iPad. There’s even exclusive books that are made to bring in the average student such as E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth, of which the first two chapters will be made free at first.

This is all part of a grander scheme, of course, to bring the classroom further into the tech-minded fold, a great thing for generations in the future where textbooks have, perhaps, become outmoded to the point of extinction. We’ll see how that all pans out in the coming months! Follow along with us for the rest of this event at http://live.slashgear.com/ – still going on now!

You begin with a template, creating a new document that will eventually turn into a book. You’re able to add elements by dragging and dropping pieces of content into the pages that make up the bulk of the book. Galleries, media, reviews, keynotes, interactive images, 3D images, and straight up HTML code are allowed here, you able to switch from Layout mode or Interaction mode to Preview to check out how your pages are turning out as you go. Auto-formatting on the fly keeps the pages uniform, but completely customizable if you’d like with Javascript and HTML5.

You, the author of these fine books made with iBooks Author, are able to add a glossary, check your work at any time, bring forth the content you wish at a snap, and publish these books directly to the store. Anyone can create stunning, interactive books, they say, and with multi-touch widgets, photos, videos, and instant publishing to iBookstore, why not? This application is available today in the Mac App Store for free!

Follow along with the rest of our by-the-second updates to this event at http://live.slashgear.com/.

Apple’s iPad sits at the head of students minds in every level of education, said Schiller, students from k-8 all the way up to highschool, college, and more. But education is still “in the dark ages.” A video shown with teachers from across the United States shows teachers and professors speaking about how the technology they need is not what they have, classrooms are too large, students are not graduating. Schiller returned to the stage and said what we knew was coming: “these teachers need help, and we try to figure out what we can do at Apple to help.”

This year during the holidays, the iPad, says Schiller, was the number one most wanted item on teen’s lists. This can be tied to the thin and light nature of the device, how its powerful and has an all-day battery life, and is affordable on top of that. The iPad also has 20k education apps built specifically for it, including iBookstore which will be working, we’re sure into the rest of the announcements Apple has for this week – Reinventing Textbooks. Stick with us the rest of the week (especially today) to see what Apple has in store for students through the iPad.

Continue to follow along today with http://live.slashgear.com/ as well for up to the second updates on this event!

Content theft is not something we advocate at SlashGear. Like many news sites online, there are numerous “scraper sites” grabbing the content we produce and republishing it without permission; we understand how frustrating that can be. Yet, there are already tools to tackle content theft – like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) – and which do so with the same mindfulness of due process that other laws in the US and abroad have been built upon.

Perhaps most frustrating is that neither the Stop Online Piracy Act nor the Protect IP Act would actually effectively address piracy in any way more effective than current tools. As Google and others have pointed out, those sharing or searching for illegal content could easily circumnavigate the limitations SOPA and PIPA would allow. Everybody else would be left to face the unnecessarily strict threat of censorship, with companies forced into monitoring users to ensure they didn’t upload anything remotely controversial.

Today’s tools may not be perfect, but blanket laws that threaten the free speech currently permitted on the internet are even more dangerous. The powers SOPA and PIPA would grant would not only mean sources of pirated content could be taken down without due process, but that any site daring to voice opinions not shared by big content companies, ISPs or the US government could also find itself taken offline before it had even had a chance to argue its case.

You can find out more about SOPA/PIPA in our plain English guide to the proposed acts, and details on how to contact your US Representative – or, if you are outside the US, how to make your voice heard too – at sopastrike.com/strike. There’s also more information at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act and its sibling bill is PIPA, or the Protect IP Act. Both bills are written in a way that makes them appear to attempt the killing of online piracy – the hosting of media like videos, music, software, and the like, and offering it for download when the hosts do not have the right to do so. What they actually would do, instead, is to put up a screen door to block a wave, this stopping all of the law-abiding fish when its the water they’re trying to get. SOPA and PIPA give rights to businesses and the government itself to stop and sue companies out of existence, even if they’re not actually doing anything illegal.

NOTE: Read the entirety of SOPA here and the entirety of PIPA here.

SOPA and PIPA work with non-US sites by attacking the sites inside the USA that work with them to bring their content to US citizens. Just to be clear, the US government already has the right to seize domains inside the USA (.com, .net. and .org) they believe are used for piracy, and have been doing so since 2010 through the “Operation In Our Sites” act with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) – having seized hundreds of domains thus far. The Pentagon has “Cyberspace” as an Operational Domain as well, if you want to know. What SOPA and PIPA do instead is to force US-based internet service providers, search engines, online payment groups (like Paypal), and ad services to stop working with, indexing, and paying groups outside the USA if they host illegal content.

Copyright owners will be able to write up a certain kind of letter under SOPA and PIPA to a media host such as YouTube or any manner of data host (like the ones that host SlashGear) demanding that if the group (like us) take down any little bit of content we have, without proof that it’s theirs. If we do no respond within five days, our host would have to either take us down entirely, or face themselves being sued into a corner as well. Can you see how this might be harmful to more people than just those who are “real” pirates of illegal content?

SOPA has a section (section 104, if you’re counting) which allows for a big bad conflict of interests that favors giant companies like Comcast. As mister Nilay Patel notes, legal immunity to ISPs like Comcast to block websites at will. Comcast owns NBC, and if they found a group from somewhere outside the USA that competes with them, they could claim, technically, that if they had “reasonable belief” that they were “dedicated to the theft of US property,” they could stop them from being shown to everyone under their Comcast umbrella.

That’s not an open and free Internet, and it will not stop piracy.

And this is just the beginning. The people writing up this bill are not alone, and they’re not going to stop just the same as the people pirating media are not going to stop, ever. You’re not going to get someone to stop looking at your painting if its out in public, you’re not going to stop someone from smelling the lovely smells your bakery gives off – the only thing you can do, media creators, is evolve.

These lawmakers are not protecting the interests of movie makers, they’re not helping out those who make music for a living. They’re attempting to control the free and open internet as it stands today so they can profit from a closed market. Plain and simple.

Get educated, do everything you can to stop this kind of outright evil.

[poll 25]

Zappos users here are the subject matter simply because it’s the most recent attack, but it’s true for whatever set of services you use on the daily. If you’ve got an eBay account, an account for your online bank account, and an account for Zappos, you need, need, NEED to have a different password for each of them. What you do when you keep the same password for each of these sites is to open yourself up to a MUCH wider array of hackers than if you change your password for each.

For those of you that live in a house, here’s a good example of what this is like: You’ve got a door that needs a key to open it. You keep that key on your person, but you also have a key hidden in the yard just incase you’ve lost your own key.

This is what it’s like to have one password for one site – someone could figure out where that key is, but they’ve only got one door they could open with it. What having the same password for all of your sites is like would be if that key was not only duplicated several times to be hidden in different areas of your yard, but also opened up your house, your garage, your shed, and your car.

Make yourself a different key for each of your buildings and vehicles. Make yourself a different password for each of the sites you access. It’s as simple as that.

BONUS: for those of you that have a difficult time remembering a ton of passwords, there’s always an app for that. Check out 1Password for desktop and mobile including iPhone and Android, LastPass 1.72 Premium as found at LastPass.com has the same benefits but also works on such platforms at Linux, symbian, BlackBerry, and more, and KeePass is your open-source free alternative, if you know how to make it work, that is.

[poll 25]

The Galaxy Note is what Samsung is placing in its own category, saying that it’s not exactly a tablet, yet not exactly a smartphone either. What it does amount to is a pretty neat little in-between complete with Gingerbread, a built-in stylus, and the promise of Ice Cream Sandwich early on in 2012. There’s currently a white as well as a black version, both to be released soon. Another device we’ve got to look forward to soon is the ASUS Padfone, this device having now gone through a couple of iterations since its first announcement and set to be officially unveiled for release at MWC 2012.

For readers there wasn’t one whole heck of a lot of differentiation to be made between the masses, but the Kyobo Mirasol eReader did catch our eye with its unique method of lighting, it’s logo reflecting the butterfly-like feature of the display. There was also the Jetbook Color eReader, a CES award winner, whose maker we got to sit down with and have a talk about.

As for the Windows 8 world, groups like Qualcomm and their S4 chip showed off what WILL be possible in just a few weeks or months. We’ve already also had a look at a developer tablet running Windows 8 inside 2011, but will be looking forward to the full real deal in early 2012.

The team at Acer came to the show swinging, it’s early Sunday showing of their newest Android-based Acer Iconia Tab showing us what it means to rock with a fabulously high definition display and the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core chip inside. They also re-showed a slightly less impressive tablet/laptop combo by the name of Iconia Tab W500, this showing us that they’ve more than likely got better concepts in the works for Windows 8, or we can hope! Toshiba brought with them a couple of slight upgrades from their already released line, one being the smaller version of the Thrive we’ve already reviewed in the Toshiba Thrive 7, bringing then the lovely thin and fully functional Toshiba Excite x10 as well for a real contender in 2012.

Then it was Asus all the way – bringing the fire with not one, not two, but three new tablets that all had a bump over not only their own previous models, but the competition as well. Not to be mistaken for one-another, Asus brought forth two 7-inch MeMO devices, one designated 171, the other called 370t. The first one, the Asus MeMO 171, is rolling out with a Qualcomm 8260 1.2GHz dual-core processor and Honeycomb, also bringing with it a built-in stylus for note-taking glory. The other device, the Asus MeMO 370t, is the real gem of the show as it’s got an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor, comes out with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and costs a mere $249. That’s an industry changer, if you did not know.

NVIDIA then stole the show again with Asus’ upgraded Transformer Prime 700 series, complete with a massive display, updated casing, and a bump in the front-facing camera for fun. NVIDIA showed that the Prime (in either its first or second iteration) was capable of using the Tegra 3 processor to the fullest, running Skyrim via Splashtop, moving on to play the first multiplayer mobile shooter in a brand new upgraded version of Shadowgun for Tegra, and displaying the fact that it will be first with Ice Cream Sandwich, officially.

Look like a good showing to you? If you could have any one of these devices in your hands right now, which one would it be? Better yet, when these devices are released to the market, which one are you most likely to buy?

BONUS: Don’t forget the Fujitsu Arrows Tablet, complete with waterproofing, and the Pantech Element, an AT&T-bound tiny tablet with waterproofing as well!

But it wasn’t just LG. Vizio showed off an ultra-widescreen set that many film buffs were happy to see, and the sheer number of Smart TVs featuring built-in apps, integration with DVRs, and countless other features was dizzying. There were even the giant televisions on display for those who have large rooms and want to impress friends.

Check our all the CES 2012 Smart TVs here

All that has made me wonder: how will Apple, a company that is reportedly working on a new television to best them all, actually achieve its goal of changing customer perceptions about TVs?

The way I see it, just about every company is providing what Apple will reportedly offer in its own HDTVs. We already have extremely well-designed sets, thin televisions that look like a picture frame hanging on the wall, and TVs featuring all the apps you would seemingly want. What’s more, they all come in at prices that, if history is to be our guide, Apple likely won’t even come close to matching.

Furthermore, I just don’t see any technologies out there that Apple could stake claim to. If the company offers up an OLED set, LG will respond with one of its own. If it only sells 4K televisions, the competition will have already put some out.

Unfortunately for Apple, the television market might be one place where it really was too late to the game.

Looking back, being late to the game is something that Apple hasn’t suffered all that often. In fact, its most successful products, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, helped set off entire new product ideas. In the television space, however, there’s little chance of the iPhone maker having a chance to do that.

Of course, there will undoubtedly be Apple apologists that disagree. They’ll argue that Apple’s integration of the App Store and iCloud will be enough for the company to attract customers away from competing sets. They’ll also say that Apple’s branding always wins out.

Admittedly, it’s hard to argue with that. And even if Apple launches a television with technologies we’ve already seen, there’s a good chance the set will still sell well.

But I think it’s time we all acknowledge that Apple isn’t the only company in the industry that has, or is willing to, take chances. Some of the top TV vendors in the world are quite Apple-like in their product presentations. And this year, I think we’re going to see that quite clearly.

Watch out, Apple. You might just have more TV competition than you think.

Whatever the year, it’s clear that Sony will eventually launch a new console. Microsoft will do the same. And Nintendo is already planning to do so in the coming months.

But all this talk of consoles has me thinking: do we really need more hardware?

The fact is, we’re inching closer to the day where hardware connected to our televisions will be a thing of the past. Samsung and DirecTV at CES this week announced a “boxless” solution that lets users have the full DVR experience on their 2012 Smart TV without actually needing to hook the device up to the set. There’s talk of Apple wanting to include apps, iCloud, and other features into its own television.

And all that fails to mention we have downloadable games already available to us both on the PC and on game consoles. We’ve already come to the point of being able to enjoy content without being required to have a set-top box to do it.

So, how important will consoles be in, say, 2014 or 2015? Will broadband speeds be fast enough to accommodate downloading a big game, like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3? Will televisions come with application stores in them to allow us to access games without requiring that middleman?

It’s certainly a possibility. But there’s one major issue standing in the way of us finally detaching ourselves from the console life support: the hardware companies themselves.

Like it or not, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony all rely heavily upon hardware to make their businesses as big as they are. And there’s a good chance that they will be the first companies to denounce ideas of eliminating hardware and getting direct access to titles from game makers.

Microsoft and Sony might be especially outspoken about such a plan. Those companies have not done nearly as good of a job as Nintendo delivering first-party content consumers actually want to play. If television makers and game developers sync up, there’s a solid chance those companies’ game divisions will be marginalized, to say the least.

As for us? Well, we can only hope to get the best experience, regardless of whether that comes via consoles or downloadable content. But I suspect the latter will deliver a better experience at some point in the future.

Who’s with me?

Riding high on Android and with its expertise in search, Google should’ve swept the board when it first turned its hand to smart TV. Instead, Google TV was lambasted for its confusing interface, patchy functionality and ever-changing line up of content (made unpredictable by Google’s apparent refusal to pay for licensing deals but instead attempting to harness free online streams). With the second-gen system now ready for prime time, the search giant has managed to coax some big names back onboard, as well as tease gamers with the promise of OnLive for console-quality play without any extra hardware beyond a wireless controller.

Samsung, Sony, LG and Vizio were all expected to bring Google TV powered sets to the show, and all but Samsung delivered. LG spared us the heavy-duty specs, only saying that its two Google TV sets would drop later this year and use a homegrown quadcore ARM chipset. Like Vizio, which announced the R-Series of Google TVs, LG has reskinned the core Google UI to suit its own interface styling. Vizio also had two set-top boxes, one adding a Blu-ray drive, the VAP430 and VBR430, which promise to make Google TV more affordable.

Sony, meanwhile, took another approach, not bothering with fully-integrated Google TV HDTVs but instead looking to two new set-top boxes instead. It’s possible the company learned the hard way from its first-gen Google TV sets, though the new Network Media Player NSZ-GS7 and Blu-ray Disc Player NSZ-GP9 are arguably more useful given there are plenty of people content with their existing TV but still wanting a smart upgrade.

Finally, Marvell brought along its ARMADA 1500 chipset and a reference design Google TV STB to demonstrate it. The company is pushing the design to its hardware partners, along with a useful upscaling addition that promises to make lower-res content and UI look better on a 1080p Full HD display.

As for Samsung, it stuck with its homegrown smart TV platform for CES, though reiterated its support for Google TV and promised that “a forthcoming offering will deliver an entirely distinct experience in the category” later in 2012. That’s not to say its hardware this week has been underwhelming, however. Our playtime with Samsung’s 60-inch smart TV – which packs Kinect-style motion and voice control – suggested the non-traditional navigation may be gimmicky but the core software is very strong, while integrated DIRECTV support and the potential for hardware upgrades along the line shows services aren’t being left behind either.

LG may have had Google TVs to show off, but it also pushed ahead with its own platform, and some models ramped up the extras to stand out of the crowd. The Cinema Screen 3D HDTVs, for instance, can use their 3D screen technology for dual-view gaming, each player getting their own full-screen view simultaneously.

Vizio, too, used its own VIA smart TV software on some of its other models, echoing Philips’ push for true theater-aspect 21:9 screens with the new XVT CinemaWide line-up. You’ll need a big living room to accommodate them – and Vizio will need more luck than Philips, which eventually axed its range – but if you’re a keen movie buff they might be a solid alternative to a projector.

Lenovo isn’t a name generally associated with TV, so the company’s K91 entrant to the home entertainment segment came as something of a surprise. Headed to Lenovo’s home territory China first, but with broader international availability expected after that, the K91 actually runs Android but Ice Cream Sandwich rather than Google TV (v.2 of which is based on 3.x Honeycomb) and has a custom UI to suit sofa-bound users.

Finally, Canonical is hoping the hunger for Linux-based smart TV platforms will see its own embedded Ubuntu system picks up steam. We were impressed by the performance on the Ubuntu TV the team had prepared for CES, though Canonical wouldn’t say much on the “multiple manufactures” apparently in talks about using the system. It’ll go head to head with Google’s renewed Google TV drive, that’s for sure, and the search giant’s known brand and significantly improved second-gen software could prove difficult to beat.

Convinced by Smart TV? Considering buying one of these sets, or holding out for more new hardware later in the year? Let us know in the comments!

AT&T‘s cluster of LTE devices was perhaps the biggest single launch of the show, with the carrier hoping to flood our attention with more than a half-dozen 4G handsets. There are some stand-out phones in among the torrent, however: the HTC Titan II, for instance, packs a whopping 16-megapixel camera, while Nokia‘s much-anticipated Lumia 900 brings polycarbonate unibody style to the US and marks the start of the Finn’s North American re-entry.

Otherwise there’s the Pantech Burst and Samsung Exhilarate, both attempting to drag LTE to the entry-level, with a $50 apiece price tag. Sony ditched the Ericsson name and passé hardware with the Xperia ion, toting a 720p HD display and sizable 12-megapixel camera; both it and its European HSPA+ Xperia S pack NFC and the promise of ICS in Q2.

Finally, Samsung‘s Galaxy Note gets a new, AT&T LTE version, offering a compelling – if perhaps tricky to pocket – smartphone/tablet hybrid with useful digital ink input and a beautiful 1280 x 800 display. It’s a phone we’ve coveted in Europe and we’re curious to see how it does in the US.

Verizon had fewer devices than AT&T, but some eagerly awaited ones nonetheless. Motorola brought the DROID 4 to the party, an LTE-toting QWERTY Android slider, along with the DROID RAZR MAXX. The latter answers a common complaint of the original DROID RAZR of last year, meagre battery life on LTE, throwing a huge 3,300 mAh battery at the phone while still measuring just 8.9mm thick. Those looking for superlative displays have the LG Spectrum to look forward to, another LTE device but offering a 1280 x 720 IPS panel with iPhone 4S-besting pixel density.

T-Mobile USA had a much quieter show than either of the big boys, perhaps still licking its wounds and pondering the future now the AT&T acquisition has been ditched. The carrier had just one new device to announce, the Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G, supporting HSPA+ and – as the name suggests – being another iteration on the Korean company’s familiar Galaxy S II.

Then there are the outliers and oddities. Lenovo opened the show with its S2, headed to China first with an encrypted kernel to keep your data secure and malware-free, while ViewSonic attempted to bridge the work and home worlds with its dual-SIM ViewPhone 3. Beyond their core conceit it proved tough to work up much enthusiasm around either device.

Easier to like has been the Huawei Ascend P1 S and P1, two phones that take dieting very seriously. The “S” prefix device is a mere 6.68mm thick, with what looks to be Galaxy S II “inspired” styling helping it take – for the moment at least – the title of world’s thinnest smartphone. Perhaps more interesting, they both run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, still something of a rarity (all of the previously mentioned handsets are still using Gingerbread).

ASUS‘ Padphone – back in its 2012 redux – is a lot chunkier than the Huawei, certainly, but arguably more useful. Like the Ascend phones it’s now running Ice Cream Sandwich, but of course the Padphone also gets a tablet chassis in which it can be docked for big-screen browsing and multimedia playback. ASUS reckons it’ll hit shelves in the spring, though still isn’t talking pricing.

Finally Intel, a company that has been talking about entering the smartphone market for several years, but is only now looking like it’s building any sort of momentum. The freshly announced Atom Z2460 Medfield processor, along with deals with Motorola and Lenovo, should result in some actual handset launches by the end of the year, each running Android, with talk of tablets also making an eventual appearance.

Lenovo stopped by to demonstrate its Racer-A Atom reference design, an impressive 4.5-inch smartphone with a 1280 x 720 display, 8-megapixel camera, HSPA+ and a 1.6GHz dual-core processor. There may be a few tweaks to the aesthetics, but for the moment this is likely to be one of the devices Lenovo brings to market in the second half of this year. We’ll have to wait until then to find out whether Intel’s long-standing battery issues have been ironed out with Medfield.

Tempted by any of these smartphones? Or are you waiting for Mobile World Congress next month, to see what HTC and others have in store for 2012? Let us know in the comments!