iMac

The Apple Store is down

New Sandy Bridge iMacs expected shortly

[UPDATE: The store is back up with new iMacs on display starting at $1,199.]

As expected, Apple's (AAPL) online store early Tuesday displayed its Post-it yellow "We'll be back soon" note, the universal sign that a new product is about to be released.

This time the new entry is widely expected to be an updated iMac, the workhorse Apple desktop that hasn't been refreshed since July 27, MORE

Today in Tech: Can BlackBerry still cut it?

A curated selection of the weekend's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you everyday.

"It is not thicker, don't believe all the junk that you read."
-- Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller supposed response to reports that the white iPhone 4 is thicker (9 to 5 Mac)

Some Research In Motion investors reportedly sold shares late last week based on growing general concern that MORE

How Britain lost Apple's Jony Ive

A profile in the Daily Mail blames it on an assignment to design a toilet

Lots of new details about the man it calls "the most successful designer on the planet" in Rob Waugh's long biographical profile of Jonathan ("Jony") Ive in Sunday's Daily Mail, starting with the toilet design that drove him out of England:

"The manner of his departure for the U.S. is particularly galling to Clive Grinyer, who MORE

Mac zigs while the PC market zags

Our survey of analysts suggests that Apple is set to report its first 4 million Mac quarter

In the Gartner report issued this week, U.S. sales of Apple's (AAPL) Macintosh computers grew 23% year over year last quarter while overall PC sales (even including the Mac) fell 6.6%.

That's been the story for much of 2010: PC sales weak, Macintosh sales strong.

But the Mac has been on its own trajectory for some MORE

Munster: Apple's lineup for 2011

Piper Jaffray's top Apple analyst offers his annual product predictions

Apple (AAPL) is unlikely to break into any new hardware categories in 2011, according to a note to clients issued Monday by Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster. But that doesn't mean the company won't have a busy year.

Here's what he sees as the major announcements of 2011:

95% probability: Launch of a Verizon (VZ) iPhone (before the end of March)
100%: Launch of the MORE

The Valentine's Day iPhone

Is Cupid's day the date for the long-awaited launch of an iPhone for Verizon?

Here's how these rumors get started. Someone tipped off Peter Burrows at Bloomberg Businessweek that Apple (AAPL) was waiting until after next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to launch an iPhone for Verizon (VZ).

Apparently his anonymous source or sources didn't give him a date, but by winks and nods they narrowed it down enough for MORE

Today in Tech: Facebook facial recognition, Twitter worth $3.7 billion?

A curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web.

Next week, Facebook, which is on track to reach sales of $2 billion this year, will release a new facial recognition feature called Tag Suggestions that automatically suggests who users should tag in photos. Whenever users choose to tag people in their photos, Tag Suggestions will step in and offer up suggestions about who the friends in MORE

A peek at next year's Macs

Reports from Apple's Asian suppliers hint at lighter, more affordable machines

An item in Thursday's DigiTimes offers an early glimpse at Apple's (AAPL) plans for its flagship computer line in 2011. The details -- based on reports from unnamed "upstream component makers" -- are sparse:

At least four new MacBook Pro models with a "slight" change in chassis design
A new iMac with a different screen size and a presumably lower price point MORE

Fast times at iPhone High

The New York Times paints two very different pictures of a Silicon Valley high school

Matt Richtel's 4,000-word story on the front page of Sunday's New York Times -- part of the paper's Your Brain on Computers series -- reads like an indictment of a generation driven to distraction by shiny gadgets, their minds permanently rewired by too much time spent texting, networking, surfing the Web and playing video games.

The 7:45-minute MORE

Bob Mansfield's $10 million payday

An options windfall for Apple's top Mac and iPhone hardware engineer

Several senior Apple (AAPL) executives -- including Betsy Rafael (controller), Jeffrey Williams (operations senior VP) and Bertrand Serlet (software engineering senior VP) -- took advantage of the company's recent record share prices to exercise some of the stock options they've been sitting on.

But none saw quite the windfall that Bob Mansfield enjoyed last Thursday. According to an SEC Form 4 MORE