“The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform,” [Valve Software CEO Gabe] Newell said. “I think that there’s a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging — I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily. The question is can we make enough progress in the PC space to establish ourselves there, and also figure out better ways of addressing mobile before Apple takes over the living room?”

Valve is working on hardware devices to complement their Steam game service, which is available for the Mac. The device will run on Linux and will enable Steam gamers to play games from their TV rather than having to use a Mac or PC.

IDC reports that tablet shipments set another record for the fourth quarter of 2012, with 52.5 million units sold worldwide. Apple’s way out in front with 43.6 percent of the market, but that’s actually down from 46.4 percent for the previous quarter, when Apple sold 14 million iPads, and down from 51.7 percent for the same quarter a year before.

Apple’s volume of iPads and iPad minis sold surged for the quarter with 22.9 million units. Samsung sold 7.9 million tablets during the same period, for 15.1 percent share. Amazon, Asus and Barnes & Noble trailed behind. Microsoft, with its vaunted Surface tablet, was nowhere to be found on the list.

IDC’s Ryan Reith noted that devices based on Windows 8 and Windows RT “failed to gain much ground during their launch quarter, and reaction to the company’s Surface with Windows RT tablet was muted at best.”

[Editor’s note: Readers are having trouble accessing the link. The IDC report seems to have been removed.]

Nvidia took the game industry by surprise at CES with its Project Shield announcement – an Android-based video game system with a built in screen and console-style controller which also streams games from a PC equipped with a late-model Nvidia graphics card. Now they’ve posted details on their blog about how the thing got built.

I agree with Benedict Evans. No matter how you look at this, the numbers just don’t seem to favor BlackBerry.

Jim and Dan talk about the new Apple TV, the 128GB iPad, Apple vs. Amazon profits and Wall Street, the future of the Apple Store, the Blackberry Z10, control surfaces and more.

Sponsored by Lynda and Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME1 for 30% off).

Now it’s a must-have.

I saw and heard this new series at NAMM and it was really interesting. They model different power valve responses, which is a really interesting way to shape the tone.

Cheers people.

Exactly.

Even though Android app revenue grew much faster than iOS app revenue, iOS apps still earned over three and a half times the amount that Android apps brought in, according to App Annie’s Index.

Top revenue for iOS games included Clash of Clans, The Simpsons: Tapped out and Puzzle & Dragons, according to the report.

The stock market makes me want to drink… more than usual.

This is hilarious. Much respect to the BBC.

Apple has been granted a service mark in the U.S. for the design and layout of its retail store, reflecting the company’s interest to protect the design of its popular stores from copycat retailers.

Ribeiro brings up China copycat retailers, which aren’t going to be affected by this – this is a U.S. trademark, after all. But China isn’t the only place where Apple’s store design gets imitated – one of the authorized Apple resellers in my area copies the Apple Store pretty closely, right down to colored t-shirts for their employees.

According to new data shared with AllThingsD by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), the average monthly carrier bill of the typical iPhone user is the highest in the smartphone market. iPhone owners spend more on wireless fees than owners of any other handset, be they Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone.

CIRP also points out that carriers “are working hard to make their money back” because of high subsidies on the iPhone.

T-Mobile aims to buck that trend by doing away with phone subsidies this year, and other U.S. carriers are weighing their options too.

The iPad, for all its glory, suffers from one very distinct flaw: It’s very difficult to use for creation.

Bullshit.

[Editor’s note: My apologies. I didn’t look at the date on this article when I posted it. It’s very old.]

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose yesterday declined to increase the award after she found Samsung’s infringement wasn’t willful. The ruling was one of many post-trial decisions Koh issued yesterday denying both companies’ bids for a new trial and leaving largely untouched the jury’s finding in August that Samsung infringed six mobile-device patents.

Guess Apple will have to settle for $1.05 billion.

Macworld/iWorld kicks off on Thursday and runs through Saturday. We’re not going to be there this year, unfortunately, but if you’re in San Francisco and plan to attend, have a great time.

And people think Apple doesn’t give enough information.

Amazon misses its earnings, income fell, sales missed Wall Street consensus and… the stock price goes up 6 percent.

Apple sells a gazillion of everything, reports record revenue and profit, and its stock falls.

I talked to one of the guys doing these straps at NAMM last week and he said everyone had the same look I did when told they were made of wood. He said they were very comfortable though. As you can see, Santana uses one.

I agree with Gruber. Every design decision involves some element of compromise. Microsoft seems to have compromised a lot, though.

Office 365 Home Premium, which includes such familiar programs as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Access, will be offered with a yearly subscription fee. Instead of buying Office flat-out as you did in the past, you will pay a $99.99 annual charge, which buys you automatic software updates, 20GB of extra storage on SkyDrive (Microsoft’s Cloud storage service), 60 Skype world minutes and use of all the Office programs on up to five computers or tablets.

This new apps are relegated to Windows devices specifically, but the service is available for Mac users – initiating a subscription gives you access to the Office 2011 apps which have been around for a while, and, presumably, new versions as they are released. The company continues to offer Office standalone software, as well. There’s a small business edition that costs $150 instead.

This comes almost a year after Adobe launched Creative Cloud, providing access to its Creative Suite applications via a monthly subscription fee, rather than charging a huge sum up front for a software license.

Editor’s note: Explained that the service is available for Macs, which use older software.

I had it all planned out. Inspired by Macworld contributor Joel Mathis’s recent piece on the subject, I was finally motivated and ready to cancel my cable television subscription. It didn’t work.

When I’ve haggled with Comcast about the cost of my package they’ve countered enough to make me keep my service. Plus they’re the only game in town for high-speed Internet (DSL doesn’t cut it and we’re a long way off, if ever, from getting fiber to the home in my area). So I can relate to Lex Friedman’s frustrations here.

Apple on Tuesday announced plans to introduce a new fourth-generation iPad model with 128GB of storage, twice the capacity of its previous high end model. The new version goes on sale Feburary 5, 2013 for $799 for Wi-Fi only and $929 for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model.

Besides the additional storage capacity, the iPad is a standard fourth-generation model. It comes equipped with a 9.7-inch “Retina” display with 2048×1536 pixel resolution. Under the hood is Apple’s A6X dual-core microprocessor, with quad-core graphics. The iPad comes with front and rear-facing cameras and a Lightning connector.

The 128GB model will be available for $100 more than the 64GB model, which will remain in production.