In its test run with four teams for the final two weeks of the season, 1,500 e-ticket buyers (12%) chose Passbook delivery.

That’s impressive.

Christie’s announced the auction in August, and at the time the firm expected the Apple 1 to fetch US$127,000. When the auction ended, however, the price hadn’t met the reserve of $80,000, resulting in no sale.

“There will be times when we build specific devices for specific purposes, as we have chosen to do with Xbox and the recently announced Microsoft Surface,” wrote Ballmer.The new approach mimics Apple Inc, whose massively successful iPhone and iPad demonstrated tight integration of high-quality software and hardware and made Windows devices feel clunky in comparison.

Who’s laughing now Ballmer?

John Moltz:

How many times can we sarcastically say “No compromises” before it’s not funny anymore? I know we’re not there yet, I’m just asking for future reference.

I think there will be a lot of disappointed people when these Windows 8 devices are released.

That’s a lot of tracking.

Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer got a lower bonus than last year’s, partly for flat sales of Windows and his failure to ensure that the company provided a choice of browser to some European customers.

I wonder what they’ll do to him when Windows 8 flops and the Surface sucks balls.

Apple has done a great job of attracting young users with the iPod and keeping them as they grow up and purchase an iPhone.

With the size and weight of a typical single stompbox, the MS-50G includes a thorough lineup of high-quality effects types. It features 47 stompbox effects and 8 amp models. Along with distortion, reverb, modulation and other classic effects, its amp models simulate some of the most prized pieces of live and studio gear.

Picked this up today. Looks really cool, but I’ll post more details after I’ve used it for a bit.

I agree with MG on this one — it wasn’t ready to begin with.

Shawn Blanc in his review of the Hidden Radio, a project he backed on Kickstarter.

Research In Motion is not likely to launch the much-anticipated BlackBerry 10 operating system software until March 2013, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek asserts in a research note. To date, the company has only said it expects to debut the first BB 10 devices in the calendar first quarter.

Not a single thing is going right at RIM.

Nick Wingfield for the New York Times (via Gamesindustry.biz):

Using this model, Supercell executives say its two games are currently grossing over $500,000 a day, which translates into about $350,000 a day in revenue for Supercell after Apple takes its 30 percent cut on transactions through its iOS App Store.

Supercell’s two games include “Hay Day” and “Clash of Clans.” Clans is the mroe successful title, according to the developer. The games are dependent on in-app purchases in order to make money.

The iPad mini also elicited this comment from the company’s general manager of North America operations:

Mr. Harper says he believes that the growth in the tablet market will be a bad development for dedicated portable game devices from companies like Nintendo and Sony. “That market seems in trouble to me,” he said. “The iPad mini could be one of the final nails in the coffin.”

The game Unmentionables gives Taboo a 21st century makeover and puts the real social back into social gaming.

Taiwan is asking Apple Inc. to blur a map image of its new $1.4 billion early warning radar station that can detect aircraft and missiles coming from as far as western China.

So Maps is good then.

Great news, I can’t wait to get mine.

OnAir in-flight mobile service is considered international roaming, and is billed appropriately. (First, your carrier has to have a roaming agreement with OnAir.) This AT&T page suggests OnAir calls are billed at $3.49 per minute, for example. Text messages are $0.50 each.

That should cut down on the needless yammering.

Facebook Inc is testing a feature that lets users of the social network create “wishlists” of home furnishings, clothing and other retail products, laying the groundwork for what some believe could be an eventual push into e-commerce.

Makes sense since so many people are on Facebook.

Barney Britton and Kelcey Smith for Digital Photography Review:

The most likely cause of the iPhone 5’s purple haze is probably lens flare and internal reflections in the camera lens assembly. All lenses are succeptable to lens flare to some degree, and as you can see from the images at the top of this page, the iPhone 4S isn’t immune either (ditto the iPhone 4 and competitive smartphones from other manufacturers).

It’s a shame that this even has to be said, but apparently many tech writers are so profoundly stupid, they don’t understand it.

Rovio Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. announced today a new blockbuster entertainment franchise collaboration; Angry Birds Star Wars. Launching worldwide on November 8, the unique partnership will combine all the fun of the classic Angry Birds and Angry Birds Space with the characters, stories and settings of the epic space fantasy, Star Wars.

Looks to be a nice selection here.

No jailbreak required.

Anvil takes your site folder, gives it a .dev URL and makes it run for you. Works for any static HTML sites and Rack apps.

I thought this was pretty cool.

[Via Big Week]

Committed is a great way to be alerted when someone pushes new code to the GitHub repositories you care about. Committed notifies you using OS X’s new Notification Center feature when someone pushes code.

Great new app from Justin Williams. I love that he’s using the Notification Center too — great detail.

Leave your laptop behind. Imagine having control over your computer from anywhere. Jump Desktop is a remote desktop application (RDP and VNC) that gets you to your computer from any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and Android device. With over 4000 reviews, customers have declared it a 5 star app. It is super easy to setup, with automatic configuration you will be up and running in less than 5 minutes.

It is the easiest, the fastest and most secure way to get to your computer.

Dante D’Orazio for The Verge:

We reported a few weeks ago that T-Mobile had no intention of letting the iPhone 5’s smaller nano-SIM card interfere with its newly-bolstered plans to woo unlocked iPhone owners over to its network, and now we’ve received confirmation that the carrier’s stores have begun receiving stock of the new SIM cards.

Given the limitations – with the exception of a handful of areas, iPhone 5s don’t support T-Mobile’s high speed network, and you’ll need an unlocked phone (like Verizon’s) for it to work – I don’t expect that many users will go flocking to T-Mobile. But there’s one in every crowd.

Mat Honan for Wired:

Jobs, like the titans of industry before him, realized that when we think about how the world works, we are actually thinking about the way people have made it to work. And that means that if you don’t like the way the world works, you are free to change it. Which is exactly what he did.

A thoughtful piece about why Jobs remains so relevant a year after his death. Honan also doesn’t spare criticism at journalists and analysts that, as he put it, “trot out his corpse” at every opportunity to examine Apple’s strategic moves.

If this has happened in your pictures, Apple explains why.