512 Pixels

While the service was a little buggy at first, I’ve come to really enjoy iTunes Match. I’ll be letting it renew.

My wife loves Clear on her iPhone, and I’m sure she’ll love this, too.

The other end of my state is now home to what is possibly the most powerful supercomputer on Earth.

And possibly butt chugging.

Jim Dalrymple:

Anything that is simply shrunk down or scaled up feels amateurish. The iPad mini feels like an iPad, it’s something you can have with fun with and accomplish tasks on.

Joshua Topolsky:

The iPad mini hasn’t wrapped up the “cheapest tablet” market by any stretch of the imagination. But the “best small tablet” market? Consider it captured.

Tim Stevens:

This isn’t just an Apple tablet made to a budget. This isn’t just a shrunken-down iPad. This is, in many ways, Apple’s best tablet yet, an incredibly thin, remarkably light, obviously well-constructed device that offers phenomenal battery life. No, the performance doesn’t match Apple’s latest and yes, that display is a little lacking in resolution, but nothing else here will leave you wanting. At $329, this has a lot to offer over even Apple’s more expensive tablets.

It really seems like the iPad mini doesn’t suffer from being smaller. I’m looking forward to opening mine on Friday.

WTF, mate.

The tail appears damaged, but the rest of the shuttle looks to be intact.

The Atlantic has some unreal photos of the damage done by Sandy.

Scott Forstall will be leaving the company in 2013 and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim. Eddie Cue is now over Siri, Maps, in addition to his previous work with the iTunes Stores, with Craig Federighi running both the OS X and iOS teams. Bob Mansfield will be running all wireless and semiconductor work.

(Interestingly, Apple’s release says the semiconductor team has “ambitious plans for the future.”)

Finally, retail head John Browett is gone. He’s the guy who tried to cut retail staffing back in August. I think this is Apple simply getting rid of a bad hire.

Five newspapers partially-owned by Bain Capital have backed its co-founder Mitt Romney, and none have endorsed President Obama.

While that’s fairly damning, I really dislike that newspapers endorse candidates. Even though journalism professors would say that the Editorial and News departments are separate, that’s a hard thing to pull off in reality.

Ben Brooks, writing about his daughter’s recent surgery:

We knew the wait wouldn’t be easy, and as we waited for the 10 minute surgery to be completed we were both beyond stressed, nervous, and hopeful. It seemed like an hour passed. We got the call to head back, and when we came back to our daughter, who was screaming, it wasn’t a pleasant sight.

She was in pain and not around anyone that she knew. She was scared. It was a terrible sight for any parent.

Stellar piece.

It’s time for Ballmer to go.

Apple’s stuff looks better, even inside.