Steve Jobs, despite promoting shoe carton-sized Apple boomboxes, was an audiophile who, when he was at home, dug out his vinyl records and spun these instead of firing up iTunes.

This is according to legendary singer Neil Young, who has become so exasperated with the quality of currently recorded music that he gets ‘angry’ listening to it. Speaking at the D: Dive Into Medie Conference in California, he said: “Steve Jobs [was] a pioneer of digital music, and his legacy is tremendous. But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you’ve got to believe that if he’d lived long enough, he would have done what I’m trying to do.”

The Canadian, who has recently been jamming with his old band Crazy Horse, said that the late Apple CEO would have been right there with him in the trenches, fighting the good fight against the ‘degrading’ influence of mp3 downloads.

In his speech, he told the audience about how he actually talked to Jobs about creating a new music format that would have more than 20 times the fidelity of most current digital audio file formats.

This would result in a single song occupying as much hard drive space as a whole album currently does, which, one assumes, would have been anathema to someone like Jobs, who valued convenience and litheness over most things.

But apparently Jobs was indeed taken aback at the eagerness with which people embraced the mp3 and other digital audio formats, which contain a fraction of the data recorded by the artist.

Neil Young’s new album, meanwhile, was finished recently and should be released later this year.

The Apple iPad has ruled supreme in the tablet market ever since it was launched, but that could change in 2012 according to new figures.

The battle between Apple and Google is set to continue (shocker), not only in terms of who’s the biggest brand in the world, but also in regards to the increasingly sizable global tablet market. According to figures released by Strategy Analytics this week, Apple’s share of the global tablet market dropped from 68% to 58% last year, while the overall market grew from 10.7m in the last quarter of 2010 to 26.8m twelve months later.

It seems that Apple’s loss has been entirely Android’s gain: the latter’s tablet sales grew from 29% to 39.1% from Q4 2010 to Q4 2011.

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was quoted at this year’s CES in Las Vegas as saying that Android tablets would sell a billion units before too long. With tablet prices generally going down slowly but surely, this might not be as far off the mark as it may sound right now.

It appears that this year will also be the year where smaller competitors might be squeezed out of the picture if they don’t shape up: BlackBerry PlayBook and Windows 7 tablets put together sold less than a million units.

It’s a new year, it’s a new beginning, it’s a new PC Site giveaway. To kick off 2012, we’re giving away four copies of the latest Norton Antivirus software for Mac.

To take part, all you need to do is complete the following tagline:

Norton Antivirus 2012 – Fast. Powerful. …

The competition is taking place over on our Facebook page, so head there, follow the easy-as-pie instructions and you could be in with a chance to win this bodyguard for your Mac!

Terms and conditions apply, and the competition ends on 9th February.

Competition powered by Win Free Stuff, OfferOasis.co.uk – Competitions and Freebies in the UK, Competitions Today and ThePrizeFinder – UK Competitions

This new laptop was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, and Acer have boldly proclaimed it to be the world’s thinnest Ultrabook.

And at 1.5cm height at its thinnest point, the Acer Aspire S5 does come higher in the skinny table than the MacBook Air. It’s a 13 inch laptop that comes equipped with an LCD screen and a handy-sounding quick (re)boot-up feature called Acer Green Instant On.

The Aspire S5 will apparently come with the super-modern SSD hard drive technology, shock resistance and a concealed port panel that pops out at the press of a button.

The Acer Aspire S3 was launched only last September, but as netbooks are being usurped by laptops that are even more portable, Acer seem to have made this market one of their priorities.

No word of an exact UK release date or pricing yet, but apparently we can expect the Acer Aspire S3 to be shipping this early summer.

Ultrabook seemed to be the buzzword at this year’s CES, so expect a few more emaciated-looking laptops to be announced in the next couple of weeks.

Those of you with cash to burn and a love for all things Apple will be pleased to hear that not only will the iPad 3 be released this year but the iPad 4 will as well. The rumours all sprang from DigiTimes, so if it doesn’t happen then complain to them.

Supposedly the iPad 3 is to launch around March, and then its successor, the imaginatively named iPad 4, will see the light of day around October 2012.
One thing that’s good for us consumers is that the iPad 2 will have its price slashed. Strange how a piece of equipment people queued up for overnight can be replaced by something better within a year, isn’t it? With that in mind we’ll focus on the iPad 4 because in all honesty if you’re going to pay top dollar for a device, why be impatient and buy a machine that will be outshone by an incredibly similar one a few months later. Right?

Apple’s competition is stiff but they seem to fend it off effortlessly. This year will see the debut of Windows 8 which purportedly is being developed with portable devices in mind, hence the release of the iPad 4 – a similar tactical decision as we saw in the race for new mobile operating systems between Apple and Android late in 2011.

As the top tablet of choice, the iPad 2’s price being reduced to make way for the next generation will cause serious problems for the demi-tablet market. Products like the Kindle Fire are, for the time being, enjoying popularity as a more reasonably priced portable device. But if you could get an iPad 2 for just a little more than a demi-tablet wouldn’t you part with the extra dough?

Dell has unveiled news today that their netbook line, the Dell Mini, will cease production.

With slumping sales figures for netbooks across most brands, it’s likely 2012 will be a year of ultrabooks and tablets. It’s for the Intel Atom we lament – this nifty little processor may fall out of production. Its Raison d’être as a fast chip for micro computing keeping your system running efficiently is easily outclassed by ULV chips used in netbooks – these are also made by Intel, so at least they won’t suffer. AMD and Qualcomm should be preparing to celebrate though, as their input into Ultrabook processors is significantly larger then it was with netbooks’.

It will be a shame to witness the demise of the netbook (though not an unexpected one) and it’s laughable now to recall some of the projections made about netbooks, particularly the scaremongers warning Apple about a lack of input into the market.

The netbook’s downfall came about through usurpation by the Ultrabook, which boasts a better class of specs not implemented in the netbook to help make its design more mobile. Unfortunately for netbook manufacturers ultrabooks are awesome, ever so slightly thinner and much more powerful – and that’s what we want really.

There are also posts on web about Samsung moving away from the netbook market, perhaps their ongoing suit with Apple is going to take precedence. Naturally we can’t overlook the input of tablets; an iPad is a more then reasonable alternative to a netbook when it comes to mobile computing. With the iPad 3 expected for 2012 it’s safe to assume most computer manufacturers will still be holding their breath.

Toshiba are set to launch a 10.1 Honeycomb tablet next year, titled Toshiba Excite, the company confirmed today.

Apart from the grammatically dodgy name (surely it should be ‘Excitement’?), the tablet is looking pretty tasty: Slash Gear reported that the Excite will run on a dual-core 1.2GHz Texas Instruments OMAP4 processor and that its screen will have a 12800 x 800 pixel resolution.

The tablet will be 7.7mm thin, with two cameras – a 2MP one on the front, and a 5MP one at the back. This is Toshiba’s first Android Honeycomb tablet, and the general feeling is that it might come a bit too late to cash in on the Honeycomb hype. On the other hand, the Excite does look mighty cool with its brushed aluminium lid and the discreet Toshiba logo in the bottom corner.

Since the last Toshiba tablet, the Thrive, was criticised for being too hefty, Toshiba have tried to keep things skinny this time around, and are lauding it as “the thinnest, lightest tablet on the market today”.

For the time being, the only sale info out there regards Canada, where the Toshiba Excite will apparently become available in February.

To continue our tour of browser add-ons which may make you say ‘hmm isn’t that convenient’ we present to you ReminderFox.

This extension integrates a calendar into your browser. Let’s face it, we all neglect calendars, along with forgetting to water plants and occasionally not feeding the fish, your calendar is one of the things which, no matter how good your intentions at the start of the year, will gradually get paid less and less attention – to the point where it’s pretty much abandoned altogether.

This is a terrible truth since they’re excellent tools for organisation; ReminderFox is a brilliant way to keep on top of your schedule.

If, like me, your schedule isn’t that busy and odd reminders aren’t worth opening a calendar and noting down, then this extension could be for you. ReminderFox is very accessible, an icon in the bottom right of your screen opens a simple to use interface, which works much like any other digital calendar, except this one is on your browser. So it’s likely you’ll be on there every day to receive a reminder anyway.

This add-on has an annual notification feature on it so it’s perfect for recording birthdays and anniversaries, and just look at the logo, how can you resist? It’s available here

www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2oBNFlNSnI

It’s not so much cool to hate ****** these days as a bare minimum requirement to qualify as a person with half-decent taste.

Pretty much everyone’s agreed that there are no redeeming features to this band – alright, so we might have once put “How You Remind Me” on a mix CD for a girl, but that was years ago, and what the hell did we know back then anyway.

For those who think that the band, led by Chad Kroeger (somehow even his name manages to be annoying), is still way too prominent in their daily lives, the guys at aux.tv have come up with a plug-in that blocks every mention of these odious dudes in your browser.

It’s aptly titled ‘Nickelblock’ and works a treat, as you can see below.

You can download it here – but I tell you, googling ‘******’ is going to be an absolute pain.

It’s been another quirky week in techno-land – meaning the world of computers not the one full of banging beats and kids off of their faces.

We’ll keep this one short because otherwise it’ll just end up whining about the economy and if that’s what you’re after, you can read pretty much any post on the internet. Like this one.

One of the stories that tickled us most was claims Apple’s voice activated assistant Siri is anti-abortion. I like the fact that hidden deep within the new iPhone software is some religious programming. It’ll start posting reminders out of nowhere, telling you to go to church and shock you when you take the Lord’s name in vain.

Controversy arose when someone wanted to find the nearest abortion clinic and the iPhone came up with no results. If a child is born as a result, hopefully they’ll live stream the explanation of why he/she wasn’t aborted in a couple of years.

History buffs and those of you curious about the inane and aged may be interested in perusing some century old newspapers which are now published on the internet. From our extensive research on the BBC News website we came across toppings spanning from absentee fathers to snake eating cows. The world doesn’t change much does it?

This week has also brought surprising news that ASUS is actually doing well. I know, you don’t see that often do you? The Taiwanese firm recorded an increase in laptop and netbook sales, meaning their EeeBooks still have a nice little piece of the technology market.

On the other end of the spectrum, Toshiba have been shutting down chip factories left right and center. Seriously they’ve shut down three factories, one of thems to the right, one of thems to the left and the other is dead in between the two.

Happy Friday everyone!