The Week in Tweets: Jobs Bio Tackles Reality Distortion, Meltdowns

Steve Jobs Bio Tackles Reality Distortion!

The long-awaited Steve Jobs biography hit stores on Monday, and tech journalists, analysts, and fans alike quickly tore it apart looking for sound bites, quirky anecdotes, and classic Jobs meltdowns.

The nearly 600-page book chronicles Jobs’s life from early childhood, charting the rise of Apple, his subsequent ousting, and triumphant return, mixed in with a few personal stories and interviews with friends and enemies. Author Walter Isaacson sat down for at least 40 interviews with Jobs, where the Apple co-founder often discussed his life and philosophies during long walks in his unassuming Palo Alto neighborhood.

How to Buy an HDTV

Undoubtedly, the biggest trend in HDTVs this year is 3D TV. But the truth is, not everyone wants to spring for a 3D-ready HDTV and the accessories required to bring 3D to your living room. If you're not sure, Buy a 3D TV Now or Wait? can help you decide, and if you're dead-set on getting a 3D set, here's a list of the best 3D TVs we've tested. Whether 2D or 3D, selecting the right HDTV isn't easy: what type of set should you get? How big should it be? How about resolution and other specs? What sort of extras do you need? Understanding the basics will help you make your choice (and your video) crystal clear, so here's what you should consider when shopping for an HDTV.

The 10 Best Desktops

The Top 10 Best Desktops

Desktops have come a long way from the boring, beige boxes of old. Now, you can get something as sleek as an all-in-one desktop or as flashy as a boutique gaming box and even a compact (and cheap!) net top. The price for desktops these days start as low as $250 and as high as, well, $5,000 and maybe more, but a powerful desktop can be had for about $800. The editors of PCMag.com test hundreds of systems each year to help you find the best desktop. In this story, we help you narrow your choices by collecting the top 10 desktops on the market today.

Apple iPhone 5 Could See October Release!

Apple could release the iPhone 5 in October, according to latest rumors. But questions remain about actual features.

Apple’s next iPhone could see its debut in September—or maybe October. It will likely come with Apple’s proprietary A5 processor and an 8-megapixel camera, but it’s more questionable whether the case will undergo a fundamental redesign. As for the device’s official name, you could probably place money just as easily on “iPhone 4S” as “iPhone 5”—or both, if Apple chooses to launch a whole new line of cheaper iPhones to complement its annual high-end device.

The ramp-up to the launch of each new Apple product sometimes plays out like the tech-world version of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” in which confusion reigns.

The 50 Best iPhone Applications

Whether you're joining the roster of iPhone owners for the first time, perhaps when the iPhone 5 launches or you're a long-time Apple customer trying to make the most out of your iPhone 3 or 4, you need app recommendations. The app store is just too big to go through on your own. Word-of-mouth advice is useful, but we at PCMag spend thousands of hours each year scouring iTunes, speaking with developers, reviewing the best apps we find, and hunting for hidden gems. If there's an app that makes owning the iPhone more worthwhile, we find out about it.

Why? Because apps are what transform the iPhone from mobile phone to pocket PC. Anyone can find an app for just about anything, but plenty of them aren't worth your time. Others are good—entertaining, usually, at the very least—and still others seem useful for only a day or two, until their novelty wears off. And some make you wonder how you ever functioned without them.