This week Gary Shapiro, chief exec of the CEA (the trade group which puts on CES, and, full disclosure, for which I sometimes consult) held a private dinner with journalists in San Francisco. According to Dow Jones / WSJ reporter Ben Charny (whose first Google result is this page on shoddy journalism), a juicy morsel was revealed: "Apple plans to attend the show's 2010 version, marking the first time in memory the Cupertino, Calif., consumer-electronics giant will be there." Very interesting, indeed.

Unfortunately, it's also specious and flatly wrong. I was seated directly across from Gary, and present for the entire conversation, wherein a dozen or so other journos chatted with him and one another. When asked about the CEA's ongoing contact with Jobs, Gary joked that every once in a while Steve might even return his email -- to which we all laughed knowingly. Yep, that's our Steve. Shapiro went on to mention that Apple was a great and long-standing supporter of the efforts of the CEA, but that their only direct involvement was sending a check each year to pay their membership dues.

At no point did Gary even remotely imply that Apple would be present at a future CES -- let alone state unequivocally that Apple "will be there" in 2010. In fact, at one point, someone asked if, hypothetically, Apple did want to attend CES, whether the CEA could accommodate them. Gary said that if pressed, they might be able to come up with a small 2,000 square foot booth, but they couldn't do anything, say, Microsoft-sized on such short notice. Bottom line, though, is that if Gary had even gotten remotely close to implying Apple would be at CES, this shoddily sourced piece by Charny wouldn't have been the earliest story with the scoop nearly 24 hours after the fact -- laptops would been immediately out for reports filed from the dinner table.

Now, I'm not saying Apple won't be there. But Gary and the CEA certainly never said or implied that they would, and Charny certainly didn't cite any other sources. Maybe by "Apple plans to attend" Charny meant one of Apple's 32,000 employees would happen to be in Vegas next January. Of course, the greatest irony of this little dinner was the lively debate at the end of the evening sparked by one particular old school BusinessWeek journalist who laid claim that tech blogs like Engadget publish first and ask questions later. Right.

Update: The WSJ has unceremoniously retracted, now stating at the top of the page that "It is not clear whether Apple will attend the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show." No, I think things are very clear as of right now: unless the CEA or Jobs say otherwise, Apple is not attending CES 2010. Oh and PS, Chris Nuttall from FT, who I was also seated across from, has the transcript of the conversation.

Update 2: The WSJ has issued a second update, clarifying things (as they should have the first time). Their post now reads: "Apple has not made any plans to attend CES 2010." So there you go.

Ryan Block is editor emeritus of Engadget, and co-founder of the recently-launched gdgt.

While most people would probably agree that 3.0 doesn't represent a revolutionary upgrade for iPhone users, it's still large (and interesting) enough to warrant tons of questions, which we've been collecting to answer in a FAQ about the beta. Feel free to submit some more below! Just remember that just about anything can change between now and the final launch of 3.0 -- it is a beta, after all.

So, how do I get this thing?
Well, unfortunately you need to be part of the developer program (which costs $99).

Whatevs, I just got it off of BitTorrent!
Okay, but it may not work. Your iPhone's unique ID must be authorized for the 3.0 upgrade, and Apple checks that. So until someone cracks the 3.0 beta firmware image, you have to be a registered developer, or know somebody who can hook you up, pretty much.

How did installation go? From Miqal
Running it on a non-jailbroken device, it went smoothly. Took about as much time as your traditional restore. Just be warned: from what I've been hearing, once you go to 3.0, you can't go back to 2.0. (Apple must have changed some of the baseband firmware or something, no real surprise.) Update: been hearing it IS possible to go back to 2.0 from 3.0, but be warned, it could require some baseband hacking and god knows what else, so it'd be wise to prepare for the worst.

How's performance been? I heard it's really sluggish.
Actually, it's been pretty good for me so far! Spotlight is actually faster than I expected and the rest of the common interactions feels the same as 2.2. I'm going to continue to keep an eye out for issues, but so far things have been humming along nicely. [Interestingly, Nilay, Ross, and Chris have all reported occasional slowness, proof that Ryan's zen-like patience is a virtue. -Ed.]

Do all of your apps sync? Do they work okay? From Kwarren and davidiom
So far, yes, I haven't seen anything really go missing. 3.0 isn't a fundamental architectural change, so I don't think most apps need to be re-worked to function. Granted, there have been a few apps which have definitely given me some trouble when running in 3.0 (like the Peanut Butter Jelly Time! app -- don't you judge me), but so far I've run into very few problems and apps have been working mostly without much issue. As always, with something like this your mileage may vary.

So I took a little a break from working on gdgt to get on Virgin America's inaugural Aircell GoGo WiFi party flight, posting this at altitude. If you haven't already caught one of the early Aircell flights on Delta, American, or Air Canada, their now-active GoGo service provides in-flight internet. So far, as far as party planes go, this one hasn't been too raucous -- probably because everyone's been geeking out on their laptops.
Quick facts:

• The service is a shared high-power EV-DO Rev. A connection, at 3.6Mbps downstream and 1.8Mbps upstream.
• By April, 100% of Virgin America's flights will have GoGo service. Dayumn! All GoGo service is $10 for short flights (under 3 hours) and $13 for longer flights (over 3 hours).
  
• So far I've been getting about 1Mbps down, and 200Kbps up -- pretty good considering that this is about as pinned as the system is going to get. There are only about 150 people on it right now, you know?
• Latency is between 200-500ms, sometimes higher. Reasonable latency, though.
  
• The system uses 802.11a/b/g, although it's an open AP (i.e. no encryption).
• Speaking of which, GoGo claims they'll support VPN, so expect that to work. SSH is iffy though -- it worked for us, but they don't really want people SSH tunneling (especially to do stuff like VoIP).
• Aircell intends to block voice and video chat to keep things less obnoxious for travelers. It's working in flight though -- people are doing iChat sessions. But part of this inaugural flight will have live YouTube streaming, so one should expect to have this cut off later.
• BitTorrent works! It's not crazy fast, but I'm peering with about 8 nodes. I wouldn't expect this to work when the service launches.
  
• GoGo has a built-in traffic shaper that keeps an eye out for those using more traffic than others. If you're consuming too much, it'll scale you back (although no one has a hard cap). If you're the only one on GoGo (say, on a red-eye at 4am) then you can go crazy, you won't be scaled back. Still, I'm sitting next to my old pal Brian Lam from Giz, and I'd wager the two of us are somehow taking up about 80% of the plane's bandwidth.
  
• Virgin America isn't filtering content, so feel free to cast a glance over your shoulder and engage your browser's private mode.

Any thing else you want to know?

We just got our grubby, oily hands all over this pristine, all glass and aluminum MacBook. We sullied it on your behalf, but our initial impressions mostly positive: it's small, incredibly, ridiculously solid feeling, and we actually don't hate the all-clicking trackpad much at all. (If your thumb muscle memory makes you click at the bottom where the button used to be, it works and feels pretty much the same.) Of course, the glare of the glass screen is a MAJOR issue for us, and will be pretty much forever. There's just no way we'll be able to love it, so our eyes will be peeled for after-market add-ons to cut that down a bit. But in terms of the rest, it's pretty clear this is the best MacBook -- and best mainstream consumer laptop -- Apple's made to date.

Engadget editor-at-large and gdgt co-founder Ryan Block contributes Engadget Cares, a friendly advice column for the people who make your technology.

It's not hard to argue that the App Store's inspired success for the mobile software world, with over 100 million programs downloaded on only a few million phones in just a matter of months. Palm, Nokia, Microsoft must all be simmering (and understandably so). But Apple, if you're having trouble getting buy-in from passionate developers with a serious creative vision for iPhone apps beyond the dozens of me-too calculators and to-do lists -- and you know you are -- the writing's on the wall, and you're the one who put it there.

But it's not just about the draconian SDK agreement (which we'll get to in a minute), or the uncertainty that runs through every developer -- large and small -- as they wonder whether you'll give the all-important thumbs-up to the app they've just invested all that blood / sweat / tears / money into (we'll get to that, too). What seems to the rest of us like nefarious intent may simply be Apple coming to grips with its own successes by reacting with the same kneejerk response it plies to most everything else: control and micromanagement.

Let's rewind for a moment though, and go back to what Steve said at this Spring's iPhone roadmap event, where the SDK was introduced for the first time. As Steve's introduction reached its crescendo, he excitedly declared, "The developers and us have the same exact interest, which is to get as many apps out in front of as many iPhone users as possible," but "there are going to be some apps we're not going to distribute: porn, malicious apps, apps that invade your privacy..." The slide listed "malicious," "illegal," "porn," "privacy," "bandwidth hog," and "unforeseen." Ah, unforeseen -- glorious wiggle room. I suppose "apps that might compete with our own" wouldn't have gone over as well with the crowd. Read on.

We just got some hands-on time with the new iPod touch, and we're really feeling this one. Jury's still out on the new nano, but the second-gen touch is a marked improvement over the first gen model. The WiFi antenna looks much better integrated, the speaker doesn't sound like complete trash despite not even having any speaker holes, and the thing is crazy thin. Like, really, really thin.

Looks like that Apple event for the Tuesday, the 9th of this month is on. We know it'll be new iPods (they always do iPods for the fall / holidays), but hopefully they'll have a little something special for us. Whatever, just as long as it's not that round, awful looking nano. Go on, hit the comments and get speculating.

Back in the early days of Engadget, everyone -- including us -- thought mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) were totally poised to be the next big thing. And why not? You get to be a wireless carrier without having to operate your own infrastructure (which is by far the most expensive, difficult part). Just what the doctor ordered for the big, stodgy wireless carriers, each struggling to balance differentiating themselves while trapping their customers in their walled content and services gardens.

What we got instead was failed business model after spectacular failed business model, leading to a domino effect of collapses that left just a precious few companies standing. Let's take a look at the carnage over on Engadget Mobile, shall we?

Outgoing Engadget editor-in-chief Ryan Block contributes Engadget Cares, a friendly advice column for the people who make your technology.

Hard to believe, but it's been a year and a day since Peter, Josh, and I published our intervention letter to Palm, wherein we rattled off a number of (admittedly unsolicited) suggestions on how we thought they might best turn things around at a time when Microsoft, RIM, and Apple were really eating into their slice of the smartphone pie.

Palm CEO Ed Colligan took the time to publicly reply, letting everyone know that he "forwarded [our letter] to [Palm's] entire executive staff and many others at Palm have read it. ...We are attacking almost every challenge [Engadget] noted, so stay tuned." When the dust settled, we were cautiously optimistic, if not a little hopeful.

In some ways that letter inspired Engadget Cares. And since it's my last day here at Engadget as editor-in-chief and all, it seems only appropriate to check in on things and see whether Palm really did "attack every challenge" from a year ago. Read on.

For obvious reasons, we're not really big believers in optimizing Engadget for individual devices or platforms. Despite the unrelenting number of requests for an iPhone-optimized version of Engadget, we thought we'd let Apple stand by its whole "the real internet in your pocket" thing. And then we ran the numbers. We could hardly believe it.

So far in 2008, the iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPod touch account for some 95.8% of all mobile views on the full site. We're not even kidding. That doesn't factor the visitors who hit our current mobile version of the site, but it's pretty hard to argue with any number like that, so we're rolling out a new beta version of Engadget optimized for the iPhone at i.engadget.com. (Don't worry, we'll still be keeping original mobile site active at m.engadget.com.) Please feel free to let us know what you think in comments!

Oh, and for the stats nerds in the audience, you can check out Engadget's mobile device breakdown after the break.

Our Deutsch is a little rusty, but Spiegel's got a hard-hitting, um, sounding story on Segway safety -- specifically regarding what happens when one hits a stationary object or falls off of one while riding it at full speed. Hey der Spiegel, why don't you try the same test with one of those bicycle contraptions we hear Europeans are so in love with? We have a feeling you might be slightly more horrified by the results.

[Via AutoblogGreen, thanks Nate]

We're not going to get back into the Xbox 360 + Blu-ray debate, but Sony's HD format is clearly on Microsoft's collective mind, as it's begun prepping a new Windows add-on dubbed Feature Pack for Storage. The kit's set to contain modules for portable drive recognition and restriction, ICCD and CCID Smartcard drivers, but most notably an image mastering API for Blu-ray that enables "master style optical burning on Blu-Ray [sic] media." Expect it soon on Windows Vista, XP SP2+, Server 2008, and Server 2003 SP1+ -- or really soon if you get in on the beta.

[Via ZDnet]

It may be true that no one can hear you scream in space, but we'd be wagering that a whole lot of people can hear the yelling coming out of Houston-based Oceaneering International, Inc., who just lost their two month old $745 million NASA contract to build the next-gen space suit. Of course, the bid was not without its fair share of bitching and moaning by competing contractors (apparently long time space suit-makers Hamilton Sundstrand and ILC Dover made a big stink after the contract was awarded to their upstart competitor), but them's the breaks when your gear's headed to space. Too bad though, we were really looking forward to the gear -- especially since now we have absolutely nothing to wear to the astro-prom.

Of course, it all seems so obvious now! How did we not interpret El Jobso's true meaning of the iPhone kill-switch -- it actually kills you. We have noted iPhone expert Stephen Colbert to thank not just for this brilliant deduction, but also for sticking up for the lot of us and giving the iPhone 3G a cold staredown -- but not before declaring, "I knew I should have gotten a Zune! They can't kill me... or do anything else." Zing! Clip after the break (iPhone at 5:45).

[Thanks, Matt]

Tons of pics of Dell's new Precision and Latitude E series machines? You got 'em, including shots of the crazy-small E4200, which really takes us back to the days of the hot little Samsung-built X1. Hit the gallery below, marvel at some of the machines your IT department may be rolling out in the next 6-18 months.

After spending a few minutes with it, there's no question to us that the Touch Pro is HTC's most impressive handset to date (even if you count the Xperia X1). Okay, the phone is still a bit thick (roughly the same as a Tilt), and there's no 3.5mm headphone jack, but it's got a very small footprint and a very comfortably proportioned keyboard. We can also really definitely appreciate the lengths HTC is going to trying to make Windows Mobile a bit less doggish these days -- but were they to spice up the Touch Pro with a capacitive touchscreen and Android, HTC might just have a game-changer on their hands.

Like so many other devices made in China, we're convinced this Bird's Nest Stadium, um, "inspired" device is totally, completely authorized and legit. And hey, unlike Chinese bird's nest soup, it not only comes in capacities up to 4GB, but doesn't even appear to be assembled with avian saliva. Difficulty: 1.2, execution: 3.55.

The UK's National Oceanography Center in Southampton is prepping to launch a new autonomous underwater vehicle (also known as a robo-sub, landlubber) capable of exploring undersea volcanoes in the Cayman Trough up to 20,000 feet deep. It'll only run for about a kilometer at a time though, so while it does have quickly replaceable lithium polymer battery packs, it still won't exactly be roaming the briny deep for months on end without human supervision. And you know how we feel about unsupervised self-directing machines.

Just an FYI to the CPU geeks in the house: if you've been following Nehalem, you can officially start calling it Core i7 (which means that it's not getting the code name we all thought it'd carry: Core 3 Trio Quad Duo Pro Extreme Edition). Everyone else can feel free to continue scratching their head.

What with all this electric car business going on down on terra firma, it was clearly about time we all got to work flying the negatively-charged skies as well. The ElectraFlyer C, built by the Electric Aircraft Corporation, recently got some extended hang time on its maiden flight, powered by a 5.6 kWh lithium battery capable of flying for between 1.5 to two hours at a cruising speed of about 70 mph (and topping out at 90). Presumably close to silently. Read link hits EAC's site, more photos of the ElectraFlyer C here.

[Via Autopia, thanks Sam]