Hasta La Gadget!

With the new version of the Apple TV poised to reach that milestone, Apple marks healthy progress in the transition from the earlier “hobby” version of the set-top box.

Originally posted at The Digital Home

Apple has issued a press release saying that it expects to sell 1 million new Apple TVs by the end of the week. The second-gen set-top box has been on sale for three months, so sales are not as hot as Apple’s top sellers, the iPad and the iPhone, but it’s still selling a lot faster than the first version.

Apple likes to brag about its sales numbers — if they’re good enough. Otherwise, those numbers are never mentioned.

The timing of this announcement is rather odd. Apple is usually very clear with its messages, but here it is expecting us to report that it will probably sell a million units by the end of this week. This is because of the Christmas weekend, of course, but it’s still out of character.

The press release is also less clear than usual. When I read the headline, “New Apple TV Sales to Top One Million This Week,” my first thought was that Apple was shifting a million units in this week alone.

Either way, it shows that Apple’s hobby has finally become a paying job.

New Apple TV Sales to Top One Million This Week [Apple PR]

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

See Also:

• Hands-On With New $100 Apple TV
• 5 Reasons Why Apple TV Is (Still) Boring
• 3 Secret Apple TV Features Steve Jobs Hasn't Told You About …
• Why iOS Could Make Apple TV Succeed
• AppleTV Jailbroken, Ready for Apps

The Google Nexus team says that the Gingerbread OS update will be delivered over the air “in the coming weeks.”

Originally posted at The Digital Home

Is this enough to challenge popular notions of dinosaur as blood thirsty meat-eating machines? Naw, probably not, but it’s fascinating, nonetheless. A new study found that more than 90 species of theropods previously suspected to be carnivores most likely had largely plant-based diets.

Says scientist Dr. Lindsay Zanno, “Most theropods are clearly adapted to a predatory lifestyle, but somewhere on the line to birds, predatory dinosaurs went soft.” For those species with less clear cut adaptations than, say, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, dietary preferences have been something of a guessing game.

Adds Zanno,”These oddball dinosaurs have been the subject of much speculation but until now, we have not had a reliable way to choose between competing theories as to what they ate.”Scientists have managed to piece together clues including feces, teeth marks, and the presence of food evidence and stones used for herbivorous food breakdown in stomachs.

Zanno again, “Once we linked certain adaptations with direct evidence of diet, we looked to see which other theropod species had the same traits. Then we could say who was likely a plant eater and who was not.”

Their plant-based diet may have been what helped these species thrive.

We’ve been hoodwinked by trademark filing and domain registrations before (cough, BlackPad and SurfBook) so we wouldn’t say this is anywhere near definite, but we just caught wind of a Sony Ericsson EU trademark registration for “Xperia Play,” and SE PR firm Jung Relations has registered a variety of Xperia Play domain names, including XperiaPlay.com, .net, and .org. Yes, that certainly sounds like a promising name for the PlayStation Phone (although not quite as promising as, you know, “PlayStation Phone,”) but honestly we wouldn’t bet on anything at this point. We’ve got a feeling we’ll either find out either at CES or at MWC in February — hold on tight.

Update: Turns out SE also registered Xperia Arc, Xperia Duo, and Xperia Neo, so now our interest is definitely piqued. And our hopes are totally shatter-able.

Sony Ericsson PlayStation Phone to be called ‘Xperia Play’? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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