Tim Cook: ‘we would not make’ 7-inch tablet, iPad mini in ‘a whole different league’  —  Apple CEO addresses Steve Jobs' criticism of 7-inch tablets  —  Those who have been paying attention to Apple over the years remembered one thing when the company revealed the iPad mini earlier this week …

Gentlemen, start your benches: Measuring Windows 8's performance  —  For a couple of decades, it seemed like every time a new version of Windows was released, its hardware requirements would keep pace with hardware advancement, necessitating sometimes-costly hardware upgrades if you wanted to stay up on the latest software.

Samsung shipped a stunning 57M smartphones in Q3 — twice as many as Apple  —  Samsung shipped 56.9 million of the 162 million smartphones sold globally in the third quarter of 2012, according to the latest research from Strategy Analytics.  That adds up to a massive 35 percent global share …

Citigroup's Star Tech Analyst Mark Mahaney Fired Over Leaks To TechCrunch  —  Mark Mahaney, a star tech analyst at Citigroup, was just fired.  —  He got canned because one of Mahaney's junior associates leaked information about the bank's views on the Facebook IPO to TechCrunch writers Josh Constine …

Apple's iPad Mini, 4th Gen iPad Now Available For Pre-Order - Wi-Fi Only Versions Deliver November 2  —  If you're looking to get your hands on an iPad mini after the big reveal this past Tuesday, now's the time to pre-order, as Apple has launched pre-orders via its mobile app and online retail store …

Google's Vic Gundotra is posting pics with the Nexus 10 tablet  —  It's not unusual to see top-level Googlers vacationing in some really cool places.  It's also not unusual to see them taking pictures with unannounced devices.  —  So here's Google senior VP of engineering Vic Gundotra …

Bad day for the cloud: Dropbox and Google App Engine experiencing outages  —  Dropbox and Google App Engine are both experiencing outages today.  At the time of writing it's unclear how the two downtimes are related.  —  Dropbox is giving the following error:

Eric Schmidt is headed to Paris to head off French proposal to charge Google for linking  —  France's new government has been making noises about forcing Google to pay for the privilege of linking to French news sites.  Google responded by threatening to remove all French news sites from its index …

HTC made just $133m in Q3, down 79 percent from last year  —  HTC has just announced its Q3 2012 earnings, revealing a net profit of NT$3.9 billion (roughly $133 million) from NT$70.2 billion ($2.4 billion) in revenue.  In contrast, over the same period last year the company made NT$18.68 billion …

Update: Facebook Plans To Build Out Pinterest-Style Collections Feature For Web And Mobile  —  No so Pinteresting after all.  Facebook began testing Collections on October 8th.  But today I found that photos users collected had disappeared and so had posts with Collect or Want buttons .

Apple Posts Notice to UK Site Acknowledging that Samsung Galaxy Tab Did Not Infringe on iPad Design Because “They are not as cool”  —  As instructed by a UK court, Apple has posted a small link in the footer of Apple.com/uk.  The notice acknowledges the judgement that Samsung had not infringed on the iPad design with their Galaxy Tab.

Apple's no internal client syndrome  —  There exists a common problem for Apple frameworks, technologies and services.  —  Once upon a time apple proceeded this way: They worked on frameworks and services internally, made them private, gave them a little time to mature (about one or two releases) and only then made them public.

Google Nexus 10 leaks: Android 4.2, Exynos 5250 (1.7GHz), 2,560 x 1,600 resolution  —  Unless we're looking at one of the most elaborately photographed fakes in the world, this is the Nexus 10.  With the Nexus 7 apparently going over quite well at just $199, it was only ever a matter …

Introducing CrunchGov, TechCrunch's Policy Platform  —  Nearly a year after citizens blindsided the government with an unprecedented protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act, Congress is at a loss for how to proceed.  Luddite officials see complex tech issues as a mysterious minefield …

Microsoft exec says rampant cyber crime made his company fall behind on smartphones  —  Microsoft (MSFT) development director Craig Mundie knows that his company has fallen way behind on smartphones but he insists that it's not the company's fault.  In an interview with Spiegel …

Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets  —  The Digital Millennium Copyright makes it illegal to “circumvent” digital rights management schemes.  But when Congress passed the DMCA in 1998, it gave the Librarian of Congress the power to grant exemptions.