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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

Tumblr suffering extended downtime, now out of action for almost 2 hours  —  UPDATE: As of 9.50am EDT Tumblr has been down for almost two hours.  We've approached the company for comment.  —  Tumblr is currently in the midst of downtime which has lasted at least 20 minutes at the initial time of publishing.

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.

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 …

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:

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.

Apple's Online Radio Service to Challenge Pandora in 2013  —  Apple Inc. (AAPL) and major music labels have intensified negotiations to start an advertising-supported Internet radio service by early next year, according to people with knowledge of the talks.

VIDEO: First look at Blackberry 10 phone  —  Research in Motion chief executive Thorsten Heins took up his post in January, with many analysts thinking he had been given an impossible task - to revive the fortunes of the Blackberry mobile phone.  —  Touch-controlled handsets running on Apple …