Mark Sullivan

Tablets and smartphones are making music more fun for musicians and nonmusicians alike. These devices--mainly iPhones and iPads at the moment--have brought about a wave of innovation in tuneful apps. Here are some of the coolest ones out there.

GyroSynth

The iPhone 4 contains a very good gyroscope, which senses the exact position you're holding the phone in. GyroSynth is a tone generator that alters its tone as the user moves the phone around--a little like the way a classic theremin works. And the app creates a unique sound, not one that mimics an already existing synth sound. I could easily see someone playing one of these things in a live setting.

You've been uploading pictures, sharing stories, and entering personal data into your favorite social network for years. Now the network says that all of your data is public and that it's going to share the information with an advertiser.

Maybe you've heard of this little start-up company called Facebook. They're finally attempting to go public, and with that we've learned quite a bit about the company, including how much money they're making and how much they want to raise by becoming publicly traded (about $5 billion). Our resident Facebook expert Mark Sullivan is on hand to talk about the IPO and the imminent arrival of Timeline.

Also, there have been about 537 digital cameras announced this week. That's an exaggeration, but not much of one. Camera guru Tim Moynihan gives us the highlights from this week's announcements.

You know those "Alex P is listening to Sleezin' by Freak-Z on Spotify" messages you always see in your Facebook ticker? You're going to start seeing many more of those, and not just ones about your friends' music tastes. The ticker will soon be telling you about everything your friends are eating, photographing, buying, watching, tasting, reading and much more.

When Facebook announced last fall that Spotify and a few other apps would integrate with its Timeline platform, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Facebook today announced the immediate availability of more than 60 new apps that integrate closely with the social network's Timeline presentation.

CES is the world's biggest coming-out party for the year's new gadgets, and it's also a good barometer of the health of the tech industry as a whole. Since the CES festivities got rolling over the weekend, we've been trying to get a bead on the major themes--the hot products and topics that are being discussed in the hallways, on the show floors, and in hotel bars all around the Las Vegas Strip. Here's what we're seeing and hearing so far.

Ultrabooks and Tablets

For many wireless users, Verizon's LTE service is no longer the only game in town. AT&T announced earlier today at an investor conference that it has launched 4G LTE mobile data service in 11 new cities, bringing its total LTE footprint up to 26 markets and 74 million customers, the carrier says.

The new cities are the New York City metro area, Austin, Chapel Hill, Los Angeles, Oakland, Orlando, Phoenix, Raleigh, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose.

After months of wrangling against opposition from the FTC and the Justice Department, AT&T has finally admitted defeat in its attempt to take over rival cell carrier T-Mobile. By canceling the $39 billion deal, AT&T stands to lose almost $4 billion in cancelation fees to T-Mobile and, more importantly, has failed to eliminate one of its cell carrier rivals. While the deal's collapse is bad for AT&T, though, it should be cause of celebration for consumers.

[Read: AT&TKills $39 BillionT-MobileDeal]

Walking past laptop-toting digital nomads who huddle around the outlets lining the concourse, you arrive at your gate with 30 minutes to spare. You have a 6-hour flight in front of you, and a laptop and a smartphone that need a full charge to keep you working and listening to music throughout the flight. You stalk the gate area. The two available outlets on the payphone are taken. No outlets on the walls. The remaining minutes before departure tick down. A baby is crying. (Please, please, please, you think, don't seat me next to the baby...). "Final call for boarding." Your laptop has an hour of life left, and so does your phone. When both are dead, your noise-canceling headphones will be useless. You board and approach your seat. You're in 16B. The baby, in 16C, is already crying...

Photograph by Robert Cardin.

Illustration by FlorafaunaThough a multitude of competing tablets have entered the marketplace, our results show that the iPad remains miles ahead of the pack in durability, ease of use, and features such as battery life, screen quality, and overall speed. In fact, Apple soaked up almost all of the high scores in those areas, leaving the rest of the field saddled with average or below-average scores on our survey measures.

Highlighted in the three charts below are our survey participants' ratings of tablet manufacturers in three general areas: reliability, ease of use, and features. These results are drawn from our 2011 Reliability and Service survey of some 63,000 PCWorld readers. The other product categories covered in this survey were desktop PCs, laptop PCs, HDTVs, printers, digital cameras, and smartphones. For a closer look at the methodology we used in our survey to gauge manufacturer reliability and customer satisfaction, see "Reliability and Satisfaction: What the Measures Mean."

Illustration by FlorafaunaOur survey results show up-and-down results for many printer makers. Samsung received high marks for its printers’ reliability and copy speed, but poor ones for photo and graphics printing quality. Participating readers esteemed Xerox for its machines’ printing speed and network connectivity, but bashed it for their poor reliability. Only Canon, Brother, and Epson had especially strong showings in both reliability and feature satisfaction; and of those three, only Canon also graded high in service and support.

Highlighted in the three charts below are our survey participants' ratings of desktop PC manufacturers in three general areas: reliability, features, and service/support. These results are drawn from our 2011 Reliability and Service survey of some 63,000 PCWorld readers. The other product categories covered in this survey were desktop PCs, laptop PCs, tablets, digital cameras, HDTVs, and smartphones. For a closer look at the methodology we used in our survey to gauge manufacturer reliability and customer satisfaction, see "Reliability and Satisfaction: What the Measures Mean."

Illustration by FlorafaunaDell and HP business PCs received fairly positive ratings, but the companies’ home PC lines earned poor marks for durability and product support. Apple ruled the desktop PCs category, with top marks in reliability, service, and features (from product design to ports and connectivity). Asus finished second, thanks to high user satisfaction with the reliability, value, and low operating noise of its machines.

Highlighted in the three charts below are our survey participants' ratings of desktop PC manufacturers in three general areas: reliability, features, and service/support. These results are drawn from our 2011 Reliability and Service survey of some 63,000 PCWorld readers. The other product categories covered in this survey were laptop PCs, tablets, digital cameras, printers, HDTVs, and smartphones. For a closer look at the methodology we used in our survey to gauge manufacturer reliability and customer satisfaction, see "Reliability and Satisfaction: What the Measures Mean."

Illustration by FlorafaunaMore than 63,000 PCWorld readers responded to our online and print advertisements or email messages, and volunteered to participate in our survey. With the help of statistical consultant Ferd Britton, we analyzed the resulting survey data to determine which companies' numbers were reliably above or below the average of all responses for a particular product type. It's important to note that our survey results don't necessarily reflect the opinions of a given company's customers as a whole. And because our data comes only from PCWorld readers who chose to take part in the survey, our results don't necessarily reflect the opinions of PCWorld readers in general.

About the Survey

PCWorld readers rated hardware vendors in seven product categories: laptop PCs, desktop PCs, tablets, printers, smartphones, HDTVs, and digital cameras. For each category, our survey included at least four measures of the reliability of a brand's products, such as failed components (a laptop hard drive, say) and problems that the user noticed right away ("out of the box").