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According to multiple third-party estimates, Apple's Mac App Store has hit is first major milestone, 10,000 available applications.

One source, Macrumor's Appshopper site, has the total at 10,334 while France's MacGeneration had a similar figure.

Apple opened the store in early 2011 to have a centralized area for applications available for the Mac OS X operating system. Last December, the company said they had reached 100 million downloads by users, making the store the "fastest growing PC software store in the world."

By comparison, it took Apple's iOS App Store 6 months to reach the milestone, along with 300 million downloads. Of course, the iOS App Store is the only way to "legally" get apps on iPhone/iPad devices while Mac users can download the software from a plethora of sites, include the software maker's own site (usually).

Nintendo has announced today a significant expansion to its digital games business.

Beginning in August with New Super Mario Bros. 2, the gaming company will release most of their first-party games via retail packages and as digital downloads in Nintendo eShop.

The company says "the majority of Nintendo-published Nintendo 3DS games will have the same dual-distribution strategy" into the future. Additionally, the majority of Nintendo-published Wii U games will be distributed the same way when the console launches in November before the holidays.

Furthermore, the downloadable games will be available for purchase at retail stores and via retailer's websites. Gamers can purchase the product in store and then be provided with a 16-digit code to download the game in the eShop.

In 2008, Apple applied for a patent for ad-supported operating systems in which users would receive the operating system at a largely discounted price (or even free) in exchange for having to watch occasional advertisements.

Steve Jobs was listed as the lead inventor on the patent, which eventually surfaced in 2009.

Ken Segall's new book, "Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success," reports that Jobs looked to originally implement the OS starting in 1999 with the release of OS 9.

At the time, the Mac OS cost $99 to upgrade, but Jobs had the idea to sell the full price upgrade alongside a second version which would be free and supported by ads. Apple would win either way as it would generate money through advertising whilst also gaining market share as more people moved to Mac due to the price. If a free user ever wanted to get rid of ads, they could update to the full-price version.

In Jobs' visions, the ad-supported version of Mac OS 9 would have displayed "a 60-second commercial from a "premium" company at startup, with the ads occasionally being automatically swapped out for new ones over the Internet." Targeted ads were also expected, such as one from Epson whenever a user's printer ran low on ink.

In 2006, two years before the release of the grandfather of Android, the T-Mobile G1, Google had concepts down for the original "Google Phone."

Google was going around showing off the concept device to carriers, looking specifically at T-Mobile and their unlimited data plan.

The designs are now public thanks to the ongoing Oracle lawsuit against Google over Java patents. In Google's original presentation for the Google Phone, one slide blatantly says [we plan to] "Leverage Java for its existing base of developers. Build a useful app framework (not J2ME). Support J2ME apps in compatibility mode. Provide an opTMobileized JVM (Dalvik)."

What Google had in mind for the original phone was an ARMv9 processor running at a minimum of 200MHz, GSM (3G preferred), 64MB of RAM and ROM, miniSD external storage support, a 2-megapixel camera with a dedicated shutter button, USB support, Bluetooth 1.2, and a QVGA display with at least 16-bit color support. In 2006, these specs would have been very close to top of the line, but seem quite laughable now.

Eugene Kaspersky, CEO and co-founder of security company Kaspersky Lab, had some choice words for Apple and its recent malware woes.

The CEO says the Cupertino giant is "10 years behind Microsoft in terms of security" and predicts that cyber criminals will create "more and more" malware for the operating system in the near future.

Kaspersky's words come after the Flashback trojan infected over 600,000 OS X users using a Java vulnerability.

Furthermore, the CEO says Apple will have the "same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They [Apple] will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software."

Apple, for its part, knows that it will be an uphill battle against malware writers. As a strong step, the company has added a "Gatekeeper" feature to its latest OS X iteration, Mountain Lion. Gatekeeper blocks apps from running unless they are from identified developers or downloaded from the Mac App Store. You can enable all apps, of course, but the restrictive version is default out of the box.

Four members of the popular IMAGiNE scene release group are facing up to thirty years in prison for criminal copyright infringement.

The group was busted last year by ICE, and the four defendants, aged 27-57, now face jailtime. Although obviously unconfirmed, there have been rumors for months that the group was sold out by a rival scene release group with a grudge.

Jeramiah Perkins, 39, of Portsmouth, Va., Gregory Cherwonik, 53, of New York, Willie Lambert, 57, of Pennsylvania, and Sean Lovelady, 27, of California were each charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.

Perkins, Cherwonik and Lambert are also charged (via Freak) with two more counts of criminal copyright infringement while Perkins and Cherwonik are charged with a sixth count of criminal copyright infringement of a work being prepared for commercial distribution.

Each count brings up to five years in prison.

A few of the films listed as being reproduced and distributed by the group were "The Green Hornet," "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and "Yogi Bear" although they released hundreds.

Google has announced today that it has sold the popular 3D modeling software SketchUp to Trimble Navigation.

Financials of the deal were not posted.

Says John Bacus, Product Manager, SketchUp, in his blog post: "I'm sharing today that the SketchUp team and technology will be leaving Google to join Trimble. We'll be better able to focus on our core communities: modelers who have been with us from the beginning, as well as future SketchUppers who have yet to discover our products. Designers, builders and makers of things have always been the heart and soul of SketchUp. With Trimble's commitment to invest in our growth, we'll be able to innovate and develop new features better than ever before.

For those of you in the architecture, engineering and construction industries, the knowledge and experience Trimble will add to the SketchUp effort are obvious. Together with our new colleagues at Trimble, we plan to continue making our tools for the building professions as innovative, intuitive and (dare I say) fun to use as we always have."

Trimble will offer all new versions of Sketchup and will remain partnered with Google for the "SketchUp 3D warehouse," a repository online where fans can collaborate on models.

In a scary development, the US House Of Representatives has passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a margin of 248 to 168.

Despite the passing, the nightmare bill is still stalled in the Senate and President Obama has indicated he will veto the bill no matter what, regardless.

What is Cispa?

The new Act is intended to protect out Internet interests by updating the National Security Act of 1947 and follows the failed SOPA and PIPA acts, which were publicly flogged over how the invaded our privacy. Additionally, the Act is meant to protect companies from the likes of hackers in other nations like China and Iran, who routinely try to break into networks of American corporations.

CISPA would allow the government almost infinite power by telling private companies to hand over all personal data it has collected on you over to any government agency that ask, before it is handed off to the Department of Homeland Security. This data includes all emails, all social network posts, all blog comments and everything else you do online.

In the bill itself, it says the companies will not have to pass on the info unless there is a "cyber threat," which is defined as "efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy government or private systems and networks." That means, for example, that someone writing the term DDoS on a forum post, can technically be eligible to have all their personal data handed over to the government.

According to sources, Spotify is creating an Internet radio service that will rival Pandora directly in the U.S.

The new format will launch by the end of the year and will be supported by advertising. Pandora is cheaper to operate than Spotify currently is because the royalty rates are lower and standardized by Congress.

Spotify currently has 10 million registered users around the globe, 30 percent of which are paying subscribers. Pandora, which launched just a year earlier than Spotify did in 2006, has 150 million registered users in the U.S. alone, with 50 million active.

How Pandora works is users can choose an artist, genre or specific track and the service will identify songs with similar melodies (and more) and create a playlist. Just like traditional radio, you cannot choose the tracks you hear. With Spotify, the entire catalog is available to you along with the ability to creat playlists from the tracks you want.

Differentiating the services is the fact that all music is available on Pandora, from all artists, while Spotify is missing music from artists like the Beatles and others. Spotify is also at the whim of the labels and artists, who can withhold new releases if they want to, or delay them.

AfterDawn is expanding to Norway with its own brand and with its Nordic franchise, Tom's Hardware Norway. To achieve our goals, we're hiring one staff writer to Norway.

Samsung has showed off their latest processor, the quad-core unit used in its upcoming Galaxy flagship.

The tech giant is revealing the phone next week on May 3rd at its much-hyped "Next Galaxy" event.

Called the "Exynos 4 Quad," the chip runs at 1.4GHz per core and is based on the ARM Cortex A9 SoC. The processor will be in the upcoming device, and is currently being sampled by other major phone makers.

Samsung boasted about the 32nm High-k Metal Gate technology, power management, and per-core dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (via Verge). The chip is also capable of "full 30fps 1080p video playback and recording, includes an interface for HDMI 1.4 and also an embedded image signal processor interface."

Sony has confirmed it is looking to expand the PlayStation brand further into the mobile market.

PlayStation Digital Platforms senior director Jack Buser showed off the company's new development platform, dubbed PlayStation Suite, which will be available to devs looking to work on "PlayStation Certified" Android phones and tablets.

Explains nseek: "The idea is that binaries written for Vita can be adapted to run on such devices without porting, meaning developers using the PS Suite software will also be able to write games for Vita."

The amount of Certified devices is extremely small, as of now, with only a few Sony and Sony Ericsson devices having the distinction.

Sony hopes to expand the Suite and its capabilities to HTC, Motorola and Samsung in the near future.

According to a Digitimes report, HTC is building a new Facebook phone.

The device will be Android-based, and unlike past devices, there will be more than just a "Facebook button."

HTC's Salsa and ChaCha each offered a dedicated Facebook button that allowed for quick access to the site including chat, uploading photos and more.

The new device, which will launch in the Q3 will be "a platform exclusive to Facebook," however, with much deeper integration.

Digitimes speculates HTC is picking a side with Facebook, as Google is expected to begin creating its own Nexus devices into the future, leaving other Android makers in the dark.

Lenovo has announced today it will be recalling 28,000 more ThinkCentre M70z and ThinkCentre M90z all-in-one (AIO) desktop PCs.

Last month, the Chinese PC maker stated it would be recalling 160,000 of the devices.

The move came in conjunction with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) for computers sold between May 2010 and January 2012.

Due to a failure in the power supply, the system has a small chance of overheating and being a fire hazard and is therefore being recalled. The company received two customer reports in the last year of fires that resulted in damage to the computers in question.

All affected systems can be identified by machine type and serial number here at the Lenovo support page and if yours is affected Lenovo says "you should immediately stop using the affected desktop PC, and unplug the power cord."

Effective as of last month Lenovo is sending free power-supply replacements for all affected ThinkCentre M90z and ThinkCentre M70z.

Yesterday, search giant Google announced the launch of the oft-rumored Drive cloud service.

While the announcement was a large success, there was a small group of vocal critics; Linux users for whom the service was not supported.

Google Docs Community Manager Teresa Wu has come to the rescue today, pronouncing: "We're working on Linux support--hang tight!"

As it currently stands, Linux users cannot sync files automatically, like their Windows and OSX counterparts can, making the service nothing more than a cyber locker with less appeal than the Ubuntu One service for Linux users. Ubuntu One offers 5GB free storage, as well, and sync capabilities.

For more information on Drive, check our post here: Google Drive is finally here