This according to Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who says he discovered early production evidence of the mythical iTV during a recent trip to Asia.

“We believe specialty components have begun to ship to Apple’s Asia panel suppliers with polarized films, filters, and IGZO components starting to move in small quantities,” Misek says. “We expect commercial production in May/June with 2M to 5M builds likely.”

Misek offered no details on the iTV beyond that, though he did raise his price target on Apple shares in anticipation of it, as well as an upcoming refresh of the MacBook Air and Pro and generally strong demand for the iPhone 4S and new iPad. His new call: $699, up from a previous projection of $599.

Among the headline features are deep integration with Apple’s iCloud service, and with Twitter. And several features from iOS devices, like Messages and Reminder, are making their debut on the Mac, and will create a more unified experience among Macs, iPads and iPhones.

The release, which is coming only a year after Lion debuted last summer, might just indicate a speeding up of the cadence at which Apple does Mac software upgrades. Usually there’s an interval of 18 months to 24 months between major OS upgrades. That makes this announcement a bit of a surprise. Does that mean we can expect another one about 18 months from now? We’ll see.

Here’s a quick rundown of the 10 new features:

iCloud built in: Mountain Lion will be the first version of OS X built with iCloud fully integrated. Documents in the Cloud is a new feature that will allow documents you create and edit on the Mac to sync up and readily be available on iPhones and iPads. Changes you make in the document on one device will automatically appear on the other. You’ll be able to use iCloud from the moment you start up your Mac and sign in with an Apple ID.

Messages: It’s crazy to think about it, but iMessage users on the iPhone and iPad have sent something like 26 billion messages in only the few months it has been available. Messages is the new instant messaging application that will replace iChat. It will unify the experience between the Mac and iOS devices, and will still be compatible with services like Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Jabber, but will also bring iMessages into the Mac. Conversations stay up to date across all devices. It supports photos and videos. Also? There’s a FaceTime button.

Twitter: Twitter is also deeply integrated into Mountain Lion. You’ll be able to tweet directly from within several applications, sharing Web site addresses, photos and videos. Central to this is something Apple calls the Tweet Sheet, which you call up from the Share menu. It grabs what you want to share on Twitter and you write your tweet from directly within the Mac OS. And as cool as this is, it’s notable also for what it’s not: Facebook integration. Expect lots of speculation around that.

Share Sheets: Sharing is kind of a big deal these days, so it makes sense that the ability to do it — whether on Twitter or via email or any one of the cloud services out there — would be available on the Mac. There’s a new Share button in Safari and in other applications that makes it easy to send a photo to a friend via email or to Flickr, or a video to Vimeo or to another computer via AirDrop.

Notification Center: The dashboard of notices saying what’s going on in iOS is coming to the Mac. Similar to how you reach it on the iPhone — a swipe down along the length of the screen — it will appear on the Mac with a two-finger swipe from the right edge of the trackpad, and the list will appear on the right side of the screen. When you get a notification from an application — say, an email has arrived, or a download is finished, or a calendar reminder is going off — you can see them all in one place. Also, short messages with notifications appear in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and then fade away after a few seconds. It reminds me a great deal of a third-party application enhancer I use, called Growl.

Reminders: Another popular iOS app is being added to the Mac. Your to-do list remains synced across the Mac, iPhone and iPad, and you can add reminders that pop up throughout the day, so you don’t forget.

Notes: The all-purpose “take this down for later” application gets the Mac treatment. Soon you’ll be able to drag URLs into a note. And thanks to iCloud, they’ll be synced across Mac, iPhone and iPad. You’ll also be able to “pin” a note to your desktop, meaning it will stay open even if you close the main Notes application. Notes also has a Share button.

Game Center: Long a weakness on the Mac, gaming is getting stronger all the time. Games, it turns out, are the most popular software titles on the Mac App store. So it makes sense to bring the Game Center experience from iOS to the Mac. I saw a quick demo, where two people played a racing game against each other — can’t remember which game exactly — one was on the iPad, the other on the Mac. You’ll be able to challenge friends, keep track of your standings on a leaderboard and see what games your friends like. There’s also support for in-game voice chat, so you can talk trash.

Gatekeeper: Expect this feature to be controversial among Mac software developers. Basically, it’s an attempt by Apple to deal with the fact that the one serious security threat it faces is software that looks good at first but turns out to behave badly only after you’ve downloaded and installed it. The new scheme basically sets up a three-tier system, where the user can decide from where they will be allowed to download and install new software. In the most restrictive — or some will argue safest — case, you can set your Mac to allow only software from the Mac App store. As it does with the App Store on iOS devices, Apple vets the software sold there for safety. In the second case — this one not as restrictive — you can install software from sources other than the App Store, but only from developers who have signed up as a known developer. Here, Apple will not have checked the app for safety, but will at least vouch that the developer is known. Developers will have the option of signing up for a Developer ID. This is the part that I think they’ll find a little controversial. Anyway, in the third case, there are no restrictions. You can install software from any developer and any source, much as you can do today.

AirPlay Mirroring: If you have an Apple TV handy, you’ll be able to use your TV as a screen for your Mac — it’s super easy. If they’re on the same wireless network, the Mac will have a simple pulldown menu that makes your TV mirror what’s on the Mac.

Finally, Apple added a lot of new features for the Chinese market. Text input has been improved, and several popular Web services — like Baidu for search, integration with Sina Weibo for Twitter-like sharing and video-sharing with Youku and Tudou — have been built in, in order to make the Mac OS experience a lot more China-friendly than it has been before. Given the Apple madness that has struck that country in recent months, it will certainly find a happy audience.

The company said it sold 37 million iPhones, up 128 percent from a year ago, with 15.4 million iPads sold, also more than double sales of a year ago. Mac sales were up 26 percent, to 5.2 million.

“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

That said, Apple gave its usual extra-cautious outlook, predicting a significant dropoff in revenue and earnings. CFO Peter Oppenheimer said to expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and per-share earnings of about $8.50.

Apple shares, which had dipped a bit ahead of the earnings report, have surged in after-hours trading, changing hands recently at $458 a share, up $37.59 or nearly 9 percent.

We’ll have more when Apple’s earnings conference call starts in about 20 minutes.

Better processing and graphics power, of course. And perhaps a much improved display as well. Supply chain sources tell DigiTimes that the next iteration of the MacBook Pro will feature display resolutions as high as 2880×1800 pixels.

An intriguing rumor, and one that I’ve been hearing a lot about as well, though it’s been tough to nail down.

Here’s the logic behind it, though: Ivy Bridge architecture in upcoming Intel chipsets should allow for 4K-resolution displays. Add to that all this talk about Sharp, etc., supplying LCDs for the forthcoming iPad 3, and a MacBook with a Retina-esque display begins to seem plausible.

Too much of a stretch?

DisplaySearch’s Richard Shim doesn’t think so.

“Not a stretch at all,” he said. “We’ve already started to see the impact of tablets on the notebook market with an IPS panel being used in upcoming notebooks. This is a reversal of sorts in the notebook market, where wide angle viewing has traditionally been unused. …

“[We] haven’t seen the move to higher resolution ‘Retina’ panels for notebooks yet because the panels are new and are being using mainly for tablets, specifically iPads, but I could see it happening in the future for sure.”

I bought a new MacBook Pro, and need larger font size in order to read what’s on my 13″ screen. I know I can increase font size within individual programs, but what can I do about increasing the diminutive Finder items and others within the operating system?

A:

You can adjust the size of the text and icons in the Mac’s Finder—its desktop and file system viewer—by hitting Command-J, which calls up a menu that allows you to set the size of icons and text such as file names. In general on the Mac, you can zoom in on any screen that’s hard to see by pressing Command and Option and the equal sign key simultaneously. There’s also a way to Zoom in on just a small area of the screen. That feature, and other settings for people with low vision, can be found in the Universal Access section of System Preferences.

Windows 7 users can change the size of text and icons using the Display control panel and can zoom in on text using a magnifier tool that can be activated in the Ease of Access control panel, which contains other options for making items on the computer easier to see.

Q:

I am reading reports that the Epic 4G Touch lacks a dedicated microphone for noise cancellation. I was curious if this is true, and if it affected voice calls in your recent tests?

A:

According to Samsung, neither the Epic, nor any of the other Galaxy S II models, has a second, noise-canceling microphone. However, as I said in my review, I found voice calls on the phone to be clear.

The Epic 4G Touch

Q:

Do you have any suggestions for new phones for those of us wedded to the old Palm interface? Now that Palm is a dinosaur, I know I must upgrade, but so far, I find that none of the software associated with other phones comes close to the Palm functionality for taking notes and categorizing contacts and tasks.

A:

You’re not the only veteran Palm user in this quandary, and I wish I had a great answer for you. Neither of the two most popular smartphone operating systems, Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS, emphasizes elaborate functionality in these areas out of the box. However, both the iPhone and Android phones have access to numerous third-party apps that deal with tasks and notes and contacts. If the built-in functions for these things lack features you like or need, it’s likely that one or more of these apps can help.

Email Walt Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com.

PatentlyApple reports that Operating Systems Solutions LLC has filed suit against Apple, alleging OS X violates a patent it owns for quickly booting an operating system. The patent at issue here, RE840,092: “Method for Quickly Booting a Computer System,” describes what seems to be a pretty basic process:

“A method for fast booting a computer system, comprising the steps of: A. performing a power on self test (POST) of basic input output system (BIOS) when the system is powered on or reset is requested; B. checking whether a boot configuration information including a system booting state which was created while executing a previous normal booting process exists or not; C. storing the boot configuration information from execution of the POST operation before loading a graphic interface (GUI) program, based on the checking result; and D. loading the graphic user interface (GUI) program.”

Operating Systems Solutions cites Apple’s MacBook Pro as an example of infringing hardware, but argues that anything running Mac OS X is liable. It’s seeking injunctive relief as well as damages.

At first glance, this seems like just another case of a patent troll coming forward to try its hand at squeezing some cash out of Apple. But as Florian Mueller notes over at FOSSpatents, there may be something else going on here as well. Operating Systems Solutions LLC appears to have acquired the patent at issue in this case from LG Electronics. And while there’s no evidence of a working relationship between the two companies (LG is not included in the suit), it’s certainly possible that Operating Systems Solutions could be a proxy for LG, which sells a number of Android-based devices that might draw Apple’s ire.

Whenever I know Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is going to speak at a major public event, I get two feelings at once: Excited anticipation that the chances are high that he’ll say something controversial and dread that the chances are high he will say something, well, controversial.

Which is just what happened at his opening keynote speech yesterday at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, which is taking place in Los Angeles this week.

At the event, Ballmer got off several good ones, which always happen when he makes fun of himself or Microsoft products.

Most effective was the tiny market share of the very laudable Windows Phone 7, which replaced its failed Windows Mobile efforts.

Said Ballmer with verve about the situation: “We’ve gone from very small to very small…”

Funny, right? Especially when he also made it clear that he thought Microsoft had made the right bet in moving to Windows Phone 7, which was a deft way of both poking fun at the company and praising it at the same time.

Of course, like the skunk at the garden party he often can be, Ballmer also could not resist dragging out his oldest chestnut about how much bigger that PC market is than that of its longtime rival, namely Apple.

But because he’s Ballmer, he plays it cute and can’t ever seem to bring himself to actually say the name of the company that has always been top of mind at Microsoft and always has remained the target of grumbly frustration.

The solution? Pretend Apple does not exist by belittling the competitor’s weakest point.

Thus, he trotted out the usual stats about how big the PC market is in comparison — about 350 million units with the Windows operating system compared to about 20 million of Brand A.

All true, except it only makes Ballmer look petty and backward-thinking, since those 20 million represent so much more than just laptop computers.

In fact, when talking about Apple, it also means smartphones — where the iPhone dominates Windows Phone 7 handily — and also tablets, a market where there is no contest between the iPad and anyone else so far.

And it also leaves out the excitement and thrill that Apple always manages to engender among consumers, the media and techies alike when it launches new products, which will be happening just a week from now with Apple’s new MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs debut.

Because, while Ballmer can make fun of Apple’s laptop sales all he wants, it only makes him look silly rather than witty.

In fact, when you’re as big a company as Microsoft, it’s only funny when you are shooting at a behemoth like yourself over failings. Best of all, you never run out of material.

And, if you do, there’s always Google to kick around.

Among the 11-inch laptops Consumer Reports reviewed, the MacBook Air scored a 62 out of 100 possible points, besting a Gateway machine that scored 52.

Among 13-inch laptops, the MacBook, MacBook Air and 3 models of the MacBook Pro took first through fifth place with scores that began at 76 (MacBook Air) and ended at 67 (MacBook).

Among 15- to 16-inch laptops, the MacBook Pro took first, second and third place, with scores of 78, 77 and 76, beating out Dell’s MacBook Pro-esque XPs 15 and HP’s Pavilion.

And, finally, among 17- to 18-inch laptops the MacBook Pro took first and second place with scores of 81 and 80. HP’s Pavilion ranked a close third with a score of 79.

Is there software available to allow one to run Apple-compatible apps on Android tablets?

A:

None of which I’m aware. However, bear in mind many of the most popular apps for the iPhone are now available in versions for Android phones. My guess is that, over time, if Android tablets start selling in large numbers, the same phenomenon is likely to occur, with at least the top apps for the iPad being issued in versions for Android tablets.

Q:

I subscribe to 10 magazines. When I want to save an article I tear it out and file it away. I was wondering if there is another way to save articles by faxing/photocopying them and sending them as an attachment to a remote site accessible anywhere in the world. I would be willing to pay for the site but it has be easy to use.

A:

The answer is yes, but not exactly in the way you envision. If you’re starting with paper, you’d have to scan the articles into digital files and then upload them to a service or site that’s universally accessible. One good candidate is Evernote, at evernote.com. It allows you to file away a wide variety of digital files, including the PDF files you’d likely create from scanning, and then access them from any PC, or Mac, or from many smartphones and tablets. In fact, some scanners can directly send the files they create to Evernote, or you can email attachments directly to your Evernote account.

The other option is to read your magazines digitally, and save the articles directly from the digital editions, skipping the scanning step. Evernote can handle this approach, but there are other options.

A service called Instapaper can save Web pages for later reading, and works on computers, iPhones, and iPads.

Q:

I have a MacBook Pro for personal use—mostly Web browsing, emails, calendar, Facebook, etc. I want an iPad 2 but need to sell my MacBook in order to fund the purchase. If I do this, what will I miss most about my MacBook Pro?

A:

All of the things you say you do on the laptop can be done very nicely on the iPad 2. However, you will lose some significant advantages that any laptop offers. These include a built-in physical keyboard; a larger screen; the ability to view Flash videos in the browser; and direct connectivity to external devices like hard disks, wired Internet connections, and wired printers. Also, though you didn’t mention it, you might miss the option of using a wide variety of much more powerful productivity programs than exist today for the iPad.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columns at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

No wonder it was a blowout.

Posting second-quarter results after the bell Wednesday, the company reported earnings per share of $6.40 on revenues of $24.67 billion–an 83 percent increase over the same period a year ago. The Street had been looking for Apple to report earnings of $5.36 on sales of $23.34 billion, while unaffiliated analysts polled by Apple 2.0 had been looking for earnings of $6.33 on sales of $25.34. Gross margin was 41.4 percent compared to 41.7 percent a year ago.

It was the biggest non-holiday quarterly revenue and earnings in Apple history.

The company sold 3.76 million Macs during the quarter, a 28 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. It sold 18.65 million iPhones–113 percent more than it did a year ago. And it sold 2.8 million MacBooks. (see chart below).

But it sold just 4.69 million iPads; the Street had been looking for 6.2 million. Evidently the tsunami disaster in Japan and production shortages hamstrung sales. (Worth noting: the iPad 2 launched on March 10, 2011 in the States and on March 25, 2011 in 25 additional countries. Apple’s second quarter ended on March 26, 2011.)

“With quarterly revenue growth of 83 percent and profit growth of 95 percent, we’re firing on all cylinders,” CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. “We will continue to innovate on all fronts throughout the remainder of the year.”

Looking ahead to the June quarter, Apple offered its typically conservative guidance: earnings of $5.03 per share on revenue of $23 billion. Analysts had been expecting earnings of $5.25 per share on revenue of $23.8 billion.

NOTES FROM THE EARNINGS CALL

• CFO Peter Oppenheimer: This is the highest March quarter revenue and earnings in Apple’s history. “We’re thrilled with the iPad’s momentum.”
• Mac sales for the March quarter were up 28 percent year over year, a new record. This was the 20th quarter that the Mac outperformed the broader PC market.
• Wow. iTunes hit $1.4 billion, another new record.
• There are now over 100 million books in the iBooks store.
• iPhone is now on 186 carriers in 90 countries.
• 18.65 million iPhones sold during the quarter represent 113 percent growth, year over year.
• 88 percent of the Fortune 500 are testing or deploying the iPhone.
• “We sold every iPad 2 we made during the quarter.”
• There have been well over 10 billion app downloads to date and Apple has made some $2 billion in payments to the developers who created them.
• Apple Stores continue to do very, very well. Retail revenue is up 90 percent. Apple Stores sold 79,000 Macs during the quarter, up 32 percent. A new record.
• In the next few days, Apple expects the 1 billionth visitor to its retail stores.
• Tim Cook on Japan/supply constraints: We’re very saddened by the situation in Japan and our hearts go out to everyone there….We source many components from Japan–LCDs, optical drives, NAND flash, resin coatings, foil. The earthquake and tsunami caused disruption to many of these suppliers….But as a result of outstanding teamwork we did not have any supply or cost impact from Japan quake in Q2 and we don’t anticipate any in Q3. We’ve been working around the clock with our supplier partners in Japan to ensure there are no supply chain disruptions….We do need to caution that the situation remains unpredictable, though.
• Cook on iPad 2: Demand has been staggering. We’re amazed that we are still so heavily backlogged. Really, this is the mother of all backlogs … but we’re pleased with our manufacturing ramp-up and confident we’ll be able to produce a great number of iPad 2s during the quarter.
• Cook on the prospect of an LTE iPhone: The first generation of LTE chipsets forced a lot of design compromises that we are just not willing to make.
• Cook on the Mac’s international penetration: The Mac has seen enormous growth in Asia. Sales are 76 percent in Asia-Pacific. Doing very well in Japan as well.
• Cook on iOS devices creating an opportunity for the Mac in enterprise: The iPhone and the iPad clearly seem to be creating a halo effort for the Mac. In part that’s why we’re seeing such growth in Mac sales.
• Cook on future CDMA iPhone carriers: I don’t want to get into specifics about CDMA or GSM. But we’re constantly looking to add new carriers where it makes sense.
• Cook on Android: I read yesterday that the iOS platform outreaches Android by 59 percent in the US….IPhone’s integrated approach is inherently better than Android’s fragmented approach…Android turns users into system integrators…we feel very good about where we are and our future product plans.
• Cook on Steve Jobs:He’s still on medical leave, but we see him on a regular basis. As we’ve said before, Steve continues to be involved in major strategic decisions. I know he wants to be back full time as soon as he can.
• Cook on demand for the iPad 2:I wish we could have produced more iPad 2s because there were certainly a lot of people waiting for them.
• Cook on the Samsung suit: We are Samsung’s largest customer and we value them as a component supplier. I expect the relationship with them to continue. But we felt their mobile communications division crossed the line. We tried to work it out, but ultimately decided we needed to turn to the courts.

PREVIOUSLY

• iPad Will Rule Tablet Market For Years, Says Goldman
• Second-Quarter Mac Sales Likely to Be Magical, Revolutionary
• Apple Earnings: Expect Another Barn Burner
• Steve Jobs’s Finest Product–Apple–Won’t Break Down

In January, U.S. Mac sales were up 20 percent year-over-year. In February they were up 12 percent.

And in March?

Up 47 percent, year-over-year.

That’s an average increase of 27 percent for the quarter. An impressive surge–more so considering that growth slowed in February ahead of the debut of the new Thunderbolt-equipped MacBook Pro line. March was the first full month in which those new machines were available and, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, sales are tracking ahead of the Street’s expectations for 3.6 million Macs sold in the quarter.

As I said yesterday, expect Apple’s second-quarter earnings report Wednesday to be another barn burner.

Traditionally, Apple launches its new MacBook Pros in April, well into its third quarter. This year, it didn’t. It launched them in the second, and that’s where the resulting spike in sales will be reflected.

And if the company sells enough of them, we could see a nice little bump in its earnings-per-share for the period, says UBS analyst Maynard Um.

“The refresh comes with about 6 weeks remaining in what is typically Apple’s seasonally weakest Mac quarter of the year,” Um said in a note to clients. “However, AAPL’s last three MacBook Pro refreshes came in FYQ3, so the accelerated cycle could provide upside to our estimates for this quarter. Every incremental 100,000 portable Mac units would add ~$0.02 to EPS in FYQ2 assuming slightly lower gross margins.”

As expected, the MacBook Pros all run Intel’s latest Sandy Bridge CPUs, which Apple says will make them up to twice as fast as their predecessors. The 13-inch machines has been outfitted with an up to 2.7GHz Core i5 processor while the 15-inch and 17-inch models sport Core i7 processors up to 2.3 GHz. For graphics, the 13-inch runs an integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 chip. The 15-inch and 17-inch versions use AMD Radeon HD processors with up to 1GB of memory. And the entire product line line has been upgraded with a new Light Peak I/O port that Apple calls Thunderbolt and intends as a replacement for Firewire, USB, Ethernet, and HDMI connections, among other things. Thunderbolt is backwards compatible with both full and Mini DisplayPort screens.

Also new to the line: a FaceTime HD camera, which outputs video at three times higher a resolution than its precursor iSight and require’s FaceTime 1.0 which is now out of beta and available in the Mac App Store for 99 cents.

So not a revolutionary refresh, but one that hews to Apple’s strategy of offering increasing value at similar price points. Interesting that none of this hardware merited inclusion in next week’s big event …

Intel is hosting a press briefing tomorrow at which it will “discuss a new technology that is about to appear on the market” and according to CNET that new technology is Light Peak, a single universal replacement for the clutter of cables we currently use to connect our computers to their peripherals and one capable of carrying data at 10 gigabits per second in both directions simultaneously.

The event is rumored to coincide with an update to Apple’s MacBook Pro line, which is further juicing speculation that the new hardware will be the first to implement Light Peak. Apple’s reported name for the standard? Thunderbolt.

Conceivably, the sudden delay could be related to unexpected supply constraints, but it’s not likely. Apple typically institutes such product-line-wide shipping delays when a refresh is imminent and that appears to be the case here. Certainly, all the other standard indicators are there: a MacBook Pro drought at Apple’s European distributors, placeholder SKUs for unknown Apple hardware mysteriously appearing retail partner inventory systems and a sudden abundance of spec rumors: in this case claims that the new iteration of the MacBook Pro will be cast from Liquid Metal, run Intel’s new Sandy Bridge architecture, feature a larger glass trackpad, a combination drive that will store the machine’s OS on SSD and data on HDD and support Intel’s high-speed connection technology Light Peak.

Tough to separate fact from fiction here. Apple should do that for us on Thursday, the presumed launch date–and CEO Steve Jobs’s birthday.

I’ll be starting a two-year assignment with the Peace Corps in the near future. I would like to start a blog where I can record my daily activities for my friends and family to read. Do you have any suggestions?

A:

There are numerous free blogging services that offer templates, simple tools and a free address your friends and family can use to view your reports. Two that I have used and can suggest are Blogger, owned by Google, at blogger.com; and the independent WordPress, at wordpress.com.

Q:

In terms of battery life, does it make any practical difference if I leave my common programs on my MacBook Pro running when dormant versus shutting them down when I’m not using them and then firing them up as needed?

A:

I asked Apple about this, and the company said an open, but idle, application on a Mac notebook generally won’t use any or many processor resources, which means almost no impact on battery life, even if it performs periodic background actions like fetching mail.

Exceptions would be programs that do heavy-duty things in the background, like rendering videos. The company strongly advises making sure the laptop is in sleep mode when not in use, and keeping the screen at the lowest brightness level that works for you.

Also, you can check how much demand a program is placing on the processor by running the Activity Monitor, located in the Utilities folder in Applications.

Q:

Why would a GSM phone run in 3G-mode only on AT&T and not on T-Mobile?

A:

It’s true that both carriers use the same basic technology, called GSM. But, in some cases, phones (like the AT&T iPhone) are locked so that, unless you do serious hacking, you can use them on only one of the two networks.

In other cases, it might have to do with the frequencies used by a carrier. T-Mobile and AT&T use different frequencies for their 3G networks, and a phone might simply be built to support only the 3G frequencies used by one of the carriers and not the other.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and my other columns at the new All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

According to DisplaySearch, Apple shipped 10.2 million mobile PCs in the fourth quarter of 2010–iPads, MacBooks and MacBook Pros–to claim a 17.2 percent share of the mobile PC market. That makes it the new global leader, a title it wrests from Hewlett-Packard, which shipped 9.3 million units during the same period for a 15.6 share and a second-place ranking. Acer ranked third, with 14 percent of the market and 8.4 million units shipped. Dell ranked fourth, with 5.9 million units shipped and a 9.9 percent market share.

An interesting rebalancing of market power and one that DisplaySearch believes is the result not just of first-mover advantage from the iPad, but notebook shipment growth that exceeds the industry average. Said Richard Shim, senior analyst at DisplaySearch, “Apple is currently benefiting from significant and comprehensive growth from both sectors of the mobile PC spectrum, notebooks and tablet PCs.”

[Image credit: Gizmodo commenter Ahubbuch]

“Even with a handful of tablet competitors hitting the market, the iPad remained the only game in town in our holiday checks largely because many of the tablets hitting the market are junk for lack of a better word,” he wrote. “They are underpowered, poorly constructed and largely not ready for prime time.”

Evidently, Blair wasn’t too impressed by Samsung’s Galaxy Tab.

Anyway…

The holiday season is always particularly kind to Apple, but this year it may have been even kinder than usual. In addition to the iPad’s continued momentum at market, Blair observed stronger than expected holiday sales of iMacs, MacBook Pros and the new 11-inch MacBook Air.

Sounds like Apple’s December quarter is shaping up to be another blowout.