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Could Apple's next iPhone sport double the storage of the company's current models? That's the latest rumor, or at least the latest revival of such talk.

Citing the same anonymous source of alleged model numbers for new iPhones and iPods that entered Apple's retail inventory system earlier this week, 9to5mac says Apple's iPhone refresh will bring three models at differing storage capacities. That's as opposed to Apple's current lineup, which has a 16GB model and a 32GB model.

The outlet suggests that the third model will feature 64GB of storage, matching the storage options made available on the iPad since the first-generation model.

There have been a few signs of Apple testing out higher capacity iPhone models that subsequently never made it to market. For instance, in March, China-focused technology blog M.I.C. Gadget said it had secured an "engineered prototype" of the iPhone 4 with 64GB of storage on board. The outlet posted photos of the device and said its production information suggested it was produced in the beginning of 2010, ahead of when the iPhone 4 was announced. … Read more

The Nintendo 3DS is in a state of crisis. You could argue that's the case for all of Nintendo, too, especially this holiday season.

Handheld games are no longer a domain dominated by Nintendo, not with phones offering so many alternatives for less. The 3DS needs top-notch software to help it prove its worth, and while other games are no doubt on the way, titles like Star Fox 64 3D, Nintendo's latest franchise rerelease, just don't do enough for a software-starved 3DS holiday lineup.

Scott: Nintendo fans will rejoice: much like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, released earlier this summer, Star Fox 64 3D is a pitch-perfect and graphically remastered version of a beloved N64 console game. The only problem with Star Fox is that a rails-based shooter has less to offer than a well-developed adventure game like Zelda. I loved Star Fox on my N64; its 3D graphics were unprecedented for a Nintendo console, and the sci-fi effects were a kick. Now, games like Galaxy on Fire for the iPhone can offer many of the same thrills for a few bucks.

Newly added gyro controls add motion control to the classic Star Fox, using the 3DS' internal gyroscope to tilt-steer. Unless you turn off 3D, don't bother, as 3D effects are bound to break up due to line-of-sight shifts when continually tilting. It only took one try to convince me to turn gyro off for good. You can have 3D or motion, but not both.… Read more

Windows 8 will include Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization tool in an effort to attract developers, IT pros, and other users who need to run, test, or support virtual environments.

Describing the move in the latest edition of the "Building Windows 8" blog, Mathew John, a program manager on Microsoft's Hyper-V team, noted that Hyper-V has previously been available only in recent server-based editions of Windows, making Windows 8 the first client OS to include the feature.

Virtualization tools such as Hyper-V allow users to run multiple operating systems and environments on the same machine. That's helpful … Read more

The BlackBerry PlayBook got a hefty discount at one major reseller though it hardly compares to the fire-sale pricing seen recently for Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad.

Best Buy today started offering the 64GB PlayBook at $550, $150 off the original price of the $700.

That hardly compares to the $100 offer for the 16GB HP TouchPad. Nevertheless, the PlayBook is not a defunct platform like the TouchPad and $550 is a low price for a 64GB tablet. 64GB models from Apple, for example, are more than $800.

Features include BlackBerry's Tablet Operating System based on QNX, Wi-Fi connectivity, 7-inch HD capacitive screen with multi-touch, 1024 x 600 resolution, 1GB of system memory, 1GHz dual-core processor, forward and rear cameras, and Micro USB and Micro HDMI ports.

Best Buy is also offering the 16GB PlayBook for $449, $50 off the regular price of $499.

But stiff 7-inch tablet competition is on the way. The Lenovo 7-inch IdeaPad A1 with Android 2.3 will be offered at $200 and $250 for 8GB and 16GB models respectively. (Currently, the release date for the A1 is unclear.) And existing 7-inch competition includes the original Samsung Galaxy Tab, a model released last year, which is priced at $279 at Best Buy.

Overall, the PlayBook is competing in an increasingly crowded tablet market. Apple's iPad dominates the tablet space, making it very difficult for any rival to gain a big toehold. And then there's the non-Apple market with tablets from Motorola, Samsung, Toshiba, Acer, Asus, and others--all based on Google's Android operating system. Not to mention the WebOS-based TouchPad, which is due for a final production run in the coming weeks at $100 and $150 for the 16GB and 32GB models respectively. … Read more

Mozilla has begun turning the Firefox crank faster with a rapid-release development cycle. So what's in store now that we can expect a new version every six weeks?

A lot, including 64-bit support on Windows and a plan to reduce the open-source browser's memory usage. But the most far-reaching change probably is a project called Electrolysis that splits Firefox into multiple somewhat-independent processes.

Electrolysis holds the potential to improve responsiveness, smooth graphics performance, take better advantage of multicore processors, and tighten security. Mozilla already added one Electrolysis element to Firefox 3.6--the separation of plug-ins to their own … Read more

Aside from my annual NHL video game head-to-head face-off, there aren't too many times where tech and the greatest sport in the world cross paths--aside from a glowing puck or two.

So it's no surprise that I was ecstatic to learn that a movement to have NHL veteran defenseman Mike Commodore change his number to 64 had been started to pay the classic home computer homage, a piece of electronics that still holds the title of being the best-selling computer of all time.

Commodore--the hockey player--was drafted by the New Jersey Devils in 1999 and has spent his career moving around the league playing for teams like the Carolina Hurricanes and, most recently, the Columbus Blue Jackets.

On the first day of the NHL's free agency, the Detroit Red Wings signed Commodore to a one-year deal. Since then, an outpouring of support to have him wear number 64 has been making its rounds on hockey blogs and Twitter, with a significant push coming from Yahoo Sports' fantastic hockey blog, Puck Daddy. The site has totally committed to the cause, raising the eyebrows of local Detroit news outlets and the Red Wings organization as well. Even Mike Commodore himself has also tweeted that he's considering 64.… Read more

Retro gamers who use Android devices to play classics from old-school systems like Atari, Nintendo 64, and Sega took a hit this week when emulator apps for those consoles and a handful of others were removed from the Android Market.

Yongzh's (also known as Yong Zhang) emulators have been among some of the most popular and highest rated in the market, but the emulator creator reports that his developer account has been terminated without warning.

The removal of yongzh's account comes just weeks after PlayStation emulator PSX4droid--the work of another developer--was also deleted from the market in the lead-up to the release of Sony's Xperia Play. Yongzh, who lives in China, took down his Genesis emulator last month after receiving a complaint from Sega, but apparently it wasn't enough to placate Google and/or those console makers who may have lodged complaints with Mountain View. … Read more

Windows sometimes encounters an unusual or compressed file it can't open, though its offer to search for the correct program has been known to provoke groans. The antacid to this heartburn is a good third-party file-management utility, one that can decompress a wide variety of zipped files as well as copy, split, join, compare, verify, and delete files. Extras like secure password and key file creation, strong encryption, and hash and checksum generators would be welcome in such a tool. We'd like it to run in 64-bit editions of Windows and integrate with Explorer's right-click menus. Last … Read more

FastCopy (64-bit) is a slim but powerful freeware file-copying utility for 64-bit Windows editions. It can copy large files at close to the hardware-defined read/write limit without hogging system resources. To that end, it uses few system resources itself, and it doesn't use MFC or any OS caches. It automatically selects one of two copying methods, depending on whether the destination directory is on the same hard disk or a different disk as the source directory. When source and destination are the same, the program writes to a buffer that can be configured via a slider on the … Read more