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With any new Apple iPhone or iPad, a logistical question emerges that bears considering: how do you buy it without enduring a line or a long wait time? The iPhone 4S goes on sale next week on October 14, and it's crossed my mind that my travails with both the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 weren't pretty. Resellers have recently been largely responsible for making the already challenging Apple Store lines an unbearable ordeal with products being sold out well before most people even knew they were back in stock.

In fact, I preordered an iPad 2 back in the spring, then canceled when I decided that the two-week wait time could be bettered by a quick trip to the Apple Store. I bet wrong, and spent two weeks calling Best Buys and searching message boards for a place that would have the iPad I wanted in stock.

Embarrassing, yes, but this was a common occurrence for many people during the first month or so of both the iPhone 4 and iPad 2's existence.

I have one simple suggestion, and it's hardly a shocker: take advantage of preorder. … Read more

DrawRace2 is the sequel to DrawRace, an unconventional but very fun take on racing games for the iPhone. In DrawRace games, you don't drive a car around a track in real time. Instead, you draw the path you will take around the track before the race even begins. When you're done drawing, you watch the race to see how you did.

While it sounds easy, you have to be very precise in the way you draw your line. As you come to sharp turns, for example, you'll need to draw more slowly, then speed up again as … Read more

In case you missed it, Polk Audio, which made a name for itself in the speaker world, announced a new line of UltraFit sports headphones back in June. Now all four new models have started shipping to retailers and should be available by the end of this month, if not sooner.

The line includes a mix of in-ear, on-ear, and in-ear-canal models that come in a variety of colors and range in price from $49.95 to $99.95. The three in-ear models look fairly similar but simply get swankier (and presumably sound better) as you step up in price.

Polk is touting the 'phones sturdy design, good sound quality, and touches like "tangle-free contrast-colored cables for instant left/right recognition" and an iPhone-friendly integrated three-button remote control and microphone (should work with Android models, too). No models, however, offer wireless Bluetooth connectivity.

Here's the basic rundown on all the new models courtesy of Polk:… Read more

Cocktail is both useful and fun for inveterate Mac tinkerers and would-be power users (that is, power users who aren't hard-core enough to use the command line).

This multipurpose utility can help you keep your computer happy and healthy, giving you access to scores of tweaks and optimizations pulled together from various utilities, preferences, third-party hacks, and command-line tools. Cocktail can help you with routine maintenance and customization across your disks, system, files, network, and interface. Cocktail is organized around these five areas, with highly customizable options for everything from clearing caches and repairing permissions to changing the appearance … Read more

One of the earliest game publishers to enjoy huge success on iOS devices was Firemint, maker of Real Racing 2 and Flight Control. Though it is not a company that puts out several games a year, you know that when Firemint does release something, it's probably going to be good. Last week, Firemint released its latest game, Spy Mouse, and with a mix of line-drawing fun and excellent production values, it has already reached No. 1 in the iTunes App Store.

Spy Mouse (99 cents - see note at bottom) is a line-drawing stealth game that challenges you to … Read more

Professional photographers use shift lenses (expensive) or special large-format cameras to avoid the undesirable visual effects caused by converging lines in images, especially in architectural and landscape photos. Marcus Hebel's ShiftN is freeware that does much the same thing, analyzing images for parallel lines and correcting the perspective.

ShiftN's simple, efficient interface is divided between two panels, an image pane and an EXIF data view that also serves as a preview pane for image processing. Aside from a file menu bar, this program has five buttons: Open, Automatic Correction, Re-Optimize, Adjust Correction, and Save and Exit. We clicked … Read more

My Sketch makes your photos into hand-sketched artistic drawings in only a few easy steps. Upon launch you get the option to take a new photo or choose one from your iPhone photo library. Once selected, My Sketch immediately has you crop the image to your liking, either in portrait or landscape layouts. The next step is to choose a style, and My Sketch offers 20 different types of sketch styles, from long-line sketches to pastel styles. It takes a couple of moments, but once the high-res sketch is finished, you have a chance to apply some finishing touches with … Read more

Zyxel announced today that it has now officially joined the Powerline AV+ 500 club with its first adapter, the Zyxel PLA4205.

Similar to the D-Link DHP-501AV and the Netgear XAV5501, this new adapter from Zyxel is designed to offer up to 500Mbps throughput speed via a home's electrical wiring.

In real-world usage, the speed is likely to be much slower than that but probably still faster than a traditional Ethernet connection, which would make it more than fast enough for streaming HD content and other heavy home-networking needs.

Zyxel says its PLA4205 adapter is backward-compatible with previous power-line standards … Read more

If you can't live with the huge physical size of the Netgear XAV5501, there's now an alternative: D-Link's DHP-501AV PowerLine AV 500 Adapter Starter Kit (model HDP-501AV).

This kit includes two adapters, model DHP-500AV, which are based on the HomePlug Powerline Alliance's new Powerline AV 500 standard, the same standard that the XAV5501 is based on. The D-Link's DHP-500AV adapter, however, is much more compact, just about 40 percent the size of the Netgear.

The smaller size doesn't mean it's slow, and in our testing the kit showed superfast performance, significantly faster than … Read more