Apple will drop restocking fees on January 11

A rumor out of 9to5 Mac suggests Apple will drop its 10% restocking fees starting January 11th. These fees were assessed when a customer brought a product back within the 14-day return and could get quite expensive, especially for the high-end MacBook Pro notebooks or Mac Pro desktops.
The reasoning behind this rumored policy change was not divulged, but Apple may be following in the footsteps of Best Buy, which got rid of its restocking fees this past holiday shopping season.

This new no restocking fee policy may also explain why some Apple stores were covering their windows last night. Signage promoting this new policy would need to be setup by employees working under the cover of night. Coincidentally, this January 11 date is also the same day Verizon Wireless is hosting an event, we assume to announce the CDMA iPhone. 

iTunes celebrates its 10th birthday, still takes too long to sync your iPhone

If you've managed to use any piece of technology for ten years, it's safe to say that said piece has some serious lasting power in an era filled with flavors-of-the-week. It's a bit startling to think that Apple's iTunes has now fallen into that category, but sure enough, the music-turned-media-application is now a decade old. Fittingly enough, it just hit version 10.0 a few months ago, and it may very well be tweaked to play nice with an all new device later this week. Head on past the break for a look at the very first iTunes introduction at Macworld 2001, and then think about how many times you've hated your life as you watched that sync progress bar crawl along at glacial speeds. No, seriously, think about it.