The response to an apparent Gmail issue seems mixed here at BetaNews -- some claim to have experienced email delays, while others noticed nothing. But, regardless of how real or wide-spread the problem was, a problem did exist and Google would like to explain how it happened in an effort to retain trust in its email service.

"We’d like to start by apologizing -- we realize that our users rely on Gmail to be always available and always fast, and for several hours we didn’t deliver. We have analyzed what happened, and we’ll tell you about it", begins Sabrina Farmer, Senior Site Reliability Engineering Manager for Gmail.

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If a prominent analyst's sales estimates are correct, Apple hit, at best, a single rather than homer launching iPhone 5s and 5c. Yesterday, the company announced first-weekend sales of 9 million, which compares to 5 million for iPhone 5 a year earlier. But today, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster tells Bloomberg:

"When I saw that 9-million number, I basically fell out of my chair. But you have to put that 9 million in context here". Apple's so-called sales includes "channel fill of the 5c". Based on that, the real number of total new iPhone sales was "closer to five-and-a-half million". I cannot overstate what the number really means for the launch.

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Adobe has released brand new versions of its consumer-level photo-editing and video-editing suites with the launch of Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 and Adobe Premiere Elements 12.

Version 12 of both suites add mobile-friendly features and a number of new editing tools, but critically remain standalone applications, allowing users to purchase them outright as opposed to signing up for an ongoing cloud subscription.

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We're delighting in iOS 7 (mostly) and enjoying our new iPhones. Thanks Apple! As if this wasn’t enough, there are now new updated iMacs coming out from the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant. All told, there are four new models: two 21.5-inch and two 27-inch variants, with entry-level and high-end versions of each to choose from.

All four iMacs feature updated quad-core Intel Core i5 processors, and graphics and Wi-Fi have also been enhanced. With support for next generation 802.11ac, wireless performance is improved by up to three times. There's also support for faster PCIe-based flash storage, with a claimed speed boost of 50 percent. Graphics performance has been improved across the board with new chips from Intel and NVIDIA to be found throughout the range. No sign of Mavericks yet; the new iMacs are supplied with Mountain Lion.

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11 months ago my colleague Joe Wilcox asked BetaNews readers if they intended to buy Surface RT. Then a month later he posed the same question for Surface Pro. Out of the 2,753 responses to the first question, a sizable 61.75 percent said they would buy the tablet at some point. Which, judging from the poor sales Surface RT experienced, may have been over optimistic. Unless a large portion of the RT tablets Microsoft sold were snapped up by BetaNews readers…

The positive response was echoed in the Surface Pro poll, with a whopping 73.4 percent of 2,165 responders saying they would buy the flagship tablet, and just 16 percent giving a definite no (10.67 percent were uncertain). Clearly this shows people like the idea of Surface, and are enthusiastic about it, but just not enthusiastic enough to get their wallets out.

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O&O Software has announced the release of O&O Defrag 17, the latest edition of the company’s powerful defrag tool.

Top of the new features list this time is the ability to securely wipe your hard drive’s free space while defragging, ensuring snoopers won’t be able to recover confidential files.

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Many years ago, my parents bought me the Atari Jaguar. While the system proved to be a failure, one of its features stuck with me as fascinating. Games could come with plastic inserts that fit over the controller's buttons. This enabled a game developer to enhance the experience of the game by offering visual representations of things like bombs and missiles instead of just pressing "1" or "2".

During yesterday's Surface 2 event, Microsoft announced a new accessory called The Surface Remix Project. This accessory plugs into the Surface keyboard port and replicates hardware buttons that a music producer or electronic performer may use. It may prove popular with professional musicians and amateurs alike. While making music may be well and good, you would be short-sighted to think it ends there.

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Today Microsoft opens the pre-order books for its second-generation Surface lineup. The two slates, Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2, come with major under-the-hood and external changes, including beefed-up processors that are faster and help deliver better battery life and revisions to the built-in kickstand, as well as a slew of new accessories.

Surface 2 comes with the most noteworthy improvements of the two new slates. It now sports an Nvidia Tegra 4 processor which Microsoft says is up to four times faster than the Tegra 3 chip from the old generation, offers 25 percent more battery life, comes with a two-angle kickstand and features a full HD -- 1920 by 1080 resolution -- display which, again, is better than before (Surface RT's panel has a lower resolution of 1366 by 768). Pricing starts at $449 for the base 32 GB model. The 64 GB model costs $549.

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Protecting your phone may well be something you don’t think about until it is too late. I'm one of those people who can't stand PIN protection on phones -- heck, I hate the lock screen… I just want to switch on and start using my phone! For people like me, there is a new feature in the superbly useful Android Device Manager. This free tool was released back at the beginning of August, but there's now an interesting new option that has been quietly added.

Previously when you lost your phone you had a couple of options -- call it to locate it, or remotely wipe it (which is quite an extreme length to go to). Now when you head to the Android Device Manager Page you'll find a new feature in the form of device locking. But how does this work if you have not enabled locking on your handset?

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Last year, Gabe Newell of Valve infamously called Windows 8 "a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space". However, this was not just lip service -- the company put its money where its mouth is and released its game-distribution service, Steam, for Linux. Today, Valve takes this a step further and announces a new Linux-distribution called SteamOS.

"As we've been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we've come to the conclusion that the environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself. SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen. It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines", says the company.

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Technology moves at a feverish pace. It feels like only yesterday that the iconic Blackberry was the market leader for smartphones. However, fast-forward to 2013 and we see a struggling company laying off 4,500 employees and losing close to a billion dollars in one quarter alone. On August 13, Blackberry (formerly known as RIM) announced the possibility of selling itself, hinting at strategic alternatives.

Today, Blackberry announces that "it has signed a letter of intent agreement under which a consortium to be led by Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited has offered to acquire the company subject to due diligence". In other words, it is exploring being bought by Fairfax.

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Microsoft has taken over the tech news today with its Surface 2 launch, but the company doesn't stop there, keeping the ball rolling with a bit more news, this time from the cloud. SkyDrive has become tightly integrated with today's marquee products, Windows and Office, as well as being a competitor to rival services from Google and Amazon. Now the company announces a new storage tier.

"Today, we are happy to introduce a new storage option to add 200 GB of additional storage to your SkyDrive for $100 per year", says Omar Shahine, Group Program Manager for SkyDrive. For perspective, Microsoft describes this as enough space to store one photo per hour from birth through college graduation -- this obviously depends on average image size, which continues to grow.

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At an event in New York, Microsoft reveals the successor to the Surface RT and Surface Pro -- the predictably named Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 (interesting to note that the "RT" is gone from the former's name) -- and Brian Fagioli was live-blogging from the event. So what do we have to look forward to from the product refresh?

The first generation Surface tablets suffered poor sales and came in for criticism from many quarters, so there is certainly room for improvement.

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Microsoft chose not to live stream its Surface 2 reveal earlier today, but fortunately our own Brian Fagioli was in New York to cover the unfolding events in an excellent live blog. Now that the event is over Microsoft has made the full on-demand video of the proceedings available for anyone to watch.

During the one hour (and a bit) event Microsoft unveiled the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablets as well as a whole load of accessories, including "Blades", a new type of touch cover which can be customized for different uses. Brian described it as a "potential game-changer" and hasn’t stopped raving about it ever since.

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First-weekend iPhone sales look good at first glance, and they're surely nothing to snicker at. But the numbers are not as big as they might seem. A year ago, iPhone 5 racked up 5 million sales, which compares to 9 million combined for successor 5s and the new 5c. Five is more than nine right?

But the math isn't so simple. The 9-million figure should stand on its own, and not -- as many blogs and news sites state today -- suggest sales surge. Don't be fooled by Apple marketing. What's good isn't great.

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