Previously, Foursquare allowed users to create “tips,” or recommendations of certain places, but they would all be together in one unsorted list. The new feature allows you to create specific groupings of places like the top 10 happy hour spots in your neighborhood, or the five best baseball stadiums you’ve ever been to. Lists can also track the places you want to go in the future, such as a list of 10 places you plan to see on your upcoming trip to Tokyo.

The new feature also has social capabilities such as the ability to create group-edited lists. Lists can also be shared with people who aren’t on Foursquare through email, Facebook or Twitter.

Foursquare’s lists feature is similar to Yelp’s lists, which allows users to collate reviews of places they’ve been or services they’ve experienced. But it bears mentioning that the imitation goes both ways: Last year, Yelp launched the ability to check-in to places using the site, essentially copying Foursquare’s signature check-in feature. Then Foursquare announced a partnership with restaurant review stalwart Zagat to allow its users to view in-depth reviews and recommendations. Though Foursquare and Yelp both started out in two very different realms — location-based check-ins and user reviews, respectively — the two companies are closing in on very similar turf with each new feature upgrade.

The new feature was launched Monday with public lists created by a number of Foursquare’s partners, which are brands including People Magazine, Lucky Magazine and Zagat. Here is a screenshot of a new Foursquare list by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck (click to enlarge):

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Since the screws aren’t readily compatible with any standard screwdriver that a user may have (unlike the Phillips screws they replace), users wanting to crack the case on their own devices and effect repairs at home will be out of luck. On the iPhone and MacBook Air, the new screws will make it harder to get any access to the internals of either device at all, and on the MacBook Pro, they protect the battery, making it even trickier to replace.

The new screw type, called “Pentalobe” because of its five-pointed design, is not proprietary (used and licensed by Apple alone), but it is something you’re unlikely to find just by rummaging through your toolbox or running down to your local hardware store. In fact, iFixit reports that there isn’t even a reputable consumer channel for the exact screwdriver Apple’s own technicians use to handle Pentalobe screws, so users will have to settle for best-fit solutions. You can see iFixit’s video explaining the screws at length below.

Note also that while early iPhone 4 models shipped with standard four-point Phillips screws, if you’ve had your phone serviced recently or are planning to, Apple’s service staff will replace those with the new Pentalobe versions while repairing the device. That swap makes this new screw look like a means to well, screw consumers.

There are two possible explanations for the new screws. First, there’s the line Apple will probably take, if the company comments at all (no response received as of press time): that the screws help prevent against potentially dangerous tampering that would do more harm than good. In other word, the “we’re protecting you against yourselves” argument.

The other explanation is the one that iFixit (which admittedly makes much of its money selling DIY repair kits for Apple devices) is convinced is the real reason: that Apple wants you to buy upgrades and replacements, so it’s making it as hard as possible to repair its products yourself at home. This is definitely in keeping with Apple’s current product design trajectory. The culmination of this new design philosophy seems to be the iPad, which offers no easy internal access, can’t have its storage or RAM upgraded. Apple is approaching the same model in its notebook line with the latest MacBook Air, which now also features the tamper-resistant Pentalobe screws in addition to non-upgradable RAM soldered to the logic board, and a non-standard implementation of flash storage that makes it very hard to replace.

Apple’s newest, more closed designs arguably allow them to make improvements in terms of battery life, system efficiency and physical device size, but they also sacrifice a lot in terms of a user’s ability to customize and repair the devices on their own. The use of these screws, however, doesn’t come with a functional benefit to offset its downsides. Is it a step too far?

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There’s nothing a Mac bought a year ago can’t do today, and nothing a Mac bought today won’t be able to do a year from now, just not as well.

That’s the problem for those seeking to maximize the value of their next purchase. If one believes the hype from none other than Steve Jobs himself, Macs are going to “take Apple to the next level” in 2010, and who doesn’t want to level up with Steve?

But even without the hype, there are three–well, really, two good reasons and one forlorn hope–to wait a while before purchasing your next Mac.

While Steve Jobs just pronounced Apple a “mobility” company at the iPad event, it’s actually been one for awhile. More than two out of three Macs sold are laptops, and if you are in that majority you should definitely wait for Arrandale.

That’s the mobile CPU from Intel launched at CES under the Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 variants. Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost technologies for improved parallelization and increased speed on demand have resulted in double-digit performance increases without a decrease in battery life.

Regarding performance, the desktop Core i5 and Core i7 can already be found in the high-end iMac, which admittedly are quad-core versus dual-core for the mobile versions. Nonetheless, Macworld found the that the “2.66GHz Core i5 iMac is the fastest standard configuration Mac we’ve ever tested,” and can be as fast as Xeon-based Mac Pros.

This is the kind of upgrade worth waiting for, and the wait shouldn’t be long. The MacBook Pros and the MacBook Air were last updated in June, meaning they are due for an update even without significant new technology. Keep in mind the MacBook, last updated in October, may continue to use a Core 2 Duo for market segmentation purposes. Since the iPad is set for launch in late March, and companies like HP are already selling Arrandale laptops, expect an update within weeks, possibly even sooner.

There’s something else HP is selling, the Envy 15 laptop with USB 3, and that’s the second reason not to buy a Mac right now. USB 3 has transfer rates of up to 4.8Gbps, though real world rates won’t be nearly that high, but then USB 2 doesn’t reach its theoretical maximum of 480Mbps, either.

We can expect that USB 3 will be multiple times as fast as USB 2, which is the kind of benefit instantly recognizable to anyone downloading images from a camera or backing up to a USB drive. While there are very few USB 3 devices available today, that will change quickly this year.

As to when to expect USB 3 Macs, a recent rumor in DigiTimes suggested Genesys Logic is sampling device controllers for Apple now, a claim which the company denied. Whether there’s truth in the rumor or the denial, Apple is undoubtedly working on USB 3 for Macs. The new bus could conceivably be part of the next round of updates in the spring, but if not then expect USB 3 Macs in the fall.

Something not to expect this spring, and that is suspect this year, would be Macs with Blu-ray. Just last month, it was attributed to Steve Jobs that Blu-ray is still a “mess,” and that Apple is waiting until Blu-ray sales “take off.”

According to market researcher In-Stat, that could be about 2013, if by “take off” one means exceeding sales of DVD players. Unfortunately, the predicted adoption rate for Blu-ray in PCs is even worse. Metrics firm iSuppli projects that by 2013 only 16 percent of PCs will come with Blu-ray drives.

If, like me, you are waiting for a Mac mini with Blu-ray, you probably won’t be buying this year. However, for those who plan on keeping their next Mac for one to three years, a Mac mini with Core i5 and USB 3 can likely be had this year.

The same can be said for every other Mac, too. While 2010 may or may not take Macs to the “next level,” both Intel’s new Core processors and USB 3 are significant upgrades. That’s why if you need a Mac today, buy one, but if not, tomorrow is definitely worth the wait.

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The Mac Pro got a new option in the processor customization department, a 3.33GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processor for an additional $1,200. As of yet, there’s no option to double up the 3.33GHz version of the quad-core to create a more powerful 8-core machine on the more expensive configuration of the Mac Pro.

You can also now outfit your Mac Pro with 2TB hard drives, instead of the 1TB option at which capacity previously maxed out. That means the official total capacity of the Mac Pro, as configured in the Apple Store, is now 8TB, which is nothing to sneeze at. Each 2TB drive will set you back $550.

The only reason to hesitate if you’re thinking about picking up a Mac Pro is that the last time they were updated was back in March 2009. Chances are another major upgrade isn’t too far around the corner, possibly involving Intel’s forthcoming i9 processor, so if you can wait, you probably should.

The configuration options for the Xserve were also updated, allowing for use of the same 2TB drives that are now available to the Mac Pros. That means max capacity for the Xserve is now 6TB. RAM options also got upgraded, with 4GB modules now available, so that the max configurable memory is now 24GB on the quad-core Xserve, and 48GB on the 8-core.

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I took the plunge day one for two reasons: as a tech journalist specializing in the Mac, I felt I owed it to our readers to offer timely insight on Snow Leopard from the perspective of one who has actually used it. After all, someone needs to be able to report back if it’s a smart idea to strap a jet engine to a Ford Pinto. The other reason was timing. I knew I wanted to install it. I was going away the weekend after, and my night classes started a week later and I wanted to be able to allow a couple of weeks to smooth out any issues.

Leaving plenty of time to resolve any issues appeased the karma gods and my installation went very smoothly with no issues. Another friend of mine angered the gods by installing Snow Leopard at 1 am the night before a business trip — ask her how her Snow Leopard install went.

I’ve been very happy with SL over the last month. After I installed Leopard before the first patch, I quickly realized it was bad news. My gaming performance — admittedly meager on a Macbook with a GMA 950 chipset — took a nose dive. I had odd crashes, application incompatibility, and a nightmare getting my printers working again that was reminiscent of Vista’s printer issues.

Snow Leopard has been a joy and I have zero regrets about upgrading. I’m going to break down my experiences in terms of positive and negative experiences.

Positives

My Snow Leopard install has “just worked.” All my printers work, even our ancient HP Color Laser at work. The only major incompatibility issues I had were with Launchbar, but upgrading to the latest version and waiting for it to index cleared the problem.

Dock Expose and Minimize to Dock Icon have become Features I Wonder How I Was Able to Get Through the Day Before™. It’s so intuitive and so hard to believe it’s taken Apple this long to implement it.

The new Automator is really amazing. I wrote about it already, and I stand by that article. Automator alone has been worth the upgrade fee for me.

Being able to drag off selected pages of PDF file in Preview is proving to be godsend. Every now and then, I’ll need to grab a few sections from 200+ page PDFs, and dragging them from the sidebar to my desktop is very efficient.

As an aside, while this isn’t really a Snow Leopard feature, a week ago I upgraded my aging 2006-era Macbook to a new Macbook Pro. I was able to just swap out the hard drives with no reinstallation needed. I’ve heard conflicting reports on how this worked in Leopard, but the only painful — and I use that term loosely — part of the hardware swap was re-pairing my Bluetooth devices and resetting up Time Machine.

While there’s been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Photoshop compatibility issue, my ancient copy of — wait for it — CS1 is working fine. I really should get around to upgrading that one of these days, but I’ve moved most of my image editing needs over to Pixelmator. The only thing I really use Photoshop for these days is cutting masks with the pen tool, so it’s possible other features aren’t SL happy.

Negatives

I haven’t really had any negatives. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought while composing this article to make sure I’m not being a total fan boy, but the only negative I have is Microsoft Word crashes a lot on exit. It’s not affecting any data. It’s not crashing while I’m using it; just when I quit. According to this tweet by David Pogue, reinstalling Office solved that problem. When I went to reinstall it, I was having media issues with my internal drive so I can’t test the validity of his statement.

As I mentioned in my Automator piece, Word 2008 isn’t context services aware, but that’s not really a Snow Leopard problem; Word is still a Carbon app.

I guess if I wanted to, I could complain that items in stacks aren’t context sensitive…but that’s reaching.

Would I recommend upgrading?

After my glowing words of praise, you’d probably expect me to join the chorus of pundits proclaiming, “It’s a no brainer! Make haste to the Apple Store!” but my verdict is instead one based on reason. Therefore, I can definitively  answer this thusly: kinda, sorta, maybe. I know, it’s hard to get people to make a stand for their beliefs; I’m glad I could fall on that sword for you.

The Word crash on exit issue is enough for me to tell heavy Office users to hold off. It may well be that a reinstall fixes it, and I’ve had no issues with Word other than the exit crash, but apps that crash quitting don’t fill me with confidence, even if it’s just cosmetic.

If you work in the design business, I’d definitely say let others test the waters and wait a few app upgrades before upgrading the OS. Actually, that statement works for anyone who considers their Mac to be mission critical. If it’s working just fine now, and you rely on it working just fine, don’t upgrade.

One of the problems with Snow Leopard is while I can come up with reasons like these not to upgrade, until applications are updated — and in some cases rewritten — to take advantage of Snow Leopard, you’re likely to not see a big upgrade.

Sure, the new cat is faster than the old one. Even on my old 2006 MacBook I could tell they patched in more snappy. While I love the new Expose and Stacks, and would miss them if I had to go back to Leopard, right now I’m still having a hard time recommending people make a change for the sake of change.

I can’t think of many reasons for you not to upgrade. However, unless you want the new UI improvements, until we see apps take advantage of Grand Central and Open CL, I can’t really think of many reasons you should upgrade.

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A news item yesterday on iLounge reports AT&T will be upgrading its existing 3G network to provide a “significantly faster” mobile Internet service. The communications giant is planning to double its current 3G network speeds and expand its cell coverage.

From AT&T’s own press release:

The upgrade to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 technology is part of AT&T’s plan for continued investments to deliver the nation’s best mobile broadband experience — the ideal combination of speed, coverage and best device line-up. AT&T today has the nation’s fastest 3G network and has attracted more than twice the number of smartphone users than any other competitor.

While the expanded cell coverage (AT&T is deploying over 2,000 new cell sites throughout the country) will hopefully reduce the number of dropped or failed calls for iPhone users, the improvements in mobile broadband speeds appear to be limited to larger cities and other metropolitan areas.

Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, said, “With the array of smartphones, laptops and emerging devices taking advantage of AT&T’s 3G network today, we know that customers are excited to experience higher mobile broadband speeds, and we are deploying the right technologies at the right times to help them get the most from that experience.”

The new upgraded network could, according to AT&T, allow theoretical peak-speeds of 7.2Mbps. For those of us hoping to see bandwidth-hungry applications and services (such as HD YouTube video down/uploads, video calling or TV/Movie downloading) on the next-generation iPhone, this sounds like a step in the right direction, though AT&T does carefully point out that:

Typical real-world downlink and uplink speeds experienced by customers with upgraded 3G will be less than the theoretical peak and will vary based on a number of factors, including location, device, and overall traffic on the local network at a given time.

Still, the upgrades are sorely needed and should be warmly welcomed by iPhone customers. A word of warning, though: Despite the announcement yesterday, AT&T doesn’t expect to see these upgrades completed and fully deployed until the end of 2011. So why announce it now? Well, it’s exciting news for its existing customers, and probably has nothing at all to do with the fact that a great many of its iPhone customers’ contracts are about to expire…

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I don’t recommend moving the app to your Applications or Utilities folders since it’s a one-shot deal for most folks and you can always re-download it the next time you need it.

Double-clicking the app icon runs a program which dumps an html file on your system (it put mine in file:///var/folders/NZ/NZ2aeHCxEy4bRcChWavt0++++TI/-Tmp-/sysoutput_utf8.html) and opens that up in your browser – you may want to make a note of where it stored yours and make an effort to remove it once you’re done with the tool.

It turns out that the all the utility does is put the contents of the output of system_profiler -xml (you can run that yourself from a Terminal.app session) into a hidden text area and submits it all to Crucial. As a result, the fine marketers at Crucial now know the details of your whole system, including printers, drive layout, etc. This is great marketing info for them and their partners, so you may want to think twice about using the tool if you are at all concerned about potential privacy issues.

The report is similar to what they provide from a PC scan and includes details of your current configuration and upgrade paths.

The utility is a Universal Binary so it should work fine on older systems. (I may be setting up an older PowerBook for my son in the near future, so I am in the market for an upgrade on that system unlike the result you just saw for my MB Pro, but I’ll probably be skipping the Scanner for that one).

If you don’t mind Crucial knowing all your system secrets, give the utility a try and drop a note in the comments to let us know if they identified your configuration properly. Also drop a note if you have suggestions on alternate ways you use to find the information required to upgrade your Macs memory. I may do a compilation post with the results (full credit if you leave that in the comment) if we receive enough good entries.

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