[Best of the Web — Tuesday, 26 January 2010]

Apple beats the Street on Mac sales: Computer maker Apple has beaten analysts’ estimates thanks to record sales of Macintosh computers, sending the share nearly 3% higher in after-hours trading on Monday. The company, which is expected to unveil a tablet computing device at a press conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, notched up a 50% increase in first-quarter profits to US$3,4bn on revenue that rose 32% to $15,7bn. [BusinessWeek] [The New York Times]

Could Apple’s tablet rescue media?: Apple may be giving the media industry a kind of time machine, says The New York Times — “a chance to undo mistakes of the past.” Media companies, floundering about for a strategy as the Internet turns the media business model on its head, could soon be thanking Apple for helping save the industry. “People who have seen the tablet say Apple will market it not just as a way to read news, books and other material, but also a way for companies to charge for all that content. By marrying its famously slick software and slender designs with the iTunes payment system, Apple could help create a way for media companies to alter the economics and consumer attitudes of the digital era.” [The New York Times]

Internet Explorer hit by new security flaws: A new raft of security vulnerabilities has been discovered in the world’s most popular Web browser, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The vulnerabilities were discovered just a day after the software maker released an unscheduled security patch to fix flaws that allowed hackers to access the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. [The Telegraph] [Reuters]