The North Carolina Utilities Commission today officially approved (PDF) Apple's proposal to construct a 4.8-megawatt fuel cell electric generating facility near its data center in Maiden, North Carolina. The Commission previously approved a plan by Apple to build the first of two 20 megawatt solar farms around its data center. The Public Staff presented this matter to the Commission at its Regular Staff Conference on May 21, 2012

Studies of "brand value" are always difficult to compare, as widely differing methodologies used by those measuring such data yield markedly different results. But tracking year-to-year movements using a consistent methodology can offer some interesting perspectives, and so Millward's Brown's latest BrandZ study ( via The Next Web ) makes for a good look at trends in marketing and branding

In line with today's claims of taller iPhone prototypes with 3.95-inch displays, one of our sources has provided us with images of what are claimed to be new next-generation iOS device parts being carried by a supplier. The most significant of these parts is a claimed front panel from the next-generation iPod touch, with the supplier claiming that the display would be taller than the current model and that the opening in the front panel measures 4.1 inches diagonally.

9to5Mac reports that Apple is currently testing two prototypes of the next-generation iPhone that offer a taller screen while maintaining the existing 640-pixel width. According to the report, the two prototypes carry a display with a height of 1136 pixels, up from the current 960-pixel height and leading to an increase in the diagonal size of the display from 3.5 inches to 3.95 inches

Current micro-SIM (bottom right) punched out of a full-size SIM card (top right) The Financial Times reports that Apple is up against rival smartphone makers over the next industry standard for miniaturized SIM cards. (via Engadget ).

Following up on reports from earlier today that the outer shell of the iPad 3 gets warmer than the iPad 2 , Consumer Reports found that their iPad 3 reached temperatures up to 116 degrees after running Infinity Blade II for 45 minutes. The piece did note that the iPad felt "very warm but not especially uncomfortable if held for a brief period" during the testing process. In a statement earlier today , Apple said that the iPad was "operating well within our thermal specifications." We ran our test while the new iPad was propped on the iPad Smart Cover, plugged in, and after it had run Infinity Blade II uninterrupted for about 45 minutes

With the 3rd Generation iPad now out in the wild, we are starting to see more benchmarks comparing the new iPad to the iPad 2 and other devices. Insanely Great Mac provides this nice overview video comparing both graphics and processor benchmarks between the new iPad, iPad 2 and original iPad.

Comparison , though color differences hard to capture in screenshots DisplayMate has published an extensive "shoot out" between the new iPad, the iPad 2 and iPhone 4. Aside from the much discussed resolution improvements of the 3rd Generation iPad, DisplayMate also confirms that the new screen also has much better color reproduction than the previous generation model.

During today's financial conference call , one analyst asked if Apple would be issuing a press release about last weekend's launch sales numbers for the iPad.

Apple today seeded the second preview version of OS X Mountain Lion to developers, building upon the initial developer version released one month ago. As noted by The Next Web , Apple has also posted an extensive list of known issues alerting developers to various bugs and missing features that have yet to be addressed. OS X Mountain Lion is Apple's next major operating system version and is scheduled for release in "late summer".