Coke or pepsi? Popcorn or chips? What's your favourite snack food?

A new survey commissioned by CNBC is as good a reason as any of why Apple's stock price has been on such a tear in recent years. More than half of all US homes own an Apple product, according to CNBC's All-America Economic survey -- and 1 in 10 homes that don't own any Apple products plan to purchase one in the next year. “It's a fantastic business model — the more of our products you own, the more likely you are to buy more,” says Jay Campbell, a vice president of Hart Research Associates, which conducts the CNBC survey along with Bill McInturff

Earlier this week, we reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook has shown up in Beijing, posing for photos with customers at the company's Xidan Joy City retail store as part of a trip to meet with unspecified "Chinese officials" as disclosed by an Apple spokesperson.

CPU World reports that Intel will be introducing a number of its new Ivy Bridge processors for desktop and mobile systems during the week of April 22-28, with availability set for April 29. The date had previously been cited as the launch for quad-core desktop chips, but the latest rumors indicate that several quad-core mobile chips will be making their debuts at the same time.

Apple has been prominently featuring Siri, the voice recognition feature, in its iPhone 4S advertising. And, for a good reason: it's apparently very popular amongst iPhone 4S owners. 87 percent of iPhone 4S users use at least one Siri feature each month, according to a new study .

Much has been made of the increase in battery capacity in the new iPad over the past week and a half, including its impact on charging and heat issues experienced by consumers. More recent discussions have focused on the device charging beyond the 100% indicator .

Sina.com notes [ Google translation ] that Apple CEO Tim Cook has been spotted in Beijing today, taking time on his trip to visit the Xidan Joy City retail store and pose for pictures with customers. The purpose of Cook's trip to Beijing has not been confirmed, but the report suggests that he is meeting with top officials at Apple's iPhone carrier partners including China Unicom and China Telecom. The iPhone launched for the first time on China Telecom earlier this month, breaking China Unicom's exclusivity on official availability of the device.

Last week, we reported on long return lines at Apple's 5th Avenue retail store filled with Chinese iPad resellers. Resellers try to buy up as many iPads as possible on launch day to quickly turn around and sell them for a profit. According to our report many of these resellers were returning their iPads with some individuals returning up to 30 devices at one time

TechCrunch reports that Apple has begun rejecting iOS apps for the use of a unique device identifier known as the UDID. The site notes that several developers have reported rejections for the use of the UDID in the past week, and Apple is said to be ramping up the enforcement of this policy over the next few weeks.

iOS developer David Smith has been posting iOS version stats for his Universal app Audiobooks [ Direct Link ]. Smith gets about 100,000 weekly downloads to both his paid and free versions and believes it is a statistically meaningful data set. With the launch of iOS 5.1 on March 7th, 2012, Smith has been tracking the adoption rate which he suspected would be faster than in the past due to the availability of over the air (OTA) iOS updates.