Whew! The International Consumer Electronics Show doesn’t even kick off until tomorrow and we’ve already got gadget fatigue from the sheer number of companies jumping the gun and announcing things early. It’s nearly impossible to keep up with them all, but you can get the Mac|Life staff will be reporting back all week with the coolest of the cool to help whittle down the madness somewhat. In the meantime, check out a few of the early birds in our news recap for this Monday, January 9, 2012.

Where Were You 5 Years Ago Today?

Ah, we remember it like it was yesterday! Today marks the fifth anniversary of that fateful Macworld Expo keynote where Steve Jobs casually trotted out the iPhone -- and the tech world has never been the same since. By all accounts, it was the most legendary keynote of Jobs’ career, perhaps eclipsing even the introduction of the original Macintosh in 1984. Ironically, the iPhone was touted by its proud CEO as five years ahead of any other cell phone -- which is hard to quantify now, given how disruptive its arrival on the scene was. Google’s Android and the late, great Palm webOS certainly owe their very existence to the iPhone, which eventually even pushed the mighty Microsoft to abandon Windows Mobile in favor of starting over again with Windows Phone 7. Perhaps the only two companies who have stagnated in the wake of the iPhone are Nokia (with Symbian) and Research in Motion (with BlackBerry), whose current product lines often feel stuck in 2007. Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, we can relive Apple’s complete 2007 Macworld Expo keynote address and witness the iPhone being unveiled for the very first time, all over again!

CES 2012: Dish Remote Access iPad App Adds On-Demand Streaming

The Verge managed to corner the folks at DISH Network earlier today and report back with the company’s release of an updated iPad app offering “thousands of on-demand movies and TV shows from HBO, Cinemax, Epix and many more networks.” Version 2.8.5 of said app is already live in the App Store and the svelte 6.3MB download unleashes the magic with an updated Guide screen, new unified Search screen and “greatly increased video quality” for those with a 722K receiver and Sling Adapter. Of course, on the downside, all of that on-demand goodness means you have to subscribe to said channel in the first place… but you knew that already, right?

CES 2012: LaCie Introduces Thunderbolt Hub for Those Old eSATA Drives

Got a pile of eSATA-equipped hard drives gathering dust next to your Thunderbolt-equipped Mac? Fear not, LaCie is coming to the rescue later this year with the new eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series, now on display at CES 2012. According to Cnet, the device is “about the size of a portable external drive” and comes equipped with two Thunderbolt ports and a pair of eSATA ports. Connect up to two eSATA drives and you’ll be able to access them both through only one Thunderbolt port (the second TB port can be used for daisy chaining, including to another hub, if you so desire). Needless to say, you won’t magically get Thunderbolt speed out of those old eSATA drives with this box, but you can top out at 6Gbps, which is probably as fast as those old drives can realistically go anyway. LaCie will release the eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series in the first quarter of this year, but you’ll have to remain in suspense until that fateful day to find out what it will cost you.

CES 2012: Now Acer is Ripping Off Apple, Too

There’s just no way to say it except… wow. According to The Loop, Acer has now joined Samsung in completely ripping off Apple, this time with something they call “AcerCloud” that puts photos, documents and media in the cloud and makes them available to all of your devices. Yeah, sounds a lot like iCloud, right? But it gets worse: Acer’s marketing team was apparently so lazy (or sloppy?), they also completely stole their presentation right from Apple as well. It’s worth hitting the link above just to see them side by side. (Warning: Extreme head-shaking ahead!)

Developers Can Now Download iOS 5.1 Beta 3

Apple doesn’t attend the CES show, but somehow it always seems to steal some of the limelight away from those who do (case in point: the introduction of the iPhone back in 2007). Nothing quite as Earth-shattering this week (so far), but MacRumors is reporting that a new beta of iOS 5.1 has just rolled out to developers today. The build number is officially 9B5141a, but you can call it simply iOS 5.1 Beta 3, if you’d like. So what’s new? At this writing the update was only rolling out to developers via an over-the-air software update, but the beta appears to bring back the “Enable 3G” toggle switch under the Network settings for those times when you want longer battery life at the expense of a slower EDGE connection (um… not sure when that would be handy, really). Developers should be able to also download iOS 5.1 Beta 3 from the developer website later today.

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