For the mere price of $3.2 billion Apple looks to be on the verge of its largest acquisition to date. [More]
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New Apple Patent Seeks To Prevent Drivers From Texting While Behind The Wheel
By 4.22.14
Apple’s already got a patent in the works for technology to keep distracted pedestrians from hurting themselves while texting and walking, and now the company’s got its eyes on the road. Because you should too, instead of texting and driving. [More]
Anti-Theft Tools Coming To A Smartphone Near You In 2015
By 4.16.14
Last month we told you that a proposed anti-theft kill switch feature for smartphones could save the 1.6 million consumers who are victims of phone theft billions of dollars each year. Well, it looks like that technology is closer than we could have anticipated now that major U.S. wireless carriers and smartphone manufacturers have agreed to introduce similar tools to their products. [More]
Guy Gets His Stolen Laptop Back A Year Later When Suspect Calls Customer Service For Help
By 4.9.14
In perhaps the only example of when a broken computer is a good thing, a man who had his laptop stolen last year was reunited with his property after the suspected thief called up Apple’s customer support. [More]
Steve Jobs Called The Competition With Google’s Android System A “Holy War”
By 4.2.14
How devoted was the late Steve Jobs to the company he co-founded? Devoted enough for him to liken Apple’s competition with Google’s Android operating system to a “holy war,” according to emails unearthed by Samsung’s lawyers as part of the Korean company’s legal fight against Apple. [More]
Anti-Theft Kill Switch For Smartphones Could Save Consumers $2.6 Billion A Year
By 3.31.14
Smartphones are a popular target for thieves, in fact nearly 1.6 million phones were stolen in the United States in 2012. The anger knowing that you’ll have to shell out big bucks to replace it is almost comparable to the feeling of helplessness and rage one feels after having their trusty phone snatched away in the first place. But one simple change to all smartphones could lessen those feeling and keep $2.6 billion in consumers’ collective pockets. [More]
Apple And Samsung Back In Court For Round Eleventy Billion Of Their Legal Fight
By 3.31.14
What’s happened once has happened before, and will happen again. Whether or not you ascribe to that kind of Battlestar Galactica/Rust Cohle on True Detective life view, it certainly feels like seeing Apple and Samsung in the legal ring again was inevitable. We’re on about round eleventy billion, give or take an eleventy, as the two head back to court today in a dustup over patents. Again. [More]
Apple’s Latest Patent Aims To Protect Users Who Text While Walking
By 3.27.14
Texting while walking is dangerous. It may not be as dangerous as texting while driving, but you could still hurt yourself or someone else. Apple is looking to take the danger out of your preoccupying habit by creating a transparent texting system. [More]
This iPad Ad Placement Is Most Unfortunate
By 3.26.14
On Monday, the Malaysian government announced that they are certain that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean, with no survivors. That’s an international tragedy and an important news story, and was the top story on the New York Times website. Unfortunately, Apple was running a large and beautiful iPad advertisement on the front page at the time. An ad that featured a diver using an iPad underwater. [More]
Amazon Begins Issuing Credits From E-Book Price-Fixing Lawsuit
By 3.25.14
While Apple is still fighting the court’s ruling that it was involved in e-book price-fixing with America’s largest book publishing companies, those publishers have all reached settlements with the various regulators, attorneys general, and others over the same allegations that they colluded to set an inflated price on e-books. Today, Amazon began issuing credit to its customers who paid too much because of the publishers’ actions. [More]
Most Apps Mobile Users Purchase Are Free
By 3.24.14
This piece of news will surprise absolutely no one: most smartphone and tablet applications that consumers purchase are free to download. Not free to use, necessarily, thanks to in-app purchases and upgrades, but free to download. Analysis by Statista for the Wall Street Journal shows that the consumers who spend the most on apps are iPad users, who shell out an average of fifty cents each for apps.
Apple, Comcast Chatting About Streaming TV Service That Would Make End-Run Around Net Neutrality
By 3.24.14
One of the biggest roadblocks for non-cable TV companies looking to get into the business of offering live TV service over the Internet is that these cable companies often control that “last mile” of Internet service to customers’ homes. Since the FCC’s net neutrality rules have been gutted — and ISPs now realizing they can charge tolls to content providers even if those rules were in place — the end-user might just get a TV screen full of blocky, stuttering visuals and intermittent audio. Apple is reportedly chatting with Comcast about a set-top box that would get around this concern by treating Apple’s stream differently than regular Internet traffic. [More]
Apple Pushes Record Labels To Offer Exclusive iTunes Content, Block Initial Streaming
By 3.11.14
While Apple is still trying to fight its loss in last year’s e-book price-fixing lawsuit, a new report claims the electronics giant is making controversial waves in the music industry by pushing record companies to make Apple the exclusive venue for new releases. [More]
Google Sued Over Kids’ In-App Currency Purchases
By 3.11.14
While the folks at Apple have already settled civil and regulatory complaints about in-app purchase policies that allowed children to run up huge bills on their parents’ accounts, the Google Play store has only recently come under scrutiny for its allegedly lax controls. Now, a mom in New York has filed a potential class action against the Internet giant, claiming its policies encourage kids to waste their parents’ money. [More]
Apple Reveals Statue Of Melted T-1000 To Honor The Late Steve Jobs
By 2.28.14
You might’ve thought that the late Steve Jobs was the CEO and founder of Apple, which sure, he was. But if a new statue the company has unveiled to honor him has anything to say about it, he was a T-1000 from the future and somehow melted on his way back to our time, ostensibly looking for John Connor. [More]
Apple Asks Arizona Governor To Veto Bill That Would Let Businesses Refuse Service To Gay Customers
By 2.25.14
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has a few days to decide whether to veto or approve SB 1062, a piece of legislation that would allow businesses in the state to refuse service to a customer based on religious grounds. Following pleas from big players in the travel industry, Apple is the latest to ask the governor to put an end to the legislation. [More]
Apple Purges Last Bitcoin Wallet From Its App Store
By 2.6.14
While you can now use bitcoin to buy anything from basketball tickets to cars, that doesn’t mean you’ll have a way to use your digital currency if you’re an iOS user. Apple has been ditching bitcoin apps that people use to exchange it and just gave the boot the last one remaining. [More]
Snowblower Reportedly Shatters $450K Glass Panel At NYC’s Apple Store
By 1.22.14
It snowed in New York City yesterday, in case you hadn’t heard. And in what appears to resemble many of the iPhone screens displayed by various friends and others in the past, a glass panel that’s part of Apple’s cube store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan was apparently shattered by a snowblower blowing too close. [More]
