Lugging around all the charts and papers required by commercial pilots can be a pain - literally. Now comes word Apple's iPad is taking a load off pilots of one airline, replacing 40-pound flight bags with a 1.5-pound tablet. By the end of May, 8,600 American Airlines pilots will swap the heavy bags of charts, maps and manuals for the iPad, easing one of the industry's largest sources of injuries...
Wall Street is nothing if not fickle. Questions over Apple's future profits sent the company's stock into a tailspin for the past six months, then a recovery of sorts is now underway.
The iPhone maker Tuesday floated a record $17 billion in debt, an action that literally had investors falling over themselves.
Consider that Apple up until now was literally the only major technology corporation with zero debt on its books. By the end of yesterday, $50 billion in orders were received for what now looks to be Apple's latest hot product: the iDebt...
Apple once again is rated best at providing technical support to consumers, according to Consumer Reports, an influential American magazine published monthly by Consumers Union since 1936. This year's overall score of 86 out of 100 topped Apple's 2012 rating, the publication announced.
Additionally, Apple's retail Geek Bar solved nearly 90 percent of tech problems, higher than Best Buy's lookalike Geek Squad bars. The iPhone maker produced the highest survey results, outstripping its nearest competitor, Lenovo, which scored 63. Apple's success was due to a number of factors, according to the Consumer Reports survey...
Some intriguing numbers were released Monday on how one research firm views the smartphone race between iOS and Android. According to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Google's Android averages a 64 percent unit share of the smartphone market across ten countries.
Apple leads in Japan while Android's doing its best in Spain, where the mobile software owns an astounding 93 percent of the smartphone market.
In the U.S., the race is much tighter, with Android holding 49.3 percent and Apple owning 43.7 percent of the domestic market. But the rivals might be even closer as observers question how accurate Kantar is, given recent iPhone sales reports by U.S. carriers...
While in the middle of being told Apple is washed-up, a has-been being overtaken by Android, comes a patent which reminds us the company actually has some good ideas left.
Take, for instance, those annoying calls which seem to arrive in the middle of dinner. The gear heads at Apple also find them annoying and created a way to put you in control of who calls you when and whether a text might suffice. Particularly when you have a mouth of spaghetti.
The granted patent describes a "system for facilitating contacting people using electronic devices."
Instead of taking the usual path most technology firms selling smartphones would follow - creating multiple ways to blast messages to you - Apple goes for a more zen-like approach, realizing that understanding when not to make a call could make for the ultimate smartphone...
For US PC buyers accustom to receiving items from China, here's a switch: new research indicates more computers are being shipped into China than America. After China became the largest PC market in terms of buyers, the country is now also the world's top market when it comes to shipping.
According to IHS iSuppli, in 2012 69 million PCs were shipped into China, compared to 66 million units headed for the United States. Despite its size, China still has some catching-up to do with the rest of the world. For instance, while most countries have moved on from desktop computers, a full half of PCs shipped to China are desktops.
That's just one of many intriguing differences in the world's largest PC market...
For the first time, more messages are being sent via applications such as iMessage, WhatsApp and Viber than traditional texting. That's the message of a new study which found that messages sent using such apps outnumbered those sent through carrier-based SMS in 2012.
That lead is expected to widen this year as chat apps send twice as many messages as texting. The study by Informa suggests the lucrative business of text transmissions could be winding down for carriers.
Although traditional SMS has a larger user base, iMessage, WhatsApp or other chatting apps are sending more texts per user, giving them the momentum...
To bolster its stock in the eyes of investors, Apple recently announced it would buy back $60 billion worth of shares. Such a move makes sense - after all, the iPhone maker does have this cash hoard of nearly $150 billion. However, it turns out Apple won't touch that money, opting instead to borrow the funds.
By borrowing the money, Apple keeps its billions out of the reach of U.S. taxes, saving the corporate giant money while also retiring expensive stock dividends.
You didn't think there was any altruism involved, did you? The move, however, isn't without its pitfalls. Moreover, Apple isn't alone in a corporate game of chess where it's all about manipulating the tax code, according to a report Friday...
For some time, the mobile phone industry has been shifting toward more powerful smartphones and away from basic mobile phones. Now comes word that smartphones outnumber feature phones for the first time. The line was crossed in the first quarter of 2013 with 216.1 million smartphones shipping, accounting for 51.6 percent of all handsets sold. Smartphone shipments grew 41.6 percent during the quarter, up from 152.7 million units shipped during the same period in 2012, one industry research firm announced Thursday...
Apps (whether iOS or Android) are attracting huge audiences in the United States. Indeed, during a recent month apps attracted nearly the same number of people as used laptop and desktop to go online. What's more, for a prime-time period during the week apps attract 52 million users, equivalent to the circulation of the top 200 weekend U.S. newspapers and three television shows, according to numbers released by a mobile analytics firm Thursday...
When your smartphone and automobile come up in conversation, too often the discussions center around texting while driving, or distracted driving. However, two patents submitted by Apple suggest the iPhone could become your car's best friend - at least that's the hope of the consumer tech giant.
The two patents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office outline ways to replace your car's key fob with the iPhone and a Bluetooth connection to remember your location in a crowded parking garage, as well as creating an intelligent car starter/theft prevention tool...
Let the post-mortem begin. It is a ritual on Wall Street: forecast Apple's quarterly numbers, then afterwards dissect the data the iPad maker releases. And once more, the coverage conflates shipment with usage to determine the status of Apple or Android.
Although Apple Tuesday announced selling 19.5 million iPads during the first quarter of 2013 - an improvement from 11.8 million tablets sold during the same three-month period in 2012 - the focus Wednesday was on the iPad shedding market share to Android. But do unit sales trump actual usage?