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Nope, Google’s $249 Chromebook totally didn’t rip off MacBook Air wholesale

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 18, 2012

I kinda like the concept of an Internet-only notebook which boots in a few seconds, is always on and runs smoothly. I wanted to like Google-branded Chromebooks and almost bought one before realizing that Apple has already ticked all the right boxes with its iPad computer. But if a portable computing device with a physical keyboard which runs a browser-based OS and runs only web apps is your thing, this new Chromebook surely will pique your interest.

Apart from being a total rip off of the MacBook Air down to its black rounded keys, trackpad and the recess right where the lid opens, know that this Chromebook is a quarter of the Air's asking price and half the iPad's. On paper, the machine is a must-have: it weighs in at only 2.43 pounds, is 0.8-inches thick, runs 6.5+ hours battery and rocks a 11.6-inch display at a 1,366-by-768 pixel resolution.

Per usual, there are some caveats that a flashy commercial (included below) fails to mention...

Sega launches its first iOS exclusive, Sonic Jump

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 18, 2012

Sega, a console maker turned games developer, is pretty active on the iOS platform. It's been churning out various episodes of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and recently launched its popular Crazy Taxi game on the iPhone. Today, Sega released a brand new iOS game set in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe. Called Sonic Jump, it's Sega's first iOS-only game.

As the name suggests, Sonic Jump has your charming hedgehog character jumping up the platforms, collecting coins, avoiding enemies, squaring off against Dr. Eggman and a whole bunch more. It should be instantly familiar to anyone who has played platform jumpers like Doodle Jump. Fans of Sega games will no doubt feel right at home.

Sonic Jump runs natively on both the iPhone and iPad and is provided as a universal binary setting you back two bucks. A few screenies, more info and a trailer can be found past the fold...

Apple changes sales tactics as the iPhone’s share in India plummets to new lows

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

I've previously written about Apple's woes in India, where the company was forced to re-price the iPhone 3GS because cheap Android handsets took the market by storm. It's really the same problem plaguing Apple in any other country, only it's way more pronounced in India, a 1.24 billion people market that buys 220 million handsets per year.

India is also home to the largest concentration of people living below the World Bank’s international poverty line of $1.25 per day. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Apple's exorbitant pricing model in India couldn't fly with the vast majority of would-be buyers who simply cannot afford an iPhone at Apple's terms of business...

Google prematurely posts bad Q3 earnings, stock plunges

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated December 20, 2017

A strange thing has just happened: Google has posted its third-quarter earnings prematurely, giving Wall Street analysts and investors a pause as the company missed expectations substantially. Compared to Google's stellar results in past few quarters, largely driven by soaring sales of ad slots and Apps hosted solutions for businesses, the September quarter saw the search giant stumble a bit.

The Mountain View, California-headquartered company reported a huge 20 percent dive in net income to $2.18 billion (operating income was $3.26 billion). Net revenue was $11.3 billion versus the $11.9 billion that investors had been expecting. Google earned $9.03 a share versus an analysts' estimate of $10.65, a huge disappointment analysts had expected, on average.

Doesn't look good at all. I guess that $12.5 billion acquisition of unprofitable handset maker Motorola Mobility has really 'paid off', so to speak...

Good news: Tweetbot for Mac is out. Bad news: it costs $20

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 9, 2016

TapBots' beloved Twitter client Tweetbot has finally arrived for the Mac, following an extensive period of beta testing since July. The bad news is, it will run you a whopping twenty bucks a pop! It's not that developers have become greedy overnight, mind you. As you know, Twitter has capped their user base in a quest to exercise total control of third-party programs.

Twitter is doing so by enforcing token limits upon third-party developers. Tokens determine how many users an app like Tweetbot for Mac can have. As a result, developers get to only sell the app until they use up all the tokens Twitter allocated.

That's the official line. Some people think it's crap, others point the finger of blame at Twitter. You could call it economics, I guess. No matter how you look at it, Tweetbot for Mac - at least to my knowledge - has officially become the priciest Twitter client on the Mac App Store...

Sprint has acquired control of Clearwire

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

It was reported that the nation's third-largest telco Sprint Nextel is looking to buy a controlling stake in Clearwire without an acquisition. Sure enough, Sprint instead opted to buy out one of Clearwire's other shareholders to increase its 48 percent stake to a controlling 50.8 percent stake. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Sprint acknowledged as much in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday...

Analysts estimate the iPad mini could cannibalize one-fifth of current iPad sales

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

The rumored iPad mini, expected to be introduced by Apple next Tuesday, could eat into up to twenty percent of sales of regular-sized iPads, analysts said Thursday. Such cannibalization caused one high-profile Wall Street Apple watcher to trim one million units from his sales projection for the December quarter.

"We believe that the smaller iPad could cannibalize one million regular iPad units in December or a rate of cannibalization at twenty percent", Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told investors. In other words, for every five million iPad minis sold, deduct one million sales of the original iPad...

Apple previews Beijing’s massive new store, the largest in Asia

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated July 12, 2017

Apple is set to launch a grandiose new store in Beijing this coming Saturday, as we told you earlier. Both Western and local press had a chance to attend a media preview today and boy does the upcoming retail outlet impress. It files as the company's sixth brick-and-mortar store in China and Apple's SVP of Retail John Browett was on hand, taking advantage of the opportunity to confirm that the iPhone maker is also working to open another store in Shenzhen, China, where its contract manufacturer operates plants where Apple products are being assembled...

Verizon activates 3.1M iPhones in Q3, nearly 1 out of 5 was iPhone 5

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

Verizon reported today it activated 3.1 million iPhones during the three-month period ending September 30. About 650,000 were iPhone 5 units that had been purchased in just one week, the largest US carrier reported. The iPhone represented 46 percent of smartphones Verizon sold during the period. Overall, smartphones now account for 53 percent of the handsets Verizon sells.

The 650,000 iPhone 5 sales figure is impressive, given Apple's latest handset was released in late September, permitting only one week of sales during the third quarter. The Cupertino, California-based Apple confirmed it sold 5 million of the new handsets during its opening weekend last month...

Microsoft’s Surface OS is a resource hog

Christian Zibreg ∙ October 18, 2012

We've been covering Microsoft's Surface and other competing tablets quite extensively here at iDB because we believe Apple is not an isolated isle and it pays to keeping tabs on what your competition is doing. Now, a 32GB Surface RT matches a 16GB iPad 3 in terms of price, both costing $499. That said, Surface RT users will wind up having less storage space available because the operating system and bundled apps require a significant amount of storage. It almost comes close to installing a Windows on a PC...

Apple’s request to seal financial documents from Samsung trial denied

Cody Lee ∙ October 18, 2012

Apple must have really hated divulging all of those secrets during the high-profile patent trial against Samsung this summer. We saw everything from iPhone and iPad prototypes, to how Apple creates its products.

And it looks like we're about to learn some more interesting information, as Judge Lucy Koh handed down an order late last night denying Apple's motion to keep certain financial documents sealed from the public...

Sprint to take control of Clearwire without acquisition

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

Sprint is said to be in high-level negotiations with Clearwire, a wireless broadband provider, that would give it greater control over its long-time partner. The deal would give the carrier the ability to appoint a majority of the company's board members, without having to pony up cash for a buyout.

The news actually comes as a bit of a surprise, as many folks (especially investors) believed that Softbank's announcement that it was going to take a controlling stake in Sprint from earlier this week would lead to a Clearwire acquisition. But apparently, the carrier had other plans...