Apple

iPhone 5s/5c hitting Straight Talk and NET10 Wireless this Friday

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 19, 2018

Contract-free United States Mobile Virtual Network (MVNO) wireless brands Straight Talk and NET10 Wireless this morning announced they will start selling Apple's latest iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c this coming Friday, December 15.

According to a media release, customers will be able to pick up their handset full-price or subsidized. The no-contract plans for individuals and families start at $45 per month for unlimited voice calls, text messages and 2.5GB of high-speed data.

The full breakdown is after the break...

iPhone 5s hits 100% availability in U.S. Apple Stores

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 9, 2013

Following its September debut and severely constrained supply, Apple's iPhone 5s has finally achieved full availability across the company's retail outlets in the United States. According to a survey by one analyst, the flagship Apple smartphone is now in stock for all colors and capacities and across all major U.S. carriers in company-owned U.S. retail Apple Stores.

Although the U.S. Online Apple Store still shows ship times of five to seven business days, you should now have no issues waltzing inside your nearest Apple Store and picking up an iPhone 5s. At any rate, this is a good sign which indicates Apple and its suppliers have finally caught up with demand ahead of the all-important Christmas shopping frenzy...

WSJ: China Mobile to start taking iPhone pre-orders this Thursday

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 9, 2013

The long-enduring game of cat and mouse between Apple, the maker of the world's most popular smartphone, and China Mobile, the world's top wireless carriers with more than 700 million subscribers (the equivalent of over twice the US population), looks to be ending as the carrier is expected to start taking pre-orders for the iconic device later this week, reports The Wall Street Journal.

As the carrier is gearing up to launch its long-expected high-speed fourth-generation network services on December 18, China Mobile Shanghai’s website on Monday invited potential customers to pre-order the iPhone 5s and other smartphones from Samsung and Sony that support China Mobile's new 4G TD-LTE mobile network...

Apple joins major U.S. tech giants in NSA surveillance reform push

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 9, 2013

The U.S. government's mass-scale surveillance program which has compromised the security and privacy of millions of domestic and foreign online users, the secret PRISM initiative, did not sit well with Apple and other technology giants. In response to the scandalous revelations by the NSA contractor Edward Snowden that also put the blame on Silicon Valley giants for bowing to NSA's request and providing the agency with hassle-free access to its users' data, the iPhone maker chastised the practice and published how it handles government requests to give up private information belonging to its users.

And now, in the aftermath of the ongoing snooping scare, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple along with seven other U.S. technology giants is making a joint appeal to reform government surveillance activities...

There are now 1 million apps available in the US App Store

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

During its October iPad event, Apple announced that it had crossed the 1 million app milestone in its worldwide App Store. This meant that, not counting duplicates, it had over 1 million apps available around the globe at that time.

This week, Apple passed the same milestone here in its US App Store. According to data from app discovery firm Appsfire, there are now more than 1 million live apps in the App Store. 1,006,557 to be exact at the time of this writing...

Apple pays tribute to Nelson Mandela on its homepage

Cody Lee ∙ December 7, 2013

Apple has updated the homepage of its website this evening to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela. The late South African president and anti-apartheid revolutionary died on Thursday at the age of 95.

As it did following the passing of Steve Jobs and a handful of other figures, Apple has removed all product placements on the landing page and replaced them with a large portrait photo of Mandela...

Apple now selling 4K Sharp displays in its European web stores

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Apple has begun offering a 32-inch Sharp Ultra HD LED monitor in its European web stores. The 4K monitor, which retails for £3,499.00 (or roughly $5,700 USD), has been available since November, but this is the first we've heard of Apple selling it.

The display uses Sharp's IGZO technology (Indium gallium zinc oxide) and has a resolution of 3840 x 2160. It offers a 1.07 billion color palette, an 800:1 contrast ratio, and comes with DisplayPort support (though it doesn't include the Mini DP adapter)...

Google’s Eric Schmidt has the nerve to shoot down Amazon’s drones over privacy worries

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated December 23, 2017

Google chairman Erich Schmidt is definitely on a roll these days. He first posted a guide on how to convert from iPhone to Android which draw much ridicule in suggesting that the latest high-end phones from Samsung, Motorola and Google represent "a great Christmas present to an iPhone user" because these devices have "better screens, are faster and have a much more intuitive interface".

Now, Schmidt's attention turns to Amazon's conceptual sci-fi Prime Air service that will use miniature everyday drones to deliver packages at customers' doorsteps. This, according to Schmidt, constitutes a serious violation of privacy because the drone technology can be used to spy on neighbors and record your private activities...

A mixed experience with iBeacon at the Apple Store

Sébastien Page ∙ December 6, 2013

Following this morning's report about the deployment of Apple's iBeacon technology to its 254 US retail stores, I decided to go to my local Apple Store and give it a try for myself. After agreeing to enable in-store notifications within the Apple Store app, I then drove to the Carlsbad Apple Store.

I didn't expect to be blown away by this new app/store feature, but I did expect it to work and offer a certain level of relevancy. The results were very mixed, to say the least...

WSJ wants antitrust judge taken off e-book case over conflict of interest

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated December 23, 2017

After the July trial found Apple guilty of ebook price-fixing, the iPhone maker last week filed a complaint over exorbitant lawyer fees. Specifically, court-appointed Michael Bromwich billed the company an unbelievable $138,432 (or the equivalent of 75 percent of a federal judge’s annual salary, as Apple wrote in the complaint), plus a fifteen percent “administrative fee” on top, for a fortnight’s worth of work on overseeing the electronic books price-fixing antitrust case.

It has now come to light that Bromwich and Denise Cote, the very same federal judge who found Apple guilty of price fixing, are in fact old friends. The finding prompted The Wall Street Journal to issue a scathing editorial lambasting Cote over conflict of interest and demanding that the antitrust judge be taken off the case...

Apple moves to recover $15 million in legal fees from Samsung

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 6, 2013

Just a day following the mid-November Appeals court ruling which gave Apple another chance to ban Samsung's infringing devices, the iPhone maker made its case on why it’s entitled to an additional $379 million in pending damages over patent infringement and lost sales in the Apple vs Samsung lawsuit.

Following a short period of deliberation, a jury of six women and two men reached a conclusion for the retrial between Apple and Samsung over damages, ruling the Galaxy maker must pay Apple an additional $290 million on top of more than the $500 million in damages already awarded last year.

But Tim Cook & Co. aren't stopping there. As reported by an expert patent blogger, Apple is now demanding a cool $15 million in legal fees from Samsung, or one third of Apple attorneys' fees that total over $60 million...

Official: iOS 7 hits 74 percent adoption rate

Christian Zibreg ∙ December 6, 2013

If you had any any doubts concerning popularity of the iOS 7 which caused - and continues to cause - quite a commotion among the punditry with its light design, here's your wake up call. According to Apple's official data, iOS 7 is now installed on more than three-quarters of iOS devices in active use.

Specifically, Apple's data indicates a 74 percent adoption rate for iOS 7 as of December 1. Apple released iOS 7 on September 18, 2013.

The 74 percent iOS 7 adoption rate is a huge share no matter how you look at it, especially versus the 22 percent seen by iOS 6. The company put the older iOS versions at just four percent.

By comparison, Android 4.4 KitKat is currently installed on a meager 1.1 percent of Android devices. That the iPhone maker has been able to put iOS 7 on three out of each four devices in the wild in less than three months iOS 7 has been on the market is nothing short of phenomenal...