by wildcherry on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 | News, Tech/Gadget | No Comments

According to a new Stanford University study, iPhone users are becoming so reliant on their iPhones that they are actually reporting being addicted to their Apple smartphones.

Almost half of the respondents in the 200 person study acknowledged an iPhone addiction.

Here are some highlights from the Stanford study:

• Only six percent of students said they weren’t at all addicted to the device, whereas a full 10 percent said they were fully addicted, and 34 percent gave themselves a ‘four’ on the five-point scale.
• Thirty-two percent of respondents who didn’t report feeling completely addicted did worry that they would eventually become addicted.
• Eighty-five percent of those surveyed reported using their iPhones as a watch while 89 percent use it as an alarm clock.
• Seventy-five percent actually confessed to sleeping with their iPhone in bed next to them.
• It isn’t just phone and clock features making the iPhone so indispensable. As LiveScience notes, ‘15 percent of those surveyed said the iPhone was turning them into a media addict; 30 percent called it a ‘doorway into the world’; 25 percent found the phone ‘dangerously alluring’ and 41 percent said losing their iPhone would be ‘a tragedy.”
• However, as students are using the iPhones to arrange their social lives, they must be careful to not let their addiction create a backlash: Seven percent of the students reported roommates or partners who felt neglected due to the respondent’s iPhone use, giving rise to the term ‘iPhone widow’ for those people who feel as though they’ve lost their significant other to the iPhone.
• Many of the reported ’side-effects’ of iPhone use are positive as 70 percent reported being more organized, 54 percent were more productive and 74 percent just felt ‘cool’ having an iPhone.

Interestingly, the iPhone is seen less as an outside device and more of an extension of the person due to the amount of personal information held on it and the ways in which students use it to organize and facilitate their social lives. Researchers were surprised by how readily students seem to anthropomorphize the device.

Source:Huffpost

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by wildcherry on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | Deals, Products Review | No Comments

The brand new Apple iPad specs that have been revealed at the Apple Live Event are listed below:

iPad specs

• Display: 9.7 inch IPS
• Weight: 1.5 lbs
• 0.5 inches thin
• Battery life: 10 hours
• Accelerometer and Compass
• Speaker, Microphone, and 30 pin connector
• WiFi 802.11n
• Processor: 1GHz Apple A4 chip
• Storage: 16-64GB Flash
• Full capacative multi-touch

The popular tech site, engadget has laid out what it would cost to own an Apple iPad 3GS version over two years. With the unlimited plan for internet on a 3GS, expect to hand over a bit over $1500 in two years’ time.

Tags: apple, apple tablet, iPad, ipad 3g data plan, ipad 3g plan, ipad calendar, ipad cost, iPad price, iPad review, iPad specs, ipad tablet

by wildcherry on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | News, Tech/Gadget | No Comments

Live coverage: Apple media event —today is Apple iPad day!

The Apple iPad was introduced today  at a much-hyped press conference at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco , according to the New York Times Bits blog.

The new device is a medium between the smartphone and the computer, but more intimate than a laptop, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive. The  touch screen is similar to ipod, with a touch keyboard, and the device is larger, according to ReadWriteWeb.

Jobs made the appearance today in his trademark jeans and black turtleneck and opened with a history and update on Apple mobile devices.

Analysts said a tablet-style computer can help people watch videos, surf the Web, play games and read electronic books.

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by wildcherry on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 | News, Tech/Gadget | No Comments

Apple will be announcing their new tablet device during Apple’s “Special Event” this Wednesday, January 27. That speculation is finally getting backed up by some relatively “hard” evidence.

Web analytics firm, Flurry, has released some data based on activity it has seen coming out of Apple’s Cupertino headquarters that indicates increased activity on tablet-based applications. Use cases for this rumored tablet have covered everything from the publishing industry as a rival to Amazon’s Kindle to a competitor to Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP).

Traditionally, tablet PCs have been considered to have a more industrial application for things like inventory management, purchase orders and data entry. However, according to the data reported by Flurry, the largest category of applications it is seeing for the Apple Tablet is games.

Tags: apple, apple new products 2010, apple tablet announcement, apple tablet price, apple tablet pricing, apple tablet release date

by wildcherry on Monday, January 25th, 2010 | Business, News | No Comments

Apple first-quarter 2010 earnings soared past Wall Street expectations Monday, with the company reporting a profit of $3.37 billion, or $3.74 per share.

That’s up 50 percent from the same quarter a year ago, when profits reached $2.26 billion, or $2.54 per share.

Revenue for the quarter was $15.6 billion, up 32 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Wall Street was expecting between $11.21 billion and $12.6 billion in revenue on earnings of $2.07 per share. And Apple always gives an overly conservative estimate; last quarter, Apple said it was anticipating earnings between $1.70 per share and $1.78 per share, and revenue of between $11.3 billion and $11.6 billion.

Tags: aapl earnings, apple, apple earnings, apple earnings call, apple earnings q4 2009, apple investor relations

by wildcherry on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 | News, Tech/Gadget | No Comments

Apple is seriously considering replacing Google search as their default search engine on the iPhone with Bing. And why not? Bing has turned out to be a big hit for Microsoft, which is no small feat considering the competition.

According to Businessweek, Apple is in talks with Microsoft to drop Google search as the default on Mobile Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The move would place Bing, Microsoft’s recently rebranded search, at the top of the mobile browser. The reason would be twofold. One: Microsoft would offer more money for users who click on ads from search and two, because Google’s Android is a much bigger threat to Apple’s iPhone than anything Microsoft can muster.

Interestingly, Apple may also add Bing as an option in Desktop Safari as well, according to their sources. The deal, if finalized, may not be a long one however. Businessweek closes by saying that Apple is working on a skunkworks search product of their own and they don’t want to ‘outsource the future’.

Technorati Tags:apple bing,bing iPhone,google,iPhone bing,iPhone default seach engine

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by gadgetqueen on Friday, November 13th, 2009 | Business, News, Tech/Gadget | No Comments

Google has acquired Gizmo5, a company that offers voice-over-IP software for mobile phones and computers, for about $30 Million intending to roll the company’s engineers into the team that develops the telephony application/controversy magnet known as Google Voice.

Whereas Gizmo5 offers Skype-like software for calling people over the interwebs, Google Voice is a special telephony thingy that lets you use a single phone number for multiple phones - and turn your voice mails into emails. “While we don’t have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5’s engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience,” reads a post on the official Google Voice blog.

Google Voice is itself the child of an acquisition. It was first developed by GrandCentral, a startup Google gobbled up in 2007.

Last month, during Google’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Eric Schmidt told the world the company was pulling out its checkbook now that the recession is supposedly over. “We believe the worst of the recession is behind us and now feel confident about investing heavily in our future,” he said. The Gizmo5 buy marks the ad giant’s second acquisition in the four weeks since.

Google Voice sits at the heart of not one but two ongoing controversies. Google nemesis AT&T has argued that Voice violates Google’s beloved net neutrality, while Apple is under investigation by the FCC for rejecting Voice’s entry into its iPhone app store.

According to the Gizmo5 homepage, the VoIP service can already be used in tandem with Google Voice. Google has now closed Gizmo5 to new users, but existing users can continue to use the service. Existing users cannot, however, sign up for new call-in numbers.

Unlike Skype, the Gizmo5 network is based on open standards: the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). XMPP is what underpins Google Wave, the company’s new-age communication and collaboration thingy.

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by nate on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 | News, Tech/Gadget | No Comments

A Spoofcard is an inexpensive way to call someone else while having your caller ID number disguised as any number you want. It even lets you disguise your voice. It sells its services under the slogan “Be who you want to be,” and advertises itself as a tool to protect your privacy. It costs about 20 cents per use.

The reality is that Spoofcard is not a new service, it has been around for years. Spoofcard already has dedicated mobile apps for the iPhone, Blackberry and Android phones that let you use the service directly from your handset without even having to dial in first. Spoofcard will even work with international phone numbers.

Instances of maliciously using SpoofCard have started to pop up in the press. First it was reported that celebrities such as Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton had their phones hacked. Brickhouse Security reports that Dolce and Gabbana Publicity Director Ali Wise was fired from her job after she used SpoofCard to hack into people’s phones more than 700 times.

Tags: apple, Be who you want to be, caller id, hack, Lindsay Lohan, paris hilton, Phone hack, privacy, protection, spoofcard free trial

by wildcherry on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 | News, Tech/Gadget | 2 Comments

The updated iMacs have bigger screens – 21.5 inches and 27 inches, compared with existing models’ 20 inches and 24 inches. They also have speedier processors and better graphics. The least expensive model costs $1,199, the same as the past generation, but the top-of-the-line iMac is now $200 cheaper at $1,999. Order the New iMacs now

The wireless Magic Mouse, as Apple calls it, will be sold standard with iMacs or by itself for $69. It lets people manipulate what they see on the screen by pinching, swiping and using other gestures, similar to the control mechanism made popular on the screen of the iPhone.

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, said that after using the new mouse for a few months, sitting down at a computer with a traditional mouse makes him “want to throw it out the window.”

Apple also made its least expensive laptop, the $999 MacBook, sleeker, faster and more like the higher-end MacBook Pro machines, with a “multitouch” track pad and a sealed-in battery that can’t be removed.

Apple Magic Mouse, with its Multi-Touch surface, does the same thing for your Mac. When you use gestures, it’s as if you’re touching what’s on your screen. For instance, swiping through web pages in Safari gives you the feeling of flicking through pages in a magazine. And scrolling with Magic Mouse isn’t your everyday scrolling. It supports momentum scrolling (similar to iPhone and iPod touch), where the scrolling speed is dictated by how fast or slowly you perform the gesture.

Read More:CNN

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by bintangkecil on Monday, October 19th, 2009 | Business, News | No Comments

Apple Inc. on Monday reported a 46% increase in its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings as the company posted higher revenue than a year ago led by better-than-expected sales of iPhones, Mac computers and iPods.

Apple said it earned $1.67 billion, or $1.82 a share, on revenue of $9.87 billion. During the same period a year ago, Apple earned $1.14 billion, or $1.26 a share, on $7.9 billion in sales.

Apple’s results topped the estimates of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, who had forecast the company to earn $1.42 a share on revenue of $9.2 billion.

The initial reaction to Apple’s report was strong enough to send the company’s shares up more than $12, or as much as 6.5%, in after-hours trading to $202.20 after earlier rising $1.81 a share in the regular market session.

The company sold 7.4 million iPhones during the quarter ended Sept. 26. It was the first full quarter of sales for the iPhone 3GS, Apple’s latest version of its touchscreen smartphone that starts at $199. Analysts were expecting iPhone sales of 7 million, on average.

Apple also said it sold more than 3 million Macs during the quarter, thanks in part to the back-to-school selling season. Mac shipments increased by 17% from the same period a year ago. Analysts had been expecting Mac sales of 2.8 million. During the quarter, Apple released Snow Leopard, the latest upgrade to its Mac operating system.

“It was a strong, strong quarter,” said Shaw Wu, who covers Apple for Kaufman Bros. “[The] big upside was driven by Macs and iPhones. This was amazing despite very high expectations, and we’re still in the middle of a recession.”

The company said it sold 10.2 million iPods during the quarter, which was an 8% decline in shipments from the year-ago period. However, those results still exceeded the 10-million shipment figure that was expected from many Wall Street analysts.

Gross margins as a percentage of revenue climbed to 36.6% from 34.7% in the same quarter last year.

Read more from Marketwatch …

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