Thursday - November 12, 2009
It's easy to see why the retail industry has been in love with the bar code for the past several decades. It makes checkout faster, and it probably makes inventory a lot easier when you've got a computer system to keep track of everything that passes over the counter. But some retailers abuse the technology by using it as an excuse to not put an actual price tag -- written in good ol' Arabic numerals -- anywhere on or near the products on their shelves. The customer is expected to make a small economic leap of faith and presume the item is reasonably priced.
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Wednesday - November 11, 2009
The iPhone has launched with relatively weak sales in China, and the situation echoed what the handset faced in India, where the device was launched in August of 2008. There is little demand for the iPhone in India, ccording to BusinessWeek. The problem is perhaps structural. Apple appears to be going into developing nations with the same mindset as it has in the United States.
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Tuesday - November 10, 2009
Apple on Monday issued its latest update to its Snow Leopard operating system. Mac OS X 10.6.2 fixes a slew of bugs and glitches that users had been complaining about. It also froze out Intel's Atom chip, leaving "hackintosh" users -- people who use do-it-yourself methods to run Mac OS X on Intel-powered netbooks -- out in the cold.
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Tuesday - November 10, 2009
Although it apparently causes no actual harm besides a trivial annoyance, a worm that hits jailbroken iPhones has security researches worried. The so-called Ikee worm was discovered by security researchers recently. It installs a picture of pop singer Rick Astley and displays the message "Ikee is never going to give you up" on victims' iPhones.
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Monday - November 9, 2009
If Apple has its way, buttons will become a thing of the past. After slowly emaciating the mechanical controls on its wildly popular iPod media players and obliterating them from the touchpads on its notebook computer line, it now wants to purge them from every keyboard jock's favorite rodent. The company's new Magic Mouse is as sleek as an alien interstellar taxi.
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Saturday - November 7, 2009
Now that Fortune has named Apple CEO Steve Jobs CEO of the decade, where will he go from here? Throughout his career, Jobs has typically led the market, bringing out products that consumers didn't know they wanted until they saw them -- products like the iPhone and iPod touch, for instance. He will probably continue doing so, but in the future he may delegate more responsibilities.
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Friday - November 6, 2009
I'm the kind of guy who rarely bothers to hack my devices. By "hack," I mean use the hacks and instructions of those who are much more intrepid than I. Tinkering with a device that I shelled out hundreds of dollars for, if not more, isn't something I take lightly. If I break it, I've not only lost usage of the device, I'm out of the money, too. If I had a bigger bank account, I might be more cavalier about it all.
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Thursday - November 5, 2009
The iTunes App Store became 100,000 applications strong this week, and it took less than a year and a half to get there. Would it surprise you to know that not every last one of those apps is a perfect work of art? Yes, believe it or not, many of the apps that compete for your attention in the App Store are pretty worthless.
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Wednesday - November 4, 2009
The reason commonly given for the creation of technology standards is to enable a more open, seamless process for licensing and adoption. However, in its lawsuit filed recently against iPhone maker Apple, Nokia is attempting an interesting spin on this definition, which may very well reflect reality.
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Wednesday - November 4, 2009
The iPhone went on sale last week in China, and it landed more or less with a thud. Cupertino's carrier partner in that country, China Unicom, announced on Tuesday that only 5,000 customers had purchased the phone thus far. At this rate, the handset may have trouble meeting sales expectations. China Unicom had pledged to sell 1 million iPhones per year.
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