Apple is Now Bigger than Bigger

APPLE NOW WORTH ALMOST A TRILLION DOLLARS.

Apple market is now above $765 billion. Combined with Exxon Mobil Corp.'sXOM -1.01% pullback in the last six months, Apple has pulled off the rare occurrence of being worth at least double any other publicly traded U.S. company. No. 2 Exxon’s market cap has eased to $374 billion.

On a year-end basis, the last time the biggest company by market value was worth at least double the second-largest was 30 years ago, says S&P Dow Jones Indices’ Howard Silverblatt. At the conclusion of 1983, 1984 and 1985, International Business Machines Corp.’s market cap was more than twice Exxon, which ended each of those years in second place.  At its widest year-end point back then, IBM was worth 140% more than Exxon.

Three decades hence, the most-valuable company is worth more than 10 times that and is a 30% stock jump from becoming the first trillion-dollar company.

Exxon in late 2008 was nearly double the market cap of the then-No. 2s, which alternated between Microsoft Corp.MSFT +0.67% and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.WMT +0.36%, as Exxon help up better than most stocks amid the financial crisis.

Since Apple first got past Exxon in 2011, the company has largely held the top spot uninterrupted. But it really wasn’t until last summer that Tim Cook’s outfit put substantial, consistent room between it and Exxon. That gap has only grown further in 2015 with Apple up  19% and Exxon falling 3.7%.

Are you an iPhone user? Congratulations! You're probably smarter than the Android owner sitting next to you.

Smarter people use iPhones - study

Are you an iPhone user? Congratulations! You're probably smarter than the Android owner sitting next to you.

A new study conducted by online advertising network Chitika found that states with more college graduates tend to also have higher iPhone sales. 

Alaska (66%), Montana and Vermont have the largest percentage of iPhone users. New Mexico (41%), Iowa and Delaware have the lowest share of iPhone sales per capita. Notably, Chitika found that increased wealth is also linked to greater iPhone sales -- but since college degrees also correlate with higher incomes, Chitika says those results are redundant. Other studies have found similar results. Rich, white males tend to buy more iPhones, particularly in the first weeks that they go on sale. In the first month of sales, nearly 80% of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus buyers in the United States were male, and more than 60% made over $75,000 a year, according to Slice, a company that tracks consumer purchases.

A new study shows that states with more college-educated people tend to have higher iPhone sales.

Related: Vast majority of iPhone 6 buyers are rich, white men

The study also notes that iPhone sales correlate to

Blackberry Tweets from iPhone

Oh, BlackBerry. We can understand when your celebrity creative director accidentally tweets from a competitor's smartphone — or is the victim of a "hack." But your own, central Twitter account? That's no good. And yet somehow it's exactly what's just happened. Moments ago, BlackBerry tweeted out a (since deleted) message urging its last bastion of loyal users to keep up with the conversation on Twitter. You'd think the BlackBerry Classic would be a perfect device for thumbing out 140-character missives and sending them to the world; that keyboard is undeniably fantastic.

The new iMac concept

An homage to the original Macintosh hailing from an alternate universe

You don't need to have been around 31 years ago to appreciate the enduring legacy of Apple's Maci

Apple Wins Gesture-Control Patent

The U.S Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) today awarded Apple an incredibly broad patent for gesture-based controls.

The patent covers a "three dimensional user interface session control." In other words, you wave your hands and something happens on

Don't worry, your severed fingers won't unlock your iPhone 5S

Panic ensues when Apple announces its fingerprint scanner. However, a closer reading suggests that finger-chopping might not be so worthwhile for thieves.

I've been going through Apple's App Store in search of new products.

I've been looking for specially designed needles, thread for stitching, and possibly fingernails.

You see, some people have been worrying that with the new Touch ID, a biometric fingerprint sensor built into the iPhone 5S, they will have their fingers cut off. And, well, you know, business is business.

Still, there was no sign of such accessories in the App Store. And there may be less cause for concern than first entered people's suspicious heads.

I am grateful to Fast Company's CoLabs for attempting to soothe furrowed brows and tightly clenched fists.

It explains that Apple's scanner doesn't work by optics. Rather, Apple's new system probes beneath the layer of you skin to see the real live action beneath.

So the sensor is looking for something that has slightly more alive characteristics than, you know, a severed finger.

However, because those with devious minds tend to have a lot of time on their fingers to be devious, there might be all sorts of ruses that will arise in order to break into a fingerprint-locked iPhone 5S.

Fast Company posits the idea of whether one might try and imprint a fingerprint on a piece of red meat, or perhaps molding a fingerprint in ballistic gel.

But iPhone thieves generally work on the principle of fast and furious. Will they really bother with vast technological setups in order to make a few hundred dollars?

Will they really try and recreate the live prints of severed fingers? The whole thing sounds like an especially gruesome movie starring John Malkovich.

It is, indeed, possible that Apple's fingerprint scanner is a genuine upgrade in phone security.

There's still, though, something slightly uncomfortable about one's fingerprint being recorded in yet another database somewhere.

One great problem, as exemplified by German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble a few years ago, is that once your fingerprint has been copied, you can't get new ones.

If there's one thing that society has learned over the last few years, it's that the more you put yourself out there, the more your information can be used to ends that you might never have imagined.

Nokia slaps Apple with backhander during iPhone event

Nokia takes a look at the colorful iPhone 5C and sees, well, itself. It has to tweet what it sees. Then its UK arm decides to mock the gold 5S.

(Credit: Nokia/Twitter)

Your level of whelmed after Tuesday's Apple event might depend on your level of loyalty.

The folks at (Micro)Nokia in the US, however, were moved to paroxysms when they saw the new iPhone 5C.

They racked their brains as to where they'd seen it before. The mirror, that's where.

So out went a tweet that offered, quite simply: "Thanks, Apple."

Was (Micro)Nokia sincere in its admiration of the pretty iPhone 5C with the plastic back and joyous colors? Was it grateful that Apple was still the finest, most innovative phone creator on the planet?

In a way. For accompanying the tweet was a picture of a lot of joyously colorful Nokia phones and the headline: "Imitation Is The Best Form Of Flattery."

Gaining spirit from its American cousins, the good people at (Micro)Nokia UK decided to join the Twitter partisanship.

So it tweeted: "Real Gangsters Don't Use Gold Phones."

Accompanying it was an image. Oh, take a look below.

Of course, this was all in good humor. MicroNokia has its own little challenges ahead, such as finding a way to raise its market share from the micro level.

One can't help feeling, though, that these tweets expressed some relief that Apple hadn't surprised anyone at all.

Not glittery.

(Credit: Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Apple invention would let you check the status of another iPhone user

A newly published patent application outlines a method to check the availability of any iPhone user you want to call.

Apple has envisioned a way to see whether a fellow iPhone user is free to talk before you even complete the call.

Published Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a patent appropriately called "Methods to determine availability of user based on mobile phone status," describes just that process.

How many times do you call someone only to get dumped into voice mail? Maybe the person isn't available or is in a dead zone or has just turned on Airplane mode. Apple's proposed invention seeks to eliminate that uncertainty by alerting you to the person's status right off the bat.

To accomplish this feat, a person's iPhone would talk to Apple on the backend to report its status and call preferences. Such settings as location, signal strength, battery life, and mode (Normal, Airplane, or Vibration) would be sent to Apple's servers. A fellow iPhone user who attempts to call that person would see the status of the callee's phone on the screen and can then decide whether to complete the call.

(Credit: Apple/USPTO)

In essence, your phone would borrow a key feature from instant messaging in which you can see if someone is online, offline, free, or busy.

As Apple describes it in typical patent language:

New, high-quality shots of 'iPhone 5C' casing appear

New shots purport to be the back of Apple's upcoming low-cost iPhone.

Could this be Apple's next iPhone?

(Credit: Sonny Dickson)

More photos of what appears to be Apple's next iPhone, or at least a lower-cost version of it, have cropped up.

Sonny Dickson, who is a frequent leaker of all things Apple hardware, has posted a rather large gallery of the rear case of a white, plastic iPhone.

It's just a piece of the device, so there are no internals inside, just some mounts for various components. Also of note is that there don't appear to be any openings for the typical volume buttons and mute switch, which have been included on each and every iPhone model so far.

The iPhone 5C, as it has been dubbed, is expected to debut alongside an updated model of the iPhone 5 this fall. The device, which already has some cases on places like Amazon, is rumored to be a low-cost iPhone model aimed at better penetrating prepaid markets, like China.

Apple's strategy thus far has been to sell older models at lower costs. Come the next model, that might not work out as well with the iPhone 4S, which has a smaller screen size and uses an older 30-pin connector instead of Apple's Lightning connector. The 5C could knock it out of the lineup. The device was even mentioned (though not by name) in a recent report about one of Apple's contract manufacturers from the China Labor Watch.

Dickson has posted 5C photos before, but these latest offer a more diverse look. Last month the Australian blogger posted a shot that depicts various possible colors for the 5C rear shell.

(Credit: Sonny Dickson)

Woman buys two iPhones for $1,300, gets only apples (really)

In perhaps the ultimate in mockery, an Australian woman buys two iPhones after posting an ad on a Web site. When she opens the boxes, they contain just one apple each.

Apples to Apples?

   (Credit: Depression Cooking/YouTube Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

The depths which humanity can plumb would fit a whole synchronized swimming team, each member standing on the next's shoulders.

This is just one more piece of evidence.

Please imagine the essential goodness of a woman in Australia who went onto the classifieds Web site Gumtree, in search of a couple of iPhones.

As the Herald Sun reports, the core of an agreement was reached between the woman and another woman who called her on seeing the ad.

They arranged to meet at a McDonald's in the Sunnybank suburb of Brisbane.

All went very well. The buyer handed over 1,500 Australian dollars (around US $1,336). In return, she got two shiny new iPhones still in their shiny new boxes.

At least, that's what she thought.

But in the latest tale of trusting buyers who should have caveated before being an emptor, when she opened the boxes all that was inside were two apples. One in each box.

Yes, these boxes were all natural logo and no gadget. The seller had been rotten to her pips.

Though some might wonder what special care the seller must have taken to fit two apples precisely into iPhone boxes. And, wait, didn't the box smell a touch?

This isn't the first time a private transaction for an Apple product has been a touch unbalanced.

There was the woman who bought a $180 iPad in a Spartanburg, S.C. parking lot. It turned out to be made of wood. Well, at least it had an Apple logo. Oddly, the parking lot also belonged to McDonald's.

Then there was the British man who bought a $390 iPad in a parking lot. The box turned out to be full of potatoes.

But Spartanburg is still the capital of such torrid offenses. For it was there that two women paid $250 for a paper laptop. At least it had a power cord.

At the most basic level, it's surely worth opening the box before handing over the money. It seems unconscionable that people would offer large sums and have no assurance of what might be inside.

Yet such incidents seems to happen again and again.

Will people never learn? No, they won't.

I bet you didn't know your iPad could do that

Discover the iPad's hidden keys, set it to read selected text, and get quick access to hundreds of emoticons, plus four other handy iPad customizations.

There has never been a "handier" computer than the iPad. Yes, that's a bold statement. Here are seven tips that back it up.
Use your thumbs to type letters that have no keys
When it comes to entering text on an iPad, many of us are all thumbs. The device's split keyboard lets you type characters with your thumbs while holding the iPad with both hands. To activate the split keyboard, press and hold the small horizontal lines to the right of the minimize-keyboard button in the bottom-right corner, and then choose Split.

Split and shrink the iPad's onscreen keyboard by pressing and holding to the right of the hide-keyboard button.

The keyboard shrinks, undocks from the bottom of the screen, and splits into two halves appearing on the left and right sides of the screen. When you hold the iPad in two hands, you can use your thumbs to tap keys as you enter text.
If you favor one thumb over another, you can tap the split keyboard's invisible keys to enter in the vertical row to the   right of the left edge and to the left of the right edge, as   shown in the screen below.

Press to the right of the left edge and to the left of the right edge of the iPad's split keyboard to enter the "invisible" characters (shown in small boxes I've added to the image).

The "keys" on the iPad's split keyboard are even smaller than those on the standard keyboard that is docked in the bottom of the screen. Data entry using the onscreen keyboard is challenging to say the least. The thumbs-only approach using the two-hand grip isn't any easier, but two-thumb tapping is faster than the single-digit approach.
If you go the thumbs route, you might as well use all the keys available -- visible and invisible.
One emoticon is worth a thousand words
One way to reduce your reliance on the iPad's onscreen keyboard is to express yourself using emoticons. OK, I admit I feel like I'm back in junior high school whenever I see an emoticon embedded in a message, but the goofy characters certainly do help you make your point.

To add emoticons to the iPad keyboard, press Settings > General > Keyboard > International Keyboards > Add New Keyboard > Emoji. The first time you activate the onscreen keyboard after enabling a second keyboard layout, a message pops up instructing you to tap the Globe key to switch keyboard layouts.

After you enable a second iPad keyboard layout, a message appears instructing you to press the globe button to switch keyboards.

 The Emoji keyboard lists hundreds of colorful emoticons in six categories: those you've used recently; smilies, hand gestures, and hearts; animals and plants; common items; transportation and flags; and common symbols (such as clock faces, astrological signs, and Japanese Kanji characters).

Among the hundreds of symbols on the iPad's Emoji keyboard are transportation icons and flags.

Save key taps by creating keyboard shortcuts for repeated text
I wish I had a nickel for every time I've typed "I wish I had a nickel" on my iPad. (I have a thing for nickels.) Now I just tap "nkl" and a space to add my nickel aspiration in a note or document.
To create a keyboard shortcut that enters frequently used text automatically, tap Settings > General > Keyboard > Add New Shortcut.... Enter the phrase, press your preferred shortcut keys, and press Save. The entry is added to your Shortcuts list, which is shown just above the Add New Shortcut option.
Thereafter when you enter the shortcut, the phrase appears below the shortcut. Press the space bar to enter the phrase or press the X to the right of the text to retain the shortcut letters.

Enter repeated text more quickly on an iPad by creating custom keyboard shortcuts.

 Set the iPad to recite selected text
If you'd like your iPad to read to you, press Settings > General > Accessibility, and in the Vision section, toggle Speak Selection to On. Use the slider control to set the speaking rate; the default setting is a couple of clicks to the slow side of the median.

Set the iPad reader's playback speed via the slider control, which is set by default a bit to the slow side of middle.

After you enable selection speaking, a Speak option appears when you select text. Press it to hear a Siri-like voice read the selection. At the default reading speed the voice seems hurried, although the pauses at punctuation are unnaturally long. But like the dancing dog, it's not that the iPad reads text well, it's that the machine reads it at all.
Select an entire paragraph with four taps
Selecting text on an iPad is crazy-making: tap the screen to select a single word (or press Select to highlight the word you tapped), and then grab and slide one of the little blue dots that appear in the top-left and bottom-left corners of the selection.
The fast way to select an entire paragraph is to tap it four times. Just like that, your paragraph is ready to be copied or read to you (if you've used the above tip to enable the iPad's text reader).
Swipe the screen to switch among open apps
Most people move from one iPad app to another by pressing the Home button and then pressing the new app's icon, which may entail a lot of screen swiping or folder opening.

A faster way to go from one open app to another is to swipe the screen left or right using four or five fingers. Alternatively, you can swipe up with four or five fingers to open the multitasking bar at the bottom of the screen, which shows all the apps currently open on the machine.
Double-tap to zoom the screen
You probably know that you can stretch the iPad screen with two fingers to zoom in and pinch with two fingers to zoom out. To get more control over screen zooms, tap the screen twice with three fingers. Repeat the three-finger double-tap to zoom out.
To control the zoom magnification, double-tap with three fingers and hold, then scroll up to zoom in and down to zoom out. Once you've got your preferred zoom level, navigate around the screen by swiping left, right, up, and down with three fingers.
To enable zoom, press Settings > General > Accessibility and toggle the Zoom setting in the Vision section to On.

iPad 5 said to be 15 percent thinner, 25 percent lighter

The next iPad will be both thinner and lighter, according to an analyst with a very solid track record of Apple tea leaf reading.

The side of the current iPad.
(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Apple's next iPad will be both thinner and lighter than its predecessor, bringing back the company's old habit of iPad shrinkage.
That's according to KGI Securities analyst Mingchi Kuo, who in a note to investors last night said to expect a full-size iPad that's 15 percent thinner than the fourth-generation device and weighs 25 percent less.
The size reduction is due to a handful of tweaks, Kuo said. That includes a battery that's 25 percent to 30 percent smaller, and improvements on display panels and A-series chip technology, which now slurp up less juice. Apple also will use the same touch technology found on the iPad Mini, which is thinner than what it currently uses on its full-size iPads.
"Thinness and lighter are key attributes," Kuo said in the note. "We think one of the reasons iPad 3 and iPad 4 didn't sell as well as expected was they are both heavier and thicker than iPad 2."
Apple, of course, released both of those models within seven months of one another. The move ticked off third-generation buyers, but likely kept people from holding off on purchasing third-generation units with the company's obsolete 30-pin connector.


              Kuo expects the next-generation iPad to arrive toward the end of the third calendar quarter.
This is just the latest in a series of rumors and murmurs pointing to a slimmer iPad. Apple's used what's effectively been the same outside design for the device for the past three versions, something of an abnormality when compared with the iPhone and iPod line. A report out of Japan back in December claimed Apple was working on a slimmer iPad model, though erroneously said it would be due last month. More recently, there have been a handful of third-party cases for next-gen iPads, which appear to take design cues from the iPad Mini by sporting a narrower design.
As for a reason to trust Kuo over myriad other Apple analysts, he's been spot on about Apple's plans and timing of its 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro last year, along with iPod and iPad details. Before that, there were his accurate reports of the white iPhone 4 timing, Apple's discontinuation of the 17-inch MacBook Pro, and revamps of the MacBook Pro line in mid-2011.

Apple’s App Store Named In Chinese Porn Investigation

Apple’s App Store has been included in a list of websites and app stores that have been investigated for providing pornographic content in China. The list, published by state-owned newspaper People’s Daily, comes just a month after a government regulator named the App Store as a source of “obscene pornography,” despite Apple’s strict policy against pornographic apps.

The list is mostly made up of obscure websites, The Wall Street Journal reports. But Apple’s App Store appears next to the names of other app stores, sparking concern among Chinese Internet users that this may be the beginning of another government campaign against Apple.

Apple has been scrutinized by the Chinese government over pornographic content before, and it’s not the only major company to come under fire for this. Back in 2009, Chine Central Television accused Google of spreading pornography, leading to hacks that cause Google to move its operations to Hong Kong the following year.

4 Of The 5 Highest-Paid Execs In The U.S. Work For Apple

Four out of the five highest-paid executives in the United States work for Apple, Bloomberg Businessweek reports, but not one of them is CEO Tim Cook. According to fiscal 2012 compensation figures for top earners filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Apple’s Bob Mansfield, Bruce Sewell, Jeffrey Williams, and Peter Oppenheimer join Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to make up the top five corporate earners last year.

Mansfield was the highest-paid Apple employee, receiving $85.5 million during 2012. He actually decided to leave the company last June, but was reportedly handed an “exorbitant” payout that convinced him to sign a new two-year deal. Mansfield came second only to Oracle’s Ellison, who earned $96.2 million.