Jordan Golson

Apple captured "19 percent of all sales dollars" of consumer electronics sales in the U.S. during the holiday quarter of 2011 according to NPD. Not coincidentally, the holiday season was also the best quarter in Apple's history. Not only was Apple by far the most successful consumer electronics brand for the second year in a row, Apple Retail has the third most revenue of any electronics...

ThinkGeek, the creators of the iCade iPad gaming cabinet have upped the ante with a new Bluetooth enabled controller called the iCade 8-Bitty. The controller is roughly the size and layout of a classic NES controller, with an extra pair of A/B buttons on the right side and two shoulder buttons. The 8-Bitty offers the same compatibility as the larger iCade cabinet, supporting all...

Apple's share price pushed through the $500 barrier as trading opened this morning, reaching an important psychological figure. The stock price has been on a tear ever since Apple reported blowout earnings for the first fiscal quarter of 2012, rising more than $75/share, or nearly 18%, in just under three weeks. Apple is now worth more than $469 billion, making it the most valuable public...

Apple has begun offering a stripped-down 13" MacBook Air to educational institutions purchasing in bulk, replacing the two-year old white plastic MacBook offering the company recently discontinued. Apple had ceased sales of the MacBook to consumer customers back in July of 2011. The new educational-exclusive MacBook Air is a 13" model with the same specs as the entry-level consumer 11" MacBook ...

Apple posted two new iPhone 4S television ads to its YouTube account this evening, "Road Trip" and "Rock God". Both ads showcase the various ways to use the iPhone 4S's Siri functionality to find directions, locate a restaurant, or send text messages. There have been several other iPhone 4S ads previously. In December, Apple released an iPhone 4S ad featuring Santa Claus using his iPhone...

Google is developing a wireless home entertainment system designed to stream music throughout the home, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The system would be marketed under Google's brand and would be based on Google's Android platform. Google has sold a few items under its own name, but has never designed consumer electronics hardware itself. The Google Nexus phone, for...

One of the most frequent reasons for an iPhone to go on a trip to the Apple Store's Genius Bar is because of water damage. Typically, a water damaged iPhone can be replaced for a flat $199 fee, though with the recently launched AppleCare+, that price can be reduced to $49. Most ultra-durable iPhone cases, like Otterbox's Defender or Case Mate's TANK, are merely water-resistant -- not actually...

TuneCore president Jeff Price today wrote a blog post praising Apple's iTunes Match service for creating money "out of thin air" for copyright holders. iTunes Match launched with all the major record labels on board, but some small labels refused to participate over concerns the service was legitimizing music pirates. Price disagrees: A person has a song on her computer hard drive. She...

Popular iPhone Twitter client Tweetbot has finally arrived on the iPad, with a user interface instantly familiar to any current Tweetbot user. Designed for the Twitter power-user, Tweetbot packs a lot of punch into an intuitive, slick interface, with unique functionality like Smart Gestures which give quick access to a variety of features through double or triple-taps. The Next Web and Business...

Vonage has introduced yet another app to its growing mobile arsenal. The latest, called Vonage Mobile (not to be confused with another app called Vonage Mobile, introduced in 2009) adds a Skype-esque component to the old app's VoIP calling component. Users with Vonage Mobile installed can make "high-definition" audio calls or SMS-type text messages over Wi-Fi and 3G to other Vonage Mobile...

More than fifty commercials aired during the Super Bowl this past Sunday, including one from Samsung that again poked fun at Apple's customers. Apple didn't run any ads during the Super Bowl, at least not officially -- a fact that puzzled some commentators. But, as investment guru Jim Cramer points out, Apple did have an advertisement of sorts air during the Super Bowl. After the game was...

Much has been made of the recent comment by Apple CEO Tim Cook that the Apple board of directors has been "actively discussing" what to do with its enormous cash pile. Some see it as a sign that Apple will soon pay a dividend or initiate a share buyback program -- except Apple's board has been discussing what to do with its cash for nearly 7 years. MacRumors went through Seeking Alpha's...

Late last year, Motorola Mobility requested Apple pay a potential royalty of 2.25% on its iPhone sales in recently unsealed litigation from last year. The royalty would amount to more than $1 billion in 2011 alone, though there is no indication which specific iPhone models would be covered by the license nor if it would be retroactive to the initial launch of the iPhone in 2007. The patents...

In December, an apparent bug appeared in Apple's iMessage service that allowed iMessages to be sent to a stolen iPhone. The messages can, apparently, continue to be sent and received from the stolen phone after a remote wipe and a SIM card deactivation. This is obviously an unintended action, and though Apple explains the solution to be "toggle iMessage on and off" in the Settings app, that is an ...

New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)'s sweetheart deal for Apple's just-opened Grand Central Terminal retail store seems to be paying dividends for the MTA and neighboring stores. One restaurant is reporting a 7 percent increase in sales since the store opened in December. Michael Jordan's The Steak House is located across the terminal from the new Apple Store, Grand...

Some iTunes Match users are encountering difficulties when attempting to download songs they have previously uploaded to iTunes Match. Matched songs appear unaffected for most users. Threads on both the MacRumors Forums and the Apple Support Communities detail the issues. I keep getting the "error = -2114" and "Please check that the connection to the network is active and try again." It then...

Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this week explained that new Apple's new Senior Vice President of Retail, John Browett, was hired not to "bring Dixons to Apple", but instead "to bring Apple to an even higher level of customer service and satisfaction." In the initial press release announcing the hire, Cook went even further, saying that "John shares that commitment [to customer service] like no one...

As the Mac becomes more popular, the arrival of A-List titles to the platform is beginning to become a more common occurrence. The latest top-shelf game to hit the Mac is Id Software's RAGE, which has gone live both on the >Mac App Store [Direct Link] and on publisher Aspyr's GameAgent online store. The game takes place more than 100 years after the impact of an asteroid destroys most life...

One year ago today, News Corp. launched its iPad-only newspaper called The Daily. It was the first app to take advantage of the "In-App Subscription" feature that Apple launched the same day. The Daily is available to subscribers for $0.99/week or $39.99/year and Mashable reports that the newspaper currently has more than 100,000 paid subscribers on the iPad alone. Rupert Murdoch, head of...

In December, an apparent bug appeared in Apple's iMessage service that allowed iMessages to be sent to a stolen iPhone. Earlier this week, Gizmodo reported that a customer who went to Apple's Genius Bar began receiving iMessages to and from the Genius who helped fix their phone. It appears that the Genius took his personal SIM card and inserted it into the customer's iPhone as part of a series ...