Jordan Golson

Earlier this week, Tim Cook announced the hiring of John Browett to replace Ron Johnson as the Senior Vice President of Retail at Apple. After spending more than 10 years at Apple, building the world's most successful retail chain from scratch, Johnson was appointed CEO at JC Penney with the difficult task of turning around one of the country's most well-known department stores. Johnson...

While most USB-charged Apple products like the iPhone and iPad come with a USB charging cable in the box, there is a thriving third-party market for these easily lost accessories. Dexim's $20 Visible Green USB-Dock Connector cables have a distinctive twist: they use electroluminescence to "visibly show the electrical current flowing through the cable". Completing the illusion is the fact that...

Launched in beta last week, Valve has opened up its Steam iPhone companion app to all users. The app allows Steam users to view their Steam friends list, see what games their friends are playing, and chat with players in-game. Gamers can also browse and purchase from the Steam library of titles from the iPhone, to play later on a PC or Mac. However, there is no purchasing of iOS games...

Sir Benfro's Brilliant Balloon is a one-button side-scroller in the vein of the Helicopter Game or Jetpack Joyride, but with its own unique twist. Players take control of Sir Benfro and his balloon as they explore strange and fantastic worlds filled with weird creatures, complete with wonderful sound effects and soundtrack. Travel with inquisitive explorer Sir Benfro as he flies through...

NASA, the U.S. space agency has released a new iOS game called Sector 33. The educational title aims to teach youngsters math and reasoning skills as they act the role of an air traffic controller in charge of ATC Sector 33 as they guide planes to San Francisco International Airport from the East over California and Nevada. Players adjust multiple planes' path and speed to safely reach a...

Apple has released updates to its Wi-Fi base stations and to the Airport Utility program that controls them. AirPort Utility 6.0 for Mac OS X Lion weighs in at 14.13MB and requires Mac OS X 10.7.2. The user interface has been redesigned to look more like the iOS Airport Utility application available through the App Store for the iPhone and iPad. It is also streamlined, with fewer windows...

The iPhone's glass screen may be made of Corning's advanced Gorilla Glass, but, contrary to Steve Jobs' assertion, that doesn't mean it is scratch proof. Many products exist to solve this problem, including ZAGG's InvisiShield or rugged cases like Otterbox's Defender. Both solutions work well, but the feel of screen protector films bother some users, and though the Otterbox solidly protects the...

In the early 90's, a small software company called Callisto Corporation released a number of games for the Macintosh, along with a few other productivity applications. One of those games was Spin Doctor, which some long-ago Mac Performa owners may remember because Apple licensed a 10-level Spin Doctor Challenger edition for bundling with "about a million" Performas, according to developer Seth...

One of the biggest issues with the iPhone, especially amongst those who live in colder climes, is the tricky question of how best to answer the phone while wearing gloves. Hip-Hop producer Will.I.Am noted on the car show Top Gear that he wears fingerless gloves in order to use all his touchscreen devices, and claimed that capacitive touch gloves weren't fashionable. Fashionable or not, a...

Three months after the iPhone arrived on Sprint, the carrier has launched an app allowing customers easy access to their account and to iPhone and Sprint customer support information. In the US, AT&T and Verizon, the other two iPhone carriers, both have existing account management apps. They all work similarly, allowing customers to pay their bill, track usage, and get contact information for ...

Intuit has begun offering its entry-level financial management software Quicken Essentials for Mac on the Mac App Store. This is the standard edition of Essentials that has been on sale for quite a while, not a new version -- something Intuit is quick to point out in the description for the software. It's merely a new distribution point. Quicken Essentials for Mac, a basic starter edition,...

U.S. carrier T-Mobile has decided to offer "additional support" to customers using the iPhone on its network, reports TmoNews. While T-Mobile doesn't sell the iPhone, it reports that more than 1 million unlocked iPhones are used on its network and the additional support will be useful to T-Mobile's less tech-savvy iPhone users. T-Mobile will support users who have questions about "common...

A U.S. District Judge has ruled that an anti-trust case filed against a number of tech companies can continue, saying "they still have an antitrust claim" according to Bloomberg. [Judge] Koh didn’t take issue with the allegations about the agreements between individual companies, Joseph Saveri, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an interview after the hearing. Instead, Koh has questions...

Valve, the company behind the popular gaming platform Steam, has released a new companion app for iPhone called Steam Mobile as a closed beta. The app allows Steam users to view their Steam friends list, see what games their friends are playing, and chat with players in-game. Gamers can also browse -- and apparently purchase, though the app descriptions are a little fuzzy on that point -- the...

Earlier this week, Apple reported its best quarterly earnings ever, taking in more than $46 billion over three months. 53% of that revenue was from the sale of 37 million iPhones, at an average selling price of nearly $660. This ASP is particularly impressive, considering this is the first quarter that Apple has sold a "free" iPhone in the U.S. -- the iPhone 3GS is available for free to new...

One of Tim Cook's first acts when he became CEO of Apple was to institute a charitable matching program for employees. Under the program, Apple would match employees' personal contributions to 501(c)(3) charitable organizations up to $10,000 per year. However, the program initially only applied to US-based full-time employees. Now, it seems Apple has expanded the program to include part-time...

In what seems like a logical result of economic pricing strategies, iPhone app developers who put their apps on sale see an average increase in revenue of 41% on the first day, and total increases of 22% after 15 days. App store analytics provider Distimo shared the findings in a new research report. TechCrunch writes: When a developer decides to put an application on sale, there’s a...

Motorola Mobility has filed a new lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida against Apple, asserting six patents against the iPhone 4S and iCloud. As noted by FOSS Patents, the merger agreement between Google and Motorola Mobility requires the company to get Google's permission before asserting "any Intellectual Property Right in any new Action". As a result, this lawsuit is the closest Apple...

British actor and Apple enthusiast Stephen Fry has narrated this in-depth and iPad-only virtual encyclopedia called Inside the World of Dinosaurs. In the works for more than a year, 30 dinosaur specialists collaborated on the $13.99 app, with 60 dinosaurs detailed, 200 pages of original text, 84 videos, and, perhaps most enjoyably for many, 5 hours of narration by Stephen Fry. The art team...

Contrary to some reports, Apple CEO Tim Cook said today that the company hadn't seen any slowdown in iPad sales following the introduction of the much-hyped Kindle Fire tablet. When asked by an analyst during today's quarterly earnings call about the impact on the iPad from lower priced tablets, Cook noted that the company sold a record 15.4 million iPads and that Apple doesn't consider...