apple

Apple has the third week of January all to itself this year, and although it probably won't top last year's Macworld, the company will likely make everyone forget about the Consumer Electronics Show.

Trade shows are a necessary evil in the tech industry. Everyone claims to hate them, but the opportunity to have all the major players in the same town at the same time is too much of a draw. And usually, the parties are decent, leading more than 140,000 business types to CES in Las Vegas this week for a chance to make deals and … Read more

With the new year under way and the holidays on the back burner, CNET's first big coverage extravaganza of 2008 was CES. The annual Consumer Electronics Show, which runs through the end of this week, was predictably brimming with cool gadgets and new technology. Many of our editors were on hand to give their take on all the sleek new products. Check out our extensive coverage of CES here. Though I was jealous to see all of the cool new items coming out of Las Vegas while I remained in San Francisco, I knew the next week would be … Read more

It's a full hand of cards for Amazon: the Web's mega-retailer announced Thursday that it will be selling music from Sony BMG Music Entertainment in its Amazon MP3 store. This means that Amazon MP3, which only sells "naked" tracks without any digital rights management (DRM) protection, now has deals with all four major music labels. Because of the lack of copy protection, any song from Amazon MP3 can play on virtually any media-playing device, from PCs to music players to cell phones and PDAs.

The DRM-free songs from Sony BMG will be available for purchase on … Read more

According to an Apple statement sent out yesterday, Apple will equalize the price of music on its iTunes Stores across Europe within the next six months.

It seems the peeps at Which? weren't satisfied that us Brits were being charged more for music in iTunes than the rest of Europe, so they filed a formal complaint with the U.K.'s Office of Fair Trading, which then contacted the European Commission, which started antitrust proceedings. Apple's decision has satisfied the EC, which will take no further action.

At the moment you have to pay 79 pence (about $1.… Read more

The Macworld Expo starts Tuesday, and I'm sure there are countless people out there who simply don't know what to do with themselves in those long hours until Steve Jobs steps onstage at Moscone Center in San Francisco.

As I sat at my desk this afternoon, pondering my next few days, an e-mail came across about free passes to the show, and for reasons that I can't fully explain, it got me writing a little bit of Macworld haiku.

Sure, it's silly, but then, so what.

So I thought I'd offer mine up and give … Read more

Apple's store-within-a-store partnership with Best Buy is going to expand this year, according to Best Buy executives.

So says UBS analyst Ben Reitzes, who met with Best Buy during the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas. Best Buy wants to have Macs inside 500 of its stores by February of next year, up from around 270 stores at present. The Blue Shirts already sell iPods in about 900 stores, but the Mac operation is a little different.

Best Buy allows Apple to set up its own retail space within its stores in an attempt to re-create the … Read more

In a recent interview with Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bill Gates was asked about the future and whether or not his company will ever release a a proper competitor to the iPhone.

"No, we won't do that. In the so-called smart phone business we will concentrate solely on software with our Windows Mobile program," Gates said.

"We have partnerships with a lot of device manufacturers from Samsung to Motorola and this variety brings us significantly more than if we would make our own mobile phone," he added.

And with one fell swoop, the founder of Microsoft finally told the world that a Zune Phone or some other Microsoft toy won't be coming to fruition. And while I can't say that I know the exact reason why Bill and company doesn't want to compete with the iPhone, I can see about three reasons why he has decided against it.… Read more

The iPhone is already in China: I saw one for sale today, and a friend really should call me more often from one. But Marbridge Daily is onto a story in the Southern Metropolitan News reporting that the iPhone will be on sale in China by the second quarter of 2008.

I'm not able to find the original article right now, but Marbridge's blurb says the source is Lin Ronghui, vice president of iTell. Lin apparently said the phone will be selling for about RMB 4,000, considerably less than the unlocked street prices I've seen, and … Read more