new york

iPad Mini sells out quickly at Apple's top NYC store

While Apple is expected to sell far less iPads this weekend than it did with its tablet launch earlier this year, one of the company's major stores is already sold out.

Apple's "cube" store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, sold out of both iPad Mini models in about two hours. The white model sold out first, analyst Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets wrote in a note this morning, followed about an hour later by the black.

"We believe these early stock outs are driven by the combination of strong demand, combined with … Read more

Verizon: Land-line, cable repairs could take two weeks

Verizon warned that some homes may not get service for another two weeks as the company scrambles to get Internet, phone, and television up and running for customers devastated by Hurricane Sandy.

A company representative warned that the two-week figure represents a "worst-case scenario," and that some customers may get service back up in a few days. On Thursday, it was still working to pump water out of its central offices, according to Reuters.

The service outage isn't related to Verizon's wireless arm, which has held up relatively well in the aftermath of the storm.

Sandy … Read more

iPad Mini launches in Sandy's wake: CNET's live coverage

For the Apple faithful in the East Coast, the iPad Mini couldn't have come at a worse time.

Apple's newest tablet, the smaller 7.9-inch sibling to the larger 9.7-inch iPad, launched today, just days after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast and left millions without power and many others without water or access to public transportation.

Sandy's damage forced the closure of most shops in Lower Manhattan, including Apple's SoHo and West 14th Street stores. Both cited the extreme weather and posted signs that they were closed until "conditions improve."

CNET's … Read more

Storm surge: Uber just doubled car service pricing in NYC

New Yorkers already are having a tough time getting around in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, but Uber just made it a little harder, at least on the wallet.

The company, which provides an app for locating and booking car service, says today that it has reinstated "Surge Pricing" in the city. Basically what that means is car drivers can charge astronomical fees to shuttle riders around. Yesterday, that would have been about double the normal fare, based on what Uber ended up paying drivers.

In New York, where public transportation has been hobbled by the natural disaster, … Read more

FDNY to NYC: Please don't tweet for help

PLEASE NOTE: *Do not* tweet emergency calls. Please call 911. If it is not an emergency, please call 311. #NYC #Sandy

-- FDNY (@FDNY) October 30, 2012

With New York City inundated by Hurricane Sandy-driven storm surge, heavy winds, and emergencies throughout town, the FDNY is pleading with people not to use Twitter to call for help.

"PLEASE NOTE: *Do not* tweet emergency calls. Please call 911. If it is not an emergency, please call 311," the FDNY tweeted at 9:32 p.m. ET as the massive storm roared through the city.

It's not that … Read more

Sandy is a disaster, but these photos are ridiculous

As almost everyone knows, Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on the East Coast, and when all is said and done, its likely to leave a wide, expensive, and potentially fatal path of destruction in its wake. Yet despite a massive number of legitimate photos of the storm being uploaded to every social network you can think of -- including 10 a second to Instagram -- a number of sensational photos seem to be dominating the conversation.

The photos show incredible images like the eye of the hurricane floating over the top of the Statue of Liberty. Or of a very … Read more

Hurricane Sandy blows down paywalls at NY Times, WSJ

Two major publications have stripped away their paywalls to give consumers unfettered access to up-to-date information on the arrival of Hurricane Sandy.

The New York Times removed its usual paywall on Sunday evening for both its Web site and its apps. Spokesperson Eileen Murphy told Poynter:

The gateway has been removed from the entire site and all apps. The plan is to keep it that way until the weather emergency is over.

The paywall -- which typically prevents users from viewing more than 10 articles for free each month -- has occasionally been removed in the past, when the situation … Read more

Hurricane Sandy: Keeping tabs online

Grocery store shelves have been cleaned out, generators have been fueled up, and cell phone chargers are surely already running hot -- there's a massive hurricane coming to town.

Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on the mid-Atlantic region amid all the usual warnings of potential power outages, flooding, damage to property, and other disruptions to business operations and the day-to-day lives of millions of people. Residents up and down the U.S. East Coast are bracing to be pummeled and hoping that it all turns out to be more bluster than actual damage.

In anticipation of the Category 1 hurricane, … Read more

Blockish 'Jenga building' going up in New York

How would you like to live in a puzzle in the sky? How about right on top of Manhattan?

After a long delay, a rather puzzling 60-story condo building in New York's Tribeca district could soon start becoming a reality. It's made up of a pile of stacked residential units, a design that earned it the nickname "the Jenga Building" after the 1980s game of wooden blocks. … Read more

iPhone 5 call quality testing, compared across carriers

How good is the iPhone 5's call quality, and most importantly, how it does it compare across carriers? We addressed some of the iPhone 5's call quality in our CNET review and follow-up stories, but let's take a listen to the Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T models side-by-side. Is there a difference in audio quality?

For our quick test, I made phone calls from the same street corner in New York to Brian Bennett upstairs, using all three carrier models both against my ear and held several feet away from me in speakerphone mode. I also made test calls from the same location on all three models to our San Francisco office's voice-quality-testing voice mail drop. For comparison purposes, I also threw in my AT&T iPhone 4S in all instances to see how it fared. … Read more