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The technology world spent this past week with its collective eyes glued to the Consumer Electronics Show. But there was a truckload of news in Apple land, including announcements that confirmed three high-profile rumors.

Amid the product unveilings going on at CES in Las Vegas, Apple quietly sent out invites to an education-related event that it's holding next week in New York. That matched up with rumors from last week claiming the company was gearing up for an event across the country from its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters.

That confirmation was joined by two others. Target confirmed that it was, … Read more

The Apple rumor mill went into high gear this week, with reports of multiple iPads, giant televisions, and mystery events later in the month.

One tidbit of official news is that the company is planning to bring the iPhone 4S to China and 21 other countries next week. The move, which was expected, should give the 4S a healthy sales boost considering that China has become a top market for smartphones. In Apple's most recently reported quarterly earnings, Greater China came in second (behind North America) on the company's list of top revenue-generation regions.

You can read more … Read more

Were you one of the lucky ones on vacation this week? Then you might have missed a story or two. We've got you covered in this week's edition of Apple Talk Weekly.

The big news this week was numbers from last week's Christmas holiday. A research report from Flurry Analytics glommed together Android and iOS devices activated on Christmas day, noting that the combined number of 6.8 million devices was up 353 percent from the rest of the month, and 140 percent from the same day last year.

Making matters more interesting was a tweet a … Read more

Welcome back to Apple Talk Weekly. We're back from hiatus with a weekly dose of the top Apple news and rumors.

Despite the holiday season being in full bore, it's been a busy week for Apple, starting with a win against HTC in its complaint to the International Trade Commission. That was followed shortly thereafter by the apparently successful purchase of an Israeli memory chipmaker, and another legal volley against Samsung in an Australian court.

There were, of course, other goings-on, like some changes to the iTunes store, talk of "prototype" Apple retail stores, and a … Read more

Not everyone is on Facebook, but it sure seems that way sometimes; the site certainly has more members than any other social networking site in history. Among Facebook's many options for staying connected is its chat feature, which is popular with many users. But what if you want to chat with Facebook friends without being tethered to the Facebook Web page? Try fTalk. This slick chat client lets you log into your Facebook account and chat with your friends without even having your browser open.

We got off to a rough start with fTalk, as it immediately crashed the … Read more

The way I see it, the demographic of buyers for the Kyocera DuraCore is rather slim.

Rugged, it absolutely is, but it's also rather plain. It has a thick, sturdy build, a good, grippy surface, and is the third phone to ride on Sprint's new Direct Connect network. However, if you're looking for a durable device with a camera, a microSD card slot, and even more ruggedness, the Kyocera DuraMax will be more your speed. If it's a basic, durable phone you want for just making calls, stick with the more affordable DuraCore.

Watch the video, … Read more

Apple took this week off as a company holiday, but that doesn't mean things stood still.

The week kicked off with a rumor that Apple was planning to open up its Grand Central Terminal retail store in New York in time for Black Friday, but that deadline came and passed. Not all was uneventful though--Apple put up a sign confirming that the store was "arriving soon."

The space is more than 23,000 square feet and stretches between two balconies. By comparison, Apple's Regent Street store in London is 25,000 square feet, 22,000 square … Read more

This week iTunes got a little more Web savvy with a feature designed to clean up and beam up your music library with a little help from the cloud.

iTunes Match, which Apple originally promised to ship by the end of last month, went out to users as part of a software update this week. It stores music tracks in the cloud, and makes them available on any device with iTunes. It can also tidy up old collections of ripped CDs with high-quality versions from Apple's music store.

The $24.99-a-year service is a big step in bringing user … Read more

Apple surprised users this week by delivering its battery-life-fixing update to iOS 5 sooner than expected. But complaints about the problem continued.

The update arrived a little more than a week after Apple first acknowledged that some users were, in fact, running into problems with battery life after upgrading to the newer version of iOS. Apple then promised to deliver a software update to fix the issue, which the company said would be here "in a few weeks."

Instead, the update came just eight days later, on both iTunes and as the first over-the-air update on devices--a feature … Read more