Gadgets

Note: I wrote this article before pre-ordering kicked in, and I got an entirely new story when I called AT&T today around 9:30 a.m. PT. I was told I could do an early upgrade on my iPhone 4S for an extra $250 fee on top of the two-year contract price, so that a base model 16GB version would be $450 total.

I was transferred from the initial customer service rep who told me this to an "upgrade specialist" after over an hour wait (so be forewarned, if you try today). At first, she … Read more

Like clockwork, Apple never fails to refresh its iPod lineup every fall. In recent years, though, one can't help but notice that the ritualized iPod unveiling has lost some of its gusto compared with the fanfare surrounding the iPhone and iPad.

Still, Apple remains the top manufacturer of portable media players. Those of us old enough to remember the "iPod wars" that occurred nearly a decade ago can attest to the fact that Apple's tenacity in making the world's most popular MP3 player laid the groundwork for the success of the iPhone (pour one out for the Zune, friends). Apple may have moved on to bigger, better products, but maintaining its dominance in the diminishing world of MP3 players is just good housekeeping.

And so, the 2012 Apple iPod lineup offers a mix of new and old.… Read more

Hot off the heels of Motorola, Nokia, and Apple's phone press conferences, LG will host its own spectacle set for September 19 in New York. LG will also team up with chipmaker Qualcomm to put on the show and flamboyantly invites us to, "Live without boundaries." … Read more

Refrigerators have always been the hub of the kitchen. Considering that is where all the food lives, it only makes sense. However, there is another aspect of the big appliance that draws constant attention, and that would be the refrigerator door. Sure, the door is where all the fun easy-access items such as condiments reside, but there is another side to the story: the outside.

As a wide-open plain, the outside of the refrigerator door is a perfect area for personalization. Long the center for communication, refrigerators have more recently upped the ante by including Wi-Fi-enabled touch screens (such as … Read more

I think it's fair to say that the iPod is the most important product Apple ever made. It marked the tipping point between Apple's history as a computer manufacturer and its shift toward mobile consumer electronics. Without it, there would be no iTunes, no iPhone, no iPad -- none of the things people think of when they think of Apple today.

Which is not to say that the iPod is still an important part of Apple's bottom line. It could ax the iPod's whole division and still make more money from the iPhone and iPad than … Read more

Tovbot, a startup that wants a future full of personal robotic assistants, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Shimi, which is auditioning to be your own personal robotic DJ.

The robot -- created by roboticists from Georgia Tech, MIT, and IDC -- takes advantage of smartphone technology to play music and pick songs based on your taste or mood.

It's essentially a cute, shiny dancing robot that performs a Pandora-like service and costs $199 (unless you help fund it through Kickstarter -- it's going for as low as $129 there).

"We want it to be your little musical companion," co-founder Gil Weinberg said at TechCrunch Disrupt today during the conference's startup battlefield segment. … Read more

Apparently Samsung's unique Galaxy Note II is slated to arrive on Verizon. If a report is accurate, not only will the big-screened, pen-toting gadget boast 4G LTE data but also Samsung's quad-core Exynos processor. It'll be the first time a Galaxy Note has been scooped up by Big Red as well. … Read more

The biggest game changer from Amazon's Kindle Fire announcement yesterday wasn't the pricing, dual WiFi antennas or Dolby Digital Plus sound. Rather, it was that Amazon became the first major tablet maker to allow different people to have their own accounts on the same device.

Think how commonplace this is for traditional personal computers. Mac or Windows, both platforms allow multiple people to use the same machine, logging in with different accounts that are linked to their own settings, data, applications and perhaps even special restrictions. But for tablets, it's been the dark ages.

I've found … Read more

Mobile is the future, and nobody wants to be left behind, because losing would mean certain death.

The iPhone accounts for a whopping $150 billion of Apple's revenues over the last five years. Google spent $12.5 billion in order to acquire Motorola. Microsoft and Nokia have finally built a flagship Windows phone (though they seriously need to fire whoever named it).

Amazon is the company everyone should be watching in this space, though. The online retailer first struck gold with the Kindle e-reader in 2007. A few years later, Amazon decided that Apple and Google needed some competition … Read more