apple

Apple has shot up to sixth place in the Fortune 500, Fortune announced today.

The iPhone maker's strong showing in the Fortune 500 is a dramatic rise from its 17th-place ranking in 2012. In sixth place, Apple is the highest-ranking technology company in a list topped by Walmart. Major oil companies, including Exxon Mobil and Chevron, along with Berkshire Hathaway, separate Apple from the top spot.

Another notable mention -- Facebook has for the first time made the Fortune 500. The company was previously ranked 598, but this year, it was able to take the 482nd spot in Fortune'… Read more

Update at 11:15 p.m. PT: The iPad Mini will get a refresh in the third calendar quarter with a Retina display, NPD DisplaySearch predicted late Sunday.

This is an update to information that DisplaySearch provided earlier Sunday.

"We see two refreshes coming. One [with a Retina display] in the second half of this year, then one in Q1 [first quarter] of 2014," analyst Richard Shim told CNET late Sunday night.

"The Q1 [2014] device will have a Retina display plus an updated processor," Shim added.

Earlier Sunday night, NPD stated that the first iPad … Read more

"Did you hear that? I'm cool."

These are the words by which all parents will be greeted, the minute they exchange their iPhones for a Samsung Galaxy S4.

This is the conceit, at least, of one of the latest ads for Samsung's new Phone, which will launch from Monday.

Parents live for grains of approval from their upstart, self-righteously technological children.

Last Thursday, Samsung offered some chilling brutality in a graduation pool party ad that suggested all iPhone-owning parents were gormless social Neanderthals.

With these new ads, it wants them to know all hope of cool … Read more

Apple is good at addressing design oversights. Will Microsoft be as adept?

The Retina iPad, for example, violated Apple's design creed: products should get thinner and lighter -- aka, cooler. Not thicker and heavier.

But Apple fixed this quickly (six month later) with the iPad Mini trifecta: thinner, lighter, cheaper. And the iPad, reinvented as the Mini, has been a runaway success.

Now that Microsoft is in the business of making tablets, can it act fast when it commits product-design sins?

Surface is not a success -- yet. The Surface Pro is too big and heavy (and expensive), according … Read more

You thought it might be all over?

You thought that Samsung had tired of suggesting Apple was a fading brand for geriatrics?

You may also have thought that the world runs on Cabernet and common sense.

Yes, the Galaxy S4 was launched on a rocket of the beige and the tasteless. But those were just the corporate folks doing their thing.

Now, the American arm of Samsung has returned to its own style. This involves squishing Apple till it's cider.

Here we are at a high school graduation pool party presented by the latest Samsung ad.

The cooler people … Read more

Maybe it's time to hold off on the Apple negativity.

The iPhone franchise captured 39 percent of the U.S. smartphone market in the first quarter, extending its lead over Samsung, which garnered 21.7 percent of the market, according to research firm ComScore.

Interestingly, Apple's iOS took market share away from Google's Android, which traditionally has seen more rapid growth.

Apple saw its smartphone market share rise by nearly 3 percentage points in the quarter, while Samsung's share inched up slightly. The next three largest handset vendor, HTC, Motorola, and LG, all lost market share … Read more

A trade group that represents Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and several other device makers is pushing to change international rules to make it easier to ship broken mobile phones and other gadgets to developing nations.

The Information Technology Industry Council is suggesting the changes at this week's meeting of the Basel Convention, which oversees the international treaty intended to prevent international toxic waste dumping. The group is proposing new language in the treaty that could reduce the types of gadgets currently considered electronic waste.

The changes are esoteric shifts in what for most consumers is an obscure international document. But, according … Read more

An operational Apple-1 will go on the auction block later this month, and the rare computer is expected to fetch as much as $392,000.

The 37-year-old machine -- thought to be one of only six in working condition -- is expected to sell for between $261,000 and $392,000 at the current exchange rate, according to German auctioneer Breker, which is conducting the sale. As impressive as that range may sound, it's far off the record mark of $640,000 set last December for Apple's first production computer.

Constructed in 1976, the Apple-1 is one of … Read more

Just how much is Apple's new, six-part, $17 billion bond plan going to end up saving the company in taxes it would have needed to pay if it used its overseas cash pile?

Try $9.2 billion, says a senior vice president at Moody's Investors Service.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Moody's Gerald Granovsky said that's how much Apple's not going to pay in U.S. taxes as it pays out $55 billion of its $100 billion capital returns program.

To put the figure, which was first reported by the Financial Times (subscription required) late Wednesday, in … Read more