apple iphone

Report: Chinese students forced to 'intern' at iPhone factory

Students from a university in Huai'an, Jiangsu Province, allegedly have been forced to do assembly work at a Foxconn plant under the guise of internships, according to the Shanghai Daily.

The newspaper reports that 200 students were driven to a factory run by Foxconn after the company experienced a labor shortage ahead of Apple's anticipated new iPhone, which is likely to be revealed at a September 12 press event.

Citing a student from the Huai'an Institute of Technology under the online alias MengniuIQ84, the publication writes that after working on production lines, each student was paid 1,… Read more

Sharp mortgages iPhone screen factory, Japanese plants and offices

Electronics maker Sharp has mortgaged almost all of its domestic offices and factories in order to stay in business.

The properties were offered as collateral for up to 150 billion yen ($1.92 billion) of credit from Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, according to Reuters.

Company spokeswoman Miyuki Nakayama told Reuters the offering includes "almost all the business sites owned by Sharp in Japan."

Sharp operates 11 factories in Japan that make products including display screens, TVs and solar panels. The Kameyama plant in western Japan manufactures screens for Apple and is thought to have … Read more

Apple's iPhone 4S drops to $149 with Sprint

Apple fans may be quick to read into this: over the weekend, Sprint dropped the price of its iPhone 4S from $199 to $149.

Could this be in anticipation of the iPhone 5?

Sprint's $50 price cut, first reported on by AllThingsD, comes before competing carriers have dropped their prices. AT&T's iPhone 4S is still $199, as is Verizon's.

According to AllThingsD, rumor has it that the price slash is a Sprint promotion but with Apple's approval. A spokesperson for the carrier told CNET that the price drop is simply a back-to-school promotion.

Apple … Read more

A miss: Apple sells 26 million iPhones in third quarter

Update: 3:10 p.m. PT.

Apple sold 26 million iPhones in its third quarter, the company announced today, coming in slightly below what analysts had expected.

The number of iPhones sold grew 28 percent year-over-year. The company's other revenue came from 17 million iPads -- an 84 percent increase -- and 4 million Macs, a 2 percent increase. All sales amount to $35 billion in revenue total.

Apple is clearly celebrating the incredible growth in iPad sales and not highlighting its iPhone sales. Analysts predicted that Apple would sell 29 million iPhones, down from its numbers for the … Read more

Yep, Apple owns iPhone5.com now

If there were any lingering doubts that Apple sought to control the iPhone5.com domain, a recently updated domain record shows that that's exactly what happened.

The Whois database record for iPhone5.com, updated on May 21, now shows "Apple Inc." as its registrant, with registered servers that go back to Apple.com. Even so, the site continues to not go anywhere.

The move comes a week after the closure of an investigation by The World Intellectual Property Organization regarding the domain name. Apple had taken aim at an Internet forum site residing at iPhone5.com, which … Read more

Rumor Has It, Ep. 7: You can't fight the quad core (podcast)

Karyne may be up a point on the Rumor board, but I'm winning where it actually counts: on Twitter.

As of this writing, I have 232 followers and Karyne has 223.

OK, you can stop laughing now.

We realize, of course, that those numbers are embarrassingly low. So follow us, guys! (@EmilyDreyfuss, @karynelevy, @RumorShow.) Our new high-stakes side bet is who can get to 500 first. Maybe the lucky 500th follower of the winner will get a prize!

The rumors on today's show are of the spiciest variety: sightings of the first quad-core phone (which some people really don't want); two new iPads in 2012; all-new Apple products next year (huzzah); and Siri may ruin my life by coming to old iOS devices. … Read more

SF police confirm search for lost, unreleased iPhone

San Francisco police have confirmed that they "assisted" Apple internal security in a recent search of a home, which CNET was the first to report earlier this week was aimed at finding an unreleased iPhone owned by the company.

"Apple came to us saying that they were looking for a lost item," San Francisco Police Department spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield said, according to a report this afternoon by SF Weekly.

Sergio Calderón, who lives in the city's Bernal Heights neighborhood, told the paper that about six people who looked like police showed up … Read more

Apple loses another unreleased iPhone (exclusive)

In a bizarre repeat of a high-profile incident last year, an Apple employee once again appears to have lost an unreleased iPhone in a bar, CNET has learned.

The errant iPhone, which went missing in San Francisco's Mission district in late July, sparked a scramble by Apple security to recover the device over the next few days, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

Last year, an iPhone 4 prototype was bought by a gadget blog that paid $5,000 in cash. This year's lost phone seems to have taken a more mundane path: it was taken … Read more

Why Apple is the master craftsman

Whatever you may think about Apple, there is no denying that it continues to set new standards for its craft. Craft? Yes, that seemingly old-fashioned word that many confine to quilting, scrap-booking, and other pursuits often disparagingly categorized as women's activities. My alma mater, the California College of the Arts, dropped the word craft from its name years ago, feeling that it was dragging the image of the school down. But craft as a concept has made something of a comeback in recent years, and no company in the mass-production realm is doing it better than Apple.

That's … Read more