Amazon to update Kindle Fire software
Amazon to update Kindle Fire software
2:48

Amazon to update Kindle Fire software

Culture
It's Monday, December 12th, 2011. I'm Wilson Tang on CNET. com and it's time to get loaded. Amazon's Kinder Fire was released to great demand a few weeks ago. According to he online retailer, the Fire was the most successful product it has ever launched, but enthusiasm for the Fire maybe waning. User and professional reviews across the web are panning the user interface in awkward button placement or just lack of buttons altogether. In the face of turning opinion, Amazon has declared that it will be releasing an update in the next two weeks that promised to improve performance across the board and fix some outstanding user interface issues. Still for just $200, we can't help but feel that the Fire is still a steal. Speaking of low priced tablets, HP restarted its touch pad Fire sale this Sunday night at 7 PM Eastern and unit sold out within minutes. The 16-gig byte touchpad sold for just a under $100, while the 32 gigabyte version sold for $150. The original WebOS tablet from HP may have failed, but that doesn't meant that the operating system is dead. After weeks of speculation, HP's new CEO, Meg Whitman announced on Friday that it will be opened sourcing WebOS. The move while a dramatic change considering HP bought software and company for $1.2 billion was viewed by many as the safest way for HP to capitalize on some of the developer and tech enthusiasts love for WebOS. The company however says, don't expect any new WebOS products to be available in 2012. In more mobileOS news, Google has updated the web version of its Android market with new sorting and display options that hopefully will help with the app buyers find better apps. Each review will now display the mobile device that it was reviewed on and users can surf reviews by helpfulness, date or rating. The new features haven't made their into the Android market app yet though. In more app news, Apple announced that the Mac App Stores officially surpass the 100 million download mark. The PC software app store is available only on Mac Store 10 versions Snow Leopard and Lion and while 100 million apps sounds like a lot, keep in mind that Apple recently reported that the mobile IOS average 1 billion monthly downloads and over 18 billion apps have been downloaded since its launched in 2008. Finally, in some industry news. Companies and analyst are sending positive reports about parts of the industry while reports don't look so cheery. First, the bad news, due to the flooding in Thailand, Intel is forecasting that it will take a hit to its business by a billions dollars because of the hard drive shortage. In the meantime, Samsung reports that it believes it will sell 300 million handsets and Apple's MacBook Air is expected to be the top ultra ultrabook of the season. Both sets of devices do not use hard drives. Those are our headlines for today, I'm Wilson Tang for CNET.com and you've just been loaded.

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