T-Mobile lures gadget addicts with new upgrade plan
Culture
T-Mobile is spicing things up.
I'm Bridget Carey and this is your CNET Update.
If you're someone who can't wait to buy that new phone, T-Mobile is hoping to lure you in with a new upgrade program called Jump.
For $10 a month, customers can upgrade a phone twice a year by paying the same amount for a new phone that a new customer would pay.
No need to wait for 2 years to get that big discounted upgrade price, which is the case for other
carriers.
The program also acts as insurance to protect against damage or theft.
A Federal judge has found Apple guilty of conspiring with book publishers to raise the retail prices of electronic books.
The U.S. Department of Justice accused Apple of colluding with five publishers to artificially raise the price of e-books back when the iPad was about to launch.
The case claimed that all publishers were pricing their bestsellers in Apple's Bookstore at $13 or $15 but Amazon was selling e-books for $10.
So, publishers were withholding their books from Amazon until the prices were raised.
And Apple denies that it was colluding to fix the prices and it will appeal the verdict.
Only Apple went to trial over this because all the other publishers settled at court.
The next step is to have another trial to determine the damages that Apple will have to pay.
This will include not only change the way books are sold online but it also could change the future deals that are made for other digital media like music and television programming.
Google just launched the new Google Map's app for Android
users.
If you look up the location of a restaurant, you'll see reviews.
Look up a store, you'll see coupons.
A new explore menu which you'll discover a new place to visit based on different categories.
It's a copy of what Foursquare does.
If there's a traffic problem ahead, you'll be alerted to take a new route mid-travel but there are some features being removed.
Latitude and check-ins are going away.
Instead, if you wanna see your friends and family pop up on a map, they'll have to use their Google Plus accounts to show location.
To save a map offline, you'll have to now
type in the phrase "Okay Maps" into the search box.
And if you want to create your own custom map, well, sorry, you'll have to wait for that to be added in a future update.
All these changes are also coming soon for iOS.
Xbox gamers could be paying more for games when Microsoft decides to ditch the point system for real world money in Xbox Live.
Some people in the UK are beta testing the switch over and they are noticing games are costing slightly more.
For example, games that were listed for 1200 points came out to cost about
ten pounds in the UK, and now those games are listed for 12 pounds.
It's just a beta test.
So, things can change but maybe you'll want to spend up those points now before everything is converted to get the most bank for your buck.
That's your tech news update.
You could find more details at cnet.com/update.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
