Apple sells 5 million iPhone 5 phones in first weekend

Apple sold more than 5 million iPhone 5 phones since the highly anticipated device went on sale on Friday, setting a new sales record for the device, Apple announced Monday.

Over the weekend, the company outpaced the 4 million iPhone 4S units that it sold during last year's opening weekend, though the numbers are a bit skewed. This year's iPhone was simultaneously launched in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom, while last year's launch did not include Hong Kong and Singapore.

Investors viewed the iPhone 5's opening weekend as somewhat of a disappointment. Wall Street analystshad anticipated a slightly more robust opening weekend, with most projections in the 6 million range.

Shares of Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) fell by more than 1% by then end of trading on Monday.

Click here to continue reading: http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/24/technology/apple-iphone-5-sales/index.html

Best time to trade in your iPhone is ... now

Rumors are rampant that Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) will announce the iPhone 5 on September 12, with a release date soon after that. But if you want to offset the cost of your new phone by scoring the highest value possible for your old one, trade-in experts say you'll need to lock in your trade now -- before everyone else gets the same idea.

"We always get a rush of people who wait to get a quote until they have the new [iPhone] in their hands," said Jeff Trachsel, the chief marketing officer for trade-in serviceNextWorth. "But as the volume increases, the value of your phone declines."

Trading in now will help you avoid that rush and score more cash. Most trade-in services simply ask for you details about your device, like its storage size and condition, and offer up a price that's guaranteed for 3 weeks to a month. In turn, the companies typically refurbish and resell the devices.

Smart traders play arbitrage: Lock in a price now, then wait until you have the new phone in hand to actually send in your old model.

Old iPhones hold their value remarkably well. At NextWorth, a 16 GB iPhone 4S in good condition currently fetches $274. Rival site Gazelle is offering $277 for an AT&T phone or $260 for a Verizon or Sprint device.

Go one model older, to the iPhone 4, and you can fetch $175 at NextWorth for an AT&T phone or $162 for a Verizon phone. Gazelle will pay $160 to $165.

Click here to continue reading: http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/20/technology/iphone-trade/index.html?iid=HP_LN&hpt=te_t1

Apple account hack raises concern about cloud storage

On Friday night, Wired technology journalist Mat Honan was brutally hacked. In a chain of events that Honan would unravel in the following days, hackers took advantage of security holes at Amazon and Apple to gain access to his iCloud account. They then took over his Gmail account, remotely wiped all data from his MacBook Air, iPhone and iPad, and took over his Twitter account as well as the Twitter account of his former employer, Gizmodo.

The incident might seem small on its surface -- just one person's information, not a huge data breach of credit card numbers. But this one very public incident, thoroughly documented by Honan in a Wired article, could be a wake-up call to many who store their information with cloud-based services, including Amazon, Apple and Google.

"My experience leads me to believe that cloud-based systems need fundamentally different security measures," said Honan. "Password-based security mechanisms — which can be cracked, reset and socially engineered — no longer suffice in the era of cloud computing."

The hackers used fairly basic techniques to accomplish the hack. They found Honan's home address and e-mail address online, and after some back and forth with Amazon tech support, used it to get the last four digits of Honan's credit card number. They called Apple customer support pretending to be Honan and used those four numbers along with same billing address to verify his identity, gaining access to Honan's iCloud account and the associated .Me account. The .Me account was Honan's backup e-mail for his Gmail account. Once they were in his Gmail, the hackers could reset passwords for all the key accounts that used Gmail, including Twitter accounts.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/06/tech/mobile/icloud-security-hack/index.html

Facebook earnings: Good, but not good enough

 Facebook's shares plummeted to all-time lows in after hours trading after the company's first quarterly earnings report failed to wow investors.

Shares of Facebook (FB) fell more than 10% to around $24 -- nearly 40% below the company's initial public offering price.

Facebook did beat analysts' revenues expectations slightly and earnings matched forecasts, but that was apparently not enough for Wall Street.

Behind the numbers: Facebook is still posting strong growth. It generated $1.18 billion in second quarter revenues, up 32% from a year ago.

Related: Facebook analyst: Sell to buy in 2 months

And while Facebook reported a net loss of $157 million due mainly to $1.3 billion in compensation expenses tied to stock-based pay following the IPO, the company did generate a profit of 12 cents per share when excluding those costs.

Analysts were expecting sales of $1.15 billion and earnings (backing out the compensation charges) of 12 cents per share.

Zuckerberg addresses concerns: CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the company's investment in research and development as a positive.

"Our goal is to help every person stay connected and every product they use be a great social experience," Zuckerberg said in a release. "That's why we're so focused on investing in our priorities of mobile, platform and social ads to help people have these experiences with their friends."

Click here to continue reading: http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/26/technology/facebook-earnings/index.htm

The myth of the 'drunk phone'

Some young adults are so fond of their expensive smartphones that they take a cheaper backup phone with them to bars and leave their fancier phones at home where they are safe from spilled vodka tonics, pickpockets and uncoordinated drunk people.

That's according to consumer-behavior expert Laura Krajecki of the Starcom MediaVest Group, who stumbled upon the trend while researching beer and shared it with AdAge. "They take what they call their 'drunk phone' ... because they don't want to lose their smartphone," she said.

CNN's independent research yielded different results, however.

An exhausting, though hardly exhaustive, survey of bar patrons in San Francisco this past weekend turned up zero people who had opted to carry a beater phone out with them on a night of drinking. Nor did any interview subjects know other people who had ever done such a thing.

But as seasoned bartender Jerome Bishop put it, "I've never heard of anybody doing that, but it doesn't mean they don't."

It's possible the people in watering holes visited by this reporter were not young enough (are college students more likely to binge drink and lose things?), well-off enough (a stream of secondary phones can add up), or beta testing top secret phones for their Silicon Valley employers.

Interestingly, while the mythical back-up phone was nowhere to be found, carrying multiple phones was not uncommon. Two friends at Churchill bar were hauling around their assigned work phones -- both BlackBerrys, of course -- in addition to their personal handsets.

Many people admitted to having lost their phones while drinking in the past but were still set on taking their smartphones with them on nights out.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/17/tech/mobile/drunk-phones/index.html

Leaked documents reveal 'Xbox 720' plans

 A 56-page document from Microsoft, dating back to mid-2010, reveals company plans for an "Xbox 720" gaming console. The recently leaked document has been removed since its discovery.

Notable features include Xbox SmartGlass, Blu-ray support, 3-D glasses, cloud-based gaming and an improved Kinect system. If the Xbox 720 described in the document is true, Microsoft's next-generation entertainment console could change the future of gaming.

The console will be loaded with a 1080p output with full 3D support, according to The Verge. The image above shows what the follow-up to the Xbox 360 might look like.

The sleek black Xbox 720 portrayed in the documents will seemingly be the only entertainment device you'll need. Microsoft's goal is to sell 100 million units at around $299 each in 2013. New Kinect 2 hardware will incorporate better voice recognition, hardware processing and stereo imaging.

Click here for more information: http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/18/tech/gaming-gadgets/leaked-documents-reveal-xbox-plans/index.html

The high-school blogger who's been cracking Apple's secrets

Trying to scope out Apple's (AAPL) product plans in advance is serious business for a small army of tech journalists, one that has been dominated in the past by the team that covers the company for the Wall Street Journal.

But in the walk-up to this week's World Wide Developers Conference, everybody -- including the Journal -- got scooped by an 18-year-old kid named Mark Gurman who goes to high school in Los Angeles and writes on the side for Seth Weintraub's 9to5Mac.

Let's review, with the benefit of hindsight, the WWDC predictions Gurman posted over the past month:

Seven out of eight ain't bad, and I suspect that the one that we don't yet know about -- his report that Apple is bringing the Retina display to the rest of its notebook line -- will eventually be proven true.

I ran into Gurman in San Francisco, where he is attending Apple's developer sessions. He clammed up when I asked him where he gets his stories. But Weintraub -- who hired Gurman two years ago when he realized the teenager had his finger on Apple's pulse -- was more forthcoming. Some of his stories come from sources inside Apple, but most are based on what used to be called old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting -- poring over Apple's published documents and building a network of Apple developers and parts suppliers that he hammers relentlessly.

Click here to continue reading: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/12/the-high-school-blogger-whos-been-cracking-apples-secrets/?iid=SF_F_LN