Happy Cyber Monday! Here’s hoping our MacLife.com readers have been able to find a bargain or two while browsing around today… seems to us that most of the good deals were blown out last Thursday and Friday, but we confess to spending a few hard-earned dollars here and there today. Oh, and hey, there’s still some news happening in the cyberworld, so here’s the latest for (Cyber) Monday, November 28, 2011.
We’ve heard of spontaneous human combustion before, but spontaneous iPhone combustion? That might be a new one. According to The Register, an iPhone 4 (or possibly an iPhone 4S, since they’re virtually identical) apparently started to glow red and emit “significant amounts of dense smoke” as a Regional Express Airline flight was touching down Friday in Sydney, Australia. A quick-thinking flight attendant extinguished the mobile device, which was later described as having self combusted on the lower right hand side of the unit’s back. Apple has yet to comment on the issue.
Can’t say we didn’t see this one coming in the wake of Steve Jobs’ death. According to Bloomberg, one of the three original contracts from the founding of Apple Computer back on April 1, 1976 is about to hit the auction block at Sotheby’s, where it’s estimated to bring the owner upwards of $150,000. The three-page document is an original signed by founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, the latter who withdrew from the partnership 11 days later (the contract amendment is also part of the auction). The consigner who’s auctioning the contract bought the document in the mid-1990’s from a manuscript dealer who had acquired them from Wayne himself, apparently during Apple’s darkest hour and just prior to the return of Jobs. We’re guessing Wayne could have fetched a lot more had he chosen to hang onto the contract just a little longer...
Apple might want to control what Siri is capable of, but never underestimate the hackers, who are always quick to expand the horizons of any new technology. Gizmodo is reporting that the voice activated mistress of the iPhone 4S has been hacked to start some dude’s Acura. How does it work? Apparently, developer Brandon Fiquett has rigged Siri so that a request to start his car gets routed to a proxy server hosted on his own website, which then sends a message to the Acura TL, conveniently connected via cellular data connection to the Viper Smart Start system. Check it out for yourself in the embedded video… all we can say is, “We want!”
E-tailer Amazon.com isn’t waiting for the dust to clear on Cyber Monday before they begin chest-thumping about how great their Black Friday was. According to The Los Angeles Times, the website quadrupled their previous Black Friday Kindle sales this year, and the new Kindle Fire has now become Amazon’s “best-selling product across all of Amazon.com on Black Friday.” Of course, in keeping with tradition, Amazon doesn’t back up their claims with any hard numbers, but there’s some ancillary evidence to support the bragging, since Target also confirmed the Kindle Fire was its top-selling tablet on Black Friday.
Speaking of Black Friday, it looks like Apple.com had a pretty good day as well. According to AllThingsD, Cupertino’s website was “the fifth most-trafficked retailer on Black Friday,” an impressive feat considering it’s the only product manufacturer on the short list. Amazon is ranked first, followed by Walmart, Best Buy and Target -- who narrowly beat out Apple for the fourth position, as it turns out. “Apple has not historically been in the top five,” reveals comScore analyst Andrew Lipsman, whose company provided the traffic data analysis. “In fact, this is the first time I can remember.” Something tells us it won’t be the last, either...
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Bownse
November 29, 2011 at 10:51am
I can see the smug dripping from that entry. Why all the animosity for a good product that refused to be trapped into a head-to-head competition with the iPad? It targets a different demographic, does it well, and does it for a 3rd of the price of the high-end options out there (of which the iPad rules the roost).
Why even compare the two when they are clearly designed for different needs and wants? Since Apple doesn't want to race to the bottom in a price fight, step back and take a deep breath. There's room in the market place for both devices.
