Jim Tanous

Apple’s sales in the United States accounted for the largest share of revenue among all consumer technology firms in 2012, according to data published Tuesday by NPD. The company also did well in terms of consumer technology retailers, taking third place behind only Best Buy and Walmart.

Mac Geek Gab listener John needs a new external hard drive for his growing iTunes library. Will a cheap USB 2.0 drive be fast enough, or would it be better to go with a FireWire 800 or Thunderbolt drive? We examine the difference between the interfaces so that John can decide what best fits his needs.

Following efforts last year to increase iPhone sales in India, Apple’s smartphone saw significant gains in both revenue and market share in the country during the fourth quarter of 2012, according to IDC data reported by The Economic Times Monday.

Recent rumors suggest that the second-generation iPad mini will adopt a Retina resolution display that exceeds the pixel density of its larger sibling, but doing so could raise the production cost of the device by more than 30 percent due to the need for additional backlighting and GPU performance. The change would also hit Apple's already shrinking margins, which have negatively affected the company's stock price.

Apple’s iOS and Android’s Google continued to dominate the global smartphone market in 2012, combining in the fourth quarter for over 91 percent of total smartphone market share, according to data released late last week by IDC. But Android alone remained king, shipping over three times as many units as Apple's platform.

Apple launched a new ad campaign for the iPad and iPad mini over the weekend. A combination of television ads and billboards highlight the more than 300,000 iOS apps formatted specifically for the iPad that make the product "up for anything you are."