Bryan Chaffin

Nokia announced on Tuesday that it will be bringing its highly-touted mapping service to iOS and Android. The company is launching the effort under a new brand name called “Here.” The company is looking to expand its presence in the smartphone mapping services industry beyond its own smartphones, which are struggling. Here, Coming to iOS…

Microsoft's Windows head honcho has left Big Redmond. The change is at least as big a shakeup as Apple's decision to remove Scott Forstall as head of iOS in October, as Mr. Sinofsky has greatly steered the direction of Windows and oversaw the development and launch of Windows 8. Steven Sinofsky, Outgoing Head of Windows…

Shares of Apple Inc. have officially slipped into bear territory after the stock slid another 3.63 percent on Thursday. $AAPL ended the day at US$537.75 per share, $20.252 (-3.63 percent). Worries about Foxconn's ability to make enough iPhone 5s continued to concern investors, while one analyst called AAPL's recent sell-off overdone. AAPL has fallen $164.35…

The Mac Observer is (collectively) a huge fan of Apple's iPad and iPad mini, but we are happy to tip our hat to a very entertaining spoof offered up by a fan of Microsoft's new Surface tablet. Forest Gibson posted a spoof response to Apple's current iPad and iPad mini commercial that we think is…

Shares of Apple Inc. closed below US$580 on Friday, the first time it has done so since July 26th. $AAPL ended the week at $576.80, a loss of $19.74 (-3.31 percent), on moderate volume of 22.1 millions shares trading hands. The broader markets were down, but AAPL's selloff may have been sparked by what is…

Apple released the iPad mini and iPad with Retina Display on Friday, an event that has earned competing narratives, especially in New York City. Lines of people waiting to buy the iPad mini are either “shorter,” according to Reuters, or “still impressive,” according to The Wall Street Journal. In both cases, hundreds of people lined…

An interesting tidbit in Scott Forstall's ouster at Apple has surfaced saying that the former Apple senior vice president refused to sign a letter of apology over Apple Maps in September. The New York Times, Fortune, and The Verge (which specifically pointed it out), all claim sources saying as much, suggesting that this could have…

San Jose's California Theater is all dressed up and ready to go for Apple's media event on Tuesday. The company is expected to announce a 7.x-inch iPad, as well as a potpourri of other rumors that include a minor upgrade for the larger new iPad with a Lightning connector, a smaller Mac portable with a…

Microsoft's decision to price its new Surface Windows 8 tablet at $499 without a keyboard, and $599 with a keyboard, could end up being a “fatal mistake,” according to Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu. The analyst said that Microsoft should have priced its device starting at $299 with a keyboard if it wanted the device…

Fear of an Apple-Android planet* will cause carriers to embrace and push Windows Phone devices, according to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. The Canadian tech exec said that carriers want a third ecosystem to reduce the power of the two heavyweights in the industry, and that their support will finally make Windows Phone 8 a thing.…

Shares of Apple Inc. jumped 2.37 percent on Tuesday as investors reacted positively to the news that the company will hold a media event on October 23rd. Everyone and their brother expects the company to announce a 7.x-inch iPad that the tech world has dubbed the iPad mini. AAPL ended the day at US$649.793 per…

Amazon sent out emails to customers over the weekend effectively pre-announcing how a settlement between three publishers and the DOJ. Though that settlement won't be approved by the courts until February of 2013, Amazon told Kindle customers that they'll be getting credits of either $0.30 or $1.32 per book for purchases may between April 2010…

Taiwan reminded Apple on Tuesday that there is a political aspect of running a global mapping service. The island nation asked Apple to blur images of a new early warning radar station from Apple Maps, the company's iOS mobile mapping service that launched with iOS 6. According to the Associated Press, Taiwan Defence Ministry spokesman…

Shares in Apple Inc. slid more than 2 percent on Monday, pushed down by broader economic concerns in Europe and worries over the effects of a Foxconn strike in China. AAPL ended the Monday session down, at US$638.17 per share, a loss of $14.42 (-2.21 percent), on strong volume of 22.7 million shares trading hands.…

A small Web development company called Inventika Solutions has paid tribute to Steve Jobs by recreating the original iPod on the Web using HTML 5, CSS3, and jQuery. The firm, which is located in Mumbai, India, has made the virtual iPod (shown below) to work as the original device worked, down to the rotating scroll…

The City of Fremont has abandoned an effort to have the original, state-of-the-art factory that made the first Macs listed as a place of historic significance. The City Council wanted the building registered as such a place after the death of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs in 2011, but found out that the building isn't old…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks Apple's new iPhone 5 is the bee's knees. In an interview with The Today Show's Matt Lauer that will air on October 4th, Mr. Zuckerberg said that Apple CEO Tim Cook had sent him one on the house, and said, “It's a wonderful device.” Mark Zuckerberg & Matt Lauer Source:…

Apple Maps in iOS 6 uses significantly less data to do its job than the Google Maps-powered service it replaced, according to a report from data compression and analytics firm Onavo. The company did side-by-side tests of Apple Maps in iOS 6 and the previous Maps app in iOS 5.x, and found that Apple's new…

Apple quietly dropped a claim that its new iOS Maps app was the, “most beautiful, powerful mapping service ever” in the wake of CEO Tim Cook's apology for the service and commitment to improve it. Apple's webpage devoted to the product replaced the above-mentioned braggadocio with a more modest claim that Apple Maps offered, “a…

Apple built a separate Maps app for China, according to The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper said that mapping restrictions in China and other issues specific to the communist country resulted in Apple building a special version of maps for customers inside China. According to the report, there are only 11 companies who have a…