Apple has become the country’s third-largest music retailer, bitch-slapping Amazon aside for the bronze.
With a 10% market share, Apple sits close behind #1 retailer Wal-mart (15.8%) and #2 Best Buy (13.8%). All findings were recently reported by NPD Group and are based upon their survey of 400,000 people age 13 and older.
Preemptive strike: We are such Apple fanboys.
Real question for the comments: Can Apple reach the top spot?
Apple Now Third [reuters] More »
iPhone obsessed? Me too. Here’s a quick and easy guide to all of the fanboy deets that were discovered in the last day. •Definitely will be sold online via Apple Store. Some sites didn’t know which, but Apple just updated. (duh, but this is a roundup.) [Apple] •Contract cancellation fee will be $175. [Macrumors] •When out of stock in stores, sales people will take orders for mail delivery, with delivery in 3-5 days after launch. [USA Today] •Same USA Today’s piece has a sidebar about “200 field technicians who have been secretly testing the iPhone and looking for technical glitches for more than 10 weeks and counting” •Can read World, Excel and PDF Files. No editing, though [Giz!] •A Free iPhone Developer Camp is going on in the Bay Area, July 6-8, focusing on web apps and turning desktop widgets. [Apple Insider] •2000 temps will be hired for iPhone launch, so bum rushing the store. [USA Today...again] More »
Ever since we waited in line for a PSP only to find out you could still get them the next morning, we haven’t exactly been thrilled about camping out. But being the gadget freaks that we are, we still want them. What’s a geek to do? Pay someone else to do it of course!
There are already Craigslist posts in NYC and San Francisco for “Professional Line Waiters“. Yeah that’s right, you pay these day laborers around $250, and in exchange you’ve got yourself a guaranteed place in line without ever touching the concrete.
And for you cheapskates who think $250 is too much. You could always just take a page from the PS3 launch. Go around the corner of an Apple store, grab Homeless Joe and pay him to sit there for a fraction of the price. Hell, he was probably going to sit there anyway.
Professional Line Waiters [SF Craigslist] Professional Line Waiters [NYC Craigslist] Homeless People Line Up In America For a PS3 [Kotaku] More »
Hey lay-deez! Don’t you wish there was some way to control your iPod other than your iPod? Specifically when you’re sunbathing in a bikini? Well, good news. Now there’s a bikini with built-in iPod controls that may or may not electrocute you if you try to swim in it.
Its perfect for those days where you’re too lazy to even pick up the music player that’s right next to you and instead want to just reach the same distance and hit buttons that are impossible for you to see. It’s product design at its finest. –Adam Frucci
China Daily [via Spulch] More »
This crazy Batman-esque steam-powered car is an entry to the British Steam Car Challenge, which intends to both break the land speed record for steam records and give a lot of people steam burns in the process.
This entry has four boilers and can go up to 200MPH in the Utah Salt flats, some of the flattest tracts of land this side of Keira Knightley. Steam Superman is jealous. – Jason Chen
British Steam Car Challenge [via Crave via Sci Fi] More »
If your apartment complex pool is anything like ours, it’s 10 feet wide and 20 feet long, which means you can do about 5,000 laps before you get tired. What we need is a pool treadmill, this $3,999 gadget that creates a downstream current so you can swim in place but still be swimming.
Sure, $4,000 is a lot of money, but it’s pennies compared to remodeling your pool to fit more than two old dudes and some kids. – Jason Chen
Product Page [Hammacher via Red Ferret via Geekologie] More »
Not everyone can get in front of a crowd and be as confident in the crap coming out of their mouths as a Tony Snow or a Steve Jobs. But this SteadyPointer lets you exude a cool confidence in the laser- pointing part of your presentation by stabilizing your jittery hand, which is almost as good. So you could in fact be shaking like someone injected caffeine straight into your eyeball, but nobody would be the wiser.
From the video demos, it actually looks like this thing works. – Jason Chen
We’re not fans of hiking—obviously—but this Picnic For One design would be the thing we’d take with us if we were hiking. The container is waterproof and skinnable (in case you don’t like military grey), and contains a plate, a cup, cutlery and room for spices. Plus, you know, food.
So after you finish up your picnic for one, you can neatly pack everything back into the container before your throw yourself off the cliff because you’ve got nobody to go hiking with you. – Jason Chen
It’s Just A Picnic For One [Yanko Design] More »
We always knew the Xbox 360 failure rate was high, but the only time Microsoft’s put any sort of solid numbers on the thing it was always somewhere around 5%. Retailers here in Australia, on the other hand, have just reported a failure rate of somewhere over 30% historically, though things seem to be getting a bit better. That’s pretty ridonkulous. It’s a good thing Microsoft support is usually pretty good about taking them back, so you don’t have to go all Picard and shout about how many lights there are over the phone.
From what we’ve seen in unconfirmed reports on the Net, the problem comes from insufficient cooling for the GPU. This in turn causes the three red lights, which means you’re going to have to send back your 360 to Microsoft and possibly get a dirty refurbished unit in return. If you’re really, really lucky (and French), you’ll get a unit with added cooling as well. – Jason Chen
Microsoft confronts Xbox 360 hardware failures [Current.com.au] More »
Today in New York, Tivoli Audio founder Tom DeVesto unveiled plans, what he called “five years worth of work,” for two Internet radios modeled after the company’s successful Kloss Model One and SongBook radios. The Kloss Model One look-alike will be called NetWorks, and the SongBook-styled one, shown above, will be the NetWorksGo. Price has not been announced, nor has a ship date, but the company is aiming for this fall. More »
