Christmas

Kindle Fire: Moment of truth

The tablet most likely to succeed against the iPad gets its first hands-on tests this week

Toward the end of a report entitled "Why the Amazon Kindle Fire could be hot this holiday season," which generated the widely-reproduced charts at right, Retrevo's Andrew Eisner adds this caveat:

"As popular as the Kindle Fire appears in this study, whether it lives up to expectations on things like battery life, performance, image quality, etc, MORE

Just in time for the Holidays: Teach Parents Tech

Google is launching a site that will help people whose family members are in need of tech help.

We've all been there.  We're either the beneficiary of the family tech guru or we're the ones who head home on the Holiday vacation to a year's worth of tech support issues to address.

Google (GOOG) hopes to help with a site called TeachParentsTech:

TeachParentsTech.org lets you select from more than 50 basic how-to videos to send MORE

Rumor: Verizon stockpiling iPhones for post-Christmas launch

Management training was reportedly held last week with fully-functioning units

MacDailyNews, a site that is usually a repository for Apple (AAPL) news broken elsewhere, unloaded a motherlode of Verizon (VZ) iPhone rumors Monday. Among their bullet-points:

Verizon held management training for iPhone sales last week with functioning iPhones in management hands for the training sessions
The device has been "100% cooked for quite a while" and already shipping in bulk to Verizon warehouses
Formal MORE

Christmas, iBand style

Some holiday cheer from the North Point Community Church in affluent Alpharetta, Georgia, where the median household income in 2000 was $184,207. The band, however, plays with "borrowed" Apple (AAPL) iPads and iPhones, according to this YouTube entry.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

The world's first subsidized iPads

Apple's tablets will reportedly sell in the U.K. for more than 60% off. Could it happen here?

Americans dreaming of an iPad Chrismas will be watching closely to see if AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) follow the lead of Orange and T-Mobile (DT), two carriers authorized to sell 3G iPads in the United Kingdom.

On Monday, Everything Everywhere, a joint venture of the two firms, announced that it will be selling -- MORE

Apple TV tops Amazon's wish list

In fact, the three most-wished-for gadgets in its electronics category are Apple products

Business Insider's Dan Frommer made a big deal Wednesday evening about the fact that Apple TV doesn't appear on Amazon's (AMZN) list of its top 100 best-selling gadgets. (See Is There A Secret Reason That Apple TV Is Being Kept Off Of Amazon's Best-Selling Gadgets List?)

Even more surprising, to me, is the absence of the iPad, especially given MORE

First sighting of Android-based Sony PSPhone

Engadget found a PSP Phone running Android.  That would make a few shoppers a nice Christmas present.

The Sony PSP Phone has been rumored since the first PSP showed up in 2004.  If the product shot Engadget produced this evening is the real deal, it will likely be coming to fruition either right before Christmas or early next year.

According to Engadget, the device sports a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655, 512MB of RAM, MORE

The iPod's rise and fall

Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPod on Oct. 23, 2001, nine years ago today

Here are the stats:

Age: 9 years
Units sold: 278,545,000
Net sales: $47,833,000,000

Note the seasonal patterns of quarterly sales in the chart, with Sonic-the-Hedgehog-style Christmas spikes. Note also the major inflection points, when sales accelerated:

The iPod touch's breakout Christmas

Downloads grew 1000% on Christmas Day, surpassing the iPhone's for the first time

Judging from data scheduled for release Monday morning by Flurry Analytics, Apple's (AAPL) iPod touch was one of the hot gifts this holiday season.

"It appears that an influx of new iPod Touch devices has flooded the market over Christmas," Flurry reports, "and that users of the handset, primarily pre-teen and teen audiences, are voracious downloaders."

In the chart above, iPhone MORE

Macs top Amazon's 'Most Gifted' list

Some computer wishes seem to have come true this holiday season

Last time we looked -- on the eve of Cyber Monday -- there was a conspicuous discrepancy in Amazon's (AMZN) computer department between the "Most Wished For" and "Most Gifted" machines. Customers may have been hoping for Apples (AAPL), but it looked like they were getting Toshibas, Acers and Hewlett Packards (HPQ) instead.

One month later, on Christmas morning, that discrepancy MORE