Christmas

Bah, humbug! Apple's Holiday Sampler

Curious about iTunes LPs? For the price of some dreadful music, you can get one free.

It's hard to imagine Steve Jobs choosing the tracks that appear on the "Holiday Sampler" Apple (AAPL) released this week, just in time for Christmas.

Barry Manilow singing "Jingle Bells"? "The Twelve Days of Christmas" done as an instrumental by the Mexicani Marimba Band?

This is the kind of music that makes you want to turn off MORE

Macs are Amazon's 'Most Wished For'

But some people may not be getting the computers they hoped for this holiday season

On the eve of Cyber Monday, Apple (AAPL) Macs held the top three spots on Amazon's (AMZN) "Most Wished For" laptop list, as well as the top four spots on the desktop computer wish list.

But wishes are not horses -- or premium-priced Macs -- and judging from Amazon's "Most Gifted" lists, some of those Christmas wishes MORE

iPod touch use "exploded" Christmas day

Did Apple's (AAPL) unrelenting advertising campaign for the iPod touch as a game machine  ("The funnest iPod ever") pay off this holiday season?

Indirect data from two Web-based sources suggest it did -- big time.

Net Applications (a Web metrics firm), and AdMob (a mobile Web ad network) both produced graphs last week with sharp Christmas day spikes of the kind you usually see only from runaway hits.

"iPod Touch requests on MORE

Amazon's Christmas bestsellers: Acer, Apple and Asus

Look what Santa left under Amazon.com's tree this Christmas morning:

7 Acer netbooks
7 Apple MacBooks
4 Asus netbooks
2 Samsung netbooks
2 MSI netbooks
1 OLPC (One laptop per child) XO laptop
1 Lenova Ideapad laptop
1 Toshiba Satellite laptop

Can you spot the ringer on Amazon's 2008 Christmas-day list of 25 bestselling notebook computers?

You guessed it. It's those seven premium-priced Apple (AAPL) MacBooks in a shopping cart dominated by stripped-down netbooks, heavily discounted Windows notebooks and a MORE

Apple's Black Friday bestsellers

In a holiday shopping season that got off to a better start than expected, Apple (AAPL) products sold particularly well -- although not as well as last year, judging from sales at Amazon, America's largest online retailer.

The iPod Touch was Amazon's No. 1 best-selling electronics item Black Friday morning. By Sunday, however, it had dropped to No. 4 after the Kindle reader, a Canon (CAJ) Powershot camera and a Garmin MORE

Apple Q1 earnings: How big the bounce?

Apple (AAPL) by all accounts had a terrific holiday season. The Apple Stores were packed, and Macs, iPods and iPhones were shipping in record numbers. On Christmas day alone, Steve Jobs announced at Macworld last week, the company sold 20 million songs.

Then the market tanked, and Apple's shares, having more than doubled in 2007, went into free fall. As the Dow dropped 10 percent, Apple dropped more than 20 percent, MORE

Survey: Mac OS hit record 7.3% share in December; iPhone up 33%

Reflecting strong holiday sales of both MacBooks and iPhones, Apple's (AAPL) market share grew sharply in December, as measured by a Net Applications survey released today.

The Mac hit a record 7.3% share, up from 6.8% last month. The iPhone also hit a new record, .12%, up from .09% in November. That suggests that better than 1 out of every 1,000 people on the Internet are browsing the Web using an MORE

Christmas eve: Apple MacBook is Amazon's No. 1 top-selling computer

Despite fierce competition from machines with more than twice the memory and price points hundreds of dollars lower, Apple's (AAPL) white 120 GB MacBook has captured the top spot on Amazon's (AMZN) list of bestselling computers this Christmas eve.

Helped along by rebates ranging from $75 to $150, three Apple-brand notebooks are on the top 10 list this morning. The other bestsellers are the 80 GB MacBook (No. 7) and the MORE

X-mas electronics top sellers: 5 of 10 on Amazon are Apples

Online shopping is up nearly 20% this Christmas, according to comScore Inc. (see here), and electronics is one of the hottest categories, up 24% from last year. So what gadgets are Americans buying this holiday season?

Judging from Amazon's (AMZN) list of top sellers, a lot of iPods and iPod touches.

With only a couple shopping days left before Christmas, five out of the top 10 items on Amazon's "bestsellers in MORE