Carol Costello, the news anchor for the 9 am to 11 am segment of CNN Newsroom, revealed this weekend that she had been robbed on Thursday. She claims that she was “walking down a beautiful, leafy Atlanta street” while talking on her iPhone. Three “teenagers” then ran up to her and grabbed her phone. Costello fought for the phone but had a “chunk” of her hair pulled out for her trouble.

According to a wsbtv report on the incident, Costello was walking in the 1100 block of Piedmont Avenue. Costello gave the police a description of the iPhone thief. The anchor vented about the event on her Facebook page, where she wrote that she was “angry”:

Carol Costello CNN3 days ago

Good Morning. In retrospect, what happened to me yesterday is insignificant in light of what happened in the Boston.
Still, I feel the need to vent. And isn’t that what friends are for?
I was robbed.
And I am angry.
I was walking down a beautiful, leafy Atlanta street, talking on my IPhone.
Guess what happened next?
Three teenagers ran up behind me. One of them grabbed my IPhone. Stupidly I struggled to hold on-to it. But, he was a big guy. And he pulled out a chunk my hair.
I let go.
As he ran down the street, laughing, I hurled a few expletives his way.
I felt no fear at the time, I was just angry. Now I’m angry, shaken and sad. What a lousy life those kids have ahead of them.
Turns out, according to ABC news: “cities across the country are on alert as officials warn of an uptick in stolen Apple products, dubbed “Apple picking.”
Thieves steal IPhones, wipe them clean, then sell them for up to one-thousand bucks.
So, a warning for you. Do not talk on your IPhone as you walk down the street.
Oh, and let go of the stupid device if someone tries to steal it.
Hope you join me at 9 and 10 AM ES. Powered by socialditto  390 likes ·  740 comments

IPhone theft is nothing new, and though thieves may be getting better at it, apps such as iCloud can help locate an Apple device once it is stolen.

Internal documentation reveals that the iPhone will be classified as “vintage” or “obsolete” by June 11th. This will affect the Asia-Pacific, Canada, Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the United States.

Here’s what the internal document says (obtained by 9to5Mac):

For vintage products in the U.S., service parts are only available to repair older Apple products purchased in the state of California, as required by statute. Owners of these products may obtain service and parts from Apple service providers of Apple retail stores within the state of California. Apple does not provide service parts nor service documentation for obsolete products. Obsolete products (obsolete and vintage in the U.S.) cannot be facilitated as Mail-In Repairs to AppleCare Repair Centers.

In the U.S., you won’t be able to walk in to Apple Stores and have your original iPhone serviced. But you can call directly to AppleCare and Authorized Service Providers, as it has “vintage” status.

It’s not just the iPhone that’s being given this status. Various iMacs and MacBooks are also being laid to rest, so to say.

Of course, this will rarely affect anyone in a practical way. The original iPhone, with its EDGE 2G and 128 MB of RAM is not really in the circulation anymore. It’s been discontinued for years, and you would have to look pretty hard to find a conclave of original iPhone users – considering the low price and availability of something like the iPhone 4.

But it is significant, nostalgic even. We’re now living in a world where the original iPhone, heralded as such an innovation back in 2007, is now considered obsolete. Officially.

“Every day, more photos are taken with the iPhone than any other camera.”

And with that, the only words in the ad, Apple builds a nice commercial around the act of snapping pictures with the iPhone. Gone is the barrage of words that they’ve been throwing at you with their previous ads, and it’s been replaced by a subtle piano. Apple is at its best when making ads like this. Let’s hope it continues.

Last week, Google showed developers how to integrate Google+ Sign-In on iOS. Now the Google+ team is showing developers how to integrate interactive posts in Google+ on iOS.

Check out Google’s documentation if you want to learn more about integrating interactive Google+ posts into iOS.

“We are pleased to report record March quarter revenue thanks to continued strong performance of iPhone and iPad,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Our teams are hard at work on some amazing new hardware, software, and services and we are very excited about the products in our pipeline.”

For hardware, Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter. It’s a noticeable increase from the 35.1 million iPhones sold in the year-ago quarter. It also sold 19.5 million iPads, which is a pretty sizable increase from the 11.8 million iPads sold in the year-ago quarter. The company’s saw a small decrease as it sold a little under 4 million Macs compared to the year-ago quarter’s 4 million Macs.

“Our cash generation remains very strong, with $12.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the quarter and an ending cash balance of $145 billion,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO.

Apple expects the following earnings results for Q3 2013:

Apple will be be live streaming its Q2 2013 financial results conference call today at 2:00 p.m. PST/5:00 p.m. EST. You can listen in here.

Tactus, a site that recently revealed the iPad 5 mold, has just unveiled its latest leak – the rear shell of the cheap iPhone that Apple says doesn’t exist.

As you can tell, the rear shell is made out of plastic instead of the aluminum that’s now standard in the current iPhone. It fits with previous rumors that said the cheap iPhone would be made out of plastic to cut costs. It also appears to jibe with rumors that the cheap iPhone would look like a combination of the iPod Touch and iPod Classic.

As for hardware, it’s said that it will be powered by the A5 processor. Interestingly enough, it’s said that the A5 in the cheap iPhone will be the same A5 that powers the iPad 2 and iPad Mini. That would give the cheaper iPhone a small jump in performance over the A5 that was in the iPhone 4S.

The cheaper iPhone is also rumored to sport a 3.5-inch display instead of the 4-inch display that’s been rumored for the past few months.

On a final note, it appears that Apple will be treating the cheaper iPhone the same way it treats its iPod line. The device will be available in multiple colors, including blue, red and yellow on top of the usual black and white.

[h/t: Engadget]

Apple and Yahoo are said to be in talks about possibly integrating Yahoo products more into iOS, the the operating system powering the iPhones, iPods and iPads in millions of hands.

Should Google be worried? What would you like to see out such a partnership? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Any increased integration of Yahoo into iOS would only add on to existing Yahoo Finance and weather data that come on the operating system today.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the two companies have been “discussing how more of Yahoo’s services can play a prominent role on Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices,” citing people briefed on the matter. Such possibilities could include, according to the Journal’s sources, “more content from Yahoo News and its other web properties loaded onto Apple devices or available through an expanded Siri partnership.”

A deal is not imminent, the report says.

The Journal isn’t the only publication with sources talking about this. Bloomberg cites “a person familiar with the matter” as saying executives from both companies have “discussed ways to collaborate more closely on mobile software”:

Yahoo Chief Executive Officer (and longtime Googler) Marissa Mayer has met with Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet services, to explore ways Yahoo can be more deeply integrated into the software that runs on the iPhone and iPad, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

Mayer has been very clear about how important mobile is to the company’s strategy going forward since she took over as CEO last year. This would obviously be a huge step in making sure smartphone users are accessing Yahoo content on a regular basis. Depending on what kinds of integrations we see, it could turn out to be a pretty big deal for Yahoo’s piece of the search market as well, and would give Yahoo an interesting partner should the Microsoft alliance fall apart.

The part about Siri is particularly interesting, and that could mean any number of things. One thing it can at least enable us to imagine is a search-related partnership. Yahoo, of course, outsources its search to Bing on the back-end, but Yahoo’s relationship with Microsoft seems to be souring. Apple’s with Google, meanwhile, is too.

Yahoo has expressed how important search still is to it as a company in recent months, and now they have one of the biggest names in the search industry running the show. It was a different story when Yahoo went the Bing route.

The Motley Fool even makes an interesting case for why Apple should (but probably won’t) just buy Yahoo. “Yahoo! already provides some of the default iOS apps for stock quotes and weather. Perhaps more importantly, Yahoo! isn’t Microsoft or Google,” writes Rick Munarriz. “Mr. Softy and Big G are Apple’s two biggest rivals, though these days Google has become the bigger enemy as Android conquers the smartphone and now tablet markets. Apple tried to distance itself from Google last year, going with a homegrown default solution to Apple Maps.”

“Right,” he continues. “We know how badly that played out for Apple. Any bone that Apple could throw Yahoo! is one less bone that it would either throw out to Google or possibly mess up on its own.”

I don’t expect any acquisition announcements to be made anytime soon, but it’s interesting to consider.

Even with the right partnership between Apple and Yahoo, Google could suffer significantly in terms of search market share. Let’s not forget that Yahoo used to rule the search space, and now it has a seasoned veteran from the current king of search running the show. What if iOS made its way to using Yahoo as the default search? How many would bother to change it to Google?

Google and Apple have had a search deal in place for about a decade. Few details are known about this deal. Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land recently shared a couple of analysts’ theories:

An analyst at Macquarie Capital estimated that Google was making $1.3 billion annually in paid search revenue from iOS devices. Macquarie speculated that Google returned about $1 billion of that to Apple as part of the agreement that made Google the default search engine on the Safari browser….Another financial analyst has come up with a similar annual estimate of the value of Google’s default iOS search deal with Apple: $1 billion. Morgan Stanley’s Scott Devitt is responsible for the new estimate…Devitt disagreed with Macquarie, arguing that the structure of the relationship is probably not a “revenue sharing” deal but instead a straight fee-per-device payment from Google to Apple. Devitt believes that Google pays Apple roughly $3.20 per iOS device, which would avoid the accounting issues arising from a revenue sharing agreement.

Sterling himself wrote, “While it’s extremely unlikely that Apple would try and make Siri into a full-fledged search engine, it could significantly beef up Siri’s content search and discovery capabilities. In that capacity, Apple might be able to siphon off selected commercial queries in key categories such as local, travel and entertainment.”

As we have discussed repeatedly, including in this recent article, the biggest threat to Google’s search market share is the gradual chipping away at it by various vertical services. Even if Yahoo only supplied some of the content on Siri (regardless of whether it became the actual default search on iOS), Siri could continue to improve with increased integration across other services, and rendering Google less of a need for users, little by little.

Obviously, how this really plays out is anybody’s guess. Apple and Yahoo may not even expand their partnership at all, when it’s all said and done. Still, if I were Google, I might be a little nervous about what these companies are discussing.

Should Google be worried? Let us know what you think.

Jameson was reportedly accused of hitting someone at a house in Newport Beach, California on Saturday. Since then, new details have emerged. TMZ reports:

Jameson allegedly went all Naomi Campbell on the transgender gofer, but with a dangerous twist … a BRASS KNUCKLES CASE on her iPhone 5 … according to legal docs.

Shocking details of the arrest have now emerged in Britney Markham’s restraining order request, filed by attorney Adam Krolikowski. She claims Jameson barged into a Newport Beach salon and started bitching at her, and eventually punched her in the stomach and back with the weaponized device.

Yep, iPhone knuckles. Photos of them have appeared on Instagram (via TMZ):

Like what you see? Google Shopping appears to offer a wide range of “iPhone knuckles” despite removing some weapons last year.

Jameson has also posted a stun gun photo on her Instagram account:

Last year, Jameson was arrested for D.U.I.

Piper Jaffray’s 25th bi-annual teens and devices survey just came out. And in continuing what has been a trend over the last few surveys, Apple comes out on top. Although Android OS smartphones made some (very) small gains, the iPhone is far and away the most desired smartphone on the market among our nation’s bright future.

According to the survey, 48% of teens already own an iPhone. That’s up from 40% in October (the last time this survey was published), which is in turn up from 34% in the spring of 2012. So, in a year, we’re looking at a 14% increase in the iPhone’s market share among teens.

And 62% of teens said that their next device purchase will be an iPhone.

On the Android side, 23% expressed future plans to buy a smartphone, which is up 1% from last October.

Overall preference for the OS – 59% of teens say they’re likely to buy an iOS device (unchanged) compared to 21% likely to buy an Android OS device (up 1%).

Proclamations of the iPhone’s decline in popularity among today’s youth have been coming for a couple of years now. Upon the launch of the iPhone 4S, you may remember HTC President Martin Fitcher said that the iPhone is a dad phone, and that kids don’t find them cool anymore. Then, a couple of months later, a Nokia product manager called iPhone’s “black mono boxes” and said that the youth are fed up with the ubiquitous Apple product.

More recently, you may have read one of the many articles discussing the iPhone’s loss of cool with teens. “Teens are telling us Apple is done,” said one youth marketing director.

Sure, the U.S. smartphone market still has room to grow. And that means that all types of devices have room to grow. And with the gains we’ve seen recently from manufacturers like Samsung, it’s possible that Apple loses some of its dominance over the next few survey periods. But for now, it’s clear that teens love their iPhones.

[Image via heyheygig, Flickr]

Brian White, analyst for Topeka Capital Markets, said that Apple will release the iPhone 5S with three separate screen sizes. He reportedly got his information from a company in Apple’s supply chain.

“We believe Apple is coming around to the fact that one size per iPhone release does not work for everyone and offering consumers an option has the potential to expand the company’s market share,” White said.

This isn’t the first time that White has predicted the iPhone 5S will come in multiple screen sizes. He said the same thing back in January, while adding that Apple would be using Sharp’s new IGZO display panels for the larger screens. He also said that the iPhone 5S would be offered in more colors than just the traditional black and white.

White also addressed the persistent rumor that Apple will be releasing a cheaper iPhone this year for the Chinese market. Some rumors suggested that Apple would go as low as $99 for the cheaper device, but White says that Apple can’t possibly go below $300 without a subsidy. The reason being that Apple never sells at a loss or at cost. Even if it’s cheaper, Apple has to make a tidy profit on every iPhone sold to keep investors happy.

All of this is speculation for now, but we may find out more about the mythical iPhone 5S sooner rather than later. The latest rumors peg the iPhone 5S release date for June. If that’s the case, we could see a reveal in late May/early June.

[h/t: Apple Insider]