Apple

J.C. Penney has launched a new ad campaign apologizing for the decisions made under Ron Johnson, its former chief executive and Apple's one-time retail chief.

The new ad, posted to YouTube, focuses people in different locations as a narrator acknowledges the company's recent mistakes that left customers unhappy and pushed revenue down billions of dollars.

"It's no secret, recently J.C. Penney changed," the narrator says over the ad. "Some changes you liked and some you didn't, but what matters from mistakes is what we learn. We learned a very simple thing: … Read more

While we don't know when iOS 7 will make its debut, here's what we do know: it will be the biggest reinvention of Apple's flagship OS in years -- perhaps ever.

iOS was Scott Forstall's baby since its inception. He was an advocate of skeuomorphism, a design philosophy that brings the look and feel of real-world objects into software design. iOS' linen backgrounds, notepads, and famously terrible podcast app are all examples of this philosophy in practice.

Skeuomorphism has dominated iOS for years, thanks to Forstall and Steve Jobs, who also advocated for the approach. Its … Read more

When LG was developing its first phablet, known globally as the Optimus Vu but in the U.S. as the Intuition, the head of the mobile division, J.S. Park, supposedly obsessed over the slide-top mechanism that covered the charging port, sending back prototype after prototype to his designers.

One was too fast, one was too loose, and another was too slow, according to a story related by James Fishler, head of marketing for LG's U.S. division, one he characterized as LG folklore. Park was convinced that the little detail was an important detail that consumers would focus … Read more

Both Apple and Samsung have been in ongoing talks with the Department of Defense to bring their devices to the agency's employees, and now it looks like approval for device security is finally around the corner.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Defense Department reportedly plans to give security approval for Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and Apple's iPhones and iPads within the next few weeks.

The Defense Information Systems Agency, which rules what commercial technology the Pentagon can use, will decide within the next two weeks whether to accept Samsung's Galaxy smartphones loaded with Knox security … Read more

A virtual private network, or VPN, is a method of securely connecting to a network from a remote location, and is commonly used in work environments. While some institutions require the use of third-party VPN client software, others allow the use of Apple's built-in VPN clients.

In these cases, you can choose to enable the VPN menu in the OS X menu bar, and can then use it to quickly establish a VPN connection. However, if you are regularly connecting to your VPN, you may choose to also implement a hot-key shortcut to speed things up a bit more.… Read more

At first glance, new numbers released by research firm IDC show that Apple has nothing to worry about regarding its control of the tablet market, but a closer look could raise some doubts.

While Apple is still the world's No. 1 tablet maker, Samsung is No. 2 and growing at a faster rate. Looking specifically at year-over-year growth from first quarter numbers, Apple grew by 65 percent -- not bad. But, Samsung grew by 282 percent, Asus grew by 350 percent, and Amazon grew by 157 percent.

The question is: Is this part and parcel of a bigger problem? … Read more

To paraphrase an old expression: Give a man an apple and you feed him for a day; teach a man to phish apple IDs and you feed him for a lifetime -- with stolen data. That's what some bold phishers are hoping for, according to a new report by security intelligence company Trend Micro, which documents a major phishing scam that has already compromised 110 sites in a plan to steal Apple IDs.

According to Trend Micro, all of these sites are "hosted at the IP address 70.86.13.17, which is registered to an ISP in … Read more

Keith Richards wearing white headphones would be like Josh Groban wearing a skirt.

Or Steven Tyler wearing men's clothing.

Somehow, it wouldn't seem right.

Fortunately, it is unlikely to happen, because the Rolling Stone who once fell out of a tree has revealed he doesn't own an iPod. … Read more

It wasn't us, it was him.

Yes, that man with the weird ideas we hired from Apple. He made us do all those things that drove our customers away in droves.

So now that he's gone, please come back. We beg you. We'll be the old JC Penney. The one you all loved.

Although maybe you didn't all love it enough to keep shopping there, which is why we hired the man with weird ideas from Apple.

But we were wrong. You were right. Well, many of you. We think.

This seems largely the subtext of a new ad released by JC Penney.… Read more