The Apple App Store odometer was spinning furiously en route to the 50 billionth app download.

Apple on Thursday morning formally announced the passing of the milestone and named the winner of the race to reach 50 billion. That honor went to Brandon Ashmore of Mentor, Ohio, who downloaded Say the Same Thing by Space Inch. Along with bragging rights, Ashmore receives a $10,000 App Store gift card.

The threshold was reached Wednesday just before 2 p.m. PT when the counter on Apple's Web site turned over the 50 billion mark. A tweet from Apple's App … Read more

Apple will reportedly be the subject of a Senate hearing next week into U.S. companies' offshore tax practices.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is expected to testify Tuesday before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, according to Politico, which first reported on Apple's involvement at the hearing. The committee has been examining the various tax-avoidance strategies used by companies, including Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, and how that affects U.S. interests.

Apple recently announced a $17 billion bond plan as part of its shareholder capital returns plan that will save it $9.2 billion in taxes it would have had … Read more

Apple's App Store on Wednesday passed another major benchmark, topping 50 billion app downloads.

That's according to the countdown timer on Apple's Web site and in iTunes. Apple also confirmed the benchmark on Twitter:

We just hit 50 billion app downloads. Thank you. It couldn't have happened without you. #50BillionApps tw.appstore.com/hgE

The person who downloaded the 50 billionth app will get a $10,000 App Store gift card from Apple, and the 50 people who downloaded apps right after that each will receive a $500 gift card. … Read more

Apple violated antitrust laws by colluding with book publishers to raise the price of e-books in an effort "to strip retailers of pricing authority," federal prosecutors said in a court filing released Tuesday, according to Bloomberg.

In an antitrust lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in April 2012, the government accused Apple and five book publishers of conspiring to illegally fix e-book prices to boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its discount pricing. All five of the publishers involved -- Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Simon & Schuster (owned by CBS, which … Read more

At least one Microsoft executive believes that Apple designs are good enough to cite as a yardstick.

After revealing that Windows Blue would officially be called 8.1 at the JP Morgan Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference on Tuesday, Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Tami Reller moved on to the topic of tablets, convertibles, and detachables.

"The HP envy x2 is a classic example of a beautiful detachable. When the tablet and base are together it looks like a MacBook Air competitor," she said.

How good is the Envy x2's design? "This 11-inch ultraportable laptop is cute, … Read more

A lawsuit has been brought against Apple for allegedly selling iPhone 4 smartphones with faulty power buttons. The suit, which seeks class-action status, claims that Apple knew about the issue and failed to fix the problem.

Debra Hilton filed the lawsuit in San Jose, Calif., alleging that she and "thousands of iPhone 4 users" were sold the device with on-off buttons that stopped working shortly after the 1-year warranty was up. The problem purportedly had to do with a defective flex cable that controlled the power button.

"The Apple iPhone 4 is plagued by a latent defect … Read more

After 86 bids, the coffee meeting with Apple's CEO has sold for $610,000.

The winning bidder is anonymous, and goes only by "a********s."

The "power meeting" was part of a campaign by auction site CharityBuzz to raise money for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. It promises little beyond some coffee and facetime with Cook at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.

The auction is now officially tied for the highest-grossing CharityBuzz has ever had. It's matched up with last month's auction for a Lamborghini Aventador, which … Read more

If you're the type of person who asks long-winded questions, Siri would like to change your ways.

Apple's server-powered software assistant is now telling users to trim down questions that are too long or otherwise complicated -- a move that iLounge suggests is to retrain how users interact with the service versus an actual human being.

If Siri deems your question verbose, the software will serve up quotes that suggest brevity, a comedic -- though also passive-aggressive -- move. Some of the quotes come from author William Strunk, former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, and fictional characters like … Read more

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday granted Apple nearly three dozen patents, including one that covers how a device responds to acoustic signals such as scratching and tapping.

Patent No. 8,441,790, or "Electronic Device Housing as Acoustic Input Device," focuses on tech that would allow a device to detect and react to sound resulting from an impact with the housing, such as dragging a finger along the surface of the device. The sensors send information to a microprocessor, which can distinguish between different types of input as well as interpret what each input … Read more