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Larry Page is turned off by treating his life's work as a kind of sporting competition. In his way of thinking, battles over Android vs. iOS or Google+ vs. Facebook are a petty distractions, glorified in the press. They generate negative energy, which leads to a diminished capacity to innovate and focus on moonshots, such as self-driving cars, that have the potential to change the world.

"Every story I read about Google is us versus some other company or some stupid thing," the Google co-founder and CEO told 6,000 developers at Google I/O in his … Read more

First, a bit of history:

Back in August of last year, I wrote an article titled, "Why I regret buying an iMac." The hard drive in my $2,000 iMac had died after 22 months and when I went into an Apple store to see if Apple would help me out, particularly after the company had already recalled the drives in 2011 iMacs (I had a 2010 model), I was told by the geniuses in the Apple Store that since I hadn't bought Apple Care there was nothing they could do for me except replace the drive … Read more

A new update to iTunes on Thursday adds two new features to Apple's MiniPlayer and improves performance for users with large libraries.

Version 11.0.3, which went out as a free update on Mac and PC, has a new feature that lets you tweak the MiniPlayer to show album art with the player controls hidden. When you mouse over the player, the controls fade back into view. It also brings back the MiniPlayer progress bar, one of a handful of features Apple took out in the jump to iTunes 11.

Other changes include now showing album art in … Read more

If Apple can obtain the go-ahead from the city, its San Francisco store on Stockton and Ellis streets will be moving -- but not too far.

According to SFGate, Apple recently applied to move its current store to Union Square in a new silver box-shaped building. The current store opened nine years ago, but Apple has outgrown it, the company claims. By building a new store in Union Square, it believes that it can increase the number of people employed at the store by 50. Apple currently employs 350 people at the retail location.

Apple has so far not presented … Read more

An increasing number of people are deciding to dedicate their cash to Apple's iOS rather than traditional gaming handhelds, according to a new study.

A joint study performed by research firms IDC and App Annie found that during the first quarter of 2013, total spending on iOS App Store games outpaced that of dedicated handhelds such as Nintendo's 3DS and PlayStation Vita. It was the first time that iOS games outpaced the traditional devices. In the fourth quarter, iOS was slightly behind gaming handhelds in total spending.

For now, Google Play is still a distant third, tallying about … Read more

A single iPhone may not provide enough light to shoot a dark scene. But a handful of them remotely controlled might just do the trick. At least, that's the idea behind a patent filed by Apple.

Published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a patent application dubbed simply "Illumination system" describes a method whereby multiple iPhones or other mobile devices team up to act as camera flashes. The primary device could be a camera or a smartphone. The secondary devices could be smartphones, tablets, or other gadgets with their own built-in flash or a … Read more

Android scooped up more than half of all ad impressions seen by Millennial Media last quarter, according to the ad network's new MobileMix report.

For the first quarter, Android won 52 percent of all impressions (the number of times a mobile ad is displayed), up from 49 percent in the year-ago quarter.

In second place, iOS accounted for 39 percent of all impressions, up from 33 percent. That left the third spot to the BlackBerry OS, which saw its slice of ad impressions cut in half to 7 percent from 14 percent. Microsoft's Windows Phone also witnessed a … Read more

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

Microsoft's Windows Phone grabbed third place from BlackBerry in global smartphone shipments in the first quarter, market researcher IDC said Thursday.

Windows Phone accounted for shipments of 7 million smartphones, earning itself a market share of 3.2 percent last quarter. That was a gain from the first quarter of 2012, which saw shipments of 3 million and a market share of 2 percent.

Over the same period, BlackBerry saw its fortunes fall. Last quarter, shipments fell to 6.3 million from 9.7 million in the year-ago quarter, while BlackBerry's market share dropped to 2.9 percent … Read more