Holiday

Mesmerizing front-window displays going up at Apple Stores ahead of holidays

Christian Zibreg ∙ November 18, 2013

With the start of the 2013 holiday season officially less than two weeks away, Tim Cook and his lieutenants are adamant to turn Apple Stores into the best place to experience the magic of iPhone and iPad devices, Macs and other gear - all over again.

As is Apple's wont, part of the upcoming festivities is a holiday-themed interior design and fitting tweaks, including this mesmerizing front window display.

Take a closer look after the break and tell us what you though about it down in the comments...

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Several U.S. Apple Stores will be open on Thanksgiving Day

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated August 26, 2017

I know it may sound blasphemously to some, but the iPhone maker's retail army does get to enjoy turkey with their families as Apple Stores typically close for major holidays such as Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving Day. One notable exception is the flagship glass cube store on Fifth Avenue, open 24/7 every day of the year.

Apple normally allows store employees to spend time with their families on Thanksgiving Day, with some of its retail shrines typically opening as early as 3am on Black Friday. Last year, for example, only the Royal Hawaiian and Las Vegas Forum Shops outlets were open on Thanksgiving, mainly because of tourist who arrived in droves for the start of the holiday shopping season in the United States.

This year will be different. According to a guy who tracks Apple's retail efforts for a living, a bunch of Apple's brick-and-mortar Stores in the United States will be open on Thanksgiving Day, a move apparently that in line with Tim Cook's policy of doubling down on Apple Stores.

UPDATE: Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly cancelled plans to keep additional Apple Stores open on Thanksgiving...

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Christmas comes early as Apple refreshes web store with holiday gift ideas

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated August 26, 2017

A seeming barrage of Apple product refreshes over the past few months has helped a great deal overhaul virtually the company's whole lineup. For starters, with September's dual-launch Apple's replaced the iPhone 5 with the fingerprint-reading iPhone 5s and the colorful iPhone 5c and released iOS 7 for public consumption.

Moreover, Tim Cook & Co. have finally managed to give the iPad mini and 13-inch MacBook Pro some much-needed Retina/Haswell love while at the same time introducing the iPad Air and rebooting Mac Pro around a radical new industrial design.

Doomed, indeed!

This has become Apple's modus operandi as of lately: they time product updates so that everything gets revamped ahead of the all-important holiday season. With less than three weeks until Black Friday, Apple's now updated its online store with some nice gift ideas for holiday shoppers...

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Survey: the iPad mini becomes ‘kid’s tablet’ for holiday gifts

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

We're still gaining insights from holiday sales of Apple products. The latest finding: the iPad mini is now dubbed the "kid's tablet" after one survey found post-Christmas usage of Apple's smaller tablet rose 270 percent among families with young children. The new data comes from the makers of Kindertown.

Kindertown makes an app which helps parents find child-suitable apps. Among other findings culled from the software's more than 200,000 users: while the iPad 4 was popular as a family gift, children also adopted the original iPad as a technological hand-me-down. Elsewhere, iPhone's were not a big gift item for this demographic, after-Christmas usage of Apple's handset not rising following the holidays...

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Best Buy accuses Walmart of hurting holiday iPhone 5 sales

Ed Sutherland ∙ January 4, 2013

Get ready to rumble! Best Buy, a gadget retailer that sells more iPhones than anyone but Apple, is charging the world's biggest retailer Walmart with unfairly pricing the iPhone 5 during holiday.

A number of states' attorney generals are looking into the allegation. Best Buy says it lost $65,000 a day trying to match the $150 price (later cut to $127) Walmart promoted in December.

The electronics retailer charges Walmart didn't have sufficient supplies to fulfill its holiday promotion of the regularly-priced $199 smartphone...

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Angry Birds: 30M downloads on Christmas week

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 24, 2018

So much about Angry Birds running its course. Finnish developer Rovio announced today that its Angry Birds series, which just turned three, has been downloaded thirty million times during the Christmas week, raking in over eight million downloads on the Christmas Day alone. The 99-cent holiday sale of Rovio's iPad games might have helped with that. It was an Angry New Year for Rovio indeed and the company produced a charming infographic that highlights other interesting holiday sales stats...

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Chitika: iPad rules ‘biggest ever’ holiday

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

How did holiday sales of tablets shake out? Although sales numbers aren't yet available, we can get some idea of which devices were in most demand. For instance, Amazon's Kindle Fire, followed by Samsung's Galaxy tablets and Google Nexus devices were the top three non-iPad products serving ad impressions in December, according to an ad firm.

Although the iPad (both the full-size versions and the iPad mini) accounts for 87 percent of U.S. and Canadian tablet-based ad impressions, the Kindle Fire was next best with 4.25 percent of tablet traffic. The Samsung Galaxy tablets had 2.65 percent, while the Google Nexus family of tablets garnered 1.06 percent of tablet traffic, according to ad network Chitika...

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How to track Santa’s progress tonight on your iPhone

Cody Lee ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Put on the cheesy music and pour the egg nog, it's finally Christmas Eve! And for millions of kids around the world, that means that it won't be long now until Santa Claus shows up.

In this day and age of GPS technology, it's never been easier to track Santa on his 20,000+ mile route around the planet. In fact, you can actually do it right from your iPhone...

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Walmart selling $50 iTunes Gift Cards for $40 with instant email delivery

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 19, 2018

Here's a nice last minute holiday gift idea: if your loved ones use Apple products, give them iTunes Gift Cards that can be used to add credits to their iTunes account. Usually these things are delivered physically, but Walmart is having a sale where it's offering a $50 iTunes Gift Card for $40, an instant $10 saving.

Additionally, you card gets delivered through email right after purchase, depending on your credit card issuer's rules. Walmart is no stranger to such promotions. Back in August, the retailer was selling $100 iTunes cards for $80...

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Here’s Samsung’s Christmas ad that will ruin your childhood

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIKv1AXUmOk

Not sure whether or not you saw Samsung's TV ad starring Santa and Mrs. Claus where the characters share their sex tape using "the magic of S Beam on the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II".

I know it's a rehash of Samsung's earlier (and pretty funny) take on a sex tape exchange between a guy and his wife. Let's be clear - I have absolutely no problem with sex in advertising, but that's a preposterous thing to air as we head into Christmas.

Just what exactly are kids supposed to think after being exposed to such a dramatized sexual innuendo involving their childhood hero? Seriously, what's next? A sexting Santa commercial? Thanks for ruining my childhood, Samsung!

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Walmart discounts iPhone 5 to just $127, starting December 17

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated November 19, 2018

Just in time for my birthday, retailer Walmart is shaving $72 off the entry-level iPhone 5 with sixteen gigabytes of storage. Beginning December 17, you'll be able to purchase the device for just $127, that's $22 less than the lowest price we could find at RadioShack, Target and Best Buy, which all offer Apple's phone with a cool $50 discount (and some gift cards). Walmart is also offering the previous-generation iPhone 4S for just $47 and a fourth-generation iPad for $399, a $100 saving...

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