iPod Minis: More Beatles, White iPhone 4s?, Google Voice on iOS

By Sam Costello, About.com GuideNovember 18, 2010

Follow me on:

See More About:

Some Beatles follow-ups:
- Apple has an exclusive on the catalog "through 2011" and beat Amazon and Google for the deal (does that mean they offered better than normal cuts of sales or was it just market size that sealed the deal?).
- On Tuesday, I wondered if there was much demand for Beatles music on iTunes at this point. Apparently the answer is yes: Beatles songs held 25% of the iTunes Top 200 songs as of yesterday. Curious to see how that trails off (or if it does) over time.
A 17-year-old in Queens has beaten Apple to the release of the white iPhone 4 the company's been unable to ship. He contacted Foxconn (the company that manufactures the iPhone) and bought all the parts to convert regular iPhones 4s to white ones. He sells the kits for US$279 and has reportedly cleared over $130,000 in sales. Setting aside how long he'll be able to keep this up, the question for Apple has to be, who at Foxconn thought this was OK? Heck of a partner.
In tablet news, RIM has posted a demo of its BlackBerry PlayBook outperforming the iPad in web browsing (it is their demo, of course).
- HP has doubled the sales of its Slate tablet -- but they still only sold 9,000.
- A Business Insider survey found that iPad users prefer the Kindle app to iBooks for the e-book reading. Not remotely me! What about you, readers?
Google Voice is finally approved for download at the App Store. Seems like a good sign for greater openness at the App Store to me.