iPhone-related thefts are up 44 percent this year, but that doesn't really seem to bother Mayor Bloomberg. At his budget announcement yesterday Hizzoner was asked about the spike in crime and replied nonchalantly that, "If the worst problem we have is iPhone stealing..." Then he turned to the police commissioner added, "Ray, you’d better get on this iPhone right away. This is serious!" Somehow we suspect the parents of the chef killed for his iPhone, or the teen stabbed in the face for his, or the 81-year-old pushed in the subway tracks for his, wouldn't appreciate the mayor's tone. more ›

Do you want to smell like the Apple Store? An artistic collaborative has created what they believe is the scent one whiffs when opening up an Apple box and pulling out a brand new MacBook Pro (soon available for purchase online). They say "a distinctive scent can be observed when unwrapping a newly purchased Apple product from its packaging," one that Apple fans will recognize. But what about the olfactory of the factory workers in China? Or the scent of the grown men waiting on line for days for a new product to be released? There are so many possibilities—so we await version 2.0 of this fragrance. more ›

Writing apps for phones is not actually easy—and it is a lot harder with a billionaire breathing down your neck. That's what some city tech developers learned, at least, after Mayor Bloomberg reportedly tried to use the city's NYC 311 iOS app last February—and was so put off by the experience that, according to the Daily News's Juan Gonzalez, he lost it on his staff. more ›

A bookworm is eating at Apple. Today the Justice Department filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against the iPad-maker and a slew of major book publishers saying that they colluded to raise the price of e-books. Remember when it was Microsoft that was always getting kicked around for this kind of stuff? more ›

It was fun while it lasted! For the last few months the NYPD has been doing quite well for itself recovering stolen iPhones using Apple's Find My iPhone feature. Cops even got training to use the software. But—and this isn't surprising since the NYPD (and we in the media) kept harping on the news—apparently the crooks have started to catch on. "Whatever surprise we had, that surprise is out the window now," one Manhattan police source cried to the Post. more ›

Mike Daisey—the performer and monologuist whose Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs put tremendous pressure on Apple to clean up its manufacturing act in China only to be revealed as a sham when This American Life retracted its segment based on it—is not leaving the stage just yet. Yesterday he took to his blog to take another stab at apologizing and explaining himself. In the post he says he "failed to honor the contract I’d established with my audiences over many years and many shows." more ›

The 83-year-old woman who is suing Apple for $1 million because she broke her nose when she walked into the glass door at the Apple Store in Manhasset is speaking out about her lawsuit. more ›

Mike Daisey's stirring monologue The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs was performed at the Public Theater for what will likely be the final time on Sunday. In the wake of a nasty backlash against the show's veracity, Daisey prefaced the monologue by informing the audience that This American Life was retracting a segment about his show, which concerns the mistreatment of workers who make Apple products in Chinese Foxconn factories. more ›

Yesterday, beloved public radio institution This American Life said it was retracting its popular segment about the horrid working conditions at Apple factories in China producing various iProduct. The program was centered around the work of monologuist Mike Daisey, whose latest piece, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, "illuminates how the CEO of Apple and his obsessions shape our lives, while sharing stories of his own travels to China to investigate the factories where millions toil to make iPhones and iPods." But TAL executive producer and host Ira Glass explained that Daisey lied to him and the TAL staff, about small and big things (like meeting a 13-year-old worker, showing a worker a completed iPad for the first time). Still, in the edition of This American Life that aired yesterday, Glass ended the program by discussing the labor issues at the factories with NY Times reporter Charles Duhigg, who says, "What has happened today is that rather than exporting that standard of life, which is within our capacity to do, we have exported harsh working conditions to another nation." more ›

Apple launched its newest product, the iPad3, today and the Apple store on Fifth Avenue was packed to the brim with Apple consumers hungry to get their hands on the new and improved tablet. Some people braved the cold and rain early this morning only to end up in the back of what was an already packed line. more ›

Hoards of hungry gadget-heads are currently turning on their new iPads to find out that This American Life has decided to retract their recent segment on the harsh working conditions at Chinese factories making the company's toys [PDF]. The problem is that the segment, which included large segments from Mike Daisey's one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, "contained numerous fabrications." In other words: Yet more good news for Apple, whose stock is currently trading over $580 a share. more ›

Apple's Find My iPhone feature has caught a fair number of iPhone-snatchers since it was introduced—cops are now being trained to use it—so we shouldn't be surprised that it has now helped catch a counterfeit iPhone seller in Queens. more ›

Tonight Nightline will broadcast a segment on Foxconn's massive factories in Shenzhen, which has a population of workers greater than NYC. That they toil for low pay in exploitative conditions to make our shiny Apple products is an open secret the mainstream media is finally covering. But monologuist Mike Daisey shining on a spotlight on Foxconn factories for years, particularly with his electrifying play The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Having read a transcript of the Nightline segment, Daisey says it "does a lot for actually helping to give a human face to people who have been ignored forever." However, "context is everything." On his blog, he writes: more ›

Following the Times' damning investigative series on the human costs of its cheap electronics and Mike Daisey's scathing one-man show, Apple has announced that they have asked the independent group to conduct audits of Apple's assembly suppliers in China. “We believe that workers everywhere have the right to a safe and fair work environment, which is why we’ve asked the FLA to independently assess the performance of our largest suppliers,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. more ›

This year the NYPD has had a few successes finding stolen iPhones using Apple's GPS-based "Find My iPhone" feature. So naturally the NYPD is now reportedly teaching cops to use the technology. more ›

The Pentagon's budget is being trimmed for the first time since 1998, but that hasn't stopped the Air Force from placing a request for as many as 18,000 iPad 2s. According to Bloomberg News, the devices would "lighten the load of flight crews," who have to lug navigation charts and paper-bound manuals that can weigh as much as 40 pounds. Will we finally see pilots playing Fruit Ninja in those Air Force promos? more ›

Would-be criminals don't seem to be learning their lesson: if you steal an iPhone, cops will use the Find My iPhone app to track you down. And if you're really dumb, you may get caught in an embarrassing manner. Case in point: according to CBS, two cops found a stolen iPhone after they heard it ringing inside the pants of a 14-year-old suspect. more ›

An iPhone-wielding cop used his Find My iPhone app to track down a thief in Midtown in under 30 minutes on Thursday. After a cashier at Tuci Italia was robbed of her phone around 7 p.m., officer Robert Garland, who the Times describes as "an avid Apple consumer—he and his wife own iPhones, iPads and Macintosh computers," put her Apple ID into his Find My iPhone app and saw the victim's phone was a few blocks away. "I told her when I walked in, 'I'm going to find your iPhone,' " Garland says, in what will surely be a line in a Liam Neeson movie next year. more ›

Monologist Mike Daisey has drawn attention to the horrendous labor practices in China that are exploited by Apple and other electronics corporations since he first performed his one-man show, The Agony and the Ecstacy of Steve Jobs, in 2010. Recently, the New York Times has released a series of reports detailing the brutal nature of the Chinese "iEconomy," much of which overlapped with Daisey's show. A Romanesko reader wonders what Daisey thinks of the pieces, and he responded. "I’m absolutely thrilled that the NYT is doing this reporting. It’s what I’ve been hoping for—that journalists would dig in and pull this story out by its roots." more ›

iPhones are super-popular with consumers and thieves, so it's nice to know that not all iThefts include bloodshed. Some actually include happy endings—especially thanks to Apple's built-in tracking software. In the latest "Find My Phone" success story, a 24-year-old woman helped by a clever officer in midtown was able to get hers back within hours. more ›

The days of lugging a 40-pound backpack to and from school are almost over, or so Apple would have us believe. At an invite-only event at the Guggenheim this morning, Apple introduced the newest version of its iBook ebook app, an ebook authoring tool, and introduced a line of math and science textbooks designed for the iPad. The textbooks are focused, for the time being, on elementary through high school students, and will supplement the existing 20,000 educational apps already made for the tablet. more ›

While Marty Markowitz has been lobbying for an Apple store in Brooklyn for years, that borough may be one of the last to get one. Currently Manhattan has five Apple stores (the latest in Grand Central), Staten Island has one, and it turns out Queens may be next on the list. Forest Hills, to be exact. more ›

Apple is tearing (divorced) families apart! A judge yesterday pushed a mother to swap her 10-year-old son's iPhone for a low-end flip-phone after she "entered the father's home and took residency with the iPhone" using Apple's video conferencing software FaceTime. Apparently Fordham adjunct Annmarie McAvoy had taken to hours-long FaceTime conversations with her son while he was at his father John Hannigan's home. more ›

Few muggers posses the sophisticated refinement to appreciate the finer things in life: a nice bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, a Whole Body Robotic Massage Chair from Sharper Image, and the latest version of whatever iPhone has been bestowned upon the unworthy masses (preferably the white one). So it's nice to know there's at least one discerning thief out there showing a little class. Police tell DNAinfo there's a cell phone robber targeting people in the neighborhood around Columbia University, and if he tries to rob you, don't even think about handing over your vulgar BlackBerry. more ›