Hasta La Gadget!

It doesn’t offer a lot of power, but the compact and stylish handset should do well for first-time smartphone buyers. Plus, it’s just $80 with service.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

By Duncan Geere, Wired UK

Update: Wired.co.uk has independently confirmed store referred to in the story to be an unauthorized Apple Store.

Chinese counterfeiters have a long history of cloning hardware from major tech manufacturers, but now they’re going a step further by cloning entire stores.

A US blogger living in Kunming in Southwest China noticed what appeared to be an Apple store pop up in her town, complete with the store’s trademark spacious, airy interior, blue-shirted staff, products to play with, and upstairs seating area.

“We proceeded to place a bet on whether or not this was a genuine Apple store or just the best rip-off we had ever seen,” said the blogger, who hasn’t disclosed her identity but goes under the pseudonym BirdAbroad. It turned out to be the latter — a quick glance at Apple’s website shows that there are only stores in Beijing and Shanghai in China.

Even more curiously, the staff believed they genuinely were working for Apple. “I tried to imagine the training that they went to when they were hired,” says the blogger, “in which they were pitched some big speech about how they were working for this innovative, global company — when really they’re just filling the pockets of some shyster living in a prefab mansion outside the city by standing around a fake store disinterestedly selling what may or may not be actual Apple products that fell off the back of a truck somewhere.”

There is some debate as to whether the store in question is a “Premium Reseller” taking the job far too seriously. (Not any more there isn’t. See the above update.) The blog’s author addresses this in the comments, adding: “What these stores are doing is clearly different — they are trying to trick people into thinking this is an actual Apple store. The employees all think they actually work for the American company Apple, when they plainly do not.”

You can see plenty of images of the store on BirdAbroad’s blog, along with discussion in the comments.

It isn’t the first time cloning of this scale has been claimed. In 2006, for example, it was reported the whole of NEC, the electronics firm, was cloned.

Apple outpaces Nokia in global smartphone shipments originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Mac Rumors  |  The Financial Times (registration required)  | Email this | Comments

BioWare and EA open the floodgates for Star Wars: The Old Republic preorders.

The new MacBook Airs' i5 processor and backlit keyboard make it a speedy, slick machine

If you bought a MacBook Pro last year, tough beans: It just got outflanked by its slimmer, smaller cousin, the MacBook Air.

According to benchmark tests, the 2011 MacBook Air outperforms every 2010 MacBook Pro.

Laptop magazine reports that the 13-inch Air had a performance boost of 100 percent over last year’s Air, scoring 5,860 on the Geekbench test. It boots in 17 seconds, and has a 6.25-hour battery life. The 11-inch Air jumped 149 percent, for a Geekbench score of 5,040, compared to 2,024 for last year’s model. It took 19 seconds to boot up, and its battery lasted a little longer than 4.75 hours.

As a direct comparison, the 2010 17-inch MacBook Pro scored 5,423 on its benchmark test — so the new 13-inch Mac Book Air is more powerful than the 17-inch Pro, and the 11-inch Air is on par with it. Kind of mind blowing.

The MacBook Pro line, particularly the 2010 MacBook Pros, have been a big target audience for Apple. Available in 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch sizes, they featured the most powerful processors in Apple’s line of portables (the 15- and 17-inchers came standard with a 2.6-GHz Intel Core i5 Chip).

Apple’s big performance boost for the MacBook Air illustrates its larger plan. The company in recent years has invested less on products for the professional marketplace to focus on hardware for general consumers, including iPhones, iPads and now, the MacBook Air.

Apple’s steady strides away from the professional marketplace are exemplified by the recent release of Final Cut Pro X, a dumbed-down version of the video-editing tool, which angered many professional video editors. Also, Apple in recent years has been slower with releasing upgrades for the Mac Pro.

And here’s an obvious tell: Apple hasn’t updated its Pro webpage in two years.

Last year’s MacBook Airs were lauded for their super-slim .76-inch thickness and less than 3-pound heft. That frame came at a price, though: They housed less impressive Core 2 Duo processors, relegating the Air to niche markets like frequent travelers who were looking for just a decently performing ultra-portable notebook.

Since Apple unveiled its newer, faster MacBook Airs yesterday, it seems the MacBook Air will be taking the front seat from the Pro.

It looks like size doesn’t matter. Well, when it comes to Apple notebooks, at least.