In advance of Apple’s Thursday earnings report, it’s being announced that iPhone had 51.2% of all smartphone sales in the 4th quarter of 2012. Verizon posted its 4th quarter earnings today, taking a hit for subsidizing — you guessed it — the iPhone 5. WhoWhatWhy says Aaron Swarz perescutor Carmen Ortiz has a “sordid rap [...]

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt boasts to Bloomberg about the rapid proliferation of Google’s Android smartphone operating system, comparing it to Microsoft’s domination of the desktop platform in the 90s. And if everyone remembers the 90s correctly, the Department of Justice stepped in and smacked Microsoft around for antitrust violation, without which they would have no doubt strangled Google in its infancy.

Apple CEO Tim Cook appeared with Brian Williams on NBC News last night, and confirmed that the company will bring production of some iMacs to the United States in 2013. It’s largely a PR move, even with the $100 million Cook says Apple will spend to shift assembly to the US.

Some tech reporters rightly noted that with the formation of the Internet Association, it looks like Google is getting the SOPA band back together again. But nobody asked the rather obvious question: why an industry that spent $129 million on lobbying in 2011 needed yet another lobbing shop, especially when the Net Coalition already exists.

Ahem. Allow Bytegeist to read the tea leaves.

Oh the irony:  Video of app developed by defense contractor Boeing allowing “minimally trained” people to operate drones by iPhone Everyone with an iPhone knows there are apps out there that are ugly, poorly designed and just plain don’t work. But according to FDL alum Spencer Ackerman, Apple is applying a new standard of excellence [...]

Apple spanked Samsung so hard their whole family could feel it on Friday when a 9 member jury found that Samsung had violated numerous Apple patents that pertain to the iPhone. The jury deliberated for only 23 hours, an indication that they found Apple’s chronological, side-by-side presentation of Apple and Samsung product development extremely convincing. [...]