By AnnaMaria AndriotisThe rise in new home sales is being driven in part by demand for the kind of larger and more luxurious custom-built houses that had fallen out of favor in recent years: so-called McMansions. Data released on Wednesday shows that sales of newly built homes rose 3.3% in April from a month prior and 9.9% from a year ago. While the figures do not disclose the size of these new homes, home builders credited the McMansion side of the spectrum. That’s a reversal from recent trends: During the recession the size of homes got smaller, shrinking 3.4% to 2,382 square feet, according to the US Census. But last year that size jumped 5.2% to 2,505 – the largest in at least four years. ... Continue reading →
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Apple's priorities have shifted slightly under new CEO Tim Cook, Adam Lashinsky reports for Fortune. Lashinsky spoke with current and former Apple engineers who say that executives are interfering too much with their work, which was never the case under Jobs: From the Fortune article: "It looks like it has become a more conservative execution engine rather than a pushing-the-envelope engineering engine," says Max Paley, a former engineering vice president who worked at Apple for 14 years until late 2011. "I've been told that any meeting of significance is now always populated by project management and global-supply management. When I was there, engineering decided what we wanted, and it was the job of product management and supply management to go get it. It shows a ... Continue reading →
Steve Jobs' successor is making his mark and trying to keep the Apple magic going. FORTUNE -- In February of this year, a group of investors visited Apple as part of a "bus tour" led by a research analyst for Citibank. The session started with a 45-minute presentation by Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer, and the 15 or so investors who attended the session were treated to Apple's unique brand of hospitality: They met in a threadbare conference room in Apple's Town Hall public conference center at the 4 Infinite Loop building in Cupertino, Calif., where the refreshments consisted of "three stale cookies and two Diet Cokes," in the words of one participant. All that, save the meager refreshments, is routine for big public ... Continue reading →
Stephen Colbert Voted One of Maxim's Hottest Women May 23 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Scarlet Fu reports that after a write-in campaign by his viewers, Stephen Colbert comes in at No. 69 on Maxim's Hottest Women list. She speaks on Bloomberg Television's "Inside Track." (Source: Bloomberg) TV Channel Finder ZIP is required for U.S. locations Bloomberg Television in change Continue reading →
Many assumed Apple's process of developing new products would suffer without the oversight of its visionary leader Steve Jobs, but according to the head of Apple's design department, it has mostly been business as usual since Jobs left the company. "We're developing products in exactly the same way that we were two years ago, five years ago, ten years ago," said Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of industrial design at Apple, in an extended interview with The Telegraph. "It's not that there are a few of us working in the same way: there is a large group of us working in the same way." In fact, Ive goes on to argue in the interview that Apple's ability to innovate didn't stop when Jobs left the ... Continue reading →
Apple is planning to make the next iPhone's screen a little bigger, according to several recent reports. The latest rumors suggest the new iPhone will have a 4-inch screen, up from the current 3.5-inch screen. Apple is expected to make the iPhone screen taller, but not wider. This would mark the first time Apple changed the dimensions of the iPhone's screen and there are concerns that it could cause fragmentation issues for developers. Business Insider reached out to several prominent app developers to get their take on the rumors and to find out whether they are happy or unhappy about the prospect of a larger iPhone screen. For the most part, they don't think it will be a problem. The only concern we heard repeatedly ... Continue reading →
Last August, Google (GOOG) Chief Executive Officer Larry Page fulfilled a pledge made to one of his senior executives, a square-jawed former attorney named Dennis Woodside. Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook had been trying to poach Woodside to make him Apple’s head of sales, but Google had convinced Woodside to stay, in part by promising him greater responsibility at the search company, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. Now it was time to make good. Woodside says he was speaking with board member Ram Shriram when Page asked him to run Motorola Mobility, the company Google had just acquired for $12.5 billion. “He said, ‘I know you’ve been looking for a ... Continue reading →
Study Shows Congress Speaks At The Literacy Level Of High School Sophomores » comments If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s just you or if members of Congress really do sound slightly less eloquent now than they did a few years ago, a new study proves there might be a pattern to worry about. Congressional floor speeches have declined at least one grade level between 2005 and 2012. While the average Congressman still speaks better than the average American, the quality of their rhetoric on the floor has declined from an 11th to 10th grade level, according to the Sunlight Foundation. RELATED: Could Recent String Of Burglaries In Capitol Hill Offices Be An Inside Job? The study, which Lee Drutman, the political scientist who ran it, ... Continue reading →
