Apple will assemble Macs in Texas using some parts made in the U.S., CEO Tim Cook said, making good on a pledge made last December. In a prepared statement Cook read before a Senate subcommittee yesterday, the chief executive named Texas as the location of a new factory where Apple will assemble Macs. Cook was in Washington, D.C. to defend Apple’s tax practices after senators accused the California company of dodging its obligations by shunting profits to overseas subsidiaries, including several... 

GameStop president Tony Bartel has reassured consumers that next-gen games will be able to be bought and sold on the pre-owned market, and explained why that is important as consoles transition. “Both Sony and Microsoft have said games can be resold and that’s exactly what we anticipated. It’s a recognised way to make these games more affordable. All three new platforms understand that,” Bartel told Forbes. “As people upgraded to PS3 they traded in their old systems... 

Wal-Mart plans to use big data about a customer’s shopping habits to automatically create shopping lists for them on its mobile app. That’s one of the tools the world’s largest retailer plans to use to improve the in-store shopping experience as it looks to mobile-influenced purchases outpacing e-commerce sales, said Gibu Thomas, Wal-Mart’s global head of mobile, in a CTIA Wireless keynote speech on Wednesday. “The future of retailing is the history of retailing, of... 

If you have any old AMD shares lying around you might like to sell them as fast as you can, according to the bean counters at Goldman Sachs. Despite the fact that the company is doing rather well, and its share price is has gone up rapidly over recent months, Goldman Sach analysts claim that the writing is on the wall for AMD. It thinks that AMD shares will be worth just $2.50 soon. The stock’s 50-day moving average is currently $2.98. The company said that while AMD could clean up in the gaming... 

Teenagers are growing tired of the excessive sharing and “drama” on Facebook and more are turning to sites like Twitter and Instagram to express themselves, according to a new study. “Many teens expressed waning enthusiasm for Facebook,” the Pew Research Center said in a study released Tuesday, based on interviews with 800 teens conducted between July and September last year. They complained of too many adults on the site, the inane details shared by friends and the “drama”... 

A Comparative Climatology Symposium held at NASA Headquarters on May 7 focused on new approaches to climate research by highlighting the similarities and contrasts between the environments of the rocky worlds Venus, Earth, Mars and Saturn’s smoggy moon Titan. The symposium also included discussions about exoplanets, the sun and past, present and future space missions. John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said that the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope... 

A day that SEGA fans thought would never come has arrived: SEGA has entered into a deal with Nintendo where Nintendo consoles will get the next three Sonic the Hedgehog titles as platform exclusives. The once bitter rivals are calling this a “worldwide partnership,” which despite being a bit short on details apparently leads us to believe that SEGA will be developing additional new software for the Wii U and 3DS consoles going forward. The next three Sonic titles will include Sonic: Lost World,... 

Apple’s dominance in smartphone customer satisfaction evaporated last year, with rivals like Samsung and Motorola dramatically closing the gap, a national survey said today. Although the iPhone remained the top smartphone by customer satisfaction, with a score of 81 in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) published Tuesday, Apple’s lead largely evaporated. Not only did Apple’s score fall two points from the year before, satisfaction in competitors’ devices jumped. Samsung’s... 

Yahoo has once again made the list as one of the world’s 100 most valuable brands. The Internet company nabbed the 92nd spot in the annual list of global companies from multiple industries including technology, retail and service, released Tuesday by BrandZ, a brand equity database. The ranking gave Yahoo a “brand value” of US$9.83 billion, which is based on the opinions of current and potential users as well as actual financial data. Apple occupied the number-one position on the list,... 

Three months after hackers working for a cyberunit of China’s People’s Liberation Army went silent they appear to have resumed their attacks using different techniques. The Obama administration had bet that “naming and shaming” the groups, first in industry reports and then in the Pentagon’s own detailed survey of Chinese military capabilities, might prompt China’s new leadership to crack down on the military’s team of hackers. But it appears that Unit 6139 is back in business, according... 

Sprint Nextel has increased its offer to acquire Clearwire, bidding US$3.40 per share, to counter a competing offer by Dish Network. The new bid marks a significant boost from its earlier offer of $2.97 per share and beats Dish’s $3.30 bid. Clearwire shareholders had been scheduled to vote on Sprint’s offer at a special meeting Tuesday, but that meeting has now been postponed until May 30. Sprint already owns roughly half of Clearwire, which has been its partner for 4G WiMax service... 

Dell has dumped its own cloud service offering to instead resell services for Joyant, Scalematrix and Zerolag. Dell’s public cloud service was the firm’s offering that was meant to tempt customers that buy kit from the firm not to run off to Amazon. Now it seems that Dell doesn’t want to run its own cloud datacentre operations but resell services through its Cloud Partner Program. Dell’s Cloud Partner Program presently has three providers signed up, with Joyent arguably being... 

Intel will offer five GPU SKUs in its upcoming Haswell based processors and a further two for its server chips. Intel has been placing greater emphasis on its graphics performance in the last few generations of its chips, with Ivy Bridge finally bringing full profile OpenCL capability. Now the firm has released some more details on the GPUs that will be available with its Haswell processors, with five options for desktop and laptops that the firm claims are up to twice as fast on its favoured 3DMark... 

Two of the nation’s largest online food delivery businesses said they are merging in a deal that they hope will drive more orders, in more cities, through their platforms. GrubHub and Seamless, which allow consumers to easily order online from various restaurants, are part of a group of fast-growing businesses that standardize local services under a national umbrella. Think restaurant reservations, where OpenTable dominates, or car services, where privately held startups such as Uber are... 

Finnish startup Jolla has announced its first smartphone, which debuts its Sailfish OS on a 4.5-inch screen. The device integrates the company’s unique back covers with the software, allowing the look to change and new features to be added. Jolla, which was founded by former Nokia employees who wanted to continue the development work the Finnish phone maker had done on the MeeGo OS, is with the introduction one big step closer to entering the ultra-competitive smartphone market. “The...