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Attempts to legislate online, video privacy very sticky

Congress has recently amended the quarter-century-old Video Privacy Protection Act. In immediate and practical terms, it means that a video service like Netflix can now share your personal viewing history with an outside service (like Facebook) after getting your permission.

What Apple could do to make 2013 a really great year

ANDY IHNATKO: Apple’s done well with iBooks, movies, and computers that sell for half the cost of a conventional notebook. What other turnabouts does Apple have in store for 2013 and beyond? Here’s what I’m hoping for.

Celebrate 2013 with a new font for $20.13

IHNATKO: Comicraft, the producer of some of the finest display fonts available anywhere, celebrates New Year by putting all of their fonts on sale, for $20.13. Get it? 2013.

Ihnatko: The best tech products of 2012

When I’m choosing tech products and services for a “best of the year” list, there’s only one valid criteria: the things that remained a big part of my life after the review was over and done with. Here are my favorites.

Read this before you wrap that Christmas Wii U - and ukuleles

ANDY IHNATKO ON PERSONAL TECH: Before wrapping up all those tech goodies for under the tree, take a few minutes to make sure they’re ready to use. From software updates to apps to just making sure there is a full charge - there are lots of small, time-consuming steps you can take to make it a better gift out of the box.

Ihnatko: Google Maps is back on iPhone, thank goodness

If you believe that the world will end in a couple of weeks, you might be cursed with a peculiar kind of intelligence that also led you to believe that Google Maps wasn’t coming back to the iPhone. The jury’s still out on the whole Mayan Calendar Rollover bug, but you can now rest assured that good old Google Maps, the service that powered the iPhone’s Maps app from the debut of the device through this summer, is now back on your favorite phone.

iMac’s nifty design does little, but guts are great

Obviously, the new 2012 iMac is thin...just 5mm at the edge of the screen. It’s a marvelous effect Apple pulled off a true magic trick here; I can crabwalk my chair sideways to the extreme left and the extreme right, and the illusion of a powerful desktop that’s no thicker than a sheet of tempered glass is intact until I’m practically looking at it from the side. Only then does the thick bulge which contains everything that makes a Mac a Mac come out from its hiding place, and Apple’s design team steps forward and takes its bows.

Tech gifts in store for holiday:

Presenting a few useful ideas

ANDY IHNATKO: Holiday gift shopping. Here are a few gifts I think so highly of that I’ve bought several to give away as gifts.

DC Comics goes mainstream by widening digital world

ANDY INHATKO: DC Comics expanded their digital distribution system all the way into the native reader apps found on multiple mobile devices. In addition to finding them in Comixology, you can now purchase DC’s weekly releases through the Kindle Store, the iBookstore, and the Nook Store.

Review: Despite flaws, iPad Mini more than just small iPad

ANDY IHNATKO REVIEW: The iPad Mini is a device at 80 percent the size of the iPad, but don’t mistake that in way way to mean it come up short in comparison. The Mini has it’s flaws - text rendering leaves a lot to be desired - but this a device worth every penny of a pricetag that starts at about $130 more than other mini tablets.

Ihnatko: First-look - iPad Mini makes tablet experience intimate

ANDY IHNATKO FIRST LOOK: The new iPad Mini hits the market and, upon first impression, it’s an iPad - only smaller. That’s to say that the tiny iPad is just as powerful and capable as its big brother, but in a more intimate handfull.

REVIEW: Microsoft Surface RT a great yin to iPad’s yang

ANDY IHNATKO FIRST LOOK: A one-day look at the Microsoft Surface with Windows RT yields a couple of observations: it’s no iPad . . . and that’s a perfectly fine thing to be.

Ihnatko: Why Apple was right to price iPad Mini at $329

I don’t think $329 is a mistake. Instead, it simply reveals how Apple thinks of the competition for the iPad Mini: They don’t think it exists.

Mini review: Windows 8 closest thing to a complete teardown, rebuild

Andy Ihnatko: Windows 8 (available Friday as a $39 digital download) represents the next closest thing to a complete teardown and rebuild of the world’s most popular operating system. The basic footprint may be the same, but most of its reliable and familiar touchstones have been done away with. Which is a shame, but the benefits are huge.

Ihnatko: Apple displays its capabilities at iPad mini event

It’s almost time to start talking about Apple as a company that makes displays. That’s one of my takeaways from the first half of the company’s big media event this week.

  • iPad Mini and Surface nearing very exciting debuts

    IHNATKO: I’d anticipated that 2012 was going to be an unusually interesting year for consumer technology. It felt as though a number of plans that had been visibly simmering for the past few years were nearly ready to serve up, and that a number of companies were ready to convert Great Potential into Great Products.

  • Ihnatko: Speed tops iPhone 5’s improvements

    REVIEW: The top new “under the hood” feature of the iPhone 5 is its speed.

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