Research firm Gartner just released their estimates for PC shipments in the Western Europe region during the holiday quarter. Only Apple and Asus made any meaningful progress, with Apple recording the strongest gains in France and the United Kingdom. While the Mac maker remained absent from the top 5 rankings in Western Europe and Germany, it was a sole first-tier PC brand to grow sales in the UK during the holiday quarter. Specifically, Apple’s Mac business in the country grew 17.2 percent, enough to rank fourth with a 9.1 percent market share.

Everyone else’s business has shrunk: Hewlett-Packard (#1) was down 27 percent, Dell (#2) declined by a whopping 32.2 percent, Toshiba (3) fell 5.4 percent and Acer (#5) was by far the biggest loser with a 62.4 percent year-over-year decline. Same story in France, where Apple placed fifth by growing 15.3 percent for an 8.2 percent market share. Only Asus (#2) grew slightly faster than Apple (17.4 percent), while shipments of PC desktops and notebooks from HP (#1), Acer (#3) and Dell (#4) plummeted.

If you include the iPad, Apple easily beats its rivals to the PC punch across the board. More notes and charts after the break.

Shipments of notebook and desktop PCs in the United Kingdom. Source: Gartner, February 2012

Shipments of PCs in Western Europe are in slump four quarters in a row now as consumers are increasingly picking up smartphones, media tablets and e-readers and postponing PC purchases and upgrades. Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain are hit worst, with PC sales plummeting 30 percent. It’s important to point out that Gartner’s data covers desktop and notebook PC shipments, excluding iPads and other tablets. With that in mind, Apple’s growth in the UK and France is even more telling. Desktop sales in Western Europe decreased 12.1 percent and notebooks shrank 17.5 percent.

Shipments to the professional segment fell 13.5 percent and the consumer segment declined 18 percent. Explaining Apple’s seemingly unstoppable march, Gartner’s research director Ranjit Atwal said:

The UK market has been a prime illustration of the underlying weakness in PC demand across Western Europe. [...] PC vendors face a long, uphill struggle to regain the interest of consumers. The introduction of Ultrabooks in late 2011 is desperately needed.

Shipments of notebook and desktop PCs in France. Source: Gartner, February 2012

Shipments of notebook and desktop PCs in Germany. Source: Gartner, February 2012

Shipments of notebook and desktop PCs in Western Europe. Source: Gartner, February 2012

American politicians are in a hullabaloo over the 500,000 Foxconn low-wage jobs in China that they claim could be stationed in the United States, but no one seems to pay attention to the booming “App Economy” that created roughly the same amount of decent jobs stateside. Both sides of the aisle have made public statements on how the Cupertino, Calif.-based Company should bring its grueling $0.31-an-hour factory occupations home.

President Barack Obama reportedly once asked the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, “What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?” at the Silicon Valley Summit last year, and Jobs allegedly responded: “Those jobs aren’t coming back.” The New York Times described why those positions are not returning last month. You can watch the Republicans, perhaps besides Ron Paul, be just as dumbfounded about the labor issue in the video above.

Bureaucrats can toy with the idea of stimulating employment, but innovation —the creation of new goods and services— is already boosting industries and small businesses capable of employing hundreds of thousands of workers at respectable wages. For example: According to Indeed.com, the average app developer salary in Palo Alto, Calif., is $119,000 a year.

“Nothing illustrates the job-creating power of innovation better than the App Economy,” contended a new NetTech sponsored study (PDF) released today. “The incredibly rapid rise of smartphones, tablets, and social media, and [apps] that run on them, is perhaps the biggest economic and technological phenomenon today.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is currently unable to track App Economy employment numbers. TechNet is a “bipartisan policy and political network of technology CEOs that promotes the growth of the innovation economy,” and it enlisted Dr. Michael Mandel of South Mountain Economics to conduct analysis from The Conference Board Help-Wanted OnLine database and track accurate employment statistics.

Dr. Mandel’s conclusions illustrated that the industries housed under the App Economy’s wide umbrella are responsible for an estimated 466,000 jobs (including spillovers not depicted in the above graph) across the states…

“America’s App Economy – which had zero jobs just 5 years ago before the iPhone was introduced – demonstrates that we can quickly create economic value and jobs through cutting-edge innovation,” said President and CEO of TechNet Rey Ramsey. “Today, the App Economy is creating jobs in every part of America, employing hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers today and even more in the years to come.”

Obviously the App Economy is not just Apple, but its ecosystem pioneered the new economy and is leading the charge.

The App Economy includes “pure” and “infrastructure” careers across Apple, Google, Facebook, Zynga, Electronic Arts, Amazon, AT&T and other app-related positions at large technology companies based in America. TechNet’s study claimed the No. 1 metropolis for App Economy jobs is New York City at 9.2-percent. However, San Francisco and San Jose surpass New York City with a joint 14.8-percent total. California tops the App Economy states list at 23.9-percent with New York trailing far-behind at 6.9-percent.

Measuring the App Economy involved many metrics, including counting the number of apps in each particular app store across the various platforms, as well as how many developers published. According to the study, the Apple App store saw 529,550 active apps by Dec. 12, 2011, which 124,475 active publishers uploaded. These statistics, combined with other methodology data, estimated that the App Economy generated almost $20 billion in revenue in 2011.

“The App Economy, along with the broad communications sector, has been a leading source of hiring strength in an otherwise sluggish labor market,” said Dr. Michael Mandel.

Professions in the industry include positions for programmers, user interface designers, marketers, managers, and support staff. The analysis indicates that the App Economy is fluid and booming quickly, and the amount and site  of app-related jobs are “likely to shift greatly in the years ahead.”

OverBoard è il tweak che porta l'Exposè delle pagine della SpringBoard, ora anche su iOS5.

Overboard è molto utile per saltare da una pagina all'altra molto rapidamente, utile se si hanno molte pagine.

Nel menu impostazioni troviamo tutte le opzioni di customizzazione di Overboard, tra le quali tre diversi metodi di attivazione che, tra l'altro, sono selezionabili contemporaneamente:

• Attivazione tramite tasto Home;
• Attivazione tramite un'icona sulla SpringBoard;
• Attivazione tramite il classico "pinch-too-zoom" sulla SpringBoard.

Novità della versione 1.2.9:

• Completamente compatibile con iOS5;
• Supporto per le cartelle e Edicola in iOS5;
• Eliminata l'ombra delle icone per rendere tutto più graficamente pulito.

Blogger Arun Thampi has discovered something that may or may not sit right about the free social media app Path while packet sniffing the app last night. Upon first installing the app and registering for an account, Path sends every single one of your contacts in your address book to their server via a .plist. The .plist includes full names, phone numbers, and e-mails.

Path makes the call “https://api.path.com/3/contacts/add” when you first create an account, and it uploads every single one of your contacts to its server. In most people’s mind this obviously makes them feel a little uncomfortable. Thampi details the technical aspects of this, and how you can recreate it yourself, in his blog post.

Path’s co-founder and CEO Dave Morin commented on the situation, saying iPhone users will soon be able to opt-out of the setting in an update that will be rolling out to the App Store shortly. But does that really change anything? He didn’t really explain why Path is doing this, and all of your address book is still on their servers. You can read Morin’s comment after the break:

We believe that this type of friend finding & matching is important to the industry and that it is important that users clearly understand it, so we proactively rolled out an opt-in for this on our Android client a few weeks ago and are rolling out the opt-in for this in 2.0.6 of our iOS Client, pending App Store approval.