Apple usurps Google as world's most valuable brand

Apple usurps Google as world's most valuable brand

 Apple has overtaken Google as the world's most valuable brand, ending a four-year reign by the Internet search leader, according to a new study by global brands agency Millward Brown.
The iPhone and iPad maker's brand is now worth $153 billion, almost half Apple's market capitalization, says the annual BrandZ study of the world's top 100 brands.
Apple's portfolio of coveted consumer goods propelled it past Microsoft to become the world's most valuable technology company last year.
Peter Walshe, global brands director of Millward Brown, says Apple's meticulous attention to detail, along with an increasing presence of its gadgets in corporate environments, have allowed it to behave differently from other consumer-electronics makers.

"Apple is breaking the rules in terms of its pricing model," he told Reuters by telephone. "It's doing what luxury brands do, where the higher price the brand is, the more it seems to underpin and reinforce the desire."
"Obviously, it has to be allied to great products and a great experience, and Apple has nurtured that."
By contrast, one of the brands most threatened by Apple's rising popularity in offices took a big hit in the survey.
Research In Motion's BlackBerry brand lost a fifth of its brand value. Among technology companies, only Nokia's 28 percent decline was steeper.
Of the top 10 brands in Monday's report, six were technology and telecoms companies: Google at number two, IBM at number three, Microsoft at number five, AT&T at number seven and China Mobile at number nine.
McDonald's rose two places to number four, as fast food became the fastest-growing category, Coca-Cola slipped one place to number six, Marlboro was also down one to number eight, and General Electric was number 10.
Walshe said demand from China was a major factor in the rise of fast-food brands. "The Chinese have been discovering fast food and it's such a vast market -- Starbucks, McDonald's... and pizza has hit China," he said.
"The way McDonald's has reinvented itself, adapted its menus, added healthy options, expanding the times of day it can be visited, for example oatmeal for breakfast... that allied with growth in developing markets has really helped that brand."

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Parse the new Apple iMac Intel 21.5 "EMC 2428 Teardown

Parse the new Apple iMac Intel 21.5 "EMC 2428 Teardown

 Operatives portal iFixit on the traditionally high level - hardly in the online Apple store has a new 21.5-inch iMac EMC 2428, he was immediately taken to a testing laboratory and has undergone painstaking disassembly. No surprises did not happen - as the previous generation iMac, «the first line of defense is a protective glass screen perfectly removes with a pair of suction cups.

Inside the sample is parsed the following configuration:- Intel Core i5 2,5 GHz with 6 MB L3 cache;- Hard Drive 500 GB Western Digital 7200 rpm;- 4 GB of RAM;- Graphics Card AMD ATI Radeon HD 6750M;- LCD screen with a diagonal of 21.5''LED-backlit display and a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (matrix production of LG is the same as in the previous generation iMac);
Located outside the battery terminals:- Audio line in and out,- Four USB 2.0,- Firewire 800,- Gigabit Ethernet, and Thunderbolt.- Slot SDXC located near the optical drive.
In general, no surprises emerged, overall rating of maintainability of the new 21,5''iMac Release iFixit: 7 out of 10 (the higher the score, the easier it is to fix the device on its own). LCD matrix and a protective cover is easily removed, the core components are replaced without any problems. Replacing the graphics chip or the CPU will require extraction of the motherboard that can "get" anyone - would have to unplug the set of connectors and jiggle the card in different directions, pulling it out. Install the screen and protective glass as perfectly as it did at the factory, is unlikely to succeed, so I have to live with it.