But then I diddled around, distracted by the holidays. I didn't actually install Google Maps until I was reminded to by a Business Insider article elucidating Google's "worm strategy" of "attacking Apple from the inside out." Google's apps for the iPhone are so good that they are increasingly preferable to Apple's own apps for its own hardware.

I went whole hog. I installed Google Maps, Google Chrome, YouTube and Google's new Gmail app. I even threw in Google+ for good measure, though I have yet to make much use of Google's attempt to dislodge Facebook. I exiled Apple Maps, Safari, and Apple's Mail app to a folder labeled "Seething." (My own little joke, because Apple execs were reportedly "seething" at the rapturous response the world showered on the new Google Maps app.)

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Where past generations had film cameras, scrapbooks, notebooks, and that part of the brain which stores memories, we now have a smartphone app for every conceivable recording need. The thing is, all that time you spend logging and then curating the quotidian aspects of your daily life is time taken away from actually doing things.

There is just so much to unpack in Carter's dismissal, one hardly knows where to begin. There's the dig at current generations, who presumably lack the part of the brain that stores memories. There's the implicit certainty that curating one's life isn't actually doing anything, suggesting that in spending your time logging data you deprive yourself of some greater chance at capturing life's essence. And then there's the sweeping arrogance of the phrase "no matter how inconsequential."

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Here’s my top 10, in no particular order.

Exhibitions at 319 Scholes
As Brooklyn’s premier technology-art space, 319 Scholes knocked it far out of the park this year. Following up on late 2011′s excellent Notes on a New Nature from Nicholas O’Brien came Big Reality, critic Brian Droitcour’s intensive look at video game-influenced art, and editor Francesca Gavin’s E-Vapor-8, a celebration of rave culture that launched with a fittingly awesome opening party. With 319 director and curator Lindsay Howard refining her work through a residency at Eyebeam, the year ahead should be even better (if that’s possible).

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So why is the once-unstoppable favorite suddenly in such a fix?

Yes, Apple is up some 25 percent for the year. But it was only four months ago when the price per share sat at $700.

In the New York Times, economist Edward Zabitsky suggested that "as Samsung has surpassed Apple as the leading handset maker, apps have become more important than the devices that carry them, and handsets are increasingly being evaluated on their ability to access the cloud and interact with other devices." Zabitsky, long bearish on Apple, suggested those trends are bad news for Apple's long-term competitive situation.

In Business Insider, Henry Blodget posited several theories, many of them also suggesting concern that Apple's long dominance may be waning as the smart phone market evolves and lower-priced -- and lower-profit margin -- phones take a larger piece of the annual sales.

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"Aesthetically pleasing" is very subjective.

I was deep into the fifth page of the reader comments of the first installment of Ars Technica's excellent "The State of Smartphones in 2012," when I encountered this observation, which is simultaneously the most illuminating and worthless Internet comment of all time. It was a response to the declaration by Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham that the "Live Tiles" user interface in the brand-spanking-new Windows Phone 8 operating system was more "aesthetically striking" than the icons of Apple's iOS or the widgets of Google's Android.

(With Live Tiles, the restless smartphone user can expand or shrink the on-screen real estate devoted to a particular app or function, providing a level of configurability alien to the straitlaced universe that iPhone lovers, in particular, are accustomed to. Remember this, for future reference: Windows: freedom! Apple: tyranny!)

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In the second most embarrassing tech flub of the year, (Facebook's IPO) Apple's iPhone 5 included a new but comically flawed maps program. The release resulted in the firing of an executive and a rare public setback for the company. In cartography, it turns out, experience matters and now Google has released a new maps app for sometimes rival Apple's flagship phone. In a near worshipful review, New York Times gadget fiend David Pogue finds that Google's maps app is accurate:

Hundreds of Google employees have spent years hand-editing the maps, fixing the thousands of errors that people report every day. (In the new app, you report a mistake just by shaking the phone.) And since 2006, Google’s Street View vehicles have trawled 3,000 cities, photographing and confirming the cartographical accuracy of five million miles of roads.

Now iPhone users won't be bumping into each other because they're lost, they'll be bumping into each other because they're staring at the maps app on their iPhones.

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Here's how it begins:

With the "fiscal cliff" looming, taxpayers are wringing their hands about all sorts of things. Income taxes might rise, dividends might get walloped, lifetime gift-tax exemptions might get slashed.

But when it comes to immediate impact on their wallets, maybe they should be thinking about something else entirely: The Apple tax.

Americans are shelling out big bucks annually to outfit the entire household with Apple products.

But about halfway down the column, Taylor notes, "Remember, this is not something that consumers are being forced to pay. They are dipping willingly into their own pockets, because they're essentially slaves to the devices."

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If you need a new phone today, and you are on T-Mobile, get the new LG Nexus 4. Get the Samsung Galaxy S III if you're on Sprint. If you're on Verizon, get the Droid DNA unless you want a stupendous battery, in which case the get Droid Razr Maxx HD. On AT&T, get the HTC One X+ if you don't mind the lack of reviews. But if your current phone still works, it's best you wait.

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The push, noted CNET, appears to be underpinned by the fact that Android controls a far larger percentage of the smartphone market than Apple:

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Laws against displaying your ballot are motivated by concerns about vote buying, since voters being bribed might need to be prove they voted a certain way.

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Anyone who owns a smartphone knows what a pain in the ass it is to have to tug off your gloves in the dead of winter just to make a phone call or respond to a text message. In order for a capacitative touchscreen—the touchscreen technology used in the majority of touch-capable phones, tablets and computers today—to register that it’s being asked to do something, you have to poke it with something that conducts electricity like a finger or a stylus.

(A capacitative touchscreen panel is typically made from glass, which acts as an insulating agent, and a conductive material like indium tin oxide, or ITO. A current is run through the panel. When you touch the panel with another electrically conductive object like your finger, the electrical current being run through the panel is disrupted, which translates into on screen action.)

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"This is not only a violation of China's labor law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions," a Foxconn statement announced, according to Reuters. The 56 underage interns found will now be sent back to their schools.

This is not the first labor scandal for Foxconn, Apple Inc.'s largest manufacturer. In Northern China in September a riot broke out at a Foxconn plant assembling iPhones over living conditions at the factory's on-site dormitories. Foxconn has been forced to improve working conditions at a number of its Chinese iPhone and iPad plants following numerous reports of labor abuses and the suicide of 14 Foxconn factory workers in China in 2010.

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The fight, the cause of which was under investigation, erupted Sunday night at a privately managed dormitory near a Foxconn Technology Group factory in the northern city of Taiyuan, the company and Chinese police said. A police statement reported by the official Xinhua News Agency said 5,000 officers were dispatched to the scene.

The Taiwanese-owned company declined to say whether the factory was involved in iPhone production. It said the facility, which employs 79,000 people, would suspend work Monday and reopen Tuesday.

Foxconn makes iPhones and iPads for Apple Inc. and also assembles products for Microsoft Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. It is one of China's biggest employers, with some 1.2 million workers in factories in Taiyuan, the southern city of Shenzhen, in Chengdu in the west and in Zhengzhou in central China.

The fight in Taiyuan started at 11 p.m. on Sunday, "drawing a large crowd of spectators and triggering chaos," a police spokesman was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

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I knew exactly what I wanted -- an 11-inch MacBook Air for my departing-to-college daughter. I was ably assisted in the purchase by a bright young woman. When she asked me if I had any proof of my daughter's college student status, so as to qualify for a discount, I was able to pull up a billing email on my iPhone that satisfied her. I didn't have to stand in line -- she rang me up (although I daresay such archaic terminology is hardly appropriate to the Apple checkout experience) right in front of the table upon which the MacBook Airs rested, in all their aerodynamic glory.

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As BuzzFeed reports, the unreliable maps are more than inconvenient -- they can be dangerous:

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Really, Apple? Haven't we suffered enough? The news drove Slate's normally calm and measured Farhad Manjoo into a froth of rage and sarcasm. I feel his pain. Just two months ago, my children gave me a Sony "Dream Machine" docking station for my iPhone 4S that works very nicely as a combination clock radio/stereo. But if I dare upgrade to the iPhone 5, I would have to plunk down an additional $29 for what Manjoo describes as an "ungainly" adapter to keep my Dream Machine functional. Yes, Farhad, I agree, that is indeed "the definition of being unfriendly to your customers."

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It will also come with the capability to connect to the fastest new wireless data networks, both in the U.S. and overseas. That's another feature that was widely expected. Some competing phones in the U.S. have had this ability for a year and a half.

Thanks to new technology that eliminates a separate touch-sensing layer in the screen, the phone is 18 percent thinner and 20 percent lighter, said Apple marketing head Phil Schiller.

He spoke at an Apple event in San Francisco.
Here's a running account of the event, presented in reverse chronological order. All times are PDT. Appearances are made by CEO Tim Cook, Philip Schiller, the senior vice president for worldwide marketing, and others.
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