Samsung Galaxy S 4 Benchmarks Nearly Twice as Fast as iPhone 5 [iOS Blog]

Following last week's introduction of the Samsung Galaxy S4, Primate Labs has analyzed Geekbench 2 scores for the phone, comparing it to a number of other smartphones including the iPhone 5.

The analysis shows the new Samsung flagship is significantly faster than competing phones including the HTC One, and its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S3. However, the S3 also benchmarked faster than the iPhone 5.

From John Poole's analysis:

The Samsung Galaxy S 4 is twice as fast as the Samsung Galaxy S 3. Given that the Samsung Galaxy S 3 is less than a year old, that's a remarkable achievement. I am amazed at how quickly smartphone technology is improving.

The Samsung Galaxy S 4 is also twice as fast as the Apple iPhone 5. Apple has improved performance dramatically in the past (there was 2.5x increase in performance from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone 5). Will they be able to make a similar improvement for the next iPhone?

Though the iPhone does benchmark somewhat slower than its competitors, Apple's close integration of software and hardware leads to significant performance gains that Android phones can't easily replicate.

Tim Cook's Approval Rating Slips, Loses Top Spot in CEO Rankings [Mac Blog]

Career site Glassdoor today released the results of its annual CEO approval rating survey, showing a four percentage-point drop for Apple CEO Tim Cook that resulted in a decline from the top spot in last year's survey to 18th in this year's version. Glassdoor's results are based on over 500,000 company surveys submitted by employees over the past year that ask whether they approve of how their CEO is running the company. Based on an average of ratings over the past year, Cook dropped from a 97% approval rating in the 2012 survey to a 93% rating this year.


Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg surged to the top of this year's list, seeing a 14-point rise in his approval rating to 99%.

While Apple has continued to perform well financially since Cook's ascension to the CEO position in August 2011, the company's growth has been slowing in recent quarters and its stock price has declined by roughly 40% from its highs amid concerns over increasing competition and how well Apple will be able to tap new products and markets to drive future growth.

Dropbox Acquires Mailbox, Will Accelerate Rollout

Popular email management app Mailbox has been acquired by file-sharing and storage service Dropbox.

Terms weren't disclosed, but the company plans to keep Mailbox as a standalone app, though the companies plan to extend both their platforms going forward, reports The Wall Street Journal.

"We felt we could help Mailbox reach a much different audience much faster," said Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, who said both companies shared the goal of making people's lives easier.

He said Dropbox will keep the Mailbox service running as a stand-alone app, and over time Dropbox will also use Mailbox's technology to enhance Dropbox features, like email attachments. The deal came together, he said, after the companies started talking about email attachments a few months ago.

The thirteen Mailbox employees will join Dropbox, but continue working on the Mailbox app. Mailbox is now delivering 60 million messages per day and has taken 1.3 million reservations for its free service.