Diner’s Journal Blog: PepsiCo Will Halt Use of Additive in Gatorade

PepsiCo announced on Friday that it would no longer use an ingredient in Gatorade after consumers complained.

The ingredient, brominated vegetable oil, which was used in citrus versions of the sports drink to prevent the flavorings from separating, was the object of a petition started on Change.org by Sarah Kavanaugh, a 15-year-old from Hattiesburg, Miss., who became concerned about the ingredient after reading about it online. Studies have suggested there are possible side effects, including neurological disorders and altered thyroid hormones.

The petition attracted more than 200,000 signatures, and earlier this week, Ms. Kavanaugh was in New York City to tape a segment for “The Dr. Oz Show.” She visited The New York Times on Wednesday and while there said, “I just don’t understand why they can’t use something else instead of B.V.O.”

“I was in algebra class and one of my friends kicked me and said, ‘Have you seen this on Twitter?’ ” Ms. Kavanaugh said in a phone interview on Friday evening. “I asked the teacher if I could slip out to the bathroom, and I called my mom and said, ‘Mom, we won.’ ”

Molly Carter, a spokeswoman for Gatorade, said the company had been testing alternatives to the chemical for roughly a year “due to customer feedback.” She said Gatorade initially was not going to make an announcement, “since we don’t find a health and safety risk with B.V.O.”

Because of the petition, though, Ms. Carter said the company had changed its mind, and an unidentified executive there gave Beverage Digest, a trade publication, the news for its Jan. 25 issue.

Previously, a spokesman for PepsiCo had said in an e-mail, “We appreciate Sarah as a fan of Gatorade, and her concern has been heard.”

Brominated vegetable oil will be replaced by sucrose acetate isobutyrate, an emulsifier that is “generally recognized as safe” as a food additive by the Food and Drug Administration. The new ingredient will be added to orange, citrus cooler and lemonade Gatorade, as well Gatorade X-Factor orange, Gatorade Xtremo citrus cooler and a powdered form of the drink called “glacier freeze.”

Ms. Carter said consumers would start seeing the new ingredient over the next few months as existing supplies of Gatorade sell out and are replaced.

Health advocates applauded the company’s move. “Kudos to PepsiCo for doing the responsible thing on its own and not waiting for the F.D.A. to force it to,” said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Mr. Jacobson has championed the removal of brominated vegetable oil from foods and beverages for the last several decades, but the F.D.A. has left it in a sort of limbo, citing budgetary constraints that it says keep it from going through the process needed to formally ban the chemical or declare it safe once and for all.

Brominated vegetable oil is banned as a food ingredient in Japan and the European Union. About 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain it, including Mountain Dew, which is also made by PepsiCo; some flavors of Powerade and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

PepsiCo said it had no plans to remove the ingredient from Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew, both of which generate more than $1 billion in annual sales.

Heather White, executive director at the Environmental Working Group, said of PepsiCo’s decision, “We can only hope that other companies will follow suit.” She added, “We need to overhaul how F.D.A. keeps up with the latest science on food additives to better protect public health.”

Ms. Kavanaugh agreed. “I’ve been thinking about ways to take this to the next level, and I’m thinking about taking it to the F.D.A. and asking them why they aren’t doing something about it,” she said. “I’m not sure yet, but I think that’s where I’d like to go with this.”

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Labor Relations Board Rulings Could Be Undone

By ruling that Mr. Obama’s three recess appointments last January were illegal, the federal appeals court ruling, if upheld, would leave the board with just one member, short of the quorum needed to issue any rulings. The Obama administration is expected to appeal Friday’s court ruling, a move that might result in a legal stay that would delay the removal of the recess appointees.

If the Supreme Court were to uphold Friday’s ruling, issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, it would mean that the labor board did not have a quorum since last January and that all its rulings since then should be nullified.

Many Republicans and business groups applauded Friday’s ruling. They often assert that the appointments Mr. Obama made to the board have transformed it into a tool of organized labor. But many Democrats and labor unions say Mr. Obama’s appointments restored ideological balance to the board after it was tipped in favor of business interests under President George W. Bush

Mark G. Pearce, the board’s chairman, issued a statement saying the board disagreed with the ruling and suggested that other appeals courts hearing cases about the constitutionality of Mr. Obama’s appointments could reach a different conclusion.

“In the meantime, the board has important work to do,” said Mr. Pearce, whose agency oversees enforcement of the laws governing strikes and unionization drives. “We will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”

Unless the Senate confirms future nominees to the board — Senate Republicans have blocked several of Mr. Obama’s board nominees — Mr. Pearce will be the only member left if Friday’s ruling is upheld. The board has five seats.

Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issued a statement that urged the recess appointees to “do the right thing and step down.” He added, “To avoid further damage to the economy, the N.L.R.B. must take the responsible course and cease issuing any further opinions until a constitutionally sound quorum can be established.”

The three disputed recess appointees included two Democrats, Sharon Block, deputy labor secretary, and Richard Griffin, general counsel to the operating engineers’ union; and one Republican, Terence Flynn, a counsel to a board member. Mr. Flynn resigned last May after being accused of leaking materials about the group’s deliberations. Another Republican member, Brian Hayes, stepped down when his term expired last month.

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LAUSD principal failed to report alleged molestation by teacher

A now-retired principal twice failed to report accusations of sexual misconduct by a teacher who this week was charged with molesting 12 students at a Wilmington elementary school, officials said.

In 2002 and 2008, the principal was told that the teacher, Robert Pimentel, 57, inappropriately touched a student. But the principal failed to tell law enforcement authorities, as required by law, said L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy.

The Los Angeles Police Department began investigating Pimentel only last March, when they learned of more recent allegations at George de la Torre Jr. Elementary School.

LAPD Capt. Fabian Lizarraga said Thursday that detectives will launch an investigation into whether the principal, Irene Hinojosa, should face charges for failing to report alleged abuse. She could not be reached for comment Thursday.

It remains unclear why Hinojosa did not tell authorities about the accusations. The 2008 allegation also occurred at De la Torre, where she was principal. The 2002 allegation was made when Pimentel was a teacher and Hinojosa the principal at Dominguez Elementary in Carson, Deasy said.

At De la Torre, volunteer Magdalena Gonzalez said Thursday that Hinojosa had been made aware of several questionable incidents involving Pimentel.

Three years ago, she said, a girl told her parent that Pimentel had playfully spanked students. Gonzalez also said she and other volunteers saw Pimentel pull on a student's bra strap during a fifth-grade graduation ceremony.

Gonzalez alleged that Hinojosa was dismissive of their complaints and that she allowed Pimentel to have students in his classroom during recess and lunch despite their misgivings.

"We told her he was touching the girls," Gonzalez said in Spanish.

School employees are required by law to report allegations of sexual misconduct to police. They also are supposed to report such issues to their supervisors, according to school district policies.

The revelations angered parents and once again placed the Los Angeles Unified School District under scrutiny over its handling of student-abuse cases. A state audit released last November found that Los Angeles school officials failed to promptly report nearly 150 cases of suspected misconduct to state authorities, including allegations of sexual contact with students.

The audit resulted from the furor over the case of a Miramonte Elementary School teacher who last year was accused of spoon-feeding his semen to blindfolded students, giving them tainted cookies and taking bizarre photos of them. The school had received previous complaints about the teacher, Mark Berndt, that had resulted in no discipline. Berndt has pleaded not guilty to lewd conduct.

On Thursday, Deasy criticized the handling of the De la Torre case by the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing. He said the district informed the state of the allegations as soon as they came to light, but the commission has not suspended or revoked the credential of either educator.

If Pimentel had applied to work as a substitute teacher at another school system, for example, the state would have reported him in good standing as recently as Thursday.

A spokeswoman said the commission cannot automatically suspend a teacher's credential until charges are filed. But the commission does have the discretion to act sooner, said Erin Sullivan, who said state law prevents her from commenting on specific cases.

Hinojosa's case is "scheduled to be taken up by the commission" next Thursday at its regular meeting, she added.

Pimentel is charged with seven counts of lewd and lascivious acts on children under 14 and with eight felony counts of continuous sexual abuse involving eight victims. The charges cover the period from September 2011 to March 2012, when Pimentel worked at De la Torre. He was charged with molesting 12 students, but police allege there is a total of 20 child victims and one adult victim.

Pimentel was taken into custody shortly after noon Wednesday and was being held on $12 million bail. He pleaded not guilty Thursday, and his attorney Richard Knickerbocker said he is "absolutely innocent."

Knickerbocker described the touching as appropriate and said it fell within district policy.

In one instance, Pimentel hugged a girl and "gave her a kiss on the forehead," Knickerbocker said. Pimentel, he said, never touched "any private parts."

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Vine's Launch-Day Woes Include Bugs and Facebook Block

Twitter’s new social video app isn’t having a smooth launch day.

Despite being well-received, Vine has faced a mess of issues since it launched Thursday morning. First, server-side bugs led to users signing into other people’s accounts. Then the app had to disable video-sharing to social networks. And all day long, there’s been the general bugginess of trying to sign in via Twitter and find friends through Twitter or Facebook.

And as of Thursday evening, it appears that Facebook has blocked Vine’s access to its network.

When you try to find Facebook-connected friends on the app, an error message pops up: “Vine is not authorized to make this Facebook request.” This is only hours after the app had no problem connecting to, and pulling friend data from, your Facebook network.

Neither Facebook nor Vine or Twitter responded for comment at the time of publication.

Facebook cutting off Vine is another way for the social giant to exert its powers. Considering Facebook just released data about how third-party, Facebook-connected mobile apps have much more engaged users, it’s clear that Facebook doesn’t want to give Vine the same benefits.

But it’s a development that further illustrates the battles taking place between social giants — it comes on the heels of other competitive shenanigans, including Instagram dropping Twitter card integration, and Twitter subsequently cutting Instagram off from finding friends within its app.

All this strategic posturing is much more than just a headache for Vine. The app continues to enjoy a tremendous amount of launch-day buzz, and as new users are flocking in and signing up, they’re the ones being greeted with super-annoying roadblocks. It proves once again that when the social networks decide to stop playing nice, ultimately, the loser is you.

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CBS orders pilots for “Bad Teacher,” Bruno Heller drama

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – A pilot based on the 2011 Cameron Diaz film “Bad Teacher” and a drama from “The Mentalist’ creator Bruno Heller have been ordered by CBS, an individual with knowledge of the orders told TheWrap on Wednesday.

“Bad Teacher” will be written and executive-produced by “My Name Is Earl” and “Community” veteran Hilary Winston, with Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, who were behind the film, executive-producing as well. Sam Hansen and Jimmy Miller will also executive-produce the pilot, which comes from Sony Pictures Television in association with the Mosaic Media Group, and follows a sexy, foul-mouthed divorcee who becomes a teacher to find her next husband.

“The Advocates,” written and executive-produced by Heller, revolves around a female lawyer and a male ex-con who team up as “victim advocates,” going to the very edge of the law to right wrongs and fight for the underdog. Warner Bros. is producing.

The new pilot orders follow on the heels of CBS ordering pilots for a small-screen adaptation of the Eddie Murphy film “Beverly Hills Cop” – which is being executive-produced by “The Shield” creator Shawn Ryan, and Murphy will appear in – as well as the sitcom “Friends With Better Lives” and the detective drama “Backstrom.”

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: Grief Over New Depression Diagnosis

When the American Psychiatric Association unveils a proposed new version of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of psychiatric diagnoses, it expects controversy. Illnesses get added or deleted, acquire new definitions or lists of symptoms. Everyone from advocacy groups to insurance companies to litigators — all have an interest in what’s defined as mental illness — pays close attention. Invariably, complaints ensue.

“We asked for commentary,” said David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who has spent six years as chairman of the task force that is updating the handbook. He sounded unruffled. “We asked for it and we got it. This was not going to be done in a dark room somewhere.”

But the D.S.M. 5, to be published in May, has generated an unusual amount of heat. Two changes, in particular, could have considerable impact on older people and their families.

First, the new volume revises some of the criteria for major depressive disorder. The D.S.M. IV (among other changes, the new manual swaps Roman numerals for Arabic ones) set out a list of symptoms that over a two-week period would trigger a diagnosis of major depression: either feelings of sadness or emptiness, or a loss of interest or pleasure in most daily activities, plus sleep disturbances, weight loss, fatigue, distraction or other problems, to the extent that they impair someone’s functioning.

Traditionally, depression has been underdiagnosed in older adults. When people’s health suffers and they lose friends and loved ones, the sentiment went, why wouldn’t they be depressed? A few decades back, Dr. Kupfer said, “what was striking to me was the lack of anyone getting a depression diagnosis, because that was ‘normal aging.’” We don’t find depression in old age normal any longer.

But critics of the D.S.M. 5 now argue that depression may become overdiagnosed, because this version removes the so-called “bereavement exclusion.” That was a paragraph that cautioned against diagnosing depression in someone for at least two months after loss of a loved one, unless that patient had severe symptoms like suicidal thoughts.

Without that exception, you could be diagnosed with this disorder if you are feeling empty, listless or distracted, a month after your parent or spouse dies.

“D.S.M. 5 is medicalizing the expected and probably necessary process of mourning that people go through,” said Allen Frances, a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force and has denounced several of the changes in the new edition. “Most people get better with time and natural healing and resilience.”

If they are diagnosed with major depression before that can happen, he fears, they will be given antidepressants they may not need. “It gives the drug companies the right to peddle pills for grief,” he said.

An advisory committee to the Association for Death Education and Counseling also argued that bereaved people “will receive antidepressant medication because it is cheaper and ‘easier’ to medicate than to be involved therapeutically,” and noted that antidepressants, like all medications, have side effects.

“I can’t help but see this as a broad overreach by the APA,” Eric Widera, a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote on the GeriPal blog. “Grief is not a disorder and should be considered normal even if it is accompanied by some of the same symptoms seen in depression.”

But Dr. Kupfer said the panel worried that with the exclusion, too many cases of depression could be overlooked and go untreated. “If these things go on and get worse over time and begin to impair someone’s day to day function, we don’t want to use the excuse, ‘It’s bereavement — they’ll get over it,’” he said.

The new entry for major depressive disorder will include a note — the wording isn’t final — pointing out that while grief may be “understandable or appropriate” after a loss, professionals should also consider the possibility of a major depressive episode. Making that distinction, Dr. Kupfer said, will require “good solid clinical judgment.”

Initial field trials testing the reliability of D.S.M. 5 diagnoses, recently published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, don’t bolster confidence, however. An editorial remarked that “the end results are mixed, with both positive and disappointing findings.” Major depressive disorder, for instance, showed “questionable reliability.”

In an upcoming post, I’ll talk more about how patients might respond to the D.S.M. 5, and to a new diagnosis that might also affect a lot of older people — mild neurocognitive disorder.

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 24, 2013

An earlier version of this post misspelled the surname of a professor emeritus at Duke who chaired the D.S.M. IV task force. He is Allen Frances, not Francis.

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The Education Revolution: As Graduates Rise in China, Office Jobs Fail to Keep Up

Forbes Conrad for The New York Times

Wang Zhengsong, right, viewed job postings outside in Guangzhou. Blue-collar jobs are plentiful in China, but many recent college grads are reluctant to pursue them.

GUANGZHOU, China — This city of 15 million on the Pearl River is the hub of a manufacturing region where factories make everything from T-shirts and shoes to auto parts, tablet computers and solar panels. Many factories are desperate for workers, despite offering double-digit annual pay increases and improved benefits.

Wang Zengsong is desperate for a steady job. He has been unemployed for most of the three years since he graduated from a community college here after growing up on a rice farm. Mr. Wang, 25, has worked only several months at a time in low-paying jobs, once as a shopping mall guard, another time as a restaurant waiter and most recently as an office building security guard.

But he will not consider applying for a full-time factory job because Mr. Wang, as a college graduate, thinks that is beneath him. Instead, he searches every day for an office job, which would initially pay as little as a third of factory wages.

“I have never and will never consider a factory job — what’s the point of sitting there hour after hour, doing repetitive work?” he asked.

Millions of recent college graduates in China like Mr. Wang are asking the same question. A result is an anomaly: Jobs go begging in factories while many educated young workers are unemployed or underemployed. A national survey of urban residents, released this winter by a Chinese university, showed that among people in their early 20s, those with a college degree were four times as likely to be unemployed as those with only an elementary school education.

It is a problem that Chinese officials are acutely aware of.

“There is a structural mismatch — on the one hand, the factories cannot find skilled labor, and, on the other hand, the universities produce students who do not want the jobs available,” said Ye Zhihong, a deputy secretary general of China’s Education Ministry.

China’s swift expansion in education over the last decade, including a quadrupling of the number of college graduates each year, has created millions of engineers and scientists. The best can have their pick of jobs at Chinese companies that are aiming to become even more competitive globally.

But China is also churning out millions of graduates with few marketable skills, coupled with a conviction that they are entitled to office jobs with respectable salaries.

Part of the problem seems to be a proliferation of fairly narrow majors — Mr. Wang has a three-year associate degree in the design of offices and trade show booths. At the same time, business and economics majors are rapidly gaining favor on Chinese campuses at the expense of majors like engineering, contributing to the glut of graduates with little interest in soiling their hands on factory floors.

“This also has to do with the banking sector — they offer high-paying jobs, so their parents want their children to go in this direction,” Ms. Ye said.

Mr. Wang and other young, educated Chinese without steady jobs pose a potential long-term challenge to social stability. They spend long hours surfing the Internet, getting together with friends and complaining about the shortage of office jobs for which they believe they were trained.

China now has 11 times as many college students as it did at the time of the Tiananmen Square protests in the spring of 1989, and an economy that has been very slow to produce white-collar jobs. The younger generation has shown less interest in political activism, although that could change if the growing numbers of graduates cannot find satisfying work.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao acknowledged last March that only 78 percent of the previous year’s college graduates had found jobs. But even that figure may overstate employment for the young and educated.

The government includes not just people in long-term jobs but also freelancers, temporary workers, graduate students and people who have signed job contracts but not started work yet, as well as many people in make-work jobs that state-controlled companies across China have been ordered to create for new graduates.

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Fontana school police are armed with semiautomatic rifles

Police officers in the Fontana Unified School District were armed recently with semiautomatic rifles, drawing sharp criticism and sparking an effort to ban such weapons on school campuses.

The Colt military-style rifles, which cost about $1,000 each, are kept in safes when officers are on campus and will be used only in "extreme emergency cases" like the massacre in Newtown, Conn., Supt. Cali Olsen-Binks said.

The district purchased the rifles in October and received them in December, before the tragedy in Newtown, where a gunman killed 26 people — 20 of them children — at an elementary school. The shooting sparked debate on whether armed school guards could prevent these types of tragedies.

The purchase was not spurred by a specific event, Fontana Unified School District police Chief Billy Green said. The rifles are designed to increase shooting accuracy and provide the 14 officers with more effective power against assailants wearing body armor, Green said, adding that those capabilities are necessary for officers to stop a well-armed gunman.

"If you know of a better way to stop someone on campus that's killing children or staff members with a rifle, I'd like to hear it," he said. "I don't think it's best to send my people in to stop them with just handguns."

"I hope we would never have to use it," Green said. "But if we do, I'd like them to be prepared."

Several other school districts have similar weapons but policies differ on whether they are brought on campus or left in patrol car trunks or administration buildings.

Fontana school police bought the guns for about $14,000, which fell below the threshold that requires school board approval. School board members were not informed until after the purchase.

Board member Leticia Garcia said the police chief and superintendent should have alerted the five-member board and held a public hearing on the issue. She said arming officers with such weapons is a policy matter and should have been decided by the entire school district community, especially in light of the ongoing debate around the country.

Garcia, whose son attends Fontana High School, said she is working with local state legislators to draft a bill that would keep school police departments from taking these types of weapons onto campuses.

"We're turning our schools into a militarized zone," she said.

But the Fontana school superintendent said she believes it's a necessary evil to have the guns on campus to keep the 40,000-plus students and staff members safe. Officers have gone through training for the weapons, Olsen-Binks said.

"It balances providing that community-oriented openness at schools without compromising any kind of security for students and employees," she said.

Although she stopped short of saying the matter should have been put before the board, Olsen-Binks said doing so might have helped ease concerns.

"Having an opportunity for more community discussion is always a good thing," she said.

The rifles are kept either in the trunk of the police officer's vehicle or in a safe on campus.

Still, Garcia worries that bringing such a weapon on campus could lead to it falling into the wrong hands. An officer could be overtaken or someone could gain access to the safe, she said.

"Teenagers can get creative," Garcia said.

Green, however, dismissed that concern as unrealistic.

The Los Angeles Unified School District's police department has issued "patrol rifles" to officers on an as-needed basis, the district said in a statement. The department does not disclose the number of rifles given to officers.

Most San Diego Unified School District police officers have AR-15 rifles, Lt. Joe Florentino said. But the department did not buy the weapons; rather, officers were allowed to purchase their own — which many did, he said.

The rifles are kept in the trunk of the officer's vehicle and are not brought into school buildings. Although there is no policy yet, bringing the rifles into buildings is something the department is looking at, Florentino said.

"From a safety standpoint, we have police officers that want the weapons close by," he said. "If we keep them in the vehicle trunk, they would have to run to the car and grab it if they need it."

stephen.ceasar@latimes.com

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CEO Tim Cook Hints at Apple's Future Growth in Q1 Earnings Call

Investors may have cringed at Apple’s revenue numbers in its Q1 2013 earnings call, but CEO Tim Cook took pains to point out that there is still a lot of room for growth when it comes to Apple product sales and profits.

There are a number of different ways Apple could continue to expand iPhone and iPad growth: introducing lower-priced options for emerging markets, bringing major changes to its product lines, or focusing on expanding to new geographic regions. For now, Apple seems to be focusing on the latter.

Although Apple has deeply embedded itself among U.S. mobile consumers, its presence abroad has been more slow going. And as with the past few quarters, that appears to be changing, particularly in China. “In terms of geographic distribution, we saw highest growth in China, and it was into the triple digits,” Cook said. Given that China is the world’s largest smartphone market, that’s the place you want it to happen and one of the few markets in the world that can keep the Apple growth machine humming.

Apple has had a difficult time in some emerging markets because of the iPhone’s high up-front cost. Other smartphone manufacturers like Samsung and Nokia have been aiming lower-end devices at these segments, but Apple’s only option is to flog its spendy iPhones. In China at least, buyers don’t seem to be put off by, something to which Cook was keen to draw attention. “It’s interesting to see how China is growing in importance for Apple so much so that they broke out their revenue [in its earnings release],” Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi told Wired.

Uncharacteristically, Cook also drew attention to recent rumors circulating that iPhone demand could be waning due to reduced orders for iPhone 5 parts, gossip that fueled drops in Apple’s stock prices last week. Apple typically does not comment on rumors or reports.

“There have been lots of rumors about order cuts and so forth. Let me take a moment to make a comment on this,” Cook said in response to a question asking about the iPhone’s reported “deterioration in demand.” “I would suggest it’s good to question the accuracy of any kind of rumor about build plans… Even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to accurately interpret what the data point meant for our overall business because the supply chain is very complex.”

And what about all those pesky other handsets available in a rainbow of screen sizes? Are those affecting iPhone sales, or will Apple ever expand to other screen sizes? Cook took a decidedly Steve Jobs (and Apple) approach, saying, “We put a lot of thinking into screen size and believe we picked the right one.” For years 3.5-inches was the right size, but in 2012 and 2013, the 4-inch display of the iPhone 5 is now Apple’s perfect phone size. It’s large enough to provide the user with a greater amount of information on screen (and make watching videos more pleasant), but not so large that it affects your ability to operate it with one hand.

As far as the iPad is concerned, the Windows-dominated PC space continues to be the area Apple hopes its slate will infiltrate. Although Cook openly acknowledged the iPad mini is likely cannibalized some iPad sales, and the iPad some Mac sales, he said that the Mac market is far smaller than that of Windows, and it’s out of Microsoft and its partners where the iPad will continue to take a chunk in the coming years.

“It is clear [the iPad] is already cannibalizing [Windows] some,” Cook said. “There’s a tremendous amount (of) opportunity there. I’ve said for two or three years now that the tablet market will be larger than the PC market at some point. You can see by the growth in tablets and pressure on PCs that those lines are beginning to converge.”

Now, if Cook can just get the line on his stock chart to move in the right direction.

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“Thrift Shop” bests Timberlake’s “Suit & Tie” on Billboard chart

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Justin Timberlake’s first single in five years – “Suit & Tie” – fell short of sales expectations for its first week and was kept from the top spot on the Billboard digital songs chart by a novelty rap act.

“Suit & Tie,” which features rapper Jay-Z, sold 314,000 downloads, according to figures released on Wednesday by Nielsen SoundScan.

Industry experts had expected about 350,000 downloads for Timberlake’s widely publicized single, which precedes a new album later in 2013 – his first since 2006.

But Timberlake, 31, who has been focused on building a Hollywood acting career, was dressed down on the digital chart by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop” featuring rapper Wanz, which sold some 341,000 downloads in the week ending on January 20.

It was the second consecutive week atop the digital songs chart for the novelty rap song about eschewing designer clothes for a second-hand look.

Timberlake will perform his first concert in five years during a private Super Bowl-related event in New Orleans on February 2, DirectTV announced on Wednesday. The invitation-only concert will not be shown on TV, the satellite providers said.

On the Billboard 200 album chart, rapper A$ AP Rocky’s debut album “Long.Live.A$ AP” entered at the top spot, selling about 139,000 units last week.

The New York rapper outpaced the child-focused compilation “Kidz Bop 23,” also in its first week, that features children performing recent pop hits.

“Kidz Bop 23″ sold 78,000 units last week and the series of albums have sold some 13.3 million albums since its 2001 debut.

TOMLIN TUMBLES

The soundtrack to musical-film “Pitch Perfect” landed at the No. 3 spot on the Billboard 200 and was followed by country-pop starlet Taylor Swift’s “Red” and singer Bruno Mars’ “Unorthodox Jukebox” in the top five.

The soundtrack to the stage-to-screen adaptation of musical “Les Miserables” fell to sixth from third, failing to capitalize on three big wins at the Golden Globe Awards, Hollywood’s second-biggest prize to the Oscars, on January 13.

Last week’s top album, “Burning Lights” by Christian singer-songwriter Chris Tomlin, tumbled to No. 22 on the chart. The album’s sharp fall was expected as opening week sales were largely boosted by pre-orders through churches and a national Christian convention, Billboard said.

Album sales for the past week totaled 4.97 million, down 2 percent from the same week last year, but year-to-date album sales were up 2 percent from 2012, totaling 16.32 million so far in 2013.

Some 27.82 million songs were downloaded last week, which was flat compared with the same week last year. A total of 91.17 million songs have been downloaded in 2013, a rise of 2 percent.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Mohammad Zargham)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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