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  3. The year 2010 began with a herd of manufacturers chasing Amazon’s Kindle. It

The year 2010 began with a herd of manufacturers chasing Amazon’s Kindle. It

游客2023-10-30  56
问题     The year 2010 began with a herd of manufacturers chasing Amazon’s Kindle. It ends with some of the same companies in pursuit of Apple’s iPad. In between those tablet-computing crazes, we’ve all been challenged to keep up with the expanding universes of social networking and smartphones.
    Nothing illustrates what makes the tech business both fascinating and frustrating as well as the rise of Facebook. The social-networking site crossed the 500 million-user mark and debuted numerous features, such as an upgraded e-mail service and options to share your location with friends and get discounts from nearby retailers. But it also spent much of the year infuriating(触怒)users with privacy changes that exposed more of their data and were confusing or impossible to undo. The simpler privacy interface it launched in May should help, but it won’t if this company again forgets that its users don’t all operate at start-up speeds.
    Other social networks had a smoother road. Twitter offered its growing user base a more reliable service and a busier but more useful interface, while Foursquare had users checking into such far-off locations as the international space station.
    You can’t write the story of any of these sites without noting how smartphones have allowed their users to connect from so many places. Apple’s iPhone 4 led that pack in 2010, but Google’s Android operating system improved at a faster pace and didn’t require its users to sign up with only one carrier, even if some of the carriers selling Android phones showed a serious lack of taste in their tweaks(扭转)to Google’s software.
    I probably devoted more column inches to smartphones than to any other sort of hardware, and with good reason; This is the most exciting, fastest-moving part of the electronics industry. Tablet computers aren’t far behind, though. Apple’s launch of the iPad in January redefined this market in a way that finally made the concept relevant to home users. Competitors took the hint and have begun rolling out devices that will never qualify as " iPad killers" but do earn the title of " iPad competitor. "
    The success of the iPad and other tablets pushed down the price of the Kindle and other e-book readers. But Amazon’s e-reader may need to drop below $ 100 and get a major screen upgrade to hold its place in the market. Both smartphones and tablets have further eroded the significance of traditional desktop and laptop computers. Sure, people still buy the things in massive numbers. But when you can get so much work and play done on a smartphone or tablet—or, for that matter, any other device with a browser that can run Web-based applications like Google Docs—why bother stressing out over your choice of one brand of computer?
    This trend has hurt Microsoft, the company that once benefited more than any other from the traditional computing market. Its biggest software shipment of the year, its Office 2010 productivity suite for its Windows operating system, was a yawner(无趣的东西)of a release. [br] According to the passage, Facebook______.
选项 A、caused the fever of tablet-computing
B、faces great threats from smartphones
C、enables you to find something on sale
D、does nothing to protect users’ privacy
答案 C
解析 根据题干关键词Facebook定位到第二段。该段第二句提及脸谱网推出了许多新的特色，其中就包括获得附近零售商的打折，故[C]为答案。原文并未提及脸谱网引发了平板电脑热，故排除[A]；由第四段首句可知，智能电话并未给社交网站带来严重威胁，而是起到辅助性的作用，故排除[B]；由第二段末句可知，[D]含义绝对化，脸谱网还是采取了措施来保护用户隐私的，故排除。
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