Another year is drawing to a close, which means that we'll have gone another twelve months without an Apple television being released. While that fact seems to perpetually bamboozle so-called analysts, it probably won't come as too much of a shock to those that don't spend their days with their heads in the clouds. Still, just because Apple hasn't announced its own television, that doesn't mean that we can't have some fun.
If you weren't lucky enough to get to WWDC and take a seat at some of Apple's sessions then you may have had to settle for getting to one of the company's Tech Talks. Taking place throughout North America, Asia and Europe, the talks saw Apple's evangelists take to the road in order to cover development of both apps and games for Apple systems.
Rumors have been rife for quite a while now that Apple is readying a larger iPad for release at some point in the soon, and although the iPhone now boasts an ever so slightly larger display since last year's release of the iPhone 5, there has also been plenty of suggestion that a future handset will take things a step closer to some of the Android and Windows Phone devices doing the rounds. DigiTimes has come through with more information pertaining both smartphone and tablet, suggesting that the new iPhone could launch as soon as May 2014 with the new iPad releasing in the fall.
Apple has announced that it has reached a deal with Chinese carrier China Mobile to make the iPhone officially available on the network starting January 17, 2014. Consumer demand for the iPhone has historically been extremely high in the Chinese market, but has dwindled in recent times thanks to the availability of affordable devices from rivals Samsung and local Chinese manufacturers. The official tie-in with China Mobile will see the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c officially made available for sale through the world's largest network starting January 14, 2014.
For the lucky few who managed to get a hold of the Mac Pro before the shipping was pushed back to February, the wait is finally over, and no new product launch would be complete without a spate of unboxings. The first are beginning to emerge online on sites such as YouTube, and if you're anxious to see what the device and its packaged contents look like as they're extracted from packaging, then you'll want to join us after the break.
One of the great things about the release of the Walter Isaacson biography detailing the life and times of Steve Jobs, was that we learned much more of events and instances that we'd only previously gathered the crux of. We hear names, we see keynotes, we enjoy products; but the ins and outs of what exactly goes on tend to remain obscured from the public eye - at least until another extensive book hits the market. Fred Vogelstein’s Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution, is a self-explanatory tale of two modern-day tech titans, and The Atlantic has posted an interesting piece dissecting a particular chapter about the release of the iPhone and notably, Google's reaction.
As with every new product launch from Apple, there is a brief period of downtime on the company's official site as the purchase process is streamlined for the inevitable rush of eager shoppers. If you are particularly keen on the Mac Pro, which was the reason that the official Apple site was briefly pulled offline just a short while ago, I'm afraid you're going to be waiting quite a while, with shipping times having already been pushed back to February.
The fact that webcams are installed into each and every MacBook (and indeed, most other notebooks nowadays), can be of great usefulness, and the fact that Apple's computers present a green light when the camera is activated means that users are under no illusions as to whether the FaceTime camera is running or not. However, a piece of software in circulation, which has already been utilized by one unscrupulous individual, allows anyone to activate the camera without throwing up that green light, which is more than just a tad alarming.
Sky has been flogging its NOW TV set-top services in the United Kingdom for a while now, and with Apple TV being the subject of frequent updates just lately, it should be no surprise to see the Sky Sports channels hit Apple's very own set-top box. NOW TV, for the unfamiliar, is owned by Sky's parent company, and has provided some of the familiar Sky channels to the NOW TV set-top in different packages. Rather than pay the monthly subscription, NOW TV lets you pay as you watch, and the same model is now available for Sky Sports on Apple TV.
It's a title that almost invites allegations of casual sexism, but stay with us a little while and hopefully all will make a little more sense. See, you know how Facebook tracks usage of its service to the nth degree and then shares that with its advertisers in order to help target ads? Well, that same information can be used to try and extrapolate usage data for specific devices across specific demographics, which is where we get the information that leads to that title. Intrigued?
