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.
Apple's OS X Mavericks was first announced back at this year's WWDC, and although it hasn't really brought any earth-moving changes, it has somewhat enhanced the desktop operating system from last year's Mountain Lion. Having rolled out very recently, work as been ongoing with regards to changes and improvements, and today, Apple has seeded the first OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks beta to developers.
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.
Apple's Mac Pro was first announced all the way back at this year's WWDC, and although it was looking, for a while, as though the older model would never be afforded an upgrade, the Cupertino company instead came through with a complete redesign. The trash can design has proven rather polarizing - particularly among Mac Pro veterans - but for those interested in making the purchase, it will be available from tomorrow, Thursday 19th December, from $2,999.
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?
Apple has signaled the approaching end of the year by publishing its "Best of 2013" page on the iTunes Store. The dedicated page on iTunes concentrates on digital products which the company offers for users to purchase and download, including iOS apps, music, podcasts, books and movies. As well as listing the most successful consumer downloads of the year, Apple also outlined their own choices in each category by having an Editors’ Pick for things like app and album of the year.
When Jeff Keacher decided that he wanted to try and get his 27-year-old Mac Plus online, he knew the challenge that he had set himself would require a substantial amount of time and effort. Things have advanced a great deal since the antiquated Apple desktop was released, and to try and connect it to the TCP/IP Internet we enjoy today was a pretty ambitious task, to say the least. But with a little perseverance, he managed it, and although the result isn't quite the Safari / Chrome / Firefox-injected, seamless browsing experience of this Digital Age, it's still a very commendable achievement.
Beyoncé's new, self-titled fifth studio album has shattered sales records on Apple's iTunes Store by shifting a mammoth 828,773 copies in its first three days. With 617,213 copies sold in the U.S. alone, the album is already well on its way to becoming the singer's fifth solo album to pass the million sales criteria for Platinum certification in the States, and considering that at present, it's only available on iTunes, it's a great achievement.
Managing email on the go is a lot easier than it used to be thanks to the slick, practical interfaces of our smartphones and tablets, but as powerful as the apps and hardware may be, things can sometimes border tedious. Searching for an old email in the stock iOS Mail app is almost always a cumbersome affair if you happen to have forgotten those key search terms that would locate it with little or no trouble, but since you're stumped on that one, you're left hopelessly trawling through tens of thousands of old, mostly useless emails. We did some digging and it turns out that finding an old, important mail is actually not that difficult at all.
Apple gets more than its fair share of stick for supposedly not being innovative enough these days, but that wasn't what everyone was saying when the iPhone was first announced in 2007. Offering what, at the time, was the holy grail of mobile telecommunications in something the size of a smartphone, the iPhone was a truly revolutionary device.
