Yesterday’s biggest Apple-related news was that of veteran Apple executive, Senior Vice President of iOS Software, Scott Forstall and recently inducted Head of Retail operations, John Browett leaving the company.
The most unexpected announcement at last week’s Apple media event was that of the 4th generation iPad; Apple broke its steady February-March release cycle of three years to shift to more business-friendly pre-Christmas holiday shopping cycle. The new tablet is essentially an iPad 3S considering the fact that it has received under-the-hood specifications bump without any updates in its somewhat chunky design.
It may be overpriced according to some, and others may claim that its lack of a Retina display makes it a poor excuse for a tablet, but it's fast becoming clear that the doubters amongst us will not stop Apple's iPad mini from being a resounding success. At least, that's the conclusion that is easy to draw when you look at the state of pre-orders around the globe.
The much anticipated update to The iPhone Dev Team's Redsn0w jailbreak utility brought a ton of features. The updates attached to the revision are probably a lot more notable than most of us would have imagined with one of the new features allowing iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS users to block the baseband update that would generally come attached to updating the firmware on the device. This is great news for owners of one of those two devices who want to experience all that a new version of iOS has to offer without losing a software based unlock on their current baseband.
As soon as Apple entered the small tablet market with its recently announced iPad mini, plenty of people understandably suggested that the game was up for the competition. Can the likes of Google, Amazon and the rest compete when the 800lb gorilla that is Apple comes knocking? Well, turns out Amazon for one, can.
We're all more excited about getting our hands on an iPad mini than we would like to admit, and when pre-orders began it became clear we are not on our own.
Apple have this morning updated their customer facing website in the United Kingdom to comply with an earlier ruling made by a British court. A relatively small link has appeared at the bottom of the Apple.com/UK homepage that forwards customers to information pertaining to the ruling made in July of this year in the High Court of Justice of England Wales.
Competing directly with the Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD in the quickly expanding small but powerful, cheap but well designed tablet market, the iPad mini is most important new product to come out of the October 23rd Apple media event.
It's been an extremely busy week so far for Apple, with the announcement of the iPad mini, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, an all-new line-up of iMacs and Mac minis, and the surprising introduction of the fourth-generation iPad. Not wanting to take their foot off the gas, the company has now announced their Q4 earnings of 2012, and once again, it makes extremely pleasant reading for company executives and shareholders.
Apple's iPad mini announcement was only two days ago, but the consumer reaction on the Cupertino company's decision to release a second iPad in almost seven months has been nothing short of damning. The main, 9.7-inch Apple slate was expected to be given one or two menial updates - the main one perceived to be the Lightning Dock connector, but by doubling up the speed of its flagship slab in adding an A6X, dual-core processor, many current third-gen iPad owners feel somewhat cheated.
