The smartphone industry is one of the most fiercely contested in tech space, and although Windows Phone 8 will bring Microsoft well and truly into the fold, the battle is currently fought between Google's Android and Apple's iOS platforms.
Although the Apple TV is becoming increasingly popular as time goes on, the company is still refusing to publicly acknowledge the product’s existence as a major player in their product arsenal, with Tim Cook and his executive team still referring to the set top box as a "hobby" project at every possible moment. Hobby or not, Apple TV is an extremely attractive product for millions of people and with the sales numbers going up every quarter, Apple has to start taking the product seriously sooner or later.
The last few days have provided us with not only intense speculation surrounding the possible launch dates of Apple's next-generation iPhone but also a possible scheduling for the announcement and release of a new smaller and more lightweight iPad Mini. The iPad Mini has been a long speculated product but with no real concrete details being known, it has just been put down to conjecture until this morning when a possible release date emerged.
New sources have confirmed that Apple will announce the iPhone 5 on September 12th, with a release date coming just nine days later on the 21st of the same month. It would appear that the assumption that Apple would release the next iPhone in October may have been a little off, with the news that the unannounced handset is all-but confirmed to arrive on September 21st.
By means of a press release, Apple has announced its OS X Mountain Lion has amassed three million downloads in just 96 hours, rendering it most successful operating system release ever for Apple.
We’ve previously seen prototype iPhones and iPads from 2006 and earlier which show some of the many iterations the class-dominating smartphone and tablet went through before being finalized. Now, as the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit continues to heat up even more, more and more classified design documents are making their way online for us to feast our eyes on.
Not even Apple themselves could have predicted the influence that the iPhone would have on the world when it was first launched in 2007. Obviously the company knew that they had created something special, but if asked to answer honestly, it is highly unlikely that anyone involved from the start would have thought it would become the iconic product that we have today. The current model iPhone, the 4S, is the fifth-generation device and although we are still a couple of months away from seeing what the technology giants have to offer us with their next iteration, the interest and demand is already unprecedented.
There is one big story in Mac software right now, and that's OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion. Available for less then twenty dollars via the Mac App Store, the update to Mountain Lion is all geared around building on top of your current, working system. If you're like us though, you probably like to have a nice clean install of your operating system every once in a while, but the Mac App Store doesn't always make that the easiest thing in the world.
Apple maintains a tight grip on the smartphone, tablet and premium notebook market with the iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air/Pro. They make their own software for these gadgets; controlling the whole “widget” as Steve Jobs used to say. Yet, there are markets where Apple is hardly relevant. One such market is online social networking. Microsoft has investments in Facebook, Google of course has their own Google+ while Apple has nothing at all.
The legal issues between Apple and Samsung show no sign of letting up, and whilst we're growing a little tired of the entire debacle, we're also learning more and more about two of technology's most influential companies.
