We are fast approaching that time of year again when Mac and iOS developers and enthusiasts descend on the Moscone Center in San Francisco to take part in Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference. The annual conference, famed throughout the technology world is one of the biggest and most popular of its kind, attracting delegates from all over the globe paying thousands of dollars each for the privilege to be in attendance.
Even by Apple's impeccably-high standards, the launch of the new iPad over the past seven days has gone exceptionally well. The usual congregation of devotees could be found outside any given Apple Store last Friday morning, waiting to get their hands on the Retina-toting, 5 megapixel-snapping, LTE compliant device.
You only need to stop for a second and have a look at the number of smartphone devices and tablets available in the marketplace to understand just how popular mobile devices are becoming in our everyday lives. For seasoned users of these devices, the ownership decision generally isn't a difficult one as they tend to have their preferred manufacturers and preferred OSes and will only deviate if something exceptional enters the public domain. However, for those who may be new to the smartphone or tablet ownership, the decision about what device or OS to opt for can be somewhat overwhelming.
Angry Birds has been to iOS and Android what Call Of Duty has been to consoles over the the last few years. Those crazy, unstoppable birds have flown as far as PC, Mac, Facebook and Google Chrome in their never-ending quest to defend the nest.
If there is one thing that owners of Android phones laud over their iPhone owning friends, it's the ability to use their handsets as external storage for their computers. Plug an Android phone into a computer, flick a switch and the device appears just as if it was a thumb drive.
There's been much talk of late regarding Apple's expansive bank balance. As opposed to making a large acquisition like Google or Microsoft with its $100 billion kitty, the fruit company decided a share repurchase program would be a forward-thinking way to utilize some of that eye-watering wealth.
If you ever decided to take the time to sit and sift through the hundreds and thousands of packages that live within the default repositories in Cydia, I would imagine you would need to set aside a fair portion of your week in order to get through them all. With that said, even if you managed to sort through the packages, you only come out with a handful of tweaks or extensions that would be classed as essential installations for your jailbroken iOS device.
Of all the essential everyday uses our smartphones give us, the simplest - and perhaps, the most vital - is the alarm clock.
Part of the joy of owning an Android device is its open source-ness - allowing customization of almost any aspect. As such, a plethora of different launchers, ROMS and features are ported and shared on a daily basis.
As a company, Apple is getting used to breaking their own sales records, so the fact that they shipped more than 3 million units of the new iPad in the first three days of availability shouldn't really come as a great surprise. The next-generation iPad has proved once again that Apple have the winning formula when it comes to tablet devices, something that has manifested through fantastic first weekend sales and will no doubt put the company on an even greater solid financial footing.
