Apple today announced that its $100 billion pile of money is to be used, not for buying Twitter, Facebook or even Google, but to initiate a stock buy back and to offer dividends to existing share owners.
We're only three months into the year, but I can already tell that it's going to be exciting. And, contrary to what many PC hardware manufacturers wish to assert, this is not because of some gimmicky new PC form factor that nobody will care about in a few months; rather, it is because two of the major players in the tech space, Microsoft and Apple, are each doing awesome and unique things this year as far as their entire product ecosystems are concerned.
It has been a very busy Friday in tech, Apple has just seeded a revised Developer Preview to its upcoming Mountain Lion OS for Mac.
In amongst all the talk of new iPads and Samsung Galaxy S III's, another product trending in the blogsosphere of late is Apple's MacBook range.
There's no doubt that we're forever indebted to our gadgets and gizmos in helping us through our day-to-day tasks. Whether it's a smartphone, tablet, notebook or computer, most of us utilize one - or a combination of a few - of the above in order to get things done.
As well as the obvious introduction of the new iPad, Apple also made what many deemed as a statement of intent towards eventual connected TV by introducing an updated Apple TV device.
It wasn't that long ago when users had to wait an eternity for the developers over at Mozilla and Google to push out new versions of the popular Firefox and Chrome web browsers. In fact, pretty much every major browser version seemed to have an extremely long shelf life before the developers felt it needed an update and brought new and improved features to the public. Thankfully, it looks as though that trend of making users wait for improvements has been put to bed, with Mozilla pumping out the updates thick and fast for its Firefox browser.
The Retina display was arguably the most keenly anticipated feature of the third iPad installment. With users having become accustomed to a pixel-free experience with the iPhone 4 back in 2010, some were left disappointed by the unchanged screen in the fruit company's tablet sequel.
Some of the most useful applications on the Mac and iOS devices are ones that seem to be simplistic in form, but ultimately end up offering a service or solution to users which can be used time and time again. A lot of people purchase or download an application which offers a one time solution to a problem and then delete it from their machine or device, but the apps which offer a consistent feature set are generally the ones that are used repetitively.
Ever since smartphones began earning their stripes as very adept and convenient Wi-Fi hotspots, companies and carriers have been looking for ways to halt the trend - or at the very least, charge more.
