With Apple's success in the smartphone and tablet arenas, it is easy to sometimes forget where Apple made its name. Desktop computers, and later ultra stylish notebook machines have been Apple's meat and drink since the company was founded way back when in that famous garage. Since then the Mac has been born, and the world of iOS has come to fruition thanks to the ever popular iPad and iPhone devices.
The last couple of days has been rammed full of Apple related goodness with more than enough news coming out of Cupertino to keep the most hardcore Apple fan content. The release of the financial figures for the third quarter of 2012 showed great progress with seriously impressive sales of the iPad and a profit of $8.8 billion raked in during the period. And today, we saw the final retail version of OS X Mountain Lion hitting the Mac App Store, and is all set to consumed by millions of Mac users out there.
During the WWDC keynote last month, Apple announced that Mountain Lion - the upcoming version of OS X - will be available for download for Mac users in July. And just like we had expected, the Gold Master build of said OS has just been seeded to registered users of Mac Dev Center.
The mobile app development business is a funny old game. Designing and developing quality apps takes an extremely unique skill set, something that often gets overlooked by a lot of people due to the fact that anyone with a computer can throw some code together and bundle it onto the relevant app stores for people to download without having a second thought about the experience. True developers on the other hand live and breathe through their creations with good code flowing like poetry, and when mixed together with flawless design, makes up for an amazing app.
Remember those murmurings about the possibility of the Mac getting a Cydia-like store? Well, considering the amount of time that has passed with no further updates about the legitimacy of the project, it would seem that we can put that idea in the 'nice but isn't likely to happen' pile. With that said, all hope should not be lost, especially if the release of the OS X HackStore in the next few months turns out to be a reality.
One of the more significant additions to Windows 8 (on the latest Consumer Preview build) - which is critical for the platform to succeed in the tablet space - is the Windows Store, essentially an app store where you can purchase applications for Windows, particularly Metro-style ones. Thus, in terms of functionality, it's pretty much like a combination of the iOS and Mac App Stores. But, in usability and design, it does have its differences.
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.
The world we live in is a very expensive place where every penny counts, even more so in recent times thanks to the worrying economic climate we find ourselves in. With that in mind, it is imperative that creators of goods and services which are not deemed as necessities go that extra mile to provide consumers with truly exceptional value for money. The problem with that is that one persons definition of value for money differs greatly to another, especially when we are talking about software. A growing trend is emerging where consumers seem to believe software should be free of charge is somewhat concerning when you take into account the days, weeks and months which are put into the design and development of these programs and applications.
If you check out the photography section on the iPhone or iPad App Store, you might be shocked at how many applications exist which allow all forms of photograph editing features. Some of the applications are very useful and have an amazing array of options to make photographs look beautiful, but some of them are dreadful and offer no functionality that can't be found through the new editing section of the photos application within iOS 5.
Mac OS X has been run on non-Apple computers before, but today we’ll show you a pretty impressive new port a developer has reported on tonymacx86. He has been able run OS X Lion 10.7.2 on his Samsung Series 7 Slate, or as he calls it now: HacPro Touch. The catch is that an external monitor such as a TV is needed to run Lion successfully.
