Earlier on in the month, it came to light that Apple had struck a deal with Beats Electronics to purchase the audio-focused company, in a union that would serve as the Cupertino's costliest acquisition by some margin. Now, Apple has issued a press release offering official confirmation on the takeover, worth a cool $3 billion.
Today is fairly busy as far as Apple software is concerned, and off the back of the iTunes 11.2.2 release to the general public on Windows and Mac, the Cupertino giant has just seeded OS X 10.9.4 Mavericks to developers. At this point in time, we don't know precisely what is packed into the latest beta, but with the recently-released OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 having proved problematic for some users - particularly those running the all-new Mac Pro - here's to hoping that Apple has worked on refining the overall experience.
Apple has just released iTunes 11.2.2 - a fairly rudimentary update that fixes issues relating to podcasts. Apparently, some users were finding that podcast episodes were accidentally downloading after the previous installment, which was iTunes 11.1.1, and thus, Apple felt it necessary to push another update that also includes a bunch of stability improvements.
In terms of pricing, Apple's product line-up is inaccessible to many, and in particular, students. Beset by fees and general student debt, the purchase of a product like the iPad Air or iPad mini with Retina display is largely out of the question, and as such, Apple frequently offers discounts to those studying in university or college. Apparently, those two aforementioned slates are now subject to the Cupertino's special education pricing structure, with prices starting at $469 for the iPad Air and $379 for the Retina iPad mini.
One of the ways we measure how far we've come technologically seems to be how closely our lives resemble that of Star Trek. Be it smartphones, tablets or Bluetooth earpieces, plenty of the things we take for granted today were once just the thing of science fiction in a TV show or movie. That fact that within a short period of time these things have gone from barely imaginable to being on sale in your local store just goes to show how far we've come.
If you ever wanted to feel like you're living in the future, and that smartphone didn't quite cut it for you, then the fact that Google was working on driverless cars should have at least given you a sense of what was to come. Having had its self-driving cars marauding around San Francisco for a few years and clocking over 700,000 miles, Google has now taken the next logical step by creating its own car from the ground up. That means no steering wheel and no pedals.
iOS 7 brought a multitude of changes to the fore back in September, and the most immediately-noticeable was that of the user interface. Almost every element was overhauled and redesigned from the ground up, and despite some initial resistance, the overwhelming majority appear to have warmed to the new look. Given how many years the old aesthetic stuck around for, though, it's more than likely that some of you will have developed an affinity to certain aspects, and if you preferred the look of the old default keyboard, there's now a tweak that will allow you to reinstate it.
It's almost that time of year again. The time of year where everyone sits down and feverishly flick between all the live blogs to try and get the lowdown on what is going on at WWDC. With this year's event kicking off on June 2nd, all eyes are now on the Moscone Center venue where Apple holds its yearly developer conference.
The hacking community has certainly been on its game of late, and following on from the news that eBay had been hit by a breach that prompted users of the auction site to change their passwords en masse, it now appears that music streaming service Spotify has also been hit. Unlike the eBay fiasco, it would seem that the Spotify incident is small-scale and only affects those on Android, but nonetheless, the fiasco has been noted, acknowledged, and a remedial update is apparently en route to the Google Play Store.
Korean outfit LG has just taken the wraps off its new flagship G3 smartphone at a launch event in London, and as the build-up correctly touted, this thing is an absolute beast. Below, we've got the specs, pricing, release date and everything else of importance, so if you've been waiting for the low-down on what comes next following last year's acclaimed G2, join us after the fold.
