Apple has shown an increased desire over the last 12 months to highlight the fact that a lot more of their design and manufacturing processes is taking place in the United States. The company's "Designed by Apple in California" slogan is playing an increasingly important role during media events, with Tim Cook and his executive team keen to drill home that products like the new Mac Pro will be manufactured in the US. If today's reports regarding the future of the iPhone and iPad processors turn out to be true then it could mean that upstate New York could be the production home of Apple's chips in the very near future.
The Retina iPad mini 2 was announced alongside the iPad Air at Apple’s special media event in October. But at that time, Apple vaguely announced that the device will be available ‘later in November’, and no proper calendar date was given. And today, out of nowhere, the device has made its way to Apple’s Online Store.
Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto 5 has been the biggest-selling console title of this year, breaking several early sales records since its release in September. Many millions of gamers had been waiting years on its arrival, and barring a few technical glitches with GTA Online and whatnot, most have deemed the latest in the popular free-for-all classic series to have been worth the lengthy delay. To supplement the title, iFruit for iOS (and rather belatedly), Android, have given those running either of the two main mobile OSes an even richer experience, and although Windows Phone, as ever, remains bereft of any official support, a new third-party app for Microsoft's platform could serve as the perfect accompaniment to GTA 5.
I don't think it's too much of a statement to make that when the Xbox One finally arrives later on this months, relationships are going to be affected. As avid gamers go out and possibly queue for hours to pick up a console that has been several years in the waiting, some other halves will be feeling as though they've been replaced by a plastic box that, to them, just plays games and streams movies as the last console did. But while the general demographic of the console gamer tends to be young males, the latest Xbox One ad flips things a little, with the female taking the traditional position of the guy. It's mildly humorous, and we've embedded the 30-second clip below for your viewing pleasure.
Tweetbot has certainly built up a strong reputation among Twitter users on Apple products, and with the big Tweetbot 3 release for iPhone and iPod touch just a short while ago, the app's publishers have already come through with a rather handsome update. Having apparently recooked the UI from the ground up over the previous version, one or two of Tweetbot 2's most popular features seemed to have been dragged away by the cull, but as the process of continual improvement enters the next stage, Tweetbot 3.1 sees the restoration of some of the app's most useful quirks.
Being able to install multiple operating systems on a desktop computer is something we just assume as standard. Running Linux alongside a Windows installation on a PC is an everyday experience for millions of users around the world. Installing Windows 7 or Windows 8 as a dual-boot operating system on a Mac is actually extremely commonplace as well. Although mobile platforms have benefited from significant growth in the last few years, and continue to grow, we've never really had a truly functioning dual-boot system that has been adopted by the masses. For those that may have heard of, and used, the MultiROM booting system on Android you may be pleased to hear that the development team have released a new version with support for additional hardware.
Things seem to be on the upside for BitTorrent Sync. The service that allows users to synchronize files without the use of Dropbox or other cloud based storage alternatives has just announced that it has hit a milestone that must have initially seemed out of reach. It's also been announced that the BitTorrent Sync offering will be greatly improved for the end users with the addition of third-party developer access as well as extending the current mobile distribution to appeal to a greater number of iOS users.
As we move closer and closer to an official public launch, it's fair to say that the rivalry between Sony and Microsoft is well and truly heating up. Undecided consumers will soon be faced with one of the toughest video gaming decisions that they have had to make in the last few years: should they purchase Sony's PlayStation 4 or Microsoft's Xbox One? As you might expect, both companies are involved in their own final promotional campaigns ahead of the hardware launch with Microsoft France taking a leaf out of the Sony France book by creating the Xbox One Hotel.
We've been hearing a great deal about Google Glass over the course of 2013. Almost 10,000 lucky technology enthusiasts have been putting the wearable tech through its paces since Google opened up the Glass program earlier in the year. There's been a renewed focus on the Glass project in the last few weeks, with Google recently announcing that they are planning on expanding the initiative to allow those early beta testers to invite an additional three people each to get in on the Glass action.
We've seen rumors of Apple's claimed interest in launching new, larger iPhones throughout the recent months, and it's clear that those rumors aren't going to go away any time soon after Bloomberg today got in on the speculation action.
