Apple's vast product line may have helped it to reach the dizzy heights of world's most expensive company, but as long-time followers of the Cupertino company will know, it hasn't always been iPhones, iPads and MacBook Airs. This is no more apparent than if we take a look back a few decades to some of the earlier designs, and one particular German designer has unveiled some never-before-seen treasures from the Apple archives. Hartmut Esslinger, assigned by Steve Jobs on a $2 million a year contract to come up with a signature look for a new Macintosh line back in the 1980s, has showcased a number of his eventually-scrapped computer and tablet designs in a new book, called "Design Forward".
It is being reported that the Samsung Galaxy S IV, the next generation of Samsung’s flagship smartphone, will hit the shelves in April 2013 and include features from the Samsung’s mini-tablet, the Galaxy Note, such as the infamous ‘S Pen’.
Want to see Windows RT on a smartphone? We know you do, that's why we're fairly sure this latest news will excite you just as much as it does us. Windows RT has been ported to the HTC HD2 smartphone. Honest!
In the Android ecosystem, the first ever tablets (other than the first experimental builds like original Galaxy Tab and HTC Flyer) ran on Honeycomb, Android 3.0, which was tailor-made to suit the tablet devices’ larger screens. Unfortunately (or not), Android 3.0 didn’t really see much glory for two reasons. One, it was rather buggy in itself, and two, when Ice Cream Sandwich was released, it unified both tablet and smartphone versions of the Android ecosystem, making it redundant to have a separate OS in the first place. For the same reasons, the said Android version didn’t see much developer love, either.
Android is constantly a target for those looking to spread malware, and the latest - discovered by Russian security outfit Doctor Web - is probably one of the more significant to date. Arriving in the form of a trojan, it can aid the loathed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, while also housing the ability to send spam SMS messages and receive commands from the criminals behind them.
Every now and then, an app for the iPhone will come along and leave us totally speechless, making it something that we have to own and have to use as many times as possible in front of friends or family. Thankfully, this year is coming to a nice end with one of those apps that appears to be somewhat of a gimmick that provides great entertainment at social gatherings or dinner parties, but at $0.99, we really don't mind. Cycloramic allows all iPhone 5 owners to capture a Street View-esque video of their surroundings without even touching the device.
Patent filings are usually a solid indicator of which avenue a company intends to take with future products, and since Apple is the world's most valuable company, it USPTO entries are scrutinized more so than any other. A filing published today by the Patent and Trademark Office offers details of a gesture-based computer peripheral which takes into consideration actions such as tapping and tilting in order to interact with an interface.
BlueStacks’ mobile app player has long since allowed Windows users to run Android apps on their PCs, and with that service receiving positive reviews to date, it’s fair to say that it’s a big hit. Today though, Mac users too can now enjoy just about any Google Play app thanks to the latest beta of BlueStacks for Mac, and with such a wealth of content now available for those on Android, the update will be more than welcomed by many.
The previous-gen iPod nano certainly whet the appetites of those dreaming an iWatch. For some reason, the idea of the wearable iOS device is something people seem to really yearn for, and although said nano was little more than a trumped-up, iOS-ified iPod nano with a separately-sold wrist strap, it gave us a glimpse, perhaps, into the future. Today, the iWatch rumors have been reignited once more, and as well as the possibility of a release in the first half of 2013, the speculators are touting a possible 1.5-inch OLED display, Bluetooth 4.0, and - get this - the involvement of chip-making extraordinaire Intel.
First Tweets From Newly Purchased Tablets Reveal iPad At Top Of The 2012 Holiday Gift Charts [IMAGE]
We probably all expected that a lot of individuals would be receiving some type of 7 or 10-inch tablet as their main festive gift this year, but there has been a lot of talk about whether or not the iPad would continue to reign as the most popular tablet or whether the competition would gather traction in the market as part of the Christmas shopping rush. It may not go down in history as one of the most scientific polls ever, but a collection of 'first tweets' gathered from Twitter show that the iPad remains the most popular tablet out there - at least for those who have a Twitter account and took the time to send out a tweet announcing their device.

