With Microsoft's Surface tablet not yet even slated for a release date or given a public price, one of the company's co-founders has claimed that the upcoming tablet may lead Microsoft to re-think its tablet strategy. In fact, the one and only Bill Gates believes that Apple may even need to make its own Surface in order to compete.
There is a certain order of things whenever a new piece of technology is released. There's the big, flashy announcement event with lots of press, some music and a few over-excited executives. There's the first reviews. Finally, there's the teardown of the poor thing by the people at iFixit, laying the new tablet, smartphone or whatever bare for all to see. It's a strangely voyeuristic thing, and we love it.
Happy 4th of July to our readers from America! To make the federal holiday special, we went out and hunted for the best iOS / Android apps that have had their prices cut specially for Independence Day; our quest so far has resulted in a treasure trove of awesome apps. All of them are listed right after the jump. Check them out and be sure to share this post with your friends and family!
Steve Jobs once professed to have "cracked" three markets he deemed to be key in Apple's progress. One was the textbook market, which has already become a reality with iTunes U. The next was the television market, which is hotly-rumored to be in the works for the not-so-distant future, while the third area was the photography market, which although affected by both the iPhone and iPad, has yet to be attacked by Apple in a manner which would back up Jobs' claims.
While most consumers only pay attention to an iOS software update when it pops up on their device or in iTunes, the lengthy beta process beforehand is when said firmware version is perfected. With new features come new compatibility issues, which frequently see a beta release revised several times before eventually reaching the end-user. One iOS enthusiast by the name of Will Hains decided to dig deep, creating a breakdown of each iOS iteration from its inception as the old iPhone OS back in 2007 up to the present day.
All talk of the purported iPad Mini has been relatively quiet during the past month or two, but with Google announcing its Nexus 7 tablet at the I/O fanfare last week, more information appears to be surfacing with regards to how Apple plans to tackle the very powerful, inexpensive device.
A report surfacing from the famously hit-and-miss DigiTimes claims Apple is preparing to release a Retina-displaying iMac as early as October. Consumers were dazzled by the sharp display of the MacBook Pro with Retina display unveiled at WWDC this year, and although natural progression suggests the rest of the line-up will follow suit, most presumed we would be waiting until at least early next year.
Steve Jobs was not only Apple's co-founder, but the driving force behind most of the company's successful times, and although he was known throughout his career as being quite a ruthless CEO, his character and mannerisms always made him a hit with Apple enthusiasts at the keynote speeches.
It's hard to imagine a technology partnership bigger than that of Apple and Facebook. The world’s largest and most exciting technology company has recently embraced the world’s largest social network by offering native sharing support in the up and coming OS X Mountain Lion as well as iOS 6, with the latter being set to be released later this year.
Certain parts of iOS have remained pretty much identical since they first saw light back in 2007. When placed side by side with earlier versions - back before it was even called iOS - the software will look different and there are many traces of evolution, but there is quite a large part of the software that has been left untouched in the last five years.

