Although Apple themselves have been the center of attention for most of the last few weeks due to the imminent announcement and launch of the new iPhone, there has been an organization that has dared to try and steal Apple's thunder in the last week. Those guys are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and have taken it upon themselves to thwart the hype around the new iPhone by blasting the Curiosity Rover onto the red planet to send images back to earth that document its findings.
When we talk about Apple, the first products springing to mind are the MacBooks, iPhones, iPads, and iPods, devices of which have all had a hugely significant impact on their respective markets over the past 10-12 years. That said, before the last decade, Apple was nothing more than a computer company, competing with fierce rivals Microsoft while creating plenty of innovations of its own.
Crytek's CryENGINE has been around for years, and has evolved to become arguably the very best in the business, catering mostly to the first-person shooter genre. FPS titles are, hands down now, the most popular and sought among gamers, and the Crysis series is at the forefront. CryENGINE 3 was announced back in 2009, but the meticulous nature of gaming development means it takes game makers an age to utilize the engines to their full potential.
The Samsung Galaxy S III was one of the most highly-anticipated Android releases of this year, but after numerous purported sightings and inaccurate images of the device's final design, it was of much surprise that the device didn't ship in black. Sure, many vendors alter and omit various colors along the way, but the black shading of the device had been a standard feature of both the original Galaxy S and its predecessor, the immensely-popular Galaxy S II.
There are many companies embattled in a quest to gain the largest market share in both the tablet and smartphone markets, and the recent court cases between Apple and Samsung has offered us a strong indication as to the inner workings of the firms locked in the fight for supremacy. Internal documents have been leaked to the San Jose case revealing much about the practices of both companies, while some of the big cheeses of both electronic outfits have leapt from obscurity to make their feelings known.
If there is one thing which we love the most apart from an official launch of a new smartphone from manufacturers like Apple or Samsung is when concept developers throw their hat into the ring and produce some seriously gorgeous looking renders of entirely fictional devices. It isn't uncommon to see designers producing images of what they believe new Apple devices will look like, but this time, it’s the turn of Google to get the treatment as Dorian Lust has knocked up what he believes a possible Google Nexus device could look like.
Wireless charging has constantly been spoken of in the past as a technology the consumer market will eventually adopt with natural progression, and according to a report over at DigiTimes, Intel could be launching a new system that'll allow wireless charging of smartphones powered by its processors. The technology has been approved by the Wireless Power Consortium as the Qi standard, and is another leap in the quest of hardware manufacturers to minimize the cables and wires - something we definitely agree with.
In a similar fashion to the iOS App Store, Apple's official home for OS X apps can sometimes prove to be a bit of a software jungle with so many categories and apps being available that it can be a bit tricky to find things that will actually be useful to you. Investigating the top charts list gives an insight into what other users are downloading, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you as an individual will find it useful or appealing.
So far, we’ve seen leaks of just about every major component of the next and sixth generation iPhone. We’ve seen its home button, slightly larger front with a 4” display, a metal back, and an all-new MagSafe-like dock connector to name a few things.
It's difficult to remember what we all used to do to handle our increasingly busy schedules and work loads before we had such capable computers and mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. Being able to be permanently connected to our diaries, appointments and task lists through the use of mobile hardware and scheduling software has proved to be an invaluable resource for those who have busy professional and personal lives, but the real power is needed when we knuckle down to actually sift through our list of tasks.
