Today, November 1st, Apple opened their stores around the world to fans queuing up for the latest and greatest in their tablet line: the iPad Air. Announced in late October, the iPad Air didn't exactly come as much of a surprise to anyone who isn't living under a rock. Leaks of it's existence were occurring left, right and center until almost the only piece of the puzzle we were missing was it's official announcement from Apple.
Apple's thinner, lighter and faster iPad Air is officially available for sale to the general public today. Queues in various flagship stores around the United States and Europe had people queuing outside for more than 24-hours in an effort to guarantee they are amongst the first to get their hands on Apple's best performing iPad to date. To some it may seem like nothing more than an evolutionary update to the iPad line, but to others it most definitely still contains that Cupertino magic that is derived from being designed in California by Apple.
We think it's pretty fair to say that Apple's recent announcement of the iPad Air didn't exactly blow everyone's mind when it comes to technological innovation. The unveiling of the next-generation full-sized iPad pretty much fell in line with what the majority were expecting in the fact that it offers an improved but evolutionary upgrade from its predecessor. The introduction of the Apple A7 chipset and the improved engineering principles mean that the device will ultimately be faster, lighter and thinner than all other iPads to date, but the Primate Labs Geekbench 3 tests give us a pre-release indication of just how capable the iPad Air is.
Apple has officially published their latest financial results that give a thorough insight into how the Cupertino based company has performed in the last fiscal quarter. Many technology analysts and industry insiders have been using the days running up to the Apple Earnings Conference Call to declare their predictions that the company would fall short of projections due to lackluster demand for the iPhone 5 because new devices were on the verge of being announced. With posted revenues of $37.5 billion it seems that Tim Cook and his executive team can take a lot of positives from the financial performance.
Talk of Apple being able to read iMessage contents is nothing that new, but it's been at the fore today after the iPhone and iPad maker was forced to reiterate that it cannot see the content of messages, even if it wanted to. That may have put people's minds at rest, and while it should be reassuring, Apple's claim has already had a bog old dollop of doubt thrown at it by jailbreak supremo Pod2g.
It's been all change in the Apple boardroom over the last 24 months, and while some of it has obviously been unavoidable other moves have been entirely by the Cupertino firm's choosing. The latest high profile addition to the brain trust that roams Apple's corridors of power is the appointment of current Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts.
A number of new research studies into the effectiveness, responsiveness and overall quality of smartphone and tablet touchscreens has found that Apple Inc. is still leading the pack. Mobile ad company Agawi has been putting a number of popular iOS and Android devices through their paces in an attempt to measure the performance of the touchscreen technology on the device, with the results putting the fruit company way ahead of the competition.
Samsung has been in quite a bit of hot water lately. As well as dropping two Galaxy S4 Gold Edition right after the launch of the Gold iPhone 5s, the company was then found to be severely cooking the books with certain flagship handsets in order to yield favorable results in benchmark tests. Now, it would seem the Korean giant is up to another one of its old tricks - copying Apple - and as you'll see below, the ad for its Galaxy Gear smartwatch is very much the same as that of the original iPhone.
Apple may have had a rough ride of it in the early 1990s, but ever since its co-founder and eventual CEO Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997, some may say that Apple has been on something of an unstoppable upward motion that has culminated in the firm now being one of the most revered in business. Able to make huge profits and owning the manufacturing and retail chains that make it so streamlined, Apple is perhaps the blueprint by which companies now form their own strategies.
The iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c are still hot off Apple's manufacture line, and we've already done a lot of coverage here on Redmond Pie on both of them. I need a little more time to consolidate my opinion regarding the iPhone 5s, but as the iPhone 5c mainly consists of the iPhone 5 components, I felt ready to bring you my full video review. You may also have missed some of our other coverage regarding each of the two handsets, so you'll be able to find all of it within this post.
