The last couple of days has been rammed full of Apple related goodness with more than enough news coming out of Cupertino to keep the most hardcore Apple fan content. The release of the financial figures for the third quarter of 2012 showed great progress with seriously impressive sales of the iPad and a profit of $8.8 billion raked in during the period. And today, we saw the final retail version of OS X Mountain Lion hitting the Mac App Store, and is all set to consumed by millions of Mac users out there.
Apple has today pushed out updated releases of both the iOS and Mac versions of the popular iWork site of productivity apps. While the release of Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is obviously Apple's biggest software push of the day, the Cupertino firm is also unleashing an updated version of its iWork suite of apps across both the Mac and iOS devices.
It’s believed that over nine months have passed since Apple publicly released iOS 5, bringing with it a whole host of new features and developer APIs including the much loved Notification Center. The previous notifications system - if you can call it that - on iOS devices was clearly in need of a revamp with Apple deciding that the best route to go down was to overhaul the system entirely and introduce a notifications hub where all app announcements are placed together.
Despite most Apple products being manufactured over in China, the nation is usually behind most other countries when it actually comes to seeing the newest Cupertino device. Some four months since the US and Europe release of the third-generation iPad, the slate has finally hit stores over in China, and unlike the usual frenzied rush, the launch came and went relatively quietly.
After two teaser trailers, The Dark Knight Rises mobile title is now rolling out for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users around the globe. The motion picture also hits cinemas today, and will conclude the trilogy of Christian Bale's Batman.
Personally speaking, I have been a user of iOS since the launch of the first iPhone back in 2007 and during that time I have always let Mobile Safari take care of my web browsing requirements. There has always been the temptation of fraternizing with some of the third-party browsers available on the App Store such as Apollo or SkyFire, but it always felt a little like cheating to move away from Apple's own offering.
Apple and Samsung have been through the courts numerous times, and although proceedings do often descend into farce with playground-like slander aimed in both directions, a UK judge has really sent Apple back to school. With the Cupertino company having dragged Samsung's name through the mud with claims the Korean company copied the iPad design for its tablets, the British Judge has ruled Apple must publicly state that Samsung did not plagiarize the design.
With the recent announcement of the Microsoft Surface, the tablet market is starting to heat up a little bit with the Surface representing what could be classed as the first real iPad competitor. Until the official price point, full specifications and release strategy for the Redmond company's latest hardware is revealed, it will be difficult to truly gauge whether or not Apple should be concerned, but, it at least represents a true test of the iPad’s market dominance.
Having only announced iOS 6 last month at the WWDC event, the Cupertino company is already meandering its way through the betas, and if you've a developer account, you can now download iOS 6 beta 3, linked to at the very foot of this post.
Adding on to the already-tall pile of rumors that suggest Apple will be launching a smaller iPad with a roughly 8-inch display, the New York Times has just stated that, according to sources close to the company, the 7.85" iPad will be "significantly cheaper" than the existing iPad 3, and will make its debut sometime this year.
