In more welcome airport-related news than the reports that Apple’s Maps app steers people the wrong way across Fairbanks Airport taxiway, Apple has released an update (version 1.3.3) of its AirPort Utility — the app which allows you to manage your Wi-Fi base stations, including AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and AirPort Time Capsule, from the comfort of your iOS device.
If, as Tim Cook predicts, “it’s going to be an iPad Christmas” then December 25 has come early to Cupertino, on the back of reports that the iPad Air saw adoption rates of five times those of the iPad 4 following its opening weekend.
If you believe the reports, Apple is currently working on a way of charging iOS devices using solar panels. If you’re not content to wait, however, and want a quick-and-easy means of charging your iPhone or iPad right now, you might want to consider investing in this Indiegogo crowd funding campaign to create a mobile wireless charging solution for Apple products.
Based on the increasingly popular Qi inductive electrical power transfer system, iQi Mobile Wireless is set to bring true, low-cost wireless charging to iOS device. This is done without the fuss of plugging and unplugging wires, since charging is achieved simply by placing your iPhone or iPad on a Koolpuck charger.
Google’s algorithmically-driven cars may be partially designed to give commuters more time to surf the Internet (using Google, natch!), but if a new report from ABI Research is anything to go by, it’s Apple who have the real early adopter advantage in terms of connected in-vehicle infotainment systems.
ABI Research forecasts that shipments of such infotainment systems, equipped with one or more smartphone integration technologies, will grow substantially over the next five years — reaching 35.1 million units globally by 2018. Of these, ABI projects an impressive 49.8% will be running Apple’s “iOS in the Car”, the standard for allowing iOS devices to work with manufacturers’ built-in in-car systems as unveiled during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference back in June.
iPads might seem the perfect device for government meetings (if only for a quick game of Angry Birds when things get boring), but not if you’re a member of the UK Cabinet.
Forget for a moment all the talk about Apple’s recent quarter financials disappointing Wall Street analysts — and instead focus on two “nuggets” from Apple’s recently released 88-page Form 10-K, as picked up by ISI’s Brian Marshall.
In a note to clients sent Thursday, Marshall notes that not only is Apple’s $11 billion in projected capital expenditures for fiscal 2014 a double-digit increase for a company already “the single largest CapEx spender” in his “Big 7 Hyperscale group”, but also that Apple generates “off-the-charts” revenue-per-head metric compared to the other IT and networking companies he covers — which includes Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), Facebook (FB) and Yahoo (YHOO).
Apple had added its name to an open letter from the tech industry — also signed by Google, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL and Yahoo! — demanding “oversight and accountability” of NSA surveillance.
The letter, sent Thursday, was addressed to the sponsors of the USA Freedom Act, a legislation designed to end bulk data collection by the National Security Agency. It claims that the tech industry (including Apple) welcome debate about the best way to further national security, while also protecting individual user privacy interests.
Unofficial iDevice chargers have taken the form of everything from the hand crank to to the camp stove, and now it seems that Apple is getting in on the act too by taking out a patent for portable solar panel chargers. The patent application — filed with the US Patents & Trademark Office — details a power management system incorporating a solar panel accessory, compatible with both Macs and iDevices, and potentially attached by way of a USB connection. By turning solar energy into electricity, this could then be used to charge future iPhones or MacBooks without the need for a mains power charger.
Cloud computing giant Marc Benioff has praised hailed Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s new head of retail and online sales, as the “future Apple CEO.” Referring to her in a Tuesday tweet as “the most important hire Tim Cook has ever made”, Benioff’s toasting of Ahrendts has left analysts asking whether it is simply a show of support for Burberry’s outgoing CEO — or evidence that Benioff knows more than he is letting on, following disappointing fourth quarter numbers for Apple.
It’s a natural instinct to assume that a book written in the wake of a famous (and famously litigious) person’s death might well be a cash-in — particularly when the author of said book is an ex-lover, with an all-too-apparent axe to grind. That was my first instinct when approaching The Bite in the Apple: A Memoir of My Life with Steve Jobs, whose author, Chrisann Brennan, will be well-known to Apple followers as the first girlfriend of Jobs — and the mother of his daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, who the Apple co-founder denied paternity of for many years. The suggestion that this is a money grab is seemingly backed up when Brennan starts the book by claiming that she not only never considered studying history, but had little interest in writing a book either: both seeming prerequisites for a person writing what essentially amounts to a modern history book. Misgivings deepen yet further when Brennan locates the book’s origins as following on from a 2006 spate of ill-health which left her financially destitute and “virtually homeless.”
CNNMoney has hit out at Apple by saying that it should momentarily forget about its position as an acclaimed product manufacturer and instead “focus on its mediocre software.”
While acknowledging that Apple builds some of the most coveted laptops, tablets, and smartphones around, writer Adrian Covert nevertheless singled out the company’s suite of software applications as the “one dark cloud” which looms over Apple. Although apps like iPhoto, Pages, iCal and Mail are functional enough, Covert claims, better alternatives exist, while iTunes and defunct social network Ping are varying degrees of broken.
As the fifth generation full-sized iPad, users likely know what to expect from the newly-released iPad Air. And while the device doesn’t try and reinvent the wheel by radically altering the iPad’s genetics in either abilities or form factor, the mere fact that Apple has proven able to further hone what was already a winning concept — by decreasing the size and weight, upping the speed and power, all while maintaining battery life — is reason enough to mark down the iPad Air as an assured winner in the tablet category. This verdict is more than backed up by the reviews which have begun flooding in over the past 24 hours, with reviewers now having had around a week to test Apple’s newest tablet.
We reported it back in July and now there is confirmation: Steve Jobs-actor Ashton Kutcher has joined Lenovo to help launch its new Yoga tablet.
“This is not just another ‘me too’ tablet.” Kutcher said at a launch event for the Android device Tuesday night.
Write it off as a smokescreen to cover sliding profit and margins if you want, but Tim Cook’s belief in the culture of Apple came across loud and clear during Monday’s conference call with analysts and reporters.
Speaking about Apple as a “force for good in the world beyond our products” Cook claimed that, “Whether it’s improving working conditions or the environment, standing up for human rights, helping eliminate AIDS, or reinventing education, Apple is making substantial contributions to society.”
According to research consultants Counterpoint Research, Apple captured 34% of the 2.8 million Japanese mobile phone sales this September, marking a sizable increase from the estimated 14% seen in both July and August.
The news is even more impressive when, as Counterpoint director Tom Kang notes, “This is the first time any handset brand has crossed the 30% mark in the last decade in one of the most modern digital handset market in the world, Japan.”
It might not be the iCar that Berenberg analyst Adnaan Ahmad recently recommended Apple invest in, but Tim Cook nonetheless dropped some hints about forthcoming new products in previously unexplored categories while announcing the company’s final quarter financials.
During his introductory remarks, Cook noted that Apple sees “significant opportunities ahead of us in both current product categories and new ones” and later reiterated that the company was working on some “great new products in areas where we do not participate today.”