Latest Technology News

Retina Display support continues to be added to more and more applications as they are updated, and the latest update is for Opera 12.10 beta. This is one of the headline features of the latest build, but there are also a range of bug fixes as well as an update core – although it should be noted that this is a beta release.

The addition of Retina Display support helps to improve the appearance of web pages, particularly for text. Graphics, on the other hand, will appear slightly blurry unless the page administrator has taken the step of using double resolution images. The interface of the browser has also be updated with a new skin which includes new higher resolution icons.

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Do you want to know what’s annoyed me most about recently switching from Google Chrome to Firefox (or, more precisely, its 64-bit variant, Waterfox)? The lack of a built-in PDF viewer, that’s what.

In Chrome, you’d click on a PDF link, and it would open in Chrome: do the same in Firefox, and it would save the PDF to disk instead. Incredibly annoying. The development of a built-in PDF previewer was welcome news to my ears, but having appeared in Firefox 15 Beta, it disappeared from the final version. The good news is that it’s there, and you can switch it on. If you know how.

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Thanks to Tim Conneally's quips, I feel obliged to write this story today. But he knew I would ask: Will you buy iPhone 5? As usual, I've got a buying poll for you and opportunity to explain in comments why iPhone 5 is or is not just right for you or any member of the family (including cute Cubby kitty). As always, fanboys beating one another senseless isn't discouraged. There's nothing quite like Android-iPhone cat fights. So rake the claws, commenters.

If your immediate answer to the question is "Yes!", slow down, put your brain in low gear and think for a moment. You must understand the implications of that decision, particularly if you bought doodads for earlier models.

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So the iPhone 5 has been unveiled and, well, it’s just a bigger version of the iPhone 4S. No great surprise there, as all the rumors and leaks predicted that would be the case. There are some other changes to the device of course; it’s faster, lighter, prettier and has a better camera and a new dock connector, but really it’s just Apple’s phone with a bigger screen, improved OS, and less Google.

If the reports are to be believed, and they are, in October Apple will introduce another new product -- a smaller iPad.

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Today during a special media event, Apple unveiled its next smartphone, as expected.

Pricing is unchanged from previous models: $199 (16GB); $299 (32GB); $399 (64GB). iPhone 4 is now free and the 4S $99. All prices are with contractual commitments.

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If you've got iPhone 4 or 4S, recent iPod touch or one of the two recent iPads, Apple will give you iOS 6, and you won't wait long. The Cupertino, Calif,-based company formally announced the release date, September 19, during a media event today.

New iOS 6 features include FaceTime video over cellular, Facebook integration, Passbook for buying movie tickets and other passes, shared photo streams and new maps app, among others. Apple released a developer preview in June. Perhaps most notable among the new features is Apple's homegrown maps app, replacing the one long provided by Google.

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In what can only be described as a turning point for post-PC operating systems, cumulative Android device sales now exceed iOS, and in a shorter time period. Today, during a special media event, Apple reduced the cumulative number of iOS sales to 400 million -- that would be since iPhone's debut in June 2007. But yesterday, Google put Android sales at 500 million, from the G1's launch four years ago this month. The days of iOS' perennial lead are over.

Android has been on the catch-up track for better part of the year. At the end of June cumulative iOS shipments were 410 million, according to Apple. Why CEO Tim Cook put the number at 10 million less today is anyone's guess. Days before the quarter ended, Google put cumulative Android shipments at 400 million. A few months earlier: 365 million and 300 million, respectively. Daily Android activations now total 1.3 million, up from 900,000 in June, according to Google.

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Security vendor Bitdefender has released a major update to its 2013 stable of security products. Bitdefender Total Security 2013,BitDefender Internet Security 2013 and BitDefender AntiVirus Plus 2013 have all been updated to version 16.20.0.1483, and include a large number of fixes, many of which are in response to customer feedback. The new build is automatically applied through Bitdefender’s own update tool.

Build 16.20.0.1483’s notable fixes include ensuring the Sandbox works in Windows 8, adding a separate folder for backed up files disinfected by the product and ensuring Rescue Mode can also detect USB drives.

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Today, gadget tastemaker Apple is expected to unveil a host of new products, including a new iPhone, new iPods, and perhaps even an update to the bête noire that is iTunes. In all likelihood, the "iPhone 5" will be the scene-stealer of this event, which will add some small, incremental changes to the obnoxiously popular device. The changes documented herein are sure to be labeled as life-changing and essential by the bike-riding gentrification brigade, and be labeled as Android copies by the cloak-wearing dungeon masters. Since we've sat through six different iPhone unveilings, we've decided to call this one as we see it...

Today's event begins at 10:00 am PDT (1:00 pm Eastern), and all updates appear in reverse chronological order (i.e. newest posts first), and yes, you do actually have to refresh the page.

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To keep your web accounts secure it’s a good idea for their passwords to be as cryptic as possible: lengthy, a good mix of numbers, upper and lower case letters, maybe even other characters if they’re allowed.

You won’t be able to remember them? That’s probably true, but with a copy of the free SmartUtils Easy Password to hand that simply won’t be necessary.

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We all know that Microsoft is taking a hell of a gamble with its new operating system. If Windows 8 fails, as many are suggesting it will, that would be a major blow to the Redmond, Wash.-based company. Microsoft is staking pretty much everything on Windows 8 and trusting that ubiquity -- placing the OS on desktop systems, tablets, and mobile phones -- will be enough to persuade people to give it a chance.

The problem: Microsoft isn't just risking its own business. With the traditional PC market stagnating, faltering companies like Dell and HP (which both reported large drops in revenue recently -- HP’s losses being the worst in its 73-year history) need a way of boosting their dwindling PC sales. In previous years, the arrival of a new operating system would have done exactly that. When Windows 7 launched, for example, sales of new computers jumped 40 percent in the first week alone. While PC sales will undoubtedly still increase following Windows 8’s launch, it’s unlikely we’ll see such a big jump as last time around. Partly because many of those relatively recent upgraders will be happy to stick with what they’ve got, and partly because Windows 8 runs better on lower-specced systems than its predecessor does anyway. For those reasons alone it’s unlikely that this version of Windows will drive hardware sales in the same way that previous ones did.

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Finally, someone is brave enough to give iPhone 5 a big reality check. Who better than Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis?

"Ahead of the expected launch of the iPhone 5", he says, "there is a growing expectation that this release will achieve the equivalent blowout sales success that the iPhone 4s enjoyed; however, a careful review of the sales history reveals that, while the new iPhone may be a gigantic success around the world, the inevitability of similar success in the US is not quite so pre-determined".

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Yesterday registrar and web hoster GoDaddy went down for several hours, taking millions of websites along, too. Within an hour, Twitter accounts associated with hacktivist group Anonymous took credit. Today, GoDaddy blames "corrupted router data tables". Meanwhile AnonymousOwn3r claims denial of service attack and hack -- and within the hour publicly posted what supposedly is GoDaddy "source code and database".

Somebody's lying here. But whom?

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Berlin-based O&O Software GmbH has released DiskRecovery 8.0 Professional, the latest iteration of its data-recovery tool for Windows PCs. Version 8, which is also available as a dedicated 64-bit build, recognizes more file types, plus promises improved tools for recovering picture and video from digital cameras. It also claims enhanced search tools for compressed files, including zip and 7-zip.

Despite the “Professional” tag, this version of O&O DiskRecovery is aimed very much at individuals as well as home users, and offers a simple wizard-based interface for finding and saving deleted, lost and corrupt data from a user’s hard drive.

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Apple is on my mind again, with the company hosting a big media event tomorrow presumably to unveil iPhone 5. I'm not seriously thinking about buying the smartphone, certainly not sight unseen. I'm super satisfied with Galaxy Nexus -- if not, I'd move to a LTE Android, perhaps HTC One X or Samsung Galaxy S III. Rather, iPhone 5 is good time to assess my personal Apple boycott, where I sold off all my fruit-logo gear in protest of patent bullying.

Until July, I was a long-time Apple user, starting with the December 1998 purchase of the original Bondi Blue iMac. Then about six months ago, Apple's persistent competition-by-litigation tactics finally made me mad. I also had grown sick of Apple media bias that borders on the insane. How crazy? Yesterday, Washington Post explained "How Apple’s iPhone 5 could singlehandedly rescue the US economy". Bad is worse -- today, extending this economic lift to US presidential elections, Nextgov (a product of the National Journal Group) asserts: "How the iPhone 5 could help re-elect Obama". These are people I really don't want to associate with. (Say doesn't the president use BlackBerry?)

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