Latest Technology News

Apple makes terrible mice, but boy, oh boy, the company makes a mean keyboard. The iPhone-maker understands how to create a quality typing experience -- including on its laptops. Its wireless Magic Keyboard is a personal favorite for both macOS and Windows.

Unfortunately, the company has made buying their keyboards a tough affair. You see, it produces both wired and wireless variants, but only the former has a numeric keypad. In other words, you had to choose between having a wireless keyboard and having a number pad. Today this changes, however, as Apple releases the Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad. The company released it quietly, which is understandable, as it made many announcements during WWDC today.

Ever since the first iPad was released back in 2010, people have dreamed about replacing their laptop with the tablet. The big draw, of course, was not having to carry a heavy and bulky notebook. At the time, many such portable computers were quite thick and heavy, making them a chore to lug around. Even though there are much thinner and lighter notebooks nowadays, the dream of replacing them with an iPad remains; even more since the release of iPad Pro.

Earlier today, Apple announced new 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch Apple iPad Pro tablets. While the company makes its own keyboard case for these slates, that hasn't stopped third-party companies from making arguably superior offerings. Today, Logitech unveils its latest such keyboard cases for the newest iPad Pro models. Called "Slim Combo," it will protect your iPad Pro while also making it a powerful laptop -- it even has a place to hold the Apple Pencil. The keyboard is removable, so you can use the iPad as a traditional tablet without removing the tablet from the case. It even draws its power from the Smart Connector, meaning no need for batteries!

Hadoop, for all its strengths, is not without its difficulties. Business needs specialized skills, data integration, and budget all need to factor into planning and implementation. Even when this happens, a large percentage of Hadoop implementations fail.

To help others avoid common mistakes with Hadoop, I asked our consulting services and enterprise support teams to share their experiences working with organizations to develop, design and implement complex big data, business analytics or embedded analytics initiatives. These are their top seven mistakes, and some advice on how to avoid them.

When Amazon released the Echo hardware and Alexa voice assistant, no one knew for sure how successful it would be. Since the release, however, it has proven wildly popular -- not only with users, but with developers and hardware-makers too. There are many devices that work with Alexa, not to mention, countless skills.

Following Echo being a runaway success, Google copied it with its Home assistant. Curiously absent in this copying, however, was Apple. Since the company already has a voice assistant with Siri, it seemed like creating a hardware speaker would be a no-brainer. Sadly, one did not surface -- until now. Today, Apple announces the product for which many people were clamoring -- HomePod. Unfortunately for the company, the product will be a tough sell.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference is traditionally about software, but that certainly isn’t the case this year as the tech giant has refreshed its Mac line, and introduced a new HomePod speaker.

Apple today also introduces all-new 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros powered by a new A10X Fusion chip that Apple says "delivers incredible performance that rivals today’s fastest PC laptops" -- a clear dig at Microsoft.

At WWDC 2017, Apple has lifted the wraps of the next version of its mobile operating system. iOS 11 introduces a lot of new features, including improvements to Siri, Apple Photos, Apple Maps, and Apple Pay, a redesigned Control Center, a new Augmented Reality feature, and more.

With Siri, Apple is introducing improved voices that sound more natural, and the digital assistant will be able to perform language translations. English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Spanish will all be supported. Siri will also be able to make suggestions of things that might be of interest to you -- such a news article -- via a new on-device "Intelligence" feature.

It's WWDC 2017 and if there is one thing that you can count on is Apple showing off the new versions of its main operating systems. So, today, we catch a glimpse of macOS High Sierra, which is shaping up to be a pretty impressive upgrade over its predecessor, macOS Sierra.

There are a couple of notable new features in macOS High Sierra, namely the introduction of Apple File System, VR support, a better browsing experience in Safari, faster graphics, and improved video support.

UK companies were hit with fines totaling over £3.2m last year after falling foul of data protection laws, a new report reveals.

Analysis of figures from the ICO by PwC found that the 35 fines handed out in 2016 were almost double of  the previous year, despite repeated warning that the new GDPR regulations are just a year away.

When Apple unveiled the newest MacBook Pro laptops in October of 2016, some people were upset that they didn't come with 7th-generation Intel Kaby Lake processors. Instead, the company opted for the 6th-gen chips. One big issue with this is that the memory was limited to DDR3 rather than the newest DDR4. Despite these shortcomings, the machines sold well -- they were hard to come by for quite some time after launch.

Today, Apple finally refreshes the MacBook Pro machines with the latest such Intel processors. But that is not all. In addition to the Pro laptop, the company is delivering Kaby Lake to the newest MacBook (non-pro) and iMac computers too. Surprisingly, the MacBook Air gets a little speed bump to 1.8GHz.

In the new digital communications age it’s often the simplest, yet most elegant solutions that capture our imaginations and take off. People across the world have fallen in love with the sleek, pocket-friendly form of the iPhone, for example, or the pared-back concept of Twitter. Consumers can follow the journey of low-cost goods such as a coffee maker from Amazon or a pizza from Dominos from the warehouse to their doorstep quickly and easily via their smartphone or tablet. In London each week, 30,000 people download the Uber app knowing that this will enable them to hail a taxi with a swipe of the technology in their pocket.

The automotive industry has been among the pacesetters, of course, in embracing stylish innovation. The advent of the driverless car and the use of virtual reality and other immersive technologies like augmented reality to drive marketing and sales of vehicles provide compelling examples of how pioneering the sector can be. Car servicing has remained a stubbornly conservative low-tech industry until recently, however.

At WWDC today Apple announced not only High Sierra, but also watchOS 4. One of the biggest updates -- or at least the most visible -- here are to be found on watch faces. As well as being customizable, faces can now dynamically change based on various criteria, such as location and time of day.

Apple is also bring kaleidoscopic faces to the Watch -- something it describes as "trippy." But perhaps the most exciting update is the fact that Siri can now be used on Apple Watch.

It's WWDC 2017 and, for the first time, Tim Cook has revealed the precise number of announcements we can expect from the keynote: six. The first of them is the news that Amazon is coming to Apple TV.

Apple isn't saying exactly when this is happening, but Apple TV is finally going to benefit from Amazon Prime TV. The two companies have traditionally been rivals, but have now managed to become friendly enough to join force.

If you’ve developed an app then the last thing you want to see is it languishing in the app stores, attracting just one or two downloads a week. The dream is to see it "fly off the virtual shelf," attracting hordes of fans who willingly pay to use your app.

So, what is the secret? Unfortunately, just having a great idea isn’t enough. For every app success, there are 10 great ideas that just never get that much interest. But why?

Social media platforms are, by their very nature, keen to be welcoming to as broad a spectrum of people as possible. Twitter, YouTube, and other services of their ilk like to be seen to be as inclusive as can be imagined and Facebook is no different.

This month is Pride Month, and Facebook is not only joining in the celebrations, but also using it to indulge in a little self-celebration and self-congratulation. The social network is rolling out a rainbow frame, a Pride reaction and Pride-themed masks for photos, Pride stickers in Messenger and more, but the company is also falling over itself to prove how diverse not only its userbase is, but also its workforce.

It's becoming increasingly clear that data breaches can happen to any company and at pretty much any time.

Protecting your company's data isn't just about securing your own systems, it also means ensuring that any third-parties you contract out services too are taking appropriate care too.