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Apple's longstanding perchant for secrecy is legendary. It's also a myth. Granted, the company has a strict no-comment policy about future products, which isn't so much about keeping information from seeping out but controlling who disseminates it. Something else: Secrets are impossible to keep when a company produces physical products overseas and depends on so many third-party suppliers. Controlled leaks, or strictly managing those that aren't, lets Apple maximize marketing advantage.

The value cannot be understated, because Apple's business model in 2014 isn't much different from 2001 or 1995: Reselling to the same core group of loyal customers. The Mac faithful mattered when the company struggled to survive against the Intel-Microsoft duopoly and made the majority of profits from selling computers. Cofounder Steve Jobs wisely chose to expand into new product categories -- iPod (2001), iTunes Music Store (2004), iPhone (2007), iPad (2010) -- that freed Apple from monopoly bondage. But the core philosophy of selling to loyal customers, even while trying to grow their numbers, remains the same.

Apple makes gorgeous looking and highly desirable products, but unfortunately for buyers, the iPhone and iPad are among the most breakable devices in the world. Back in February, SquareTrade tested a bunch of gadgets, and rated the iPad mini as the most breakable, with the iPad Air in third place, the iPhone 5c in fifth, and the iPhone 5s in eighth.

It was hoped by many that Apple’s new phones would have sapphire crystal screens, but in the end the tech giant went for ion-strengthened glass. There’s good news for Apple users though, and that’s new breakability tests conducted by SquareTrade show the new devices are Apple’s least fragile to date.

Many businesses rely on CRM tools to store sales data, but the increased use of mobile devices has led to new demands for information to be available anywhere at any time.

Now Base which describes itself as an intelligent sales productivity platform, has added a range of new features to boost team productivity and make data available in real time.

Smartphone manufacturers are conservative when it comes to form factors. Virtually every new handset is of the bar (slate) type. That is because this allows the shell to maintain a thin profile and the touchscreen to take up most of the space on the front panel. Both are features relevant today. Unsurprisingly, clamshells and smartphones do not ever go hand in hand. But there are exceptions.

Among the few smart flip phones, or flip smartphones, is the newly-unveiled LG Smart Wine. The device runs Android 4.4 KitKat and packs decent hardware specifications for what could very well be the ultimate niche smartphone.

Although mobile devices are becoming essential in many workplaces security budgets are failing to reflect the growing numbers of devices that need protection.

This is among the findings of a new report by electronics and systems specialist Raytheon. According to the research around one-third of employees use mobile devices exclusively to do their work and this is expected to increase to an average of 47 percent of employees in the next year.

Expectations always run high when it comes to sales of new iPhones during launch weekend. There's an incredible frenzy in the media fueled by loyalists, long lines form outside Apple stores (immediately followed by the first inadvertent drop caught on camera), the reviews are raving across the board (and why wouldn't they be when only loyalists get review units?) and, finally, on Monday, Apple gives its fans the much-awaited reason to celebrate -- a new first-weekend sales record.

Needless to say, the 10 million iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus units that Apple managed to sell during the first weekend exceed the 9 million iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c units sold a year ago. Barely. Considering the appeal that larger iPhones seem to have -- we've been waiting for them for a couple of years, after all -- 10 million sounds a tad short. It really does.

Versatile video converter/ downloader/ editor TEncoder has expanded its range even further with the addition of a DVD ripper.

Point the program at your disc video folder (\VIDEO_TS, probably), and you’re able to choose the title, start and end chapters, audio and subtitle track you’d like to rip.

Intel’s wireless charging bowl is on track to be released by the end of the year with the company still tight-lipped on how much the revolutionary device will end up costing.

CEO Brian Krzanich confirmed as much during a speech at MakerCon in New York when he said that the device will be "on the market right around the end of this year," according to CNET.

Phablets might be increasing in popularity globally, but iPhone users aren’t blown away by the idea of carrying around a giant phone, if early adoption data is to be believed.

Although it’s very, very early days for Apple’s new handsets, the iPhone 6 is already proving to be a much more popular draw than the giant iPhone 6 Plus, although as my colleague Joe Wilcox points out in his 10 things you should know before buying iPhone 6 or 6 Plus article, limited stock means the 6 Plus is already sold out in a lot of locations, which will obviously have an impact on the number of people who own one.

You should always shoot RAW, if given the option. As opposed to JPG, it's a lossless format. What the sensor sees is exactly what you get in your files. You also get lots more breathing room when editing photos without an apparent drop in quality. Shot in black and white and want to go back to color? No problem, RAW gives you that option. Want to recover shadow details without messing up the look of the image? Again, it's possible, as long as you shoot RAW. Want to recover details from blown highlights? Well, I am sure you get the gist by now.

If you are the lucky user of a Nokia Lumia 1020, Lumia 1520, Lumia Icon or Lumia 930 you can also take advantage of RAW capture. But, after you'll enable the feature, you will soon run into a problem -- what app to use to edit those unusually large files (with a DNG extension), right on your Windows Phone? Well, you can use Rawer.

As we all carry out more of our day-to-day transactions online and access the internet through a wider range of devices, we're opening ourselves up to greater potential risk.

Add in the constant battle of security providers to stay ahead of hackers and malware writers and it's easy to doubt if you can ever stay truly safe online. Joe Siegrist CEO of password management specialist LastPass thinks that although it's not 100 percent possible to hack-proof yourself, you can significantly reduce your risk, we spoke to him to find out how.

Most big-name audio players come with a few visualizations to liven up playback. Right-click inside Windows Media Player, click Visualizations, and you can have it display swirling clouds, spectrum-type bars, psychedelic ripples and space flight effects, amongst others.

These aren’t always great quality, though. There may not be much choice, and smaller audio players often don’t have a visualizer at all. But if you like the core idea, you can always improve the situation by installing the free Plane9.

Not so very long ago virtual reality was the stuff of science fiction but it's increasingly emerging into the real world.

A new infographic produced by collaboration specialist PGi explores the current state of virtual reality and the possibility that it will soon be appearing in the world of work.

The new iPhone 6 models have gone on sale, and shortly after Apple's new smartphones hit shelves, teardown sites had the full skinny on the innards of the devices, having ripped them apart.

The most prominent, iFixit, produced its usual very detailed breakdown of the components of both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Here are some of the highlights...

If you've backed something on Kickstarter then you know that you're risking the money you spent, as some come to fruition while others never do. The site has had its share of major successes such as the Pebble watch and the tiny Android-based Ouya gaming console. But there have also been ones that simply get the money and never ship.

Now the service is trying to clean things up with a new terms of service agreement that it hopes will lend more confidence to potential backers. That should be a good thing for customers, and Kickstarter spells things out pretty clearly.