Apple's mini tab weighs down iPad Air
New iPads reveal much about Apple's current and long-term device dilemmas. Full-size iPad cannibalizes Mac sales, while mini does the same to the larger tablet. Those are the clear takeaways from yesterday's product launches.
CEO Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs, and perhaps that's a good thing. Where Jobs championed grammatically incorrect "think different" -- as a marketing and product development strategy -- Cook thinks differently, making fundamentally difficult branding and pricing decisions to preserve current and future Apple crops. There's great risk in the strategy and greater by doing nothing.
Pixelmator 3.0 FX adds layer styles and liquefy tools, OS X Mavericks support
Lithuanian developer The Pixelmator Team has released Pixelmator 3.0 FX, a major update to its popular Mac image-editing tool. Version 3.0 adds non-destructive Layer Styles, allowing users to apply multiple effects at once, as well as Liquefy Tools that allow users to shape images in multiple ways.
Version 3.0 also adds full support for OS X Mavericks, promising to tap into OS X 10.9’s new features like App Nap and Compressed Memory for faster, more efficient performance.
Mobile strategy becomes a priority for business
Mobile phones are almost as important as PCs for engaging with customers according to the results of a survey released by enterprise mobile specialist OpenMarket.
The study of 167 business leaders in the USA carried out by Forrester Consulting showed that 74 percent now think that mobiles are an important channel for customers, partners and employees, as against 79 percent for PCs.
The real cost of ransomware
Ransomware, software that locks you out of your PC and asks for a fee in order to release it, has been around for quite a while. The first examples date back to the late 1980s but in its most recent form it started to gain popularity with malware writers in 2006, starting in western Europe and rapidly spreading to the rest of the world.
Finnish security specialist F-Secure has been working with the police on a joint investigation and reckons that just one case could be responsible for up to $800 million of damage and losses.
Puran File Recovery is a very flexible undelete tool
If you’ve tried a few undelete tools then you’ll know most offer nothing more than the core basics: choose a drive, they’ll scan it, display any deleted files and you can select and recover them with a click. Nothing too inspiring, then, but still enough to be useful, most of the time.
The free (for personal use) Puran File Recovery follows the same core approach, but just takes it further, with more options, more flexibility, and probably more successful restorations than many of its competitors.
LG releases Fireweb, its first Firefox OS smartphone
Even though LG is the second-largest Android smartphone vendor and showing strong growth in the market, the South Korean manufacturer does not want to put all its eggs in one basket. The company is now also pursuing success with Firefox OS, with its new Fireweb smartphone.
The smartphone launches today in Brazil, alongside the Alcatel Onetouch Fire, at local mobile operator Telefonica Vivo. Like other Firefox OS devices, the Fireweb is aimed at the low-end smartphone market, featuring modest hardware by modern standards.
Apple inflicts major Surface damage on Microsoft -- probably doesn't even care
Yesterday was unquestionably the day of the tablet. Nokia unveiled the Lumia 2520, its first Windows RT 8.1 slate, Apple announced the iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display, and Microsoft’s Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 went on sale.
It was unfortunate timing for Microsoft. On a day when Steve Ballmer and co. would have hoped people would be talking about Surface, they were salivating over Apple instead. The fruit logo company inflicted more damage on Microsoft than just drawing focus for a day however.
Nitro Pro 9 [Review]
It’s been a relatively quiet couple of years for Nitro Pro, the chief alternative to Adobe’s Acrobat PDF editing and conversion tool. Last year’s update was a minor one, opting to refine existing tools alongside offering a handful of new features. With the release of version 9, the question is, has Nitro continued to prefer evolution to revolution?
The answer is a qualified yes. It’s worth remembering just how good Nitro 7 was on its release, and version 8 built on that. Helped by a competitive upgrade price, it was a worthy upgrade. Like its immediate predecessor, Nitro Pro 9 doesn’t pull up any trees, but there are some nifty new features to add to an already impressive feature set.
BBM rakes in more than 10 million downloads during the first 24 hours
I will admit to being intrigued by BBM. I have never owned a BlackBerry smartphone (nor do I have plans to buy one) so I have never had the chance to find out what all the fuss is about. But, after the Canadian maker revealed that the service will also arrive on Android and iPhone, my interest piqued.
And I am definitely not the only one who is interested. Following the second release on rival platforms, in its first 24 hours on Apple App Store and Google Play BBM surpassed 10 million downloads, which is impressive for a service that only had 60 million users before the second half of the year.
I'm going all in, Microsoft-only for one week
When I got my first computer, a Packard Bell, it was running Windows 95. At the time, I was just happy that I could talk to girls on AOL. The political and religious nature of the operating system never entered my mind. This was because, at the time, Microsoft monopolized computing in America's households. Microsoft was computers to me and I was fine with that.
Fast forward to 2013 and we see a far different landscape in home computers. Heck, the idea of owning a desktop is foreign to many consumers as they instead opt for tablets. Shockingly, Microsoft is almost nowhere to be found in the tablet revolution. Yes, it was selling convertible, tablet-edition Windows devices years ago, but consumers weren't buying them. I should know, I sold them at the time -- well, didn't sell them, I should say.
Apple officially launches the cylindrical Mac Pro
Historically, the Mac Pro has been a beast of a machine -- a giant footprint on the desks of professionals. When it was originally released in 2006, it became an iconic fixture among artistic professionals. However, it was not just the outward appearance that was so pleasing to consumers, it was the inside too.
When the first generation was released, I was working at CompUSA. The store had an Apple section with a dedicated representative -- a precursor to the Apple store and its geniuses. We would often open up the machine to show off the internals because it was just that amazing. At the time, the inside of a typical Windows machine was just a mess of wires and poor design. The inside of the Mac Pro was organized and well thought out. Today, in continuing with this tradition, Apple officially launches the all-new Mac Pro. While things change, they also stay the same.
Amazon Prime announces expanded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer agreement
Amazon Prime today continues its battle with Netflix and Redbox Instant, in a fight to get control of that monthly fee you lay out in the name of entertainment. This time the retail giant strikes with a new agreement between it and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio to expand availability of content.
The company brought the hit series Vikings to its British and German viewers through LOVEFiLM back in May, but those who failed to watch season one in the US can now also catch up with Ragnor and his crew.
Apple unveils multi-colored cases for iPad Air and mini
When you spend a sizable amount of money on a device, it's understandable that you wish to have a bit of insurance on your investment, and a fair amount of us do that by purchasing a protective case. Apple is no stranger to the accessory market and today pushes it a bit further, announcing new offerings for its latest iPad devices.
These protective wombs for your tablet are available in a range of colors. The Smart Covers for iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display will retail for $39, and hit the market in a choice of blue, green, pink, yellow, black and red.
Apple announces updated iWork and iLife apps for free -- although there is a catch
Despite being billed in the press as an iPad event, Apple announced much more than just the iPad Air and new iPad mini today. As well as improved hardware it revealed its OS update Mavericks would be free, and the giveaways didn’t stop there.
Its iWork productivity apps -- Pages, Numbers and Keynote -- and its iLife creativity apps -- iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand -- have been redesigned to take full advantage of OS X Mavericks and iOS 7, updated to 64-bit, integrated with iCloud and made entirely free. They’ll come bundled with new Macs or iOS devices. If you’re an existing user, and running Mavericks or iOS 7, you’ll be able to update to the new versions. Not planning on buying new hardware and not an existing user? You’ll still need to pay to get them, I’m afraid.
Apple announces the thinner, lighter iPad Air and new iPad mini
It was a feature-packed morning of announcements where it seems as though Apple was going to give away everything for free. Sadly the freebies are limited to software and the new range of hardware has to be purchased in the regular way. The big news for tablet fans is the iPad Air. Borrowing its name -- in part at least -- from the MacBook Air range, thinner and faster are the adjectives of the day.
Phil Schiller said: "Thinner, lighter, more powerful than ever before, and incredibly, excitingly new that it deserves a new name: iPad Air". Boasting the same A7 processor as the recently announced iPhone 5s, the iPad Air is just 7.5mm thick and weighs 1 pound -- compare this to 9.4mm and 1.4 pounds for the previous model. Despite the thinner design and smaller battery size, we can still expect 10 hours of usage from the tablet which offers up to eight times the performance of the original iPad, and up to 72 times the GPU performance.
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