Latest Technology News

"Don't upset the apple cart" takes on new meaning for the company Steve Jobs cofounded. Supply chain simplicity defined his leadership, starting with the many products axed after he took the interim CEO title in early 1997. While complexity creeped into some product lines over the years, mainly iPod, Apple followed a streamline approach. Until today. Tim Cook oversees a suddenly complex tablet lineup, following iPad mini's introduction early this afternoon.

Before today's event, Apple offered eight different iPad configurations -- that's without separately counting carrier-specific LTE models. The mini, which goes on sale November 2, brings the number to 14. It's a crowded lineup, with overlapping features and prices not seen from Apple since the early- to mid-1990s. Something else: Apple chose to price higher than what BetaNews surveys show people want to spend on a tablet, particularly in the mini's size class, and too close to other models, risking some sales cannibalization -- or worse, none at all, if customer confusion hurts sales.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wants 2012 to be "the most epic year" for the company determined to make a splash in October with the launch of Windows 8, Surface, and Windows Phone 8 all within a few days of one another.

To complete the package, Microsoft has announced a major update for the Xbox dashboard, the launch of Xbox SmartGlass, and a cheaper Xbox 360 console.

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At WWDC 2012 in San Francisco last June, Apple debuted its latest generation of Macbooks. Today, at an event to spotlight the new iPad Mini, Apple also unveiled a version of the 13" Macbook Pro which includes the high definition Retina Display. For the last five months, this display has only been available on the 15" Macbook Pro.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said the 13" Macbook Pro is Apple's most popular notebook computer, and by adding the Retina Display into the mix, the company now offers four different stock versions of the PC.

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Months of rumors have come to this: Yes, Virginia, there is a smaller iPad, and if they don't sell out, you could get one for Christmas. During a special media event today, Apple unveiled iPad mini.

The new tablet's screen measures 7.9 inches, compared to 9.7 inches for fourth-generation iPad, also announced today. Screen resolution is 1,024 by 768 -- the same as iPad 2 and other tablets in the size class. The device weighs .68 pounds and is 7.2mm thick, or about one-quarter more than fourth-generation iPad. Apple claims 10-hour battery life. The tablet runs an A5 dual-core processor and packs a 5-megapixel camera on the back and another camera, mainly for video recording on the front. Contrary to rumors, prices start at $329, not $249.

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Today, during a special media event, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that 200 million devices already have iOS 6. That works out to half cumulative shipments -- 400 million. The company may update that number during its quarterly earnings call in two days.

The number starkly contrasts with Android, where just 1.8 percent of devices are on newest version Jelly Bean. The difference demonstrates the extent of operating system fragmentation of one versus the other. Uniformity offers many advantages to developers and customers using their apps. Consider this: Jelly Bean released in mid-July, iOS 6 last month. So Apple reaches considerably more users with its newest OS than does Google. There is no comparison.

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The music industry has tried various things to combat piracy over the years, ranging from actually selling music online, to suing alleged file sharers/customers. In the United Kingdom, the British Phonographic Industry is trying to force internet service providers to block access to infringing sites.

The Motion Picture Association started the trend last year by going to the courts and asking them to block access to Newzbin 2, a members-only site sharing music and video. The BPI followed its approach, successfully getting the High Court to order ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay, and now it’s got three more major torrent sites in its crosshairs.

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Whether some might people like it or not, we live in the cloud era and there the key role is played by services. But what happens when there's an outage? Yesterday I tried to log into Flipboard, but unlike what would usually happen, the message "service is currently down" greeted me.

It wasn't a scheduled maintenance. Flipboard announced via Google+ that the service was down and it "only" took roughly five hours to get it back up. So what happened? According to Data Center Knowledge and Wired, when Amazon Cloud went down so did Heroku, Flipboard, Foursquare, Reddit "and others", with problems reported to its North Virginia-based servers. But the cloud is supposed to be the future, and it doesn't include pulling the plug and sending people off: "Go to sleep, I'm incapable of anything now!"

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When Apple debuted the iPhone 5 just over one month ago, I was assigned to cover the launch event in a liveblog, despite the fact that I wasn't actually present at the event. So I did the liveblog the only way I saw fit: in the style of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

So here we are again, there is another Apple event today in San Jose, where the company is expected to unveil a couple of new products including the smaller, cheaper 7-inch iPad, and a new Macbook with a high-resolution Retina display. The event will begin at 10am Pacific, or 1PM EST, and I'll be providing a live, unscripted sarcasm track starting approximately an hour before the event begins. Unlike the iPhone 5 launch event, this one will be live streamed at Apple Events.

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I struck a chord with my recent column on H-1B visa abuse, so soon follow up with an enormous post that tries to explain the underlying issues. But before then here’s something I came across that doesn’t quite fit that theme but was too interesting to let pass unnoticed -- how companies like IBM intimidate employees and discourage them from speaking up.

A few years ago there was a class action lawsuit against IBM. Thirty-two thousand server administrators were being forced to work overtime without extra pay. IBM lost the suit and paid a $65 million settlement. That’s just over $2,000 per affected employee before the lawyers took their share. Then IBM gave all those workers a 15 percent pay cut with the justification they’d get it back in overtime pay. Next IBM restricted the workers to 40 hour weeks so there would be no overtime.

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Piriform has updated the Mac version of its popular freeware cleaning tool to add full support for the latest revision of Mountain Lion plus an option for selecting files and folders to include or exclude from scans.

CCleaner for Mac 1.05 also resolves issues with older versions of OS X, and includes a number of other performance and stability improvements in addition to the usual round of minor bug fixes.

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Following an earlier tweet from Omar Shahine, Group Program Manager on SkyDrive at Microsoft, the Redmond, Wash.-based company announced the availability of the new Office Web Apps across Outlook and SkyDrive which sport a refreshed look and feel in line with Microsoft's modern design language deployed across its various services.

It also features expanded device support with touch-friendly editing from tablets, co-authoring and collaboration support across the Web apps, as well as more editing and formatting controls. The latest version promises general improvements to the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote Web apps.

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Emsisoft has updated its freeware portable anti-malware scan-and-remove tool, Emsisoft Emergency Kit 3.0. The new build, which is designed to be run directly from USB stick, has been updated to include two of the latest anti-malware engines from Emsisoft and BitDefender.

The new build also promises significantly less false alerts, new performance settings for advanced users and optimized malware cleaning.

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Google News is one of the search giant’s more contentious services (Brazil's National Association of Newspapers recently blocked it from using its members' content because the service allegedly drives traffic away from their websites), but there’s no question it’s an incredibly useful resource, pulling content from a wide variety of sources.

Last year Google made it easier to scan for stories, and this year it’s implementing some useful changes to the News search results pages.

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Ahead of the public unveiling of the new Windows Phone 8 mobile operating system, Nokia has unleashed the Lumia 510. It's the Finnish company's entry-level smartphone, which surprisingly runs Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, and is priced to take on less expensive devices, a decidedly different market from its bigger brother the Lumia 920.

With a suggested retail price of $199 (before any tax or operator subsidy) the Nokia Lumia 510 is packed with a 4-inch TFT display with an 800 x 480 resolution, a Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 processor with 256MB of RAM, a 5 megapixel auto-focus back-facing camera with VGA video recording, 4 GB of internal storage. As far as connectivity goes, it comes with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, A-GPS, and HSDPA/WCDMA cellular radios. For the 1300mAh removable battery Nokia quotes 38h of music playback, 8.4h of 3G talk time and 6.2h of talk time using 2G networks.

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Microsoft may have changed the name of the interface formerly known as Metro to Modern Interface, but that does little, if anything, to stop consumers and software publisher from continuing to use the original moniker. As such, one of the apps that brings the look of Windows 8 to older versions bears the name WinMetro.

Regardless of the technical appropriateness of the name, WinMetro is a handy utility for anyone impressed with the aesthetics of Windows 8 but who is not looking to make the jump from the current operating system. While the tool is not a replacement for the Start menu in the strictest sense of the word -- it is not possible to remap the Windows key to bring it into view for instance --- the application is a neat overlay that brings you the look and feel of Windows 8 at no cost.

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