Latest Technology News

While the focus of WWDC's iOS 6 announcements surround Apple's decision to kick Google to the curb when it comes to maps, there are plenty of other features coming to the next version of Apple's mobile operating system that deserve mention.

"iOS 6 continues the rapid pace of innovation that is helping Apple reinvent the phone and create the iPad category, delivering the best mobile experience available on any device", iOS chief Scott Forstall says.

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For as much emphasis as Apple puts on its mobile ecosystem, the company's Mac business continues to grow. At WWDC 2012 in San Francisco on Monday, Apple unveiled its latest upgrades to the Macbook line of personal computers, bringing out new versions of the MacBook Pro and Air lines, and introducing a new subset of MacBook Pros that carry the higher resolution Retina display.

MacBook Air

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The marriage is over. As widely rumored, Apple debuted its own mapping service alongside the unveiling of iOS 6 at the Worldwide Developers Conference Monday. The move had been expected for awhile now, considering the Cupertino, Calif. company's recent acquisitions.

Apple's Maps include turn-by-turn navigation with smooth vector-based graphics. "Flyover mode" is the company's answer to Google Earth and Street View: it includes photo-realistic views of major cities, even allowing you to fly around and see all sides of a particular building. Traffic including crowd-sourced reports are built in, which can be used to change directions on the fly.

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It's a big number and one still well ahead of Android. Just in early 2012, Apple has shipped at least 50 million iOS devices, with iPad adding force to iPhone. Apple calls them "post-PC devices". For all 2011, Apple sold 172 million iOS devices. But wait, haven't we heard this 365 million number before? Indeed, it's same as revealed in late April for the period through end of March. I'm quite surprised Apple didn't update the number, considering the big iOS 6 reveal during today's Worldwide Developer Conference keynote.

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. The new capabilities aren't just for iPhone users but developers, as Apple provides them more built-in utilities to tap into. They received iOS 6 beta today. The software ships in autumn, presumably with iPhone 5.

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Today, at Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple laid a big challenge before Microsoft. While Windows 8 continues in testing, and won't come to new PCs until autumn, the next OS X version is ready for the masses sooner, as in next month. In the battle of oneupmanship, Apple is the clear winner. Today, Apple launches an OS war against Microsoft. The company also announced new MacBook Airs and Pros, which ship immediately, with free upgrades to Mountain Lion.

During the WWDC keynote, Apple revealed there are 66 million Mac user worldwide, which is three times the number five years ago. Apple has shipped 26 million copies of Lion to date, accounting for 40 percent of the install base. That's seems low considering it costs just $29.99.

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Where else would Apple tout App Store's success but its premier developer conference. Today the company disclosed 650,000 apps are now available -- that's up from 550,000 in March, when cumulative downloads reached 25 billion. That number is now 30 billion.

Additionally, CEO Tim Cook revealed that Apple now has 400 million App Store users -- that means with credit cards attached. Also, the number of available iPad apps is 225,000, which is up from 200,000 in March.

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Apple's yearly developer conclave is here, and we're expecting a good deal of news out of this year's event. We'll see the debut of iOS 6, and likely a significant refresh to the Mac lineup. Of course, Apple always likes to surprise, so it's fairly likely that some of the rumors we've heard -- from new native apps to some enhancements to iCloud -- will also be announced.

WWDC 2012 is also the first major company event to happen after the death of Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs. It will be interesting to watch how CEO Tim Cook and the team handle the event without their iconic and charismatic leader running the show.

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Microsoft is doing what it can to promote cloud computing, focusing on the platform at the TechEd annual developer conference in Orlando, Fla. this week. In the event's opening keynote, Server and Tools chief Satya Nadella told a sold-out crowd of 10,000 that the future of Microsoft is in the cloud.

In the month or so leading up to TechEd, Microsoft has made a fair number of cloud-related announcements. Some of this is out of necessity, because of customer demand, but a lot of it has to do with competitive pressures.

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Kaspersky Lab has released Security Scan 2.0, a simple and free tool designed to scan a PC for security issues.

The program can run either a quick or full system scan to detect any malware; it will also check to see whether the computer is properly protected with antivirus software; and you’ll even get a report on possible problems with Windows settings (Security Scan will check Internet Explorer’s configuration options, for instance).

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Second in a series. Legal crowdfunding is coming, as I explained in the first part of this series. Thanks to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, investors big and small will soon have new ways to buy shares in startups and other small companies. This should be very good for growing companies and for the economy overall, but there’s peril for individual investors -- from scammers likely to be operating in the early days of this new law.

Most concerns hearken back to the Banking Act of 1933, enacted to bring order and regulation to the banking industry during the Great Depression.  It was the collapse of the banking industry, not the stock market crash, that did most of the damage during the Depression.  Also called the Glass-Steagall Act, it established federal insurance for bank deposits, keeping banks in the savings business and out of investing, leaving the trading to stock brokers and investment banks, which were not allowed to take deposits. Glass-Steagall along with the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 established a regulatory structure that many people thought worked well, until 1999 when parts of Glass-Steagall were repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.  Sorry for all the legislative history, folks, but you can’t tell the players without a program.

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As I compose this post, Microsoft's TechEd keynote is underway, while Apple will kick off Worldwide Developer Conference in just a few hours. Both events will put forth very different views of the cloud-connected device future, which Gartner says will start as soon as 2014, when the cloud replaces the PC as everyone's personal digital hub.

For Apple, iOS 6 will be center stage, whetting consumers' appetites and giving them another weapon in their bring-your-own-device assault on workplace IT. Meanwhile, Microsoft pitches new wares for the enterprise -- Office, Windows 8, RT and Server, for starters. Where the two companies meet is the tablet, and there's no room between them for Android.

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If you’ve read a few PC speedup guides then you’ll know that Windows Search (or its indexing service, at least) often gets significant blame for tying up system resources and generally slowing you down. We’re not entirely sure how accurate this is -- the indexing service should only run when your PC is idle, minimising any disruption -- but if you’d like to try an alternative index-free search tool anyway then you might be interested in the portable UltraFileSearch Lite.

The program looks a little like the Windows XP search tool, and is similarly easy to use. There’s no need to remember a lengthy list of search filters: you’re able to search by name, size, and file creation/ modification/ last access dates in just a few clicks.

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Andy Rubin revealed the number late day, on the eve of Apple's developer conference. Google's Android chief disclosed the activations while dispelling rumors circulated by Robert Scoble about leaving for startup CloudCar. Rubin isn't going anywhere.

He last disclosed activations per day -- 850,000 -- on February 27. The new number means 27 million a month or 81 million every 90 days. That number is consistent with actual smartphone sales. Gartner, which tracks sales to end users rather than the analyst firm standard of shipments into the channel, reports 81.067 million Androids sold during first quarter -- again, that's smartphones and doesn't include tablets. By comparison, Apple sold 33.1 million iPhones, but the number doesn't include iPad or iPod touch.

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Microsoft Sysinternals has released Process Explorer 15.2, the latest edition of its excellent Task Manager replacement. And while recent Sysinternals updates haven’t exactly been exciting, this is one you don’t want to miss: it contains some very useful additions.

The Process Timeline column, for instance, displays a bar which shows how long a particular process has been running in relation to everything else. And so you can tell at a glance what’s been running since Windows launched, and what’s only just started (very useful if, say, you think you’ve just been hit by malware and want to check new processes in particular).

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As we move through June, there are more and more software titles being released. The past week has been pretty busy, particularly on the web browser front, but there have also been a number of other programs worthy of note.

If you still use physical CDs and DVDs, ISO Workshop 3.0 is worth taking a look at as it enables you to work with virtual drives to save having to keep switching discs. Diskeeper 12 Home is a great tool for anyone looking to ensure that their hard drive is completely defragged, and Diskeeper 12 Pro includes support for drives exceeding 1TB. Another interesting tool for maintaining your system is GhostBuster 1.0.1.0, a free utility that remove references in the registry to hardware you no longer use. There’s also a portable version available – GhostBuster Portable 1.0.1.0.

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