Latest Technology News

I'm quite critical of the Apple Fanclub of bloggers and journalists for overreaching pretty much anything regarding the Cupertino, Calif.-based company. They'll quote data from firms no one has heard of to make Apple and its products much bigger successes than they are. And because this group is so loudmouth, their exaggerations and lies are widely read and often taken for fact. But ever so occasionally, something altogether legitimate comes along. Today is that day. Mac market share soared during third quarter, according to Gartner and IDC, which both released preliminary data today.

By Gartner's reckoning, Apple's percentage of US PC shipments during the quarter was a stunning 12.9 percent, a solid and unchallenged third place. Fourth-ranked Toshiba had 8.4 percent share. IDC's numbers weren't as magnanimous -- 11.3 percent -- but still better than Apple has had in nearly two decades. But there's more than shocking Mac news in the data. Lenovo has unseated Dell as the No. 2 PC manufacturer worldwide, according to both analyst firms. With HP considering selling off its PC division and given Lenovo's dramatic gains, the China-based company could snatch the top spot in just a few quarters.

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You've been waiting months to upgrade your iPhone 3GS or 4 to iOS 5. Today was supposed to be the day. If you don't mind sitting around waiting for downloads to drip, drip, drip bit by bit, we suggest doing something else more useful with your time.

Updating to iOS 5 is becoming quite the ordeal for some, as Apple's servers are struggling to keep up with demand. Betanews has received and seen numerous reports of unusually long upgrade times, or upgrades failing altogether.

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SoftMaker has released a public beta of its latest office suite, SoftMaker Office 2012. You can download and install the beta until the end of October after which a new beta will be released or the paid versions come into effect, offering both Standard and Professional flavors.

SoftMaker Office Professional 2012 includes an email client and task management/calendar program, which isn’t included in the beta. The beta also lacks the Berlitz dictionaries that come with the full version and its help files are for the 2010 version of the suite. However, in all other respects the software is fully functional.

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iOS 5 may have only just been released, but Apple wasted no time whatsoever in releasing apps that have been designed with the new version of the operating system in mind. First off the starting blocks is Find My Friends which, as the name suggests, makes it possible for a group of friends to share their location with each other with a view to meeting up -- or just tracking where everyone is.

You can adjust privacy settings so that your location is only shared when you want and with the people you are happy to share with. Should you decide you want to discover where your friends are -- if you need to meet them in an new town, for example -- you can send a request from within the app and, assuming they consent, their location will be displayed on a map for you. Find My Friends can also provide you with directions so you can meet up as quickly as possible.

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Early this afternoon, Apple flipped the switch making iCloud and its next-version mobile operating system broadly available. To use one you'll need the other, and for Mac owners that also means OS X 10.7.2. If you didn't get iTunes 10.5 yesterday, you'll need it, too.

In many respects, the big news from Apple this week isn't iPhone 4S, no matter how long the buying lines might be come Friday, but iCloud and iOS 5. As I contended earlier today: "iCloud is Apple's killer app". iCloud is a synchronization service that pushes email, contacts and calendars -- like predecessor MobileMe -- and offers online data storage. But there's much more, such as synchronization of applications or digital content like music and movies purchased from the App Store across devices. It's unsurprising that Apple would take a sync-across devices approach. After all, the company generates most of its revenue from selling hardware, not offering cloud services.

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What do you do if you're Samsung, and want to stick it to one of your biggest rivals in the mobile space during what will be their biggest sales weekend of the year? You set up shop right down the street.

That's exactly what Samsung has done to Apple in downtown Sydney, setting up a pop-up store two doors down from the Cupertino company's sole location in the city. The Samsung shop opened its doors on Monday and will be open through this Sunday, overlapping the launch weekend of the iPhone 4S.

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Ahead of the update to Google TV's software that will bring the Android Market to TV, Google has released the final add-on to the Android SDK that lets developers port their Android apps over to Google's set top box interface.

This add-on is nearly identical to the preview that Google released two months ago, but Product Manager Ambarish Kenghe pointed out two differences between them.

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In March 2008, I wrote at Microsoft Watch: "Synchronization is today's killer application. It's either kill or be killed. If Microsoft doesn't strike the deadly blow first, Google will". Google got sync right first, but sometimes latecomers are the talk of the party, as Apple is today with the release of iCloud.

I'm not sure how many people get what iCloud is -- and more importantly what it is not. The service isn't an online storage space like DropBox. iCloud is fundamentally a synchronization service -- more importantly a push sync service. It's the feature many iOS device users will find they can't do without, and it's every company's dream product: Something that locks users into a broader platform, as Microsoft did with file formats and Office during the 1980s and 1990s.

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Sony's PlayStation Network is once again the target of hackers as Sony disclosed late Tuesday that it had disabled some 93,000 PSN and Sony Online Entertainment accounts. According to the company these accounts had been "tested" by hackers, although a majority of the login attempts failed.

The data was said to be obtained from "one or more compromised lists from other companies, sites or other sources," although chief information security officer Phillip Reitinger said it was likely that the data did not come from Sony itself.

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Research in Motion's BlackBerry services are now out of commission for their third day in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia.

"We know that many of you are still experiencing service problems. The resolution of this service issue is our Number One priority right now and we are working night and day to restore all BlackBerry services to normal levels. We will continue to keep this page updated," a service update from RIM on Wednesday said.

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Today, Apple releases iCloud and iOS 5, two days before iPhone 4S launches in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and United States. The new operating system is a significant upgrade that can be installed on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. iOS 5 works in tandem with iCloud, which is Apple's Internet-enabled synchronization service; it replaces iTunes as the company's major sync hub.

We're crowdsoucing our initial reviews, and I ask for your first take ahead of anything that we might do. If you've got something to say about either iCloud or iOS 5 -- or both -- we'd like to get it right away. If you've tested either or both before their release, we request your full or mini-review even sooner.

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Smartphones and tablet devices are increasingly becoming a more common way to access the Internet, says a new study from analytics firm comScore. As of August, 6.8 percent of all Internet traffic came from those devices, with about two-thirds of it coming from mobile phones.

comScore found some interesting trends, such as the increased use of mobile phones over a WiFi connection. About 37.2 percent of all digital traffic came from phones using WiFi, up three percent over the past three months. On the flipside tablets using mobile broadband are also on the rise, with 10 percent of tablet traffic coming from that type of connection.

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The attention of Apple fans has been focused on the imminent release of iPhone 4S on October 14, but before that there is iCloud and iOS 5 -- tomorrow. To make the most of both, a new version of iTunes is needed.  iTunes 10.5 includes iCloud support as well as a number of other important additions.

iTunes in the Cloud is part of the new level of connectivity that is to be found in iOS 5, and it means that any music or video purchases you make are synced online and can be accessed from any of your computers or iOS devices. Tied into this idea are automatic downloads; when you purchase music from iTunes Store, it will automatically sync to your other computers and iOS devices.

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National wireless carrier AT&T on Tuesday simultaneously announced five new Android smartphones, none of which are flagship devices for the carrier, but each of which answers the needs of a specific type of phone user.

For the Power User: Motorola Atrix 2

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If you’ve ever tried CyberLink’s PowerDirector then you’ll know it’s one of the fastest and most feature-packed consumer video editors around. So you may not be surprised to learn that PowerDirector 10, released today, carries on this proud tradition by adding plenty of essential new functionality, and some very worthwhile speedups.

The program is now a very capable video editor, for instance. PowerDirector 10 can open many native 3D videos (MVC, dual stream AVI, side-by-side, over-under) and some 3D image formats (MPO, JPS); or, if you don’t have any of these, then you can always convert 2D videos and photos to 3D with CyberLink’s TrueTheater 3D.  These can be then be enhanced with many 3D effects, titles and menu templates, and once you’re done may be exported as 3D videos (including the anaglyph format, so anyone with a pair of standard 3D glasses can view them).

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