Latest Technology News

Woe is you.

You've waited 16 months for this announcement, and all you get is a stinking upgrade to the iPhone 4? You know, that doubling of processor speed and drastic increase in graphics handling isn't enough. The fact that CDMA customers will have worldphone capability thanks to dual-mode functionality? Pshaw.

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Apple’s product announcements are a tale of two iPhones: the iPhone 4States and the Immortal 3GS.

Today at Apple’s annual event, new CEO Tim Cook unveiled evolved iPods, a new dual-core iPhone 4S, and the voice-controlled virtual assistant based on Apple’s acquisition of Siri. He also recapped on iOS 5 and iCloud which were announced back in June. Although Apple sells two-thirds of their iPhones outside the US, I fear that the most innovative new parts of the iPhone 4S product design will appeal most to a US audience. Apple will still do well globally, but it could do even better with some tweaked product thinking.

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According to data from market research firm NPD, 45 million iPods sold last year, and judging by this season's iPod refresh, unveiled on Tuesday, Apple isn't trying to change anything about its market-leading portable media players yet.

The "New" iPod Nano is exactly the same size as the model that debuted one year ago, except for three moderate changes. First, it has a slightly new UI with bigger icons, and 16 more watch faces for users who wear their Nano on their wrist. Second, fitness mode can now be used without the Nike+ accessory, and can track steps with the built-in accelerometer. Third, the price has dropped $20. The 8GB comes in at $129 and the 16GB costs $149.

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Adobe Flash is a platform that is loved and hated in equal measure. Whether used to deliver video content or interactive games, Flash can be used to deliver a uniform experience across a range of platforms, providing it’s not iOS. The Flash player is a browser plugin that allows for the deployment of this content online and the move to version 11 has a strong focus on performance.

Also updated is Adobe AIR, the company’s solution to freeing Flash, JavaScript and HTML app from the constraints of web browsers. The app has now hit version 3, and both releases offer greatly improved rendering to allow for smooth animations at a high frame rate.

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Today, Logitech's video conferencing subsidiary LifeSize announced that its ClearSea mobile video conferencing system is immediately available for iOS 5, and that it will offer support for the iPhone 4S in November.

Last July, LifeSize announced it had acquired Italian mobile video conferencing company Mirial, who was building enterprise video conferencing solutions for consumer mobile devices. ClearSea is a product of Mirial's work and addresses the growing trend of "Bring your own Gear to work," also known as The consumerization of IT.

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The big announcement coming out of Cupertino today is Apple's latest iPhone model, the 4S, which is an incremental upgrade to the popular iPhone 4 that adds a new dual-core processor and GPU, higher resolution 8 megapixel camera with new image capture features, and a baseband radio capable of supporting both GSM and CDMA wireless frequencies.

Available in black and white varieties like the iPhone 4, the new 4S will come with 16GB of storage for $199, 32GB for $299, and 64GB for $399 on October 14 through Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and now Sprint-Nextel, thanks to the new baseband chip.

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As the Friendly Giant used to say: "Look up, look waaaaay up!" Today Apple officially launched iCloud, its provocative synchronization service, during the "Let's talk about iPhone" event. The new service is available to all supported devices running iOS 5 or Mac OS X. Apple also launched iOS 5 today.

Today's launch event is a crucial coming-out party for Tim Cook as new CEO. He replaced Steve Jobs in August. Jobs is legendary for the so-called "reality-distortion field", a seemingly hypnotic effect where Apple's cofounder makes almost any new product announcement magical. Jobs is a master of selling aspiration, of making people, well some, believe that Apple's new this or that will make their lives better. Cook has presented before, but never with so much expectation -- or anticipation -- around him.

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Apple's highly-anticipated iOS update is coming your way. Today, during its "Let's talk iPhone" event, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company officially launched the fifth version of the mobile operating system. iOS 5 will be a download available for all currently supported devices, including iPad, iPhone 3GS and 4 and the new smartphone coming later this month. iOS 5 will be available on October 12.

Apple is pinning much on iOS 5, which weaves tightly with iCloud, the new suite of online synchronization services. The company unveiled both in early June, during the Worldwide Developer Conference. Apple claims more than 200 enhancements.

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At Apple's "Let's talk About iPhone" event today, CEO Tim Cook revealed the sheer size of Apple's reach by announcing the company has sold 250 million iOS-powered devices. Interestingly, though the event is dedicated to iPhone, the iPhone makes up only a small part of this total.

Naturally, the biggest segment of this comes from the iPod, which commands a 78% percent market share in the personal media player business. Cook said some 300 million iPods have been sold around the world, and 45 million of them were sold in the year that ended in June.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook stepped into the huge shoes left by cofounder Steve Jobs, kicking off the all-important "Let's talk about iPhone" event in Cupertino, Calif. Today's launch event is a crucial coming-out party for Cook as new CEO. He replaced Steve Jobs in August.

Cook dropped some big news right away: Since its release two months ago, Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion has been downloaded 6 million times. However he didn't indicate whether those were separate purchases or not. Buyers are allowed to install the software on multiple Macs in the home, which means more than one download per purchase.

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With the Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" update successfully installing on Microsoft-powered devices worldwide for over a week, Microsoft has decided to open up the update to half of all eligible phones as of Monday. The company said that it will not yet open the upgrade to all phones as it wished to compile data from its smaller operators to ensure smooth updating.

"I know some of you have questions about how Windows Phones are selected to receive the update," general manager of Windows Phone 7 customer experience Eric Hautala wrote. "Put simply, it’s done totally at random, with absolutely no preference for carrier, model, or country. Random sampling is an important engineering technique to accurately measure quality and pinpoint issues early."

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It seems like eons ago that the first details of Microsoft's Zune player were leaked right here on the pages of Betanews, but five tortuous years later that effort is over. On the company's official support website, Microsoft let users know that it was finally giving up.

This was a complete reversal from its statements just yesterday denying that its music player was dead. Asymco founder Horace Deidu noted the irony. "Yesterday Microsoft denied that Zune was being discontinued," he mused. "Today it confirmed that Zune has been discontinued."

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Today, Apple is expected to announce its new iPhone somewhat more quietly than it has in the last couple of years, with no live webcast for the world to tune into, relying instead on the traditional press conference to get the word out.

Of course, the very existence of the press conference is enough to send the rumor mill into a frenzy, and speculation about Apple's "Let's talk iPhone" event today has conjured up quite a few fantastic stories.

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LaCie’s online backup service Wuala has been updated to build 368, codenamed Hirslanden. The biggest change of note is the removal of storage trading, which previously allowed users to give up free space on their hard drive in return for free online storage.

This news, which has angered many Wuala users, appears to be caused by a switch from UDP to TCP networking, a move Wuala claims will make the service more stable, but which makes trading storage impossible for security reasons. Anticipating a backlash, LaCie has announced that any earned storage through trading will remain free for 12 months, at which point it promises a “generous rebate” for those who wish to keep this storage.

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It has been around since 1988, but German antivirus company Avira has finally said goodbye to the AntiVir brand. And so its 2012 range will now follow the same naming convention as, well: “AntiVir Personal” becomes “Free AntiVirus“; “AntiVir Premium” becomes “Antivirus Premium 2012″ and “AntiVir Premium Security Suite” is now “Internet Security 2012“.

The latest releases don’t have any major new technologies to help them stand out from the crowd, either, unfortunately.  Still, Avira has been working hard, and there are plenty of smaller worthwhile improvements tjhat should be welcome to Avira fans.

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