Articles about Apple

I ask you to remain seated for what you are about to read, for I fear you may fall over and injure yourself from shock (BetaNews assumes no responsibility for injuries that occur while reading our stories). The spec is dead. No more gigahertz or dual-core comparisons. No more comparing LTE to HSPA+ to 3G. If you read TechCrunch today, that's exactly what MG Seigler argues. Who's leading us to this spec-free world? Apple.

"Apple is the company which has ushered in this post-spec era", Seigler insists. "We’re starting to see backlash against reviews of products that just do spec-by-spec rundown. Because really, who cares how the device sounds on paper? It’s how it feels that matters".

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After you read this story, ask yourself: what would be the public response if Microsoft did this?

Apple is apparently unhappy with the security researcher who snuck a malicious app onto its App Store to expose a flaw in iOS, and has kicked him out of its developer program. Accuvant Labs researcher Charlie Miller published financial app InstaStock -- connected to a server that he operated. Miller effectively had complete control of that device, once the user installed the app. The proof of concept is in the YouTube video shown above.

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It's easier than ever to pay your "Apple Tax" -- that price premium the company collects for its products. Well, that's how Microsoft refers to the price gulf between Windows PCs and Macs, as do many BetaNews readers. If you enjoy paying the tax then perhaps the Apple Store 2.0 app is just for you.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company updated the retail app earlier today, adding new features for taking your dough. Now you can order that shiny new Mac, iOS device or other item from your phone and pick it up at the local Apple Store within the hour. The option is a great benefit for those who forget birthdays, anniversaries or other events and need that last-minute, pricey gift that shows they care. Order while you drive and pick up the item en route to the gift's destination -- assuming there's no major freeway pile up while you shop in the car.

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My problem is all the rumor and misinformation spread about Apple and apologists who treat the world's most valuable tech company like it's some rebel force. Apple is no longer a puny upstart fighting "The Man". Apple is the "Establishment". I'm aghast with apologist bloggers and so-called journalists, not the company the two Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, founded.

This post responds to a question posed over the weekend by one of BetaNews' most loathed commenters, Bay_Area_CA_Male, who I threatened to ban last week because so many other readers complain about his comments. He responded to my email promising to tone things down and also asking: "Why do you hate Apple so much? Or is it a 'get the most hits thing?'" I don't hate Apple, and I stand behind everything I write about the company (there's no hit whoring here, just provocative writing and compelling headlines). Can the Apple rumor-mongering rabble say the same? For clarification, while I here answer Bay_Area_CA_Male's question, catalyst for writing is one of several Macworld UK headlines in my RSS feeds this morning: "iPhone 5 'already built, waiting for LTE chipset'".

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Have investors, analysts, and pundits lost their minds? Reading some recent Apple analysis you could make that case. The company is still wildly successful financially, yet perusing the news sites and the blogs will make you think the company is in some danger of failure. That couldn't be further from the truth.

There is too much focus on the present, take for example Apple's most recent quarterly results. The Cupertino company had its second best quarter ever, yet investors focused on analysts sky-high expectations. Apple paid for it, and still hasn't recovered two weeks later.

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Apple will require all apps in the Mac App Store to employ sandboxing beginning in March 2012, aiming to make apps safer from malicious attack. The Cupertino company informed all registered developers in an e-mail sent on Thursday. Apple had planned to mandate sandboxing beginning this month, but for undisclosed reasons delayed the requirement.

Sandboxing is a method which developers use to limit exposure to system processes. The application is run in a protected environment and given a limited set of resources. This in turn makes it much harder for attackers to break in. "The vast majority of Mac users have been free from malware and we're working on technologies to help keep it that way", Apple argues.

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To kick off Halloween today, Betanews' Managing Editor Joe Wilcox gave us a lighthearted list of 10 things about Microsoft to be scared of. Here's a slightly more grim list of stories from the Infinite Loop.

HORROR FACTORY--- Though nearly every consumer electronics company uses some Chinese contractors for parts or manufacturing, Apple has a black mark on its ethical record for the unsafe working conditions at Chinese factories that supply parts for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod product lines. Stories of labor horrors include rash of employee suicides, and fatal explosions at Foxconn, and fatalities from exposure to neurotoxin N-Hexane at touchscreen supplier Wintek.

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Facing increasing competitive pressure, Apple silently pushed performance enhancements to the MacBook Pro line of laptops. The changes include better processors and additional storage, and on higher-end models better graphics cards.

The base level 13-inch MacBook Pro now sports a 2.4GHz Intel Core i5 dual-core processor with a 500GB hard drive, but remains at $1,199. The faster $1,499 13-inch model now includes a 2.8GHz i7 dual-core CPU with a 750GB HDD.

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Do I even need to ask?

Let the debate begin. Google and Samsung delayed their planned Android 4.0 operating system and Galaxy Nexus smartphone launches until today in Hong Kong instead of October 11 in San Diego. They claimed the delay showed respect for Apple cofounder Steve Jobs who died two weeks ago. Some members of the Apple Fanclub of bloggers and journalists insist that reason is a smokescreen for software or hardware problems. Unlikely considering nothing ships until November. Looking at what Google and Samsung unveiled today, the companies had plenty of good reasons to announce before iPhone 4S sales started October 14. It would have been the competitive equivalent of launching a nuclear strike.

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Today, after the closing bell, Apple announced another blow-out quarter -- and the first with Tim Cook officially as CEO. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company also closed fiscal 2011. While Wall Street waited with interest for today's results, fiscal Q1 2012 may be more interesting -- Cook's first full quarter as chief executive and when Apple launched iPhone 4S.

The quarter broke a longstanding trend of Apple beating Wall Street's over-inflated estimates, not just revenue and earnings but also for numbers of prominent products shipped. Only Macs exceeded analyst projections among the top-tier products.

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It's no secret iPad owners love their devices. The American Customer Satisfaction Index and NPD both report unusually high satisfaction rates for iPad. Just in second quarter, Apple sold more than 9 million tablets, generating $6 billion in revenue. Despite the best efforts of competitors, most of which offer tablets running Android OS, nothing has yet put a dent in iPad’s dominance among consumers. The fact of the matter is that, if you own a tablet right now, it most likely is iPad.

There’s  another group equally smitten by iPad: higher education. I’m not talking about students, faculty or university administrators that own the tablets (I would lump these people in with the consumer category), but rather the growing number of  higher-ed institutions around the country that currently issue iPads to their students.

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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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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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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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