Apple

Apple is looking to add peer-to-peer money transfer to its Apple Pay service and hopes it might help it take off.

According to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal, Apple believes adding the peer-to-peer money transfer would interest millennials, and it’s been talking to a number of banks about it.

Convergence is a hot topic nowadays, and for good reason -- our smartphones and tablets are very powerful. It is understandable that consumers want one device to rule them all. While Microsoft has had some success with its Surface computers, for the most part, they prove to be poor tablets and mediocre laptops. They are too expensive, big and unwieldy to be used as a tablet for relaxing, while the keyboard is not ideal for typing. Hell, you can't even type with it on your lap. Don't get me wrong, I love my Surface Pro 3 for its portability and power, but don't enjoy using it.

When it comes to enjoyment and emotional relationships with technology, Apple is second to none. While many have wondered why there is not yet a touch-screen MacBook, or a tablet running OS X, the company has wisely kept both separate. If you were wondering if Tim Cook would reverse course on this, the answer is no. The Apple CEO recently pooh–poohed the idea of an iPad and Mac convergence. Is that a good thing?

Apple is set to announce the expansion of its Irish subsidiary, creating up to 1,000 new jobs in the area. Company CEO Tim Cook reveal the plans to staff at the firm’s Hollyhill facility in Cork.

The expansion had been expected, with more that €120 million (£8.5 million) invested in the Cork plant since 2012 and it seems that Apple’s enthusiasm for the country has not been dented by recent controversies surrounding the amount of tax it pays.

There’s no question that Microsoft’s new Surface Book laptop/tablet hybrid has divided opinion. Some people love it, while others remain unconvinced, especially with regard to the high price and unconventional hinge. It’s very much designed as a rival to the MacBook Pro, and during its launch Microsoft made this clear by declaring its new device to be twice as fast as Apple’s offering.

So is Apple worried about the competition? Not so much. The company’s CEO Tim Cook took a swipe at the device earlier today while talking to students at Trinity College, in Dublin.

Online ads are a major bugbear for web users, hence the existence of ad blocking software. Tools such as AdBlock Plus have long been popular, but despite efforts by publishers to discourage their use, more and more people rely on ad blockers to improve their online experience.

The Internet Advertising Bureau reports that ad blocking is on the rise. In the UK, 18 percent of people use software to prevent the appearance of ads -- up from 15 percent just five months ago. Not everyone, however, is looking to block every single ad they might encounter.

An app that enables iPhone users to keep an eye on who has been looking at their Instagram account has been pulled from the App Store after it was found to be stealing usernames and passwords.

Apple took the decision to kill "Who Viewed Your Profile -- InstaAgent" when the app was found scraping login details and sending them back to the developer's server. This in itself is worrying for users, but it gets worse: the usernames and passwords were sent in unencrypted format.

Tim Cook is concerned about privacy. The Apple CEO has spoken out against requests from governments for backdoors into encrypted products. Following the UK government's decision not to ban strong encryption but to force companies to provide authorities with access to encrypted data upon production of a warrant.

This is effectively a backdoor into products and Tim Cook gives a stark warning: "Any backdoor is a backdoor for everyone". He also suggests that security is something that needs to be tackled on a global scale rather than by individual countries.

Anyone still desperately clinging to Windows XP only has another six months of updates for Chrome. Google has decided that the time has finally come to sever ties with the ancient operating system, and the same applies to Vista and OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8.

Just as Microsoft has stopped issuing updates for Windows XP, so too has Google set a cut-off point of April 2016 for Chrome support on older OSes. These versions of Windows and OS X have been dropped by Microsoft and Apple, so it makes sense that other companies will move on as well. But as well as not getting new versions of Chrome, there will also be no more security updates.

People have different needs. This is why saying one piece of technology is better than another is subjective. The Xbox One, for instance is a more powerful device than the new Apple TV. It has, by far, superior hardware and can do more things. And yet, if you do not need that raw processing power, and prefer casual games to expensive console-grade games, Microsoft's console may be too much. In other words, it doesn't make sense to spend the money on Xbox One if you only need it for streaming media. Sure, it can run Halo 5 and play Blu-ray movies, but I really don't want those things and I am sure there are others like me too.

Enter the Apple TV. I bought this little 4th generation box for $200 despite owning plenty of devices that can already handle streaming media. Why? because of its potential. You see, with access to Apple's App Store, the future will be really bright for it as a media machine, but more importantly, a gaming console. Yes, the Apple TV is a Trojan horse in a sense -- it comes into your home disguised as a run-of-the-mill media streamer, but becomes the future of gaming too.

After years of rumors regarding a super-sized tablet, Apple finally took the wraps of its iPad Pro two months ago. The new device has a 12.9 inch screen, with a 2,732 x 2,048 resolution and 5.6 million pixels.

If you’ve been thinking of buying one, the good news is the device will be available to order online from Wednesday and will be in stores later this week.

A new phishing threat is targeting businesses and consumers with Apple IDs in an effort to steal IDs, passwords and credit card information.

The attack has been identified by Comodo Antispam Labs and looks like an official Apple email. It has the Apple logo and includes Apple's physical address, as well as an email address that, at a quick glance, appears to to be from Apple -- giving the recipient the illusion of the message being authentic.

Without even turning on the HTC One A9 (which I haven't yet), the physical similarities with iPhone 6/6s are unmistakable. The smartphones share striking design ethic, separated by the shape of the home-button fingerprint sensor, placement of the rear-facing camera, and left-side SIM and microSD card slots. But these differences aren't immediately obvious.

My question: Is this the Android for people wanting the iPhone 6s look but something more flexible than the iOS platform? If there is truth in marketing, HTC's tag lines reveal much: "Design worth imitating", which while referring the company's One legacy also could be interpreted as backhanded praise or even fist-to-snub about Apple's device, which some could argue imitates earlier One models. "Power to choose"—customization and personalization options not offered on fruit-logo handsets.

Pebble, one of the first tech firms that jumped into the smartwatch foray via a Kickstarter campaign, has been unaffected by the competition brought by the Apple Watch, says the company CEO Eric Migicovsky.

Migicovsky revealed that the company’s sales has improved, which experienced a double year-over-year growth. Apple Watch had "no material impact" on the company, Migicovsky claimed, adding that this is due to the difference in the market the companies tap.

People who are already awaiting the 2016 Apple iPhones may see a new all-metal, four-inch device, along with the iPhone 7, according to an analyst from KGI Securities.

Ming-Chi Kuo said he believes that the tech giant is currently working on a four-inch iPhone that "resembles an upgraded iPhone 5s" with an A9 processor.

Banks are warning iPhone users that if they store more than one set fingerprints on the device, they will treat them as if they had failed to keep their personal data safe. They are equalizing multiple fingerprint storing to sharing a PIN code.

Apple’s iPhone device allows up to ten fingerprints to be stored. The company designed it so to make it easier for multiple family members to use the Apple Pay service for contactless payments.