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iPad’s popularity pushes Apple to 19 percent share of global PC shipments

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 1, 2012

If you count iPads as PCs, as research firm Canalys does, Apple had the biggest single impact on growth rates in worldwide PC shipments during the second quarter of this year, surging to a cool 19 percent global market share. In fact, if it weren't for Apple's tablet, shipments of desktops, netbooks, notebooks and tablets would have probably experienced a decline rather than a solid twelve percent year-on-year growth.

Strong sales of the new iPad, which went on sale mid-March in the U.S. and nine additional countries, along with a $100 price decrease for the 16GB WiFi iPad 2, were cited as major growth drivers for the whole PC market...

NYT: Apple talking to Twitter about investing hundreds of millions of dollars

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated October 10, 2018

Apple has apparently been in talks with Twitter officials in recent months about making a possible investment in the micro-blogging platform, reports The New York Times. Described as "a strategic investment", it could value Twitter at more than ten billions.

Apple's attempts at social were limited thus far. Its social thing for music, Ping, will likely be discontinued with the next major iTunes update. That promised Facebook integration in Ping had been pulled last minute was blamed on “onerous terms that we could not agree to”, as Jobs put it. Nonetheless, Apple has opted to partner with both Twitter and Facebook to support their services throughout iOS and OS X.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal says Apple talked to Twitter about this a year ago, claiming no immediate acquisition is in the cards.

Go past the break for the latest...

Open-source components of Sparrow now available for download

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 25, 2016

Sparrow was recently snapped up by Google and people continue to have mixed feelings about this sell-out no one saw coming. The Sparrow team made it clear in a blog post they would cease work on new features (apart from minor updates) as Google has tasked its newly acquired team with improving Gmail mobile apps.

Today, the Sparrow team announced plans to open-source parts of the Sparrow apps for personal use only. If you're good at reverse engineering, why not take a closer look at the Sparrow code?

Poll: did you buy Mountain Lion?

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 26, 2012

Apple released OS X Mountain Lion some 36 hours ago exclusively via the Mac App Store at a breakthrough price of just $19.99 a copy, with rights to install the operating system on up to five different Macs authorized with the same Apple ID account.

If yesterday's poll is anything to go by, you seem to be appreciating the bang Mountain Lion is offering for your buck, with nearly 80 percent of respondents saying that the software is worth its asking price.

But assessing the perceived value of a piece of software is one thing and actually taking the plunge is an entirely different matter. Today's poll, yet another YES/NO survey per popular demand, asks a simple question, whether or not you've bought Mountain Lion yet...

RedSn0w is compatible with Mountain Lion

Cody Lee ∙ Updated February 25, 2013

Good news for all of you Mac-using jailbreakers out there that updated to Mountain Lion today. The Dev Team has just confirmed that the new OS is compatible with RedSn0w.

The Team does have a few instructions, though, for the folks that updated. So if you have installed Mountain Lion, and you plan on using the utility, you should read this...

Safari 6 hits Lion with Smart Search Field and Offline Reading List

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated April 4, 2018

Hot on the heels of the OS X Mountain Lion release that just hit Apple's servers an hour ago, Cupertino today unleashed Safari 6 for Lion, bringing some of Safari's features from Mountain Lion to Lion systems.

Most notably, Safari 6 now (finally!) features a unified field which acts as both the address bar and search field, akin to Chrome'c Omnibox. Also new is Offline Reading List, first introduced in iOS 6, which downloads entire webpages saved for reading later so you can access them when offline...

Apple releases Mountain Lion on Mac App Store for $19.99

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 22, 2018

As part of yesterday's earnings report for fiscal 2012 third quarter, Apple's CEO Tim Cook was quoted in a media release as saying the company would launch the next major revision to its desktop operating system on Wednesday. The company just made good in its promise by letting OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion out of the cage. It's available now as an exclusive Mac App Store digital download costing just $19.99 a pop...

Poll: how do you feel about Sparrow now?

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 20, 2012

Sparrow for iPhone debuted in February of 2011 and remains to date known as a kick-ass email client for both desktop and mobile. Those that love Sparrow appreciate its best-in-class Gmail support, clean and minimalistic interface and just the right set of features.

But Sparrow got snapped up by the Internet giant Google today (looks like this is becoming somewhat of a pattern for Google). From what we know so far, the Sparrow development team will be “working on new things at Google” and they "do not plan to release new features for the Sparrow apps".

This likely means 'no' to the promised iPad version and another 'no' to push alerts for incoming messages. It's assumably a sad day for Sparrow die-hards, so I just put together a little poll to gauge your feelings on the subject of today's unexpected acquisition...

AT&T announces shared data plans, available in late August

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 18, 2012

The nation's #2 carrier, AT&T Mobility, today announced shared data plans, in response to Verizon's shared data option which became available June 28. And just like the Big Red carrier's Share Everything plans, new plans from AT&T allow new and existing subscribers to share cellular data across smartphones, tablets and other devices, plus get unlimited talk and text.

According to a media release, current customers, including business users, won't be required to switch to the new plans. Should they decide to switch, they can do so without a contract extension. More importantly, AT&T says there will be no changes to its device upgrade policy...

Barnes & Noble launches Nook for Web, iPad support coming soon

Christian Zibreg ∙ July 17, 2012

Barnes & Noble today introduced Nook for Web, a cloud platform that strives to make e-reading easier by providing browser access to electronic books without needing a download, a Nook account or a Nook device for that matter. The overdue move follows in footsteps of Amazon which last August introduced Kindle Cloud Reader, a service that lets you access Kindle books instantly in a web browser (works great on iPad), no Kindle device required. UPDATE: the article is updated with a simple fix to run Nook for Web on your iPad...

Apple’s SVP of Hardware Bob Mansfield is retiring

Cody Lee ∙ June 28, 2012

We don't typically cover employee departures at Apple, but in this case, we figured it was definitely worth mentioning. Apple has announced this afternoon that its vice president of Mac and iOS hardware, Bob Mansfield, is retiring...