Apple - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• HP leads the way as NZ PC market approaches "best ever year" in history

  "Consumer demand remained strong and was primarily driven by falling price of notebooks."

• Tablet sales fail to shine as iPad's approach first year of decline

  "The tablet market continues to be impacted by a few major trends happening in relevant markets."

• The human OS: Overdue for a social engineering patch

  It sounds like the operating system that really needs some serious security patches is the human one.

• 7 reasons Apple should open-source Swift -- and 7 reasons it won't

  Faster innovation, better security, new markets -- the case for opening Swift might be more compelling than Apple will admit

• 10 Things You Should Know About Apple's Swift

  Apple recently unveiled Swift, a new language to replace Objective-C for OS X and iOS application development. Apple won't accept submissions built using Swift to the iOS or Mac App Store until the fall, when iOS 8 and the next version of OS X (Yosemite) ship, so there's still some time to learn the ins and outs of this new programming language.

• Snapchat Must Either Grow Up or Risk Disappearing

  Snapchat had a rough May, and that's even before taking into account the massive competitive threats it faces from Apple and Facebook. The company has a lot of growing up to do. And it better do it fast.

• Microsoft's Office for iPad shakes up mobile enterprise

  It's hard to overstate the impact of the Microsoft Office for iPad. The arrival of the dominant productivity suite on the dominant tablet promises to change how iPads are viewed in the enterprise. Office for iPad may also crush competitive apps, shut out Cloud storage providers and limit MDM vendors.

• Invasion of the body snatchers: wearable devices are coming for you

  A place in your pocket is no longer enough for mobile gadget makers: now, they want your body.

• Tomorrow's news today: The biggest tech stories of 2014

  I write one of these "Tech Trends of 20XX" stories every year. For me, it's as big a part of the holidays as the Yule Log. I can remember some years when the big predictions for the next year were just the natural, incremental growth of current trends.

• 5 resolutions for a better digital life

  It's the time of year when we make promises for the new year that are routinely broken before that year is a week old. And for this reason, far too many of us simply resolve to never make another resolution. (Because, after all, that's an easy one to keep.)

• Perspective: Microsoft's CEO pick will be dubbed a dud, bragged as brilliant

  No matter who Microsoft names as its new CEO early in 2014, the pick will trigger comments from experts and technology leaders who question the sanity of the board, the person who took the job or everyone involved.

• The worst tech predictions of 2013 -- and two that hit the mark

  From the social network in business to the 'success' of the Chromebook to the launch of iTV, the pundits got it wrong, wrong, wrong

• Top tech stories of 2013: Big Brother, wearables, and the struggles of aging tech giants

  Politics collided with the world of technology this year as stories about U.S. government spying stirred angst both among the country's citizens and foreign governments, and the flawed HeathCare.gov site got American health-care reform off to a rocky start. Meanwhile, the post-PC era put aging tech giants under pressure to reinvent themselves. Here in no particular order are IDG News Service's picks for the top 10 tech stories of the year.

• Apple's new Mac Pro signals commitment to professional computing

  Apple is sending a signal that it hasn't abandoned the professional computing market with the latest Mac Pro, which will ship next month. But the workstation faces competition from its own sibling iMac as computer buyers weigh purchases.

• How Apple is playing hardball with Microsoft

  Tucked in amongst Apple's several hardware debuts last month was word that the company will stop charging for OS X and iWork. Why is Apple willing to forgo this small revenue stream? How might it affect IT buyers? The move is interesting on several fronts.