AppleMagazine #165

PLENTY OF REMOTE CONTROL FUN TO BE HAD We're big fans of toys - especially ones that make the most of the very latest technology. As Christmas looms and your younger (or perhapes not-so-young) compile their wish lists, or even as you consider what you might want to buy for yourself, all manner of newly-launched toys are appearing on the horizon. One of them is the Sphero Ollie - and we'd like to reassure you that it's more than just another remote controlled toy. You'd be forgiven for thinking that it was, to be fair. On first spying this curious toy, we must admit that we thought it looked rather unassuming. Of course, many astonishing toys are like that these days, but even so, we found it hard to imagine…

POTENTIAL EXCITING IMPLICATIONS FOR iPHONE AND iPAD USERS EVERYWHERE It's fair to say that when the Financial Times reported the news that has illuminated the technology pages over the past week - that Apple was primed to purchase the iconic headphones manufacturer Beats Electronics - there were more than a few raised eyebrows. Indeed, as impressive as the Cupertino firm's cash reserves are, that cool $3.2 billion outlay is still nothing to sniff at. So... what's going on? Of course, there are the naysayers... those who say that Apple CEO Tim Cook must have gone mad to give the nod to this particular deal. But first, let's have some background. Beats Electronics was founded by two of the music industry's most legendary figures, rapper Dr. Dre and music producer Jimmy…

LEAVE YOUR CASH AT HOME - JUST PAY WITH YOUR iPHONE Most people think about either the iPad or the iPhone when they think about Apple, but those are far from the most popular items they sell. After all, many people already have phones and tablets, so the market for new purchases is not that large. Instead, it is people's purchases of the smaller stuff that brings in money hand over fist for Apple. Whether it is via iTunes or the iBook store, it is the buying of products that Apple didn’t actually manufacture - but nonetheless sells via its different platforms - that has made the company grow into the giant that it is today. iTUNES CERTAINLY MAKES LOADS OF MONEY... iTunes? You might be thinking that those songs…

It was a little over a year ago that Dong Nguyen was living with his parents in Hanoi, spending his days working away, programming location devices for taxis. One holiday weekend, he made a mobile game that was supposed to have a simple concept while presenting a challenge, sort of like the Nintendo games he had grown up with as a child. The goal: to fly a weird-looking bird between pairs of green pipes. The quicker the user tapped his screen, the higher the bird would go. Flappy Bird was born. On May 24, 2013, the iOS App Store took the game live. Nguyen did not charge for the game, instead making it available as a free download. The hope was that it would bring in some revenue from ads…

ENTERTAINMENT, HEALTH, DAY-TO-DAY ASSISTANCE AND SO MUCH MORE Think back to the last time you couldn't get your home Wi-Fi to work, your iPad browser crashed or your in-car GPS sent you down the wrong road. It's so frustrating when technology goes wrong, isn't it? Yet, that very anger ably demonstrates just how crucial it really is to all of our lives. Great technology -and in today's age, technology really is great - is so impactful as to go almost unnoticed in nigh-on every area of life. The frank truth of the matter is that for every inconvenience or frustration that technology has caused us down the years, it has done so much more to make our lives easier, more fun and just better. After all, we wouldn't be so…

Many teenagers today would scoff at the idea of buying a compact disc that contains an entire album on it. As for the idea of a cassette tape, or a large black disc that requires a needle to be run along some grooves to hear the music, well that sounds positively Mesozoic. The shift to buying music by the song, rather than by the album, is just one of the many iconic changes that iTunes has brought to the way in which we listen to and consume music. Looking back at its meteoric rise, it seems impossible that the juggernaut that is iTunes has only been on the road for 13 years. HOW iTUNES BEGAN Steve Jobs met with executives from Sony and Warner Music. Those execs had a plan…