Dan worked as a journalist covering the tech industry, and in particular Apple, for more than 15 years. He's contributed to AppleInsider since 2005. Prior to that, he managed Information Technology teams and handled technical operations ranging from startups to enterprise organizations including U.S. government, higher education, and healthcare research organizations.
Apple shares reached a new all time closing high of $114.18 today, following yesterday's quarterly dividend distribution of $2.9 billion to shareholders. That compares to a pre-split adjusted price just cents below $800, and is 53.5 percent higher than the company's stock price just one year ago.
At a press event on San Francisco's Treasure Island, drone vendor DJI unveiled its new prosumer-class Inspire drone with 4K video capabilities and announced a new Software Development Kit to allow third party developers to write apps that work with its flagship Phantom 2 Vision flying cameras.
Despite headlines fretting of a "new era in OS X and iOS malware," Apple's security systems for iOS and OS X are working as intended to protect users from exposure to the ubiquitous malware affecting open platforms including Android and Windows. Here's the realistic, non-sensationalized facts about how safe Apple's users actually are and how users can remain protected from threats that arise.
Enterprise mobile services vendor Good Technology reports that Apple's iPhone 6 launch helped the company win back mobile device enterprise share from Android, boosting iOS to 69 percent of all device activations as firms' deployment of custom mobile apps continues to grow exponentially.
The world's most popular mobile app has developed a new way to manage Android fragmentation, targeting users' hardware capabilities rather than devices' installed OS versions. Facebook's new efforts note that two thirds of the Android phones it sees "are equivalent to something released in 2011 or earlier."
In keeping with the growing importance of Apple's iOS platform, Microsoft's new Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for iPhone are now far superior than those Microsoft offers for its own Windows Phone 8 platform.
When Apple's chief executive Tim Cook came out as gay, jokes flew that Samsung might rush to announce it "was even more gay." In reality however, Samsung Electronics is a step further behind Apple, having yet to officially name a successor to its ailing leader Lee Kun-hee, who at 72 remains hospitalized following a heart attack in May.
News commentators covering U.S. elections for CNN were given Surface Pro tablets by Microsoft, but continued using iPads on air, covering up the supplied Surface with papers or even the iPad itself.
In its ranking of electronic messaging systems for safety and security, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said no mainstream products passed all of its criteria, but that Apple's iMessage and FaceTime "stood out as the best of the mass-market options."
Speaking at the Øredev Developer Conference in Malmö, Sweeden, Emil Kvarnhammar of security firm TrueSec demonstrated a privilege escalation vulnerability affecting OS X 10.8.5 through the newest 10.10 Yosemite.
Following an anemic 0.1 percent rise in August, Australia's Bureau of Statistics reported that retail turnover lept to 1.2 percent growth in September, crediting Apple's iPhone 6 launch for driving the unexpected growth.
In the days following Tim Cook's statement that he was "proud to be gay," Apple's chief executive has been commended for his openness in a variety of online opinions, but also needled by a pestilent swarm of haters, ranging from Twitter trolls to Russian politicians and businessmen. Apple investors don't seem to care.
Bump, an app developer Google acquired last year, is bouncing back under the codename Copresence, an effort to deliver AirPlay-like file sharing that appears to be deeply integrated with Google+ Hangouts, sparking new privacy concerns.
Apple shares reached a new all time high of $108 for the end of October, less than two weeks prior prior to the company's quarterly dividend distribution date.
After failing to do much more than embarrass Samsung Electronics in years-long legal battles over patent infringement, Apple has rapidly obliterated Samsung's mobile division profitability, rendering it as barrenly unprofitable as every other Android or Windows licensee with razor thin margins in the phone, PC and tablet market.
Users who want a calculator in their iOS Notification Center can breathe easy after Apple dropped its request to a developer asking it to remove its widget feature.
Samsung Electronics reported overall Q3 operating profits of 4.06 trillion won ($3.8 billion)—a 60 percent year-over-year drop—while its Mobile division suffered a 73.9 percent drop in profits.
Apple's platform policies for iOS, OS X and their respective App Stores have occasionally irked developers or even wildly disrupted their businesses. The latest collision involves a retroactive ban on widget calculators and tightened WiFi privacy rules for iOS, as Apple issues new rules for apps using Apple Pay and TestFlight.
Apple shares closed Tuesday at an all time high of $106.74, following the market's digesting of recent earnings reports, the well received launches of a series of new products and new details outlined in the company's 10-K report yesterday.
Apple's new A8X Application Processor not only trounces other Android tablets in CPU tasks, but is also advancing iPad Air 2 to the front of the line in graphics operations as well, even before considering the ten-fold boost potential of iOS 8's Metal API.
Apple's latest iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 incorporate Touch ID and support for Apple Pay within apps, with the same 10 hour battery life of previous models. The full size iPad Air 2 is also now 18 percent slimmer with an improved, antireflective display and gains a faster A8X chip, faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi and LTE wireless, a barometer, and a significantly improved iSight camera.
Two major U.S. drugstores have turned off their NFC payment terminals to stop Apple Pay transactions in an effort to make their own "CurrentC" app-based payment system—which is designed to collect and track information on their customers—the only option, even though it's not actually finished yet.
Apple's newest iPads feature one of the same chips used by iPhone 6 and 6 Plus to handle tap-to-pay NFC transactions, but the new iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 only support Apple Pay within apps, sparing users the embarrassment of carrying around a gigantic alternative to their credit card.
Samsung's Knox security layer for Android generates weak encryption keys, stores passwords locally and gives users login hints in a fatal "security by obscurity" design "compromising the security of the product completely," a researcher has detailed.
Apple's latest iPad Air 2 is super fast, super slim and incorporates the same Touch ID and Secure Element as iPhone 6, enabling secure Apple Pay transactions within apps. Here's what it looks like naked, and in Apple's custom Smart Case and Smart Cover.
{{ summary }}
