IDC: Apple's still king of the tablet hill with 68 percent of the market

IDC's cabal of statisticians, nerds and people who just love spreadsheets have handed down their latest document about the state of the tablet market. Of the 25 million slates shipped in the second quarter, 17 million of them were iPads -- giving Apple 68.2 percent of the market. Samsung came second with 2.4 million devices and Amazon third, although since the Kindle Fire maker doesn't reveal numbers, there's probably some guesswork involved there. Rounding out the top five are ASUS and Acer, although the former should expect to move up a place (or two), depending on the success of the Nexus 7 when Q3's results are released in a few months time.

Top 5 Vendors, Worldwide Media Tablet Shipments, Second Quarter 2012

	2Q 2012 Shipments	Market Share	2Q 2011 Shipments	Market Share	Q212 / 2Q11Growth
Apple	17,042	68.2%	9,248	61.5%	84.3%
Samsung	2,391	9.6%	1,099	7.3%	117.6%
Amazon	1,252	5.0%	0	N/A	N/A
ASUS	855	3.4%	397	2.6%	115.5%
Acer	385	1.5%	629	4.2%	-38.7%
Others	3,067	12.3%	3,668	24.4%	-16.4%
Total	24,994	100%	15,042	100%	66.2&
Unit shipments are in thousands

[Source: Engadget]

PC makers falling further behind Apple, says Canalys

Things are not looking good for PC makers in the age of the iPad.

Market researcher Canalys makes this point with PC shipment stats, which are a function of the way it sees the PC market. In short, tablets are PCs too. (And note Canalys defines "PC" generically, not the traditional definition of a Windows PC.)

That gives Apple an overwhelming lead over No.2 Hewlett-Packard. In the second quarter, Apple shipped about 21 million PCs versus about 13.5 million for HP, according to a Canalys report released today. Lenovo was a close third with 13.1 million (see table below).

"There is now a large base of replacement buyers that simply must have the latest Apple product," Canalys said in a statement. "The decision to continue shipping the iPad 2 at lower price points has opened up new customers, for example in education."

[Source: cnet - Click to read the full story]

Hulu Plus Now Available on Apple TV

Apple has quietly launched a Hulu Plus channel on Apple TV this morning. We've first received a report from one Apple TV owner who first found the channel to appear this morning and have since been able to confirm it ourselves. We've found that users may have to reboot their Apple TV for the channel to appear.Hulu Plus is a U.S. online subscription streaming video service with support from many television networks and studios. The service has been notably absent from the Apple TV despite being available on the iPhone/iPad as well as other set top boxes such as Roku.Existing Hulu Plus users can login, while new users can be billed for Hulu Plus service via their iTunes account.

[Source: Mac Rumours]

Why apps in Mountain Lion might need to see your address data

In OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has added extra protection around the address book and restricted apps from gaining access to the contents without a user's permission. This added security is beneficial for users, but it poses a communication problem for developers who need to access the address book for feedback or crash reports, says Daniel Jalkut in a post on his Red Sweater blog.Developers who generate a bug report or feedback request within their app must deal with the foreboding dialog shown above when they try to populate the fields of a contact form using data contained in the "Me" card. Not only does the dialog confuse the user, it also makes it appear that the app is doing something nefarious when it's actually not.Working off a tip from Panic founder Cabel Sasser, Jalkut has devised a way to add a friendly tone to the dialog that'll explain to users why the app needs to pull information from the address book. According to Jalkut, you can modify the Info.plist file and add a string for the NSContactsUsageDescription key. This key will tell the user why the app needs the contact information and will appear the first time the app tries to gain access to the address book.

[Source: Tuaw]

Samsung 11.8 inch tablet revealed in court documents

Dozens of Apple and Samsung products are being leaked to the public in the blockbuster patent trial that got started in San Jose, Calif., today. The latest of these leaks comes from court documents that show Samsung might be working on an 11.8 inch tablet with Retina display, according to The Verge.Codenamed "P10," this tablet would reportedly have LTE connectivity, 2560 x 1600 resolution, and a pixel density of 256 ppi, according to The Verge. This is much bigger than the iPad tablet, which currently features a 9.5 inch screen, 2048 x 1536 resolution, and a pixel density of 264 ppi...

[Source: To read the full article visit CNET News]

Jony Ive: Apple's goal isn't to make money

Speaking at the British Business conference running in London during the 2012 Olympics, Sir Jonathan Ive -- Apple's Senior Vice President of Industrial Design -- told attendees that Apple's "goal isn't to make money." Instead, per the Daily Telegraph, he told attendees that the company's primary goal is to make great products.

Ive started with Apple in 1992 and attributes Apple's success to its "near-death" experiences in the mid-1990s. "Apple was very close to bankruptcy and to irrelevance [but] you learn a lot about life through death, and I learnt a lot about vital corporations by experiencing a non-vital corporation," said Ive.

Talking about late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Ive noted that "His observation was that the products weren't good enough and his resolve was we need to make better products. That stood in stark contrast to the previous attempts to turn the company around".

Apparently the fixation on making great products nearly resulted in the iPhone never making it to market. According to Ive, "There were multiple times when we nearly shelved the phone because there were multiple problems. I hold the phone to my ear and my ear dials a number. The challenge is that you have to develop all sorts of ear shapes, chin shapes, skin colour, hairdo... it seemed insurmountable".

Fortunately for the world and for Apple, the iPhone went on to be an amazing success, with 26 million of the devices selling in the last quarter alone.

[Source: TUAW]

Top 10 subtle Mountain Lion features (and a few more)

Lifehacker has put together a list of what they call the "top 10 secret features of Mountain Lion." That's not quite right -- these features aren't secret, because it would be pretty silly to release an OS update and not tell anyone about it. But they are subtle, and this is a nice list of features you may not have noticed yet.

For example, the fact that you can tweet right from the top of Notification Center, or that you can share photos straight from QuickLook using the Share button. You can also rename files in TextEdit (or share them to iCloud) just by clicking on the document's name at the top of the window, and you can even insert pages into PDF files in Preview through the Edit menu. Helpful tips, for sure.

We'll even add a few more features in that you may not have noticed yet: Over in Launchpad (which you can access from your dock or pressing F4 on a new Mountain Lion install, or set up a hot corner for), just typing will start you on a search for any app you've installed through the Mac App Store. And you may not have noticed, but Apple's added some brand new Screen Saver and slideshow options for when your Mac goes to sleep. Just like Apple's other OS releases lately, there's a lot of new stuff to go find and play with in Mountain Lion.

[Source: TUAW]

iPhone 5 and iPad Mini to be Announced on September 12th with iPhone 5 Release soon after

iMore reports that they have heard that the next generation iPhone, new iPod nano, and all new 7.85" iPad mini will be announced on September 12th. They also pinpoint the actual launch date for the next iPhone as September 21, 2012. iMore has heard that Apple is planning to debut the new iPhone at a special event on Wednesday, September 12, 2012, with the release date to follow 9 days later on Friday, September 21. This information comes from sources who have proven accurate in the past. The next-generation iPhone, which is frequently referred to as the "iPhone 5", is expected to have a taller 4" screen as shown in the above photo. Rumors have also suggested the inclusion of high speed LTE wireless networking.   While we generally refer to the next iPhone as the "iPhone 5", if Apple follows the example of their most recent iPad release, they may drop the numbering scheme with every new iPhone release. The 3rd generation iPad was simply called "the new iPad" in all press materials. Similarly, it seems likely that Apple will simply refer to the next iPhone as "the new iPhone".   While the 7.85" iPad mini has been long rumored, there has been a notable increase in the frequency and volume of rumors related to the product. The smaller iPad is believed to help Apple fill a cheaper price point in their tablet lineup.   iMore has been an accurate source of release date information in the past. They previously pinpointed the iPad 3 launch date as well as pre-order date for the iPhone 4S.

[Source: Mac Rumours]

Purported new-look iPhone 5 gets video treatment

For the second time, a purported iPhone 5 chassis has popped up in a video on the Web. Japanese site Macotakara posted a video -- dubbed "iPhone 5 Housings?" -- from YouTube that shows a person holding what could be the next iPhone. The device appears to come with the long-rumored, taller 4-inch display, and a plate on the back that extends for part, but not all, of the device's backside. In addition, the video shows the purported iPhone 5 with a smaller dock connector port as well as the headphone jack on the bottom.

The video is notable for showing what appears to be the same chassis found in a clip uploaded to YouTube last month. Like this chassis, the hardware in the previous video shows a unibody case that seems to confirm a host of rumors that have surfaced, including talk of Apple moving the headphone jack from the top of the device to the bottom and a smaller dock connector port. That earlier video followed the publication of a host of photos showing what appeared to be the same device. With this latest video now out in the wild, it's possible the rumor mill might be closing in on the eventual design of Apple's next iPhone...

[Source: To read the full article visit CNET News]

Get 'Save As' back on Mountain Lion's File menu easily

Much rejoicing accompanied the news that Mountain Lion brought back the "Save As..." option (which had been taken away in Lion and replaced with the not-nearly-the-same-thing "Duplicate" command). Unfortunately, Save As was relegated to a sub-menu which could only be seen if you held down the Option key, or you could use the not-very-convenient keyboard shortcut Command+Shift+Option+S.  For some reason, that keyboard shortcut never worked for me, so I decided to remap it using System Preferences.

[Source: To read the full article visit Tuaw]

Mountain Lion 101: The iCloud Document Library

One of my favorite features of Mountain Lion to demonstrate so far has been the iCloud Document Library. This is a way to store your iWork, TextEdit, and Preview documents in iCloud so that they are immediately accessible from other Macs on the same iCloud account as well as on connected iOS devices.

TUAW blogger and developer Erica Sadun told me the secret behind this on Wednesday. If you go to your Library folder and open the "Mobile Documents" folder, you'll notice that the name of the folder changes to iCloud (see screenshot below). That's where all of those documents are saved, and it's even possible to just drag items into the folder to add them to your iCloud Document Library.

In compatible apps, you'll find that selecting "Open" from the File menu displays a new Finder Open dialog with buttons for iCloud and "On My Mac". Selecting iCloud displays a very iOS-like dialog showing all compatible documents. Drag one document onto another, and you can create a folder -- another iOS feature. Likewise, selecting "Save As" from the File menu gives you the choice of saving a file to your iCloud Document Library.

[Source: TAUW - Click to read the full story]

Podcasts iOS App to Receive Bug Fix Update Later Today [Update: It's Out]

After Apple's Podcasts app was released last month, many users had complaints about bugs, crashes and other issues.All Things D says that an update should debut later todaythat will fix the problems and "vastly improve it":

Podcasts users take note: Apple has been hard at work tweaking the app to fix the problems that currently plague it and sources say the company expects to post an update to it this afternoon that should vastly improve it.

Nearly two-thirds of reviews for the Podcasts app on the App Store gave it a one - or two-star review, with the app having a two-and-a-half-star review overall -- one of the lowest of all Apple's apps.

Podcasts had traditionally been housed in the iTunes app on iOS devices, but Apple has been working to streamline the user experience by breaking out some categories into their own apps, including Podcasts and iTunes U.

Podcasts 1.0.1 provides a number of improvements, including:

• Significant improvements to performance and stability
• Podcasts in your library now show the number of unplayed episodes
• Top Stations now show the podcast title if artwork is missing 
• Playback speed is now remembered when playing the next episode
• Fix for a problem where the Subscribe button is inactive
• Resolution of an issue where Top Stations artwork may not appear

[Source: MacRumors]