Rumors suggested the fact that Apple’s next generation iPad mini will be launched in the third or fourth quarter of calendar 2013. In order to sustain these rumors, Apple’s CEO announced that the Fruit Company is preparing big things until this fall.

Now, the company is reportedly cutting its iPad mini display orders near to half as it encountered a decrease in demand for the tablet. This rumor is sustained by AU Optronics, the company that supplies panels for Apple’s iPad mini. The company reported the fact that it will only ship 2.5 million to 2.8 million units to manufacturers in the second quarter, down from 4 million units shipped in the first quarter.

Apparently, Apple is cutting down orders in anticipation of a slowdown in iPad mini shipments for the rest of the second quarter. This decline is due to a general lack of interest among consumers to buy new devices during the summer period. However, despite this sudden decline revealed by AU Optronics, Apple will still be shipping around 10 million units as the rest of 7 million panels will be supplied by another display manufacturer. Read More

The U.S Department of Defense announced on Friday the fact that they officially approved Apple iOS 6 running devices to access its secure government networks. Therefore, iPhones and iPads running on Apple’s latest version of the operating system receive now clearance for using its private networks.

This approval is a part of a military plan to allow employees the flexibility to use commercial products on secure government networks. The approval came two weeks after Samsung Galaxy, and Blackberry 10 handsets were given the clearance by the military arm.

In the past, the Department of Defense used Blackberry devices for their internal affairs. Now, with the latest change, military employees are able to use the latest Apple devices, along with Samsung Knox-compatible and Blackberry handsets running on the latest version of their operating system. Read More

After receiving approval from the FAA, the U.S. Air Force plans to save more than $50 million in ten years by employing 18,000 lightweight iPads instead of heavy paper flight manuals. This will lead to a $750,000 annual saving on fuel alone.

According the a spokesman for the Air Force Mobility Command, the military service will no longer have to print all those flight manuals for each aircraft pilot. In this way, they will save an amount of $5 million per year. Moreover, the whole amount of paper saved within the period of 10 year can easily reach the limit of 90 pounds per aircraft.

In the same time, the welcomed change regarding the replacement of the paper manuals with iPads can limit the need for each crewmember to carry a 30 to 40 pound paper file. As it was stated in previous press releases, airplane pilots accused severe back pains when carrying that amount of paper on each flight. Read More

The App Store In present, launched in July 2008 with just 500 apps. In present, it has 850,000 applications on the App Store, 350,000 of them being native to the iPad. As the company stated, the customers are now downloading more than 800 applications per second, at a rate of more than 2 billion apps per month.

In March, last year, Apple celebrated the fact that the company’s App Store recorded 25 billion downloads. At that moment, a woman who downloaded the “Where’s My Water” game was surprised with a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

According to recent news, Apple again has something seriously significant to celebrate, as the company officially announced that it hit the 50 billion app download mark, a figure that includes unique downloads, the re-downloads or updates, not being counted.

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The Cupertino-based Company plans to revolutionize the way in which payments are performed. A new patent application called “Payment Options Based on Location” was published at U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and it describes an iPhone-driven e-wallet service, which is meant to simplify checking out at the store.

The system presents users options based on data such as location, current balance or applicable rewards cards. In this way, users will have a smart menus based on the context of a transaction. Within the application, Apple also suggests the fact that the existence of current physical wallets does not stop customers in find the best payment option for a particular situation.

The smart connected e-wallet system developed by Apple can recognize various shopping rewards and it will also recommend cards to customers based on their specific data. In the same time, the iPhone e-wallet concept can identify the user’s location and determine what store they are in. Read More

Research firm IDC has recorded worldwide smartphone shipments during the first quarter, and it notes the fact that Android and iOS combined accounted for 92.3 percent of all shipments.

In the same time, the research firm suggested the fact that Apple and Android shipments combined increased year over a year with approximately 59.1 percent, with a total of 199.5 million units shipped world wide during the first quarter of 2013.

Despite the fact that Apple has reported an incredible growth with iPhone as being its “largest ever first quarter volume”, the Fruit Company saw a decline among usage of iOS compared to the growth of the industry as a whole. In terms of shipment volumes, Apple announced that last month, it shipped a record of 37.4 million iPhones. However, this fact has allowed Android to maintain a top spot with Samsung and OS. Read More

Apple files a patent application that describes a primary iOS device such as an iPhone, which remotely controls multiple other secondary devices such as another iPhone or iPad.

Found within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the patent called the “Illumination System” represents an invention Apple developed through which the Fruit Company proposes that a number of devices like iPhones, iPad and iPods or any other mobile products can act as remotely controlled lights for the main camera.

This invention, which is assumed to connect multiple iOS devices, belongs to multiple different people and the patent application can be considered to be a social camera flash system. This can turn out to be pretty useful when starting a photo shooting and it is required more than one source of lighting. Read More

Google has launched a new music and gaming service, which will increase its lead on Apple in the Smartphone market. In the same time, Google also revealed a redesigned social network while aiming towards Facebook.

The search giant revealed many other interesting products at its annual software developer’s conference in San Francisco. Within the conference, Google presented an updated overhaul of its maps service, which will compete with Apple’s Maps Service. Moreover, the search engine giant announced that its new product line aims to offer multiple benefits to all Google users. They include All Access, a subscription music service, Google Play and a gaming system.

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Apple is celebrating another App Store birthday and its gives away thousands of dollars for their faithful users. For more than a week, the home page or Apple.com and iTunes displayed a running ticker counting to the App Store’s 50 billionth download. According to Apple, the lucky person who will download the respective app will be rewarded with a $10,000 gift card to the App Store.

In the same time, the first user to download the first 50 after 50 billion will also receive  $500 App Store gift cards. The countdown has started ticking for several days, and the number is still increasing. Some even suggest that the final countdown might end somewhere on Wednesday night or Thursday morning. If you plan to download or purchase a certain app from the App Store, now might be the right time to start the downloading process.

During time, Apple has accustomed its users to certain milestone moments. For example, in April 2009, the App Store reached one billion download in less than two years of existence. Apple’s Store reached 10 billion mark in January 20122, 25 billion downloads in February 2012 and now it heading to the 50 billion limit. Read More

As Facebook launched the Home layer on Android, the social platform accused relatively low installation rates and lower user ratings on Google Play. Apparently, the cause of this problem might be represented by the iPhone’s popularity among Facebook employees.

Apple’s iPhone might represent the big reason why the social network has failed on reaching its purpose on the Android platform. Facebook does not have enough dedicated Android users in order to know how Facebook Home layer works best of Google’s mobile operating system.

Various Facebook employees admitted the fact that multiple Home layer tests were performed mostly on iPhone devices, and they were unable to see anything misplaced with the change. All these changes refer to doing away with widgets, removing the dock for oft-used apps and keeping users from creating app folders. Read More