Apple has long been rumored to be working on an iWatch, and today a report from Reuters appears to confirm many of these rumors. According to one “mobile health executive” who recently met with Apple, the company “has aspirations beyond wearable devices, and is considering a full health and fitness services platform modeled on its apps store.”
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It turns out that audio cassette taps might be the wave of the future after all, at least when it comes to data storage. Forbes reports that Sony has figured out how to cram a whopping 185TB of data onto a single cassette tape using technology called sputter deposition that Forbes says “involves layers of magnetic crystals firing argon ions at a polymer film substrate.” To get an idea of just how amazing this is, consider that a typical Blu-ray disc holds around 50GB of data, which means that Sony’s new storage cassette can hold somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,700 Blu-ray films. Sony says that it’s working on ways to make magnetic tape used in cassettes a practical technology for storage and backup and it hopes to release a commercial product based on its breakthroughs in the future.
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Microsoft’s Phil Spencer has always been a man of the people, and even in his new role as head of the Xbox division, he still takes time to answer questions from the community on Twitter. In his latest flurry of answers, Spencer confirmed that new IP and new sequels will be announced at E3 and he revealed that Cortana was almost brought on as the announcer for the show. Another interesting topic broached by the community was the potential existence of a portable console from Microsoft to rival the PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS.
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If you’re intrigued by Apple’s latest line of refreshed MacBook Airs, you should check out what Best Buy has to offer. AppleInsider points out that Best Buy is offering the lowest prices for the newest MacBook Airs that we’ve yet seen, including $854.99 for the entry-level 11.6-inch MacBook Air that normally retails for $899, and $949.99 for the entry-level 13-inch model that normally retails for $999. Of course, the deals being offered for 2013’s MacBook Airs are even better and you can get an entry-level 11.6-inch model for just $759.99 and an entry-level 13-inch model for $854.99. Given that early benchmarks we’ve seen of the new MacBook Airs showed only a slight improvement over the 2013 MacBook Airs, then the year-old models look like much better bargains at this point. You can check out AppleInsider’s chart that documents MacBook Air prices at multiple retail outlets by clicking the source link below.
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Scientists at the University of California have come up with a nifty new way to utilize nanoparticles of gold. A solution of gold particles embedded in a polymer film creates a bright blue color, which turns red after pressure is applied on the film. The color shift correlates with the amount of pressure used — blue turns purple after moderate impact and red with a hard hit. This nuanced response yields information about different pressure levels the gold film encounters. The possibilities seem limitless, from sports to scientific studies to fashion.
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Amazon is ready to offer shoppers an interesting new way to purchase various goods by letting them connect their Amazon and Twitter accounts in order to add new products to their Amazon shopping carts with a simple hashtag. By adding #AmazonCart in replies to tweets that have Amazon product links in them, users will be able to add those products to their carts, The Next Web reports.
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As ZDNet reports, some recent LinkedIn profile updates indicate that Apple has hired biomedical engineers from companies including Vital Connect, Sano Intelligence, O2 Medtech and Masimo. These companies manufacture devices that monitor respiratory functions, heart rate and body temperature. What might the biomedical monitoring functions of iWatch mean for the regular consumer? Many of the companies Apple seems to be hiring from have far broader and deeper goals than telling people what their heart rate is.
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Microsoft is apparently looking for a Senior Software Development Engineer to help it further boost the performance of both its new Xbox One console and the older Xbox 360 model, GamingBolt reveals, speculating that the company wants to further improve and optimize the performance of the consoles’ processors.
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It’s amazing what a strong earnings report and a 7-for-1 stock split will do for your company’s share price. Apple shares surged past the $600 mark on Monday and closed at $600.96 each, which is the highest they’ve been since November 2012. Apple’s stock value had peaked at around $700 in September 2012 before falling all the way down to under $400 in April 2013. However, the company’s better-than-expected iPhone sales in its latest quarterly earnings report coupled with news that it will enact a 7-for-1 stock split in early June have helped reignite demand for Apple’s stock. Investors may also be feeling bullish at the sales prospects of the iPhone 6, which will finally give Apple fans a device with a big display that’s on par with the Galaxy S5.
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You might want to hold off on sending sensitive attachments through your iPhone or iPad if it runs on iOS 7 or higher. 9to5Mac draws our attention to a recent post from German security researcher Andreas Kurtz, who claims that encryption for email attachments has been disabled on iOS versions 7 and higher, even the recently released iOS 7.1.1 that was issued specifically to fix security flaws. Kurtz says that he reported the problem to Apple, which supposedly acknowledged it but didn’t give a timeline for when a fix would be released. As 9to5Mac says, this is obviously a potential problem because Apple touts iOS 7 as providing encryption for email attachments and many users have likely been sending important files through email under the assumption that they’d be encrypted.
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