Apple : Gary Marshall: Bye bye Windows Live Messenger

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• Gary Marshall: Bye bye Windows Live Messenger
• Cheaper ebooks may be on Amazon's horizon after Apple compromise
• iPad mini display quality falls short of Android rivals, according to tests
• Apple reportedly prepared to ditch Intel processors
• Apple paid just 2% corporation tax outside the US last year
• Report: Rift with Jony Ive led to Scott Forstall Apple departure
• In Depth: Essential OS X Mountain Lion tips, tricks and handy hints
• Opinion: Apple iGlass: the augmented reality glasses to kill casual conversation
• Apple amends and reposts Samsung Galaxy Tab statement
• In Depth: Five Steve Jobs movies that would actually be worth watching
• Dev emulates new Fusion Drive with current Mountain Lion
• Updated: Apple loses iPhone trademark in Mexico, can still sell iPhones
• Apple senior VP in for more Samsung patent trial questioning
• Analyst: innovation at Apple is 'sputtering'
• Apple releases iOS 6.0.1 to address bugs, Maps unchanged
• In Depth: 20 of the best OS X menulets
• iPad mini ship dates disappear, replaced by vague time frames
• FaceTime and Messages suit falls into Apple's lap
• Microsoft CEO: Apple a 'low-volume player' in every category except iPad
• Report: new iTunes won't arrive until end of November

Gary Marshall: Bye bye Windows Live Messenger Posted: If internet years are like dog years, then Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) is 91 - so Microsoft's decision to shutter the service in early 2013 and migrate everyone to Skype isn't exactly a surprise. The reason for the move is obvious enough: when you spend billions of pounds on a messaging platform, as Microsoft did with Skype last year, you want to get your money's worth. And as Brian Hall writes in the final Inside Windows Live blog post, Microsoft believes that "Skype provides a better experience and even stronger network." Mac users might disagree with that one - Skype conferencing on OS X, in my experience, is hilariously unreliable - but Skype does have more features and wider device support. I'm sure the migration will be messy for some, because migrations usually are, but when the dust settles Skype will do more for more people than Messenger could. Shooting the Messenger Windows Live Messenger is getting the boot just months after the similarly old Hotmail, which is now Outlook.com, and while progress is obviously a good thing I can't help feeling a nostalgic pang. For many of us MSN Messenger and Hotmail were part of the plumbing of the internet, the programs we used when we were supposed to be doing something else such as sleeping, working or studying. I have particularly fond memories of Messenger: twelve years ago it was where I'd spend all night chatting to the woman who would later become my wife. That was a long time ago, though, and like many people I haven't used Messenger for non-work purposes for some years now. It's from an era where connections were dial-up, tablets didn't exist and phones weren't so smart, and most of us have moved on to other services. As Brian Hall writes: "Messenger enabled each of us to communicate and share with the people we care about". However, a messaging platform is only as good as the people using it, and these days most of us want to talk somewhere else.

Cheaper ebooks may be on Amazon's horizon after Apple compromise Posted: Prices for Amazon ebooks may soon take a competitive dip, according to sources familiar with an antitrust probe against Apple and four publishers taking place in Europe. The sources, speaking with Reuters, said European Union regulators will accept an offer by Apple and the publishers giving Amazon the go-ahead to sell ebooks for less than its competitors. The offer on the table would let retailers independently set prices or discounts on online books for the next two years, plus suspend "most-favored nation" contracts for five years. If approved, the EU will drop an investigation into antitrust practices that involved deals between the publishers and Apple to sell books through iTunes at exclusive discounts. The deals - between Apple and Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette Livre and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrink, owner of Macmillan - were only viable as long as the publishers didn't extend those rates to other sellers, including Amazon. The end Apple and the gaggle of publishers made the proposal in September, at which time the European Commission said it would seek feedback from competing companies and consumers. One Reuters source said commissioners haven't asked for more concessions. "The commission is likely to accept the offer and announce its decision next month," the source said. Pearson Plc's Penguin group is also under investigation but was not part of the September offer. TechRadar has reached out to Amazon and Apple and will update this story if and when the companies respond.

iPad mini display quality falls short of Android rivals, according to tests Posted: The 7.9-inch display on the Apple iPad mini fails to match up to the quality offered by rivals like the Kindle Fire HD and Google Nexus 7, new tests claim to show. Following detailed benchmarking, DisplayMate said that Apple had made "compromises" and "poor choices" and thus the iPad mini didn't follow the company's tradition of making the best displays. In a recent TechRadar review, the iPad mini's screen resolution of 1024 x 768 was determined to be "light years behind the Retina display on the bigger brother new iPad." It also pointed out that the iPad mini's display was the "least impressive" when compared to the big-two Android slates, which both boast 1200 x 800 displays with greater pixel density. Considerably sharper Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMat and the person who ran the comprehensive tests, has underlined that verdict by claiming that the Kindle Fire HD and Nexus 7 had "considerably sharper" displays than the iPad mini. He also said the iPad mini's 62 per cent colour gamut was both "disappointing" and "antiquated," compared with the 100 per cent rating of the iPhone 5 and the newer full-size iPad models. The Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD both have more impressive 82 per cent colour gamut. Big difference Soneira also found that the iPad mini reflected much more ambient light than both of its chief rivals. He wrote in his findings: "Screen reflectance on the iPad mini is a surprisingly high 9.0 percent. On the Nexus 7, the reflectance is a much lower 5.9 percent, while on the Kindle Fire HD it is 6.4 percent. "As a result, the iPad mini reflects 53 percent more ambient light than the Nexus 7 and 41 percent more than the Kindle Fire HD. That's quite a big difference." Soniera concluded that the iPad mini has "just a very capable display" due to the lower screen resolution, higher screen reflectance and lower colour gamut. The test seem to confirm what most folks already suspected. Amazon and Google have packed better screens into smaller tablets at a lower price, yet it's Apple that is continually talking about other companies making "compromise."

Apple reportedly prepared to ditch Intel processors Posted: The seven-year relationship between Apple and Intel may soon come to an end, at least according to sources speaking with Bloomberg. According to the report, Apple engineers are confident that the chips found in the company's smartphones and tablets will one day be powerful enough to run laptops and desktops. The news of an Apple/Intel break up is nothing new - TechRadar reported last month that Apple was considering moving away from Intel CPUs and even posted a job opening for an in-house system-on-a-chip architect. Apple has packed Intel chips into its personal computers since 2005, but now that mobile devices and PCs are becoming more similar, the switch to in-house designs may be inevitable. Commonality According to Bloomberg's sources, Apple engineers foresee a common chip design compatible with both mobile devices and larger computers. Perhaps the most pointed sign of Apple's intentions is a recent management shift that saw Bob Mansfield become the head of a new group dubbed "Technologies." That department oversees semiconductors and has "ambitious plans for the future," according to Apple's statement about the management overhaul. Apple's new iPad 4 packs an A6X processor, a chip that's two times faster than the one found in older iPads. While this doesn't necessarily mean its powerful enough to run a PC, it does indicate Apple has the capability and desire to design ever-better chips.

Apple paid just 2% corporation tax outside the US last year Posted: Apple's financial results reveal that it managed to pay just 2% corporation tax in overseas countries last year. The Cupertino company paid foreign (e.g. outside the US) taxes of $713 million (£445m/ AU$689m) last year, despite making $36.8 billion overseas (£23bn / AU$35.5bn). It's not clear how much of that was paid in each specific country over the course of the year. Only death is certain now Tech companies are coming under increasing scrutiny in the UK, at least, where it's possible to side-step British corporation taxes by routing payments through other countries that charge a lower rate – like Ireland. Ireland is Apple's tax haven of choice and in 2011, the company paid £10 million in tax on £6 billion-worth of UK sales by opting for the Irish route. This is perfectly legal, although it leaves Brits somewhat short-changed in the tax department despite Apple's significant contributions to the unavoidable national insurance and VAT coffers. Other tech giants that have been accused of avoiding paying their fair share of tax include Amazon and Google, both of whom have been invited to discuss the matter with the Public Accounts Committee at Parliament later this month.

Report: Rift with Jony Ive led to Scott Forstall Apple departure Posted: Apple CEO Tim Cook was forced to choose between feuding executives Jony Ive and Scott Forstall, a Bloomberg report has claimed. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek article, outgoing Senior VP of iOS Software Forstall had refused to attend meetings chaired by Sir Jony, Apple's design guru, amid tensions between the two. Bloomberg said the meetings related to discussions over iPhone hardware designs, which Forstall skipped despite being in charge of the software that would be present on the device. The report read: "Even as Forstall oversaw the group responsible for the software that would run the iPhone, he didn't participate in the meetings, according to people with knowledge of the matter who requested anonymity because the meetings were private. Ive and Forstall were rarely in the same room, the people said." Divisive Bloomberg also claimed that, while Steve Jobs was able to keep a lid on the simmering tensions between Forstall and other executives at Apple, the iOS chief had become the most 'divisive' member of the team. Reportedly, the final straw came this week when Forstall refused to sign an apology over the incomplete Apple Maps app, causing Cook to wield the axe. Briton Ive, will now assume some of Forstall's duties, putting him in charge of the software and hardware design of future iOS devices.

In Depth: Essential OS X Mountain Lion tips, tricks and handy hints Posted: Essential OS X Mountain Lion tips Apple's latest update to OS X brings several new technologies to the Mac. But, as with all of Apple's apps there's no instruction manual to follow once you've installed Mountain Lion. So, you've navigated the system requirements, purchased your new OS from the Mac App Store (or simply bought a new Mac), and now you're ready to get going with Mountain Lion, but you don't know where to start. With so many exciting new features touted by Apple prior to its launch, it can be hard to see the big cat for the trees when you first access your new OS, which is why we've prepared this special guide for you. Follow us as we take you on a guided tour of the biggest new features of OS X Mountain Lion and show you how it will change the way you use your Mac. We'll also introduce you to a few of the fun little changes in Mountain Lion and some things you may not have even heard of. So, let's get started with the best new features. Take note of Notes Let's kick off with some of the new apps in Mountain Lion. If you've upgraded from Snow Leopard or Lion, you'll remember there being a separate section within Mail for writing notes, which you could access on all of your devices that shared your MobileMe or iCloud account. Now MobileMe has been consigned to its place on the Apple scrapheap, iCloud is your path to syncing notes to your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. As with iOS devices, your notes are now no longer found in Mail but as their own app called, simply, Notes. The implementation of Notes is better than ever in Mountain Lion. There is a range of new features such as the Share button. This enables you to send the contents of a note, complete with images and other attachments, to Mail or the new Messages app. You can even pin notes to your desktop rather than use the outdated Stickies! Remember, remember Reminders Reminders is another convert from iOS, allowing you to create reminders on your desktop that automatically sync via iCloud to your iOS devices. You can sort reminders into different categories, create to-do lists and set your devices to notify you of a reminder when you arrive or leave a location, or at a certain time on a specific date. Each reminder can be given a priority and you can check off tasks that you've completed on any of your synced devices. Check your Messages You may have already seen Messages as part of the beta version; if not you should make it one of your first ports of call. The app, like all of the new additions in Mountain Lion, syncs with your iCloud account and lets you continue iMessage conversations from your iOS devices when you're at your Mac. You should have set up iCloud when you first ran Mountain Lion, in which case, your messages should appear right away. If not, you can head to System Preferences and enter your iCloud details so you're ready to join the conversation. Messages enables you to send images, videos and other attachments in the same way you would on an iPhone or iPad and also offers delivery receipts so you know friends have received your message. Get social New in Mountain Lion are the baked-in social sharing features for services such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. Once you've given your Mac access to these accounts, you can share content from the web or your Mac across these networks in a matter of seconds. Anywhere you see the Share button (the rectangle with an arrow in it, as seen on iOS devices) you can quickly upload selected content for friends, family and followers to see. To make use of these social features, head to System Preferences by clicking the icon on your Dock or selecting the System Preferences option from the Apple menu. Now click on the Mail, Contacts & Calendars icon to show all of the available networks you can add. Don't be worried that Facebook doesn't appear, support for it will be added when iOS 6 launches. Until then, you can use the other networks by clicking their logo and entering your login details. Take notice of Notification Center An exciting new Mountain Lion feature, Notification Center, makes it easier to remember important events and access all of your app and system notifications. Each time a reminder, Calendar event, app or system message is triggered, a notification appears. This could be a Twitter message, Game Center invite, software update or new email. At the top-right of the screen is a Notification Center button which, when clicked, displays all of your current and upcoming reminders on a pane that slides out from the right of the screen. This pane also allows you to quickly post to any social networks you've signed in to. Notification Center can be customised to only show alerts from apps you select, by clicking on Notifications within System Preferences. There's also a new gesture in Mountain Lion to invoke Notification Center too: a two-fingered swipe from the right of your trackpad to the left, which can be turned on or off under the Trackpad section of System Preferences. Make sure you keep up to date A shift from old to new operating systems requires app developers to adjust their software to work with the new OS. That's why we see a preview at Apple's developer conference before it's released. The chances are, a number of the apps on your Mac will need updates in order to work optimally with Mountain Lion. So launch the Mac App Store from your Dock and click the Updates button at the top of the interface to see which pieces of software need to be brought up to date. There may also be security and software updates from Apple if you're a little late to the Mountain Lion party. For apps you didn't purchase from the Mac App Store, you'll have to locate their update option manually (normally found on your Mac's menu Bar while an app is running). Sync your tabs When you have iCloud set up on your Mac and the Safari option checked (under iCloud in System Preferences), you can use a new feature called iCloud Tab. This enables you to view all open tabs on your devices that are linked with iCloud. The iCloud Tabs button appears in Safari, next to the Share button and, when clicked, shows a list of all the open tabs on your Mac and iOS devices ready for you to continue browsing. Talk the talk with Dictation The new Dictation feature in Mountain Lion can be customised from the Dictation & Speech pane in System Preferences. You can opt to turn dictation on and off, set the shortcut used to trigger a dictation, select a language and the microphone you're using. By default, your Mac will use a built-in mic but you can select another option. Connect the device, then click the microphone name listed on the menu beneath the Dictation icon on the Dictation System Preferences pane. If this new feature works well, it could be great for all the lazy writers out there. More handy Mountain Lion tips Our top 10 Mountain Lion features 1. Game Center for Mac Now you don't have to worry that you're missing the action. Play games and receive challenges right from your Mac. 2. Full iCloud integration We've had iCloud for a while and now we finally have an OS to make the most of its features. 3. Messages Messages from your various devices will be ready to go when you sit at your Mac. Very handy. 4. Facebook It's not available until autumn but having your Facebook friends added to Contacts on your Mac and constantly updated is worth waiting for. 5. Power Nap Recent Mac laptop users can use Mountain Lion to automatically update software and more while their computer is asleep. 6. Safari Tab View A simple pinch lets you see all of your tabs and swipe between them. Effortless browsing! 7. Gatekeeper You probably won't notice Gatekeeper most of the time but with the added layer of security it offers, you'll be glad that it's there. 8. Documents in the Cloud A simple way to share documents across all of your devices. Work has never been easier. 9. Better Notifications A simple, streamlined way to be reminded of important events, messages and more. 10. AirPlay Mirroring Anything on your Mac's screen can now be viewed on your big-screen TV. An endlessly useful feature. Working in Mountain Lion The big workflow changes in Mountain Lion explained, and what they will mean to you Send your documents to the Cloud When it comes to actually using your Mac while running Mountain Lion, the same features and shortcuts you love are still in place. There are, however, a number of improvements that will help you work faster and more efficiently, with the forerunner being Documents in the Cloud. This long-winded title provides a feature that makes keeping your documents in sync painless. Apple apps like TextEdit, Pages, Numbers and Keynote will immediately offer Documents in the Cloud support, and third-party developers can write the feature into their apps, so expect some of your favourites to include syncing options soon. To get yourself accustomed to cloud-based storage and syncing in Mountain Lion, try launching TextEdit. Now, when you select Open from the File menu, a window appears that shows the documents stored on your Mac, and those stored in iCloud. This pane will look a little bare to begin with, but begin typing into a new TextEdit document and the magic starts to happen… That syncing feeling If you haven't added a title to your text document, it will just appear as an untitled file in iCloud with the date it was last edited. Save the file and the document title updates too. You can even drag text documents onto the iCloud pane to send them to the cloud. Each time you open TextEdit you'll be able to see all of the files you have stored in the cloud and access and edit them as you would any other document. You can also drag files on top of one another in the iCloud pane to create an iOS-style folder. That folder then appears as a location under the iCloud section of the Save File menu. The same feature is available in Preview, Pages, Numbers and Keynote, allowing you to quickly find a file by the app it was created in, regardless of the device it was created on. But what happens on your other devices? Let's say you create a Pages document and select the iCloud option when saving it. Head over to your iPad or iPhone connected to the same iCloud account, launch Pages and, hey presto, there's your file. Make changes to the file on your iOS device and, boom, the changes are reflected back on your Mac. Share and share alike with Sharing Another way that Mountain Lion can speed up your workflow (or help reduce procrastination time) is with the sharing features that are now fully implemented across the OS. Share links from Safari to Twitter or Facebook, send videos from QuickTime to YouTube and Vimeo, and upload images from iPhoto and Preview to Flickr. Everywhere you see that Share button (the rectangle with an arrow in it from iOS) there are sharing options available. The Share button also offers alternative sharing methods other than solely to social networks, with the option to add content to Messages or send it in an email. You can also make use of AirDrop, the wireless sharing feature that arrived with Lion, to send all types of media and content from your apps to other Macs connected to the same wireless network. Simply select AirDrop from the Sharing menu and pick a computer you want to send the content to. Once the other computer accepts the transfer, it's sent wirelessly over the network. A new way of surfing Safari Safari is another default app that has seen some time-saving upgrades, not least with its unified search and URL bar. Gone are the days of searching with one field and typing web addresses into the other. You can do it all in one place, and Safari will suggest search terms and websites as you type too. Using a simple pinch gesture on your trackpad, you can view all of your open tabs and swipe between them to find the page you're looking for. Reading List has also seen a big improvement, storing pages for you to read later (as a full page), so you don't need an internet connection in order to read them. Not only is Safari faster, but it also speeds up some of the common timewasters we're used to, such as forgetting passwords. You can now use the Safari Passwords pane to view your passwords. The panes requires your system password to unlock it, so everything is kept safe. Most important Mail One of the new features added to the Mail app in Mountain Lion makes filtering your messages much faster. The new feature is called VIPs and enables you to prioritise email from certain people. You can decide which contacts to make a VIP by clicking the star next to a person's name in your inbox, then a special VIP mailbox is created just for them. You can then quickly jump to viewing only messages from VIPs within the VIP smart mailbox, so those all-important messages don't get lost in the sea of marketing junk cluttering your inbox. Fast Finder Although Mountain Lion's Finder hasn't gained as much love as we'd like, it does still introduce a few new tricks to improve the way you work. Firstly, the much-maligned departure of Save As… in Apple apps like Pages and Keynote has seen something of a compromise. The Duplicate command remains the default option, but holding down Option when accessing the File menu changes it to Save As… so you can always be sure of where you're sending a new version of a file. Users can also customise the sidebar in Finder by dragging categories up or down in order of preference (in earlier OS releases you could reorder items, but the categories were fixed). Also, Quick Look is even easier to access by using a three-finger tap, when working on a laptop or the Apple Magic Trackpad, to invoke it. How to sync TextEdit files with Documents In The Cloud 1. The iCloud Pane When you launch TextEdit, the new browser pane appears with the iCloud section highlighted. Click New Document and create a file as normal, including images and formatting. 2. Save to the Cloud Click the File menu and select the Save… option. Type a name for your file and select iCloud from the Where drop-down menu. Now click the Save button. 3. Access your file Open TextEdit on a Mac that is running Mountain Lion and is connected to your iCloud account. The file will be available to open and edit, with changes reflected across all your Macs. Fun features! There are more than 200 new features in Mountain Lion, here's our guide to some you might not have heard of Half the fun with all OS X releases is finding the clever new tricks and techniques that have been added to the default apps and the system in general. To help you get on your way, we've pulled together some of our favourite new additions that are not only fun to use but also incredibly handy in most cases. Of course, there are more than 200 new features in Mountain Lion, many more than we can fit in here. However, some of the more interesting features include the ability to back up to multiple devices with Time Machine, and to encrypt those backups. Fifteen new screensaver slideshows have been added, enabling you to use your iPhoto library in a variety of different animations. Printing to AirPrint-enabled printers is much simpler now, without the need for downloading a driver. Any apps that require the X11 windowing system (such as the open-source photo editing app, GIMP) will now get X11 downloaded and installed automatically. And the Chess app (which has been lurking in the Mac OS in various forms for decades) is now Game Center-enabled, allowing you to play against other people online. How cool is that? Game Center goodies Not only is Game Center now available for Mac users, but it also brings about cross-platform gaming. Anyone who is playing games on an iOS device and is logged in to Game Center can challenge you to play head-to-head using your Mac. The new Notification Center feature will let you know when you receive a challenge so you can jump right in to the action. Even better, you can now use the AirPlay Mirroring feature in Mountain Lion to play the game on your TV for a real console-like experience. You do need to have a Mac made in 2011 or later to access the mirroring feature, however. Launchpad search If you have a huge number of apps installed on your Mac, the new search feature in Launchpad should help you find them quickly. Once Launchpad is invoked, simply start typing the name of an app to display the closest matches. Massive messages Sending attachments with the Messages app is great, but did you know that you can include attachments as large as 100MB? That's enough to send a short HD video clip. Do not disturb If you've got a deadline to hit or you just want some peace and quiet, you can turn all notifications off from within the Notification Center pane. Scroll to the top of the pane and set the Show Alerts and Banners setting to Off. You will now stop receiving notifications for the day or until you turn Notifications back on. Notifications are also turned off automatically if you're running a presentation in Keynote or if your display is mirrored on an external monitor. Wonderful Widgets We know Widgets in OS X are a bit old hat these days, but Apple keeps updating the Dashboard with new features. The latest is a new Widget browser that works in the same way as Launchpad and iOS app icons, with the ability to drag them on top of each other to create folders. Photo Booth to Twitter As well as being able to share your Photo Booth pictures and videos to Facebook, Flickr and Vimeo, you can also create a Twitter profile picture in Photo Booth and apply it from directly within the app. Fill out forms in Preview Preview now detects spaces for text in any PDF documents you open, allowing you to fill out the fields and save the changes so you don't have to worry about printing and scanning forms. Smart expandable scroll bars Lion's system-wide scroll bars can be a little tricky to grab and drag. That's no longer the case in Mountain Lion. Now, scroll bars expand when you hover your cursor over them, making it easier to click on them. Find Mail messages faster Mail introduces an Inline Find feature, similar to the one in Safari. When you search for a word or phrase in Mail, the text is highlighted in the message while the rest of the words are dimmed so you can find what you're looking for. Superior security Gatekeeper, a new addition to the Security pane in System Preferences, aims to prevent the installation of any apps that haven't come from the App Store or a verified developer. This helps you avoid malicious software and keep your computer free of infection. Drag and drop sharing When you share the screen of another Mac on your network, you can now quickly share files between the two computers by simply dragging and dropping a file onto the shared screen. The file will then be transferred to the remote Mac automatically. AirPlay audio As well as video mirroring, you can also set an AirPlay device as your Mac's audio output from the Audio pane in System Preferences. Simply select an Apple TV, AirPort Express connected to some speakers or an AirPlay Speaker system from the Output tab and all of your Mac's audio will be sent to that device. AirPlay Mirroring looks set to be a major feature of Mountain Lion, and one we're keen to explore. Finder file transfer When you transfer a file or folder in Mountain Lion, a new inline progress bar appears on the file's icon to show you how much of it has been copied so far. An X also appears at the top-left of the icon enabling you to cancel the transfer/copy function at any time. The Finder also now includes a Share button, so you can share files with friends or colleagues using Messages, Mail or AirDrop. TextEdit tweaks For a closer look at your TextEdit documents in Mountain Lion, you can now use a pinch gesture on your trackpad to zoom in, as you do in other apps, and slide your fingers apart to zoom back out. App Store updates Software updates now come via the Mac App Store's Updates screen alongside all of the apps you have downloaded from the store. The Mac App Store also automatically downloads Mac and OS X software updates for you. Full-screen freedom When using a secondary display with your Mac, you can view any app in full screen mode on your main screen or on the secondary screen by simply dragging the app to the desired display and clicking the full-screen button. Those who have tried and failed to do this on previous versions of OS X will really love this feature.

Opinion: Apple iGlass: the augmented reality glasses to kill casual conversation Posted: If you've ever met somebody who's incredibly famous, amazingly good-looking or both, and you're not incredibly famous, amazingly good-looking or both yourself, then you're probably familiar with The Look. They're looking at you, and they're smiling, but they're not really looking at you, and the smile hasn't reached their eyes. Their eyes aren't focusing on you; they're scanning the room for somebody with a higher profile, a more impressive bosom or six-pack abs. And it makes you feel insignificant. Wouldn't it be awful if, thanks to Apple, every look became The Look? Hello, iGlass. iGlass doesn't exist yet, but Apple's certainly been thinking about it: in US patent number 8212859, "Peripheral treatment for head-mounted displays", it outlines "projecting a source image in a head-mounted display apparatus for a user" to deliver "an enhanced viewing experience" for her or him. Smart specs, in other words. The patent was granted this year, but what Apple describes dates back to 2006 - so you can be sure it's been improving on the idea. And while we don't know exactly what Apple's been up to, we do know what its archrival Google is doing with head-mounted displays. Heads up Imagine: an Apple version of Google's Project Glass. It would be a display for your head, with notifications that floated above your nose, and icons that floated in front of your eyes. Instead of peering at a screen, you'd peer through one. Horrible. Don't get me wrong. I don't doubt that if Apple made high-tech specs, they'd be the most beautifully designed high-tech specs imaginable. My worry isn't the tech, the Big Brother aspect ("Record every moment of your waking life for data mining, police analysis and the future amusement of unspecified third parties? Allow/ Don't Allow") or even the price. My biggest worry is The Look. For all the benefits, I think sticking a screen in front of our eyes is a step too far in the wrong direction. Look around you when you're next on public transport, or in the pub, or in the park: endless people Tweeting and Facebooking and Song Popping, oblivious to their surroundings. We're divorced enough from the world already without putting a heads-up display between us and it. It's bad enough trying to keep people's attention when the competition is famous people, and beautiful ones. What chance have we got if we're also up against apps?

Apple amends and reposts Samsung Galaxy Tab statement Posted: Apple has posted a new version of a statement reflecting a High Court ruling that the Samsung Galaxy Tab did not copy the iPad's designs. Following the legal loss, Apple was forced to post an embarrassing statement on its own website. However the company fell short with a half-cocked, non-apology tucked away on the official site. Apple had pointed out that rulings in Germany and the United States had found differently and once the High Court got wind of this, it admonished Apple and ordered it replace the statement within 48 hours. New testament The new, more concise statement does less to undermine the court's judgement and reads as follows: "(UK) Limited's Galaxy Tablet Computers, namely the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 do notinfringe Apple's Community registered design No. 0000181607-0001. A copy of the full judgment of the High Court is available from www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2012/1882.html." "That Judgment has effect throughout the European Union and was upheld by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales on 18 October 2012. A copy of the Court of Appeal's judgment is available from www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1339.html. There is no injunction in respect of the Community registered design in force anywhere in Europe." The court order also requires Apple to take out adverts in UK publications like T3 and The Guardian.

In Depth: Five Steve Jobs movies that would actually be worth watching Posted: Steve Jobs: the movie When Steve Jobs died last year, many of us heard the sound of Apple fans grieving - but as Jobs' authorised biography rocketed to the top of the book charts, the sound Hollywood heard was the sound of jingling cash registers. It's hardly surprising, then, that old interviews have been quickly repackaged and sent to cinemas (Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview appeared in US cinemas in May) while studios are rushing to capture Jobs' story on film. There are two biopics currently in production: jOBS, starring Ashton Kutcher, and Steve Jobs, adapted from Walter Isaacson's biography by The West Wing and The Social Network writer Aaron Sorkin. The films will be very different. jOBS will concentrate on Jobs' life from leaving college to his triumphant return to Apple, while Steve Jobs is likely to be longer, wordier and interested in Jobs' entire life. But they are both likely to encounter the same problem: while Jobs was an extraordinary man who created an extraordinary company, his story isn't particularly visual. When he made computers in his garage this was world-changing, but watching him agonise over the perfect shade of beige for a computer case or demand the removal of floppy disc drives from the original iMac is hardly going to make for gripping cinema. However, that got us thinking. How would the world's greatest film directors make the Steve Jobs story a must-see movie production? We started to wonder how differently the story would be told by Hollywood's different directors, and who would be best for the job. After some heated discussions, we settled on a shortlist: the peerless, and some would say brainless, action movie director Michael Bay of Transformers and Pearl Harbor fame; David Fincher of Fight Club, Se7en and The Social Network; Pixar's John Lasseter, director of Cars and A Bug's Life as well as executive producer of Bolt, Finding Nemo and Brave; the inimitable Coen Brothers, who brought us Raising Arizona, Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou?; and last but definitely not least, the late, great Norah Ephron, writer of When Harry Met Sally and writer/director of You've Got Mail and Sleepless In Seattle. What might they have done with the story of Steve - and would any self-respecting Apple fan actually want to see the results? Stock up on popcorn and pass the pick 'n' mix as we try to re-imagine 'Steve Jobs: The Movie'. Steve Jobs: Android Killer Director: Michael Bay Starring: Shia LeBeouf (Steve Jobs), Megan Fox (Steve Wozniak), Mickey Rourke (Eric Schmidt), Jason Statham (Jonathan Ive) Certificate: 15 Running time: 203 minutes We suspect that if Michael Bay were to be given a screenplay about Steve Jobs, he'd speed-read it - and the only bit that would get his attention would be the word "Android" and Jobs' expletive-ridden rant about the "f***Ing stolen product" that he intended to "wage thermonuclear war" over. Androids? Theft? Thermonuclear war? That's more than enough for Bay to make a movie - hell, make a trilogy! A quadrilogy! But it's hard to imagine a realistic-looking Steve Wozniak making the final cut, so expect Woz to become a pretty lady with a tendency to bend over pumped-up muscle cars while wearing the skimpiest bikinis imaginable. Similarly, Eric Schmidt is not muscular enough to be a Michael Bay baddie. In Bay's version, when Steve Jobs says "war" he means it, ordering design-guru Jonathan Ive to build him a robotic super-suit that he can use to smash Schmidt, Google and every Android device on Earth. Character development taken care of, Steve Jobs: Android Killer would then spend the remaining three-quarters of its running time showing Jobs' and Schmidt's robot suits bashing seven shades of crap out of one another to a loud Linkin Park soundtrack, with the battle interspersed with gratuitous explosions, helicopters and shots of Megan Fox. Swipe Director: David Fincher Starring: Edward Norton (Steve Jobs), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Eric Schmidt), Christopher Lloyd (Steve Ballmer) Certificate: 12A Running time: 120 minutes Fincher would explore the friendship between Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt, the ways in which Apple and Google's partnerships repeatedly out-manoeuvred Microsoft (Christopher Lloyd in his best bit of bald buffoonery since he played Uncle Fester in The Addams Family), and the subsequent fallout when Jobs discovered the extent of Schmidt's duplicity. In lesser hands the role of Jobs in particular could easily become a scenery-munching Al Pacino shoutfest, but Edward Norton has the acting chops to deliver a nuanced portrayal that encompasses both Steve Jobs' legendary charm and his famous rages. Anybody can shout, but Norton can do cold fury like nobody else - remember American History X? - and he's got just the right amount of cheekiness to do a convincing Reality Distortion Field too. When Norton as Jobs finally blows his top once he's discovered the truth about Schmidt you'll be shrinking back in your seat in fear. Swipe wouldn't just be an opportunity for Norton to show his range, though: the talented Mr Hoffman would bring real gravitas to the Eric Schmidt role, and as we've seen in films such as Doubt and Capote, he can make even repellent people interesting and worth watching. To him, Android's imitation of iOS is just business - but to Jobs, it's a deep and personal betrayal. Steve-E Director: John Lasseter Starring: n/a Certificate: U Running time: 81 minutes Pixar's great genius, like Walt Disney's, lies in its ability to invest non-human characters with real warmth and depth, and that genius would shine through this tale of a bad-tempered robot who only wants to make beautiful things. Dialogue-free and with a restrained, barely there soundtrack largely consisting of obscure Bob Dylan tracks, Steve-E would follow the eponymous, anthropomorphic robot as each day his attempts to make something perfect in the sterile world of Infinite Loop end in frustration and fury. Steve-E rages wordlessly and often, and his fellow bots become increasingly irritated by his perfectionism and rule-breaking; when Steve-E loses his temper at a meeting and attacks high-ranking bot Scull-E, he finds himself exiled to the snowy wastes of Siberia. Exiled with only his pet bee, Woz, for company, Steve-E travels the icy climate, until one day he discovers a frozen robot of a strange and foreign design. Reactivating the bot, he discovers that it is iVE, an industrial design-bot, and the two robots form a fast friendship based on creating beautiful designs in the snow and ice. As their friendship matures, iVE discovers the power of simplicity, while Steve-E discovers the power of friendship. Steve-E returns from exile with iVE in tow to save the world from poor design. The penultimate scenes of Steve-E looking down on the world he's saved could move entire cinemas of grown men to tears. Insanely Great Director: Joel and Ethan Coen Starring: Jeff Bridges (Steve Jobs), John Goodman (John Sculley), Steve Buscemi (William HB Gates) Certificate: PG Running time: 113 minutes We can't imagine the Coen Brothers making a straight Steve Jobs biopic; they're much more likely to set it in an enormous art-deco skyscraper in a heavily fictionalised, 1950s New York casting Jeff Bridges in full-on Dude mode as a wise-cracking and permanently bombed innovator who doesn't smell so great. Insanely Great would follow the story of Stephen P Jobs, Esq as he designs steampunk-inspired computers for his own company, Appler Industries. Jobs loves his work and business is booming - or so he thinks. However, Jobs' love of jazz cigarettes means he's missed important clues: while he's been taking care of the products, his right hand man, John Sculley, hasn't been taking care of business. Under his watch Appler has hired a rogues' gallery of yes-men and no-hopers, Jobs' best designs mutilated and Appler's loyal customers treated with disdain in the name of maximising profits. There's only one way for Jobs to save his company: he must strike a deal with his arch-enemy, William HB Gates III. Gates has the money Jobs needs to save Appler, and Gates knows it - so instead of just handing over the money, he makes Jobs humiliate himself for Gates' own amusement. That would give Insanely Great the dubious distinction of being one of the few films whose climactic scenes revolve around a high-stakes hula hoop battle. Cranky in Cupertino Director: Norah Ephron Starring: Noah Wyle (Steve Jobs), Anthony Michael Hall (Bill Gates) Certificate: 12A Running time: 96 minutes The late, great Norah Ephron would have found plenty of material in the relationship between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, two men with very different worldviews who were bitter enemies but perhaps also became good friends. Their intertwined stories have it all: humour, drama and a tear-jerking ending. Norah Ephron's best films had emotional depth and lots of humour, and the relationship between Gates and Jobs had both in spades. Their enmity was almost cartoonish at times, Jobs taking great delight in mocking Gates and Microsoft at every opportunity, but there was a core of real respect there: Apple wouldn't be around today if it weren't for Microsoft's late-1990s $150 million investment, and, by 2007, the men were secure enough and mellow enough to be nice to each other at the All Things Digital 5 conference. Well, Gates was nice, anyway. Who would deliver Ephron's trademarked, whip-smart wisecracks? The internet quite likes the idea of Keanu Reeves, but we think there'd be a lot of fun in reuniting the Jobs and Gates of 1999's Pirates of Silicon Valley, Noah Wyle and Anthony Michael Hall. Wyle's the only actor whose portrayal of Jobs had Steve's grudging stamp of approval, and while Hall's resemblance to Gates has dimmed, his recent CV shows that he probably could do with the work.

Dev emulates new Fusion Drive with current Mountain Lion Posted: Developer Patrick Stein recently demonstrated Mountain Lion has software that already supports Fusion Drive, Apple's newly announced hybrid hard drive. He did this by jury-rigging his own version of the upcoming storage solution. Apple announced the new storage device just a week ago. It's basically a traditional hard drive and a faster solid state drive "fused together with software," that shows up as one volume on which to store files. The Fusion Drive allows for faster reading and writing that is cheaper than a purely flash-based device. Fusing drives together Stein showed on his Tumblr Wednesday that it's possible to connect a SSD and an HDD together and get Mountain Lion to recognize the two drives as a single logical volume. That connection is basically what the new Fusion Drive comes down to. Stein achieved the feat with a SATA-connected 128GB SDD and a USB-tethered 750GB HDD. He started by launching the Terminal version of disk utility. He used Core Storage, an OS X feature that links separate storage devices into single volumes, and then created a 466GB HSF+ volume, which is also known as a Mac OS Extended. After a few tests, Stein confirmed he mimicked the new Fusion Drive. "Now in DiskUtility the individual disks no longer show, but the Logical Volume (LV) shows as one disk," Stein wrote on his blog. "Part One is finished, we've created a single Volume consisting of a SSD and an HDD." The whole thing proves that the current version of Mountain Lion will work with the Fusion Drives without needing an update. OS X 10.8.3 on the way In other Cupertino news, developers close to Apple received invitations Wednesday to test the beta version of OS X 10.8.3. Apple usually sends out such invitations before it starts letting programmers get a look at a new version of its operating systems. Those hoping to get a glimpse of what the new version of Mountain Lion will include might be a little disappointed. There's no indication what changes might be in store for the update, only that Apple is a little closer to releasing it. The pre-release beta period will give developers a chance to get ahead of any bugs an update of Mountain Lion might cause before it's released to the public.

Updated: Apple loses iPhone trademark in Mexico, can still sell iPhones Posted: In 2009, Apple filed a suit against Mexican communications company iFone for the rights to the similar sounding iPhone trademark. iFone had been granted the trademark to its name in 2003, a full four years before Apple attempted to gain the iPhone trademark in Mexico ahead of the first iPhone's launch. Last week, a Mexican court denied Apple's appeal, granting iFone a small victory which resulted in the communications company filing a countersuit for damages. While it first appeared as if the ruling would result in the ban of all sales for iPhone-branded products, a deeper investigation into the matters proved otherwise. Though Apple and iFone are still in the middle of court proceedings, the launch of the the iPhone 5 in Mexico will apparently go off without a hitch Saturday. Class is in session Trademarks are filed in classes, meaning multiple companies can have the same word trademarked as long as the specifications are different. As The Verge reported, Apple holds iPhone trademarks in Mexico under Class 9 and Class 28, which covers electronic gaming devices. iFone, however, has its trademark under Class 38, which covers telecommunication services. The dispute came about when Apple attempted to go after iFone's Class 38 trademark, which the Cupertino company's lawyers believed iFone was not actively using. Since Apple wants to protect the iPhone brand, it made sense for the company to try to wrangle as many possible trademarks for the name as possible. However, the Mexican court saw things in iFone's favor, and opened the door for the communications company to countersue. TechRadar reached out to Butzel Long's Bill Panagos for a legal perspective on the events. "What happened was iFone had the trademark in Class 38. Apple didn't see any commercial activity on the trademark," Pangos explained. "In countries like Mexico, if you don't use the trademark for a certain period it's subject to a cancellation proceeding." "I've done this with my own clients. I'll file the application, and get a trademark in the two classes that I know I can get it in, and I'll watch the use in the third class. "When the statutory period comes up, and there's no evidence of use, you file a cancellation proceeding, and try to cancel that mark. When you do that, you get to file your application into that class." "I think that's what happened here, and the iFone showed that it was using the trademark. At that point, the mark becomes unassailable. It's valid, and Apple would be found to infringe that for selling iPhones." Much ado about nothing? Apple is no stranger to trademark infringement suits involving the iPhone name. In 2007, Cisco Systems and Apple became embroiled in a court battle over the iPhone brand, as Cisco had been selling internet phones dubbed iPhone since 2006. Both companies eventually came to a settlement, which may be where the new case between Apple and iFone is headed. iFone is apparently seeking upwards of 40 percent of all iPhone sales in Mexico, and could attempt to block all sales of the iPhone 5 entirely. Panagos again offered his interpretation on the events, saying, "iFone is going to have to show that goodwill was harmed, and that the quality of the iFone name was damaged by iPhone, and that the iPhone sales were trading on the iFone name. That's a very difficult thing to do." "I do believe there will be a settlement," Panagos speculated. "My bet is Apple will just find some way to buy them out, or get a license. Either of those options would allow iPhone to be used for telecommunications, and not have the problem of trademark infringement."

Apple senior VP in for more Samsung patent trial questioning Posted: The California court overseeing the appeals process for Samsung's recent $1 billion-plus loss to Apple ruled on Thursday that Apple's head of worldwide marketing must make himself available for more questioning by Samsung lawyers. Whom is that particular witness? None other than Phil Schiller, who testified during the four-week trial in August. Both Apple and Samsung will get the opportunity to interrogate numerous expert witnesses over the weekend. Judge's orders The depositions were ordered on Monday, but Apple spent the week in part arguing that Schiller is not an expert witness, and can only comment on facts, not provide an expert's opinion. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal shot down that notion Thursday, writing, "Clarification of the court's Oct. 29 order is what Apple wants, and so clarification Apple shall get. "No later than Nov. 5, 2012, Mr. Schiller shall appear for three hours of deposition. It is so ordered." And so it shall be done Schiller will have to make himself available to Samsung's lawyers outside of a courtroom before Monday. Luckily for him, the interrogation can't last longer than three hours, though they'll no doubt make good use of that time. Computerworld pointed out that Schiller provided some of the most entertaining testimony in the original Apple vs. Samsung trial, touching on topics such as how Apple conceived of the iPhone and iPad. At the time, Samsung's lawyers questioned Schiller for more details about the devices' designs, as well as emails on which he was CC'd that reportedly showed proof of Apple copying features from existing devices. Losing appeal Naturally, Samsung wasn't too pleased with the court's decision to award Apple more than $1 billion. For its part, Apple wasn't happy either; the Cupertino company actually wanted more money, and as of September was seeking an additional $2 billion. The appeal hearing will begin on Dec. 6, and while either company could come out on top financially, both have lost enough face that each should be questioning whether this dispute is worth sustaining.

Analyst: innovation at Apple is 'sputtering' Posted: Apple is not the innovative force it once was, according to one industry analyst who has criticised the company for failing to launch touchscreen Macs. Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdry said Apple had pioneered touchscreens and high-resolution displays, but had missed a step by failing to push these innovations to its entire computing line. Despite record demand for Apple products, Chowdry wrote in a note to investors: "Apple's innovation is sputtering." "Why is that Apple, the company that brought touch to phones and tablets, stopped just there and did not bring touch to notebooks and iMacs? "Why is it that Apple brought high-resolution screens to…some Mac MacBooks and not to all devices? High-resolution screens are a commodity today." Record R&D spending The company has, of course, just recently brought the Retina display to the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models, but has resisted calls for it to launch a touchscreen iPad / MacBook hybrid. Chowdry's comments come just a day after Apple revealed it had increased research and development spending by 39 per cent (up by $1B / £600M) for the financial year ending September 2012. The spending remained at a flat, 2 per cent of the company's total sales, but if Apple's innovative flair is suddenly lacking, it's not through a lack of investment. Pressure Chowdy also stated that recent missteps like the incomplete Maps apps, which reportedly led to the impending departure of executive Scott Forstall, may signify a lack of efficient planning at One Infinite Loop. He added: "Our contacts speculate that Apple executive leadership may have rushed Scott Forstall to deliver products prematurely. "This may also indicate that Apple may be lacking a three to four-year product road map, because if a roadmap existed, engineers would not be pushed to ship products prematurely — especially when they are not fully tested." Chowdry's analysis paints an almost chaotic picture of life at modern day Apple. While there's a chance he may be correct regarding 'rushed products,' criticising Apple for its conscious decision not to introduce touchscreen computers is a little more contentious.

Apple releases iOS 6.0.1 to address bugs, Maps unchanged Posted: Apple has released the first update for iOS 6, bringing the new mobile operating system up to version 6.0.1. But the most controversial feature of iOS 6 - Apple's new Maps app - remains unchanged. Instead, Apple focused on bug fixes for iOS 6.0.1, addressing issues with the iPhone 5's Wi-Fi connectivity and its ability to receive over-the-air (OTA) updates, among others. Bug fixes and more bug fixes Besides the OTA and Wi-Fi bugs, iOS 6.0.1 addresses problems with the virtual keyboard, camera flash, lock screen, Exchange meetings, and cellular data connectivity. In addition, the update "consolidated the Use Cellular Data switch for iTunes Match," whatever that means. Due to the iPhone 5's issues with OTA updates, users looking up upgrade to iOS 6.0.1 will have to download an updater app or (gasp!) connect their devices to iTunes. The maptastrophe continues Two hundred million Apple customers have upgraded their devices to iOS 6, despite many users' complaints regarding the Apple Maps app. Apple Maps has been proven inaccurate and lacking in details, and the update was labeled a "maptastrophe" in September. Sources at the time said that Apple was hiring former Google employees specifically to fix the iOS 6 maps problems, but there's been no official word of a solution. More recently, Apple announced that Scott Forstall, the senior vice president of iOS, will leave Apple in 2013. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Forstall was asked to depart after refusing to sign a letter apologizing for the problems with Apple's iOS 6 Maps, a letter that eventually appeared with Apple CEO Tim Cook's signature instead.

In Depth: 20 of the best OS X menulets Posted: 20 of the best OS X menulets Every Mac power user understands the might of the OS X menu bar. But for the rest of us, that ever-present beam topping our desktops has been ignored for too long. But we're not here to harp on about application menus. It's the Spotlight end of the bar where our eyes roam. You'll likely see a few icons there already - system items such as Wi-Fi signal and volume, for example. An iChat bubble, perhaps. A display selector, if you're lucky. Apple calls these symbols 'Menu Extras'. What won't be so obvious, though, is what your menu bar is missing. We're talking third-party 'menulets' - super-charged icons that when clicked on provide quick access to inspired applets and novel services. If you've a Dropbox account, you have one; likewise if you Growl. But there are many more first-rate menulets out there just waiting to be discovered. So we did the legwork for you. Here's 20 of the very best... 1. Fantastical Price: £14 The Calendar app to rule them all. Fantastical is the easiest way to create new events and reminders straight from your desktop. A single click on its menulet opens up a mini calender view. Type in an event or reminder such as 'Lunch with Denise on Thursday at 1pm' and you can consider it a date, because Fantastical understands natural language input. It also features a search bar for you to instantly find future events. And with iCal, BusyCal, Entourage and Outlook support, it's got all heavy schedules covered. Just want to keep abreast of pre-arranged dates? Then try CalendarBar (£1.99, Mac App Store) instead - it tracks Facebook events too. 2. Boom Price: $4.99 (£2.99) You've maxed out your Mac's volume for the loudest possible sound but it's just not loud enough. Luckily, Boom is here to help. With its simple slider control, you can boost sonic output system-wide. You can even remap the sound characteristics of your Mac with its fine-grained equaliser, for which you can create and save custom presets for individual apps or audio scenarios. There's more: Boom can boost the volume of your music and video files for louder playback on your iOS devices, by creating a special playlist for export. 3. DesktopTidy Price: £2.99 Desktop clutter can be a perennial problem for even organised OS X users. It's not just unsightly - if you're showing work to a client it can look unprofessional. DesktopTidy promises to clear away the detritus into a 'shadow desktop' accessible from your menu bar. You can schedule automatic icon sweeps to occur weekly or even every minute, and apply filters to the shadow desktop to order files chronologically, hide older ones or group them by type. A useful ignore list let's you set DesktopTidy to allow certain file types to remain unhidden; it also tells you how much disk space the files in your shadow desktop are taking up. 4. Radium Price: £17.49 Radium works as a convenient portal to the world of streaming internet radio. Search for stations by name, country, language, genre, or any combination of these. Whenever you find a song you like, you can favourite it, preview it later, or buy it directly from iTunes. Radium supports a range of customisable shortcut keys and includes an equaliser with plenty of presets. It can even turn on AirPlay for streaming radio around the house. 5. gfxCardStatus Price: Free Modern high-end MacBook Pros pack both integrated and discrete graphics cards, switching between them dynamically in an effort to conserve battery life. This action depends on the app you're running. Trouble is, some apps are greedier than others. gfxCardStatus simply allows you to see which apps are using power-hungry discrete graphics and affecting your battery life most. It does this by notifying you when the GPU switches, and even lets you force your Mac to run in either mode. 6. Google Notifier Price: Free Yes, Google Notifier is old, but if you're not a fan of Apple Mail, it's still the simplest route to your Gmail inbox - plus it's free. New mail notifications appear in your menu bar with a quick preview of the message subject, sender, and a snippet of the mail body. It also notifies you of upcoming Google Calendar events, including date, time, event title and location. 7. Caffeine Price: Free The tiniest menulet in our list, but no less useful. Click the Caffeine icon to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen, or starting your screensaver. Option-click it to set a wake duration, and empty the coffee mug again to disable. Perfect for presentations, film marathons and work/play all-nighters. 8. Insomniax Price: Free Insomniax enables the use of Clamshell mode (OS operation with the lid closed) in the absence of an external display or power source. It does this by disabling your Mac's auto-sleep feature, meaning you can continue to play music through external speakers or leave big files downloading with the lid down. Don't worry: a CPU safety feature ensures InsomniaX is disabled if your Mac gets too toasty. 9. Tictoc Price: £2.99 Some jobs become so involved it's all too easy to forget how long they actually took - a nightmare for freelancers and anyone else who has to report the time they sank into a particular project. Tictoc is a simple task timer that stays in your menu bar out of the way and only pops up when you click it. Just press the + button to add a task, assign it a name, hit start, and get on with the job. You can pause the timer at idle moments, and the interface allows multiple timers to tick over concurrently. Tasks are logged chronologically; best of all, you can export task info to XML and CSV for easy import into your accounting or project management app. 10. Shady Price: Free Adjusting your Mac's screen brightness from the keyboard is all well and good, but what if you need more granular control to save your vision - and what about that eye-searing external display? Shady hands you the reins on both counts. Change the brightness of all your screens in increments of 5% using the menulet's slider, and save your shade level for it to be restored next time you feel that headache coming on. Definitely one for the graveyard shift. 11. XMenu Price: Free Not a fan of LaunchPad, the Dock or Dock-based folder and file access? Try XMenu on for size. Clicking its icon reveals global menus to your applications, folders, documents and files. You can customise what appears in the dropdown, so if you wish this or that app had a menu bar shortcut, now's your chance to make one for it. Simple but convenient. 12. Monocle Price: Free Say you're immersed in a piece of work and need to look up something online to get any further with it, but firing up your browser and navigating to the right search engine for the job seems a hassle at best, and at worst a distraction. Monocle is the perfect solution to such a scenario. It's an online search tool that can be raised via a hotkey, and delivers live Google results in its dropdown as you type. You can easily switch between engines to fine-tune your search, and you can add to it any search engine (or website with a search function) you like. You can even assign 'callwords' to quickly jump to a specific engine, without ever going near the mouse. 13. Trickster Price: £6.99 Losing track of that file you were just working on is about to become a thing of the past. In a beautifully refined interface, Trickster keeps tabs on all of your recently used files and applications so you don't have to. Whether it's a document you were reading, a file you downloaded, or an attachment you just emailed to someone, Trickster has it tracked. You can drag items from its recent list onto your Dock or into other applications, open them or show them in Finder, or enable one of its many file-kind filters to speed up your search. A sidebar offers fast access to your favourite folders and files, and you can even flag important files or drop new ones on the Trickster icon to add them to its list. 14. I Love Stars Price: £1.49 iTunes' star ratings system is a great way to organise your music library around your favourite - and not so favourite - tracks. But rating all those songs is a huge undertaking, and simply not practical if you have them on in the background while you're busy with something else. With I Love Stars, however, you can rate the currently playing song from your menu bar with a single mouse click. Play, pause and next buttons also feature in its dropdown, as well as cover art for the currently played song. You can even set up keyboard shortcuts to set stars, making rating as unobtrusive as possible. 15. SmartMenu for iTunes Price: 69p Smart Menu for iTunes is a highly customisable iTunes applet that displays the currently playing song in your menu bar, including track number, artist, album and duration, all in the font of your choosing. It's not intrusive either, as it scrolls the information in a user-defined space at a speed you designate, thereby avoiding clutter and leaving room for all those other icons you've likely added already... 16. Living Earth HD Price: £4.99 This awesome menulet began life as an iOS app, and you'll be glad it made the jump. Living Earth HD grants you access to the world's time zones and weather forecasts of cities around the world, all beautifully displayed on a rotatable, scaleable, 3D rendering of our globe. Its near real-time tracking of cloud cover and active storms really ups the 'live' feeling you get when ogling the view, and the option to expand your orbit to the entire desktop wallpaper only adds to the wonder. See it on a Retina display and you might just hit zero gravity. 17. PinBar Pro Price: £1.99 OS X Mountain Lion embraced Facebook and Twitter with open arms, but for whatever reason Pinterest got the cold shoulder. You can rectify the jilted social network with this little 'let. PinBar Pro allows you to browse the latest pins right from your desktop and in an unobtrusive way. Within its mini viewing window you can see what friends have pinned as well as comment, like or re-pin their posts on your own board. The unofficial applet supports multi-touch gestures, while a desktop mode even lets you zoom pins to full size. 18. SnappyApp Price: Free The multiple desktops of Mountain Lion and the rise of ultraportables means we're swiping between apps more than ever. That's fine as it goes, but when you're referencing two apps that are competing for screen space it quickly begins to frustrate. SnappyApp offers an escape. Essentially it captures a static shot of any area you define within its crosshairs and floats it, or 'snaps' it to the desktop. You can have more than one selection snapped to the screen, save snaps for later, and even share them over email, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. 19. iStat Menus 3 Price: $16 (£10) The granddaddy of diagnostic applets. iStat Menus 3 crams into the bar real-time data on every piece of Mac hardware you could possibly want to monitor. There's detailed information on your battery's current state; multifarious memory stats; disk input/output activity; network activity; disk usage; CPU core usage; hard drive and CPU temperature; fan RPM; voltages, current, power... even your top system resource hogs get shamed. You can visualise almost all of this in a range of graph and chart types. And if that's not enough, it even offers a highly configurable world time and calendar view, with moon phases thrown in for good measure. 20. Bartender Price: Free Yep, we thought you might need this one. With Bartender you can choose which of all those lovely menulets appear in your menu bar, which live in Bartender's click-to-reveal sub-menubar, and which get hidden completely. Not only that, veiled menulets can be set to appear for five seconds whenever they update, so you won't miss a thing. Of course if minimalism isn't your bag, you could always have Bartender get rid of the entire application menu in order to display the maximum possible number of menulets... but that would be overdoing it, right? Got a menulet you can't live without that we haven't covered here? Let us know in the comments below!

iPad mini ship dates disappear, replaced by vague time frames Posted: Customers who pre-ordered the LTE version of Apple's iPad mini on Friday received oddly specific ship dates from Apple, with most falling during the week of Thanksgiving. No doubt many looked forward to playing Jetpack Joyride on the couch after dinner, using their turkey-stuffed stomachs to prop up the 7.9-inch Apple tablet. On Wednesday, though, Apple began altering the expected ship dates for LTE iPad minis from specific days in the Nov. 21-23 range to the vague time frame of "mid-November." Trick or treat? How about a tablet? Is the iPad mini LTE's new, less specific arrival time a spooky Halloween trick, or is Apple simply experiencing more supply issues? When the iPad mini became available for pre-order on Friday, the white model reportedly sold out for U.S. customers in around 20 minutes, and expected ship dates for some models promptly jumped up to around Black Friday. But in Europe, iPad mini stock reportedly was still available long after pre-orders began. So it's unclear whether the altered iPad mini LTE shipping time frames handed out Wednesday are the result of low stocks or if Apple is simply playing it safe in case the devices don't make it out by the previously promised dates. That may indeed by the explanation customers are looking for, as Apple's website said all along that the iPad mini LTE would arrive in mid-November. On the other hand, Slashgear reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook has admitted that the company is "in a significant state of backlog." Worth the wait The rumors about the adorable iPad mini were finally confirmed in October, when Apple announced the pint-sized tablet at a press conference last week. The iPad 4, also known as the new iPad with Retina Display, was revealed at the same event. The 16GB Wi-Fi-only iPad mini goes for $329 (UK£269, AUD$369), the 32GB version is $429 (UK£349, AUD$479) and 64GB costs $529 (UK£429, AUD$589). The LTE-compatible iPad mini, meanwhile, comes it at $459 (UK£369), $559 (UK£449) and $659 (UK£529) for 16GB/32GB/64GB, respectively, plus a cellular data plan on Sprint, AT&T or Verizon and EE in the U.K.

FaceTime and Messages suit falls into Apple's lap Posted: Apple's had some peaks and valleys over the last few months, including the success of iPhone 5, confoundment over the iPad mini's price, record earnings and the departure of some of its top execs. Now the Cupertino firm has a lawsuit breathing down its neck. Intercarrier Communications (ICC) a Texas-based firm, has filed a suit in U.S. District Court that says Apple's FaceTime and Message apps infringe upon one of its patents. The contested patent is called "Inter-Carrier messaging service providing phone number only experience," and essentially covers a method to send messages between users on different carriers using nothing but a phone number. Trolling ICC's filing claimed it "has been harmed by [Apple's] infringing activities." The firm requested a jury trial and an unspecified amount in damages for past infringement and any continuing or future infringement, including interest, costs, expenses and other fees such as attorneys' fees. Apple isn't ICC's only target: Patently Apple reported that in the past five days, it has filed suits against a score of other companies, including MobiWeb, Iris Wireless and Broadsoft. In each suit, ICC has cited the same patent. While ICC's claims may be warranted, there is a distinct possibility the firm is a "patent troll," a patent holder that aggressively or opportunistically persecutes accused violators without the intention to manufacture or market anything based off of the patent. Apple is no stranger to lawsuits, and depending on the damages, should be able to flush some funds out of its recent $1.05 billion (around UK£664 million, AUD$1.01 billion) payday from Samsung. TechRadar has reached out to Apple and will update this story if and when they company responds.

Microsoft CEO: Apple a 'low-volume player' in every category except iPad Posted: Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system and Surface tablet tie its software and hardware together for the first time, but the company's CEO doesn't feel as if it's mimicking "low-volume player" Apple. "We like our model, as we are evolving it," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a post-Windows 8 launch interview with the Wall Street Journal. "In every category Apple competes, it's the low-volume player, except in tablets." Sure enough, Apple's market share PC market share sat at just 13.6 percent in the third quarter, according to technology research firm Gartner. "In the PC market, obviously the advantage of diversity has mattered since 90-something percent of PCs that get sold are Windows PCs," Ballmer said. Today, Microsoft added to that total, announcing it reached 4 million Windows 8 upgrades in the first few days of the operating system's availability. "We'll see what winds up mattering in tablets." But Microsoft isn't the smartphone leader, either Ballmer's comments make it seem as if Microsoft is leading Apple in every category, but it's really Google that is the smartphone market leader. Google's Android operating system is expected to be activated in 1 billion devices by next year, adding to the company's current 52.2 percent market share. Apple controls 33.4 percent of the mobile device market, according to the same pre-iPhone 5 numbers. Microsoft, meanwhile, had just 3.6 percent of the smartphone market space in September, says comScore. Windows Phone 8 devices like the HTC Windows Phone 8X and Samsung Ativ S are could help Microsoft push that number up a little bit. Can't touch Apple's iPad dominance Ballmer was right about one thing: Microsoft can't call Apple a low-volume player in the tablet market. Apple has sold more than 100 million iPads since the 9.7-inch devices launched two and a half years ago. With the 7.9-inch iPad mini on the way, analysts believe that Apple could double that figure, selling 101.6 million iPads in 2013 alone. Apple VP criticizes risk-averse PC Microsoft's CEO isn't the only executive waging a war of words. Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, took a shot at PC market rivals last week, saying that PC makers are "afraid" to phase out dated technology. "Old technologies [like rotating discs] are holding us back," Schiller said of the components in most Windows 8 PCs. "They're anchors on where we want to go." "Our competitors are afraid to remove them. We find the things that have outlived their useful purpose." In the end, it's a battle between a high-volume business heavily anchored in old components and low-volume, innovative technology solutions.

Report: new iTunes won't arrive until end of November Posted: It seems like forever ago, but alongside the unveiling of the iPhone 5, Apple also revealed a new and improved iTunes would soon arrive. The time has stretched for iTunes 11 to drop, and now it appears eager iTuners will have to wait even longer: a report now has the overhaul taking place near the end of next month. "The new iTunes is taking longer than expected and we wanted to take a little extra time to get it right," Apple spokesman Tom Neuymar reportedly said in a statement. "We look forward to releasing this new version of iTunes with its dramatically simpler and cleaner interface and seamless integration with iCloud before the end of November." Long time coming News of the new iTunes first arrived Sept. 12. While the world scrambled to get its hands on the latest Apple handset, mental notes were made that the Cupertino firm pegged late October as the time to look for iTunes 11. Reports surfaced last week that an overhauled tunes (and more) service would launch soon after Apple's announcement for the iPad mini, but those hopes soon fizzled. Apple reportedly hasn't offered any explanation for the delay, though fresh management shakeups might be to blame. That, or the company is simply more wary of releasing half-baked upgrades after its Maps embarrassment. What we do know is that the new iTunes promises a full-window interface, new library view, new MiniPlayer, Facebook integration, iCloud integration and the death of Ping. For a complete look of what TechRadar expects to see in iTunes 11 when it finally arrives, check out our complete "what you need to know" rundown.

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