With Christmas on its way, we have put together a present buying guide, with our favourite Apple products. From iPads to MacBook Pros, and iMacs to iPods, Apple’s range of products has something for everyone.



We include some of our favourites, such as Apple TV and the iPad smart cover.

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Just our own piece of video, from July 2001, taken at Macworld New York. This was from after the keynote and Jobs stayed around for about 45 mins, talking to the press, Apple managers and various well-wishers. As he approached one person, she shook his hand enthusiastically as the press continued to take pictures, and said “you guys are like rock stars!” This was before the iPod was launched, before the iPad.

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The announcement this week that Steve Jobs was resigning as Apple CEO formalised what was already in place. Jobs took medical leave from Apple in January 2011, and Tim Cook was acting-CEO since then. The decision by Jobs to resign as CEO and move to Chairman of the board simply crystallised an existing situation in the leadership at Apple.



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If you need any indication of just how much Apple dominates the tablet market, you just need to glance at this chart:


© Business Insider

The developments at HP in the last week just further strengthen this position. HP announced that it had decided to stop manufacturing its webOS devices, and held a fire-sale of all HP TouchPad tablets. The TouchPad was the number two tablet on the market, even if this was far behind the figures for the iPad.

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Tags: iPad | iOS | iPod | iPhone

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Since the launch of Mac OS X Lion, there has been a long catalogue of articles and reviews. We have gathered a list of the best of the web, and set out our reading list. We hope this is useful to find out about the new aspects of 10.7:



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Tags: 10.7

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Apple are due to launch their new operating system, Mac OS 10 X Lion 10.7, before the end of July. But the question is–are you ready?



Mac OS X Lion will run on any new Mac, bought within the last few years. Here is how to check to see if your Mac is compatible with Lion:
1/ go to your Apple menu and choose “About this Mac”
2/ check to see that your processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo or above
3/ check that your memory is above 1 GB
4/ look for the version number and make sure you are running Mac OS X Snow Leopard: 10.6.8

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Tags: 10.7 | Apple | Apps

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We have read a number of news articles in recent days, such as the article from Bloomberg, about the arrival of an iPhone 5 in September. It might be a good time to look at what happens in the Apple calendar and how these things work out.

Firstly, Apple have always held an autumn event which focussed on the launch of new music devices. The Christmas market is huge for Apple, and for the past few years they have launched new iPod nanos, touch and shuffle in the autumn, just in time for this peak buying season. This is as predictable as the seasons- September is Apple music device month, and sometimes a new Apple TV may be thrown in for good measure.

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If there is one feature you enable on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, make sure it is the “Find My iPhone” feature from Apple.




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Tags: Find My iPhone

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Having used an iPad for over a year now, and having recently upgraded to an iPad 2, here is a list of the apps we still use. We have also listed some apps which dropped out of favour.

Apps used daily:

1/ Twitter: the official app from Twitter. We slowly moved across to this instead of Twitterific, and we aren’t entirely sure why! The sliding panes of Twitter app may not be to everyone’s liking, and Twitterific does have a classier design. However you can only add one account to the free version of Twitterific, and in the end we weren’t drawn to Twitterific enough to buy a copy of the pro version. The Twitter app works fine for us.

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Tags: Apps

Thinking of getting a new iPad 2? Well Friday is the day and Apple have confirmed pricing.



The prices of the new iPad 2 models in Ireland are:

iPad 2 with WiFi
€479.00 inc VAT (€395.87 ex VAT) for the 16GB model
€579.00 inc VAT (€478.51 ex VAT) for the 32GB model
€679.00 inc VAT (€561.16 ex VAT) for the 64GB model

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Vodafone are currently advertising their new SureSignal product on the radio, promising a boost to your home or office signal when you buy a 50 euro box and plug this into your broadband connection. Sounds like a good idea. Many businesses we work with are affected by this problem, with weak signal for mobiles, and employees having to run outside to take a call!



However the major block to this device is Vodafone itself. The product is only available at Vodafone retail stores. This may be fine if you live next to a store, but as we do not, we decided to phone the stores to ask about availability, and whether these SureSignal devices were in stock. We are about 30-45 minute drive away, and so were unwilling to make this journey until we knew the trip was worthwhile.

Here are the results of our calls:

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Tags: Vodafone | Broadband

Today Apple introduced iPad 2, which adds cameras and a new faster A5 chip to the tablet computer. The new model will go on sale in Ireland on March 25th and the prices will remain the same.



The main differences between iPad 1 and iPad 2 are:
1/ weight- 79 grams lighter
2/ thickness- the new iPad 2 is 33% thinner

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Tags: iPad | iOS

Conservatism is at the core of Nokia. Nokia is a company run by engineers, very talented ones at that, but they have a view of the mobile market which is closer to RIM and Microsoft than to Google and Apple. And right now, Apple and Google are on the ascendency.




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Tags: Nokia

Apple have announced record results, with $6 billion profit and revenues of $24.4 billion.

Mac sales exceeded 4 million units for the very first time, with strong sales in laptops. Over 16 million iPhones were sold in the quarter, and the iPad also had its best quarter so far, with 7.33 million units.


iPad sales


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