Charlotte Henry

CNBC’s Jim Cramer is a well known Apple bull. Indeed, his charitable trust owns shares of Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet. Last night he pursued this line – even encouraging investors to buy shares despite the difficulties faced by Apple stock in particular. A news report on the CNBC website focuses on the Mad Money presenter’s criticism of analysts who have been downgrading Apple since its earnings call on 1 November. He believes that they are overlooking the possibility that Apple may actually have anticipated some weakness in sales prior to the earnings. Cramer’s comments on what on what he refers to as the FANG stongs – Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google (Alphabet), might also be worth a read for anyone trying to work out what is going on with big tech stocks right now. Here’s some of what he had to say:

“What do you think of the possibility that Apple knew all about the weaknesses in unit sales that are now so revelatory?” he asked, pointing to reports that Apple may have tapered its orders from a key supplier. “CFO Luca Maestri even alluded to that weakness when he told us the guidance accounts for ‘uncertainty around the supply and demand balance’ of recently launched products.”

LONDON – UK telecoms provider EE announced that it is bringing super-fast 5G mobile connectivity to 16 UK cities in 2019. The launch will initially take place in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast, Birmingham and Manchester. It will then be rolled out to Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. While this is undoubtedly good news for UK consumers, ZDNet explains that we should not get too excited yet: “The first 1,500 sites that EE is upgrading to 5G amount to around 7% of its total sites, and cover 15% of the UK population. However, these sites use 25% of all data across the whole network.” Here are some more details on the rollout:

Coverage won’t be total: 5G will be offered in the busiest parts of the six launch cites — including Hyde Park in London, Manchester Arena, Belfast City Airport, the Welsh Assembly, Edinburgh Waverley train station and Birmingham’s Bullring. EE said it will also be offering some 5G services in the busiest parts of ten other UK cities — Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Hull, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry and Bristol.

It’s been just two months since iOS 12 was released, but people are already looking ahead to what Apple might do with the next iteration of its mobile operating system. MacWorld‘s Jason Cross has published his wishlist and I suspect there is much on there that TMO readers will agree with. It includes the introduction of dark mode as seen in macOS Mojave, an upgrade for Siri and a revamped camera. Cross would also like to see YouTube 4K and HDR video support, not to mention more flexibility and power in the iPad version. Here’s a bit of what he hopes comes next on  iOS:

Apple can do more, much more. The latest iPhones and iPad Pros sport processors, cameras, and sensors that are capable of incredible things, but iOS at times feels like its holding us back. In particular, the iPad Pro feels like it has everything it needs to be a complete laptop replacement—except an operating system that lets you do everything you need to do on a laptop.

A new patent reveals that Apple is trying to use microphone to solve the problem of people wearing headphones the wrong way round. Typically our headphones are marked either L and R or having some other kind of indication as to which side is which. Apple has a new patent, reported by AppleInsider,  for a “system and method for automatic right-left ear detection for headphones.” It would use the microphone in the headset to discover the headphone’s orientation and alter the left and right channels accordingly. The patent details a system of five microphones per ear cup, including one inside. Here’s a little insight into what might be on offer in the future:

By listening to the voice of the user, and monitoring the volume of the voice by each microphone, the headphones can determine which edge is closest to the user’s mouth, and therefore which orientation the headphones reside. The offsetting of the top-side microphones also allows for just those two microphones to be used, with the logic the microphone of the two that has the louder volume is closer to the mouth.

GitHub, the widely used code management and development tool, revealed Thursday that it hosts 100 million repositories. VentureBeat has a good breakdown of the news and the current state of the platform. It includes the fascinating bit of trivia that Algeria has the most repositories per capita, while Egypt boasts the highest number of open source repositories. GitHub is used by approximately 31 million developers around the globe. It was bought by Microsoft in June for $7.5 million.

Source code management and developer collaboration platform GitHub today announced users have now created 100 million repositories. For context, GitHub had 33 million repositories when the company was founded in 2008, and nearly one in three repositories were made within the past year.

It is fair to say that Ben Lovejoy from 9to5Mac is a fan of the new iPad Pro, including the “perfection of the rounded corners in the display.” He is increasingly recommending it to non-techies over a MacBook. His one gripe though is that he thinks the iPad Pro needs its own operating system – call it padOS. I can see the case for this. The iPad Pro, in particular, is now so advanced that people are doing an increasing number of high-powered tasks on it. The device needs an operating system that reflects that. As Lovejoy points out, Apple argues against converged devices. So why not add an extra operating system into the mix so that each hardware offering is compatible but has a unique software environment so users can truly enjoy devices to their full potential?

But while the iPad Pro isn’t trying to be a Mac, it is a grown-up device and it needs a grown-up operating system. Not macOS, but rather a tailored version of iOS, designed to take advantage of the additional capabilities of the iPad. What some people have termed padOS.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” the old saying goes. If that is true, Apple should be feeling very flattered indeed. Chinese company Xiaomi has become the latest firm to imitate the AirPods with its AirDots wireless headphones. It is not just the name that’s similar. The design of the AirDots shares a lot with the AirPods. They are fully wireless and have a very familiar look charging case. The next generation of the AirPods is thought to use Bluetooth 5.0, and the Air Dots utilise that same technology. In fact, the biggest difference is the price. The Next Web reported that the Air Dots will retail for just $30. Here is a bit of what they make off this copy-cat offering:

It seems like everyone wants to get on the AirPod bandwagon. Apple’s wireless earbuds have proven so popular that shedloads of companies are copying the format and releasing similar-looking versions of the audio gear. The latest in this line? The Xiaomi AirDots. The earbuds have many of the same features as the AirPods. First off, they’re true wireless, meaning there’s not a cable in sight on the headphones themselves. The Xiaomi AirDots also have touch controls on the side of the buds and come with the now standard charging case.