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Steve Jobs has resigned as chief executive of Apple, to be replaced by its chief operating officer, Tim Cook, in a surprise move that may signal that the 56-year-old co-founder of the company is losing his battle with cancer.

The announcement was made at about 4pm Pacific time in a statement from Apple following a letter from Jobs, who said: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.” He added: “I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as chairman of the board, director and Apple employee. As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple. “I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role. I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.”

In a statement on Wednesday night, Apple said that it had appointed Cook, who was recruited to the company by Jobs in 1998, and had elected Jobs chairman of the board.

Apple’s shares fell by 7% in after-hours trading, as market digested the impact of Apple losing its charismatic leader, who had led it back from near-bankruptcy after rejoining in 1996 to become the world’s most valuable company by market value earlier in August.

“Steve Jobs is not your typical CEO. He is both a visionary from a technology industry perspective as well as a micro-manager,” said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman and Renshaw. “To say that he is instrumental or key in the turnaround of Apple’s fortunes would be a gross understatement.”

Source: The Guardian

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Developers can now use the Adobe Flash Builder platform to develop applications for iOS devices, such as the iPad and iPhone, as well as the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Support for the devices – which was announced in April – in Flash Builder 4.5.1 allows developers to create apps for a variety of popular devices and platforms without needing to recode large amounts of the software.

“The reaction from developers to the new mobile capabilities in Flash Builder 4.5 and the Flex 4.5 framework has been absolutely fantastic,” Ed Rowe, vice president of developer tooling at Adobe, said in a statement on Monday. “They are amazed by how easy it is to create great mobile apps for Android devices, BlackBerry PlayBook, iPhone and iPad.”

Support for building apps for Android devices has been present since the release of Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 in April. The platform also allows the creation of web and desktop apps, as well as mobile. Apps created using the tools can then be distributed directly via the Android Market, Apple App Store and BlackBerry App World.

Adobe Flash Builder 4.5.1 can be downloaded as a stand-alone product or as part of the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium or Master Collections.

Source: ZDNet

Windows 7 has grabbed more than 20% of the Operating System market, only a year after its release.

As of last month, Microsoft’s latest Operating System has more than doubled its market share over 2010 and now sits on many more computers than its predecessor Vista, which holds only 12.11%, according to stats from Net Applications.

Long-standing favourite XP still has hold of 56.72% computers, however.

Overall, 90.29% of computers run a Windows OS around the world, down from 92% at the beginning of 2010.

Mac OS slid, from 5.16% in January 2010 to 5.02% last month, but Apple’s iOS – found on iPads and iPhones – gained from 0.59% to 1.69%, led by strong growth by the iPad.

Rival Android also had a strong year, growing from a 0.06% share at the start of the year to finish with 0.4% of all browsing devices.

Source: PC Pro

After January 31, you will no longer be able to buy an Xserve, the Apple server meant for large businesses, the company has said via a note posted on its website.

Apple says it will however continue to support the hardware, including warranties and customer service.

Close watchers of the company shouldn’t be too surprised about the sudden axing of the Xserve. Apple hadn’t updated the hardware since April 2009, which is a long time between updates for a company that keeps its hardware on a 9-month to a year update cycle.

In its place, Apple is offering a substitute. The Mac Pro will now come in a server edition, starting at $2,999. It comes with a 2.8 gigahertz quad-core Intel Xeon processor, but can be configured with up to two 2.93 gigahertz six-core Xeon processors, and up to 32GB of memory. It also has four hard drive bays, and will come with Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard.

Apple has made moves recently that show it is positioning itself to grow its small share of enterprise computing. According to IDC, Apple had 3.6 percent of all commercial computer sales during the third quarter of this year.

Apple has been pushing the iPhone and iPad as enterprise devices, and recently signed up contractor Unisys to sell its hardware to large companies and government agencies.

Source: CNET

Apple Inc said the first iPads will be in U.S. stores on April 3 and hit nine international markets from Japan to the United Kingdom later in April.

The 9.7-inch touchscreen tablet, which is designed to surf the Web, play video and games, and read digital books, is the most anticipated product launch from Apple since the iPhone in 2007.

Chief Executive Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad in late January, but the company did not announce any international markets until Friday, when it said the tablet will go on sale in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

Apple shares rose 3.1 percent in early trading on the Nasdaq to $217.20, an all-time high for the stock.

Apple is seeking to tap an unproven market for tablet computers. The iPad, while admired for its sleek design, will have to compete for consumer attention with a myriad of more established device categories, including smartphones, netbooks and dedicated e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle.

The U.S. launch date for the iPad model with short-range Wi-Fi wireless links, starting at a price tag of $499 (332 pounds), is slightly later than the previously expected late March launch. Customers looking for versions of the iPad with third-generation (3G) high-speed cellular data links will have to wait until late April, said Apple.

Lax security screening at Apple’s App Store and a design flaw are putting users at risk of downloading malicious applications that could steal data and spy on them, a Swiss researcher has warned.

Apple’s iPhone app review process is inadequate to stop malicious apps from getting distributed to millions of users, according to Nicolas Seriot, a software engineer and scientific collaborator at the Swiss University of Applied Sciences (HEIG-VD).

Once they are downloaded, iPhone apps have unfettered access to a wide range of privacy-invasive information about the user’s device, location, activities, interests and friends, he said in an interview on Tuesday.

In a talk scheduled for Wednesday at the Black Hat DC security conference, Seriot will explain how an innocent-looking app could be designed to harvest personal data and send it to a remote server without the user knowing it.

Source: ZDNet

Apple has announced that its newly launched iPad tablet will be coming to the UK soon.

On the Apple site, the company revealed the Wi-Fi-only version of the iPad will be available in the UK from March. The more expensive 3G version will follow in April.

In the US, Apple has struck a deal with mobile operator AT&T to provide two monthly data plans for the 3G iPad. While UK operators have expressed interest in the device, none have committed to carrying it at the moment.

Source: ZDNet News

Apple has finally unveiled the iPad, its much-anticipated tablet computer.

On Wednesday, Apple chief Steve Jobs went on stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco to introduce the device, which handles e-books and email, as well as images, music, video, games and web browsing.

In his presentation, Jobs described the iPad as “so much more intimate than a laptop and so much more capable than a smartphone”. He also derided the netbook phenomenon, saying the cheap mini-laptops “aren’t better than anything”.

Closely resembling a larger iPhone, the device is fully compatible with existing iPhone applications and is based on Apple’s own custom ARM-based processor, the A4, which runs at 1GHz.

The iPad has a high-definition, 9.7-inch in-plane switching (IPS) LCD touchscreen, which allows for a 178-degree viewing angle – wider than rival screen types – and has 1024×768 pixels resolution. It also supports multitouch input, and optional extras include a keyboard dock.

Two types of iPad will be available: one with 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, and one with just Wi-Fi, Jobs said. The Wi-Fi-only model will ship globally in two months’ time. In the US, its price will range from $499 (£309) to $699, depending on the storage capacity, which ranges from 16GB to 64GB. Versions with added 3G will cost an extra $130 and will ship in 90 days’ time, Jobs said.

“We want to put this in the hands of lots of people,” Jobs said, referring to the pricing for the device.

For the launch, Apple has made a number of partnership deals for content applications. It has drafted in media firms who have created newspaper and magazine apps that can run in-page videos on their virtual pages for the iPad.

The device is also an e-reader, through a new application called iBooks. A new iBookstore lets users download e-books to their iPad, in much the same way as Amazon customers can do with the Kindle Reading Device.

In addition, Apple has introduced a version of its iWork productivity suite tailored to the iPad. Users can create presentations, spreadsheets and documents using a redesigned, gesture-based user interface.

So the iPad can be used for personal information management, virtual painting and for mapping services.

Source: ZDNet News

Apple is inviting reporters to an event next week to see what it calls “our latest creation,” which is thought to be a tablet-style touch-screen computer.

The company email offered no specifics about what it would display at the invitation-only January 27th event in San Francisco.

But it comes amid speculation that Apple is close to unveiling the gadget that is bigger than an iPhone but smaller than a standard laptop.

Tablets are one-piece computers with big screens and no keyboards. Such devices have been around since the early 1990s, but haven’t seen much success in the mainstream.

Vodafone has confirmed that it will launch the iPhone to businesses and consumers on 14 January 2010, but has done little to generate competition in the market with its pricing plans.

The company has detailed a raft of tariffs for businesses ranging from £30 to £55 a month on a 24-month contract, excluding VAT.

All tariffs offer unlimited Wi-Fi and calls to landlines and 250 text messages per month. The only key difference is the number of minutes offered, which ranges from 600 on the £30 tariff to 2,000 on the £55 tariff.

The business and consumer contracts come with a 1GB data download limit on BT’s Openzone network, underlining the growing importance users place on mobile data.

Jeni Mundy, chief technology officer at Vodafone, explained that the company is not trying to offer the cheapest iPhone but is more concerned with making sure that it offers the best service.

Safari 3.1, which was launched on Tuesday, will run on Windows XP or Vista and, of course, Mac OSX. Apple released a beta for the Windows-supporting version in June last year.

Apple has claimed that the browser is the fastest available for Windows. In a Tuesday statement, Cupertino said it “loads web pages 1.9 times faster than [Internet Explorer] 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2 [and] runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers”.

“Safari 3.1 for Mac and Windows is blazingly fast, easy to use and features an elegant user interface,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, on Tuesday.

To try it out go to the Apple web site and download a copy.

Source: ZDNet

Apple on Tuesday launched an aluminium-clad laptop, the MacBook Air, just three-quarters of an inch thick, seeking to bring a new computer to market with the same cachet as its iPod and iPhone devices.

Apple also said it would let people rent films over the web with upgrades to its iTunes online media store, a technological challenge to a movie industry still largely focused on DVD’s.

Shares of movie rental firms Netflix and Blockbuster fell sharply in response, and Apple’s own stock lost 5.5 percent since the announcements were widely expected and chief executive Steve Jobs failed to conjure up any big surprises.

The cost of an iPhone is proving to be a sticking point for UK consumers, according to a survey.

The Apple handset’s not-so-dinky £269 price tag is putting off swathes of potential buyers, according to a poll by market research company GfK NOP, which surveyed 500 people across the UK.

Almost half (46 percent) of consumers polled said they would never buy an iPhone at that price, while a further 26 percent said that, although they like the look of the phone, it’s simply too expensive.

Just two percent said they are considering adding it to their Christmas list.

UK consumers willing to shell out for the hardware must sign up to an 18-month contract with O2, Apple’s UK iPhone partner. In Germany, mobile operator Vodafone recently won a court injunction forcing Apple and its partner there, T-Mobile, to sell an unlocked version of the phone. In France, Apple is obliged by law to offer unlocked iPhones after six months.

Source: ZDNet

Apple has confirmed that it has plenty more upgrades to come for the Apple iPhone.

“All the complaints and feature requests we’ve had can be fixed and added by software upgrades,” a spokesman for the company told Pocket-lint.

The news will come as a relief to new customers who bought the company’s mobile phone over the weekend and may have been disappointed by some of its limitations.

Since its launch in the US in June, Apple has been criticised for leaving out some key functionality, like the ability to record video via the included digital camera and greater Bluetooth support beyond voice functionality.

However some commentators believe that not including all the software features from day one will allow the company to entice new customers over the next couple of months. They [Apple] aren’t stupid. They won’t want to give you everything at once. You wait, there will an exciting partnership with YouTube that adds video functionality and then lets you upload to the site in no time,” an industry insider told Pocket-lint.

Apple yesterday announced its iPhone smartphone-video iPod combo device will launch in the UK on November 9th.

The largest mobile phone operator in the UK, Telefonicas O2, has been awarded an exclusive deal to sell the device, which will be priced at 269 pounds ($536). Apple recently slashed the price of iPhones in the US by one-third, from $500 to $399. Steve Jobs told local UK reporters that the price difference was the result of different taxes and higher trading costs in the UK.

In the UK, the iPhone will be sode through Carphone Warehouse shops, as well as O2 and Apple retail outlets.

The deal with O2, which has almost 18 million subscribers in the UK, is similar to the one Apple struck with AT&T in the US, in that users must subscribe to O2 in order to use the device. AT&T is the largest mobile phone carrier in the US with a nationwide network. However, O2s wireless coverage will handle just 30% of the UK by the iPhone launch date, so the mobile operator is giving iPhone users free access to about 7,500 WiFi hotspots run by The Cloud.

This week, Apple is also expected to announce deals with Deutsche Telekoms T-Mobile in Germany and Orange in France.