Apple, Software | featured news

When Apple launched its iTunes music store a decade ago amid the ashes of Napster, the music industry - reeling from the effects of online piracy - was anxious to see how the new music service would shake out....

Word is that iOS 7 will bring a significant design overhaul to Apple's mobile operating system. That's potentially good news, but there's also some bad: The new software might be behind schedule. According to Daring Fireball's John Gruber— who has a decent track record when it comes to Apple rumors — "iOS 7 is running behind, and engineers have been pulled from OS X 10.9 to work on it."

Mac computers have stopped running programs written using the Java programming language in their browsers, as Apple blocked it because of security problems.

This morning Apple has revealed iOS 6.1 for their most modern mobile device lineup, this download and upgrade available over-the-air for all iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models currently carrying iOS 6.0. This upgrade includes several updates to the system including, first of all, LTE support for a brand new set of carriers for the iPhone 5 (and perhaps the iPad lineup as well), a full list of which you can find on Apple’s iPhone 5 carrier page. Next you’ll find iTunes Match compatibility with individual song downloads from iCloud – you’ve never had that before, believe it or not!

Google Maps have found their way back to the iPhone. The world's most popular online mapping system returned late Wednesday with the release of the Google Maps' iPhone app.

Australian police are warning the public that errors in Apple's much-maligned mapping application are leading drivers headed to the southern city of Mildura to take a potentially "life-threatening" wrong turn into the middle of a remote state park.

Since its debut in 2001, iTunes has morphed from a standard music player into something larger and more complex. It's no longer just a music player -- it's also an App store, a music and movies store and a way to manage iPod, iPhone and iPad devices. In other words, iTunes has become a bloated, slow, unwieldy mess.

The furor over Apple's faulty mapping software reached the Silicon Valley company's highest echelons Friday, prompting an apology from Chief Executive Tim Cook and opening the way for rival Google to capitalize on the misstep.

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company is "extremely sorry" for the frustration its Maps application has caused and it's doing everything it can to make it better. In the meantime, he recommended that people use competing map applications to get around... "While we're improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app," Cook wrote.

...Apple released an update to its iPhone and iPad operating system on Wednesday that replaces Google Maps with Apple's own application. Early upgraders are reporting that the new maps are less detailed, look weird and misplace landmarks... One Twitter user quipped that the lines of people queuing up to buy the iPhone 5 on Friday will be shorter, because the buyers will be misled by the new Maps.