Tonight the tech giant is poised to unveil 2 new iPads - an Air 2 and mini 3 – together with rumours of a brand-new product, the iPad Pro. We take a look at what to expect.
The new iPhone 6. Apple is poised to showcase new iPads tonight
Last month it was new iPhones and the Apple Watch , this month it’s iPads –Apple is poised to unveil a set of new-look iPads tonight at a live event in Cupertino, California.
What do we know?
Pic: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire
An updated version of the iPad Air is expected tonight
New iPads
It’s thought Apple chief exec Tim Cook will present new, next-generation versions of the iPad Air and iPad Mini that will come complete with Touch ID, Apple’s fingerprint recognition feature. They’re likely to feature some design changes too.
Pic: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire
‘Way too long’
Apple’s invite for tonight’s event (about 6pm UK time) features the tag line ‘It’s been way too long’ – which could suggest the company is planning to update some of its older products, in particular its flagship desktop computer, the iMac, which has not been updated for some time.
Pic: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire
New products?
There are whispers about a whole brand-new product, the iPad Pro, rumoured to be a bigger, meatier version of the tablet.
The rumours are the Pro, a sort of hybrid device, will have a 12-inch screen and could be powered by desktop OS X (unlike the i Pad which runs iOS).
Whatever happens, we’ll update you tomorrow with all the lowdown from Cupertino…
No great spy tale is complete without a love angle.
It's as if spies need something to rely on, as their daily lives are defined by subterfuge.
When the tale of Edward Snowden's heroism/treason (delete as appropriate) came to light, the love angle was bathed in pain.
It was said (allegedly even by her father) that his dancer girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, had been abandoned in Hawaii while Snowden sought fame/refuge (delete as appropriate).
Last night, however, love's labor was found to be still alive in the land of the kolkhoz. The premiere of a new Snowden documentary, "Citizenfour," revealed that far from being abandoned, Mills is now living with her man in Moscow (and it also apparently confirms that there's a second leaker).
I know that Moscow and bliss haven't often been two words that adorn the same sentence. Unless that sentence happens to be "Moscow is bliss for only a few."
Somehow, the concept of Moscow -- especially in spy movies -- offers ruthlessness and foreboding, rather than pelmeni and canoodling.
But if a woman has truly given up the serenity and beauty of Hawaii for the chill and gilded austerity, one can only admire such a level of love.
In these days of instant virtual contact, lovers are sometimes reluctant to move 10 miles to be with their lovers. Cross-country relationships offer all the perils of a fractious, shoe-banging UN summit.
So if Mills was prepared to take her heart into her hands and be guided by it, who will not be moved?
Snowden told The Guardian of the movie: "I hope people won't see this as a story about heroism. It's actually a story about what ordinary people can do in extraordinary circumstances."
Moving to Moscow to be with your man, whose life is likely threatened, is extraordinary.
"Citizenfour" opens in movie theaters October 24. I wonder which parts will make people weep the most.
There are now over 1,300,000 apps on the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store is home to around the same number of Android apps right now. What we're trying to say is - there are a lot of apps out there, and unsurprisingly, alot of them are 'crap'.
We're sure you've stumbled on some stinkers yourself, but we hope you've not come across any as bad of these. You see, at TechRadar we're making it our mission to scour the underbelly of both app stores to find the truly terrible, the truly disgusting, and the truly WTF, all in the name of technology.
Each week we'll be nominating an app that deserves the crown of "worst of the worst", with an aim to complete a list of the ten truly most terrible apps we've ever seen.
So let us begin our dangerous journey through the bowels of humanity's ideas. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.
1. Got Juice?
iOS Price: Free
From the very the people who created Hold On comes another smash hit app you never thought you needed: Got Juice?
"What's Got Juice?" you ask? Well let us answer your question with another question: ever wondered how much battery you've got left but had no easy way of seeing it? Us neither! Luckily that's not what Got Juice? does, which is just why you need it! This is an app that inaccurately tells you your battery status with a crappy graphic. On our first try Got Juice? told us we had 80% of battery left, the iPhone battery indicator reckoned it was 86%.
Wait, you mean Got Juice? wasn't meant to get the percentage wrong? Well that explains why it's in this list doesn't it.
But then again, who are we to argue with the real critics? sonydog123 said: "This app is free and great, very simple to check your battery status and highly recommended - great job on it!"
While the one and only reviewman57364 really dug deep for his analysis. "Great app! - liked how it goes up to your percentage. Very nice feature."
"Looks cool - I'm shocked there are no ads!" said mriphoneaddict. We'll be more shocked if this is a legitimate review.
But it's allytheangel who really nails it with Roger Ebert-esque insight: "You'll always know exactly how low your battery is! Makes me wonder why it isn't included as a standard."
Yeah, us too...
2. Pet Baby
iOS Price: Free
Let us set the scene: You're having '99 Bottles of Beer' sung to you by Stephen Hawking. We just described the entirety of the 99 Bottles app.
No, that's not fair, you can also pause the song or choose to start it over. There are also some crap bottle animations that twitch along with the "music". Ok, now we've described it.
It's just counting. Annoying counting.
Yes, it's the slow, awkward rendition of 99 Bottles you never asked for but you're sure as hell going to get anyway. And what happens if, God forbid, you last the whole 19 minutes and 48 seconds? No spoilers here, but we can confirm that time is accurate because we sat through the whole damn thing ourselves.
Actually, we got a text message at just over 50 bottles down the first time and accidentally hit 'start again', so we basically sat through it twice for this column. You're welcome.
You'll hear all the greats: 87, 64, 50, 42… And if your phone goes to sleep just as bottle 93 has been taken from the wall, does it start exactly where it left off? Course not, it starts number 93 ALL OVER AGAIN.
We really can't think of any useful applications for this other than torture, and Amnesty would be all over this in a heartbeat.
To its creator's credit he at least acknowledges how ridiculous the app is. We just don't know why anyone would use it, let alone make it. Then again we did play it for the whole 20 minutes so we're hardly in a position to judge. No wait, make that 29 minutes and 42 seconds. Again, you're welcome.
3. Pet Baby
iOS Price: Free
Here's how I imagine the meeting at Trashicon HQ happened the day the idea for Pet Baby was born.
"Hey guys, people like sharing pictures of their pets. I think I've spotted what they call a 'market opportunity'."
"You sure have, Jerry. But our app budget is focused on babies right now. Babies are funny, remember?!"
"But wait, why don't we combine the two?"
*The room falls deadly silent. A single bead of sweat runs down Jerry's forehead. He's eyeing up his desk across the room, mentally packing up his belongings*
"Careful Jerry, that's the sort of thinking that'll get you a… PROMOTION."
*Everyone claps*
And thus, Pet Baby was born. An app that asks the question that's been on the collective lips of humanity since the dawn of man: "What would your pet look like… as a human baby?" Given that most babies look the same, the answer is probably 'just like every other baby ever', right?
WRONG. Your pet baby is a mutant child that will devour your soul.
You see, rather than making any effort whatsoever to morph your dog's face into some sort of funny canine-baby mashup, the app lazily hacks the two together with an opacity tool to create what can only be described as a pure evil.
But does the fun stop there? Oh no. No, once your rabid demon child has been conceived, you can expose your friends and family to the horror via Facebook and Twitter.
Just look at some of the beauties we came up with:
Then we tried it with some humans. That should work better, right? WRONG AGAIN.
And God forbid the app ever does produce anything looking mildly sentient, you can expect something like the following:
This app had zero reviews at the time of publishing.
There you have it, there is bound to others we've missed. These are complete rubbish to say the least.
All the data on some of the tablets and phones seized as evidence is being wiped out, remotely, while they are in police custody, we have learned.
Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Durham police all told BBC News handsets had been remotely "wiped".
And Dorset police said this had happened to six of the seized devices it had in custody, within one year.
The technology used was designed to allow owners to remove sensitive data from their phones if they are stolen.
"If a device has a signal, in theory it is possible to wipe it remotely," said Ken Munro, a digital forensics expert with Pen Test Partners.
Romance fraud
A spokeswoman for Dorset police told the BBC: "There were six incidents, but we don't know how people wiped them.
"We have cases where phones get seized, and they are not necessarily taken from an arrested person - but we don't know the details of these cases as there is not a reason to keep records of this," she added.
A spokeswoman for Derbyshire police confirmed that the force had had one incident of a device being remotely wiped while in police custody.
"We can't share many details about it, but the case concerned romance fraud, and a phone involved with the investigation was remotely wiped," she said.
"It did not impact upon the investigation, and we went on to secure a conviction," she added.
Meanwhile Cleveland police told the BBC that it too had had a case of a phone that had been wiped but it was not clear "whether it was wiped prior to coming into police hands".
Asked whether the police felt that the issue had damaged their investigation, the spokeswoman said: "We don't know because we don't know what was on the phone."
Other police forces affected by the issue include:
Cambridgeshire - one incident between August 2013 and August 2014
Durham - one incident during the same period
Nottingham - one incident
Microwave help
Mr Munro, who analyses hundreds of laptops, tablets, phones and other devices for corporate clients, said: "When we seize a device for digital forensics, we put it immediately into a radio-frequency shielded bag, which prevents any signals from getting through.
"If we can't get to the scene within an hour, we tell the client to pop it in a microwave oven.
"The microwave is reasonably effective as a shield against mobile or tablet signals - just don't turn it on."
SecureDrives, which develops hard drives for the military, is releasing one next year that can be physically destroyed just by sending a text message.
The hard drive -which will cost more than £1,000 - is also immune to the radio-frequency blocking bags.
"The hard drive is constantly looking for GSM [Global System for Mobile Communications] signals, if it is starved of them it it would destroy itself. It would see such a bag as a threat," said James Little, head of sales at SecureDrives.
Silent Circle President Phil Zimmerman said despite the phone being touted as the most secure available, government intelligence agencies could still potentially gain access to it.
He said in a BBC interview "If they really wanted to attack just your phone... they would find a way in."
There are only "around 100" cyber criminal kingpins behind global cybercrime, according to the head of Europol's Cybercrime Centre.
Speaking to the BBC's Tech Tent radio show, Troels Oerting said that law enforcers needed to target the "rather limited group of good programmers".
"We roughly know who they are. If we can take them out of the equation then the rest will fall down," he said.
Although, he added, fighting cybercrime remained an uphill battle.
"This is not a static number, it will increase unfortunately," he said.
"We can still cope but the criminals have more resources and they do not have obstacles. They are driven by greed and profit and they produce malware at a speed that we have difficulties catching up with."
The biggest issue facing cybercrime fighters at the moment was the fact that it was borderless, he told the BBC.
"Criminals no longer come to our countries, they commit their crimes from a distance and because of this I cannot use the normal tools to catch them.
"I have to work with countries I am not used to working with and that scares me a bit," he said
The majority of the cybercrime "kingpins" were located in the Russian-speaking world, he said.
Relationships with Russian law enforcers have not always been good but were "improving". He revealed that he had recently been on a trip to Moscow to discuss four big cybercrime cases and was hopeful that arrests and jail sentences would follow.
Mr Oerting described how Russian-speaking criminal gangs were creating and testing malware and then selling it as a service in online forums.
"Then it is downloaded by all kinds of criminals, from Eastern Europe, Europe, Africa and America," he said.
This commercialisation of cybercrime is making his job harder.
"It is so easy to be a cybercriminal. You don't have to be a cyber-expert because you just download the programs that you want to use."
Identity theft
On the issue of what consumers should be worried about, he said: "What I think you should be afraid of is the stealing of your private, sensitive information - your inbox credentials, your Facebook account. If they know a bit about you they can reset your Google accounts, your Apple accounts. Then they simply take over your life," he said.
He also spoke about how the job of containing the cybercrime threat was getting harder as the internet acquired more users and widened its reach. The so-called internet of things - where previously dumb objects are connected to the network - "widens the attack surface a bit", he said.
And he revealed how the Edward Snowden revelations, which exposed mass government surveillance programmes, had played a part in hampering law enforcement's efforts to contain cybercrime.
"There is confusion among the good guys on the internet between anonymity and privacy. I don't think they are the same. I think that you have right to privacy but that doesn't mean that you have the right to anonymity," he said.
The increasing trend towards greater encryption of online communications is not acceptable, he said.
"Imagine in the physical world if you were not able to open the trunk of a car if you had a suspicion that there were weapons or drugs inside... we would never accept this.
"I think that should also count for the digital world. I hate to talk about backdoors but there has to be a possibility for law enforcement, if they are authorised, to look inside at what you are hiding in your online world."
It’s hard to see the latest solar panel technology — which is kind of the point.
Researchers at Michigan State University developed a new type of solar panel that is almost completely transparent. It harnesses solar energy using organic molecules, which glow when exposed to sunlight.
The panels utilize infrared light with tiny photovoltaic strips around the edges of the pane. These are miniaturized versions of the more standard solar panel you might see on a solar farm or a rooftop.
But the infrared light being used is invisible to the unaided human eye, so the panels appear transparent. But the infrared light being used is invisible to the unaided human eye, so the panels appear transparent.
Previous translucent solar panels more closely resembled stained glass or tinted windows because of the embedded photovoltaic layers. Richard Lunt, a member of MSU's research group, says they are looking to improve the experience.
Currently, the new panels convert about 1% of the light that passes through them to energy. The world's most efficient panels convert 40%.
The MSU team is aiming for 5% efficiency in the near future.
