Ben Lovejoy

Apple has announced a new UK retail store in Leeds opening this Thursday, while also posting job ads in Germany for a store in Düsseldorf [Google translation] and a second store in Munich [Google translation]. Apple typically advertises for staff 6-9 months before a store opens, suggesting that the German stores could open late this year. The unusual Thursday opening for the new store in...

In an interview in The Australian Financial Review (via AllThingsD), Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins describes iOS as an outdated user interface, claiming that the iPhone is at risk of being replaced in the popularity stakes due to a lack of innovation. "Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market ... They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon....

John Sculley, Apple's CEO from 1983 to 1993 and the man famously responsible for Steve Jobs leaving the company in 1985 to form NeXT, has said that although he considers Apple to be experiencing a "lull in innovation", he thinks this is an industry-wide issue and that Apple will be the first to spot the next big trend. Interviewed in the Huffington Post, Sculley was asked about his comments i...

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is reiterating his claims that Apple's low-cost iPhone will have a 4-inch screen, plastic casing, and be available in a range of colors similar to Apple's iPod lineup, sharing a few new details in a report highlighted by AppleInsider. In particular, Kuo shares offers some information on the device's plastic and fiberglass casing.The new, less expensive iPhone...

As noted by 9to5Mac, Apple yesterday added the latest iMac to its Employee Purchase Program, supporting earlier suggestions that production constraints have now eased. Apple CEO Tim Cook had warned in a January analyst call that iMac shipments would be constrained through Q1, but improving shipping estimates and the company's decision to allow employees to purchase them at a discount...

Apple's short-lived head of retail, John Browett, said this week that he had learned "humility" and "become a kinder person" as a result of his six-month stay at Apple. Browett's appointment had raised eyebrows in his native UK due to his pedigree as the boss of Dixons, a UK consumer electronics chain with a reputation for cost-cutting rather than customer service. Despite CEO Tim Cook...

Law360 reports (via 9to5Mac) that a Retina MacBook Pro owner has launched a would-be class action lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the widely reported ghosting issues are the result of defective LG screens and that Apple has been "tricking" customers into buying these by not distinguishing them from models sold with Samsung screens. Ghost images of previous content have been widely...

One of the first analysts to to turn bearish on Apple last year, correctly predicting lower-than-expected revenues, has upgraded the stock to a Buy, giving it a 12-month target price of $540 against a closing yesterday of $428.35. BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk is cited in Business Insider as suggesting that Apple's earnings per share will be flat or slightly down this year but will climb in 2014. ...

Apple has applied for a patent for an interesting take on wireless charging, allowing a Smart Cover with embedded battery to recharge the iPad (discovered by AppleInsider). At first blush, Apple's invention, aptly titled "Integrated inductive charging in protective cover," appears to simply be a first-party incarnation of upcoming products that use inductive charging to transfer power to an...

Samsung's lead over Apple last year in the smartphone race was helped by a massive marketing blitz, reports The Wall Street Journal. Figures published by Kantar Media showed that in 2011, Apple was outspending Samsung three-to-one in mobile phone advertising (red graphics). Samsung massively increased its phone advertising spending from $78 million in 2011 to $401 million in 2012, 20% higher ...

iFixit has done a teardown of the Pebble smart watch and declared it unrepairable due to the amount of adhesive used to waterproof the device. iFixit could only manage to disassemble the watch by breaking the e-ink screen. The innards of the Pebble are unsurprisingly very simple, with the multicontroller unit, three-axis accelerometer and Bluetooth radio all contained on a single board...

Microsoft has issued updates for both Office for Mac 2008 and 2011 to fix a security issue in which opening a malicious HTML email could result in an attacker "[overwriting] the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code" and potentially gain access to information stored on the Mac. The update to Office for Mac 2011 additionally contains a range of bug fixes: Contacts that were ...

Australian airline Qantas is handing out iPads with access to its Wi-Fi-streamed in-flight entertainment service Q Streaming, reports AFP (via AppleInsider). The iPad-based service was first tested on a single 767 in 2011, offering streaming access to over 200 hours of movies, TV shows and music, and is now being introduced on its 767 flights operating between Sydney and Honolulu. Later...

iMore Editor-in-Chief Rene Ritchie has written a worthwhile opinion piece arguing that part of Apple's challenge in maintaining its performance in an increasingly competitive smartphone market is the predictability of its "tick-tock" strategy of a major iPhone release every other year and an 'S' refresh on the years in between. Ritchie, whose close sources within Apple led him to report the...

Web video company Ooyala has published a new report (via AllThingsD) revealing that two-thirds of smartphone video viewing is being done on iPhones, despite Apple having only a 19% share of the smartphone market. While the stats sample only Ooyala's service, the base for the stats is a substantial one with the company having 200 million viewers worldwide and 25% of all Americans watching at...

A new combination of iPhone app and plug-in adapter from Automatic to read data from your car's onboard diagnostics (OBD) port turns virtually any car manufactured after 1996 into a connected car, providing detailed data on your driving habits and cost of driving (via The Verge). The OBD-II data port is a standard feature on all modern cars, providing access to fuel, mileage and engine data. ...

Citigroup's recent claim that Apple would miss its own Q1/Q2 revenue forecasts has been lent weight by Topeka Capital's Apple Monitor reporting that key Apple suppliers had a "terrible" February (via Business Insider). The monitor, which tracks the results of Apple's key suppliers, is compiled by Topeka Capital's Brian White, an analyst normally bullish on Apple.When [supplier] results are...

The 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro beat 18 Windows 8 laptops in a battery-life test conducted by Which?, the UK consumer test organization with a reputation for the most detailed testing in the industry. In the web-browsing test where most laptops performed best, the Acer Aspire M5-581T was the longest-lasting Windows 8 machine at 358 minutes, while the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro lasted 30...

Ars Technica shares several photos of an early functional prototype of the iPhone from 2005, revealing a device closer in size to a thick iPad mini than an iPhone. The photos were sent to Ars by an anonymous former Apple employee who worked on the project in the early 2000s. The prototype is 5x7 inches in size, and nearly two inches thick - though much of the thickness was to accommodate...

The Apple iBookstore Twitter account accidentally retweeted an obscene message last night, reports 9to5Mac. The account also favorited the tweet, adding to the embarrassment for the company which has sought to limit sexually-explicit content on its App Store although it has not placed similar restrictions on its iBookstore. It is likely that whoever operates the Twitter account intended to...