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It feels good to own a new Mac notebook. You're on top of the world until you haul your laptop someplace and let your battery run low before realizing that you're a MagSafe adapter short of juicing up. If only you hadn't lost that tiny, but critical, piece of equipment.

Apple changed the MagSafe power adapter hookup for its laptops in 2012, leaving consumers with a few gazillion out-of-date power adapters. To remedy the situation, Apple offered a $9.99 MagSafe to MagSafe 2 converter. It works, but it's small and easy to lose. … Read more

Apple's next mobile operating system is showing up increasingly in Web traffic logs ahead of its public debut.

That's according to Onswipe, a startup that makes Web sites more touch-friendly for tablets and smartphones. The company tells TechCrunch the testers running the yet-to-be-released version of the software made up nearly a quarter of people visiting sites that used Onswipe's technology last week.

In a follow-up report, Macrumors says it too has noticed a bump in devices running iOS 7 that are visiting its site.

It's not unusual for future versions of Apple's software to get … Read more

The iPhone could one day come with buttons and controls that blend right into the background, effectively making them invisible.

Granted to Apple on Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a patent dubbed "Disappearing button or slider" describes how various controls on the iPhone and other devices would normally stay hidden and fully appear only when needed.

A button would be made of the same material as the housing of the phone, so it would blend in seamlessly. But it could be selectively backlit through small holes to pinpoint its location, or the backlight itself … Read more

Nokia is taking the fight to Samsung and Apple in a new video posted to YouTube.

Dubbed "The Hurricane," the video follows a roller coaster going around its track as it's being filmed by Nokia's new Lumia handset, the Lumia 928, as well as by Apple's iPhone 5 and Samsung's Galaxy S3. Thanks to the handset's 8.7-megapixel PureView camera, Nokia argues, Lumia's visuals will be much better than those of its rivals when recording video.

After showing the roller coaster moving around the track, Nokia's video compares frames to those … Read more

A Japan-based report indicates that production of at least one key component for the next iPhone will begin next month.

Sharp will begin volume production in June of the display "panel" for the "next" iPhone model at its Kameyama plant in Mie prefecture, according to a report in Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, a major Japanese industrial newspaper.

Sharp's Kameyama plant has not been operating at anywhere near full capacity but production of the next iPhone's display is expected to bring the plant to "full production," the report said.

The specifications for next iPhone … Read more

For some reason it's a common belief that Android devices and Macs just don't get along. This misconception may have been true back in Android's infancy, but nowadays there's a long list of methods, apps, and services that let you use your Android device with your Mac. It's impossible to cover every app and service available, but I'm going to share the best of the bunch.

Most of the services listed below rely on the cloud to make the process of moving data between devices painless, while other methods require the tried and true … Read more

Apple has to amend its customer privacy policies in Germany following a court ruling issued Tuesday.

The Berlin Regional Court found that 8 of the 15 clauses in Apple's data use policy were invalid because they didn't comply with German law. Specifically, the company is no longer allowed to request "global consent" to use customer data, which gives it carte blanche to use any information. Further, Apple cannot use location-based data to target specific products and services to consumers based on their location.

The court also found that Apple cannot request the names, addresses, e-mail addresses, … Read more

Android may be the smartphone champ, but Apple's iOS is tops in mobile Web traffic, at least according to a report out today from analyst Gene Munster.

For the second month in a row, iOS held the lead over its rival as a source of mobile traffic, meaning that more iOS devices were tracked on the Web sites examined in the report. For April, iOS captured 69 percent of all the traffic analyzed by Piper Jaffray, leaving Android in second place with 26.5 percent.

Those numbers showed an increase from March when iOS accounted for 66.4 percent … Read more

The legion of unhappy iPad users is vast and growing.

They picket Cupertino daily, protesting that Apple make urgent changes to a device that really is substandard. They are very mad and they just can't take it anymore.

No, no, this is not my observation. It's my imagination of Bill Gates' imagination.

For in an appearance on CNBC on Monday, Microsoft's chairman explained very patiently that the iPad is a hive of pain.

I am grateful to the Loop for espying this footage and not using the word "loopy."

Gates told CNBC that Microsoft is … Read more