Apple is now the fifth-largest PC maker in the world, if you ask IDC

Apple is now the fifth-largest PC maker in the world, if you ask IDC

Jon Fingas

Engadget

Apple is historically a small player in the PC world compared to many of its peers, but it may have just entered the big leagues. IDC estimates that the company jumped to 6.3 percent market share in the third quarter of the year, making it the fifth-largest PC builder worldwide -- a feat it hasn't managed in decades. It's still no major threat to heavy-hitters such as Lenovo (20 percent), HP (18.8 percent) and Dell (13.3 percent), but IDC believes that a combination of slight price cuts and improved demand in "mature" markets like North America have helped it grow in a computer market that's still shrinking.

With that said, the crew in Cupertino probably isn't breaking out the party streamers right away. Gartner contends that ASUS claimed the fifth-place spot with 7.3 percent, and that Apple only sits in the top five in its native US. So what gives? In short, it's a difference in methodology; Gartner and IDC don't have official shipping numbers from everyone, and there's enough wiggle room in their estimates that it wouldn't take much for the rankings to change. As precise as these figures may be,
you'll get a better sense of how Apple fared when it posts its fiscal results (and real shipping numbers) in a couple of weeks.

Source: IDC, Gartner

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New iPads, Mac system expected at Oct. 16 event

New iPads, Mac system expected at Oct. 16 event

Associated Press 

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple has sent invites to an Oct. 16 event during which it's expected to show off new iPad models and an update to its Mac OS system.

The company may also use the event to launch its new digital payment service, Apple Pay. The new iPhones released last month came with a wireless chip capable of making such payments.

In keeping with its usual practice, the company isn't saying what it plans to announce. Instead, it sent a cryptic invitation to reporters and analysts. This one has the headline: "It's been way too long."
Apple used its October event last year to announce a thinner full-size tablet, the iPad Air, and the

"Mavericks" update to Mac OS. The "Yosemite" Mac update is due out soon.
Next week's event will be held at the iconic tech company's headquarters in Cupertino, California

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Selena Has a Slumber Party with Her Girls!

Instagram

Selena Gomez relationship with Justin Bieber is permanently rocky, so it makes sense that Sel would want to take some time off all the drama and just hang with her girls.

She did just that the other night when she and some friends stayed in, put on their matching owl onesie pajamas, and got silly at home. “slumber party x out takes,” Selena captioned the pic.

The girls look like they had a blast just relaxing and playing around. We hope it was the break Selena needed!

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Pics That Prove Taylor Swift Even Looks Flawless in the Rain

Credit: Tumblr

While Taylor shows off her supermodel strut, we would be slipping on this slick sidewalk.

Credit: Splash News

This pic from Taylor's rainy day stroll looks like it could be a scene from a movie!

Credit: GC Images

She totally rocks this classic trenchcoat.

Credit: GC Images

NO ONE CAN LOOK MORE STUNNING THAN TAYLOR IN THAT DRESS

Credit: Neil Mockford/Alex Huckle/GC Images)

We have never looked anywhere near as glamorous holding an umbrella.

Credit: WireImage

Her flawless NYC street style simply cannot be dampened by a drizzle.

Credit: Splash News

Even with the obviously cold winds and pouring rain, Tay looks camera-ready.

Credit: Splash News

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Happy Birthday: See Pics of Bella Thorne's Total Style Evolution

OCT 8, 2014

Today's a very exciting day for Bella Thorne: she's celebrating her 17th birthday! Recently, Bella has been showing off her incredible sense of style at high-fashion events like Milan and New York Fashion Weeks, but she has always impressed us with her bold red carpet statements ... even when she was a kid!

In honor of her big day, we've rounded up  stylish pics to show how Bella's style has transformed from girly and trendy to totally cool!

Credit: Getty

Credit: FilmMagic

Credit: Getty

Credit: FilmMagic

Credit: FilmMagic

Credit:WireImage

Credit: FilmMagic

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iOS 8 Adoption Stalls At 47% Of Users After Three Weeks

iOS 8 Adoption Stalls At 47% Of Users After Three Weeks

Natasha Lomas

TechCrunch

Three weeks after Apple released the latest flavor of its mobile operating system, adoption of iOS 8 has stalled at 47% of users — creeping up only one percentage point since September 21, the last time Cupertino reported the stat on its App Store Distribution page.

The latest figures, which measure adoption on October 5, report 47% of users using the prior iOS 7 flavor (vs 49% when Apple last reported this), and 6% on an earlier iteration of its mobile OS (vs 5% when last reported).

iOS 8 starting to roll out to users on September 17 but a series of bugs have dogged the release thus far, which may explain why adoption rates are no longer moving the needle.

Just prior to releasing iOS 8 Apple had also pulled its flagship HealthKit feature, which had been due to be there from launch, burning developers who had added HealthKit integration in the process because Apple also yanked their apps from the App Store at the last minute.

An early update to iOS 8 — 8.0.1 — was rushed out, touted as a fix for HealthKit, as well as various other bugs including a glitchy implementation of third party keyboards.
However this update ran into trouble, with some users complaining that 8.0.1 knocked out their cell service. Apple was forced to pull the update and provide instructions for users who had updated on how to roll back to iOS 8 so they could restore their phone signal.

Another quick fix followed — 8.0.2 — to patch the issues 8.0.1 was supposed to have addressed but do so without zapping cellular reception on iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices.

Given the various bugs and buggy patches it’s perhaps not surprising that additional users have not exactly been rushing to update to iOS 8. Waiting til the kinks are ironed out may look like a more sensible option to many.

iOS 8 also requires a large amount of free space on a device if the user wants to update wirelessly. (Plugging into a Mac or PC to do the update removes this requirement but is obviously less convenient. It also requires the user to own a computer — not a given in these mobile centric, ‘post-PC’ times.)

MacRumours, which noted Apple had updated its official iOS 8 adoption figures earlier, points out that Apple’s officially reported rate of adoption is similar to adoption data from Mixpanel. Adoption of iOS 8 vs iOS 7 also looks far slower, with Mixpanel recording the rate of adoption of last year’s flavor of iOS at almost 70% 20 days after release vs less than 50% for iOS 8.

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Mercedes built a self-driving truck that could save thousands of lives every year

Mercedes built a self-driving truck that could save thousands of lives every year

Chris Welch

The Verge

Mercedes-Benz believes it's built a self-driving semi-truck that could eventually help cut down on highway tragedies that kill thousands of drivers each year. The Future Truck 2025 can't navigate city streets autonomously like Google's fleet of cars, but is perfectly capable of holding its own on the open road — and that's where sleep-deprived truck drivers most often pose a threat to people driving smaller passenger vehicles. Using a combination of advanced dual cameras, radar sensors, and the latest blind-spot technology (Mercedes refers to the system as "Highway Pilot"), the Future Truck 2025 analyzes the road to get a sense of surrounding traffic and terrain. The "highway" part of that is critical; a driver is still required to get the truck onto the interstate and successfully merge into traffic.
But once that's done, a driver can sit back and relax in the Future Truck — with Samsung tablet in hand, according to Mercedes renderings — even swiveling his or her seat away from the steering wheel to reach a more comfortable resting position. It's hard to envision an interior that's more premium than what Mercedes has here, with various touch panels throughout, wood floors, ambient lighting, and plenty of space to kick back. On the outside, it's not quite as aerodynamic or attention-grabbing as Walmart's truck of the future, but it still stands out when compared to your everyday semi
When the truck is driving itself down highways at 50mph, its striking front LED grid changes from white to a pulsing blue color. That's a clever visual cue for nearby drivers, but as Wired notes it's also one that could run into trouble with highway and road regulations. That said, Mercedes has some time to work those things out and get the legislation signed that would allow these on the road; after all, it's called the Future Truck 2025 because the automaker doesn't expect this concept to become a commercially viable truck for at least a decade. But if it does, it could make those long slogs and the entire profession more appealing to newcomers — and truck drivers could use the help.

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You'll Never Believe How Fans Violated Zayn Malik's Privacy

GETTY IMAGES

Although One Direction's Where We Are tour ended without much controversy (except from fans bummed that the awesomeness of their tour was over), Zayn Malik's name has been dragged into a lot of craziness lately. After rumors that he finally married Perrie Edwards turned out to be false, Directioners are furious that two fans stole the singer's bag!

According to the Twitter account PeruInLuvWith1d, two girls from Argentina went to the airport to see the band. Their hair stylist Lou Teasdale got swarmed with a bunch of people, and then the chaos started.

"One of them or Lou — I don't remember — had that bag with them but dropped it in front of these girls. They took it and they said they tried to give it back but everyone was gone," the source said.

"They thought it would be full of Lou's make-up so they opened it and saw clothes that Zayn used while he was in Peru, like the Bob Marley shirt. The book with his drawings is from a menu at one of the hotels the boys stayed at."

Instead of trying to contact their management and return the bag, the girls made a video detailing its contents, and screenshots have been appearing online. Directioners immediately freaked out, dissing the girls for violating Zayn's privacy, and even causing #ZaynDeservesPrivacy to trend on Twitter. While we hope we gets his bag back, it's still so crazy that they managed to grab it without anyone noticing!

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Taylor Swift Complimented Lorde's Hair in the Cutest Way Possible

If there's anything more amazing than both Taylor Swift and Lorde's curly hairstyles, it's their incredible friendship. We couldn't stop gushing when we saw Taylor's latest tweet, where she complimented her BFF's spiral curls! Tay actually used Lorde's real name – Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor – to make a fun joke out of the lines of her new song, Shake It Off.

The tweet leads to Lorde's latest Instagram pic, which is a glam Polaroid taken at Taylor's show!

Her hair does look pretty amazing, and it's a perfect line from Taylor's catchy new hit!

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Taylor Swift and Pharrell Williams planning collaboration

Taylor Swift and Pharrell Williams planning collaboration

In an interview with Access Hollywood, the "Shake It Off" singer spilled that she's been in talks with Pharrell to make music together! They met up for Taylor's guest stint on The Voice, and really hit it off.

"Pharrell and I were talking, in the breaks yesterday, and we just kept saying, 'We have to do something together!' He's like, 'You just call me. Call me when you figure it out'," she said.

"I'm like, 'You call me if you figure it out first!'"

We hope they figure it out soon, because it will probably be awesome! Of course, we're still anxiously awaiting her upcoming album 1989, so we'll probably have to hold tight until after it drops.

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The secret to this interactive hologram tech is water vapor

The secret to this interactive hologram tech is water vapor

Timothy J. Seppala

Engadget

It's 2014 and while we don't have flying cars just yet it looks like interactive holographic displays could be a reality rather soon. The not-so-cleverly-named Leia Display System (LDS) uses a combination of light, water-vapor and air to provide a transparent canvas for projected images while sensors track movement and touch inputs from users. The videos we've embedded below show all manner of poking and prodding by users, a bit of Minority Report-style pinching and zooming things in mid-air and even using gestures to rotate and flick stuff out of the way. There's even a sample with a Mercedes sedan driving through the curtain and it "shattering" around the vehicle as it passes through.
As of now, the screens come in 95cm x 65cm (roughly 37 inches by 25 inches) and 3m x 2.5m (around 10 foot by 8 foot) versions, with the latter able to be linked with other displays for an even bigger installation. The tech's Polish creator says that the LDS mostly has been requested for use in digital signage and advertising so far, but that it gets "non-standard" use requests pretty regularly. Here's to hoping that we see it used for more than just shilling products in the near future -- let's save that for Michael Jackson, okay?

Source: Leia Display

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Microsoft's Project Spark game creator comes to Xbox One and PC

Microsoft's Project Spark game creator comes to Xbox One and PC

Steve Dent
Engadget 

If you enjoy the creative part of building games but not so much the coding, Microsoft's Project Spark is now available for Xbox One and PC (Windows 8.1 only). That marks the end of a six month beta period that saw over a million testers create 70,000 game levels, according to Microsoft. As a reminder, Spark lets you build games with relative ease by using onscreen tools to add monsters, geography, game dynamics and logic. You can also use a Kinect HD on either platform to capture your own movements and facial expressions for game characters. Download it now for Windows 8.1 and Xbox One for free, or as Microsoft helpfully suggested, buy a starter disk with content for $39.99. Otherwise, fresh content has to be earned during gameplay or by purchasing tokens. %Slideshow-230873%
Source: Xbox

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