Apple Car: New details on top secret “Project Titan” revealed

The Apple Car is what the media has taken to calling the electric car project that's rumored to be in development at Apple under the code name "Project Titan."

Apple is said to have hundreds of employees working on creating an electric vehicle at a secret location near its Cupertino headquarters. Little is known about the car, but sources have suggested it may resemble a minivan. The car may or may not include self-driving technology -- rumors have thus far disagreed on this point.

The Apple Car is in the very early stages of development, and Apple is still in the process of recruiting people for the project and meeting with car makers and automotive suppliers. The project is being led by Steve Zadesky, VP of Product Design, who has Cook's permission to recruit 1,000 employees, many from within Apple.

We don't know what the Apple Car will look like, but based on Apple's existing product line and its desire to expand iOS beyond the iPhone and the iPad, we can assume that any Apple-produced car will integrate deeply with the iPhone.

meet world's first VAIO phone

Vaio has already announced its first laptops since it broke away from Sony, but its smartphone comes as a bit of a surprise. It doesn’t really fit the premium image we’ve gotten from previous Vaio products, but it seems a relatively capable device nonetheless.

t best, it's a humble-looking mid-ranger that is toting a not-so-affordable price tag and seemingly does not come with a true show-stopping feature. The same can be said about its specs - we have a 5-inch 720p display at the front, a quad-core 1.2GHz chipset (most probably a Snapdragon 410 MSM8916 one), 2GB of RAM, as well as a 13MP camera at the back. 

The phone is running on Android 5.0 Lollipop, marred by no custom UI and providing you to an almost-stock Android user experience. Reading the specs sheet and eyeing the clean, somewhat sterile exterior design, you'd probably imagine that the VAIO Phone will be flaunting an oh-so-affordable price tag, right? 

Wrong! The handset will cost you 51,000 yen, which is roughly $420. The phone will launch on March 20 in Japan and will most probably remain a local exclusive..

Google unveils Android 5.1 Lollipop

Android 5.1, the first big update since Lollipop made its debut late last year, includes support for HD voice calling, as well as the use of multiple SIM cards. It also irons out more bugs and makes Lollipop more stable.

For now, Android 5.1 factory images are available for the Nexus 5, the 2012 Nexus 7 with Wi-Fi, and the Nexus 10 — and they can be downloaded from Google’s dedicated webpage via the source link below. We expect other Nexus devices to be supported very soon, so keep an eye on that page if yours isn’t just yet.

The guys at Apple weren’t the only busy ones today. Our Google friends have also announced Android 5.1 Lollipop, their latest improvement to the Android mobile OS. You probably get your usual performance improvements and bug fixes, but this is also a slightly bigger upgrade, with a few new features in tow.


Firstly, the new OS comes with support for devices with multiple SIM cards. Android 5.1 also makes your device more secure by introducing Device Protection, which will keep your lost/stolen device locked until you enter your Google account information (even if the phone has gone through a factory reset). Lastly, HD voice calling has been added for compatible devices.

New Retina MacBook unveiled by Apple

IF YOUR EYEBALLS are aching from the horrid blocky pixels in your MacBook Air’s non-HD screen, rejoice. After much speculation and anticipation, a brand new, super-skinny MacBook with a Retina display has finally arrived.

Apple announced the new MacBook today, and in true Apple fashion, it does things differently. A lone USB-C port will handle the charging, data input and video out. So how will users recharge an iPhone and the laptop at the same time? Buy these adapters from Apple of course!

There’s a 12-inch Retina display that runs at 2,304 x 1,440 resolution. The panel itself is just 0.88 millimeters thick. Inside, the new laptop has a dual-core Intel Core M that’s configurable up to 1.3 GHz (the base model is 1.1Ghz) with an Intel HD graphics 5300 chip. Bluetooth 4.0 is on-board, as is 802.11ac networking.

The base model with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD will cost $1,299. A 512GB SSD option will cost $1,599. These new computers ship April 10. They’ll be available in silver, space gray, or gold. (The gold one actually looks really nice.)

At the product announcement in San Francisco, Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller joked, “It’s filled with batteries!” The new laptop has 35 percent more battery life than previous MacBooks (Schiller didn’t say exactly which model he was comparing it to, but the message is that battery life has been improved). The company claims nine hours of wireless web browsing and ten hours of watching movies. It consumes only five watts—that’s incredibly power efficient for a laptop.

As rumored, Apple has done away with traditional USB ports. In terms of I/O, the new MacBook features only one, reversible USB Type C port. This one port handles charging, video output, and data transport. Curiously, this means Apple is taking a step back from the MagSafe-style adaptors it moved to years ago.

Dell's super thin, aluminum Venue 8 7000 is a surprisingly solid Android tablet

The Android tablet market is kind of at a crossroads. There are plenty of great options, but there’s no true leader. Seeing this saturation as an opportunity, Dell seized the chance to throw its own hat into the mix. And you know what? The company’s Venue 8 7000 isn’t half-bad.

It has the thinnest structure among all tablet species...love that feature

Ok, so the name is pretty terrible. But let’s put that aside for a moment. While folks were fawning over the Nexus 9, Dell managed to surprise just about everyone with its own slick take on what a small Android tablet should be. It’s an intriguing, bold move, and currently the thinnest tablet on the market.

The Dell Venue 8 7000 sports an 8.4-inch 2560 x 1600-pixel OLED display, Android 4.4 KitKat, 2GB of RAM and an Intel Atom processor. But it’s not really about the specs of this thing; it’s about the odd design, and some of the neat functionality afforded by the Intel technology.

android 5.1 hits nexus this week...a lot more to come..

According to Android Police founder Artem Russakovskii, Google is set to release Android 5.1 Lollipop to the first Nexus devices as soon as this week. The news comes from an anonymous but trusted source, who says the second-generation Nexus 7 could be first to get the new software.

It’s still unclear exactly what Android 5.1 will bring to the tablet, though it sounds like the update could focus on fixing issues with the current version of Lollipop. Specifically, it could mean improved battery life, along with a smoother experience overall. Earlier leaks also suggest the update will fix problems with Wi-Fi, notifications and “Ok Google” voice controls.

Hopefully it won’t be too long before Android 5.1 Lollipop starts showing up on our Nexus devices, and until then we’ll be keeping an eye out for any more news. We’ve already seen the new software show up on some Android One devices in India and Indonesia, but this could be our first chance to get some hands on time with the latest version of Android.

Microsoft and Google find common ground to build Angular 2

if you had told me Microsoft and Google would collaborate on a major JavaScript framework a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed you, but today the company announced the unlikely pairing.

At ng-conf in Salt Lake City, the Angular team announced that it’s been working closely with microsoft's typescript team to build Angular 2 and converge the TypeScript and AtScript languages.

TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that offers additional features but compiles back into plain JavaScript.

Angular is one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks, but version two has been met with disappointment from developers since it offers no migration path of Angular and brings a number of major changes that require significant re-learning.

Google and Microsoft being able to collaborate on such a large project is great news, however. It shows yet again that Microsoft is slowly opening up and giving back to open source.