After all the excitement of Apple’s iPhone 6 release last month, you might have thought that the electronics specialist had taken a month off. Instead they kept their name firmly in the press with the preview of the iPad Air and closer to home, a Swansea pub landlord found a way to use the iPad to pull more pints! But more of that later…first there was a royal tweet to celebrate!
1. The Queen sends her first Tweet
On 24th October, HRH Queen Elizabeth II visited the Science Museum to open the UK’s first permanent gallery dedicated to the history of information and technology. Naturally the Queen decided to celebrate this occasion by sending her first tweet, which unsurprisingly caused some Twitter hysteria.
The tweet, which was sent from the @BritishMonarchy account, has now received 41,000 retweets and confirms that The Queen definitely knows how to strengthen the Monarchy’s Klout score.
2. Apple reveals their thinnest iPad
The iPad Air 2 was announced during a media event at Apple’s California headquarters and it is nearly 20% thinner than its previous model!
At just 6.1 mm it promises to not just look smarter, but think smarter too! It will feature an A8X chip, a faster graphics processor and an 8 megapixel camera. Let’s just hope it doesn’t bend in your pocket…
3. Twitter targets app developers with a new service
Have you heard about Fabric? No, not the trendy nightclub in London, this is the newest service from Twitter which aims to add the social network into a new generation of apps.
Fabric has been created to help mobile app developers at each stage of the development process and will help to analyse crashes, mobile ads and how to integrate Twitter’s real-time information.
Did we also mention that this new service is completely free? Watch this space to see whether the developers give it a thumbs up!
4. Microsoft removes the Nokia brand
In some nostalgic news, Microsoft has revealed that they will be dropping the Nokia brand in favour of their Lumia phones. This truly marks the end of an era as many of us can remember our first mobile phone being a trusty Nokia. In the next few weeks Microsoft will be altering their existing phone websites and social networks to be under the brand of Lumia, signalling the end of Nokia being mainstream.
Fortunately, Microsoft will continue to sell their entry-level phones under the Nokia brand but we are unsure how easy these will be to find and buy!
5. UK’s first iPub opens its doors!
The Westbourne pub in Swansea has had a technological makeover, with the landlord fitting iPads to help his customers pour their own pints!
The iPads allow customers to purchase their own drinks and then pour them using the pumps positioned on their tables. Although currently there are only two beers available the iPads allow customers to order any drink and this can be served by the bar staff.
Although it is early days, we wonder if this idea will catch on…maybe somewhere in Cardiff should test it out too?!