Buying Guide: iPad deals: how to save big on Apple's tablets this holiday season

Apple's tablet sales are down, which is great news because that means the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 are already on sale one month after launch.

The best deals begin on Black Friday, which is Friday, November 28 this year. But you don't have to wait until then to find out how much you'll save.

Retailers like Best Buy, Walmart and Target have already revealed their iPad discounts for the new models as well as older ones. You can even find some offers on Amazon.

We'll be continually updating this iPad deals list on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to give you the 411 on Apple's 7.9-inch and 9.7-inch tablets, so keep checking back for more.

The iPad Air 2 is going to be on sale at Best Buy starting on Black Friday, giving you a chance to nab the new tablet and save $100 in the process.

It'll cost $400 for the iPad Air 2 16GB model and the discount applies to the 64GB and 128GB models that are $500 and $600, respectively. That's not bad for having just launched.

The iPad mini 3 receives a similar price drop across all sizes and colors on Black Friday. It'll be $75 and start with 16GB costing $325, according to Best Buy's official flyer.

Just be aware that the retailer's in-store hours begin on Thursday, Thanksgiving day at 5 p.m. and its early Black Friday iPad deals are good while supplies lasts.

As per usual, Walmart "rolling back" its iPad sales by one generation. Its deep discounts this year apply to the older iPad Air, not the iPad Air 2.

But the prices are fairly good if you're in need of a pencil-thin tablet. The iPad Air with 16GB will cost $397 and with a $100 gift card to the store.

No, you don't get Touch ID, but at other retailers, the same last-generation Apple tablet costs $400 and comes with no gift card. This is an excellent deal for the original iPad Air.

Target's iPad prices haven't budged, but the new models come with store gift cards that are hard to pass up, especially for the tempting iPad Air 2.

Apple's 9.7-inch flagship model costs the normal $500, yet it'll feel more like it costs $360 at Target thanks to a $140 gift card. Put that towards the rest of your shopping.

All other iPad models get the gift card treatment to the tune of $100 for the iPad mini 3, iPad mini 2 and iPad Air. The first iPad mini without a Retina display still nets you $60.

You may have noticed that Amazon doesn't sell iPad tablets. Instead, it fulfills the orders from third-party retailers.

Monitoring Amazon for iPad deals isn't such a bad idea over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These non-official Apple sellers are going to be competing for your business.

Plus, buying an iPad fulfilled by Amazon means that it's eligible for that clutch two-day shipping, just in case you wait until the last second. No one will be the wiser.

Expect more iPad deals to trickle out from additional retailers. This is just the beginning.

Apple Stores, for example, updates its website with discounts when the clock strikes 12 a.m. and Thanksgiving officially turns into Black Friday.

Last year it was just gift cards, but we'll see what's on sale everywhere come Black Friday and Cyber Monday now through December 1.

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Leaked docs reveal Apple's plans for Bluetooth Beats headphones

What will Apple and Beats produce next?

Beats released a pair of headphones - the Beats Solo2 - just as Apple was buying the company earlier this year, and now a follow-up appears to be in the works.

But while there's been a lot of speculation over the various ways Apple might change what Beats is about, a just-uncovered FCC filing suggests the iPhone 6 maker actually won't change much at all.

The FCC documents show a Bluetooth-enabled version of the Beats Solo2 released earlier this year.

But other than the addition of wireless capabilities, these headphones don't seem much altered from the earlier, wired Solo2.

There's also been some speculation on whether future Beats headphones will adopt Apple's lightning tech, but for now these appear to be sticking with microUSB so they can remain open-platform.

That may still change in the future, or Apple might even come out with iOS-exclusive variants on otherwise multi-platform headphones, thereby trying to please everyone.

Either way, while this new headset may carry Apple's branding, it appears the new Beats Solo2 will still definitely have the Beats DNA.

There's no clue as to when these will come out, so keep an eye out for announcements from Apple while we do the same.

Via 9to5Mac

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In depth: WireLurker: what you need to know about Apple's biggest ever threat

Nobody bats an eyelid when malware shows up in the Windows world, but when it manoeuvres itself Mission Impossible-style into Apple's traditionally locked-down ecosystem, everything tends to descend into a frenzy.

It's par for the course, then, that WireLurker, a strain of malware that's transferred from infected Macs to USB-connected iOS devices, has caused quite a stir in the past 24 hours.

According to Unit 42 - the threat intelligence team at Palo Alto Networks that discovered the vulnerability - WireLurker has made its way onto potentially hundreds of thousands of China-based people's Apple devices. What's more, the company reckons it has the potential to spread its tentacles much further afield.

We don't want to leave you hanging, so here's a run down of the vital information that you need to know about what has been called "a new breed of threat to all iOS devices". It has been provided by Ryan Olson, Head of Intelligence at Unit 42.

WireLurker is a strain of malware that has been discovered in a third-party Chinese OS X app store called Maiyadi. According to Unit 42, it marks a "new era in malware across Apple's desktop and mobile platforms" and poses a threat to businesses, governments and Apple device customers worldwide.

Rather than attacking OS X and iOS separately, WireLurker targets both platforms at the same time. It does so by monitoring any iOS device connected via USB with an infected OS X computer and installs downloaded third-party applications or automatically generated malicious applications onto the device, depending on whether or not it's jailbroken (hence the name "wire lurker"). Researchers have succesfully pulled off similar methods fo attack non-jailbroken devices before, but WireLurker is sophisticated enough to combine several techniques to make it even more dangeous than what has gone before.

WireLurker can boast a number of firsts - all of which make it a particularly nasty piece of work. It's the first known strain of malware that can infect installed iOS apps in a similar way to how a traditional virus on a desktop computer would.

It's also the first-in-the-wild malware family that can install third-party apps on iOS devices that haven't been jailbroken using enterprise provisioning (a way of companies installing their own apps without going through Apple's app approval process).

Additionally, until WireLurker came along, only one other malware family was known to have attacked iOS devices through OS X via USB.

WireLurker is believed to have been built by cyber criminals in China, who have trojanised (infected) 467 OS X applications in Maiyadi. Maiyadi is also a website that provides Apple-related news and resources, whereas the app store of the same name is a sub-site known to host pirated premium Mac, iPad and iPhone apps.

Think before you connect

Some criminals act first and think later, which appears to be what the perpetrators of WireLurker are doing. Unit 42 reckons they're still considering their motives while developing attack plans and fine-tuning the malware to be more stealthy and harder to remove.

WireLurker is capable of stealing data - from address book contacts to Apple device information and iMessage contact details - and could be capable of much more due to its ability to communicate with a "command control server" for updates. In other words, it's constantly becoming more powerful and sophisticated.

More than you might think. It's thought that 467 infected applications have been downloaded over 356,104 times, mainly by Mac and iOS users in China.

Because WireLurker is only found in third-party Mac apps, you can stay safe from harm by only downloading apps from Apple's own Mac App Store. In other words: keep away from third-party app stores that aren't only infested with malware, they're of dubious legality due to reasons related to copyright and IP.

The security vulnerability was discovered by Claud Xiao of Unit 42 after he came across a Chinese forum documenting highly suspicious files and processes on Macs and iPhones.

Xiao found that all of the apps trojanized by WireLurker included an installation interface that used a "Pirates of the Caribbean" themed wallpaper. The infected apps also use a QQ (an IM software service) account number that corresponds to the owner of the Maiyadi website. The packages also contained an application named "User Manual', which was displayed in Chinese.

Let's be clear: although WireLurker is affecting Apple devices, it's not an Apple vulnerability. That's because the techniques that it uses are deployed using legitimate APIs either from Apple on in Cydia (a third-party app store on iOS), which is used by jail-broken devices.

However, in a statement Apple confirmed to TechRadar that it has blocked infected apps that it has identified to prevent them from launching.

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Fighting talk: The Microsoft Band is what Apple's Watch should have been…

It's style vs substance

Microsoft pulled a Microsoft this week, by announcing what appeared to be another too-late, competition-cloning, 'me-too' product for no one, in the form of the Microsoft Band health wearable.

The thing is, though, even though it's an easy target, Microsoft is attempting to do a lot more here than Apple's trying with its more glamorous Watch.

For a start, Microsoft Band is open. There's a Microsoft Health app for it already up on the Google Play shop and in Apple's App Store, for example, which means that it's not just for the Windows Phone hardcore. That's a brave decision, although one that makes pretty clear sense given the massive difference between Android/iPhone and Windows Phone user numbers.

A health band exclusively sold to Windows Phone users would sell in numbers so low analysts would be issuing sales forecasts counting quarterly shipped units by the dozen.

But there's more to get excited about than cross-platform appeal. The Band is stacked with sensors. Sure, the health wearable world is built mainly on lies and marketing, as there's pretty much zero use in knowing what your heart rate is at any given moment, not unless you're a professional athlete training to within an inch of your life each day.

And the calculation of calories burnt by counting steps is something overweight people have been doing in their heads since the 1970s, so it hardly worth spending £200 on a watch to do that for you.

People have been able to successfully manually track their sleep by simply remembering how well they slept the following morning; no one needs a gadget to tell them they woke up twice during the night and maybe got a bit a hot and kicked the duvet off in annoyance. If that happened, you know it happened… because it happened. Not everything needs a notification.

At least Microsoft is trying to do more than clone Fitbit. The Band has a built-in UV monitor that might be of some use to more UV-sensitive types venturing out for a run for the first time. It lets you reply to text messages via short auto-replies, and even contains a galvanic skin response sensor that can, allegedly, measure the stress of the wearer.

Stress tests are likely to be another infrequently used guestimator, but still it's something new and interesting, and a shot at doing more than just the usual heart-beat-counting stuff and offering on-wrist notifications.

And in more good news for anyone who's struggling to keep all their wearables and pocketables charged, Microsoft says the Band hardware should be good for two days of normal use.

And that one's the killer. Apple suggests its Watch will need charging every day, so although you get a flashier screen and OS, having half the usable uptime is going to make Apple's first wearable much more of a burden.

The Band screen is smaller and it doesn't do as much as the full-on smartwatches, of course, and you won't look as obviously minted as if you were wearing a thing with an Apple logo on it, but it'll work for two entire days. For that alone Microsoft's engineers deserve some credit.

Apple and Google's wearables are sure to have more fans, greater sales and higher levels of general enthusiasm surrounding them, but Band seems to show Microsoft can mix it with its more fashionable and younger competitors – and could one day come up with some hardware that's actually popular and genuinely innovative.

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Apple's Tim Cook on iPhone's wins, iPad's woes

On a call with analysts, Apple CEO explains why the company's smartphone is doing well but its tablet isn't.

Apple CEO Tim Cook boasts of Apple's record iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales during last week's iPad and Mac launch. Tim Stevens/CNET

In the fiscal fourth quarter, almost more than any other, Apple showed that it's still "the iPhone company."

The Cupertino, Calif., electronics giant on Monday reported a blowout September quarter -- largely thanks to strong smartphone demand. Sales and earnings in the quarter topped Wall Street expectations, as did iPhone shipments. Apple sold 39.3 million iPhones in the period, and the device made up 52 percent of its total revenue. Apple also projected stronger revenue for the holiday quarter than analysts anticipated.

The only blot on the earnings sheet was iPad sales, which dropped for the third consecutive quarter and fell below revenue for Macintosh computers the first time in years.

For Apple, being the "iPhone company" comes with some big rewards but also some risks. Consumers are scooping up its newest smartphones in record numbers, but having one new iPhone that's not a hit could hurt its financial results. iPad has long been the other strong product, but its sales have been waning in recent periods. That puts even more pressure on Apple to make sure it doesn't have a miss in its iPhone line and that it expands its offerings into other areas.

The Apple Watch, expected early next year, will be its first new device since the iPad launched in 2010. And Apple Pay, the company's mobile payments service available Monday, gives it a new services stream of revenue.

But for the foreseeable future, iPhone remains key to Apple's financial performance. Here's what Apple CEO Tim Cook had to say about the company's newest smartphones and tablets:

Apple's latest quarter included only about a week of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales, but the devices already gave the company a boost. Apple sold 39.3 million iPhones in the most recent period, up 16 percent from the year-ago period. Analysts, on average, had expected Apple to sell 37.8 million iPhones, according to a poll by Fortune. The company's newest devices -- the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus -- went on sale September 19, so Apple will get an even bigger boost from the products in the December quarter.

The new smartphones are currently shipping in 32 countries and will be in 69 countries by the end of October and 115 by the end of December. That makes the newest smartphones Apple's "fastest and most successful iPhone launch ever," Cook said. Demand is "staggering," he said, and Apple can't keep up with all the orders.

Here's what else Cook had to say about iPhone, via a Thomson Reuters transcript.

The ramp itself is going great. It's the fastest ever in our history. So I couldn't be happier with it. That said, today, demand is far outstripping supply. It's unclear, looking at the data when supply will catch up with demand. And so I don't want to leave you with a view that we know that we're going to get to a supply-demand balance on both of the new products this quarter because I don't know that at this point.

It's very difficult to gauge demand without first achieving -- without first finding the balance. And it's clear that as of today, and certainly as of the end of the quarter is where you're looking at the data, we're not nearly balanced. We're not close. We're not on the same planet...But that said, I'm really confident the supply's going to be great and that's the reason you see incredibly strong guidance [for the fiscal first quarter] that we're giving from $63.5 billion and $66.5 billion.

But at this point it's just very difficult to gauge what the true demand is. It's very unusual to see every country having a marked improvement over the previous year. And that's what we're seeing on iPhone. And so I couldn't be happier with the way the demand looks...

We're selling everything we're making and so essentially what our current sell through looks like is our current supply. And so in the long arc of time once there's enough supply to meet demand, that mix [of iPhone 6 sales versus iPhone 6 plus] might look differently...I think that we will see a difference by geography in terms of preference, and we thought that going into the launch. And there's no data that we've received to date that would suggest that, that's not the case. And so that's about all I can say at this point.

Apple's tablet has struggled for over a year, and there's really no end in sight to the troubles. In the past six quarters, iPad sales have dropped or remained flat from the comparable period a year earlier. iPhone sales have never fallen year-over-year, even when the smartphone wasn't as big an advance as hoped.

In the most recent quarter, Apple sold 12.3 million iPads, down 13 percent from a year earlier and below the 13.1 million units analysts had expected the company to sell, according to a poll by Fortune. The company hopes its newest iPads -- the iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 3 -- will help boost sales once they hit the market later this week.

People are holding onto their iPads for much longer than their smartphones, and many are passing old models to friends and family. Cook acknowledged as much but said he still remains "bullish" about iPad's future. And Financial Chief Luca Maestri touted different businesses and schools using the tablet.

At the same time, Apple's Mac business has been surprisingly strong. In the fiscal fourth quarter, Apple shipped 5.5 million units, up 21 percent from a year ago. Cook noted sales were an all-time quarterly high for Macs, and Apple achieved its highest quarterly market share since 1995.

Here's more on iPads, straight from Cook, via Thomson Reuters:

I'd take a step back on iPad. I know that there's a lot of negative commentary in the markets on this, but I have a little different perspective on it. Here's my simple perspective...Instead of looking at this thing each 90 days, if you back up and look at it, we've sold 237 million in just over four years. That's about twice the number of iPhones that we sold over the first four years of iPhone.

If you look at the last 12 months of iPad, we sold 68 million. And FY13 we sold 71 million. So we were down, but we were down 4 percent on sell in and the sell-through was a bit better than the negative 4 percent because we took down channel inventory some. And so to me I view it as a speed bump, not a huge issue. That said, we want to grow. We don't like negative numbers on these things.

And so looking further in the data, I know that there's a popular view that the market is saturated, but we don't see that. I can't speak to other people, but I do look at our data deeply. And in the last market research data we have is in the June quarter.

Let me give you some of the real data that we've got. If you look at our top six revenue countries, in the country that's sold the lowest percentage of iPads to people who had never bought an iPad before, that number is 50 percent. And the range goes from 50 percent to over 70 percent. And so when I look at first time buyer rates in that area...that's not a saturated market. You never have first-time buyer rates at 50 percent and 70 percent.

What you do see is that people hold onto their iPad longer than they do a phone. And because we've only been in this business four years, we don't really know what the upgrade cycle will be for people. And so that's a difficult thing to call.

What we do know is that people always respond to do -- for us doing great products and we feel really great about what we introduced last week.

We also know that the deeper the apps go in the enterprise, the more it opens up avenues in enterprise. And that's a key part of the IBM partnership and what I think customers will get out of that, which is more important than us selling, is changing the way people work. And so I see catalysts going forward.

There are obvious cannibalization things that are occurring. I'm sure that some people looked at a Mac and an iPad and decided on a Mac. I don't have research to demonstrate that, but I'm sure of that just looking at the numbers. And I'm fine with that, by the way. I'm sure that some people will look at an iPad and an iPhone and decide just to get an iPhone and I'm fine with that as well.

But over the long arc of time, my own judgment is that iPad has a great future. How the individual 90 day clicks work out, I don't know. But I'm very bullish on where we can take iPad over time, and so we're continuing to invest in the product pipeline. We're continuing to invest in distribution.

Shara Tibken Shara Tibken is a senior writer for CNET focused on Samsung and Apple. She previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal. She's a native Midwesterner who still prefers "pop" over "soda." See full bio

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Apple's making 64-bit support mandatory, and it should make for faster apps

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Good news, though hardly surprising

Apple started making 64-bit smartphones last year with the iPhone 5S, but to date we've seen few tangible improvements as a result, with many developers still building 32-bit apps.

That's all about to change though, as Apple has mandated that from February all new iOS apps must include 64-bit support and be built with the iOS 8 SDK.

That includes any updates to existing apps, though apps that are currently available won't be removed. We imagine that not all developers will be happy about this change but it should be beneficial to users.

Using 64-bit architecture can lead to faster performance both in terms of speed and graphics and could also be beneficial to specialist applications such as those used by designers, artists and musicians which may require extra computing power.

But even if developers don't initially tap into the full capabilities of the 64-bit architecture, an environment where only 64-bit support is needed, rather than both 32 and 64-bit, will likely lead to slicker performance all round.

In the short term, apps will still support 32-bit hardware as well, but with the latest two generations of Apple hardware now on 64-bit it's likely that Apple will drop 32-bit support altogether before long and then we might see the real benefits of its 64-bit chips.

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The iPhone 6 is Apple's latest 64-bit phone.

The Nexus 9 is rocking 64-bit power.

Samsung's announced a 64-bit processor of its own.

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Friday Poll: What do you want most from Apple's iPad event?

Hot on the heels of new iPhones come what is expected to be a new crowd of iPads. Rumors abound that we may get an even thinner iPad Air, but a new Mini and fresh Macs could also be on the menu.

Both the Air and the Mini are likely to get updates. Sarah Tew/CNET

Right on time ahead of Apple's anticipated iPad announcement on October 16, we've gotten a fresh round of leaked product images purporting to be the iPad Air 2. The alleged leaks appear to show a quarter-inch-thick tablet that's slimmer than its predecessor. The rumors also say it will come with a Touch ID fingerprint sensor, like newer iPhones.

One of the more enticing rumors (also one of the sketchiest) is that Apple may introduced a super-size 12.9-inch iPad to go with its super-size iPhone 6 Plus. This one is a bit of long shot, though it's possible such a device could emerge in 2015 instead. A slightly likelier rumor is that Apple could introduce a gold color option for iPads to join the existing black and white models. Considering how popular the white iPad was, this could be a fun addition to the lineup.

Apple fans who prefer physical keyboards may also get some fresh products at the event, too. We could be due for new iMacs to go along with the OS X Yosemite software unveiled earlier in the year.

As someone who is still using an iPad 2 while also wielding the latest iPad Mini Retina, I've got my eye on upgrades to the entire iPad lineup. I'm especially intrigued by what Apple might pull off in terms of new features in an attempt to wow an audience that is looking for the next big thing. With declining iPad sales haunting the market, Apple could use a big win in the tablet space. That might mean coming up with an unexpected feature designed to make buyers say, "Wow."

Whether the new iPads will be incremental or truly innovative remains to seen. Despite rumors and alleged leaks, we're all still mostly in the dark as to what the new models might really look like. You've followed the gossip. You're planning to tune in to CNET's live coverage of the iPad announcement. What do you want most from the event? Vote in our poll and share your thoughts in the comments.

Amanda Kooser Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET's Crave blog. When not wallowing in weird gadgets and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto. See full bio

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Apple's free U2 album scored fans despite complaints

Not everyone was happy with Apple's gift, but the free album has snagged a total of 26 million downloads, the company tells Billboard.

Apple's free U2 album grabbed lots of downloads. Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET

Apple upset a number of iTunes users last month when it pushed out a free U2 album with no easy way to get rid of it. But according to Apple the album proved popular among a healthy number of people.

The U2 album, "Songs of Innocence," has snagged 26 million downloads since it was released as a free download to Apple's 500 million iTunes users, Apple's senior VP of Internet software and services, Eddy Cue, told Billboard Magazine.

Released to cap off Apple's iPhone 6 launch event on September 9, "Songs of Innocence" popped up on the computers, iPhones and iPads of many users via their iCloud accounts. A number of people were perplexed and annoyed that the album magically showed up without their consent. But the album itself was stored in the cloud and not actually downloaded to their local device. If their iTunes or iOS options were set to display items from iCloud, then that meant the album appeared whether they wanted it or not.

To be able to play the album without access to iCloud, you'd have to download it. So Apple's 26 million figure refers to the number of times the album was actually downloaded from iCloud to a computer or iOS device.

Further, more than 81 million Apple users experienced the album, Cue said. That term "experienced" sounds vague, but Cue explained that it includes people who played or streamed songs from the album via iTunes, iTunes Radio or Beats Music.

"To help put this into perspective," Cue told Billboard, "prior to this, 14 million customers had purchased music from U2 since the opening of the iTunes Store in 2003."

Analyzing Apple's numbers for the album, Time Magazine calculated that about 5 percent of all iTunes users who found the album in the cloud downloaded it. Around 16 percent of the people who accessed the album played at least a single song, Time added.

Time also questioned Cue's use of the term "experienced" and said that no information was available as to whether played a song all the way to the end.

The quality or appeal of the album wasn't necessarily what upset people. They were ticked off because Apple essentially forced the album on them, albeit in the cloud, with no easy return policy. Some people simply didn't want to see the album appear in their iTunes accounts or on their devices. But short of turning off all music stored in the cloud, there was no easy way to remove just the U2 album, though you could hide it.

As a concession to people who didn't want the album even showing up, Apple eventually cooked up a way to remove it from one's account. Should you change your mind and decide you want to give the album another shot, you can still download it for free until October 13. After that date, it will be available only for purchase.

Apple didn't immediately respond to CNET's request for comment. But U2 commented on the matter in the following statement sent to Billboard.

Apple is a tech company fighting to get musicians paid. The idea that they wanted to make a gift to the very people that actually purchase music is both beautiful and poetic, and for that we are very grateful.

Lance Whitney Journalist, software trainer, and Web developer Lance Whitney writes columns and reviews for CNET, Computer Shopper, Microsoft TechNet, and other technology sites. His first book, "Windows 8 Five Minutes at a Time," was published by Wiley & Sons in November 2012. See full bio

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Apple's Beats, Bose settle patent spat over noise-canceling tech

Bose filed suit against Beats in July, accusing the rival headphone and speaker maker of infringing five patents related to noise-canceling headphones.

Bose filed suit against Apple's Beats over headphone patents in July. CNET

Bose and Apple's Beats have agreed to settle a patent lawsuit related to noise-canceling headphones that was filed by Bose in July.

In a court filing in the US District Court for the District of Delaware, attorneys for the companies said "they have settled their respective claims" and want to dismiss the case. Both parties will be responsible for their own costs, expenses and attorneys' fees, they said.

The companies didn't disclose any information about the settlement.

Apple declined to comment. A Bose spokeswoman said "the issue has been resolved, and terms aren't being disclosed." She declined to provide any further information.

Headphone and speaker maker Bose filed suit against Beats in July, accusing the (at the time, soon-to-be) Apple company of infringing five patents related to noise-canceling headphones. The accused products included the Beats Studio and Studio Wireless headphones, and Bose asked for financial damages and an injunction to ban the sale of infringing Beats products.

Bose said in its complaint, lodged with the US District Court in Delaware and with the US International Trade Commission, that it had "suffered and will continue to suffer damages, in an amount yet to be determined, including due to loss of sales, profits, and potential sales that Bose would have made but for Beats' infringing acts."

It added that for almost 50 years, it has "made significant investment in the research, development, engineering, and design of proprietary technologies" used in its products. Its current line of noise-canceling headphones, for instance, uses inventions protected by at least 22 US patents and 14 pending patent applications.

Apple, meanwhile, in May agreed to buy Beats for $3 billion, giving the electronics giant a popular headphone business and subscription streaming music service. The acquisition brought Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre to Apple's management team, and Apple said it would continue to use the Beats brand. Beats controls about 60 percent of the $1 billion premium headphone market, according to NPD Group, and it has proved popular with everyone from celebrities to tweens.

The deal closed at the beginning of August, and Apple has started promoting the music service with current iTunes users and prominently featuring the headphones in its online store. However, the company may change the Beats brand for the music service, instead folding the streaming offering into its iTunes product.

Meanwhile, Apple blog MacRumors on Friday reported that Apple planned to remove Bose products from its stores.

Apple declined to comment about the report. Bose didn't immediately respond to requests for comment about the issue.

The two companies' feud has spilled over to professional sports. The NFL, which has a deal with Bose, recently banned football players from wearing Beats headphones. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick revealed that he was fined $10,000 for wearing his pink Beats to last Sunday's game against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Shara Tibken Shara Tibken is a senior writer for CNET focused on Samsung and Apple. She previously wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal. She's a native Midwesterner who still prefers "pop" over "soda." See full bio

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Apple's Tim Cook: Innovation 'alive and well' at company

Tim Cook's Apple is a more collaborative place. CNET

For his first three years as Apple's CEO, Tim Cook has had to fend off barbs that the tech giant has lost its edge as an innovator. Cook last week offered plenty of reasons to reconsider those accusations.

After unveiling the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the Apple Pay mobile-payment system and Apple Watch wearable, Cook enjoyed a victory lap in a new Bloomberg Businessweek cover story, which published Thursday.

"Anybody coming out of there yesterday knows that innovation is alive and well in Cupertino," he told the magazine a day after he introduced the new smartphones at the city's Flint Center for Performing Arts. "If there were any doubts, I think that they should be put to bed."

The new iPhones, which officially go on sale Friday, have already brought in record preorders and positive reviews. The digital watch doesn't go on sale until next year, but will mark Apple's first new product offering since Cook took over from former co-founder Steve Jobs.

Under Cook, Apple is now much more collaborative, a necessary change now that the blueprints for the company are no longer housed solely in Jobs' head, the Businessweek story reports. That new structure is also needed since "the lines between hardware, software, and services are blurred or are disappearing," Cook said.

"The only way you can pull this off is when everyone is working together well," he said. "And not just working together well but almost blending together."

For example, a new feature called Continuity is available on the new iOS 8 and Mac OS X Yosemite operating systems, which allow users to start a task on one Apple device but finish on another. "We would never have gotten there in the old model," Cook said.

For the Apple Watch, Apple product design chief Jony Ive told the magazine the project was conceived in his lab three years ago, and Apple brought a handful of watch historians to its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters to help in its research. Ive said his team first tried using the pinch-and-zoom technology used in the iPhone and iPad for the watch, but quickly realized the screen was too small for those hand gestures and users' fingers would get in the way of the screen. The team switched to a "digital crown" on the side of the watch that can be pressed and rotated to allow someone to zoom in and out, get back to the home screen and scroll.

Nearly all of the company's rivals have targeted the wearables market in an effort to establish a strong foothold ahead of Apple. Mobile device makers including Samsung, LG, and Motorola and Taiwanese PC maker Asus have unveiled smartwatches and fitness bands. Traditional watchmakers, such as Fossil, are jumping into the market. And even Intel, the world's largest maker of computer chips, this month announced a new bejeweled luxury smart bracelet called the MICA that will sell for less than $1,000 later this year.

Jeff Williams, Apple's senior vice president of operations, didn't seem bothered that his company would miss this year's holiday season with its own wearable, and took a shot at rival Samsung."We want to make the best product in the world," he told Businessweek. "One of our competitors is on their fourth or fifth attempt, but nobody is wearing them."

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Apple's solution to stop another iCloud hack is toothless

Apple's plan: add a second password

The recent iCloud hack might have allegedly only targeted celebrities, but Apple is trying to reassure users that it is beefing up security for everyone.

Apple CEO Tim Cook promised new push notifications and email alerts will be sent to users when someone tries to change their account password. At the same time every time users will also be notified whenever a new device access their iCloud account.

The system should go live within the next two weeks. In top of informing users of any suspicious activity they will also be able to change their password or inform Apple of the problem.

Apple hopes these new measures will prevent users from being blindsided by another phishing attack attempting to break into accounts to steal photos and data.

Cook also did a bit of damage control noting that no Apple IDs or passwords were compromised in last weekend's embarrassing leak of private celebrity photos.

Moving forward Cook said he believes informing users of security breaches will more effective against hacking attacks rather than a technological solution.

"When I step back from this terrible scenario that happened and say what more could we have done, I think about the awareness piece," Cook said in his interview with The Wall Street Journal. "I think we have a responsibility to ratchet that up. That's not really an engineering thing."

The Cupertino company also plans encourage more users to enable "two-factor authentication" when logging into their accounts. When turned on the security system asks for an extra bit of information - such as a four-digit texted to the user's cellphone number – to ensure the person trying to access iCloud is actually the account owner.

Supposedly if the affected celebrities activated system it would have prevented the hackers from being able to force their way though by guessing iCloud passwords over and over again. Too little, too late it seems

Hopefully the iPhone 6 and iOS 8 will come with new and better security features

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How Apple's iWatch can succeed where others have failed

Sarah Tew

I've reviewed tons of smartwatches. Or so it seems. And yet, I don't see many people wearing them. That's because the whole wearable landscape is embryonic. And, a lot of it's not very good.

By very good, I mean good of the type I'd recommend to my mom or my friend who's not into tech. Good as in, you need one of these. Or you'd want one. I can count on one hand the number of wearables that have gotten to that stage, and I wouldn't use all five fingers.

Smartwatches have come in many shapes and sizes: some have black and white screens. Some are big, bright and curved. Some run their own apps. Some have no apps at all. Some work with just Android. Others, iOS and Android. Some track fitness. Some do it better than others.

I had a list of what I was looking for in a killer wearable, Apple or otherwise, well over a year ago. A lot of my opinions there still stand. But now, as Apple might finally be ready to show off something big next week, how can it -- watch, band, or otherwise -- improve on what's out there?

Here's a good start.

Sarah Tew

Smartwatches and wearables aren't necessary. They're additional gadgets in a world already flooded with gadgets. We don't need them. People need phones. People need computers. Tablets found a way to succeed to by doing some things so well that there was a desire to get one. It's the iPad equation: at first people called Apple's iPad a large iPhone. But it started up fast, had long battery life, and was a lot more portable than a laptop, and had a big screen.

What would a wearable do better than a phone or tablet or laptop? Track health? Pay for things? Stay connected with friends? It has to have its own purpose. Amazingly, beyond "act as a pager" or "count steps," most smartwatches right now don't.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Good-looking watches are one thing; a design that helps the wearable be good at what it does is far more important. Most watches go for flair: a curved screen, or a round face and super-thin bezel, or some premium material design. Do any of these make the wearable better at what it does? Sure, wristwatches are about design more than function. But when it comes to a killer smartwatch, I don't think it should work that way. MacBooks and iPads and iPhones are really well designed, but they're mostly practically designed: they function. I don't want a fancy look if it doesn't make sense.

Smartwatches are slaves to smartphones. They're glorified Bluetooth accessories. They can offer an on-wrist way to interact with stuff without checking your phone all the time, like on Google's Android Wear watches such as the Moto 360, but what about when you walk into a store, or an airport, or around your home?

Phones manage the relationship between smartwatches and other smart things and locations right now, but these wearables need to get smarter about where they are and what they're doing all on their own. Maybe, someday soon, we'll be in a world of connected things. Smartwatches should be ready to work with them and save us the extra drain on our phone.

Josh Miller/CNET

Android Wear watches last about a day on a charge. The Pebble Steel and Meta M1, four to seven days. Most fitness bands, about a week. A few go for months, but have standard watch batteries.

It's a lot to ask for a small device to have killer battery life, but having yet another little thing to charge up is a gift that no one I know cherishes. At the least, Apple's smartwatch or wearable will hopefully have a better, smarter way to conserve battery life, or recharge on the fly, or fast and effortlessly enough that it will remain functional. But some reports say that might not be the case. Maybe battery life on these types of devices just isn't ready to take the next step.

Wearables are meant to be worn all the time. The more they need recharging, the less they're worn, and the sooner they end up in a pile of discarded electronics.

Why does a wearable have to be a watch? Why can't it be more? The 2011 iPod Nano unclipped from a watchband and could be snapped on a jacket. It could be an accessory or a watch. Having something that could be swapped into different accessories with different styles, perform different functions in different situations, and be more of a universal multi-use mini-gadget...I'd far prefer that to any true watch.

Hundreds of accessory makers, fashion companies, and others could turn a flexible little device into a gadget with dozens of designs and forms. And it would make a lot more sense than creating a smartwatch with different physical shapes. The Misfit Shine is an activity tracker that takes this approach and succeeds: as a watch, necklace, or clip-on.

Sarah Tew

Google's Android Wear will transform rapidly over time: new features and improvements, and compatible apps, are certain to make it better six months from now than it is now. But right now, it feels like a beta test. It doesn't do everything I want. Parts don't work reliably. It's fragmented.

If an Apple wearable debuts now, better to start small and do a few things really, really well. If those few things are great, and well-delivered, others can be introduced later. The iPhone didn't start with an App Store. But it had polished software for what it did right out of the gate.

Most fitness wearables right now are, honestly, more of a carrot on a stick than a true way to improve daily fitness. Step-counting bands have limits as motivational tools. Heart-rate monitors on many recent smartwatches like Samsung's are buggy. Connected health-tracking hubs, like Withings, offer some good tools but don't always play well with everything else out there.

If Apple can make a hub via Health and Healthkit that allows shared and exchanged health-tracking data between other accessories and apps, and senses your health and fitness more continuously, and with better software coaching, there could finally be something worth getting beyond basic fitness bands.

I have other hopes, too, like a way to make secure payments from my wrist, but just nailing these would help Apple, and the whole wearable tech industry, take a much-needed leap forward. Otherwise, for now, the outlook still currently feels stuck in beta.

Tune in to our live blog of Apple's September 9 event to find out more: we'll be there.

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