iOS

Apple spent 2012 much like it did the year before: relentlessly pushing out new products. But that's nothing new.

Instead, tech historians will likely look back at 2012 as one of the company's most transformative years. A time where we saw some of the first pieces of a post-Jobs Apple begin to take shape.

Five key news events marked Apple's 2012, from products to company controversy.

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of stories chronicling the top five events during 2012 for a handful of major technology companies, and technology categories. In the … Read more

What will Apple do next? It's the very secret sauce that keeps the company interesting, along with some very successful products.

Here are five predictions for the next 12 months as Apple heads into one of its most closely watched years yet.

Editors' note: This is the first in a series of stories looking ahead at what's to come from a handful of major technology companies, and technology categories. In the coming days CNET will do the same for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and others.

1. Apple TV, take four Has there ever been an Apple product with… Read more

Forget spring cleaning. The winter holidays seem to be inspiring the impulse to tidy, with everyone sprucing up their mobile apps. Dropbox is the latest to release an update.

The cloud storage provider announced that it has revamped its iOS app, and the big focus here is on the photos experience.

Based on the new design and features, it looks like Dropbox is diving deeper into the photo-sharing side of its storage service.

The main addition is a new timeline of photos automatically uploaded from the user's mobile devices. The new viewing abilities look more glamorous on the iPad … Read more

Apple faces a few challenges that could take a bite out of iPhone and iPad sales next year, at least in the opinion of one analyst.

In an investors note out today, UBS analyst Steven Milunovich slashed his iPhone sales estimates for the March, June, and September 2013 quarters by 5 million units each quarter. Sales estimates for the iPad were cut by 2 million per quarter for the same three periods.

The analyst now expects Apple to sell 41 million iPhones in the March quarter, 36 million in the June quarter, and 33 million in the September quarter. iPad … Read more

Famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen believes there is one major difference between Tim Cook and Steve Jobs: a desire for market share.

Speaking last night at an event in New York City, Andreessen said that Jobs' "single playbook" was to "invent a new product category, start with 100 percent market share, and then every day that goes by, lose market share until some terminal outcome."

Andreessen pointed to the Macintosh computer, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad as examples of that strategy. He noted -- correctly so -- that while Apple might own … Read more

iOS users searching for holiday gift ideas can head on over to Apple's App Store.

You can now directly send a paid app to someone as a gift, a feature that was previously available with iOS 5 but disappeared when iOS 6 debuted this fall.

To use the feature, open the App Store app on your iOS device. Choose a paid app that you'd like to gift. Click on the Share button in the upper right corner. The Share options window appears with a new icon in the lower right called Gift. Tap on the Gift icon.

You'… Read more

Google Maps for iPhone is getting off to a very good start. It quickly became the No. 1 free iPhone app with lots of five star user reviews.

To find out a bit more about what Google was thinking when it developed the app -- and to get some tech support on how to use its swiping features -- I spoke with Daniel Graf, Google's director of Google Maps for mobile (scroll down to listen to the podcast).

Graf said it was always Google's intention to "be present on all platforms" and that "we wanted … Read more

Amazon has finally delivered its Instant Video streaming app to the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The company announced the app's availability today, saying that over 30,000 titles in the Prime Instant Video library will be available for users to stream. In addition, the application allows for access to over 140,000 movies and television shows that can be downloaded for purchase or rental.

Amazon's Prime Instant Video is available only to customers who sign up for the company's $79-a-year Prime membership. With that, customers get free two-day shipping, as well as "free" access to … Read more

Google Maps didn't take long to capture the top spot among free iPhone apps.

Driving back into iTunes earlier today, the app had already reached first place after the first several hours. It's also garnered close to 8,000 reviews at this point, almost all of them earning five stars.

The new app offers all of the features that made it an iOS standard in the past but with a cleaner look and feel.

You can search for your destination by typing or speaking it. The app handles specific addresses as well as the names of businesses and … Read more