Mike Beasley

Reuters tonight reported that it recently polled 23 of the nation’s top hospitals and found that 14 of them have already launched the first stages of programs built on Apple’s HealthKit software in place, or have plans to do so in the near future.

These programs will allow doctors to monitor patients with chronic medical conditions and alert them at the first sign of a problem, giving users the ability to take preventative action rather than reactive. These programs will likely be expanded to include data collected by the Apple Watch when it debuts later this year.

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Microsoft has acquired the Sunrise calendar application in a deal worth over $100 million, a report revealed today. The buyout may be the next step in the company’s plans to revamp its mobile offerings, which started with the release of the new Outlook email app—also based on acquired software—last month.

Like Acompli, Sunrise works with a variety of services, not just Microsoft’s. Those services include Google’s calendar service, iCloud calendars, and, of course, Exchange. It also had built-in support for reminders that sync along with the calendars.

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It’s been years since we first heard that Steve Jobs had “cracked” TV, but we haven’t seen much progress on that front outside of a few updates to the Apple TV set-top box. Recode reports today, however, that Apple is now in talks to launch its own web-based TV service.

The service is not expected to be a full offering of current television programming, but rather a package of select shows offered as part of a subscription. The content would be distributed over the web. A prototype of the service is apparently already running inside Cupertino and has been shown off to a few industry insiders.

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Apple may be preparing a big update to its Maps application for iOS and OS X. San Francisco’s KPIX reported earlier today that a Dodge Caravan sporting an impressive array of cameras has been spotted roaming the area. The California DMV confirmed that the vehicle (seen in the photos above and below, via Claycord) was leased to Apple.

The CBS affiliate reached out to technology analyst Rob Enderle for his thoughts on what this might be. Enderle said that this van simply has too many cameras (a whopping twelve of them) to be a mapping car—though he failed to note that Google uses even more cameras on its own Street View cars.

Video and more photos after the break…

The day has finally come. It seems struggling electronics retailer RadioShack is finally dead. This doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the company at all in the past few years. The chain hasn’t turned a profit since 2011, and several attempts to reboot its image have failed miserably.

How RadioShack reached this point is also no surprise: it failed to keep up with the ever-evolving technology market, choosing instead to attempt to walk the line between DIY hobbyist and mainstream electronics.

While no one would argue that RadioShack’s insistence on keeping one foot in each world eventually led to its demise, it could also be argued that it’s exactly what kept the company around for so long.

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Apple has released a new update for iTunes on OS X that introduces support for a Notification Center widget. The widget will allow users to control their music and buy songs from iTunes Radio directly from the system-wide panel.

iTunes 12.1 also includes a “quick tour” feature that runs on the app’s second launch. It’s the same quick tour that has been available on Apple’s website since last year, but it is now included natively in the app to help users get acclimated to the new design.

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Microsoft announced plans today to launch a new app for its Outlook email service on iOS. The app is based on the Acompli software that the company purchased in December for $200 million. The app includes “email triage” features found in the old app as well as new features to help appeal to a wider audience, such as the ability to toggle threaded conversation views.

The Outlook iOS app will also support mail from third-party services beyond Microsoft’s. iCloud, Gmail, and Yahoo email accounts can be plugged into the app, and attachments can be added to messages from cloud services like Google Drive and Dropox. Check out the video below …

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Following on the heels of a record-breaking quarter for Apple, Strategy Analytics has crunched the numbers and crowned Apple the king of the smartphone vendors for Q4 2014—or rather, one of the kings. It seems the Cupertino company managed to tie rival Samsung for the title.

Both companies shipped 74.5 million handsets during the quarter, though Samsung still outsold Apple in terms of the annual total by a hefty margin. Those quarterly sales gave both companies an equal marketshare of 19.6%.

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Apple has revealed that the Apple Watch will ship in April, though a specific date wasn’t given. The announcement came during today’s earnings call.

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Last week Apple posted a video showing how the calligraphy mural painted at one of its upcoming Chinese retail outlets was created just days before that store opened to the public.

Today the company has posted a new video of a second mural, this time at its new Chongqing location. The store features a unique cylindrical entrance, and Apple commissioned two artists—a China-based painter and US-based photographer—to collaborate on the artwork.

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In November, 9to5Mac brought you an exclusive interview on Twitter’s limitations on third-party developers with the Iconfactory’s Gedeon Maheux. In the original article, Maheux said that development on Twitterrific 5 for Mac had stalled due to Twitter’s strict limits on how many users can login to a particular application.

While Twitterrific 5 is the first application to have been stuck in development because of these limits, another popular client seems to have claimed the title of the first Twitter app for Mac to run into the token ceiling: Tweetbot.

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Determined to stymie the inevitable flood of fraudulent transactions using Apple Pay and other mobile wallets (/s), one Missouri lawmaker has proposed a new law that would require shoppers to pull out a photo ID and prove they truly are who they say they are before they will be allowed to continue with the process of scanning their unique fingerprint on a high-tech piece of equipment designed specifically for the purpose of verifying their identity without the need for a physical identification card.

From a local report:

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Photos of what is claimed to be the lid and display for the upcoming 12-inch MacBook Air have been published by iFanr. 9to5Mac exclusively reported earlier this month that Apple was planning to launch a mid-size variant of its notebook computer lineup, and these photos seem to provide even further evidence of that being that the case.

The legitimacy of the photos has not been determined, but you can see several additional photos below, including shots comparing it to current Apple devices such as the iPad and existing MacBooks.

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If you can’t beat ’em, tell the government to force ’em to let you beat ’em. That’s the approach BlackBerry CEO John Chen wants to take to mobile software development. Today Chen wrote in a blog post on the BlackBerry website that he believes the issue of net neutrality requires the government to not only promote and protect neutrality not only among wireless and broadband carriers, but also among app and content providers.

Chen argues that it’s pointless to tell Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and other carriers that they can’t discriminate against certain data while still allowing applications and content providers to discriminate against certain platforms.

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TAG Heuer executive Jean-Claude Biver may have dismissed the Apple Watch just a few short months ago (as Apple was poaching members of the company’s leadership for the project), but it seems he has recently had a change of heart. In an interview with Bloomberg, Biver called the upcoming gadget “a fantastic product, an incredible achievement” and said he’ll likely wear one.

At the same time, however, Biver acknowledges that his company plans to partner with Silicon Valley to create its own entries to the smartwatch market. Because Switzerland doesn’t have the technological prowess needed to produce such a device, it will need to rely on external partners for some parts of its design.

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Dropbox has announced through an email to users on older versions of OS X that it will soon be discontinuing support for computers running Leopard or other older versions of the operating system. Users still running anything older than OS X 10.6 will need to upgrade in order to continue using future versions of the Dropbox app.

Users who don’t upgrade will still be able to use the web-based Dropbox manager, but will be automatically signed out of the Mac app. From that point forward, they will not be able to login back into the Mac client until they are on a newer version of OS X.

The changes will go into effect on May 18th, so users still have plenty of time to upgrade their software (or hardware, if necessary). The full email is included below:

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