Apple sends invites to Oct. 22 event in San Francisco

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

As per invitations arriving to some media outlets, Apple is planning another event next Thursday, October 22 in San Francisco.

The colourful invitation states "We still have a lot to cover." Looking at the October event from last year, we saw new iPad minis, new 4th Generation iPad with Retina Displays, new Mac Minis and new iMacs. This year's event is expected to be an iPad focused event but there's a lot more to expect from Apple including OS X Mavericks and the new Mac Pro. Some rumours are pinning down updated MacBoo Pros with Retina Display (likely sporting the new 4th Generation Intel Core processors from the Haswell line).

Canadian Reviewer will be covering the event live in San Francisco next week, so stay tuned for exclusive reports, video and images from the Apple event.

Review: Keizus Quadropod + Clamp

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

As more users shift to using smartphones as their primary cameras, some clever companies are designing accessories to fit their needs. Toronto-based Keizus has put their own spin on the articulating tripod segment with a clever and useful device called the Quadropod + clamp.

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BlackBerry pens open letter to customers and fans

The past few weeks haven't been kind to BlackBerry whose new smartphone releases have been somewhat overshadowed by talks of acquisition, a delayed attempt at bringing BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) to Android and iOS as well as recent loss of nearly $1 billion due to poor selling Z10 smartphones and the most depressing news of all is that it has no recourse but to lay off 4,500 employees as part of its restructuring. Thorsten Heins and Co. have been rather quiet througout all this, even cancelling a regularly scheduled earnings conference call in order to deal with the issues facing the company. There's an open letter from BlackBerry that's expected to make the rounds in various newspapers today and this is the first time the company is opening up about the issues it faces.

“You can continue to count on BlackBerry,”  is the gist of the letter with BlackBerry pointing out the positives (cash on hand, debt free balance sheet and the aim to cut expensies by 5- per cent." The company says they may be down but they are definitely not out despite what various pundits are saying. Hit jump for the full letter.

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Android KitKat will allow users to pick default messaging app

The upcoming Android 4.4 version or KitKat will let you choose the third-party app to manage your text messaging needs. According to a post on Google’s developer blog, the company wants to provide a proper, supported way for the third-party messaging apps to gain access to your texts, instead of using workarounds that the company doesn’t approve of.