News written by James Delahunty (September, 2015)

Apple is pursuing your living room again with the first major hardware and software revamp of the Apple TV since 2012.

The new Apple TV device (which just looks slightly bigger on the outside) will run on a new operating system called tvOS, which is based on iOS. Apple will provide the tvOS SDK to enable developers to utilize the increased power under the hood, and especially the considerable remote control upgrade.

The Siri Remote improves how you can select, scroll and navigate through your favorite content using a glass touch surface that handles both small, accurate movements as well as big, sweeping ones. It features a built-in accelerometer and gyroscope which developers can use to create motion-controlled apps and games.

With its internal mic, the Siri Remote can be used to search TV shows and movies by title, genre, cast, crew, rating or popularity using your voice, and Apple TV now supports Universal Search like Microsoft's Xbox services, meaning you won't have to know which content is available from which app beforehand.

Viewers will also be able to use voice commands during playback, such as asking "Siri, what did he say?", which will prompt the playback to skip back a few seconds and enable captions.

The iPad Pro has gained considerably in size and power over the iPad Air 2, and Apple has decided to embrace the stylus.

iPad Pro measures 12" x 8.68" x 0.27" (305.7mm x 220.6mm x 6.9mm) dominated by a 12.9‑inch Retina display with a resolution of 2732 x 2048 (264ppi). It weighs 1.57lb (713 grams) for the Wi-Fi only model, and slightly heavier at 1.59lb (723 grams) for the Wi-Fi+ Cellular model.

Under the hood it packs Apple's latest SoC, the A9X which boasts improvements over the A8X inside the iPad Air 2, including double the memory bandwidth. Apple decided to focus on its improvements over the A7 mostly though (iPad Air), claiming the A9X provides 2.5x faster CPU processing and 5x faster GPU processing over the A7. As for how much RAM is packed in the iPad Pro, honestly we have no idea right now but the suggestions around are that it has 2GB, just the iPad Air 2.

There isn't much to talk about in regard to camera improvements, the iPad Pro features the same 8MP iSight camera on the back and FaceTime HD camera on the front as the iPad Air 2.

It promises up to ten hours battery life (nine hours if you spend all of your time surfing) on a full charge.

Apple spices up its iPhone stocks with 4K video recording, 3D touch, Live Photos, the powerful A9 chip and more.

The details leaked about the latest iteration of iPhones from Apple in recent weeks came pretty close, which has become commonplace for a company that once kept its secrets so close to its chest. The new iPhone 6s is accompanied by the iPhone 6s Plus - available in gold, silver, space gray and the new rose gold metallic finishes - and both packing Retina HD displays and ultra-strong glass. Additionally, both use 7000 series aluminium so we're unlikely to see "bending" claims this time.

As expected, the iPhone 6s retains a 4.7-inch LED-backlit display (1334 x 750), and the iPhone 6s Plus keeps the 5.5-inch display (1920 x 1080).

Apple paid special attention to "3D Touch", which is basically the "Force Touch" feature that Watch owners will be familiar with. With it, users can press down on elements on the screen with different levels of force to bring up content. For example, you can press down lightly to peak at a photo, or an e-mail on the relevant app, or you can press down with more force to get into the content itself. Apple calls this "Peek and Pop".

A former Tesla engineer has been charged with computer crime offenses after allegedly accessing his former Boss's e-mail account and leaking information.

Nima Kalbasi, a 28 year old Canadian citizen, was fired from Tesla Motors in December, but later allegedly accessed Tesla's e-mail servers without authorization. Once gaining access to his former Boss's e-mail account, Kalbasi is accused of stealing confidential information, including employee assessments, which he then shared with former colleagues.

He also is alleged to have leaked confidential information online and attempting to harm Tesla's reputation and credibility by making false and misleading comments.

Kalbasi was apprehended while crossing the border from Canada to the United States on August 24. He appeared in U.S. District Court in San Jose on August 27, and is charged with two counts of felony computer intrusion, and one count of misdemeanor computer intrusion.

If convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of five years in prison for the felony charges, and one year in prison for the misdemeanor charge.

Tesla Motors is based in Palo Alto, California, designing and manufacturing high-end electric vehicles, including the Tesla Model S. The firm just announced that its mass market Model 3 vehicle will be available to pre-order from March, 2016, starting at $35,000. The car itself won't go into production for two years as Tesla waits on the output from its highly-ambitious Gigafactory, under construction in Nevada.

British police arrested a man on Thursday morning for allegedly uploading torrents to popular sites to help distribute music files.

The 38-year old was arrested in Everton, Liverpool, during a raid carried out by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), which investigates copyright infringement and counterfeiting in the United Kingdom.

According to the TorrentFreak blog, the man was a regular uploader of torrents to the Pirate Bay, and also to KickassTorrents. He would, allegedly, upload torrents that could be used to download and share compilations of popular music, such as the UK Top 40 hits.

In the past five years, he allegedly uploaded hundreds of torrents.

According to the PIPCU, the man also ran a separate site that offered individual tracks and acapella versions, and generated a "significant" amount of revenue through advertisements. The man was tracked down through a PIPCU investigation with cooperation from PRS for Music.

"He is also believed to be illegally uploading the UK Top 40 Singles to various torrent sites on a weekly basis as they are published by the official charts company," a PIPCU release reads.

Following an update, Google's Chrome browser should use less memory and be less of a burden on battery life.

It's not exactly a secret that Google's Desktop web browser likes to consume a lot of RAM, particularly for users that tend to have a large number of tabs open. There are ways to reduce the memory usage in Chrome manually, such as using add-ons that suspend tabs after a period of inactivity, or setting plug-ins (Flash etc.) as "click to play".

With the latest updates for Chrome, Google aims to ease the burden the browser puts on a system. The browser can now aggressively clean up old, unused memory when a webpage isn't busy with a task, which Google claims reduces memory usage per website by about 10 percent on average.

For complex web apps it is even better, with tests showing that up to a quarter of memory used by the tab can be freed.

Users of the Chrome browser will also have noticed that sometimes the browser can really lock up a system when restoring tabs that were previously opened. Google has made changes to improve tab restoration too, as Chrome will now restore tabs from most to least recently viewed and can detect when the computer is running low on resources and halt tab restoration temporarily.