Weekly Mobile News Roundup – 20 December 2013

 Once again the week is coming to an end and that means it’s time for a roundup of the past weeks news!

Love It Or Hate It, Apple’s New Christmas Spot Normalizes The Glow – There are two camps gathering in reaction to the new Apple Apple Christmas spot: one faction represented well by my own editor, Jennifer Rooney, in her, “The iPhone ‘Misunderstood’ Christmas Ad Is A Sad Commentary On Culture And Does Apple No Favors;” the other represented by fellow Contributor, Mark Rogowsky, ”Apple Offers Up 90 Seconds Of Magic, Just In Time For Christmas.” I think they are both right, and that’s exactly why this spot works.

FaceTime Audio Coming to Macs With Next OS X Update – The OS X 10.9.2 beta first distributed to developers this afternoon includes Apple’s FaceTime audio, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) feature that was originally introduced to the iPhone with iOS 7. With FaceTime audio on both iOS and OS X, Apple users will be able to seamlessly call one another from any device.

5 Ways To Clean and Maintain OS X Mavericks – One of the great things about OS X is that it basically runs itself. Left to its own devices Apple’s operating system will keep itself pretty clean and issue-free, but even with this there are times that you need to intervene to do some good old-fashioned manual maintenance.

Apple optimized Final Cut Pro, Compressor, Motion and Logic Pro apps for Mac Pro and 4K – Just as the new Mac Pro launched on the online Apple Store this morning, Apple followed up by pushing updates to Final Cut Pro, Compressor, Motion and its other pro apps, all optimized for the Mac Pro’s hardware and with 4K content, 4K monitoring support via Thunderbolt 2 and HDMI on select Mac computers and a whole bunch of additions and performance enhancements.

Looking back at the original iPad: have we come far? – In just under four years’ time, Apple has managed to make the latest full-sized iPad 211g lighter than the original. It’s also 2.8mm shorter, 20.2mm narrower, and almost half the thickness – 7.5mm versus the 13.4mm thickness of the original.

Apple squashes bugs in first update for new Mac Pro – Though the first orders won’t be arriving for a few weeks, owners of the new Mac Pro will have an update to install once they get their new desktop out of the box, as Apple has already prepared a firmware fix for the late 2013 model.

Give Voice to Apps: Why Speech Will Replace Touch as Primary Input  – Rajat Harlalka is a Product Manager with over eight years of experience in the mobile industry primarily in technology, product management and marketing role.

Apple’s Dominance In Apps Is Slipping Away As Android Takes Over – In the U.S., it sometimes feels as if everyone has an iPhone. And historically, Apple has dominated in terms of offering users the most apps, and offering developers the most lucrative place to sell apps.

Logic Pro X adds new Drummers/Drum Kit Designer patches, redesigned EQ plug-ins & more – The latest update to Logic Pro X doesn’t change anything I had to say in our full review, but it does bring a couple welcomed improvements and new features.

Apple requiring app submissions to be optimized for iOS 7 by Feb. 1 – According to a post on Apple’s developer website, all developers will be required to submit apps that are compatible with iOS 7 and built with Xcode 5 as of February 1, 2014.