Weekly Mobile News Roundup – 25 October 2013

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

Apple Offering ‘Free’ Updates to All Owners of Aperture, iWork, and iLife; Not Worried About Unethical Users – As part of its efforts to ensure that all eligible software owners are able to upgrade to the latest versions of its software on the Mac App Store, Apple is intentionally allowing users with any version of Aperture, iLife and iWork installed on their system to upgrade to the latest versions on the Mac App Store — even illegally acquired or trial versions.

Apple releases lighter, cheaper 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, Haswell  – At Apple’s special October 22 event in San Francisco, the company has unveiled the new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. As expected, the old 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros have finally been retired; now the MacBook Pro will only come with a Retina display.

New Space Gray iPad mini quietly begins hitting Apple Store shelves – Silently announced alongside the new iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display, Apple has begun selling a Space Gray version of the first-generation, non-Retina display iPad mini at its physical retail stores.

Apple’s new iPads, Macs, OS X: What the analysts are saying – Analysts were neither wildly excited nor terribly disappointed by Apple’s (AAPL) event Tuesday. Hardly anybody changed his or her rating or price target, although a few discovered that their iPad estimates were off — either too high or too low — when Tim Cook announced that Apple sold its 170 millionth unit earlier this month.

$AAPL shares regain highs from early 2013; many Apple analysts’ targets now underwater – Apple’s stock has returned to highs not seen since the beginning of the year, closing today above the price targets of a number of financial analysts and increasingly challenging the value of vast new buyback plans advocated by celebrity investor Carl Icahn.

The new Mac Pro: will professionals embrace Apple’s brave, expensive vision of the desktop? – There’s no doubt that Apple’s brand-new Mac Pro is as much a statement as a computing tool. From its dramatic introduction at WWDC 2013 (marked by SVP Phil Schiller’s bravado) to its radically engineered internals, the Mac Pro is meant to remind the public that no other company designs or builds hardware quite like Apple. At $2,999 — $500 more than the outgoing model — its price is also a statement.

Retina iPad Mini could be the new gold iPhone 5s, with ‘ridiculously tight’ supplies – A second analyst has warned that supplies of the Retina iPad Mini are likely to be “ridiculously tight”, after KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo previously predicted they would be “highly constrained.”

Apple Giving iOS Devs Free Copies of OS X Server to Promote Xcode’s Continuous Integration – Apple today sent out emails to iOS developers, promoting Xcode’s continuous integration feature and offering free copies of OS X Server.

John Siracusa posts his mammoth OS X Mavericks review – With OS X Mavericks now available for download via the Mac App Store — for free mind you — it’s high time for John Siracusa’s typically exhaustive review of Apple’s latest OS X update.

‘Anki Drive’ Robotic Car Game Now Available at Apple’s Online and Retail Stores – The Anki Drive game first demonstrated during Apple’s WWDC keynote address in June is now available exclusively on the Apple Online Store and at Apple’s retail outlets, in line with last week’s announcement.

Of 180,000 tweets about Apple’s new iPads, 50% were positive –  You know things have changed when an Apple (AAPL) event is immediately followed by not one but two illustrated surveys about how it played on social media. The first graphic comes from Crimson Hexagon, an analytics firm out of Harvard that analyzed more than 180,000 tweets about the new Pads and summarized its findings in bullet points and representative posts: 50% of sentiment expressed was positive, of that 50%: 37% was positive in general about the new iPads @ meetbojangy: Come on the new iPad mini is impressive guys.