Although 2011 saw the tragic death of Steve Jobs, a key component to Apples two successful periods, it was a good year financially for the company.

Today it was announced that Apples iOS device sales during last year alone was greater than the total sales of Mac computers for the past 28 years that the company has been in existence.  In 2011 a whopping 156 million iOS devices were sold bringing the cumulative sales figures for iOS devices up to 316 million units.

This compares with 28 years of Mac sales which currently only total 122 million.

After fears last year that some experts were predicting a bleak short term future for Apple, the announcement of these results seems to have helped people renew confidence in the technology giant.

The iPhone is way out in the lead of the most popular iOS device with the cumulative total this year expected to exceed 200 million.  The iPod Touch is in second place, but a long way behind the iPhone at approximately 70 million.  The iPad is a little further behind with approximately 55 million.

Sales of iOS devices now account for approximately 75% of Apples total income with the company raking in just under $110 billion last year.

With the growing popularity and ownership of iPads a major problem is brewing for some of the new app development companies and independent developers – sever performance.

Many new apps have been released over the past few months, a lot of which have been first time releases on the iOS platform for developers.  Some of the most voiced complaints from iPad owners is poor server responsiveness and not being able to connect.

Some new applications have suddenly shot to huge popularity overnight and it seems that some developers cannot keep upgrading and adding new servers as fast as the apps user base grows.

This can potentially have a negative effect on an otherwise popular app as users become tired of slow response between actions and being unable to connect to the apps servers at all during peak times.

DPS Computing recently reported on the problems that Mafia Wars : Shakedown seemed to be experiencing.  Although there has been no official word from developers Zynga on this, it is likely that the cause of the problems are down to server load.

Other apps are facing more intermittent server performance problems where they are unavailable for short periods of time on occasion.  One example of this is the Chronicles of Merlin game app, which is also a popular but fully independant game on social networking site Facebook.  The problem reported with this game today were however, relatively minor.  Players reporting that they could not connect to any of the apps servers for a period of 10 – 15 minutes.

The problems with server performance also seem to be disproportionately affecting developers of free apps.  One possible reason for this is the lack of a revenue stream from app sales likely means that funds for server upgrades are much smaller than developers releasing paid apps.  To compound this, free apps will usually acquire a much bigger user base, much more quickly than their paid counterparts.

Have you been experiencing any problems with any iOS (iPhone or iPad) apps recently?  Let us know!

Well it has got to be said, that the iPhone 4S is a great piece of technology.  But what really gets on your nerves about it?  Poor signal?  Having to use iTunes?  Not being able to get your favourite Android app on it?

Below we have a video from CNET explaining, according to their research, the top 5 worst things about the iPhone 4s.

Are you an iPhone 4S user?  Do you have an opinion on the iPhone 4S?  Why not share it with us below and we’ll see if the things that are hated about the phone in the US are also the same for UK users.

The new iPhone 4s, which launched only a couple of weeks ago has ran into major difficulties with a lot of its users experiencing extremely low battery life.  Results from user testing on iOS 5 have indicated that it might be the location services feature that is the problem.  The current theory is that location data is being pulled far too frequently from mobile phone masts and is therefore draining the phones battery at a much acceleratedspeed.

This flaw will no doubt be slightly embarrassing to Apple but a swift and efficient resolution from them will likely mean that it has done them no harm in the long run.

Location services are provided on most smart phones these days.  Even when these services are running correctly, they are a huge drain on battery as they are simultaneously using information from mobile masts, WiFi and Global Positioning System Satellites.

According to iDownload, turning off the automatic time zone setting will mean that your battery life will last much longer.  The bug means

that when this option is selected your location is calculated over and over again constantly so in case you change timezone the phone can update the correct time.

DPS Computing would advise all iPhone 4S users to currently turn this setting off – unless of course you are somebody that changes time

zone every second  .

Apple are continuing to investigate and hope to find the problem soon as some tests have been inconclusive with the iDownload results above.