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On Tuesday night, Apple announced its Q3 results – traditionally a subdued affair as consumers wait for newer products, like the latest iPhone – and posted its second straight quarter of double digit percentage growth in iPhone sales.

The tech giant also reported a higher-than-expected net income of $7.7 billion (around £4.5 billion) of net income on revenue of $37.4 billion (roughly £22 billion), with per-share profit coming in at $1.28, higher than the expected $1.23.

However, many results were still below what forecasts expected.

Apple has announced details of iOS8 – its latest multi-platform operating system – and one of the main innovations appears to be the inclusion of health data monitoring apps.

Speaking at Apple’s annual conference for developers in San Francisco, Craig Federighi, the company’s senior vice president of software engineering revealed details Health, an app for iPhone and iPad.

Back in January, we predicted 2014 was going to be the year of wearable tech and in February Samsung showcased some new bit of kit at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona – the Galaxy Gear 2, Galaxy Neo and the Gear Fit.

So what’s the deal with the Gear Fit?

What’s going on at Google? First they buy up a load of robotics companies for a series of undisclosed fees, and now they’ve gone splurged a reported £400million on buying an artificial intelligence firm.

For a company whose motto is “Don’t be evil”, Google appears to doing its utmost to place itself in the Skynet role in our increasingly inevitable dystopian future.

Way back in September we told you how AOL chief executive, Tim Armstrong,  sacked an employee during a company-wide conference call.

The conference call in question was to update employees on the latest developments concerning Patch, AOL’s idea for a worldwide local news hub, but, shortly after that employee was sacked by Armstrong, AOL shed a quarter of its Patch sites and laid off half the unit’s workforce, about 500 staff.

Well now AOL has sold Patch.

First there was Siri, Apple’s artificial intelligence (AI) app that would answer anything you asked it, from weather reports to what it was wearing (to which it would often respond “Why do people keep asking me that?”)

Then came Google Now, which moved things on a level by offering you information on things you might be interested in, subject to you letting it know things about you and your habits – which Google will then harvest and put into a big computer along with everything else it knows about everyone before it eventually takes over the world with its army of robot dogs (OK, that’s maybe going a bit far, but really, what’s with Google buying up all these robotics companies?)

And now Intel has thrown the distinctly Iron-Man sounding ‘Jarvis’ into the mix – a smart earpiece designed to rival Apple and Google’s AI.

It sometimes feels like the future has arrived and we’re living it right now – what with self-driving cars, smartwatches, fingerprint and retina recognition technology – but why do so many of us still seem to have such a fondness for old, outdated ‘retro’ tech?

If this is something of an alien concept to you, let me try to explain…