With little fanfare, Apple began selling the new iPad mini with Retina display on 12 November 2013. Currently, your best bet seems to be to order online and wait 1–10 days for shipping, but Apple is also offering in-store pickup for Wi-Fi models. (One interesting note: while the new iPad mini uses the same A7 processor as the iPhone 5s and iPad Air, it appears to be clocked at 1.27 GHz like the iPhone 5s, instead of the iPad Air’s 1.39 GHz.)

Just how long will your hard drive last? Cloud backup service Backblaze, which relies upon consumer-grade hard drives, performed a study of 25,000 hard drives over four years. The good news is that 74 percent of the drives survived four years. The drives had a 5.1 percent annual failure rate in the first 1.5 years, which dropped to 1.4 percent in the next 1.5 years, then spiked to 11.8 percent after that. Backblaze expects that over half the drives will last six years. Regardless, all drives die eventually, so backups are still a must.

With only four buttons, the Apple Remote included with your Apple TV is quite possibly the most elegant remote control ever made. However, that simplicity hides some useful features. This chapter will teach you how to master the Apple Remote’s basic features and shortcuts. But you’re not limited to the Apple Remote; the Apple TV can be commanded by a third-party remote, an iOS device with Apple’s Remote app, or a Bluetooth keyboard. Each option offers considerably more power than the Apple Remote, and each has its own particular strengths (and weaknesses).

If you’re buying a new iPad and want to push it to its limits, Infinity Blade III is the app to do it. But as a sequel, it doesn’t bring much new to the table.

Apple has released an update to target issues with Google’s Gmail and the Mail app in OS X 10.9 Mavericks. But will it solve all woes reported by Mail users?

In iOS 7, Apple quietly added new keyboard shortcuts to some of its apps and gave developers the capability to add their own. So if you use a Bluetooth keyboard with your iOS 7 device, be sure to bookmark this list of shortcuts that Federico Viticci is working on. Since there is no official documentation from Apple, Viticci is learning them by trial and error, as well as from reader submissions, and he will update the list as he learns more.

Our own Jeff Carlson joined host Chuck Joiner and David Chartier of Finer Things in Tech on the MacVoices podcast to discuss his first impressions of the new iPad Air, including the buying experience, device speed, and camera improvements.

When Apple overhauled its iWork apps last month, power users were outraged by the loss of features like AppleScript support and custom toolbars. In a rare move, Apple has released a support document promising to restore many of these features within the next six months. If you rely on any of the capabilities Apple removed, hang tight with the previous iWork apps until the new ones catch up. Fortunately, Apple’s support document also explains how to revert documents in the new iWork format to the iWork ’09 format for use with the older software.

Torn between the iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina display? Josh Centers shares his iPad Air experience and tells you what you need to know to make the right buying decision.

Apple has released a detailed report on government information requests about its users. In the 7-page PDF, Apple laments not being able to legally report the number of national security requests in the United States, but says that it’s doing everything short of a lawsuit to liberate that information. Apple says that most of the requests are “device requests” related to stolen devices, which numbered 3,542 in the United States between 1 January 2013 and 30 June 2013. Apple also received 1,000–2,000 “account requests,” covering things like iCloud, iTunes, and Game Center from U.S. law enforcement in the same period. The company mentions several times in the report that it does not profit from the personal data of its users, stores as little as possible, and encrypts everything to the best of its ability.

The state of Arizona has announced that Apple will build a new solar-powered manufacturing plant in Mesa, Arizona, bringing 2,000 jobs to the state. This is part of Apple’s effort to bring manufacturing back to the United States, spearheaded by the upcoming Mac Pro, which will be assembled in Texas. Apple supplier GT Advanced Technologies has announced that the Arizona facility will be used to manufacture industrial sapphire, which Apple uses to protect camera lenses and Touch ID sensors, prompting speculation that it could be used to protect future displays instead of Corning’s Gorilla Glass.

At Macworld, former TidBITS staff writer Lex Friedman surveyed Mac experts such as TidBITS publisher Adam Engst, Instapaper creator Marco Arment, The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, Faith Korpi of the IRL Talk podcast, and Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software about how they use their Macs. Read on for ideas about how to set up your own Mac and to learn Adam’s strong opinions about window placement.

See who won bags of Tonx coffee in last week’s DealBITS drawing, and if you’re not among them, read on to save 50 percent on a 6-ounce bag of coffee beans.

In all likelihood, you’ve already set up your Apple TV, but if you’re just getting started, this chapter of “Take Control of Apple TV” walks you through, step-by-step, starting with explanations of all the ports and cables you’ll need. Author Josh Centers then moves on to explain the several different setup approaches and makes sure you get other key aspects of the Apple TV configured right away.