What you need to know about cloud backup

With so many flooding the interweb on a daily basis, it can be rather difficult to assess the legitimacy of Apple rumours. But you can always trust a bookie, right?

Paddy Power has started taking wagers on what the subject of Apple's upcoming announcement in New York will be. With fingers pointing towards an 'education event' next week, the gambling firm clearly reckons Apple will announce a new digital textbook in a bid to corner the $8bn educational market.

Odds for such are 1/6, a figure far ahead of other potential announcements. The reveal of an iPad Lite sits at 6/1, the iPad 3 at 9/1 and a new iMac desktop at 14/1.

If you fancy a punt on some less likely announcements, try the Apple television set at 16/1, the iPhone 5 at 20/1 and the news of a robotic teacher at 40/1.

These all appear somewhat premature, but it is Apple we're talking about here and the Cupertino giant is no stranger to jumping the gun.

Still, it certainly seems e-textbooks are on the cards and with such a disparity between the odds, I'd be cautious about betting against it.

In other Apple-related gambling news, Paddy Power is taking bets on how many iPads the company will release in 2012 as well. Get odds of 16/1 if you think it won't launch a new model at all, 10/11 for one and 4/5 for two.

We're pretty sure Apple will throw out at least one refreshed iPad in 2012, though, so with odds like that, there seems little incentive to throw any dough at it. ®

Cloud based data management