“The judge in the Apple e-book antitrust case loves her iPad”
—Philip Elmer-Dewitt
June 2013
41 posts
Apple Wins $30 Million iPad Contract From LA Unified School District →
allthingsd.com
via John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD
“
Qual será o impacto das revelações envolvendo o PRISM e empresas de tecnologia norte-americanas na adoção de tecnologias emergentes como Cloud Computing e Big Data?
Essas revelações mudarão alguma coisa no discurso, nos produtos e serviços das empresas e profissionais que fazem parte da comunidade/indústria de segurança da informação?
No momento estas são questões ainda sem resposta.
” —
It’s back: District court judge revives SCO v IBM →
arstechnica.com
Lee Huthcinson, Ars Technica:
Sad that Game of Thrones has wrapped up its third season? Looking for some drama to fill the time? We’ve got just the thing for you. One of the Internet’s longest-running and most-hated lawsuits is back: SCO v. IBM has been reopened by Utah district court judge David Nuffer.
If you’re not familiar with this case, it really is one of the most fascinatingly bizarre ones in the annals of computer history — and it’s just gotten more bizarre. You may remember “SCO Unix” from many years ago; SCO made a Unix clone and then bought the rights to the Unix name from AT&T. The thing is, the SCO in this lawsuit really isn’t the SCO that sold SCO Unix — that SCO actually sold off all their Unix rights and changed their name to Tarantella. One of the companies that got some of those rights was Caldera, a spinoff from Novell; Caldera then changed their name to SCO and started suing people.
The sad footnote in that story is that the people who started Caldera — none of whom were involved by the time the lawsuits were flying — were arguably years ahead of their time in the Linux world. If they’d actually gotten their shit together Linux might have actually taken over the desktop after all ha ha ha ha hahaha okay but they were actually pretty good.
Why iTunes Radio could be worth a small fortune for Apple | Media →
guardian.co.uk
Streaming music system ties in users, supports iPhone and iPad sales and is likely to lead to more music buying
via The Guardian
Apple - Apple’s Commitment to Customer Privacy →
apple.com
For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form.
As I’ve said, Uncle Sam can ask, but companies can only deliver what had actually registered. And if they want to, very little can be collected, recorded and delivered. It’s a matter of intelligence and engineering platform.
An important missing with this statement relates to information about the access to encrypted data stored on iPhones that have been confiscated by the authorities. Is there a way for Apple to retrieve this information without much effort to hand them over to the security forces?
No matter what third parties say, there is still much speculation and this is still a rather nebulous area.
More clarification from Apple would be very welcome.
Apple - Apple’s Commitment to Customer Privacy →
apple.com
For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data. Similarly, we do not store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or Siri requests in any identifiable form.
Como eu tenho dito, o Tio Sam pode requisitar, mas as empresas só podem fornecer aquilo que elas têm. Se desejarem realmente, muito pouca coisa pode ser coletada, registrada e entregue, é tudo uma questão de engenharia inteligente da plataforma.
Uma ausência relevante aqui, nessa declaração da Apple, refere-se a informações sobre o acesso aos dados criptografados e armazenadas em iPhones confiscados pelas autoridades. E a viabilidade de recuperá-los de uma forma simples para uso pelas forças de segurança.
Não importa o que terceiros digam, ainda há muita especulação à esse respeito e essa ainda é uma área bastante nebulosa.
Mais esclarecimentos da Apple seriam muito bem vindos.
Apple: desempenho respeitável
- A Apple já vendeu 865 milhões de dispositivos (entre iPhones, iPads, iPods e Macs) desde 2007.
- Hoje a Apple tem mais de 575 milhões de contas cadastradas no iTunes.
- O iOS 6 é o sistema operacional móvel mais popular da atualidade batendo com folga a base instalada de qualquer versão do Android já lançada.
- 93% dos usuários de iOS usam a versão mais recente do sistema, no caso do Android esse número é de 33%.
- O usuários que se dizem muito satisfeitos: iOS 74%, Windows Phone 53%, Android 49%.
- O iOS responde por 60% de todo o tráfego mobile na web.
- Usuários de iPhone usam o smartphone 50% mais do que os usuários de Android.
- O iPhone ganhou esse ano o nono prêmio J.D.Power and Associates que mede a satisfação dos clientes. E não é só isso, ele ganhou 9 vezes consecutivas. Nenhum outro produto jamais obteve esse desempenho.
Uma pequena digressão: a Samsung precisa aprender que esse é o tipo de coisa que não dá pra copiar da noite para o dia, muito menos só na base da publicidade.
“
Quem já experimentou o OS X Mavericks e o iOS 7 (com avançadas tecnologias embarcadas, muitas delas bastante superiores ao que está disponível nos sistemas operacionais da concorrência), já consegue imaginar o potencial para novas e inéditas apps que farão uso desses recursos. Considerando também os ganhos impressionantes na autonomia da bateria dos novos MacBooks Air (até 12h, equivalente ou superior ao iPad), a rede WiFi 802.11ac muito mais rápida (“gigabit” WiFi), o lançamento do Mac Pro e o que pode estar por vir com o novo iPhone (mesmo sem considerar outras novidades que podem ser anunciadas ao longo do ano), já sabe que a Apple novamente está dando um salto adiante dos concorrentes.
Considero que no biênio 2013/2014 a concorrência estará focada em buscar se aproximar novamente da Apple.
O que na minha opinião não deve ocorrer totalmente antes do final de 2014.
” —
stratēchery by Ben Thompson | When Apple Moves Fast →
stratechery.com
And when the redesigned software meet the new hardware, everything will make sense. For now we see only a draft of one of the sides of this coin.The question we should be asking is what this shift, and the urgency with which it was executed, portends.
Where Apple Went Wrong | winn by Chris Winn →
blog.chriswinn.com
IMHO there is much to be corrected, but the fundamentals are good and are on track. When you talk about Apple, the standards are always high and that’s good.They have until September to finish this draft. I sure hope they do.
“The job of Apple’s CEO is, first and foremost, to understand what makes Apple, Apple. That is far more important than product sense, or operations excellence, or taste, or a million other attributes thrown around by pundits and analysts. On this criteria, it’s clear that Cook is the right man for the job. I would contend that anyone that says otherwise doesn’t understand revolutions, doesn’t understand culture, and doesn’t understand Apple.”
—Tim Cook is a Great CEO | stratēchery by Ben Thompson
“iOS 7 is a *huge* opportunity to march right into a crowded App Store with an unfair advantage.”
—
Because, that’s what smart people do.
“
iOS 7 isn’t flat. There are subtle shadows, lighting effects, gradients, and even new (rather gratuitous and distracting, in my opinion – and thankfully optional) parallax effects. It’s more flat, certainly, but not two-dimensional.
Apple doesn’t design things by having a goal like “let’s make it flat”. That’s a bizarre concept, because flatness in itself doesn’t have a corresponding rationale regarding user experience. Flatness may be a visual treatment that provides a certain desirable quality, but it’s not an end in itself.
The relevant goal in this case was an emphasis on content rather than medium, which I wrote about in issue 2 of The Loop Magazine. In iOS 7, apps are aesthetically and conceptually just content, with functional and informational adornments where necessary. Tables aren’t so obviously controls, but rather lists of things. The focus is on function rather than form.
” —iOS 7 - Matt Gemmell
“This new look is extremely deliberate. This doesn’t mean that a lot of changes aren’t controversial—it’s pretty much killed the button as we’ve come to know it—but they’re never being done just for the hell of it. They’re questioning assumptions we take for granted. (Do we really still need buttons? After 15–20 years of using the web, we’re accustomed to taking action by clicking/tapping frameless icons and words differentiated only by color.) It’s not entirely consistent, but they’re trying to replace three decades of design language. That’s not something you’re going to knock out of the ballpark on your first try, especially if you have less than a year to do it in.”
—Watts Martin
“The design of iOS 7 is based on rules. There’s an intricate system at work, a Z-axis of layers organized in a logical way. [It] is anything but flat. It is three dimensional not just visually but logically. It uses translucency not to show off, but to provide you with a sense of place.”
—John Gruber
“There is a deep intellectual rigor to the design of iOS 7, and it’s hard not to see it as being profoundly informed by Ive’s background in hardware.”
—Daring Fireball: ‘This Is Our Signature’: iOS 7
Apple’s confidence →
loopinsight.com
WWDC 2013 Keynote: great opening!
Two excellent, accurate and debunker texts that you must read
Covering market share versus profit share, open versus closed, Android versus Apple.
Android vs. Apple. Market Share vs. Profit Share, Part 255
By Jean-Louis Gassée
Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations | World news | guardian.co.uk →
guardian.co.uk
The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows.
The Guardian
WWDC: Hey, Samsung: Apple's been studying on killing you →
blogs.computerworld.com
via Computerworld Blogs
“
The gist of the defense was that, in contrast to what took place under the Bush Administration, this form of secret domestic surveillance was legitimate because Congress had authorized it, and the judicial branch had ratified it, and the actual words spoken by one American to another were still private. So how bad could it be?
The answer, according to the mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer Susan Landau, whom I interviewed while reporting on the plight of the former N.S.A. whistleblower Thomas Drake and who is also the author of Surveillance or Security?, is that it’s worse than many might think.
“The public doesn’t understand,” she told me, speaking about so-called metadata. “It’s much more intrusive than content.” She explained that the government can learn immense amounts of proprietary information by studying “who you call, and who they call. If you can track that, you know exactly what is happening — you don’t need the content.”
” —Jane Mayer
Daring Fireball Linked List: Verizon and the NSA: The Problem With Metadata
“
Me preocupa ainda mais que empresas privadas, grandes e influentes como o Google, há tempos venham discursando e defendendo o fim da privacidade. Como já ocorreu inúmeras vezes em depoimentos públicos do seu ex-CEO e atual chairman, Eric Schmidt.
Governos sempre quiseram e sempre desejarão vasculhar as vidas das pessoas. Temos leis e o voto como instrumentos poderosos para coibir os excessos.
Mas no momento que baixarmos a guarda e não nos importarmos mais com sagrado e democrático direito à privacidade, quando passarmos a acreditar cegamente nesse tipo de discurso oportunista do Dr. Schmidt (compreensível pois ele parece preocupado apenas em potencializar o lucro da companhia da qual faz parte e que tem como principal fonte de receita a coleta e a venda de informações pessoais dos usuários para anunciantes), esse será o começo do fim.
Trata-se de legitimar a sanha da bisbilhotagem dos governos e dos poderosos.
Deixaremos então de ser indivíduos e cidadãos para nos rebaixarmos oficialmente à categoria de meros números e estatísticas.
” —
Apple does a 180 with suppliers in China - Fortune Tech →
tech.fortune.cnn.com
Impressive.Apple is now one of the most aggressive tech companies in adopting progressive environmental policies in China.
Counting geeks: who cares that Android is 'open'? — Benedict Evans →
ben-evans.com
As I always said, the minority.It’s clear that there’s a highly vocal and highly technical group of people who love all of the technical things you can do with Android phones that you can’t do on iOS, consciously reject the iPhone and care deeply about ‘openness’ and all the things that go with it. However, it’s also clear that these people are a minority of actual Android users, given that the typical use levels seen from Android in totality are lower than those from the iPhone (often much lower).
“No case in the history of the antitrust laws, has imposed liability on a new entrant facing a dominant player with a 90% market share.”
—
Orin Snyder - Apple’s Attorney
The DOJ is arguing the facts. Apple is arguing the law. - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech
Apple Launches WWDC 2013 iOS App With Session Video Integration - Mac Rumors →
macrumors.com
One week ahead of the start of its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, Apple today launched a new WWDC iOS app to help attendees stay on top of the latest news and events going on at the conference.
New this year is video integration, with all Registered Apple Developers able to watch session videos from the conference as they are posted daily. Apple has been posting session videos increasingly quickly after WWDC, and for the first time the company will this year be making videos available during the conference.
Maybe It’s Time For Apple To Go Back Behind The Curtain | TechCrunch →
techcrunch.com
I agree with many of the arguments and maybe some adjustments are still required in Apple’s PR under Cook. In the past, this must have been one of the many responsibilities assumed by Steve personally.
Tim Cook then need to make some adjustments here as he did recently for greater integration between the team and the product services.
Fragmented Android drives big dev to Apple | Computerworld Blogs →
blogs.computerworld.com
“Why have a party if no one comes?”
Help Save Podcasting! | Electronic Frontier Foundation →
eff.org
We need your help to save podcasting. EFF is partnering with leading lawyers to bust a key patent being used to threaten podcasters. But we need your help to find prior art and cover the filing fees for a brand new patent busting procedure.
“A precursor to Safari — not in code, but in spirit. Camino (née Chimera) was like a glass of ice water on a hot day for Mac users who wanted a modern but Mac-like browser in the early years of Mac OS X.”
—RIP, Camino
“You could have won a lot of money making bar bets a decade ago that in 2013, Microsoft’s communications chief would make an argument that positions Apple as the number one maker of PCs by volume in the world.”
—Daring Fireball Linked List: Counting Tablets as PCs
May 2013
81 posts
E-Commerce is a Bear →
medium.com
What I Learned Building… - Stories from people who build things.
Must read.
“They go, they buy an iPad, they use it. They don’t have to worry about RT or Pro, “Metro” mode or “Desktop” mode, and which version of the same named browser does what and when. There’s no duality, no confusion, no feeling caught — and yes, compromised — between the OS that was and the OS that needs to be. There’s just the iPad.”
—
Rene Ritchie nailed it.
Microsoft once again fails to understand that, when it comes to tablets, Windows isn’t a feature - It’s a liability | iMore.com
“
Diversification of suppliers, investments in acquisitions of capital equipment, repurchase of shares, payment of dividends to shareholders, strategic hires (in marketing, retail, engineering and environment - Apple simply hired the former president of EPA), acquisitions of one company on every 76 days (just 9 last year), approval of products for use by government agencies, investment in strategic areas such as georeferencing, the highest profit margins in the industry, the only manufacturer with a PC line that is not shrinking, $145 billion in cash, more than 80 million iPhones and over 40 million iPads sold in the last 12 months, 81% of web traffic on tablets and 59% of all web traffic on smartphones and tablets, etc., etc.
And we are not considering here what is in development today inside Apple’s labs, because of course that we don’t know.
Well, this doesn’t seem to me a portrait of a company in trouble.
Actually, it looks more like a paradise where any company would want to be.
Tim Cook is brilliant.
” —
The Brightest Heaven Of Invention →
asymco.com
Whereas there is a constant clamoring for Apple’s to use its cash to “acquire” or “buy” something, anything, maybe people not looking hard enough. If you need the satisfaction that comes from knowing that money is being spent, a glance at the Cash Flow statement and Balance Sheet shows that Apple buys the equivalent of one Yahoo! every three years.
The main difference with this type of acquisition is that there is less value destruction. Using the capital to ensure access to capacity, differentiation and hence a high margin is better than writing off the goodwill after a few years.
Apple has been busy using its cash for acquiring not companies, but capital equipment.
Yeap, Tim Cook is brilliant.
“
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is only a couple of weeks away and everyone is wondering what the company will unveil during the keynote address. As much as we all have long wish lists for what we would like to see, I think it’s important to balance those with realistic expectations for what’s likely to happen.
The important thing to remember about WWDC is that it is a developer conference. It’s not a place where Apple is going to show off the newest iPhone or iPad 1. These are Apple’s flagship products and they demand separate events. Entire industries watch these products because they shape what will happen in the mobile space. They are that important.
” —Excellent point of view. I couldn’t agree more.
But I certainly also would add: gains in performance, stability improvements and some new features, both on iOS 7 and Mac OS X 10.9.
WWDC Expectations via The Loop
“
Acho que o Cook se saiu bem na entrevista de ontem. Mostrou segurança, não fugiu de nenhuma pergunta e reforçou os valores da Apple.
A participação daquele jovem do WSJ durante a Q&A nos proporcionou um lampejo do que deve ser a redação deles para a cobertura de tecnologia.
As vezes acho que esses caras, das publicações mais antigas, pensam que é suficiente contratar uma garotada para modernizar o jornalismo que produzem. Ledo engano.
Curiosa também foi a participação de um dos editores do hipster The Verge.
A impressão que esses dois profissionais deixam é de que, as vezes, na cobertura tech de hoje o jornalista parece tentar chamar mais atenção para si do que para a matéria.
” —