June 2012 - apple-list - University of Manitoba Mailing Lists

INTEREST: MacWorld's take on Microsoft's SURFACE tablet announcement
by billing 27 Jun '12

27 Jun '12

….from: http://www.macworld.com/article/1167334/looking_at_microsofts_surface_from_… Looking at Microsoft's Surface from an iPad perspective Impressive as some features may be, Microsoft’s tablet won’t threaten the iPad by Lex Friedman, Macworld.com Jun 19, 2012 1:00 pm Microsoft on Monday unveiled its new Surface, a tablet computer it says is “coming soon,” and one clearly aimed at competing directly with the iPad. The Surface is a touchscreen tablet with a 10.6-inch high definition screen. It will run Windows 8 Pro or Windows RT (more on that in a moment)—using the tile-based operating system familiar to Windows Phone users. What Microsoft demonstrated on stage at its press event looked interesting. At least, some of it did. There were clever bits of innovation—most specifically, the Smart Cover-esque Touch Cover and Type Cover. Each connects magnetically to the Surface to protect its screen, and each can trigger the same sleep/wake behavior that the iPad Smart Cover (and now, the Smart Case) achieves. The innovative part is that the covers double as keyboards for the Surface: The thinner Touch Cover uses a multitouch keyboard—the keys don’t move under your fingers, but you can rest your fingers on them without typing. The thicker Type Cover uses actual buttons. No one outside of Microsoft has had the chance to use one of the Surface covers in tandem with a functioning Surface just yet, so it’s hard to say how well the setup works. Still, integrating a keyboard into the cover is an awfully clever idea, and Apple has never been shy about improving upon innovations from elsewhere—see the original Mac OS, the iPod, and Notification Center for examples from three different eras in the company’s history. Some Surface elements, however, don’t seem likely to catch Apple’s eye: The integrated kickstand seemingly defines the Surface as a landscape-orientation only device, and isn’t compatible with the smooth aesthetic Apple favors. Of course, we won’t really know how good (or not) the Surface is until we can truly get our hands on a functioning version of the device. In the near-term, though, while Apple might be intrigued, I doubt Cupertino is ablaze with panic in the aftermath of Microsoft’s Surface unveiling. For one thing, the Surface is saddled with various elements that scream “Microsoft.” Most prominently, it will be sold with two different underlying architectures: an Intel-based model running Windows 8 Pro, and an ARM-processor-based model running Windows RT. Both models will be heavier than the iPad, though the Windows RT version may end up being slightly thinner than the iPad, Microsoft says. Only the Windows 8 Pro surface can run regular Windows apps in addition to touch-optimized ones. The two models will come in different size configurations. iPad purchasing isn’t without complexity of its own: Customers need to choose whether to get Wi-Fi-only models or cellular versions, and then between two different cellular carriers in the U.S. Microsoft didn’t announce any plans to include cellular connectivity in the Surface. Both Surfaces will feature a USB port, Mini DisplayPort, and a micro-SD card slot. There’s plenty of real-world use for those ports, but again, it’s exceedingly unlikely that Apple would add such features to the iPad—so those likely don’t intimidate Apple much, either. And, true to Microsoft’s seeming goal to satisfy all use cases, the Surface will ship with a stylus, too. In truth, though, Apple’s head start here is enormous. The App Store includes 225,000 third-party apps for the iPad; there are currently zero third-party apps designed for the Surface. While Microsoft will surely court the largest app makers and encourage them to develop for its platform, that’s not always an easy sell. For some customers, a tablet must run some flavor of Windows to interest them. Apple’s never going to win those customers over, and needn’t worry about them. For everyone else, there’s the iPad, a series of also-ran not-iPads, and the better-faring ebook tablet market dominated by the Kindle Fire and Nook Color. Microsoft’s Surface will need to get a wide customer base to motivate app makers to develop for it—the same Catch-22 that continues to hamper acceptance of Windows Phone. And there are two other key elements that the Surface still lacks: a ship date and a price. The former isn’t too important; no tablet maker has yet threatened the iPad’s strong hold on the market, and Microsoft can’t really get further behind than “very, very behind” as it already is. The price point, though, is hugely significant. If Microsoft can’t compete with the iPad’s $499 starter price—let alone the iPad 2’s $399 price tag—it’s hard to imagine how, barring huge as-yet-unannounced innovations, it could threaten Apple much at all. Now, if your core business model is making Yet Another Android Tablet that looks like an iPad but is demonstrably inferior, I think you’re right to feel a bit nervous that Microsoft is making a play here. And I wouldn’t be shocked if the ultrabook market finds that Windows customers prefer the Surface’s approach. So even if Apple needn’t be worried just yet, I think a few of the competitors it shares with Microsoft ought to be. [On the surface, Lex Friedman is a Macworld staff writer.]

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INTEREST: INTEL broadens its reach in wireless realm
by Wayne Billing 18 Jun '12

18 Jun '12

INTEL (the chip maker) recently announced its first cell phone, the: "...3G-enabled Xolo X900<http://www.xolo.in/> running Android [on an INTEL Atom chip] will go on sale in [India] on April 23 and cost 22,000 Indian rupees, or about $425, without a cellphone plan..." - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2403300,00.asp This week Intel announced they will be purchasing 1,700 wireless technology patents for $375 million from InterDigital. This purchase is said to include aspects of technologies relating to 3G, WCDMA, HSDPA, HUSPA, LTE and 802.11 WiFi connections. …from: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/18/us-interdigital-intel-idUSBRE85H1… Intel to buy InterDigital patents for $375 million [The Intel logo is advertised on the side of a computer box as a customer pushes a shopping cart at an electronic store in Phoenix, Arizona November 4, 2009. REUTERS/Joshua Lott] NEW YORK | Mon Jun 18, 2012 12:26pm EDT (Reuters) - InterDigital Inc said on Monday it had agreed to sell to Intel Corp about 1,700 wireless technology patents for $375 million, sending InterDigital shares up 29 percent. The companies said they expect the deal to close in the third quarter. Intel is currently pushing to expand its chip business beyond computers and into mobile devices. InterDigital said in January it would keep looking for buyers for its patent portfolio after it failed to find one for the whole company. In July 2011, InterDigital said it was looking into a possible sale of the company or its patents in the hope that other big patent deals would boost its value. InterDigital shares were up $6.73 or 29 percent at $29.61 on Nasdaq<http://www.reuters.com/finance/markets/index?symbol=us!comp> after the news. (Reporting By Sinead Carew<http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=sinead.carew&>; Editing by Maureen Bavdek and David Gregorio<http://blogs.reuters.com/search/journalist.php?edition=us&n=david.gregorio&>)

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INTEREST: One nano-SIM to rule them all: new, smaller SIM coming to phones and tablets
by Billing Wayne 02 Jun '12

02 Jun '12

…from: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/06/one-nano-sim-to-rule-them-all-apple-… One nano-SIM to rule them all: Apple submission approved as standard The ETSI decision will open the door for thinner and more capable phones. by Jacqui Cheng - June 1 2012, 11:55am CDT Apple wants to put old and busted SIMs in a landfill and replace them with a newer, smaller nano-SIM. The nano-SIM design proposed by Apple has been approved by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), opening the door for the creation of even smaller SIM cards and the continued shrinking of smartphone hardware. ETSI announced its decision on Friday morning, choosing Apple's submission over proposals from Motorola, RIM, and Nokia. The new SIM card design is the fourth form factor (4FF) and is 40 percent smaller than the micro-SIM that is currently popular in today's cell phones. The exact dimensions of the nano-SIM will be 12.3mm wide, 8.8mm high, and 0.67mm thick (0.48" x 0.35" x 0.03"), according to ETSI. And, when it hits the market, it will be packaged so that it's backwards compatible with slots designed to fit the current micro-SIM. This will enable the new SIM to work with older handsets while phone manufacturers work to develop newer hardware that can take advantage of the smaller dimensions. "Today's SIM card designs take up a significant amount of space inside a mobile device," ETSI said in a statement. "This space is more and more valuable in today's handsets which deliver an ever-increasing number of features." Although Apple's design had the support of a number of European cell carriers, the competition among the companies was quite fierce. RIM, Nokia, and Motorola all argued that their own designs would cause less damage to a handset when inserted, therefore making them superior to Apple's design. Nokia even went so far as to say that it would refuse to license Apple's standards-essential patents if it won. "We believe that Apple is mis-using the standardization process, seeking to impose its own proprietary solution on the industry and using ETSI merely to rubber stamp its proposal, rather than following established principles and practices," Nokia said in a statement in March of this year. "We have informed ETSI that, if Apple's proposal is selected, then Nokia will not license its relevant patents to that standard." This was despite the fact that Apple wrote in a letter to ETSI that it would offer royalty-free licenses for its nano-SIM design. Still, Apple did end up making some changes to its design last month in response to the controversy, as did RIM and Motorola. In fact, both sides ended up inching toward each other so much with their modifications that Apple's newly approved design is only different from RIM/Motorola's in minuscule ways. Both 4FF SIMs are the same dimensions on the outside, but RIM/Motorola's differs because it has a notch that would allow handsets to use "push-push" designs instead of sliding trays for the SIM cards. ("Push-push" allows you to push the SIM into the slot, and then push it again in order to get it to pop out.) (Update: this paragraph originally stated that Apple's design was the one with the notch, which was backwards. It has since been corrected.) ETSI didn't specifically name Apple as the winner in its announcement on Friday, but as noted byMacworld, the winner of the ETSI decision was identified by a member of the committee, Giesecke & Devrient. ETSI has also declined to comment on how the decision was made, which is unfortunate since many argue that the notched design would have been superior to the tray design. "We now have an ETSI standardized format for 4FF," the group said in a statement to The Verge. "It's no longer a question of one company or another, the industry has collectively made a decision." As for what the decision means for consumers, some will care about the shrinking SIM specifications and most others will remain completely oblivious. What most consumers will see in the coming years will be smaller and thinner handsets—as we know from various teardowns of popular smartphones, manufacturers tend to pack them as tightly as they can with components in order to keep physical size to a minimum. A 40-percent-smaller SIM means phone manufacturers can continue to reduce handset bulk, or even add newer components that might need a little more space. As for Nokia, it seems the company has come around from its original position on Apple's design—sort of. "Nokia continues to believe that the selected nano-SIM proposal is technically inferior and not suitable for a number of applications, but the ETSI Smart Card Platform Technical Committee has now made its decision," the company said in a statement. "As Nokia believes that ETSI has taken steps to address Nokia's original concerns over the standardization process, we have advised ETSI that we are prepared to license any Nokia patents which are essential to implement the standard, on [fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory] terms."

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Apple Details iOS Security Features in New Guide
by Andre Worms 01 Jun '12

01 Jun '12

Article https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/apple-details-ios-security-features-new-… PDF http://images.apple.com/ipad/business/docs/iOS_Security_May12.pdf Andre Worms IT Support Specialist Help and Solutions Centre Client Services, IST University of Manitoba (204) 474-8400 Andre.Worms(a)ad.umanitoba.ca

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