- apple-list - University of Manitoba Mailing Lists

FYI: May; July 2011: iMac 1TB Seagate Hard Drive Replacement Program
by billing 25 Jul '11

25 Jul '11

No telling (it seems) if any of these made it to Canada.... ...from: http://www.apple.com/support/imac-harddrive/ iMac 1TB Seagate Hard Drive Replacement Program Apple has determined that a very small number of Seagate 1TB hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems, may fail under certain conditions. These systems were sold between May 2011 and July 2011. Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) will replace affected hard drives free of charge. Apple is contacting affected iMac owners who provided a valid email address during the product registration process to let them know about this program. If you have not been contacted, but think you have a 1TB Seagate hard drive, you can enter your [on the page link above] to see if it's part of this program. Finding your iMac serial number is easy. See how. Replacement Process If your iMac has an affected hard drive, please choose one of the options below to get it replaced: Apple Retail Store - Set up an appointment with a Genius. Apple Authorized Service Provider - Find one here. Apple Technical Support - Contact us for local service options. Apple recommends replacing affected hard drives as soon as possible. Before you go in for service, please back up your data. Learn more about backup options. Additional Information You will need to have the original OS installation discs that were shipped with your product in order to re-install your operating system, other applications and any backed up data after your hard drive is replaced. This worldwide Apple program does not extend the standard warranty coverage of the iMac. Apple will replace affected Seagate hard drives, free of charge, until July 23rd, 2012. Apple will continue to evaluate service data and will provide further extensions to this program as needed. Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support 130 Machray Hall Building 474-6649 474-7625 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca

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INTEREST: iPad, iPhone making gains
by Billing Wayne 23 Jul '11

23 Jul '11

On the Wallstreet Journal run site "All things D(igital)", there are two stories about the growth of iPad and iPhone: ....from: http://allthingsd.com/20110721/apple-the-worlds-largest-smartphone-vendor/?… Apple: World’s Largest Smartphone Vendor JULY 21, 2011 AT 8:23 AM PT Another notch in Apple’s belt. The iPhone maker has finallyovertaken Nokia as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor. Posting abysmal second-quarter earnings this morning, Nokia reported smartphone shipments that slid 34 percent to 16.7 million units, and in doing so, forfeited its title as world’s largest smartphone manufacturer by volume. Apple, which became the world’s largest handset vendor by revenue in the first quarter of 2011 (again overtaking Nokia to claim that title), shipped 20.3 million iPhones in its second quarter. Until today, Nokia had dominated the smartphone market for about 15 years after essentially creating it with the Nokia 9000 Communicator in 1996. An astonishing upheaval in the global smartphone landscape — more so because Apple managed it in under five years. With a single smartphone. ....from: http://allthingsd.com/20110721/ipad-trouncing-android-in-enterprise/ John Paczkowski iPad Trouncing Android in Enterprise JULY 21, 2011 AT 6:00 AM PT The tablet is not yet a standard-issue sidearm in enterprise, but it’s well on its way to becoming one — particularly Apple’s iPad. According to Good Technology, which provides mobile device management services to 49 of the Fortune 100 and 182 of the Fortune 500, 27 percent of the mobile devices activated by its enterprise customers during the second quarter of 2011 were tablets.* And most of those were iPads. More than 95 percent, actually. Which is impressive, certainly, but not all that surprising. The iPad is more well-established in the tablet market than its various Android rivals; it makes sense that it has made deeper inroads into enterprise. That said, it’s worth noting that Android tablet activations among Good customers actually declined to 3.1 percent during the quarter, despite the debut of the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy. In fact, Good noted more iPad activations during the quarter than activations of all Android tablets and smartphones combined. Interesting, considering Android’s recent growth. Why the disparity? John Herrema, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at Good, thinks it’s got a lot to do with the consumerization of IT and the growing number of “Bring Your Own Device” employees in the enterprise space. “We attribute the large gap between iPad and Android tablet activations to the combination of user preference among our ‘BYOD’ users and large deployments of company-owned iPads, especially in verticals like financial services and healthcare,” he told AllThingsD.com. But the iPad can’t maintain that vast a lead forever. Android will likely narrow the gap in tablet activations just as it did for smartphones before, though Good doesn’t see that happening until at least 2012. “As we saw with Android smartphones over the course of 2010, we do expect Android to narrow this huge gap in tablet activations,” the company wrote in its Device Activations Report. “However, we don’t see that happening in 2011. The iPad 2 simply has too much momentum.” Indeed. As Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said during Apple’s latest earnings call earlier this week, “Today 86 percent of the Fortune 500 are deploying or testing iPad within their enterprises, up from 75 percent last quarter. We are also seeing strong adoption internationally with 47 percent of Global 500 companies testing or deploying iPad. In the 15 months since iPad has shipped, we have seen iPad used in the enterprise in ways we could have never imagined.” *Good’s survey data does not include Research In Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook or Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad.

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FYI: OS X 10.7 (Lion) "Up To Date" program: if you've recently purchased
by billing 21 Jul '11

21 Jul '11

...from: http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/ If you've purchased a qualifying computer that does not include OS X Lion, you can upgrade to Lion free of charge. And if you recently purchased a qualifying Mac Server, you can upgrade to Lion Server at no additional cost. Check out the conditions below to see if you qualify. OS X Lion Up to Date Program- How it works Qualifying purchases between June 06, 2011 and July 20, 2011 Customers who purchase a qualifying new Mac Computeror an Apple Certified Refurbished computer from the Apple Online Store between June 6, 2011 and July 20, 2011 that does not include OS X Lion can upgrade to OS X Lion for free. If you purchased your computer from the Apple Online Store, an Apple Retail Store, or an Apple Authorized Reseller, follow one of these links to participate in the program. Remember your order must be entered by August 19, 2011. Subject to terms and conditions. Redeem from the Apple Online Store If you cannot submit an order through the Apple Online Store, follow this link to participate in the program. Qualifying purchases on or after July 21, 2011 Customers who purchase a qualifying new Mac Computeror an Apple Certified Refurbished computer from the Apple Online Store on or after July 21, 2011 that does not include OS X Lion can upgrade to OS X Lion for free. If you purchased your computer from the Apple Online Store, an Apple Retail Store, or an Apple Authorized Reseller, follow one of these links to participate in the program. Remember your completed order must be entered within 30 days of the date of your purchase of a qualifying computer (described in this offer). Subject to terms and conditions. Redeem from the Apple Online Store If you cannot submit an order through the Apple Online Store, follow this link to participate in the program.

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FYI: OS X 10.7 available; JAVA: install-on-demand
by billing 20 Jul '11

20 Jul '11

In case you haven't yet seen it, OS X 10.7 (Lion) is now available for purchase from the MacApp store: http://www.apple.com/ca/macosx/ As a side bar, for those of you who need/use JAVA (from the Apple JAVA developer's mailing list): Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 08:37:17 -0700 From: Mike Swingler <swingler(a)apple.com> Subject: Re: Java and OS X Lion Cc: Java-Dev Mailing List <java-dev(a)lists.apple.com> Message-ID: <BB21E599-5AF8-43CA-ABC4-005C0B61FEE3(a)apple.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Java for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is provided as an install-on-demand download. Launching an application that is linked against the JavaVM framework (as the JavaApplicationStub is), causes the install-on-demand dialog to be presented, the app is terminated, and if the runtime was successfully installed, the app is re-launched. Long-term, we recommend that app developers who use the JavaApplicationStub should transition to embedding the Java runtime within their own app. We are working with Oracle on the OpenJDK project to provide an open source version of JDK7 that can be embedded, and several developers have already started deploying their apps with an embedded JDK7 (but it requires many manual steps right now). We are tracking the progress of creating an embeddable JRE in <http://java.net/jira/browse/MACOSX_PORT-105>. Regards, Mike Swingler Java Engineering Apple Inc. Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support 130 Machray Hall Building 474-6649 474-7625 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca

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INTEREST: The theology of iCloud
by billing 30 Jun '11

30 Jun '11

[Any Ihnatko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Ihnatko) is a writer of computer articles, programming manuals, and the like. His wry wit sometimes cuts quickly to the heart of the matter in question. He is credited with the original concept of the MacQuarium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macquarium) as a potential use for outdated Mac 128K and 512K machines and published the first instructions on how to build one.] ...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/160687/2011/06/ihnatko_icloud_god.html#lsrc… The theology of iCloud by Andy Ihnatko, Macworld.com Jun 26, 2011 8:00 am We’re now in the calm, cozy eye of the iCloud storm. The anticipation and speculation period was followed by the day of the announcement and the Getting of the Facts, which was followed by the analysis of the announcement and the grinding but not-at-all necessary process of converting one’s initial enthusiasm into an endless list of reasons to be deeply concerned about the future of our great Republic. Each of these things is stressful. The next step after this is the most stressful yet: it’s the bit when iOS 5 actually ships and we get our first chance to see how iCloud might destroy our day-to-day lives for real, instead of just hypothetically. But as I say, at the moment the skies are blue and the winds are still. It’s a brief bit of time in which we should stroll the yard, tracing bursts of confused clucking and mooing to animals that have been halfway-embedded in trees, and effect a humanitarian rescue, and think about the larger issues while we await the possible end of the world. Technology, when done ambitiously, is a form of art and as with painting, it’s always interesting to see how three different artists have approached the same subject. All art is autobiographical in nature, or so I heard in between naps during my Art History classes. It’s hard for me not to look at iCloud and the other new cloud services offered by Google and Amazon and think of them as emblematic of the companies’ views on the world. What I find most remarkable about iCloud is that (unless there’s a lot more that Apple hasn’t shown us yet) it’s not a destination: it’s a highway system. Yes, technically my iCloud contains loads of information and files, but that fact chiefly articulates itself when I pick up my iPad, launch Pages, and resume work on an article right from the point I left it on my MacBook earlier in the day. We understood iDisk (and even Dropbox) as a directory on a remote server that we could attach to our local file system and use for storage. Despite Apple’s positioning of iCloud as a Huge Thing, we’re not meant to even think of iDisk at all. We’re meant to just have our data where we need it, when we need it. iCloud is the reason why when I got back to my hotel room I found that my bed had been turned down and there was a bottle of Coke already on ice. It’s not the phone call I make to a hotel service to make those things happen. Some clouds have chrome linings Google’s attitude is 180 degrees away from Apple’s. The same week that Apple announced iCloud, the first wave of ChromeBooks started to ship. These are the machines that exist solely as host organisms for the Chrome browser. They can do very little except connect to Google and run apps on their servers, usually with data that’s hosted by Google somewhere. They’ve also introduced Google Music, which will let me sync my music library between my Android devices… provided that I upload all 13,000 tracks to Google’s servers first. Apple tipped its hat early by releasing iPhone and iPod Touch-compatible editions of its iOS iWork apps. Even without iCloud, it was a clear statement that Apple and Google are opposing forces destined to die with their hands wrapped around each other’s throats, like Popeye and Bluto or Lou Reed and Jimmy Buffett. Apple was clearly stating a belief that productivity apps belong on devices, with a network connecting these apps seamlessly. That’s diametrically opposed to Google’s app philosophy. Yes, using Google Docs’ web-based user interface is about as much fun as spending your last minutes of life in a disabled submarine that’s slowly sinking closer and closer to its crush depth… (I’m being kind; I count three independent menu bars.) …But when you host everything on the server, including apps, the user is left solely with the responsibility of launching the browser. And with a ChromeBook, it’s not even as complicated as that. The third cloud company in this pageant is Amazon. Amazon is the friendly neighbor who will always lend you his electric weed trimmer. You would never consider that your using his weed trimmer is coincidentally compatible with his own goals (that’s Apple) or that he’s actually manipulating you into using this weed trimmer as a ploy to broaden his opportunities to exploit you later on (yes, that’s Google; well-spotted). Amazon isn’t as simple-minded as that. It realizes that Amazon Cloud Player makes its MP3 store more valuable. But largely, Amazon’s server storage is like the power tool that it owns and often goes unused. If its customers are buying things from the store, why not give them a free Cloud Drive to put them in? Though it’s perfectly fine with them if you never ask to use it. Yes, it’s a clumsy analogy, but I’ll go ahead and say that Amazon is Ned Flanders… only without the mustache and all the God stuff. The three faces of cloud In a sense, these three companies’ cloud services do represent three different concepts of God. Google is an Old Testament, theist-style cloud all the way: He through whom all blessings and punishments come, who must be praised and supplicated; without the Cloud, you are nothing and have nothing. iCloud represents more of a Deist ideal. The Cloud exists, but its presence is more to be felt than seen; if it does its job right, iCloud will instill great doubt that it even exists, or that it takes any notice of us at all. Amazon is a form of agnosticism. You don’t know if you really believe in it or not, but you do know that on the third weekend of every month this pointy building near the center of town throws a really great bake sale. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced I’m on to something with these ideas about God and iCloud. Some atheists derisively describe God as “Your magic friend who lives in the clouds,” after all. I’m perfectly fine with that concept, if this new magical friend makes sure I’ll never again find myself 3000 miles from home with a hard drive that’s making crunchy noises instead of retrieving the Keynote files I’ll need for the four hours of talks I traveled there to deliver. I mean, at the time I prayed to my previous, analog God for deliverance… and a fat lot of good that did me.

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INTEREST: the Visible Thunderbolt Cable
by billing 30 Jun '11

30 Jun '11

...from: http://www.ifixit.com/blog/blog/2011/06/29/what-makes-the-thunderbolt-cable… What Makes the Thunderbolt Cable Lightning Fast June 29, 2011 Filed under: Hardware,Site News — miro @ 4:05 pm It’s the chips. And we’re not talking about the Lay’s variety. Wereceived good word from one of our friends, Ars Technica’s own Chris Foresman, that the $50Thunderbolt cable may be an active cable. He postulated that the cable may actually have chips containing firmware in it, making it more expensive to produce than your garden-variety HDMI cable — thus justifying the hefty price tag. There was only one way to find out for sure; we hopped on over to the local Apple Store and donated $50 to the build-Apple-a-new-campusfund. A short while later, the cable was in our hands and ready to go under the knife. And we knew exactly where to look. The cable contained a sturdy plastic sleeve on each end that looked quite suspicious. Heating up an Exacto knife worked well against the hard plastic, and we managed to remove the casing from the connector after some careful cutting/melting. Once the casing was gone, we had to perform a significant amount of desoldering and cutting in order remove the metal surrounding the connector. Peeling back the metal (which appears to be plated brass) revealed the hardware underneath. We found two Gennum GN2033 chips in the connector, one on each side. They were flanked by other, much smaller chips that surely added to the cable’s cost: two chips labeled S6A 1JG on one side, and chips labeled 1102F SS8370 and 131 3S on the other. Of course, there were tons of little resistors (providing impedance as needed) all around the larger chips. We assumed that the other connector side would be identical, and we were correct. All in all, Apple’s $50 cable contained a total of 12 larger, inscribed chips, and tons of smaller electronic components. One note: Gennum’s site mentions that their transceiver technology enables “reliable data transfer at cutting-edge speeds over low cost, thin-gauge copper cables.” Perhaps they were thinking of some other low cost cables, as we don’t think Apple’s $50 creation can be considered cheap. But, now you can at least sleep better at night knowing that there’s little chips inside your cable making it go fast. Your move, Monster Cable.

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INTEREST: iCard ECG for iOS
by billing 21 Jun '11

21 Jun '11

...from: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/20/icard-ecg-brings-heart-monitoring-to-the… iCard ECG brings heart monitoring to the iOS device of your choice (video) By Terrence O'Brien posted Jun 20th 2011 1:55PM AliveCor's iPhoneECG case was pretty sweet but, being a case, could only be strapped to an iPhone 4. Doctors content with their 3GS or patients who prefer to hug an iPad to their chest will be elated to hear the company is working on a more hardware-agnostic option for your iOS heart monitoring needs. The business card-sized iCard ECG mounts to the back of your iDevice using velcro and wirelessly feeds data from its electrodes to the AliveECG app. The app automatically records 30 seconds of your heart's rhythmic pulse before uploading it to AliveCor's servers for sharing with your doctors. The bad news? They're still awaiting FDA approval, so you can't run out and pick one up just yet. But, when it does hit shelves, it looks like you'll have a choice of red or black -- so you can make sure your medical accessories match your scrubs. Check out the video after the break. ...video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ3r-OoCj_8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.engadget.c… OR http://preview.tinyurl.com/6c9ce2a ....and ...from: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/20/withings-blood-pressure-monitor-for-ios-… Withings Blood Pressure Monitor for iOS hands-on (video) By Zach Honig posted Jun 20th 2011 9:00AM Hands-On Withings users not satisfied with only being able to share their weight with the world can now add blood pressure and heart rate to the mix. This iPhone-connected blood pressure monitor made its first appearance at CES, but you'll finally be able to order one of your own today. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, the $129 accessory costs three to four times as much as off-the-shelf blood pressure monitors, but integrates well if you're looking to pair it with your Withings scale for a complete vitals management solution. Results can be sent to health sites like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, or directly to your doctor. Care to see how it works? Join us past the break for a hands-on look at the monitor, including a video comparison with the in-store vitals machine at our neighborhood Kmart. Update: Withings wrote in to let us know that the blood pressure readings in the video below were likely inflated because we were talking, though we do appreciate the concern you've already expressed in the comments. Withings Smart Blood Pressure Monitor for iPhone Hands-On Even iOS newbies shouldn't have any issue getting started -- connecting the monitor to your device's dock connector launches the Withings app (or prompts you to install it, if you haven't already done so). An on-screen start button inflates the AAA-battery powered cuff, and presents your results about 30 seconds later. Colored circles indicate a possible health issue, and an FAQ screen helps to explain your results. During our Kmart test, the Withings monitor presented results of 147/93 with a heart rate of 94, compared to 133/95 with a heart rate of 96 on the in-store machine -- perhaps the c-list discounter was trying to imply that we can afford to load up on some junk food? Considering results tended to vary by a similar amount during multiple tests on the same machine, it's safe to conclude that both are accurate. The Withings Blood Pressure Monitor ships today, so early adopters could be tweeting a complete snapshot of their physical health before the week is out. ...video at: http://www.viddler.com/explore/engadget/videos/2887/

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INTEREST: iOS5, LION, & Windows 8 in 15 minutes
by billing 12 Jun '11

12 Jun '11

The beginning of July this year has seen major new changes announced for Microsoft Windows 8 (shipping, perhaps, in 2012) and OS X Lion (shipping in July, 2011). iOS5 will see many improvements including things like "split keyboard" when running on larger displays. Here's an overview of iOS5, Lion, and Windows 8 in about 15 minutes.... well, OK, I guess it's more like 28 minutes if you watch all of them all the way through ::-) : - iOS5: http://www.youtube.com/user/Apple?blend=1&ob=5#p/u/1/LLJIef-e-7g - OS X Lion: http://www.youtube.com/user/Apple?blend=1&ob=5#p/u/2/tq2enQYTrbU - Microsoft Windows 8: http://allthingsd.com/20110601/microsofts-windows-8-demo-from-d9-video/ Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support 130 Machray Hall Building 474-6649 474-7625 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca

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INTEREST: Microsoft joins pre-emptive patent protection program
by billing 04 Jun '11

04 Jun '11

....from: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/06/microsoft-joins-pre-emptive-p… Microsoft joins pre-emptive patent protection program By Peter Bright | Published 3 days ago In an effort to avoid costly patent litigation, Microsoft has become the first company to sign up to a crowdsourcing service that seeks to find prior art and eliminate patents that should not have been awarded. The new Litigation Avoidance Program comes from Article One Partners, a startup that pays cash rewards to discoverers of prior art. Article One pays out rewards of between $5,000 and $50,000 to members of its claimed million-strong community of patent researchers, and says it has paid out more than $1.3 million so far. So far, Article One has operated a scheme enabling those on the receiving end of patent litigation to crowdsource the search for relevant prior art; with that prior art the defendents can then seek to have the patents being wielded against them invalidated. The Litigation Avoidance Program goes a step further, proactively seeking out patents purchased by non-practising entities, and then hunting down prior art relevant to those patents. Non-practicing entities—better known as patent trolls—are those companies who perform no research and make no products, but instead buy patents and then use them in lawsuits. The Litigation Avoidance Program should enable companies to more easily identify poor-quality patents that ought not have been issued, and use the prior art to overturn those patents and avoid costly damages awards. Microsoft is no stranger to patent trolls; most famously, the company was ordered to pay $521 million to Eolas after Eolas sued Microsoft claiming that Internet Explorer's use of plugins infringed on an Eolas patent. Microsoft appealed and eventually entered into a settlement agreement with the patent troll, the terms of which are not public. Bart Eppenauer, Chief Patent Counsel at Microsoft, warned that "NPEs continue to actively target large technology companies and often with portfolios of questionable quality", and that the Litgation Avoidance Program would "reduce risk and potential litigation cost." Of course, the Litigation Avoidance Program wouldn't have helped in the Eolas case—that patent withstood prior art challenges.

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INTEREST: Google boots 30 infected applications from Android Market
by billing 04 Jun '11

04 Jun '11

...from: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/06/droiddream-light-a-malware-nigh… DroidDream Light a malware nightmare, booted from Android Market By Ryan Paul | Published 2 days ago A number of malware-encumbered applications were found in the Android Market back in March, but the infestation was brought to a swift end when Google deployed its kill switch. A new variant of the same malware recently resurfaced and was identified by security researchers over the weekend. Google has responded by booting the new round of infected applications out of the Android Market. The malware was discovered by Lookout, a mobile security company. They found just under 30 infected applications across six separate developer accounts. Several of the infected applications were existing third-party programs that the attacker copied and then repackaged with the malware. The malware-bearing programs spanned a diverse range of functions, including a scientific calculator, a solitaire game, and a photo enhancement tool. Malicious developer Magic Photo Studio had the most colorful assortment of infected apps, including a soundboard called Sex Sound and a photo gallery program called Beauty Breasts. The infected applications appear to have been widely downloaded prior to being shut down by Google. Lookout estimates that between 30,000 and 120,000 users have been affected by the attack. We used Google Cache to examine the Android Market pages for several of the malicious apps. The Beauty Breasts program had a 3.5 star rating and been installed between 1,000 and 5,000 times. The new malware is based on the same code that was used back in March, but it is simpler and has some limitations that make it less potentially dangerous. The original March flavor would attempt to root the victim's phone so that it could install additional software without requiring intervention by the user. The new variant still has the capability to download and install additional software, but it doesn't take root access and consequently has to prompt the user before it can install anything. Lookout is calling the variant DroidDream Light. Like the previous version, Droid Dream Light will send information back to a command-and-control server. The malware can apparently do its dirty work even if the user never actually runs the application. It hooks into the platform's event system APIs and will launch itself as a background process when the device's call state changes—like when a call is received. It's worth noting that hooking into the phone's state requires a special permission that is listed when the user installs the application from the Android Market. A savvy user who is paying attention to the permissions would likely realize that phone state monitoring isn't needed for looking at images of breasts and would hopefully think twice before installing the program. This latest round of Android malware makes it seem like the problem isn't going to go away. Although Google responded to the threat very quickly after it was detected, the number of users who downloaded the applications is still troubling. Armed with a remote kill switch and full control over the Android Market, Google can address threats as they arise, but can't really provide a proactive safety net.

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INTEREST: Adobe CEO on FLASH and Apple... and his take on Apple's take on FLASH
by billing 03 Jun '11

03 Jun '11

...from: http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/03/adobe-ceo-has-no-beef-with-apple-no-answ… Adobe CEO has no beef with Apple, no answer for poor Flash performance on Android (video) By Amar Toor posted Jun 3rd 2011 6:06AM The Adobe-Apple Flash war used to be one of the juiciest catfights around, but, much like two aging boxers, both sides now appear willing to act like adults put it all behind them. Speaking at yesterday's D9 conference in Palos Verdes, California, Adobe head Shantanu Narayen confirmed that he and Steve Jobs have reached an unofficial armistice, bringing an end to their prolonged war of words. According to the CEO, Apple's Flash issues stemmed from the company's "business model," rather than any legitimate concerns over quality. "It's control over the app store that's at issue here," Narayen said, implying that Flash's wide-ranging platform compatibility may not have jibed with the Cupertino ethos. He went on to remind moderator Walt Mossberg that developers can still use Adobe's AIR software to get their products to the App Store, adding that his company is looking forward to the rise of HTML5 and "actively contributing" to its development. Mossberg, meanwhile, seemed to blindside Narayen when he brought up Flash's poor performance on Android devices. "I have yet to test a single one where Flash tests really well," the columnist claimed. "I'm sorry, but it's true." Narayen sputtered a bit, before pointing to the BlackBerry PlayBook as an example of the progress that Flash has made. When Mossberg reminded him that the PlayBook doesn't run on Android, the CEO not-so-subtly sidestepped the question by emptily declaring that Adobe's mission is simply to provide people with the best tools to create content. Apparently satisfied with this non-answer, Mossberg changed the subject back to Apple, allowing Narayen to wax poetic about their new Pax Romana -- and, perhaps, to breathe a sigh of relief. See the full interview after the break. http://video.allthingsd.com/video/d9-video-adobe-ceo----flash-war-is-over/7…

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FYI: Mac Defender
by Doug Hamilton 02 Jun '11

02 Jun '11

Yesterday, Apple automatically pushed an update to their "File Quarantine" (aka Xprotect) anti-malware daemon, in response to the new variant of the Trojan / Ransomware "OSX.MacDefender". For those who don't know, "File Quarantine" was first released with introduction of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) in August 2009 but has been included is subsequent updates to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). If you wish to read further, here are two related Knowledge Base articles. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3662 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4651 Cheers. ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, ASP Senior Apple Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 (Ph.) 204-474-7556 (Fax) http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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INTEREST: Lodsys offers protection to iOS developers...
by billing 01 Jun '11

01 Jun '11

....Apple says, "We paid you your money. Go away and leave them [iOS developers] alone." Lodsys moving on to Android developers. ...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/160030/2011/05/apple_lodsys_license.html?ls… Apple to Lodsys: 'App makers are protected by [our] license' Posted on May 23, 2011 2:00 pm by Lex Friedman, Macworld Staff, Macworld.com A little more than a week after iOS developers were threatened with legal action by a company that holds various patents, Apple’s legal department has struck back. On May 13, many iOS developers reported receiving FedEx packages containing a threat that they risked patent-infringement lawsuits if they didn’t pay Lodsys to license a patent covering in-app purchasing and other app-related matters. In a letter sent Monday (read the full text of the letter here) to patent-holder Lodsys and its CEO Mark Small, Apple says its existing license for patents covering in-app purchases applies to all iOS app makers as well. The crux of Apple’s letter, from senior vice president and general counsel Bruce Sewell, is right in its opening paragraph, which reads in part: “Apple is undisputedly licensed to these patents and the Apple App Makers are protected by that license. There is no basis for Lodsys’ infringement allegations against Apple’s App Makers. In addition to stating that Apple would share the letter with developers—which it has—the company also says that it “is fully prepared to defend Apple’s license rights.” Though it runs for three pages, Sewell could have ended his letter there. Lodsys has already publicly stated that Apple licenses its patents; the companies agree on that. Apple’s contention, which runs counter to Lodsys’s previously published view, is that Apple’s license covers iOS developers, too. Under its license, Apple is entitled to offer these licensed products and services to its customers and business partners, who, in turn, have the right to use them. But that’s not Sewell’s only point; his argument is twofold: Apple’s license to the Lodsys patents covers iOS developers, and the alleged patent infringement isn’t really occurring anyway. By way of example, Sewell cites Lodsys’s claims regarding alleged violations of its U.S. Patent No. 7,222,078, which Apple says “covers two-way interaction with the user and elicits user feedback.” Sewell writes: Under your reading of the claim as set out in your letters, the allegedly infringing acts require the use of Apple APIs to provide two-way communication, the transmission of an Apple ID and other services to permit access for the user to the App store, and the use of Apple’s hardware, iOS, and servers. In other words: These developers aren’t infringing Lodsys’s patents, because they’re using Apple software and hardware to provide the functionality that Lodsys alleged needed licensing. Apple’s point is that, since the technology is Apple’s, Apple’s license is sufficient. Sewell makes the same point again regarding another alleged example of infringement: Claim 1 also claims a memory that stores the results of the user interaction and a communication element to carry those results to a central location. Once again, Apple provides, under the infringement theories set out in your letters, the physical memory in which user feedback is stored and, just as importantly, the APIs that allow transmission of that user feedback to and from the App Store, over an Apple server, using Apple hardware and software. Indeed, in the notice letters to App Makers that we have been privy to, Lodsys itself relies on screenshots of the App Store to purportedly meet this claim element. Apple’s argument is thus fairly straightforward. The company licensed its use of the Lodsys patents, and the developers that Lodsys alleges infringe those patents in fact leverage Apple’s licensing, since any behaviors covered by the patents are actually driven by Apple’s technology, and not the developers’. Citing the Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc. 2008 Supreme Court case, Sewell writes that: …because [the discussed] Apple products and services, under the reading articulated in your letters, entirely or substantially embody each of Lodsys’s patents, Lodsys’s threatened claims are barred by the doctrines of patent exhaustion and first sale… Therefore, Apple requests that Lodsys immediately withdraw all notice letters sent to Apple App Makers and cease its false assertions that the App Makers’ use of licensed Apple products and services in any way constitute infringement of any Lodsys patent. Obviously, Apple’s firm letter to Lodsys doesn’t make the issue go away. Lodsys may force Apple’s hand by going forward with threatened litigation against App Store developers. But Apple’s letter at least offers some reassurance to iOS developers that the company takes the issue seriously, and that the company intends to defend its developers against such patent legal wrangling. Lodsys’s response, of course, remains to be seen. Developers react Developer reaction to the news was swift. TLA Systems developer James Thomson, who broke the story when he received a letter from Lodsys, expressed a feeling of great relief. “I am extremely relieved that Apple has stood up for its developers against these patently unfair claims by Lodsys,” Thomson told Macworld. “I always believed they would, but it’s a huge weight off my shoulders to see it written in black and white. The last ten days have been some of the most stressful of my professional career, and I’d just like to say thanks to Apple and all our customers and friends who have been highly supportive of us during this time.” Ken Landau, the President of MobileAge and another recipient of Lodsys’s legal threat, told Macworldthat Apple’s letter is “real good for us developers… I’m really very happy. Apple did the right thing.” “I’ve never seen iOS developers so excited about the walled garden,” Red Sweater Software’s Daniel Jalkut wrote on Twitter. “I should write to Steve Jobs more often,” tweeted Iconfactory developer Craig Hockenberry. Earlier in the day Hockenberry posted an open letter to Steve Jobs on his blog where he referred to companies like Lodsys as “greedy predators.” [Updated several times on 5/23 to add developer reaction and more analysis of the letter. Macworld editorial director Jason Snell contributed to this report.] = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = ...from: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386065,00.asp May 27, 2011 07:21pm EST 23 Comments Is Lodsys Claiming Android Developers Infringe Its Patents? By Mark Hachman Lodsys, which has targeted iOS developers and threatening them with legal action, has apparently taken aim against Android developers as well. In a post to an Android developer's board, "markusn82" claimed that his organization had received similar letters from Lodsys, claiming that the developer infringed on the Lodsys patents as well. "We recently implemented in-app purchases for our Android application and several weeks later we received a letter from Lodsys, claiming that we infringed on their patents," the developer wrote. Lodsys made headlines recently for contacting iOS developers and threatening legal action for patent infringement. The patent in question covers "methods and systems for gathering information from units of a commodity across a network," which translates into in-app purchases, like upgrades from lite to paid versions. Even though Apple has licenses for Lodsys patents, Lodsys argued that those licenses don't extend to app developers. However, this would be the first reported case of an Android developer being hit with a charge of infringement by Lodsys. "Have any other Android developers out there been sent a letter? Has Google taken any action on this issue yet?" "markusn82" wrote. "Has Google given direction to any developers that have been hit by this? We are obviously a small shop and are not financially capable of defending ourselves over a litigation." This week, Apple stepped in and defended its developers, claiming that its own license indemnified those developers who wrote for the Apple platform. "Apple is undisputedly licensed to these patent and the Apple App Makers are protected by that license," Bruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel, wrote in a letter posted online by MacWorld. "There is no basis for Lodsys' infringement allegations against Apple's App Makers." Lodsys has a "fundamental misapprehension regarding Apple's license and the way Apple's products work," Sewell wrote. He outlined why Apple is within its rights to offer in-app purchases for its developers and ordered Lodsys to "withdraw your outstanding threats to the App Makers and cease and desist from any further threats to Apple's customers and partners." "Because Apple is licensed under Lodsys' patents to offer such technology to its App Makers, the App Makers are entitled to use this technology free from any infringement claims by Lodsys," Sewell added. Lodsys claimed that there was indeed justification, in a series of blog posts. "The economic gains provided by the Lodsys inventions (increase in revenue through additional sales, or decrease in costs to service the customer) are being enjoyed by the business that provides the product or service that interacts with the user," the company wrote. "Since Lodsys patent rights are of value to that overall solution, it is only fair to get paid by the party that is accountable for the entire solution and which captures the value (rather than a technology supplier or a retailer)." Lodsys representatives didn't respond to requests for comment.

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Apple Security Update 2011-003
by Doug Hamilton 31 May '11

31 May '11

Apple has just released their security update which addresses the "OSX.MacDefender.A". http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4657 Running "Software Update…" will allow you to obtain and install this update. Regards ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, ASP Senior Apple Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 (Ph.) 204-474-7556 (Fax) http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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INTEREST: What Happens When the Cloud Meets a Bandwidth Cap
by billing 26 May '11

26 May '11

...from: http://gigaom.com/2011/05/04/what-happens-when-the-cloud-meets-a-bandwidth-… What Happens When the Cloud Meets a Bandwidth Cap By Mathew Ingram May. 4, 2011, 4:04pm PT 35 Comments The cloud is a wonderful thing, as you probably know from reading our coverage on the Structure blog and posts from my colleagues Stacey and Derrick — among other things, it allows us all to keep almost unlimited backup copies of our documents, photos, music and other files on a remote server somewhere, and thanks to services such as Amazon’s AWS suite, such backups are pretty cheap as well — pennies a gigabyte. At least, they’re supposed to be. But when the cloud meets an Internet service provider’s bandwidth cap (something that is unfortunately becoming more and more commonplace) it can be a less than happy experience. I know this all too well. And while some of what happened is my fault, it’s probably not that unusual, so I thought it might be helpful to tell people about it. Some readers may recall that I wrote recently about my problems with bandwidth usage, and how I thought I had solved them. In a nutshell, my ISP — a Canadian cable and media conglomerate called Rogers Communications — started warning me that my household was using huge amounts of bandwidth, far more than I had ever used before. One particular day last month, the online bandwidth meter showed that we had consumed 75 gigabytes of data, more than three-quarters of our 95-gigabyte allotment for the month. As I described in my last post, I wracked my brain to try and figure out where this could be coming from. At first, I (and the Rogers technician I spoke to) thought that it was our wireless network, which was unencrypted. So I locked it down with a 64-bit password — but the downloads continued at huge levels, sometimes 20 or 30 gigabytes a day. I interviewed all three of my daughters, aged 13 to 21, and my niece, who is living with us. All denied downloading huge amounts, but one daughter said she had been using a Bit Torrent program for some Japanese TV shows. I checked every computer in the house to make sure there were no programs running in the background or viruses or malware — we have seven computers in all, including four desktops and three laptops, as well miscellaneous wireless devices like iPhones and a streaming media box connected to the TV. The download usage didn’t even budge. I even borrowed a network switch to try and see which ports on the network were using all this data. Then a day or two ago, I got an email from Amazon with the bill for my Amazon AWS service. I have about 25 gigabytes of photos, music and other documents backed up to Amazon’s S3 server cloud, which usually costs me about $3 a month — but this time, the bill said $109. Suddenly, a light bulb went on (one that probably should have gone on before then, I admit): that would explain how we could have been downloading 20 or 30 gigabytes a day without our computers overflowing with data. What if something was backing up all that data multiple times from Amazon’s S3 cloud? I checked JungleDisk, which is the software from Rackspace that I use to manage the S3 instance I rent, but I didn’t have it set to sync or automatically mirror the data. So what could have happened? After fishing around on the Internet, I finally found a support forum posting at Amazon’s AWS site that described exactly what had happened to me — except it was the user’s mother, and she had somehow download more than 800 gigabytes in a month without realizing it. The culprit, apparently, was either Windows indexing the files or an anti-virus program scanning them, or both. Since JungleDisk maps the Amazon cloud folder as a network drive, Windows and some other programs simply treat it as a regular drive and download all the files to scan them — even multiple times. Since the amount of data that Amazon says I consumed in April (a little over 600 gigabytes) is almost exactly the same as the amount of extra bandwidth that my ISP says I used in the month, this seems to be the solution. And luckily for me, Rogers has a maximum bandwidth over-usage charge of $50 per month. If it didn’t have this cap on a cap, I would be liable for almost $1,000 based on the company’s per-gigabyte usage fees. So I have to pay $100 to Rogers for overage charges and $100 to Amazon. A fairly cheap lesson, comparatively speaking, but a lesson nevertheless. And yet another way in which bandwidth caps threaten to turn us all into network administrators and bandwidth cops, whether we like it or not. Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support 130 Machray Hall Building 474-6649 474-7625 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca

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INTEREST: Now in an online store near you – mobile malware
by billing 25 May '11

25 May '11

The U of Manitoba is distributing Kaspersky AntiVirus software for university owned machines (both Windows and OS X: more info at: http://umanitoba.ca/computing/ist/security/kaspersky-antivirus.html) Kaspersky Lab is a privately held, world-wide (North and South America; Western Europe; Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa; the Asia-Pacific region; and Japan) anti-malware company with headquarters in Moscow, Russia. Founded in 1997, Kaspersky Lab claims over 2,000 employees working on software protecting over 300 million users around the globe. Kaspersky Lab's in-house magazine - entitled Secureview - is written by Kaspersky Lab's analysts, journalists, and industry specialists from many different companies. The magazine is designed to appeal to IT and security specialists, technical managers and anyone with an interest in computer security. (Subscriptions at: http://www.secureviewmag.com/subscriptions) This month's issue of Secureview contains an article entitled "IT Threat Evolution for Q1-2011". That article - at the end of this message - contains an overview of the exploits that were released with the opening of one online application store for mobile devices. = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - (NOTE: ...from: http://developer.apple.com/appstore/guidelines.html Apple's App Store Review Guidelines The app approval process [in Apple's App Stores] is in place to ensure that applications are reliable, perform as expected, and are free of explicit and offensive material. We review every app on the App Store based on a set of technical, content, and design criteria. This review criteria is now available to you in the App Store Review Guidelines. These guidelines are designed to help [developers] prepare iOS and Mac OS X apps for the approval process.) = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - ...from: http://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204792176/IT_Threat_Evolution_for_Q1_… Now in a store near you – mobile Trojans! We start with malware for the Android OS uploaded to the Android Market by cybercriminals. The malicious applications, over fifty of which have been detected, were infected with Trojans and repacked as legitimate programs. The attackers were after mobile phone data, including IMEI and IMSI numbers. The Trojans also included a module that could install additional malicious components on devices without users being aware. This involved gaining full control of the phone by ‘jailbreaking’ it, a process that circumvents protection to provide full access to the file system. In order to gain root privileges, which provide virtually limitless possibilities for manipulating the system, the malware leveraged Android OS vulnerabilities using popular ‘rage against the cage’ exploits, which were distributed in the same package as the Trojans. It was lucky for users who had Kaspersky Mobile Security 9 installed on their devices that these exploits were used. The Trojans were new and had not been included in antivirus databases, while the exploits bundled with them were successfully detected. Until signatures were created for the Trojans, KMS 9 proactively detected the whole bundle as Exploit.AndroidOS.Lotoor.g and Exploit.AndroidOS.Lotoor.j. Since adding the Trojans to our antivirus databases, we have detected them as Backdoor.AndroidOS.Rooter. It should be noted that they are also called DroidDream in other antivirus vendors’ classifications. This situation gives rise to two questions: Is it difficult for cybercriminals to get an Android Market Developer account? Sadly, it is very easy. All a user has to do to get an account is pay US $25. Clearly, Google wants to attract as many developers to its operating system as possible. However, $25 is not nearly enough of a barrier to entry and cybercriminals can afford to create dozens of such accounts. This could result in an endless loop, with Google shutting down accounts used to distribute malware and cybercriminals creating new ones without any problems. Can more stringent controls be enforced over applications offered on the Android Market? The primary problem is the resources available for this task. Checking all the code in apps available via Android Market, App Store, Samsung Market, plus others, is a difficult task because it is almost impossible to automate. This means that in future we will inevitably face an increase in the amount of malware-infected software in the various app stores. As mentioned above, the malware detected on Android Market exploited vulnerabilities. Note that vulnerabilities affected devices with Android versions earlier than 2.3 ‘Gingerbread’, which was released on 6 December, 2010. According to Google, three months after its release the number of systems running the new version of the OS was only 2%. It is obvious that users are not in any hurry to upgrade their systems. The main reason for this lack of inertia is that device manufacturers make significant modifications to their operating systems before installing them on mobile devices. After this, upgrading the OS may become impossible or wholly dependent upon the manufacturer’s involvement. This means that installing patches then becomes manufacturer-dependant and so they share the responsibility for the security of mobile devices. However, they often have no interest in supporting and updating software on existing devices. Since smartphone models become outdated very quickly, updating software on devices that are in effect obsolete results in additional costs with no obvious way to recoup them. All users can hope for is that device manufacturers will take appropriate measures and make it possible to install updates on their devices. Is it possible to seriously discuss security in circumstances such as these? Importantly, Google can remotely install / remove applications on / from any Android device. This ought to be very helpful when it comes to neutralizing malware on phones which are already infected. However, the incident with Trojans on Android Market has demonstrated several weaknesses in the system. Firstly, once they got administrator privileges, Trojans made themselves at home on the smartphones and could only be removed by an application that had the same administrator privileges. Google had to release a dedicated program that had such privileges in order to remove these Trojans from infected devices. Secondly, as cybercriminals further develop mobile malware, they may implement technologies that allow Trojans to disable this remote administration mechanism, a process similar to disabling the Windows Update functionality on PCs. Thirdly, the current system involves removing Trojans from infected phones, but not the prevention of infections. However, if a Trojan is used by attackers to steal money or important data, its removal will not undo the damage. Overall, the situation with the Android OS is becoming similar to the current situation with Windows: There is a plethora of Android devices with outdated software which includes various unpatched vulnerabilities; In the majority of cases, users ignore security alerts displayed when any application is installed or launched for the first time; As with Windows, the most infected computers are those on which users have administrator privileges, the greatest risk of infection is faced by those Android systems which have been jailbroken; Mobile malware communicates with its owners using a method that is widely employed by Windows malware – via command-and-control centers, which will ultimately lead to the emergence of mobile botnets; Application control systems can be bypassed: applications can be installed on Android devices using means other than Android Market. Since 2007, the number of new antivirus database records for mobile malware has virtually doubled every year. The number of new mobile malware signatures added to antivirus databases Based on our statistics for the first quarter of this year, it can be safely predicted that the number of malicious programs for mobile devices detected in 2011 will be more than double that of 2010. The situation with mobile malware is particularly disturbing because large amounts of important data are already stored on mobile devices and smartphones are likely to be widely adopted as mobile wallets in the near future. In addition, since employees are increasingly using their personal mobile devices for work-related purposes, so-called consumerization, data leaks from individual smartphones are turning into a real headache for their employers.

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INTEREST: Is it easy to break into iOS?
by billing 25 May '11

25 May '11

Well, first of all, it will be very difficult for someone else to break into your iOS device if you always have it with you. Failing that... ....the article at the end of of this message details a vulnerability you might like to weigh if you don't have the SETTINGS > PASSCODE LOCK enabled and the ERASE DATA option of that setting set to ON on your iOS devices. With these settings enabled, your device will be wiped after 10 failed attempts to unlock your passcode leaving only a 1 in 1,000 chance of the device being unlocked via the passcode lock OR ...someone attacking your iOS device also has prolonged access to unencrypted data on your personal computer. Perhaps you've already read "How to create a password-protected (encrypted) disk image in Mac OS X 10.3 or later" - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1578 Finally, don't forget FIND MY IPHONE (http://www.apple.com/mobileme/features/find-my-iphone.html). Enabling this service, in the event of your losing your iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad (or if it's been stolen) will allow you to: - Locate your iPhone or iPad on a map - Display a message or play a sound to help you find it - Set a passcode lock remotely - Protect your privacy with Remote Wipe - wipe your device completely ....and you can set up this service for free: Learn how to get Find My iPhone, Find My iPad, or Find My iPod touch free. . . . ...from: http://www.itworld.com/security/168239/russian-company-cracks-ios-4-hardwar… Russian company cracks iOS 4 hardware encryption How the company makes the technology available only to law enforcement and government officials remains unknown By John E. Dunn, IDG News Service | Security Add a new comment May 25, 2011, 9:46 AM — Having cracked Apple iPhone backups last year, Russian security company ElcomSoft appears to have found a reliable way to beat the layered encryption system used to secure data held on the smartphone itself. Since the advent of iOS 4 in June 2010, Apple has been able to secure data on compatible devices using a hardware encryption system called Data Protection, which stores a user's passcode key on an internal chip using 256-bit AES encryption. Adding to this, each file stored on an iOS device is secured with an individual key computed from the device's Unique ID (UID). Apple products containing this security design include all devices from 2009 onwards, including the iPhone 3GS (which can be upgraded to iOS 4), iPhone 4, iPad, iPad 2 and recent iPod Touch models. ElcomSoft has not explained how it hacked the hardware-stored key system in detail for commercial reasons, but the first point of attack appears to have been the user system passcode itself as all other keys are only vulnerable to attack once the device is in an unlocked state. The company said it had been aided by subtle weaknesses in the security architecture used by Apple, starting with the default passcode length of 4 digits. This yields only 10,000 possible number variations, which the company said most users would likely use to secure their devices without question. The only limitation in breaking this key using a bruteforce attack was the need to run through the possible combinations on the iPhone or iOS device itself, which took between 10 and 40 minutes, far longer than would have been the case using a desktop PC. If the passcode was too long to bruteforce, the company said it was possible to bypass this by hacking what are called "escrow keys," which are created by Apple applications such as iTunes and stored on a user's computer. Given that the company's hacking of Apple devices began last August with the news that it had found a way to beat the encryption on iPhone backup archives stored on PCs, this could be how the company first spotted the weakness in the iPhone Data Protection system. "We are responsible citizens, and we don't want this technology to fall into the wrong hands," said ElcomSoft CEO, Vladimir Katalov. "Therefore, we made a firm decision to limit access to this functionality to law enforcement, forensic and intelligence organizations and select government agencies." The company has updated its Phone Password Breaker software to include the ability to "decrypt iOS 4.x file system images, as well as an optional tools to obtain file system images of the iOS 4.x devices, extract keys required for image decryption, and brute-force passcode," a note on its website said. A license for this can be purchased for £79 (US$128) with the iOS 4-cracking feature enabled only for customers that meet the stated requirements. How ElcomSoft verifies a customer's credentials is unclear. All buyers of the software have access to the feature that cracks Apple iPhone and BlackBerry backup archives. ElcomSoft has gained a reputation in the last three years for cracking encryption systems used in a variety of technologies, including the digital camera image verification systems used by Canon and Nikon, WPA2 wireless security, as well as a range of individual applications.

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FYI: [C-REPS] Mac Defender Malware - uninstall.
by billing 25 May '11

25 May '11

Begin forwarded message: > From: Doug Hamilton <doug_hamilton(a)umanitoba.ca> > Date: May 25, 2011 9:08:55 AM CDT > Subject: [C-REPS] Mac Defender Malware - uninstall. > > Hello Everyone: > > There is a trojan-horse style malware application in the wild directed at Mac OS X users. The authors of this malware are using the typical social-engineering approach of mislead the user and trick them into installing the malicious application via their web browser, because they've detected a virus on the user's system. > > There is Apple knowledge base article on the matter with removal instructions > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4650 > > Write up about Mac Defender by Intego Security > http://blog.intego.com/2011/05/02/intego-security-memo-macdefender-fake-ant… > > > Regards > ------------- > Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, ASP > Senior Apple Computer Consultant > Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba > 204-474-6196 (Ph.) > 204-474-7556 (Fax) > http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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INTEREST: [MacLearning-l] May 18 Webcast: custom iAPPS to aid student learning
by billing 17 May '11

17 May '11

apologies for the short notice for this but it's just arrived....... Begin forwarded message: > To: MacLearning-l(a)maclearning.org > Subject: [MacLearning-l] May 18 Webcast: Anatomy on the Move > > Dear MacLearning Community Member, > > Please join us on May 18th starting at 10 am Pacific / 1 pm Eastern for the following webcast: > > Anatomy on the Move > Bringing Human Prosections Tutorials Alive > > > > Apps and iPads with 3D technology bring clinical anatomy to the cutting edge. > > Contemporary anatomical education requires various resources found in the clinic, dissection room and radiology department. These so vary in availability that it is difficult for students to access them all in a time-efficient manner for easy learning. So how to integrate portable, handheld packages providing a method of learning anatomy, outside the conventional academic environment? Forty anatomy videos were designed, using the dissection room tutorial approach with prosecutions, using narrative and visual explanations - these were packaged into apple apps with “spotter” tests and MCQs on each 3-6 minutes video. Audio and on-screen text of anatomical terminology is used in conjunction with digital highlighting to emphasise the clinical relevance. Other anatomy apps of a complete radiology textbook on the iPad provide a widely accessible method for teaching integrated clinical “anatomy on the move”. Furthermore using 3D computing we have digitised our prosection collection and although technology cannot replace traditional learning, these innovations provide a unique educational opportunity for learning “on the move”, even in coffee breaks! > > Audience members can participate by submitting their questions during the webcast. > > Join us on Wednesday, May 18th at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern by pointing your browser to: > > URL: http://webcast.training.apple.com/ > Webcast ID: MacHealth > Passcode: 242572 > > > > > Cheers, > > Chris Brewer > Co-Chair, MacLearning.org > > > About MacLearning: > > MacLearning.org is a community that promotes effective pedagogical use of Apple and related third-party technologies. Our mission is to encourage innovative education through the open exchange of information, solutions, and ideas. > > Join us on our new online community at http://MacLearning.org > > _______________________________________________ > About MacLearning > > MacLearning.org is an open community that promotes effective pedagogical use of Apple and related third-party technologies. Our mission is to encourage innovative education through the open exchange of information, solutions, and ideas. > > This is the MacLearning-l mailing list at MacLearning-l(a)maclearning.org > > You can manage your subscription to this list at http://mail.maclearning.org/mailman/listinfo/maclearning-l

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INTEREST: (long) InfoWorld on future of iOS, Playbook, Win7Mobile
by billing 05 May '11

05 May '11

...from: http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/anatomy-failure-mobile-flops-r… APRIL 22, 2011 Anatomy of failure: Mobile flops from RIM, Microsoft, and Nokia The iPhone and iPad are decimating companies left and right, at a pace even faster than the PC revolution's Print|21 comments Research in Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook is so bad that Verizon Wireless may not bother carrying it -- a spokesperson said so the day after the PlayBook debuted to customers.AT&T won't let BlackBerry users download the essential app (BlackBerry Bridge) that brings email and communications apps to the PlayBook. Carriers are arms dealers, selling weapons to anyone for a price, but even they are drawing the line at the PlayBook. That's a huge fall given that the PlayBook's creator, RIM, is the successful patriarch of the mobile market -- inventing the smartphone category, in fact. And RIM is not alone. Like RIM, after lots and lots of promises leveraging its Windows savvy and market strength, Microsoft produced its own disastrous mobile platform, Windows Phone 7. It's not as bad as the PlayBook, and if you really want one, a carrier will sell you a unit. Dell too jumped on the Android bandwagon and produced a series of awful tablets, after a failed foray into making its own smartphone. (Remember theAxim?) The list goes on. Nokia had to kill its signature Symbian OS after a new CEO forced it to admit that the OS was at end of life after several years of self-denial, and the company's efforts to create a successor had all failed. It then jumped from the frying pan into the fire by adopting Windows Phone 7 and delayed new products until 2012. Then there is the parade of successful, largely Asian PC and display makers (original equipment makers, or OEMs) -- such as Acer, Lenovo, and ViewSonic -- who promise and even sometimes ship sloppy, ill-conceived devices in hopes of getting into a growing market. How enticing! Why are such established technology powerhouses failing so spectacularly in mobile? How can they not see the self-destruction in their approaches? For RIM and Nokia, the failings threaten their medium-term existence. For Microsoft and Dell, the failings prevent them from growing where the market is moving. There are several reasons, and one of them is not Apple. Sure, Apple worked its design magic on first the smartphone and then the tablet, bringing to market the same zeal, elegance, consistency, and ecosystem advantages that have made the Mac the only PC with a growing market share. But Apple had done that with the original Mac, yet was still beaten by others. The fact that Apple's mobile products are truly the best doesn't explain why the competitors' products are generally so bad. The answers have to do with an essential flaw found in most companies: They can't easily change gears because doing so means dropping the focus on what has worked and brings in the money now for an unproven, untested, risky shift. Clayton Christensen captured and described this phenomenon wonderfully in "The Innovator's Dilemma," an often-cited business book most businesspeople don't seem to actually follow. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, it seemed to be a left-field change for the Mac maker, a bet that it could enter and succeed in an alien market. That wager paid off, with Apple now the highest-valued public technology company in the world. But in 1999 or whenever CEO Steve Jobs decided to shift from being a PC maker into a consumer device maker (2001's iPod was the result, which led Apple to the iPhone and now the iPad), that proposition had very long odds. At the time, Apple was in critical condition, so the company had the freedom to take its chances. RIM, Nokia, Microsoft, and Dell haven't been desperate enough to truly think different. When the iPhone came out, they all pooh-poohed it as a toy that would at best appeal to Mac loyalists. (Never mind the example of the iPod.) Today, iPads already outsell Macs 4 to 3 and iPhones outsell Macs 5 to 1 -- that shows why mobile is so important to computer vendors. In addition, iPads are credited with torpedoing the netbook market and shrinking the PC market. Why RIM, Nokia, and Microsoft blew themselves up RIM particularly played up its cozy relationship with security- and control-minded CIOs who would never let such toys into the enterprise. Nokia and Microsoft had the same paternalistic, insular point of view. (Dell's story is more like that of the OEMs -- I'll get to that shortly.) They were talking to the wrong people. CIOs and IT managers are generally conservative, risk-averse, and traditionalist -- especially at large companies and even moreso at regulated ones. In their worldview, change is bad, and so is user freedom. These Neanderthal IT leaders are a lagging indicator of what's really going on. They dismissed the PC, the Internet, and e-commerce, too. But betting on them -- and the large checks they kept writing -- let RIM, Nokia, and Microsoft blindly traipse into irrelevance. Meanwhile, individuals -- whether or not in businesses -- were acting on years of HR advice: They were being self-empowered. Now, they had more and more tools to apply that power. The PC was first, then the Internet, then software as a service (Salesforce.com has created a huge business by explictly seeking out these people and avoiding CIOs). In 2007, Apple added mobile to their arsenal, and they picked it up with a vengeance. Fast-forward three years to 2010, and even CIOs stopped resisting and began embracing iPhones. If RIM, Nokia, and Microsoft had any doubt their world was fast changing and they were soon to be polar bears on shrinking ice floes in a climate-changed world, those questions had to have evaporated last year. However, they had spent so much time resisting the change that they didn't know how to embrace it, and they had almost no time left to figure it out. Nokia simply flailed. Microsoft jettisoned its existing platform (Windows Mobile) and started over again. That could have worked, except the team decided to pretend the previous four years had never happened, so its new mobile operating system covered a fraction of the iPhone's iOS and Google's Android capabilities. It wasn't even a me-too product; it was a "what's an iPhone?" product. RIM followed a similar trajectory, but it had even less of a clue about what an iPad competitor should be -- in fact, it didn't want to even accept the notion that its tablet would compete with the iPad. All this happened in the year that the iPad became the most quickly adopted enterprise technology ever. Microsoft and RIM compounded their poor results of their insular, disconnected thinking by deciding to throw away their previous core mobile markets -- businesses -- and aim for 20-something hipster kids. Clearly, both companies' management teams were going through midlife crises and imposed their cracked view of a hipster on their product planning. Microsoft came out with the "social" Kin, aimed explicitly at kids, who reacted the way all kids do when a 40-something parent tries to act cool: They quietly laughed and went elsewhere. Microsoft then did the same with Windows Phone 7, but with a little less explicit hipster pretension. The result was an elegant UI, but the rest of the product was unusable by its business and adult customers: no security or management capabilities, awkward Office implementations (virtually unchanged from the iffy Windows Mobile 6 version), no copy and paste, no support for HTML5, no multitasking. There was nothing, in other words, that the iPhone platform (followed by Android) hadn't made table stakes two years earlier. RIM was even worse than Microsoft in this regard. The PlayBook has no manageability and almost no security capabilities, yet it relies on the user having the most conservative smartphone there is: a BlackBerry. The pairing makes no sense, and it's inconceivable why RIM would throw away its history and come out with a device that is less secure than any competing product. Plus, despite the word "play" in its name, it had nothing truly playful or cool. No apps stand out (despite having hired away much of DataViz's mobile apps team), and a 35-year-old title (Tetris) is its hallmark game. If RIM was comfortable trashing its security history, it didn't seem to know what to bring to the mix instead. The error was even more foolhardy given the "consumerization of IT" trend that CIOs have been talking about all year, in which employees bring in their own devices and apps, requiring those devices and apps to work in both business and personal contexts becausethe line separating the two is rapidly disappearing. In that world, Microsoft and RIM should have kept their business strengths in devices that delivered newfound appeal to personal needs as well. IT conferences and the blogosphere have been replete with this theme -- so how could the people at Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM not aim to satisfy it? Because they often don't accept that the change is even happening, and they don't know how to think that way even if they agree it is happening. RIM is most egregious in this denial: Its executives, from the two CEOs down to product managers, keep saying publicly that apps are a fad, the iPhone is a fad, bring-your-own-device and consumerization trends are fads -- that the world will wake up from its madness and re-embrace the BlackBerry as it was. I've also heard stories of RIM managers saying they can always retreat to Latin America, a RIM stronghold that somehow is immune from the changes in mobile technology. If you don't believe in the future, you can't move into it, much less succeed in it. RIM believes one thing and goes through the motions of another. The result is unsatisfying to everyone. To be fair, I've heard through the grapevine that there are people within RIM really do see the new world and want to succeed in it -- no company is a monolith, but for now, those with their heads in the sand are prevailing. Although these vendors have all brought in outsiders and even bought companies with modern technology, their leadership and their staffs remain immersed in the old way. Breaking out of that box is not easy even for creative, "imagineering" people, and executing outside that box is even harder. It's impossible if you don't honestly try. That's why most companies don't survive fundamental transitions such as the one we're going through now. The PC killed off Digital Equipment, Silicon Graphics, and dozens of other midframe and workstation companies; only IBM and Hewlett-Packard made the shift. IBM wisely sold off its PC business to Lenovo just before the PC market got too commoditized, which is why Dell is in trouble and HP is looking beyond today's Windows PC. E-commerce killed off scores of retailers, such as bookstores. The Internet has been killing off large segments of the music, video, and publishing industries. It's a rare company that can pull off the vision, execution, and timing to thrive in such transition. Apple did it, aided by its desperate circumstances and a peculiar culture that honored and encouraged out-of-the-box thinking. The time for RIM, Microsoft, and Nokia to make a real bet on mobile would have been in 2007 (as Google knew and did), when Apple showed the way but before it set the standard -- not in 2010 and 2011, when Apple has defined the direction and Google has sopped up the rest of the market. That's why any company depending on RIM, Microsoft, or Nokia mobile technology should be working fast and furiously on an exit strategy. Already, large companies are finding it hard to hire young people when a BlackBerry is the only option. I've met several CIOs who've allowed iPhones and iPads in for that very reason, only to find that it was no big risk after all. Websites, cloud services, e-commerce, and games are all clustering on iOS and Android, and the best mobile business apps are also on those platforms. This coalescence threatens to orphan businesses that are based on the "legacy" mobile technologies such as BlackBerry (in North America), Symbian (in Europe), and Windows Mobile (in government). Why Dell, ViewSonic, and the OEM crowd won't matter -- but Motorola may The success of the iPhone got Google to buy Android and put its considerable financial and intellectual muscle behind it. The result is that Android smartphones are now the top-selling devices (depending on which surveys you believe). They're not as good as iPhones, but for users familiar with only regular cell phones, they are revelatory. In any event, only Apple may make iPhones and iPads; it's a one-sheriff town. Android, however, is available to all, so anyone who wants a piece of the mobile pie could at very little cost join in. Many OEMs were already making cell phones, and adapting them to run Android was a fairly small investment -- they jumped in. The problem is that these companies typically have no sense of design or user experience. They don't really think about users, so all they'd do is have some engineers get a Linux booter, an Android version (any would do), and an existing (often Windows Mobile) device in a lab, then make them all work together. These are Frankenphones, but in an industry where the typical cell phone has a sales life of 6 to 12 weeks, Frankenphones were the norm. Dell also got into the Frankenphone business, treating its Streak tablets with the same "make them cheap, make them fast, don't worry about the result" approach that has destroyed its reputation for quality in the PC market. Never mind that Apple made obsolete the Frankenphone model -- when all you make are Frankenphones, there's nothing else. Any OEM who treats Android as an ingredient in a generic stew will fail. They'll announce and even ship products, but they're all about short-term, low-investment opportunities. They'll fool some people, but they won't last because they won't gain loyalty and entusiasm. Google seems to be getting a clue that these OEMs are destructive parasites, not allies, and is rethinking how open it really needs to be. The error was even more foolhardy given the "consumerization of IT" trend that CIOs have been talking about all year, in which employees bring in their own devices and apps, requiring those devices and apps to work in both business and personal contexts becausethe line separating the two is rapidly disappearing. In that world, Microsoft and RIM should have kept their business strengths in devices that delivered newfound appeal to personal needs as well. IT conferences and the blogosphere have been replete with this theme -- so how could the people at Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM not aim to satisfy it? Because they often don't accept that the change is even happening, and they don't know how to think that way even if they agree it is happening. RIM is most egregious in this denial: Its executives, from the two CEOs down to product managers, keep saying publicly that apps are a fad, the iPhone is a fad, bring-your-own-device and consumerization trends are fads -- that the world will wake up from its madness and re-embrace the BlackBerry as it was. I've also heard stories of RIM managers saying they can always retreat to Latin America, a RIM stronghold that somehow is immune from the changes in mobile technology. If you don't believe in the future, you can't move into it, much less succeed in it. RIM believes one thing and goes through the motions of another. The result is unsatisfying to everyone. To be fair, I've heard through the grapevine that there are people within RIM really do see the new world and want to succeed in it -- no company is a monolith, but for now, those with their heads in the sand are prevailing. Although these vendors have all brought in outsiders and even bought companies with modern technology, their leadership and their staffs remain immersed in the old way. Breaking out of that box is not easy even for creative, "imagineering" people, and executing outside that box is even harder. It's impossible if you don't honestly try. That's why most companies don't survive fundamental transitions such as the one we're going through now. The PC killed off Digital Equipment, Silicon Graphics, and dozens of other midframe and workstation companies; only IBM and Hewlett-Packard made the shift. IBM wisely sold off its PC business to Lenovo just before the PC market got too commoditized, which is why Dell is in trouble and HP is looking beyond today's Windows PC. E-commerce killed off scores of retailers, such as bookstores. The Internet has been killing off large segments of the music, video, and publishing industries. It's a rare company that can pull off the vision, execution, and timing to thrive in such transition. Apple did it, aided by its desperate circumstances and a peculiar culture that honored and encouraged out-of-the-box thinking. The time for RIM, Microsoft, and Nokia to make a real bet on mobile would have been in 2007 (as Google knew and did), when Apple showed the way but before it set the standard -- not in 2010 and 2011, when Apple has defined the direction and Google has sopped up the rest of the market. That's why any company depending on RIM, Microsoft, or Nokia mobile technology should be working fast and furiously on an exit strategy. Already, large companies are finding it hard to hire young people when a BlackBerry is the only option. I've met several CIOs who've allowed iPhones and iPads in for that very reason, only to find that it was no big risk after all. Websites, cloud services, e-commerce, and games are all clustering on iOS and Android, and the best mobile business apps are also on those platforms. This coalescence threatens to orphan businesses that are based on the "legacy" mobile technologies such as BlackBerry (in North America), Symbian (in Europe), and Windows Mobile (in government). Why Dell, ViewSonic, and the OEM crowd won't matter -- but Motorola may The success of the iPhone got Google to buy Android and put its considerable financial and intellectual muscle behind it. The result is that Android smartphones are now the top-selling devices (depending on which surveys you believe). They're not as good as iPhones, but for users familiar with only regular cell phones, they are revelatory. In any event, only Apple may make iPhones and iPads; it's a one-sheriff town. Android, however, is available to all, so anyone who wants a piece of the mobile pie could at very little cost join in. Many OEMs were already making cell phones, and adapting them to run Android was a fairly small investment -- they jumped in. The problem is that these companies typically have no sense of design or user experience. They don't really think about users, so all they'd do is have some engineers get a Linux booter, an Android version (any would do), and an existing (often Windows Mobile) device in a lab, then make them all work together. These are Frankenphones, but in an industry where the typical cell phone has a sales life of 6 to 12 weeks, Frankenphones were the norm. Dell also got into the Frankenphone business, treating its Streak tablets with the same "make them cheap, make them fast, don't worry about the result" approach that has destroyed its reputation for quality in the PC market. Never mind that Apple made obsolete the Frankenphone model -- when all you make are Frankenphones, there's nothing else. Any OEM who treats Android as an ingredient in a generic stew will fail. They'll announce and even ship products, but they're all about short-term, low-investment opportunities. They'll fool some people, but they won't last because they won't gain loyalty and entusiasm. Google seems to be getting a clue that these OEMs are destructive parasites, not allies, and is rethinking how open it really needs to be. A few OEMs understood the need to add real value as well. Thus, HTC's second Android smartphone, the Droid Eris, had an innovative UI that masked some of that generation of Android's defects. The Eris gave HTC a position in the Android market it never would have enjoyed otherwise. Unfortunately, HTC has't really followed up and has fallen back into the sea of "who cares?" OEMs. Samsung traced a similar path with its Galaxy S smartphone line, which boasted more cutting-edge components and a sleeker design than in competitors' models; it gained a big following last summer. But quality problems began to appear, and it released the Galaxy Tab, a so-so tablet using a nontablet form of the Android OS that ended up looking dowright dowdy compared to an iPad; it also diminished a lot of the company's luster. Then there's Motorola, a company that has had execution and insular vision problems for years. Like Apple in 1999, it has been in serious crisis, recently splitting into two companies. Before that split, it decided to truly bet the farm on Android and to add its own value to the mix rather than just slap Android onto a Razr. Its Droid series has been successful, even with its unloved MotoBlur interface. Motorola also shipped the first (and still only) real Android tablet, the Xoom, which compared decently to the iPad. It's a second-class tablet to be sure, but at least it belongs on the train. The Atrix smartphone and its companion Lapdock are really interesting innovations, the only recent Android developments that show the same kind of direction-defining potential as the first iPhone. But whether Motorola can keep itself together to develop that potential is an open question: Each of its products suffers from inconsistencies that make no sense, given the same company developed them all. These problems suggest insularity and balkanization are still issues at Motorola Mobility. It really is down to Apple, Google, and maybe the WebOS wild card Still, it's possible that Motorola could pull an Apple and be the comeback darling we all celebrate four or five years from now. HP could also be in that position. It's realized that making generic PCs is a dead-end business, as would making generic smartphones. Instead, it bought Palm for its WebOS and now plans to bring WebOS to smartphones, tablets, and PCs, in a bold move to unify the three types of computing devices. It's the kind of move that Microsoft could and probably should have tried. It'll be a stretch for HP, and what HP showed recently for the forthcoming WebOS didn't inspire me, but at least it's taking a run at breaking from the past. Apple is clearly going to be the idea and profit powerhouse in mobile, even if Google has more market share. Google, which seems to be realizing its fully open model could hurt Android, could also be more of a driving force if it figures out how to lead an alliance of strong OEMs (such as Motorola and perhaps Samsung and/or HTC) rather than let the OEMs damage its brand with their "slap it together" mentality. HP may have a shot of being the third engine. The rest are history. RIM, Microsoft, Nokia, and Dell are all toast in the mobile market -- the walking dead who should be looking for burial plots. Mourn them if you must, but it's time to move on. Don't get buried along with them. This article, "Anatomy of failure: Mobile flops from RIM, Microsoft, and Nokia," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman's Mobile Edge blogand follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen's mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, followInfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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INTEREST: iPhone "GPS" explained
by billing 02 May '11

02 May '11

In the wake of the hullabaloo about iPhone ('n such) knowing the whereabouts of their owners (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27location_qa.html), here's an article that explains how those devices and the "crowd-source" databases, the main focus of the hullabaloo, actually work.... ...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/159528/2011/04/how_iphone_location_works.ht… How the iPhone knows where you are Apple uses GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell towers to get (and map) location data by Glenn Fleishman, Macworld.com Apr 28, 2011 9:00 am iPhone users' experience with GPS is so quick, so instant-on, that Apple's Wednesday response about location tracking on iOS might almost seem baffling: Calculating a phone’s location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites. Several minutes? Doesn't my iPhone take just seconds to figure out where I am? Well, yes… but only when it engages in a set of tricks to avoid a lengthy process that was de rigueur when GPS receivers first appeared. In simplifying matters, Apple’s not being entirely accurate about how this all works and what it's doing. So let me explain where Wi-Fi and cell phone towers fit into the equation. 12.5 minutes to locate Early GPS receivers took 12.5 minutes from a cold start to obtain a lock; later locks in the same region could still take minutes. If you turned a GPS receiver off for a few weeks or moved it more than a few hundred miles, a cold start might be required again. GPS relies on two factors to create a set of accurate coordinates for where you’re standing: time and space. GPS satellites broadcast precise time signals using a built-in atomic clock along with their current location. They also broadcast the location of all other satellites in the sky, called the almanac. Every 30 seconds, a GPS satellite broadcasts a time stamp, its current location and some less precise location information for other GPS satellites. It takes 25 of these broadcasts (thus, 12.5 minutes) to obtain the full list of satellite locations. This information has to be decoded for a receiver to then properly interpret signals from the satellites that are within range. If you know the position of four satellites and the time at which each sent their position information, you—or, rather, your GPS receiver—can calculate to within 10 meters the latitude, longitude, and elevation of your current location along with the exact current time. With three satellites, you lose elevation, but a device can still track movement fairly accurately. Standalone GPS receivers can lock in simultaneously on multiple satellites, and track more than four. Other techniques can improve accuracy, too. But, heck, I don’t have 12.5 minutes. I’m a busy man! Give me that location faster! Giving GPS an assist So GPS chip and gear makers came up with a host of ways to shorten the wait, called Assisted GPS (AGPS). Instead of relying on live downloads of position data from satellites, future locations can be estimated accurately enough to figure out rough satellite positions, and get a fix at which point even more up-to-date information is retrieved. These estimates can be downloaded via a network connection in seconds or even calculated right on a device. The current time can also be used as a clue. With a precise current time, fragmentary satellite data can be decoded to gain a faster lock or figure out the appropriate information to use. In CDMA networks, such as that used by Verizon, GPS-synchronized atomic time is required for the network’s basic operations, making it a simple matter to have such information available. (In fact, CDMA cell towers have GPS units built in to maintain better atomic time synchronization.) You can see your iOS device get a location fix when you open Maps.These extras are what makes GPS into AGPS. Though a lot of people misunderstand AGPS and think it’s some faux GPS system, that’s not the case: AGPS requires a GPS receiver to work. Apple’s iPhone and 3G iPad models include AGPS, as do nearly all competing devices with GPS chips, notably Android phones. (AGPS allows the use of much cheaper and simpler GPS circuits in phones, reducing cost and battery drain.) This is where Apple’s statement on Wednesday deviates from full accuracy. Apple uses AGPS for native GPS-lock improvements, and Wi-Fi network and cell tower locations are additional factors in providing a fast initial connection along with improving GPS accuracy. Cellular carriers have extremely precise GPS measurements of the locations of all their towers. With a database of such towers, you can take measurements of the signal strength of those within range—which may be dozens—and trilaterate to find an area that overlaps among them. (Trilateration involves overlapping regions to find an intersecting area; triangulation uses the measurement of angles to find a center point.) But cell towers are too far away from one another to provide GPS-like precision, and they don’t work well in less-populated areas, even suburbs, where less coverage is necessary than in an urban environment. Looking for Wi-Fi Apple, Google, and others turn to Wi-Fi positioning for that. Wi-Fi positioning, originated by Skyhook Wireless, originally required specially equipped trucks with Wi-Fi antennas and highly sensitive GPS receivers that drove around cities to capture network identifiers (the unique hardware address broadcast by Wi-Fi base stations) and relative signal strengths at billions of points. As with cell towers, if you have enough networks and enough signal strength information, you can approximate a position. It’s trivial for a networked device like a smartphone to take a snapshot of nearby Wi-Fi and cellular sources and pass it to a server that replies with an approximate set of coordinates. According to Apple’s Q&A, the company takes it a step further by caching subsets of data about nearby networks and towers to reduce network activity and speed up such lookups. This also shifts some computation to the phone or tablet and away from location services. And it means if there’s no cell or Wi-Fi connection available, such location information can still be useful. (This explains a mystery I’ve seen in which a Wi-Fi-only iPad or an iPod touch can seemingly calculate a fix when it’s off the network.) Apple first unveiled Wi-Fi and cell-tower positioning with the original iPhone in an update to iPhone OS in early 2008. This was Apple’s sop to the fact that the original iPhone lacked a GPS receiver, which didn’t debut until the iPhone 3G. You can see either or both of these in action whenever you bring up the Maps app. Typically, you see a large blue circle appear nearly instantly, a result of what must be a consultation of the local database. The circle becomes smaller as more information is used, still from cellular and Wi-Fi sources, to create a better trilateration. This data is also used to provide more clues into decoding the best GPS satellite information, allowing the use of quite small fragments of data or even raw signals to get a better lock. Finally, the circle becomes a single dot when iOS is confident it has a solid GPS lock. Out of the trucks, into the cloud Apple switched from using Skyhook Wireless as a data supplier starting in iOS 4.0 for the iPhone and iPod touch, and with the iPad-only 3.2 release. There’s a reason for that. When your iOS device uses Wi-Fi positioning, it sends a snapshot of the current signal landscape to Apple, which says in the Q&A that this information is used anonymously to crowdsource better data. But this is incredibly useful market intelligence, too, about how often users are relying on location updates, and where those users are clustered. It can be used for ad targeting and other purposes beyond those in apps that look for location data. Of course, the Apple Q&A makes it clear that not every Wi-Fi snapshot is sent to Apple; clearly some algorithm drives which are sent to improve the database. By crowdsourcing, Apple avoids having to send trucks around. Google has apparently engaged the same approach, using its Street View trucks to supplement Android-based crowdsourcing. (It’s gotten in trouble two ways about this. First, for apparently accidentally recording unencrypted Wi-Fi network data, which resulted in fines, settlements, and halting such scanning in many countries. Second, for allegedly strongarming two major handset makers into changing their deals to rely on Google’s data.) GPS is, in fact, rocket science at many levels. But the way in which Apple combines and supplements information from multiple sources to create a fast and accurate lock explains why to us as users it’s all “GPS” and just works. [Glenn Fleishman is a senior contributor to Macworld, and writes regularly about wireless data. His latest book is Take Control of iPhone and iPod touch Networking & Security for iOS 4 (Take Control books).]

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INTEREST: How Apple devices saved me thousands on my new car
by billing 02 May '11

02 May '11

Naturally, there are other brands of devices which would do this kind of thing...... ...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/159494/2011/04/apple_versus_auto_dealer.htm… How Apple devices saved me thousands on my new car by Jason Snell, Macworld.com Apr 27, 2011 1:00 pm Late last year we bought a new car. And in doing so, I realized that the auto industry is undoubtedly one of the industries that has been severely disrupted by Apple in the past decade. HandBrake 0.9.4 Complete Coverage » 4.5 out of 5 Mice Mar 2, 2010 Best current price: $0.00 NAVIGON MobileNavigator USA Complete Coverage » 4.0 out of 5 Mice Jan 14, 2011 Latest Price: $34.99 Get it Yes, every new car in existence seems to offer a USB port with iPod connectivity, and my family’s new minivan is no exception. I plugged in my old hard-drive-based iPod and all of a sudden, our car has my entire music collection on tap. It’s got Bluetooth, too, so I can answer my iPhone from the dashboard and talk over built-in speakers and microphones, and even listen to music streamed wirelessly from the iPhone in my pocket. (This car is basically the shuttlecraft from the USS Enterprise. Especially when compared to our other car, a 1994 Honda Civic.) But the changes Apple has wrought had their biggest impact when it came time to decide if we wanted to pony up for the add-on navigation and in-car entertainment systems. As you might expect, automakers charge huge amounts of money for items such as these. As I recall, the entertainment option cost $1500. For a single fold-down video screen and a DVD player! We don't have this. (Image courtesy Honda.)For a few years, I dreamed of buying a car with a snazzy nav and movie-playing system. But when it came time for us to buy, we didn’t get either the navigation system or the entertainment system. And Apple was the reason. My wife and I both have iPhone 4’s, and we own a copy of Navigon’s MobileNavigator GPS app. Rather than spend hundreds of dollars for in-car navigation, we bought Kensington’s $30 Windshield/Vent Car Mount for Smartphones and stuck it on the center passenger-side air vent. When we go on a trip that requires navigation, we plug in an iPhone and let it talk to us. Problem solved. When it came to entertainment, we also opted out. Yes, we want our kids to be entertained on long trips. But there are already two iPads in our family, and during those trips we adults are happy to cede them to the small people who ride in the rear of the compartment. Each of our children can choose what they want to watch, view it on a bright 10-inch screen that's right in front of them (rather than mounted on the ceiling), and listen to it on a set of headphones so as not to disturb anyone else in the car. They can also opt to get a bit more interactive and play games or even use educational apps. (During Spring Break, I was amazed to look back while riding through the California desert and discover my kids were busy playing Math Bingo.) There’s another benefit, too. One of our neighbors has a minivan with an in-car DVD player. Their kids demand videos whenever they’re in the car, even for a short ride. It’s maddening. We only stock those iPads when we’re going to be trapped in the car for five-plus hours. Our kids never beg for a TV show on a short drive because it’s simply not an option. I’m not going to argue the merits of kids using iPads on long car trips—I’m in favor of it, obviously, but I understand if you’re opposed. But if you’re going to choose between a couple of iPads and a factory-installed in-car entertainment system, I’m not sure why any tech-savvy person would choose the latter. (I admit lots of people have DVD collections and don’t know how to use HandBrake… though they should.) The iPads offer more control, more variety, and are cheaper. And thus, my local car dealership missed out on a couple thousand bucks in extras, because Apple’s technology simply does more, is cheaper, and our family’s already got it.

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iPhone (iOS) Location Tracking ...
by Doug Hamilton 02 May '11

02 May '11

iPhone (iOS) Location Tracking You may have recently read articles about Apple tracking you via your iPhone, this is patently false. Some researchers discovered on their iPhones, a file containing GPS locations of where an iPhone they had been; or so they had thought. The locations were of the cellular towers and WiFi hotspot in their vicinity and not the phone tracking them personally. All cellular phones cache these files to improve network performance. What is of a minor concern is that this file wasn't encrypted. This issue will be resolved in a soon to be related iOS update. Here is a link to Apple's Press Release. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27location_qa.html Regards ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, ASP Senior Apple Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 (Ph.) 204-474-7556 (Fax) http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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INTEREST: AssociatedPress: Apple juggernaut sends ripples through tech world
by billing 30 Apr '11

30 Apr '11

...from: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TEC_APPLES_RIPPLES?SITE=CARIE&TEM… Apr 29, 3:55 PM EDT Apple juggernaut sends ripples through tech world By PETER SVENSSON AP Technology Writer AP Photo/Kin Cheung NEW YORK (AP) -- Consumer technology companies reporting financial results this week are looking like rowboats bobbing in the wake of Apple Inc.'s supertanker. Close to oblivion in 1997, Apple is now the world's second-most valuable company, after Exxon Mobil Corp. On April 20, it reported net income of $5.99 billion for the January-to-March period, nearly double that of a year ago. It shipped a record 18.65 million iPhones during the quarter. Its iPad tablet computers are so popular, the company couldn't make enough. Apple's ascendancy has produced many losers and a few winners, as underscored over the past two weeks: - Microsoft Corp.: loser. Apple dethroned Microsoft as the world's most valuable technology company a year ago. In its mid-fall report, it surpassed Microsoft in quarterly revenue. In the January-March period this year, it surpassed Microsoft in net income, too. On Thursday, Microsoft reported that revenue from the Windows operating system declined for the second straight quarter because people are buying fewer Windows computers. Some prospective buyers are going to Macs instead - Apple reported that it sold 28 percent more units. Others are going to iPads. Goldman Sachs now believes that more than 30 percent of iPads sold may be replacing PC sales. In the 90s, the trend was the opposite, as Windows PCs were crowding out Macs. - Nokia Corp.: loser. Nokia said this week that it will slash 7,000 jobs through layoffs and outsourcing. It still sells more phones than anyone else, but it's losing share to Apple, especially when it comes to smartphones. Research firm Strategy Analytics also said revenue from Apple's iPhone sales surpassed that of Nokia's phones in the January-to-March period, as iPhones are much more expensive than the average Nokia phone. That makes Apple the world's largest phone maker by revenue. To better compete with the iPhone, Nokia is ditching its old Symbian software and adopting Microsoft's Windows Phone 7. But the transition will take time; the first Windows-powered Nokia phones aren't expected until late 2011 or early 2012. - Research In Motion Ltd.: loser. The maker of the BlackBerry is in a predicament that's similar to Nokia's. RIM warned Thursday that net income, revenue and unit sales for the quarter ending in May will come in below its previous forecast. The company's high-end phones are looking old compared with the iPhone and ones running Google Inc.'s Android software. They aren't selling as well as the company expected. RIM promised investors that new phones with revamped software will bring sales roaring back in the latter half of the year, but investors are skeptical, sending RIM's stock down Friday. - HTC Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.: winners, indirectly. Although all three companies compete with Apple's iPhone, they are doing well. Unlike Nokia and RIM, the three are betting on Google's Android system, which comes the closest to mimicking the look, feel and functions of the iPhone. Motorola Mobility is a shadow of the old Motorola, once the world's second-largest maker of phones. But its focus on Android-powered smartphones is showing signs of success. It reported on Thursday a near-doubling of smartphone sales in the first quarter. HTC of Taiwan has been making smartphones for a decade, and sales are really taking off with the help of Android. On Friday, it reported selling 9.7 million in the first quarter. For South Korea's Samsung, smartphone sales were a bright spot in the first quarter as overall phone sales declined and other electronics were weak. The company is embroiled in patent litigation with Apple. - Verizon Wireless: winner. The No. 1 U.S. cellphone carrier posted a jump in new contract-signing customers - the more profitable kind - after it introduced its version of the iPhone on Feb. 10, which ended AT&T Inc.'s exclusive grip on the device in the U.S. (Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. of New York and Vodafone Group PLC of Britain.) - AT&T and Sprint Nextel Corp: mixed. Verizon's new subscribers came at the expense of AT&T and Sprint Nextel Corp. But neither carrier saw signs of current customers moving to Verizon for the sake of the iPhone. Rather, it seems customers weighing between carriers were more likely to go to Verizon because of the iPhone. AT&T appeared to be splitting new iPhone customers evenly with Verizon Wireless. Sprint lost lucrative contract customers in the quarter, but continued its long turnaround by signing up a record number of people on cheaper, contract-free plans.

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INTEREST: Apple outlook: iPad2, iPhone, Android, Steve, Japan
by billing 27 Apr '11

27 Apr '11

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/159366/2011/04/tim_cook_apple_android_japan… Tim Cook speaks! Apple's COO on Android, Japan, iPad 2 by Macworld Staff, Macworld.com Apr 20, 2011 6:20 pm [Editors’ note: When Apple releases its quarterly earnings report, it holds a conference-call with financial analysts. Some of the more interesting tidbits about how Apple views the world take place in this call, when Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook answers analyst questions. Here’s an edited transcript of what Cook said on Wednesday’s call.] Apple COO Tim Cook at the Verizon iPhone 4 launch. iPad 2 Demand on iPad 2 has been staggering. We’re still amazed that we are still heavily backlogged, not only at the end of the quarter but also up to date. However, I can tell you that I’m extremely pleased with the progress of the manufacturing ramp and we were so confident that we rolled out 25 additional countries at the end of last month, and we are shipping to an additional 13 countries next week, and we’re planning to add even more countries through the quarter. So I’m very confident that we can produce a very large number of iPads for the quarter. Whether that will be enough to meet demand, I don’t know. Demand has been staggering and I’m not going to predict when supply and demand will come into balance. I can only be confident on supply side. By the end of the quarter, we were in supply/demand balance [for the iPhone] in almost all of our major markets. And I would say, as of today, we’re in supply/demand balance [for the iPhone] virtually everywhere. The Mac is in supply/demand balance, and the iPod is in supply/demand balance, and the iPad has the mother of all backlogs that we’re working very, very hard to get out to customers as quickly as we can. Product transitions are never simple, and as you can probably appreciate, we are in a position that we have to call them for many, many weeks in advance, in terms of how many of the current product we want to produce and the dates at which we will announce the new product. We drew the channel down on the original iPad by 570,000 units during the quarter, and we added at the end of the quarter 170,000 of the new iPad 2s, although most of that was in transit at the end of the quarter. And so the net reduction was 400,000 and so our sell through was above five million for the quarter. And again, this has to be planned quite a ways in the future. Just to remind you, we sent out an invitation to the [iPad 2 launch] event toward the end of February, we had the event in early March, we placed the unit on sale in the United States on March 11, and our quarter ended about 2 weeks thereafter. So, there was some expectation of a new product, and we would have obviously factored that into our thinking about the product transition, as we planned the number of the original unit to build. So I think the key point here is that I’m extremely pleased with the progress we’ve been making on the manufacturing ramp. We have gotten off to a materially better start and produced a lot more units than we did on the original ramp of the first iPad, and we’re so confident with our ability to supply that we’ve already put on 25 additional countries at the end of March, and we’ll be placing on 13 more next week, and we’ll do even more as we step through the quarter. [Can you compare iPad 1 sales to iPad 2 sales?] We purposely aren’t giving that because we don’t want to help out any of our competition. But I would tell you, I wish we could have produced a lot more iPad 2s, because there were certainly a lot of people waiting for them. [What about offering an iPad subsidized by a wireless carrier?] The iPad today is subsidized in a few markets. It’s subsidized in Korea if people sign a 24-month contract, it’s subsidized in Japan with a 24-month contract, and a couple of European countries. But the vast majority of people that are using the iPad on 3G are doing so on a pay-as-you-go plan, a no-commitment plan. And so yes, carriers can do that, but I think many customers prefer the pay-as-you-go plan. [What about the iPad in education?] K-12 is sort of even more conservative than enterprise on adopting new technology. And last quarter, we were about a 1:1 ratio of iPads to Macs, which is, I think, amazing given the short life of the iPad. And really demonstrates what kind of opportunity there probably is there. iPhone In terms of iPhone, we did actually very well everywhere. I’d call out two places where it was just off the charts. The U.S. grew 155 percent year over year. Obviously adding Verizon and beginning to offer iPhone to their enormous customer base was key in that. However, as you heard from AT&T’s announcement this morning, AT&T did extremely well during the quarter. So the U.S. as a geography grew at 155 percent, and that’s about three times IDC’s forecast of growth for the smartphone market, which was about 48 percent. Also, we continued to be on a tear in China. Greater China saw iPhone sales being up over three times. Almost 250 percent. This catapulted revenue for first fiscal half in Greater China to just under $5 billion, which is up almost four times year over year. So we’re extremely happy with how we’re doing in China. [What about launching a 4G/LTE iPhone?] I was asked this question, or a similar question, when we launched the iPhone with Verizon. What I said then, and I still see it as being the case today, and I think you can see this in the products that have been shipped, is that the first generation of LTE chipsets force a lot of design compromises with the handset, and some of those we are just not willing to make. And so we are extremely happy with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS. Hitting 18.6 million units was something much larger than we thought we could do this quarter, and we’re happy to have gotten it out to three more large carriers. [Can you talk about future CDMA carrier partners outside the U.S.?] On the carrier side, I don’t want to get into specifics about CDMA (or GSM for that matter). But we are constantly looking at where we should bring on incremental partners. As we said earlier, we brought on three large ones this quarter, with Verizon, STT and Saudi Telecom. That’s on top of the ones that we brought on in December, where we added O2 and Vodafone in Germany. And so we are constantly looking and adding where it makes sense, and you can keep confidence that we’ll continue to do that. [What about moving the iPhone into the prepaid market?] Our focus has very much been on China. We wanted to understand that market and understand the levers there. iPhone sales were up over three times during the quarter, and in the first half we did just slightly under $5 billion in greater China in revenue, which is about 10 percent of Apple, to put it in perspective. And it wasn’t but a couple years ago that that number would have been less than two. And so it’s a sea change. That’s certainly not what I would call a classic postpaid market by any means of imagination. And so we have some ideas about other countries as well. I’m not in a position that I want to share those today. We purposefully put the bulk of our emphasis from an emerging markets point of view, in China, to really learn, and then we’re going to take that learning to other markets. Considerably more [than half of China is pre-paid wireless]… I think the first digit would start with a 9. Mac growth The growth on the Mac has been enormous in Asia. The last quarter we were up 76 percent in Asia Pacific, this is many multiples of the growth that region is seeing for the market. I believe the IDC forecast is around six percent. And so we’re seeing enormous growth in the Mac there. Japan also did quite well on the Mac for the quarter and the U.S. had a surprisingly strong quarter for the Mac, Americas is up 25 percent, the U.S. was up just slightly higher than that. Our market share is obviously less outside the U.S. in most places than it is in the U.S., and so I think it speaks very, very well for the opportunity that the Mac has. We’ve now hit 20 quarters in a row where we’ve outgrown the PC market, and the momentum is still there. We seem to be the only guys that are really focused on building innovative products in that space. There are several of the international countries that are extremely portable-focused, and you can see that we had enormous growth in our portables for the quarter. However, part of that is that we had a launch of the new MacBook Pro line. But honestly I see popularity in both the iMac and the portable [form] factor and believe there is a great future for both. [The iPad] clearly seems to be creating a halo effect for the Mac. And I think that’s one reason we see the growth that we are seeing on the Mac. You know, it’s amazing when you see the 28 percent year over year versus the worldwide market in PCs contracting by 3 points. It’s an astonishing delta. Android vs. iOS I just saw yesterday… the ComScore data released yesterday reported that the iOS platform outreaches Android by 59 percent in the U.S. And so this is an enormous percentage. On a worldwide basis, we just did 18.6 million iPhones, which is up 113 percent, which is materially faster than the market rate of growth. And we launched the iPad 2 and sold every one of ‘em that we could make. As we said before, we’re gaining traction in enterprise on both iPhone and iPad with astonishing 88 percent and 75 percent respectively of the Fortune 500 companies deploying or testing these. We’ve got the largest App Store with over 350,000 apps for iPhone and 65,000 iPad-specific apps on iOS. Versus what appears to be fewer than a hundred on Android. And so we feel very, very good about where we are and we feel great about our future product plan. We’ve also paid over $2 billion to developers and we’ve had well over 10 billion applications downloaded. And so our business proposition is very, very strong. And as we’ve said before, we continue to believe—and even more and more every day—that iPhone’s integrated approach is materially better than Android’s fragmented approach, where you have multiple OSes on multiple devices with different screen resolutions and multiple app stores with different rules, payment methods, and update strategies. I think the user appreciates that Apple can take full responsibility for their experience, whereas the fragmented approach turns the customer into a systems integrator, and few customers that I know want to be a systems integrator. Steve Jobs He is still on medical leave, but we do see him on a regular basis. And as we previously said, he continues to be involved in major strategic decisions. I know he wants to be back full-time as soon as he can. Samsung We are Samsung’s largest customer. And Samsung is a very valued component supplier to us, and I expect that strong relationship will continue. Separately from this, we felt the mobile communication division of Samsung had crossed the line, and after trying for some time to work the issue, we decided we needed to rely on the courts. On Japan and Apple's supply chain Let me sort of step back and talk about Japan in general. First of all, this is an incredible tragedy and our hearts go out to everyone involved. Apple as a company has a very long history and has many strong ties to people in Japan, and we’re very, very saddened by the situation, and we’ve undertaken various actions to assist in the relief effort. The economic impact that we’ll address today pales in comparison to the human impact. Regarding our business in Japan, we had some revenue impact in Q2, but it was not material to Apple’s consolidated results. We believe revenues will be approximately $200 million less in Q3, and this has been factored into the guidance [we] provided you earlier. Regarding our global supply chain, as a result of outstanding teamwork and unprecedented resilience of our partners, we did not have any supply or cost impact in our fiscal Q2 as a result as the tragedy, and we currently do not anticipate any material supply or cost impact in our fiscal Q3. To provide a bit more color on this, we source literally hundreds of items from Japan, and they range from components such as LCDs, optical drives, NAND flash and DRAM to base materials such as resins, coatings, and foils that are part of the production process that are several layers back in the supply chain. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami and the associated nuclear crisis caused disruption for many of these suppliers. And many unaffected suppliers have been impacted by power interruptions. But since the disaster, Apple employees have literally been working around the clock with our supply partners in Japan and have been able to implement a number of contingency plans. Our preference from the beginning of this tragedy has been to remain with our long-term partners in Japan, and I have to say, they have displayed an incredible resilience that I’ve personally never seen before in the aftermath of this disaster. So while we do not currently anticipate any material impact to our component supply or cost in our fiscal Q3, we do need to caution everyone that the situation remains unpredictable, given recent aftershocks, the uncertainty about the nuclear plant, and potential power interruptions. Further, there are some supply risks that are beyond the current quarter, and although we know of no issue today that we view as unsolvable, the situation is still uncertain and there’s obviously no guarantee. For this reason it’s difficult to predict whether the issues created by the tragedy would impact revenues beyond Q3. However, I’ll be happy to address Q4 on our next call in July. As of today we currently do not anticipate any material supply (or cost impact as far as that goes) in our fiscal Q3. That’s the quarter that we’re in now, that ends in June. Beyond June, there are risks, but there’s no issue that we’re aware of today that we view as unsolveable. However, new things could happen. I’m sure you’ve been paying attention to the news: there’s aftershocks, there’s still uncertainty about the nuclear plant, there’s power interruptions. If that stays at the level that it is today, I’m not as worried. I would worry if something happened and took a turn for the worst, and obviously I can’t predict that and certainly hope that it does not occur.

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