Tag: apple

Lenovo maintains tablet push

Posted on November 21, 2014 by - News

Chess boardWhile both Apple and Samsung continue to dominate the branded tablet market workdwide, Chinese company Lenovo is beginning to make its presence known in the marketplace.

That’s according to preliminary shipment figures in the third quarter of this year supplied by ABI Research.

The market research company said that Apple and Samsung hog market share at 62 percent, but Lenovo is making its presence known in developing markets while other firms show growth of 124 percent compared to the same quarter in 2013.

ABI believes that while Apple has suffered declines in its market share, it could well regain the initiative in the current fourth quarter, largely due to the introduction of new iPad Air and iPad mini machines last October.

Jeff Orr, who runs the sector for ABI, said: “The pieces have been set for the end of year holiday 2014 tablet market chess match.  The advanced mature markets will once again be where the Apple versus Samsung duel occurs.  Don’t overlook the rest of the branded tablets vendors’ ability to deliver value based devices during this crucial shopping period.”

ABI produced the following data for the top three vendors worldwide:

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Infosys forced Apple to pay more for less

Posted on November 21, 2014 by - News

8eea64e0563590b07a4d93537eb2851fSome top Infosys executives have cleaned out their desks and been escorted from the building after it was discovered that the outfit had been daring to overcharge the margin king Apple.

Infosys, India’s second-largest IT services exporter, said on Tuesday it had fired Abraham Mathews, chief financial officer of its Infosys BPO unit, for failure to comply with the company’s code of conduct.

Infosys BPO chief executive officer Gautam Thakkar resigned on “moral grounds” and would leave the company on November 30, Infosys said. It did not give details about the charges against Mathews.

“The financial irregularities are not material in nature and the company has already made required disclosures. The company has taken disciplinary action on employees,” the company said. The irregularities in Infosys BPO’s dealings with Apple came out during an internal audit.

Though the audit showed that the financial impact of the wrongdoing on the company was minimal, Infosys decided to take a tough stance to demonstrate its “zero-tolerance policy for any improper conduct,” he said.

Reports from India suggest that six more people will be fired soon after investigations revealed that they had produced inflated invoices and allegedly overbilled Apple for many months.

The thought of Apple being overcharged for a service that actually cost a lot less, strikes us as a little ironic and would be confirmation of the doctrine of karma, if we believed in that sort of thing.

Infosys earlier this year brought in Vishal Sikka as its new CEO to chart a new strategy for the company, once a trendsetter for India’s more than $100 billion IT outsourcing industry. Infosys has struggled in recent years to retain staff and market share, the fact it has to fire a few cannot help things.

Apple iWatch faces further delays

Posted on November 20, 2014 by - News

Photo of China from satellite - Wikimedia CommonsLabour shortages in China mean that Apple’s iWatch is likely to be delayed even further, and is causing problems for other multinationals too.

According to Digitimes, the labour shortages are so severe that people like Dell have asked their original design manufacturers (ODM) to start making machines early so they won’t be caught short in 2015.

The lead ODM for the Apple iWatch is Taiwanese company Quanta Computer.

But there’s bright news for manufactuers. It appears orders for notebooks are showing a surge in the fourth quarter of this year even though things will follow a familiar pattern in the first quarter of 2015 with orders few and far between.

The labour shortages have existed for some years but Digitimes thinks they will be worse than ever in 2015, exacerbated by the lunar New Year which causes mass migration of people in mainland China.

The ODMs are mostly Taiwanese companies which have outsourced their manufacturing to mainland China as tensions eased between the two countries.

Creditors fume at Apple and GT deal

Posted on November 20, 2014 by - News

Bank-imageCreditors of GT Advanced Technologies are fuming that the outfit got too little in its proposed settlement with Apple over legal claims stemming from a deal to supply sapphire screens.

GT Advanced shocked investors by filing for bankruptcy in October in a case that was initially shrouded in secrecy due to confidentiality agreements with Apple. GT Advanced’s chief operating officer has said in court papers that the iPhone maker pulled a “bait and switch” to force the sapphire maker into a money-losing deal in 2013.

Apple agreed to release GT Advanced from the deal and allow it to sell more than 2,000 sapphire furnaces located in Mesa, Arizona.

The agreement needs approval by US Bankruptcy Court Judge Henry Boroff, who has been hearing the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is not too happy about things dot com.

But holders of GT Advanced’s notes, including Aristeia Capital and an affiliate of Wolverine Asset Management, said in court papers the “extraordinary allegations against Apple … call into question the adequacy of the settlement agreement.”

The concept that Apple breached its contract and acted unfairly as GT Advanced’s lender and the fact that Apple’s claims on GT Advanced’s equipment were unsecured would put Jobs’ Mob among the last creditors to be paid, not the first as Apple claimed.

Apple has denied GT Advanced’s allegations. In court filings, Apple has called the accusations “scandalous and defamatory” and “intended to vilify Apple and portray Apple as a coercive bully.”

However, the noteholders want access to internal records and documents from Apple and GT Advanced to investigate if the settlement lets Apple off too cheaply. The noteholders asked Boroff to postpone the settlement hearing, currently scheduled for Nov. 25, to give them time to complete their investigation.

GT Advanced said it is negotiating with potential buyers for its sapphire furnaces and said in court papers an extended delay in approving the Apple settlement could hurt its ability to reorganise and repay its creditors.

Hon Hai ties up with Innolux

Posted on November 20, 2014 by - News

Hon-HaiHon Hai Precision Industry has tied up with flat panel maker Innolux and is investing $2.8 billion in a panel producing plant in Taiwan.

Hon Hai is desperately trying to find new revenue streams which do not depend on the fruity themed cargo cult, Apple.  Earlier this year it bought stakes in a Taiwanese mobile network provider and a South Korean IT services provider.

Under the plan, the pair will buy equipment for the facility located in the southern city of Kaohsiung and which is expected to start production in the second half of 2016.

The plant, which will make low-temperature polysilicon panels, predominantly for use in smartphones, was built in 2008, but was mothballed due to financial constraints after the 2008 global financial crisis.

The plans are still awaiting final approval from the boards of both companies, but it seems likely that Hon Hai will stump up for the majority of the cash. The Innolux representative said the investment may take the form of a new joint-venture company.

Hon Hai already holds a nine percent stake in Innolux though its various subsidiaries. It is all a little mysterious dot com.

 

Get ready to wear a smart shirt

Posted on November 18, 2014 by - News

fobwatchA survey from Gartner said that less wearable electronic devices for fitness will ship in 2015 because of confusion in the marketplace.

While 70 million wearables will ship in 2014, that figure will fall to 68 million next year.

That is because the entry of smartwatches into the marketplace will have overlap in functionality.

But the figure is set to rise again in 2016 because lower cost machines will be available along with a variety of different designs.

The push to get people to use fitness wearables is being funded by a number of industry giants including Qualcomm, Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Nike and Intel.

Gartner sys the five main form factors are smart wristbands, sports watches, other fitness monitors, heart rate monitor chest straps and so called smart clothes.

This last category has the biggest potential for growth, according to Gartner and so-called “smart shirts” are no becoming available.  The research firm didn’t say whether the next step will be “smart pants”.

While smartwatches will come in many different price range, those costing $150 or over are likely to include accelerometers and gyroscopes but unlike health wristbands will have to tell the time and have the capacity to send and receive texts.

Microsoft now awarded number two slot

Posted on November 17, 2014 by - News

ToiletAwardMicrosoft is now the second most valuable company in the world, behind Apple after edging past Exxon Mobil in terms of market capitalization.

Exxon Mobil was neck and neck with Jobs Mob when Apple stuffed up their Apple Maps software. But Microsoft coming up and replacing Exxon is a little surprising.

Microsoft became a number two because their stock has had a particularly good run, especially in the past year that saw an increase of more than 40 percent since January.

Redmond now has an expensive market cap valuation of approximately $408 billion, which it uses to keep its little Voles snug in bed at night. This surpasses Exxon Mobil’s market capitalization of $402 billion.

Both of them are still pretty far behind the $670 billion market cap mark that is set by Apple, and while people are still dumb enough to buy bending phones which catch fire, there is no chance of Microsoft or Exxon catching up.

That is sort of the point. If the Apple Maps fiasco could temporarily put Exxon on top, then it is almost certain to happen again. So far, Apple has not come up with any new product that will keep it on top and its long-term outlook remains bleak.

Microsoft has similar problems; it desperately needs to establish itself in a new field. It could be, that in a few years’ time, we no longer have a tech company as the most valuable in the world.

Apple use makes it harder to evolve

Posted on November 17, 2014 by - News

evolutionFor a while now, the fruity cargo cult Apple has made it difficult for its customers to upgrade their expensive hardware going with third party updates.

However, with OS X 10.10 Yosemite, the company has taken another step down the path towards total vendor lock-in and effectively disabled support for third-party SSDs.

While third-party SSDs will still work, they will no longer perform the TRIM garbage collection command which means that an SSD’s real world performance will steadily degrade.

Hothardware said that tests from 2010-2011 show that performance could degrade up to 50% between a tortured SSD without TRIM and a drive where TRIM had run.

Apple had long had a history of only enabling TRIM for Apple drives by default. If you installed a third-party SSD, you had to use a third-party tool to enable TRIM functionality. This was not exactly rocket science but Apple did seem rather petty in forcing users to do it.

In OS X 10.10 Apple introduced kext (Kernel EXTension) driver signing, which means that at boot the machine checks that all drivers are approved and enabled by Apple. If a third-party SSD is detected, the OS will detect that a non-approved SSD is in use, and Yosemite will refuse to load the appropriate driver.

The Tame Apple Press claimst that Jobs’ Mob made this change to improve device security under OS X, but it is more likely that Apple made this change to sting its customers for more cash.

Apple charges $800 to upgrade a $1999 MacBook Pro from 256GB to 1TB of PCIe storage which is a fair bit more than a third party drive.

There is a way to disable the driver signing that causes this problem, but it means shutting off your entire security system.

It forces Apple power users to make full use of their hardware, the only problem with this is that Apple security is based on faith and praying a lot to the ghost of Steve Jobs. There is now a rise of attacks which use OS X as a vector. This means corporate users are locked into something that is more expensive, but even less secure. Chances are, many of them are not going to buy it.

 

Apple has integrity, design guru says

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

Apple's Jonathan IveThe man in charge of design at Apple Corp said the primary goal of Apple isn’t to make money but to show integrity.

Jonathan Ive, the Brit who has become Apple’s design guru, also hit out at companies that copied Apple designs, according to Dezeen magazine.

Speaking at London’s Design Museum, Ive said that Apple isn’t naive and if it makes good products, people would buy them.

He described companies copying Apple designs as thieves.  He said that it isn’t at all flattering to have designs the company has worked on for years suddenly be copied in six months.

He didn’t name names.

He also said that to do something new you have to reject reason and that can make you look odd.

In other companies, he claimed, designers cave in to the corporate agendum and to marketeers.

He said Apple’s much delayed iWatch is a giant leap forward – clocks took centuries to end up as wrist watches.

You can read the full report at Dezeen, here.

Apple quizzed over health data

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

tim-cook-glareMore bad news for Apple’s iWatch vapourware – it looks like it has attracted the attention of a US privacy watchdog.

Apple’s iWatch has been blighted by product delays and the fact that even its hype has been outclassed by products its rivals have put into the shops. Now it seems that the US Federal Trade Commission is worried about how Jobs’ Mob is going to use the sensitive health data collected by its upcoming smartwatch and other mobile devices from being used without owners’ consent.

Jobs’ Mob representatives have met on multiple occasions with agency officials in recent months, to promise that it will not flog its users’ health data to third-party entities such as marketers or allow third-party developers to do so.

The fact that you have to trust Apple with all your health data and that it the fruity computer seller is secure enough to protect it is a cause for concern. After all as attractive actresses who placed their naked pictures on the iCloud found out, Apple security is not that great.

Apple developed its new HealthKit platform, which manages data from mobile health apps, to give consumers control over how their information is used and shared. “We designed HealthKit with privacy in mind,” Apple insisted.

It is not clear if the FTC intends to launch a formal investigation or inquiry into the matter, but the dialogue underscores the agency’s interest in how the increasing wealth of consumer-generated health and fitness data will be safeguarded.

The FTC is paying particularly close attention to Apple’s upcoming smartwatch, which can track a user’s pulse and potentially store health-related information.

The FTC found in a recent study that many developers share or sell health data. The study found that developers of 12 mobile health and fitness apps were sharing user information with 76 different parties, such as advertisers.

In fact Apple did not tighten its privacy rules until August of this year to ensure that personal data collected through HealthKit would not be used by developers for the purposes of advertising or other data-mining purposes. Apps that access HealthKit are required to have a privacy policy, although it remains to be seen how Apple will enforce this.

 

Apple made into security lemon curd

Posted on November 14, 2014 by - News

LemoncurdAlthough the Tame Apple Press makes much of the security features of the iPhone, it is still the easiest phone to hack.

The Mobile Pwn2Own competition that took place alongside the PacSec Applied Security Conference in Tokyo on November 12-13 has a long tradition of knocking over the latest smartphones and always finds Apple smartphones the easiest.

If you believe the Tame Apple Press, the iPhone  with its sandbox technology was supposed to be super-secure. However it turns out that the iPhone continues to be a doddle. In fact, it has become traditional for the first day of the competition for Apple to be shown up.

In this case, members of the South Korean team lokihardt@ASRT “pwned” the device by using a combination of two vulnerabilities. They attacked the iPhone 5s via the Safari Web browser and achieved a full sandbox escape.

The competition, organised by HP’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) and sponsored by BlackBerry and the Google Android Security team, targeted the Amazon Fire Phone, iPhone 5s, iPad Mini, BlackBerry Z30, Google Nexus 5 and Nexus 7, Nokia Lumia 1520, and Samsung Galaxy S5.

Later in the day, Team MBSD from Japan hacked Samsung’s Galaxy S5 by using a near-field communications (NFC) attack that triggered a deserialisation problem in certain code specific to Samsung. Jon Butler of South Africa’s MWR InfoSecurity also managed to break the Galaxy S5 via NFC.

Adam Laurie from Aperture Labs hacked an LG Nexus 5 using NFC.  This was an interesting hack because it used a two-bug exploit targeting NFC capabilities on the LG Nexus 5 (a Google-supported device) to force BlueTooth pairing between phones.  This was a plot point on the telly show ‘Person of Interest’.

Kyle Riley, Bernard Wagner, and Tyrone Erasmus of MWR InfoSecurity used a combination of three vulnerabilities to break the Web browser on the Amazon Fire Phone.

Microsoft’s Nokia Lumia 1520 came out of the competition quite well with contestants only managing partial hacks. Nico Joly, managed to exfiltrate the cookie database, but the sandbox prevented him from taking complete control of the system.

Jüri Aedla of Estonia used a Wi-Fi attack against a Nexus 5, but failed to elevate his privileges, HP said.

 

Microsoft loses ground in schools race

Posted on November 13, 2014 by - News

1920-track_field_bellcounty_30yd_dashSoftware giant Microsoft is losing ground to the likes of Apple and Google in the race to get its gear into schools.

According to consultant Pablo Valerio,  the reason is nothing to do with marketing to kids and parents, but because it is falling short when it comes to providing teaching apps and its licencing arrangements.

Apple’s Teacher Tools and Google’s Chromebook Management Console are fuelling the adoption of Chromebooks and iPads, leaving Microsoft behind.

The recent Microsoft TechEd Europe event showed that Microsoft was close to sorting out the lack of Apps with the upcoming Windows 10 operating system.

However, Microsoft has not solved the issue of having to purchase a licence for each user as each user that logs into a device will use a licence, so that license will be taken down and it would not go back dynamically.

This will cause a heavy bill for schools with limited numbers of computers and hundreds of students using them.

Google Chromebooks have Chrome OS with specific tools for schools to manage the devices, their apps and users. Its Chromebooks for Education program is helping schools deploy large numbers of devices with an easy management system.

While it is possible to buy a small Windows laptop for about the same price of a basic Chromebook, the associated management and support costs are enormous in comparison. Also Chromebooks are pre-loaded with apps such as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, with similar functionality to Microsoft’s Office.

Apple is the leader in the education market thanks to having the biggest collection of education apps available today, plus some unique management tools, some by Apple and some by MDM providers such as AirWatch, he said.

 

Masque attack hits Apple iOS devices

Posted on November 11, 2014 by - News

blue-appleA security firm warned that a vulnerability in Apple’s operating system means apps can be replaced by maleficent apps.

FireEye warned yesterday that all apps could be replaced except iOS pre-installed applications.

The company has verified the vulnerability in various recensions of iOS and told Apple the problem existed as long ago as July 26.  It dubbed the vulnerability Masque Attacks and warned that apps such as banking and email apps can be hacked.

Despite Apple was informed months ago, no action seems to have been taken, which led FireEye to issue an urgent advice notice.

Users can protect themselves by not installing apps from third parties, other than Apple’s App Store.  It also warns people not to install apps from pop up.

And if iOS alerts you with the phrase “untrusted app developer”, don’t trust the app.

There’s more information at the FireEye page, here.

Why Apple’s corporate plans are doomed

Posted on November 11, 2014 by - News, Opinions

Map09_oh_noes_two_elementalsKing of consumer toys, Apple is attempting its biggest push into the consumer market, according to Reuters.

Reuters claims that Apple is hiring a dedicated sales force just to talk with potential clients like Citigroup.

This is on top of its partnership with IBM to develop apps for corporate clients and sell them on devices, the iPhone maker plans to challenge sector leaders HP, Dell, Oracle and SAP.

Of course no one is saying much in the way of details, Reuters seems to think that the deal with Big Blue will mean that Apple will be welcomed into the corporate world and give HP and Dell a kicking.  This will result in the collapse of Microsoft, Samsung and Google’s own efforts in mobile work applications.

Apparently Job’s Mob is working closely with a group of startups, including ServiceMax and PlanGrid, that already specialise in selling apps to corporate America. Apple is already in talks with other mobile enterprise developers to bring them into a more formal partnership.

For example, PlanGrid is a mobile app for construction workers to share and view blueprints. ServiceMax is a mobile app that makes it easy for companies to manage fleets of field service technicians by ensuring they have access to the right information.

ServiceMax, whose existing customers include Procter & Gamble (PG.N) and DuPont, has co-hosted eight dinners with Apple over the past year in locations across the United States. About 25 or 30 chief information officers and “chief service officers” typically show up at these joint marketing and sales events.

But there are huge problems with Reuter’s desire to see Apple in charge of the world. The most obvious is that Apple makes toys it does not make corporate devices. Corporates are obsessed with security, Apple’s iCloud can’t even protect b list celebs from having their naked pictures being hacked.

Tablets were an Apple inspired Fad and any belief that corporates will rush to buy them never really happened. If they are ever adopted by corporates, they will be a low-level function which will require something a lot cheaper than Jobs’ Mob wants to support. Apple really needed BYOD to take off, which it didn’t.

Apple’s success has been due to its cult following, but religion does not work very well when it comes to business. Apple lacks functionality with business systems, corporates also take a dim view of the sort of things that Apple user agreements desire from their followers. Apple is also slow to confirm security flaws, and even slower to fix them. Its insistence on its own security, rather than that of the client also does not sit well with big business.

In short, to get business customers, Apple needs to change its mentality – something historically it has been unable to do. It not only has to deal with the experts in business, such as Microsoft, HP, Dell and SAP, its traditional rivals, such as Samsung are also harbour similar ambitions.

Samsung has confirmed that it is stepping up its efforts to sell devices to large enterprise clients and hired former chief information officer Robin Bienfait to spearhead that effort. It might hit the same experience problems that Apple has, and there is no reason to suspect it will be any more successful.

Apple’s IBM partnership might not be that key to the corporations either. It relies on IBM’s sales team selling Apple projects. IBM has as much experience selling consumer products as Apple has selling into business. Jobs’ Mob also has no clue about business software, which is the key to getting into the business market — for decades its networking technology has been the weak point of the few Apple installations in corporates.

Apple appears to hope that if it can hook the client on the software and content, they will keep them coming back for the hardware. However, that simply does not work in the corporates. Hell, Microsoft was unable to get corporates to upgrade to Windows 7 because they could not see a need.  What chance does Apple’s business model have against that attitude?

Apple conducted a “bait and switch” on GT Advanced

Posted on November 10, 2014 by - News

6a01053686a547970c017d3e73793e970c-piCourt documents appear to show that Apple sank GT Advanced by offering it what would have been its largest sale ever and then changed the terms of the agreement after it was too late for the smaller company to go elsewhere.

In documents unsealed by a US  Bankruptcy Court in Springfield, Massachusetts, GT Advanced Chief Operating Officer Daniel Squiller says Apple conducted a bait and switch which brought the company to its knees.

GT Advanced, a maker of sapphire furnaces that supplied sapphire material to Apple for its smartphone screens, filed for Chapter 11 protection but has refused to publicly explain why it had imploded, because of  confidentiality clauses which Apple forced it to sign.

All this came to light because Judge Henry Boroff denied requests by the companies to keep some of the documents in the case under seal.

Last year, GT Advanced outfitted a plant owned by Apple in Mesa, Arizona with furnaces that it would use to make scratch-resistant sapphire exclusively for Apple.

“With a classic bait-and-switch strategy, Apple presented GTAT with an onerous and massively one-sided deal in the fall of 2013,” Squiller wrote.

At the start of negotiations, Apple offered to buy 2,600 sapphire growing furnaces from GT Advanced, which GT Advanced would operate on behalf of Apple, the “ultimate technology client to land,” according to Squiller.

“In hindsight, it is unclear whether Apple even intended to purchase any sapphire furnaces from GTAT,” he wrote.

Apple offered a deal, under which it would shift away economic risk by lending GT Advanced the money to build the furnaces and grow the sapphire, and then sell it exclusively to Apple for less than market value, Squiller wrote.

GT Advanced was effectively forced to accept the unfair deal in October 2013 because its intense negotiations with Apple had left it unable to pursue deals with other smartphone makers, he said.

However, Apple called GT Advanced’s accusations “scandalous and defamatory” and said that the statements are intended to vilify Apple and portray “Apple as a coercive bully.”

It said GT Advanced was eager to make a deal, and pointed to a jump of over 20 percent in the shares of GT Advanced after it was unveiled.