Tag: apple

Microsoft nukes Samsung

Posted on August 4, 2014 by - News

rage-explosionIt seems that Microsoft really has copied Apple in its treatment of the smartphone maker Samsung.

According to a company blog, Microsoft is suing Samsung over its version of Android software in the Southern District of New York.

David Howard, Vole’s Deputy General Counsel said that Microsoft did not take lightly filing a legal action, especially against a company with which it had enjoyed a long and productive partnership. However it appears the pair have fallen out.

“ After spending months trying to resolve our disagreement, Samsung has made clear in a series of letters and discussions that we have a fundamental disagreement as to the meaning of our contract,” he wrote.

Microsoft said that Samsung voluntarily entered into a legally binding contract with Microsoft to cross-license IP which was extremely beneficial for both parties.

Since Samsung entered into the agreement, its smartphone sales have quadrupled and it is now the leading worldwide player in the smartphone market and decided late last year to stop complying with its agreement with Microsoft.

When Vole bought Nokia Devices and Services business, Samsung began using the acquisition as an excuse to breach its contract, Howard alleged.

He added that Microsoft and Samsung had a long history of collaboration. Microsoft values and respects its partnership with Samsung and expects it to continue. It is simply asking the Court to settle the disagreement, and is confident the contract will be enforced.

Man beat Apple 42 times

Posted on July 30, 2014 by - News

gala_appleA 24 year old managed to scam the fruity cargo cult Apple more than 42 times – at least in Florida.

The Tampa Bay Times  said that Sharron Laverne Parrish tricked Apple Store employees in 16 states starting around December 2012 into accepting fake authorisation codes to buy $309,768 worth of Apple goods.

He was arrested by the US Secret Service special agents working alongside Apple and Chase Bank security. US spooks often get involved in cases involving currency scams.

Parrish visited Apple Stores and tried to buy products with four different debit cards, which were all closed by the banks. When his debit card was inevitably declined by the Apple Store, he would protest and offer to call his bank.

He did not call the bank, of course. He would just give the Apple Store employees a fake authorisation code with a certain number of digits, which is normally provided by credit card issuers to create a record of the credit or debit override.

What Parrish had worked out was that as long as the number of digits is correct, the override code itself does not matter.

However because Apple employees overrode the initial declination against the instructions of Chase Bank, Apple suffered the loss because of this fraud.

Apple and Samsung lose out

Posted on July 30, 2014 by - News

1920s-telephone-advertApple and Samsung’s European bottom lines are being kicked by a surge of interest in local smartphones.

A report from Netbiscuits suggests that customers are becoming increasingly frustrated at the mobile market monoculture and Apple and Samsung are experiencing their first major challenge from disruptive European vendors.

Head of global research at Netbiscuits Duncan Clark said that his report marks a dramatic shift in mobile market share which are mirrored in Asia were emerging local vendors in Asia have been doing well.

French company Wiko and bq in Spain have muscled a “Top 50 devices” spot in their own countries for the first time ever.

Coupled with increased fragmentation in Asian markets as cheaper brands enter the market, it seems that smaller, companies are gaining popularity around the world and disrupting dominant players.

It is still early days yet, but it does show that the Golden Age where Apple and Samsung rule the smartphone world is coming to a close.

 

 

 

 

Apple misses a Beats. Buys lemon

Posted on July 28, 2014 by - News

head10When Apple bought the groovy headphone maker Beats for $3 billion, legions of fanboys in the press rushed to claim that it was the deal of the century.

It seems that Apple might have bought itself a bag of pain after Bose filed a lawsuit that accuses the headphone maker of infringing upon several of its patents.

The suit claims that Bose lost sales because Beats nicked its patented noise-cancelling technology in its Studio and Studio Wireless headphone lines.

To make matters worse, Beats advertises that the technology “can also be used for noise cancellation when no music is played” which is something Bose has a patent on. “Thus, Beats specifically encourages users to use the infringing functionality. Beats advertises no method to turn off features that cause end users to directly infringe.”

Apple appears to have bought a company whose products infringe on five US patents: patent 6,717,537, titled “Method and Apparatus for Minimizing Latency in Digital Signal Processing Systems;” patent 8,073,150, a “Dynamically Configurable ANR Signal Processing Topology;” patent 8,073,151, a “Dynamically Configurable ANR Filter Block Technology;” patent 8,054,992, which specifies a method for high frequency compensating; and patent 8,345,888, which covers “Digital High Frequency Phase Compensation.”

Bose never mentions Apple in the 22-page complaint, and the Tame Apple Press insists that the lawsuit has come about because Jobs’ Mob paid such a high price.

Some magazines have even implied that Bose is being a patent troll saying that this is not the first time Bose has sued a competitor over patents. It sued Able Planet last year over its noise-cancelling headphones, and reached a settlement. In April, Bose sued Monster for selling headphones that infringe a Bose patent related to “fit and retention characteristics” of their in-ear headphones. That case is in its early stages.

Bose has also filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission against Beats over the same infringement claims. That means the patent lawsuit filed in federal court will be stayed while the ITC case gets resolved first.

Either way this is going to get messy for Apple. It already paid what many considered was too much for Beats and it is going to have another expensive court battle to fight.

 

Don’t fear the Big Blue Apple Alliance

Posted on July 28, 2014 by - News

blue-appleThe glorious alliance between soft fruit Apple and Big Blue has not put the fear of Jehovah into other potential fruity alliances.

According to Reuters  top executives at Dell and BlackBerry scoffed at the deal with their best scoffing sticks.

The pair have been trying to re-invent themselves, and some of the tame Apple press claims that the glorious Apple-IBM alliance will stuff up their efforts.

John Swainson, who heads Dell’s global software business, said that the Apple-IBM made a good press release but there was nothing in it which was worth taking seriously.

Swainson, who spent over two decades in senior roles at IBM, point out that IBM reps will be unable to flog Apple gear to their client base. He said that they were rubbish at selling that sort of thing when it had an IBM logo on it, so they are going to be just as pants at trying to sell stuff with an Apple on it.

While it is true that Apple products are better marketed, Swainson said they lack the depth of security features that many large business clients like banks need.

BlackBerry Chief Executive John Chen told the Financial Times that the alliance was like when “two elephants start dancing”,

Dell and BlackBerry have declined to discuss whether they would consider teaming up, but some analysts, bankers and others have argued in the past that a partnership between the two underdogs potentially made sense.

Dell has a huge sales team, vast network of business clients and is focused on growing its security and device management capabilities which is everything that BlackBerry needs.

Chromebooks outclass iPads

Posted on July 25, 2014 by - News

classApple’s dominance over the tablet market is slumping but one thing that the Tame Apple Press is failing to say is that they are being eclipsed by Chromebooks.

Jobs’ Mob has admitted that it only sold 13.3 million iPads, down nine percent from last year, but Apple CFO Luca Maestri insisted that in education, the iPad remains the tablet of choice with 85 percent share of the US education tablet market. She said that Apple had sold 13 million iPads to education customers globally.

But while Apple leads the academic market for tablets, not all schools are buying iPads to give to students; they’re also buying laptops, including Chromebooks. In otherwords, while Apple is leading tablet sales, that is because its main rival is not providing tablets.

Chromebooks run ChromeOS on what would best be described a cheap laptop hardware – although there are a few premium models like the Pixel – with an Intel CPU. Google has a number of hardware partners, including Acer, which lead the pack with 30 percent of the Chromebook market.

Apparently, sales have been so good that Google only recently added tablets to the range.

Google reported a few days ago that it sold a million Chromebooks to schools last quarter (another 800,000 were sold to consumers. While that might not look nearly as impressive as Apple’s 13 million iPads, the numbers suggest  that Google could be selling as many Chromebooks to schools as Apple is selling iPads.

You can work it out. If schools bought five million iPads in the 17 months,  Apple averaged under a million iPads sold to schools each quarter – an average which is less than the million Chromebooks sold.

So why are Chromebooks doing so well?  They are cheaper and they have keyboards so you can do a lot more with them.

Apple faces class action for treating employees badly

Posted on July 24, 2014 by - News

oliverFour former retail and corporate Apple employees who filed a lawsuit against the over  labour violations managed to “upgrade” their lawsuit to class-action status.

The status was awarded because it was believed that more than 20,000 current and former Apple employees were harmed by Apple’s management antics.

The four people who originally filed the suit had different experiences with Apple, saying the company violated California’s Labour Code and Wage Orders with its actions. These included making people work long hours without a break and receiving their paycheques late.

It has taken years to get the case to court as Apple has been fighting tooth and nail with voluminous briefing and lengthy oral arguments.

In the end however the California Superior Court granted Plaintiffs’ motion and certified the case as a class action, appointing Plaintiffs and Plaintiffs’ counsel (Hogue & Belong) as the class representatives and class counsel on behalf of approximately 20,000 Apple employees.

Apple now faces claims of meal period, rest period and final pay violations affecting approximately 20,000 current and former Apple employees, rather than just four.

It is not clear how much cash this is going to cost Apple if it is found guilty as no financial demand has been made in the case.

It has been a bad time for Apple lately which has just been told by a court that its long-standing policy of locking in staff using no-poaching agreements with other companies was illegal.

Apple alongside co-conspirators Google, Intel and Adobe agreed to settle for $324 million with the tech workers who filed the class action.

Apple loses momentum

Posted on July 23, 2014 by - News

gala_appleThe fruity cargo cult Apple is slowing down and will look to its old enemy IBM to pull its nadgers out of the fire.

Yesterday the company posted a smaller-than-expected six percent rise in quarterly revenue.

The Tame Apple press, desperate to find something good in the figures said that revenue surged 28 percent in greater China despite stiff competition in its third-largest market. What they failed to say is that 28 percent of sod all is still sod all.

Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones in the June quarter, a rise of about 13 percent that was in line with analysts’ projections.

Chief Executive Tim Cook told analysts on a conference call that Apple’s Chinese performance was “honestly surprising”. Unit iPhone sales jumped about 48 percent and Mac computer sales rose 39 percent in the June quarter.

But Apple has never been a particularly big seller in the Android dominated Chinese market and for Jobs’ Mob to make serious money it would have to increase its sales by several hundred percent to be any use.

Again the Tame Apple Press stepped in to say that this quarter is always light because there is a new phone coming out which means people are not buying the old one. But signs are that Apple is putting its hopes on larger screen phones, ignoring the fact that its rivals have been there already.
The figures also show a different story. Apple forecast revenue of $37 billion to $40 billion this quarter, weak compared with Wall Street’s outlook for $40 billion or more — Apple does not believe the new phone will make that much difference.

Some of the dafter Apple press have even suggested that the company will be turned around by entering the wearable device market with the iWatch.

Apple reported sales of $37.4 billion in its fiscal third quarter ended June, falling short of Wall Street’s expectations for about $38 billion.

Sales of iPads, which like smartphones are coming under growing pressure from Android rivals, at 13.3 million fell a little short of analysts’ projections for more than 14 million. Net income jumped 12.2 percent to $7.75 billion.

Apple wants gazillions of big screens for iPhones

Posted on July 22, 2014 by - News

gala_appleFruity cargo cult Apple has asked its manufactures between 70 million and 80 million of its two forthcoming large-screen iPhones by the end of the year.

The Wall Street Journal has found sources which claim that Apple has predicted the numbers of people wanting iPhones with 4.7-inch (11.9-cm) and 5.5-inch (14-cm) displays is much larger than the initial order last year of between 50 million and 60 million for iPhone 5S and 5C models.

Foxconn and Pegatron plan to start mass producing the 4.7-inch iPhone model next month, and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, whose parent is Foxconn, will begin making the 5.5-inch version exclusively in September.

The Journal was full of the normal predictions about what the iPhone will deliver designed to create some hype in what is actually product similar to what is already out there.

But the numbers suggest that Apple seriously believes that it is on to a money spinner that will eclipse the sales of all other iPhones.

This is a bold statement, given that the smartphone market is saturated and developing markets have only shown slight interest in joining the Apple cargo cult.

Both iPhone 6 screens are expected to use in-cell touch panel technology, built into the screen and allowing for thinner construction than with standard touch panel films, that was introduced with the iPhone 5.

It is possibly this reason, rather than growing worldwide sales, which means that Apple has ordered so many. Word on the street is that there could be difficulties with in-cell production technology for the larger 5.5-inch size.

Apple has ordered shedloads more products because some will not work. Although this sounds sensible, it does mean that a lot of material will be junked. What might worry Apple is that if faults are not detected before they end up in the shops it might create a reputation for unreliability.

Apple installed back doors into iOS

Posted on July 22, 2014 by - News

gala_appleThe fruity purveyor of expensive smartphones, Apple, might have to explain to its users why it installed back doors into its gear.

Security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski has revealed that Apple might have deliberately installed security holes in all of their iOS devices.

In his talk to the HOPE security conference Zdziarski demonstrates “a number of undocumented high-value forensic services running on every iOS device” and “suspicious design omissions in iOS that make collection easier.” He also provides examples of forensic artefacts acquired that “should never come off the device” without user consent.

Zdziarski said Apple did that all the while it shored up the security in the rest of the iOS to make it harder to break in.

The irony is that according to Zdziarski the iPhone is “reasonably secure” to a typical attacker and the iPhone 5 and iOS 7 are more secure from everybody except Apple and the government.

For example, he has noticed that just because you lock your Apple device, it does not mean that your device’s data is encrypted. The only way to encrypt it is to shut it down. This means that as long as your device is on, you are “at risk of spilling all data”.

Commercial forensic tools will be able to perform deep extraction using these backdoor services.
He thinks Apple might have bowed to the demands of the security services and law enforcement to install such security holes to make it easier for them to break in with a warrant.

Apple has stated that it will be transparent when faced with government requests, but Zdziarski thinks that this is still a breach of customers’ trust. The back doors are obviously undocumented and not mentioned to customers at all.

Apple blames Intel

Posted on July 21, 2014 by - News

gala_appleApple has been forced to delay its coming 12-inch MacBook because the chipmaker Intel keeps delaying its Broadwell chip.

To be fair Apple has not confirmed plans to launch a 12-inch MacBook yet, but that is normal. But it is also normal to know when the product is likely to be shipped and this one is going to be late.

The news of a 12-inch MacBook emerged in October and trusted KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo said the device would combine the portability of an 11-inch MacBook Air with the productivity of the larger 13-inch version. The analyst claimed that Apple put its Retina display onto this 12-inch MacBook.

Taiwan’s Economic Daily News claims that with Intel’s delays with Broadwell, Apple will have to push back the launch date.

It claims that Apple will not be able to ship its purported 12-inch MacBook Air until late 2014 or early 2015.

The problem is the technical issues that Intel is having with its  14-nanometer Broadwell chips. The chips in question have faced numerous delays and the problems are not going away.

Word on the street is that Intel’s U series Broadwell chips destined for Apple’s upcoming MacBooks may not ship until February next year.

Apple was supposed to release this model in autumn, with mass production set to commence in the third quarter. The 12-inch MacBook will boast a redesigned chassis with an ultra-thin profile, as well as a revamped trackpad that would ditch the fan and the mechanical trackpad button.

Apple’s MacBook will not be the only major release affected by Intel’s continued Broadwell delays. Several other Apple products may face similar hurdles. The first Broadwell chips designed for iDevices are not expected to start shipping until early 2015, while those designed for the Retina MacBook Pro and the iMac may not ship until mid-2015.

All this means is that Jobs’ Mob will not have any major product launches for ages.

Hype begins for new iPhone

Posted on July 18, 2014 by - News

gala_appleIt seems that the fruity cargo cult Apple has started the hype for the launch of its new iPhone.

While other outfits have to pay for their advertising, Apple manages to attract huge attention for its product launches thanks to its fans in key newspapers.

This morning it was “leaked” that Hon Hai has begun mass production of Apple next-generation iPhone.

You can tell if a story has been written with the idea of marketing Apple products on the sly, because they are full of marketing phrases such as “game changing” and “wildly popular.”

While the worst offender is traditionally the New York Times, Reuters has also sacrificed its credibility with unethical marketing plugs.

This morning, someoneat Reuters wrote this:

“Mass production of a 4.7-inch successor to the wildly popular iPhone 5 series of smartphones will begin during the third week of July.” Firstly, the iPhone 5 was not “wildly popular” in comparison to other smartphones, secondly the 4.7 inch screen size is pretty backward.

So far the so called “next-generation” iPhone appears to be thinner than the earlier models but has no especially interesting software, in fact it will be playing catch-up until a 5.5 inch model is released later.

It does seem clear that manufacturing of the latest iPhone has begun. A report from a China state-run news service said Hon Hai is planning to hire 100,000 workers.  Of course Apple’s Tame Apple press suggest this will be to “meet future demand for the gadget.”

Pegatron also began recruitment of over 10,000 workers for its mainland facilities to manufacture the phone, according to the Economic Daily News report.

This hype  is going to get worse until the first queues start to form outside the Apple cathedrals of delight. But with mass production started, the chance of a leak is much higher and we will soon know what it looks like.

TSMC shares fall on rumours of chip cancellations

Posted on July 17, 2014 by - News

A not so mobile X86 PCTSMC shares fell as much as six percent after an analyst and Taiwanese media reported that Apple and Qualcomm were going to buy their next generation chips from elsewhere.

This is bad news as TSMC reported its highest quarterly profit since the end of 2006, and said it expected revenue to grow at least a record 20 percent this year. But its outlook was based on increased demand from Apple which recently chose TSMC over Samsung to make the majority of chips for the successor to its iPhone 5 series of smartphones.

But it looks like Apple and Qualcomm will likely buy a larger proportion of 14 nanometer smartphone chips from Samsung rather than TSMC beginning in the second half of 2015.

KGI Securities analyst Michael Liu said in a note to clients that he found that tasty bit of gossip following an investor conference held after TSMC reported second-quarter earnings.

The Commercial Times on Thursday, citing market speculation, said Qualcomm has already started working with Samsung to develop the chips. The Economic Daily News said without citing sources that Qualcomm had placed orders with Samsung.

However the rumours are not believed by everyone. Quanta Securities Analyst George Chang, who also attended the conference, said this was just a lot of speculation as no one has even seen the iPhone 6 yet, so it’s too early to say anything about future products.

During the conference, TSMC Chairman Morris Chang admitted that the company’s market share in 16 nanometer chips – which perform similarly to 14 nanometer chips – will be smaller than “a major competitor” next year, and that TSMC will claw it all back the year after.

Apple forms new alliance with IBM

Posted on July 16, 2014 by - News

ibm-officeApple and IBM do not appear to have given up on their on-again off-again relationship.

The pair have a troubled relationship.  Big Blue, and Microsoft, were one of the targets of Apple’s famous 1984 marketing campaign. IBM was supposed to be the outfit protecting the locked in status quo while Apple’s Macintosh provided a pathway to freedom with locked in products.

A  decade later, IBM and Apple entered into an alliance to produce a computer operating system to rival Microsoft Windows.

Dubbed Taligent, it was axed and Apple to bought Next, bringing back Steve Jobs into the company.

Jobs made two other partnerships with IBM back in the 1990s. Kaleida, spent several years failing to develop interactive CD-ROMs. Then there was the AIM alliance, hoped to build a rival platform to Intel’s personal computer. That created the PowerPC chip it produced would run Apple’s Macs for several years but the platform really went nowhere either.

This new glorious partnership to help companies deploy wireless devices and business-specific applications to run on them.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty were doing their best to be best buddies when they announced the tie-up.

Cook said: “If  you were ‘building a puzzle’ the two companies would fit nicely together with no overlap. We do not compete on anything. And when you do that you end up with something better than either of you could produce yourself.”

Rometty said the team-up will allow the two giants to sort out serious problems that had been inhibiting deployment of wireless in the enterprise.

In the deal IBM will use its investments in big data and analytics plus cloud computing services and mobility. Last year developed mobile software for the enterprise with an initiative it called MobileFirst. In working with Apple, it has created an extension, dubbed MobileFirst, for iOS.

The deal means IBM and Apple will develop more than 100 industry-specific applications that will run on the iPhone and iPad, including applications for security, analysing corporate data and managing the devices themselves. Jobs’ Mob will add a new class of service to its AppleCare program and support aimed at enterprise customers.

IBM will sell iPhones and iPads to its corporate customers and will devote more than 100,000 people, including consultants and software developers, to the effort.

The enterprise software will run on IBM’s cloud infrastructure or on private clouds. Data for those applications will co-exist with personal data like photos and personal email that will run on Apple’s iCloud.

The move will get Apple into the business sector, a sector which has never liked it much, by using IBM software to replace the holes in its own efforts. Big Blue, on the other hand, gets popular hardware it can provide to its business customers after flogging off its own to Lenovo.

All this depends on history not repeating itself.

The internet belong US

Posted on July 15, 2014 by - News

pressieThe US government has ruled that if data is on the internet, anywhere in the world, it has to be turned over to one of its spying organisations for processing.

President Barack Obama’s administration is insisting that that any company with operations in the United States must comply with valid warrants for data, even if the content is stored overseas.

This means that anyone who uses an iPhone anywhere in the world will see their data inside a US government database.

Microsoft and Apple insist that enforcement of US law stops at the border, but the government seems to think that it rules the world.

A magistrate judge has already sided with the government’s position, ruling in April that “the basic principle that an entity lawfully obligated to produce information must do so regardless of the location of that information.”

Microsoft appealed   and the case is set to be heard in two weeks.

The US government said that content stored online is not protected by Fourth Amendment protections as data stored in the physical world. It quoted a law put out by President Ronald Reagan called the  Stored Communications Act (SCA).  This said that overseas records must be handed over domestically when a valid subpoena, order, or warrant forces them. No one thought that the SCA stuffed up the Fourth Amendment so there is no need to change the laws.

However Microsoft said Congress has not authorised the issuance of warrants that reach outside US territory. It points out that the government cannot issue a warrant allowing federal agents to break down the doors of Microsoft’s Dublin facility.

Microsoft said that consumer trust in US companies is low in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations and the government will make overseas operations impossible.

It has the backing of Apple, AT&T, Cisco, and Verizon agree. Verizon said if the government wins, it would produce “dramatic conflict with foreign data protection laws.” Apple and Cisco said (PDF) that the tech sector would be blacklisted by foreign governments.

Recently the senior counsel for the Irish Supreme Court wrote in a recent filing that a US-Ireland “Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty” was a way for the US government to obtain the e-mail held on Microsoft’s external servers.