John Brownlee - page 70

Apple stock plummeted recently after a rumor went around that Foxconn had instituted a hiring freeze based upon a slowdown in iPhone 5 production. Foxconn quickly and emphatically deniedthat the freeze had anything to do with the iPhone 5… but what was the cause of the hiring freeze, then?

Here’s an interesting theory: Foxconn had to freeze hirings this year because, under pressure from Apple, they are treating employees so much more nicely that workers are no longer abandoning their jobs in droves after Chinese New Year.

Although these leaked images should be taken with a huge grain of salt, multiple photos purporting to be the rear aluminum shell of the second-generation iPad mini have leaked online, showing the next mini to be slightly thicker than the existing model… highly suggestive of the next iPad mini having a Retina display.

For many people who bought the third-generation iPad, the faster, Lightning-equipped fourth-gen model came far more quickly than expected. Here in America, that’s lead to a bunch of grumbling, but in Brazil, it’s sparked a class action lawsuit, claiming that the update was tantamount to planned obsolescence.

This gorgeous iWatch concept designed by Nikolai Lamm by commission of MyVouchersCode is my idea of what an Apple watch should actually look like, and how it would function: as an accessory to the iPhone.

Following yesterday’s surprise announcement that multiple employee computers within Cuptertino had been compromised by a malicious zero-day Java exploit that was uploaded to an iOS developer forum, the owner of the attacked site has spoken out, claiming that not only did he have no idea he had been hacked… Apple never even contacted him to tell him.

For the last two decades of his life, Steve Jobs was a Mercedes man, through and through. But in the 80s, Steve Jobs was a Porsche man. He gave one as an award to the salesman who sold the most Macs in the United States. And in 1980, Apple even sponsored a Porsche to race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car endurance race.

Hot on the heels of Oracle’s own update, Apple has released a Java for OS X 2013-001 software update for download that addresses the software vulnerability that compromised a number of their employees’ computers.

Following today’s big story that a number of employee computers within Apple were compromised following a zero-day Java exploit, Oracle has just released update 15 for Java 7 and update 41 for Java 6.

While there’s no specific mention of what has been updated, there’s excellent reason to believe it fixes the vulnerability that compromised both Apple and Facebook.

iOS 6.1.2 is out now, quashing some battery life and Microsoft Exchange issues… but is it safe to update if you’re a jailbreaker?

Right now, the answer to that question is a qualified no. If you want to keep your jailbreak, you shouldn’t update yet, but according to Team Evad3rs member Planetbeing, iOS 6.1.2 will in all likelihood be jailbreakable in very quick time. [Update: Planetbeing now says that Evasi0n will be updated tonight with iOS 6.1.2 support!]

What Happened?

According to Apple, a “small number” of its employees computers were compromised due to a vulnerability in Java.

How Did It Happen?

It appears that this zero-day exploit is the same one that resulted in a number of Facebook employees having malware installed on their laptops as a result of visiting a mobile developer website that had been compromised: Apple says their employees were infected “through a website for software developers.”

There’s a lot of things you have to keep track of in outer space. How much oxygen you have. Whether cosmic rays are irradiating your fellow crewmen. Which of your fellow astronauts are possible Russian saboteurs. How much murderous sentience your onboard space computer is exhibiting. And, of course, whether or not you are maintaining a balanced diet.

Right now, there’s not an app for that, believe it or not… but NASA and TopCoder, a program competition company, are working on that. And they need your help.

If you read my story about the story behind an incredible photograph of Steve Jobs wearing Groucho glasses during his wilderness years came to being, you might be interested in this: Tom Zimberoff, the photographer behind the shot, has a Kickstarter trying to get funding of a poster version of the shot off the ground.

You should really consider chipping in if you’re a fan of Steve. For $25, you’ll get an 18×24 inch poster of one of two Steve Jobs shots, and if you don’t like that, there’s a poster of George Lucas and Yoda wearing Groucho glasses you can buy instead.

I really love Zimberoff’s work, and with nine days left on this Kickstarter, I really hope it gets off the ground. This is a photo that deserves to be hung on every true Apple fan’s office wall.

Source: Kickstarter

Office supply superstore Staples will beging selling Apple products soon in the United States and Canada, according to an exuberant tweet from the company’s senior vice president of global human resources, Regis Mulot. If he seems like an odd mouthpiece for such an announcement, there’s a reason for it: moments later, it was taken down.

Rumors (and credible leaks) about Microsoft Office for iPad have been swirling for at least a year, but so far, the best you can do is load up Office 365 in your iPad’s web browser. If you want a tablet that natively runs office, you have to buy a Surface.

There’s a reason for that. Microsoft knows that Office is the biggest reason why someone might buy a Surface over an iPad. But by refusing to release Office for iPad, Microsoft is leaving a lot more money on their table than they are taking from it in Surface orders, at least according to one analyst.

planetbeing — the famed hacker who is part of the team behind the latest iOS 6 jailbreak — is now taking part in a Reddit AMA, answering questions posed to him by the community.

Although the AMA has just begun, Planetbeing has already opined on the future of iOS jailbreaking… and he says that while it’s too early to be sure, his belief is that iOS 7 will be a much tougher nut to crack than iOS 6.

Steve Jobs wasn’t known as the most generous man in the world. While working at Atari, he recurited Wozniak to build a version of Pong in a weekend, then lied about how much money was involved and stole the majority of it from his best friend in the world. And when Pixar was just starting up, he’d fire people without any notice and without any severance.

There’s at least one guy out there, though, who thinks Steve Jobs is the most generous guy in the world. In fact, Jobs once gave him a Porsche as a reward for selling the most Macs in the United States. That number? A paltry one hundred and twenty five.

Jim Balsillie, the former co-CEO of BlackBerry (then Research in Motion), has dumped every single one of his 26.8 million shares in the company, ahead of the American launch of the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry OS10.

Crowd-funding site Kickstarter can be a fantastic way to make your dream Apple accessory, like the Pebble E-Watch, a reality, and now it’s even easier than ever to help fund and keep track of new projects, thanks to the arrival of the official Kickstarter app for iPhone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=78yigV0GYGQ

Earlier this week, a report out of Australia said that Apple along with Microsoft and Adobe had been asked by Australia’s House of Representatives to appear to explain why their products were so much more expensive in Australia than they are in America.

Apple’s prices don’t look too bad compared to their American counterprices in the Land Down Under, but that’s not true of Adobe. In fact, to purchase a complete set of Adobe’s Creative Suite Applications, you’ll pay $1,400 more than in the United States… making it cheaper for Australian creative professionals to actually fly to America to buy Adobe’s software in bulk.

Check out this video in which Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen is asked multiple times why this pricing differentiation exists on a digital good, in which he shiftily avoids answering the question at every turn. It’s unbelievably sleazy. No wonder Steve Jobs thought the Adobe guys were little shits.

Via: The Verge

Sony is currently experimenting with a tablet-style PlayStation controller, which according to Slashgear would allow for “dynamic 3D motion control and virtual buttons for gaming and other purposes.” They’re even trying to patent it.

It looks like cool hardware, similar to the capabilities of the Wii U console, which was, of course, Nintendo’s answer to the tablet craze that Apple started back in 2010.

So far, so good. Want to take a guess, though, what Sony wants to call their iPad clone?

Vimeo — one of the last true alternatives to YouTube left in this crazy digital world — has just acquired Echograph, a nifty app to make animated GIFs, in an attempt to go to head with Twitter’s Vine, an app that deals entirely in six-second video snips.

Rdio — for my money, the best à la carte streaming music subscription service out there — just released a nice update to their iOS app, making it easier (and prettier) than ever to interact with your music.

Following the most recent Apple TV update that brought Bluetooth keyboard support, iTunes in the Cloud, and Up Next to the Apple TV, FireCore has released updates to their second-generation Apple TV jailbreaking software aTV Flash (black) and Seas0n Pass that allow you to get your jailbreak back on firmware 5.2.

Here’s what is new.

Apple is no longer the exclusive rights holder to the iPhone trademark in Brazil when applied to handset devices. That means IGB Electronics S.A. and Apple can both sell “iPhones” in the county, even though IGB’s iPhone is, in fact, an Android phone.

[polldaddy poll=6894415]

One of the more intriguing and, in our minds, controversial comments Tim Cook made during his interview at Goldman Sach’s conference:

“The innovation has moved away from PC development to the tablets and smartphones. Who is making PC apps now? No one, except the usual suspects.”

That’s a bold thing to say. When Cook refers to “PC development” the context of this question makes it clear the’s also referring to Mac development. That’s a strange comment to make when one of the legs on Apple’s stool of businesses is the Mac App Store, which is a lucrative business in its own right for Apple.

But is Tim Cook right? Have Mac and PC developers stopped innovating? Are all the innovators working on iPhone and iPad apps now? Take part in our poll, then please feel free to give us your thoughts in the comments.