News - page 2197

Check out this fascinating chart from The Economist regarding IT industry revenues, profits, employees and so on. The two monsters of the space are HP and IBM, which both have double the revenues of Apple, and more than 10x the number of employees.

The story, The end of Wintel, compares the giants of the IT industry in terms of how vertically integrated they are.

The shift to mobile computing and data centres (also known as “cloud computing”) has speeded up the “verticalisation” of the IT industry. Imagine that the industry is a stack of pancakes, each representing a “layer” of technology: chips, hardware, operating systems, applications. Microsoft, Intel and other IT giants have long focused on one or two layers of the stack. But now firms are becoming more vertically integrated. For these new forms of computing to work well, the different layers must be closely intertwined.

Apple, whose products have always been more integrated, is building a huge data centre and also offering web-based services.

As I argued in Inside Steve’s Brain, Apple is ascendant these days because of its vertical integration. It’s into the whole stack, from chips to online advertising. And despite what the chart says, will also likely be into cloud computing.

Apple’s iPhone 4 is a smash hit and the latest Android handsets are getting rave reviews. Apple and Google are snapping at RIM’s heels, still the smartphone market leader. To counter the attacks, RIM has just released a new OS, Blackberry 6, and a new handset, the Blackberry Torch.

But early reviews of aren’t looking so good. The Torch touchscreen slider has a ridiculously low-res screen (360 × 480) and the software is described as “uninspired, old, clunky sometimes, and cluttered.” Ouch.

Boy Genius Report: “This is a stop gap device for current BlackBerry users… and that’s an issue. iPhone 4 or recent Android owners won’t be lusting after the 9800, and that’s never a good thing.”

Analyst Michael Gartenberg: “In [a] world where every vendor is working to up their game, raise the bar and drive new innovation in hardware and software, it felt RIM barely stepped up.”

Engadget: “… the OS overwhelms the hardware a little when it’s really cranking — for example, the phone basically locked up while it loaded Engadget in the new Webkit browser.”

Programmer Will Strafach has released an app to protect against the security hole in Mobile Safari that runs code embedded in PDF files. The security vulnerability came to light after hackers used it to jailbreak Apple’s latest iPhones and iPads.

PDF Loading Warner is now available for jailbroken iOS devices via Cydia, the unofficial app store. You will need a jailbroken iPhone or iPad to install it. Users who haven’t jailbroken their devices will have to wait for Apple to release a fix.

PDF Loading Warner displays a warning if Mobile Safari tries to load a PDF file. As previously reported, Mobile Safari allows code embedded in PDFs to run in the browser, bypassing all of the device’s security systems. This is a huge security hole that is present in all iOS devices, jailbroken or not. The hole is currently being used to jailbreak Apple’s devices, but could easily be exploited by hackers to install malicious software that steals identities, passwords and sensitive login details.

Note that PDF Loading Warner is a quick hack to provide a thin layer of protection until Apple releases a secure patch for the exploit.

PDF Loading Warner can be downloaded from Cydia for free.

While it’s not too hard to imagine a luxury accessory company coming up with an iPod dock similar to this NeverNeverLand fever dream of one of Yanko Design’s Lost Boy designers, no effort has been made on Yanko’s part to explain just how that iPod Touch would hover in mid-air. Pixy dust, perhaps.

All that Yanko will venture to say is that “it streams music, connects to your iPod and computer and daisy chains with other units should you want to expand the system.” It also defies gravity, which is a first in consumer electronics: I hope the designer’s got a patent to back that up.

Take a quick visit to JailbreakMe, let Comex benevolently exploit a huge security hole in iOS’ native PDF rendering, then install the $4 My3G program through Cydia and you can have FaceTime running flawlessly on your iPhone 4 even without a WiFi connection. But how much is that FaceTime call going to drain from your monthly data allowance?

9to5Mac has done the tests, and it’s actually not as bad as you might fear: in fact, the average FaceTime call only uses about three megabytes of data per minute.

They conducted their test using “lots of movement” so that the FaceTime compression algorithm was kept on its toes, and a five minute FaceTime call ended up slurping up 14.7MB of data. That’s pretty modest usage against a 2GB cap. Clearly, the prohibition against 3G FaceTime isn’t in consideration of iPhone 4 users’ wallets, then… but AT&T’s own congested 3G network.

Apple is facing yet another anti-competition complaint today after the Attorney General for the State of Connecticut launched an investigation into the state of the ebook market.

Asked to defend itself along with Amazon over the deals the two biggest ebook sellers in the country have been striking with publishers to guarantee favorable pricing and exclusive titles, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says that the way Apple has been running its new iBooks business prevents other marketplaces from offering lower prices on the same titles, taking a sledgehammer and hobbling block to the already-atrophied legs of its competitors.

Blumenthal says that Amazon and Apple have reached agreements with the largest book publishers, guaranteeing that they will receive the best prices for e-books over other competitors. As indication of anti-competitiveness, Blumenthal has pointed to a list of New York Times best sellers that are identically priced at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Borders’ e-book stores, which he argues is a strong implication of price-fixing.

For right now, Blumenthal is just collecting data, and has invited Apple and Amazon to meet with his office to address his concerns. You can read the full PDF of his letter to Apple here.

Make me put a plump thumb on my favorite iOS app and the Remote.app icon will soon be coated with a greasy, opalescent print of my epidermal ridges. For those of us with a constabulary of Airport Expresses, the freely downloadable app singlehandedly turns our networked homes into the equivalent of a far more expensive Sonos setup.

Unfortunately, Remote.app hasn’t been updated in months… which prompted Gizmodo to raise a plaintive cry as recently as last week. What’s the hold up? It hasn’t even been updated to natively support the iPad, let alone the iPhone 4.

As it turns out, Remote.app is the product of a single engineer who has since been moved to other projects, according to Posterous CEO Sachin Agarwal.

Ever since Apple bought the web-streaming music service Lala, our teeth have been aching in anticipation of our iTunes libraries vaporized from our hard disks and existing in the Wonkavision like ionosphere of the cloud.

According to CNET, though, we may very well have a while to wait before Apple truly capitalizes upon its Lala purchase… and when it does come, it might be a far more modest proposal at first than even Cupertino would like.

In talks with the four major labels, Apple is apparently downplaying expectations, saying that if they launch their cloud-streaming iTunes functionality in the next few months, it will be “modest in scope” when it comes to streaming music.

The iPhone 4 jailbreak is one of the easiest ever. You just visit the jailbreakme.com webpage in Mobile Safari, swipe the “Slide to Jailbreak” slider, and it installs the unofficial App Store Cydia on your device.

But it comes at a price. The jailbreak exploits a wide-open security hole that could easily be exploited by malicious hackers. Malicious sites that install malware could exploit the largely unkown, unpatched security hole.

Note: The security hole in Mobile Safari is not caused by jailbreaking the device. It is already there on all iOS devices, jailbroken or not.

Apple is sure to investigate the exploit and quickly issue an update. But in the meantime, here’s a quick patch you can install yourself:

Guy Kawasaki’s seminal book The Macintosh Way is a classic for technology marketers (“evangelists”) and Apple geeks alike.  It is fondly remembered from the Golden 68k Macintosh Era, and is used to this day as reference material for startup businesses and college courses.

The book went out of print several years ago, and Guy has been working since to get the rights back.  He has finally succeeded, and is making the digitized eBook available free to everyone for the asking.

The Macintosh Way has seen Apple and the Mac through many changes over its twenty year lifetime; to celebrate the re-release, Guy has also released this video detailing the book’s transformation from printed page to computer screen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnjyrcozHyA

To get your free eBook, follow Guy on Twitter and sign up at freemacway.com
You can also read the book in the OfficeDrop iPad app.

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Added bonus for this old Mac geek (and full disclosure): my own Vintage Mac Museum was used to film the opening of the video.  For a few enjoyable hours this spring the production team and I relived the Macintosh Way!  For more on filming the spot, see Vintage Macs Live Again.  Anyone up for Snood?

The iPad may be magical, but do you want your taxes to pay for city councilors to have them?

That’s what citizens in Leicester, England wonder after the local council there drew up plans to provide all 54 city councilors with Apple’s tablet device.

Equipping all of the local politicos with iPads by May 2011 will cost around £40,000 or about $63,000 for the 64 gigabyte models, sparking critics who note that the council is spending for shiny gadgets when it has to cut some 1,000 jobs due to budget issues.

Say goodbye to that wedge of magnetized plastic in your wallet. If AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have their way, the future of credit is your smartphone… and they are going to war against the likes of Visa and Mastercard to accomplish it.

According to Bloomberg, the three carriers are working with Discover and Barclays, testing a system in four US cities that would enable special smartphones embedded with NFC (near field communication) chips to make credit card payments with just a wave of the hand.

Making a credit card payment from your iPhone isn’t exactly a new idea: Visa already lets you do this with special payWave cases, and Digg founder Kevin Rose is backing Square, which is a similar idea.

The point here, though, is that it’s the carriers who are making the most concerted push yet to consolidate and bring ubiquity to smartphone payment systems, by cutting out the biggest credit giants entirely.

Although the number of iPhone owners currently dwarfs the iPad, a new study reveals Apple’s tablet has a promising future. The tablet device is both more involving for users, as well as potentially more lucrative for developers.

Like the iPhone, games are the largest category of applications downloaded by iPad users, according to a study released Monday by mobile advertising exchange network Mobclix. Games comprise 20 percent of all applications, the study says. But iPad owners spend triple the time with the games as iPhone users, according to the numbers.

If you don’t mind taking a blowtorch to your pretty unibody iMac and trephining it a bit, you can easily add an eSATA port for the connection of external hard drives to your beautiful 27-inch. That surgery’s not for the meek, though: luckily, OWC will be happy to do it $169 in under 48 hours… and for a gasp-worthy $1649 more, they’ll even cram in a 480GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD. Yowza!

Could Intel be inside your next iPhone? That’s a possibility as the chipmaking giant is reportedly on the verge of acquiring Infineon, Apple’s sole baseband supplier for the iPhone.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel is “close to a deal” to buy Infineon for $2 billion. The possible acquisition is a reminder of the rocky road the two Silicon Valley companies have recently had. Apple decided to go with Intel rival ARM for its smartphones, then acquired chipmakers PA Semi and Intrinisity to build the A4 processor based on the ARM and now used in the iPad and iPhone 4.

Apple’s never been really serious about Mac gaming… which makes it all the more miraculous that we’re currently living in a golden age of Mac gaming, largely through the efforts of Valve Software to bring native ports of their Source engine games as well as the Steam digital delivery service to OS X.

But now Valve is doing one better. They’ve just announced that they’ll be sharing a lot of their graphics code for the Mac with developers on Steam, which they characterize as the hardest work of bringing a title to the Mac.

Valve’s a great company, but they aren’t doing this out of sheer benevolence: as it turns out, even old Steam games released for the Mac have seen 15-20% sales bumps across all platforms, and that number’s only going to rise. That means more money in Valve’s pockets. There’s huge money in Mac gaming, and even if Apple is mysteriously unwilling to capitalize upon that, it’s good to know that savvy developers like Valve know a good opportunity when they see it.

[via TUAW]

If the iPad is considered a mobile PC (as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer views the Apple tablet), the Cupertino, Calif. consumer electronics company jumps from a seventh-place mobile PC maker to No. 3, according to Deutsche Bank. Adding tablet devices to the portable PC mix means Apple passes several more traditional notebook makers, the analyst says.

“When including the iPad as part of the NB [notebook] market, writes Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore, “Apple leapt over Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and Dell in terms of global market share.”

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf1ACPTkmr0

If you can get it to load, Jailbreak Me is the one of the simplest jailbreak solutions yet. Just visit the site on Mobile Safari and — if you can get it to load — your iOS device running 4.0 or 4.0.1 is jailbroken, no reboot required.

Unfortunately, when it was released yesterday, there were caveats: FaceTime and MMS got knocked out of commission with the jailbreak.

Luckily, Jailbreakme.com has now been updated with a fix to the FaceTime and MMS issues. Already jailbroken? Just open Cydia and upgrade when you’re prompted to.

Finally, here’s the best news: if you’re waiting for a compatible unlock, it should be available in the next 48 hours.

If you’re a BlackBerry warrior who does business in the futuristic desert city of Dubai, it’s about time to consider switching to an iPhone: the telecommunications authority in the United Arab Emirates will be blocking some BlackBerry services come October.

The issue is one of government surveillance. BlackBerries send encrypted data to oversea servers through their own messaging layer, which means that local authorities can’t read that data. The iPhone doesn’t handle messaging, e-mail and the web in the same fashion, making it exempt from the UAE’s criticisms.

Research in Motion has garnered official criticism due to its encryption scheme before. India also threatened to ban Blackberries at a certain point, prompting RIM to ultimately cave on their position. That’s less likely to happen in the UAE: it’s the difference between a potential subscriber base of a billion and a hundred million.

You can view this story in one of two ways as an iPhone owner. On the one hand, if you go to the UAE with your iPhone, the government at least wants the option of snooping on you. On the other hand, at least you can use its full array of services while you’re there… an option that now appears to be completely off the table for BlackBerry owners.

Buy a case or a dock at an Apple store emblazoned with the “Made for iPod” seal of official Cupertino approval, and you put a twenty percent commission directly into Apple’s pockets.

Needless to say, Apple’s just as protective of that revenue stream as some shadier third-party accessory makers are of trying to weasel their way out of paying it. Now there’s a showdown coming: Apple is taking a number of these more scurrilous and skinflint accessory makers to court, saying that the products they make “are of inferior quality and reliability, raising significant concerns over compatibility with and damage to Apple’s products.”

Apple’s suit names Accstation, Boxware Corporation, Crazyondigital, Eforcity Corporation, Everydaysource, Itrimming, and United Integral, and might expand to include twenty other companies.

Of course, this isn’t the only front where Apple is waging this particular crusade: they also frequently change their “Made for iPod” specifications, rendering old accessories obsolete with every new product or new firmware release.

In total, Apple’s out for blood… but something tells me that no matter how far they take this, there’s little they can do to squeeze that blood from the stone of all third-party accessory makers, especially the ones originating from Chinese companies and Taiwanese gadget sweatshops.

Ruh roh! It looks like Apple has an excuse to shutter all the front facing cameras on every iPhone 4 sold after last week. Apple’s notorious grip on it’s no porn in iOS apps policy won’t protect anyone from the adult entertainment industries interest in making tons of money with the iPhone 4’s FaceTime video chat feature.

I agree with this report on Techcrunch — it is interesting that Apple has removed the videos demonstrating the antenna problems on smartphones made by rival companies. Those videos were originally posted on a special antenna page at Apple.com.  Now suddenly — poof they’re gone.

Last week the U.S. government surprised everyone by announcing that jailbreaking, root access, and carrier unlocking was a legal option for buyers of smartphones that want to access apps not sold by the manufacturer or to free the handset for use on the network of their choice.

After this decision it is likely that more people will be jailbreaking their iPhones, iPads, or iPod touches. There are over 100 million iOS devices in circulation and it is thought that a mere fraction of these are jailbroken.

Jailbreaking isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do, but there are many how-to’s (including our own below) that will explain to you how to do it. The problem with that is that you need to find the right one to fit your iOS device. That isn’t easy with the plethora of iOS versions and different iOS device models out there until now.

The Jailbreak Matrix solves that problem. The Matrix is a chart that will show you the details you need to jailbreak your specific iOS device and its version of iOS. It will even tell if you if a jailbreak doesn’t exist, provide download links for firmware and iTunes, and versioning information for firmware and baseband (if appropriate). The information provide is likely to help you to prevent bricking your device.

You can view the  Jailbreak Matrix and find the jailbreaking how-to suitable for your circumstances or you can check out Culf of Mac’s Jailbreak Superguide. Regardless of the option you choose you can jailbreak most iOS devices in no time at all.

Is your iOS device jailbroken or unlocked? What circumstances drove you to wanting to do that in the first place? Tell us all about it in the comments.

iOS hackers have released jailbreakme.com, a browser-based jailbreak utility for the Apple iPhone 4, 3GS, and 3G when running iOS 4 or 4.0.1. The jailbreak is reminiscent of one of the original jailbreaks for the original iPhone.

In addition to the above devices the jailbreak is compatible with an iPad running iOS 3.2 and 3.2.1 and an iPod touch 3G running iOS 4.0.

DVD to iPhone Converter for both Mac and PC is a handy application that allows you to transfer your DVD movies in to MP4 files optimized for your iPhone 3G, 3GS or 4.

It’s incredibly simple to use: just stick your favorite DVD in to your computer, select the appropriate movie file and then click “convert.” When it’s done, drag the MP4 file in to your iTunes library and sync it to your device.

This application is a must for any movie fan, and the giveaway which will last just over a week will save you $29. All you need is a Facebook account.

Visit iSkySoft’s Facebook page, and click on the “like” button to become a fan. Fill in your name and email address and then download the application. Be sure to click on the “get keycode” link to get the serial key sent to you via email.

Get it before the offer ends and enjoy your movies on the move without buying them again on iTunes!