Bluetooth 4.2 to Bring Direct Internet Connectivity and Increased Speed Posted: 03 Dec 2014 08:10 AM PST The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) today announced the new Bluetooth 4.2 specification, which promises enhanced privacy measures, increased speed of data transfers, and an update that will allow Bluetooth Smart sensors to directly access the Internet. The group emphasizes connected home scenarios as being able to take the most advantage of Bluetooth 4.2's new direct Internet access feature, promising low-power connectivity using the standard and with IPv6 support available by year's end.
The new 4.2 spec also promises speedier data transfers between devices, up to 2.5 times faster than previous versions. Bluetooth SIG promises that "increased data transfer speeds and packet capacity reduces the opportunity for transmission errors to occur and reduces battery consumption, resulting in a more efficient connection."
The standard Bluetooth 4.2 specificiation is available now, with the new direct Internet access feature due within a month. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Apple CEO Tim Cook Talks Technology With Senator Orrin Hatch During Washington, D.C. Trip Posted: 03 Dec 2014 06:47 AM PST Apple CEO Tim Cook met with at least one U.S. senator to discuss technology policy during a trip to Washington, D.C. this week, reports The Hill . According to the report, Cook sat down with Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force.
Details of the conversation were not made available, nor is it known whether Cook met with any other senators during his D.C. trip. On Monday, the Apple CEO, along with (RED) CEO Deborah Dugan, dropped by a Georgetown Apple Store in the city to mark World AIDS Day and Apple's contributions toward the (RED) campaign. Both Cook and Dugan tweeted photos from the visit. Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Steve Jobs' Snarky Testimony Takes Center Stage in iPod Class-Action Lawsuit Opening Posted: 03 Dec 2014 06:22 AM PST Apple this week is battling a decade-old class-action lawsuit by iPod owners angry that their media players were locked to Apple's iTunes ecosystem. Key pieces of evidence in the trial include email conversations among Apple executives and a videotaped deposition of Steve Jobs, both of which were made public for the first time this week as part of the court proceedings.
RealNetworks' iPod support incensed Apple, which published a press release accusing RealNetworks of hacking the iPod. Apple adopted this strategy following a series of emails between Apple marketing head Phil Schiller and CEO Steve Jobs.
When asked if this response to RealNetworks was "strong and vehement," Jobs replied, "They don't sound too angry to me when I read them," adding that, "A strong response from Apple would be a lawsuit." During the deposition, Jobs reportedly was snarky, asking "Do they still exist?" when referring to RealNetworks. Jobs also was evasive in his testimony, responding 74 times with "I don't remember," "I don't know" or "I don't recall." When he did answer questions, Jobs painted Apple as a company being held hostage by the major music labels, which required digital rights management (DRM) on iTunes music as part of their contract terms. Apple claimed it had to repeatedly update iTunes to patch holes in its DRM or risk forfeiting these contracts. The class action case started earlier this week and is being heard in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. Apple marketing head Phil Schiller and senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue are expected to testify as part of the ongoing court proceedings. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Posted: 02 Dec 2014 04:54 PM PST The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) today officially ended a $1.3 billion education initiative that would have seen all students in the Los Angeles school district outfitted with an iPad, reports the Los Angeles Times . LAUSD superintendent Ramon C. Cortines clarified that the district was not going to use "the original iPad contract" anymore.
Cortines' official statement comes just a day after the FBI seized 20 boxes of documents from the L.A. school district as part of an investigation into the district's contract with Apple. The FBI is reportedly looking into the bidding that led to deal, which would have seen the district spending $500 million on iPads and curriculum and $800 million on staff, improved broadband, and other expenses.
The contract between the Los Angeles Unified School District and Apple was first suspended back in August after Deasy's ties to Apple executives first became apparent, but the district was still planning to spend millions of dollars on iPads up until this week. Apple's deal with the Los Angeles Unified School District was formed under Deasy in an effort to give all students in the district equal access to technology. A $30 million agreement was signed last year to facilitate an early rollout of the program to 47 schools, which was expected to lead to a larger deal between the two. Initial testing unveiled quite a few problems with the program, including an issue that saw students discovering security workarounds to freely access content on the iPads, which led to a home use ban on the devices. Despite the cancellation of the current contract with Apple, the L.A. School District plans to continue moving forward with its technology program, shifting towards Chromebooks and other laptops. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Mozilla Planning to Release Firefox iOS App in the Future Posted: 02 Dec 2014 03:25 PM PST The statement about releasing Firefox for iOS marks a major shift in ideology for Mozilla, as the company has, in the past, repeatedly said that it would not offer a version of Firefox for iOS because of Apple's refusal to allow third-party browsers to use their own web engines. In 2013, then VP of product Jay Sullivan said that Moziila didn't "feel like it could build the browser it wants" on Apple's platform, and that it had "no plans" for an iOS version of Firefox. One of the major points of contention for Mozilla was Apple's refusal to allow the Firefox browser to carry over its rendering and JavaScript engines to iOS, as Apple imposes strict restrictions on third-party browsers and limits them to the company's own JavaScript engines. Prior to iOS 8, this meant that third-party browsers were slower than Apple's Safari, but with iOS 8, Apple began allowing third-party browsers to take advantage of previously unavailable features like the JavaScript Nitro Engine. An inability to provide custom web engines along with the lack of an option to set a third-party browser as the default browser makes it difficult for companies like Chrome, Opera, and Firefox to create satisfactory browsing experiences on Apple's platform. Though little is known about Firefox's plans for iOS at the current point in time, it is likely Mozilla will need to continue to work within Apple's limits. Though Mozilla's Firefox browser for iOS will be subjected to Apple's restrictions, key Firefox features like accounts, customizable home panels, and data syncing will translate to iOS, helping Firefox users achieve a more seamless browsing experience on a range of devices. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Apple Continues War on Notification Center Widgets, Asks 'Drafts' to Remove Note Creation Feature Posted: 02 Dec 2014 02:10 PM PST Apple is continuing to sort out its nebulous policies on Notification Center widgets, and has today told Drafts developer Agile Tortoise that the app's widget is not allowed to be used to create drafts or open the Drafts app. In a tweet, developer Greg Pierce says that he's been asked to re-submit Drafts without functionality for opening the app or creating a new note, which essentially removes all of the features of the Notification Center Widget. Drafts 4 , which was first introduced in October as an update to the existing Drafts app, is a popular note taking and text capture app that lets users post to a variety of social networks and perform various actions with notes like creating calendar events, emails, messages, and more. Like many other apps that have Notification Center widgets, the Drafts app widget lets users open the app directly, create a new draft, or create a new draft from what's on the clipboard. It has very little functionality in the Notification Center aside from simply opening up the Drafts app, which in the past, has seemed like an acceptable use of the Notification Center.
Drafts is one of a number of apps that have faced confusing rules and restrictions delivered by Apple's app review team. Back in October, Apple told the PCalc developers that calculator functions were not allowed in the Notification Center before changing its mind, and just a few weeks ago, Neato was told that it would have to remove the note taking functionality from its Notification Center widget. Apple's App Extension Guidelines suggest that Notification Widgets should have a "simple, streamlined UI," and "a limited number of interactive items," but its vague language has led developers to spend time and effort creating a variety of useful functions that are ultimately disallowed as Apple aims to refine how it wants the Notification Center to be used. It is not clear why Drafts has been singled out by Apple's app review team as it offers the same functionality as other widgets, but if the Drafts widget is removed, it's possible that many other similar widgets could be in danger of being in violation of the Notification Center widget rules. Drafts can be downloaded from the App Store for $9.99. [Direct Link] Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Wells Fargo Continues Promoting Apple Pay With New Advertisement Posted: 02 Dec 2014 12:35 PM PST Wells Fargo, one of Apple's early Apple Pay partners, has been heavily promoting the service, perhaps more than any other participating bank. In addition to sending out numerous Apple Pay emails to customers, launching promotions, and advertising Apple Pay on its website, Wells Fargo has also launched a new television commercial highlighting Apple Pay's speed and ease of use. In the ad, first shared by iSpot.tv , a man visits several different retail stores and uses Apple Pay to make his purchases at each location. With just a thumb on the Touch ID button, he breezes through each transaction, letting him return home in record time. Upon entering his house, he finds out he's interrupted his own surprise party. "You were supposed to be out shopping," says his wife after he interrupts the surprise party. "It went super quick," he responds, before a voice over goes on to tout Apple Pay. "With Apple Pay, using your Wells Fargo card just got easier. Done." Ahead of Apple Pay's launch, Wells Fargo began emailing its customers to let them know about the upcoming service, and the bank began allowing Apple Pay transactions on the service's October 20 release date. Just after Apple Pay debuted, Wells Fargo even introduced a promotion offering a statement credit of up to $20 for its customers who gave Apple Pay a try, which has recently been extended until January 1. Alongside Wells Fargo, Chase has also been heavily promoting Apple Pay. The bank recently launched a promotion giving its users a free David Guetta album for adding a Chase Visa card to Passbook for use with Apple Pay, and last week, it debuted an Apple Pay ad starring Fun front man Jack Antonoff. Wells Fargo and other banks have been highly supportive of Apple Pay due to the inherent security of the system, which offers many improvements over traditional credit and debit card payments. In addition to utilizing tokenization to keep credit card numbers secure, payments are authenticated via Touch ID, reducing the potential for fraudulent transactions that banks traditionally assume responsibility for. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Eddy Cue Speaks About iBooks Price-Fixing Case: 'We Feel We Have to Fight for the Truth' Posted: 02 Dec 2014 10:09 AM PST In a new interview, Apple's Eddy Cue spoke with Fortune about the e-books pricing scandal that has plagued the company over the past several years. After a July 2013 judgment found the company guilty of conspiring to fix prices of electronic books, and a settlement in a class-action lawsuit was reached over the summer, the Apple negotiator at the center of the lawsuit has shared his thoughts on the case with Fortune ahead of Apple's appeals court appearance later this month. The specifics of the case lie in the opening of the iBooks Store and the 17 percent industry-wide increase in e-book prices following its unveiling in April of 2010. Cue, Apple's , played a key role in convincing five of the then-six major publishing houses to start selling e-books through Apple's new store alongside the launch of the iPad. Part of the deal involved a shift in the pricing model for the entire e-books industry, eliminating Amazon's previous pricing advantage in which it would sometimes sell books at a loss in order to attract customers to Kindle hardware and other Amazon products. These events led the Justice Department and thirty-three state attorneys general to sue Apple and those five publishing houses for horizontal price fixing in violation of the Sherman Act. While the publishing houses settled the lawsuits, Apple declined to do so and proceeded to trial in the federal case where the company was found guilty.
A settlement in the separate state and class-action consumer lawsuit worked out this past June sees Apple paying around $450 million if the company loses its appeal in the federal case and nothing if it wins. The case has dragged on far longer than most expect, and Cue argues that the company is fighting more for reputation than for monetary reasons.
Cue met with all six CEOs of the major publishing houses before the original iPad launched, and discovered most wanted the cost of e-books at price points both he and Steve Jobs considered too high. Cue proposed price tiers tied to the suggested retail prices of the hardback versions of the books. As part of the shift to a new "agency model" of pricing similar to that used in the App Store, Cue also proposed a "most favored nation" clause, allowing Apple to match the price at which any retailer was selling a new e-book. When the iPad launched a few weeks later, most iBooks were priced between $12.99 and $14.99, higher than Amazon's typical $9.99 price point for best sellers but in the range of where publishers wanted to be selling their books. The agency model quickly became the industry standard, with Amazon also being required to adopt the pricing at the insistence of the publishers. The sequence of events led Judge Denise Cote to rule in July 2013 that Apple was guilty of e-book price-fixing. When asked how he looks back on the "nightmare", Cue plainly stated, "If I had it to do all over again, I'd do it again. I'd just take better notes." Apple will appear before the federal appeals court on December 15. Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
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Google Chromecast Leapfrogs Apple TV as the Aging Media Player Loses Ground to Rivals Posted: 02 Dec 2014 09:14 AM PST Amid persistent rumors of substantial upgrades, the current Apple TV is beginning to show its age, losing ground in the streaming media device marketplace to rival Google Chromecast and Roku in the first three quarters of 2014, according to market researcher Parks Associates as reported by CNET. Apple's decline comes at a time when interest in streaming media devices is on the upswing, with 10 percent of households buying at least one media player this year.
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Wednesday, 3 December 2014
MacRumors : Mac News and Rumors
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