Showing posts with label Apple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apple. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Apple makes good on CEO's promise to expand iPhone 5's 4G carriers


iOS 6.1 patches more than two-dozen security vulnerabilities and adds three-dozen LTE carriers to the supported list for the iPhone 5. Apple today released iOS 6.1, the first major update for the mobile operating system since its September 2012 launch, patching 27 security vulnerabilities and adding three dozen LTE carriers to the iPhone 5's support list.
At the top of Apple's list of improvements was an expansion of the LTE networks compatible with the iPhone 5, a move announced last week by CEO Tim Cook during a quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts.
"Next week, we are adding 36 more carriers for LTE support," Cook said Jan. 23. "And these carriers will be in countries that were currently not supporting LTE."
Among the iPhone 5 markets where customers now can connect to an LTE carrier are Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and South Africa.
iOS 6.1 also added carriers in countries already served by LTE. In the U.S., for example, the update expanded the list from AT&T, Sprint and Verizon to add Alaska Communications, Bluegrass Cellular and Pioneer Cellular.
complete list of all iOS 6.1-supported LTE carriers can be found on Apple's website.
Other enhancements in iOS 6.1, according to Apple's typically terse note, included Fandango movie ticket purchases using Siri (U.S. only) and individual track downloads from iCloud for iTunes Match subscribers.
iTunes Match is the $25-per-year service launched in November 2011 that acts like a music storage locker in the sky, storing tracks purchased via iTunes or ripped from CDs in iCloud, then making the library available on all of a user's iOS, OS X and Windows devices.
Prior to today's update, iTunes Match automatically downloaded all tracks in an album, making it difficult to grab just a single tune to place, say, on a storage space-strapped iPhone.
iOS 6.1 also included patches for 27 security vulnerabilities, most of them labeled with the phrase "arbitrary code execution," Apple's way of saying they are critical.
Of the 27 total, 22 were in WebKit, the browser engine that powers Safari in iOS and OS X, as well as Google's Chrome. Not surprisingly, most were reported to the WebKit open-source project, and from that to Apple, by Google security engineers.
Eleven of the WebKit bugs were uncovered by the prolific Abhishek Arya, a Google engineer who goes by the nickname "Inferno."
The update also revoked several digital certificates improperly issued in mid-2011 by TurkTrust, a Turkish "certificate authority," or CA. While Google, Microsoft and Mozilla had previously revoked those same certificates, this was Apple's first move. It has yet to update Safari for OS X to do the same.
Today's update was the third for iOS 6, although the first two were minor refreshes that either fixed a handful of security flaws (November's iOS 6.0.1) or addressed a single issue ( December's iOS 6.0.2).
Owners of the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5; iPad 2, third- and fourth-generation iPad, and iPad Mini; and iPod Touch fourth-generation and later can retrieve 6.1 over the air by tapping the "Settings" icon, then the "General" tab, and finally "Software Update."
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.
Read more about ios in Computerworld's iOS Topic Center.

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Saturday, December 29, 2012

Apple gives Tim Cook 51 percent salary rise, but his total compensation drops 99 percent


Apple CEO Tim Cook received compensation totalling US$4.17 million in 2012, down 98.9 percent on last year -- although his 2011 compensation of $378 million consisted mostly of a one-off stock grant, worth $376.2 million at the time.
Cook's salary, on the other hand, rose 50.8 percent, to $1.36 million, and his additional incentive payments more than tripled, to $2.8 million, the company revealed in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday.
His predecessor, Steve Jobs, famously took an annual salary of just $1. He received no additional incentive payments, although Apple picked up the tab for his private jet, paying $1.1 million from 2008 through 2010.
Apple's compensation committee considered that Jobs was amply compensated by the growth in value of Apple's stock, of which he held around 5.5 million shares. Its grant of 1 million restricted stock units (RSUs) to Cook on Aug. 24, 2011 was an attempt to motivate him in a similar way. Half the shares will vest in 2016, five years after he became CEO, and the other half in 2021, assuming he is still with the company.
Jobs' holding of Apple stock was dwarfed by his stake in Walt Disney Co., of which he owned around 7 percent as a result of his sale of animation studio Pixar to the company. That reportedly netted a 2011 dividend payment of $82.8 million for the trust fund to which he bequeathed his shares.
Overall, compensation by stock price has been good for Cook. His one-million-share holding is now worth around $515 million, up 36 percent over the last 16 months, based on Friday's stock price.
That, though, is nowhere near the $705 high Apple shares hit on Sept. 21, the day the iPhone 5 went on sale. Since then, Cook has made a paper loss of $190 million.
The stock price decline was triggered, in part, by disappointment that the new iPhone did not exceed the numerous rumors about its capabilities, and also with dissatisfaction with the new mapping application that Apple included in iOS 6. Its poor performance prompted Cook to issue a rare public apology, and led to the departure of Apple software chief Scott Forstall, once seen as a contender for the role of CEO.
To get Apple's stock back on an upward track, Cook will have to deliver more inspiring products than the iPad Mini -- perhaps including an Apple TV. There are signs that Apple may be moving to extend its TV offering beyond the diminutive AppleTV set-top box and the sale of TV show episodes through iTunes. Earlier this month, Cook described TV as "an area of intense interest," a stark contrast to his predecessor's dismissal of it as a "hobby."
Peter Sayer covers open source software, European intellectual property legislation and general technology breaking news for IDG News Service. Send comments and news tips to Peter atpeter_sayer@idg.com.

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Apple drops bid to add Samsung Galaxy S III Mini to patent lawsuit


Apple has dropped its patent-infringement accusations against the Galaxy S III Mini, a mid-market Android smartphone that Samsung Electronics says it is not selling in the U.S.
In a filing in the U.S. District Court for Northern California on Friday, Apple said it would withdraw its request to include the Galaxy S III Mini in a patent infringement case against Samsung that is set for trial in 2014. On Nov. 23, Apple had asked to add the Mini and five other recently released Samsung products to its complaint, which originally was filed in February. The case is one of many in an ongoing set of disputes between the two companies in several countries.
When Apple asked to add the Mini to its case, the phone was expected to be released in the U.S. soon. Samsung subsequently filed an opposition to that request in which the South Korean company said it was not selling the Mini in the U.S.
In its filing on Friday, Apple said the Mini apparently was available for sale in the country, because its attorneys had bought multiple Minis from Amazon.com's U.S. online store and successfully had them shipped to addresses in the U.S. The company also said it appeared the device was still on sale at Amazon on Wednesday.
However, Apple wrote that because Samsung had represented it wasn't "making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing the Galaxy S III Mini in the United States," it would drop the patent allegations against the Mini.
Apple's move may rely on Samsung staying true to its statement. Apple withdrew its allegations "without prejudice," reserving the right to make the accusations again "if the factual circumstances change."
Stephen Lawson covers mobile, storage and networking technologies for The IDG News Service. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @sdlawsonmedia. Stephen's e-mail address is stephen_lawson@idg.com

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Saturday, December 1, 2012

Apple starts selling thinner, higher-priced iMacs


More than a month after Apple unveiled new all-in-one desktops, the company today started selling its redesigned iMacs.
The 21.5-in. iMac, with standard configurations prices at $1,299 and $1,499, will ship in one to three days from ordering. The larger 27-in. iMac, which costs $1,799 and $1,999 for its two models, can be pre-ordered starting Friday, but won't ship for two to three weeks, Apple's online store showed.
The new desktops are $100 more than their predecessors.
Apple introduced the new desktops on Oct. 23, but said then that the computers would not ship for weeks. The same week, CEO Tim Cook acknowledged the delays, saying then that iMac supplies would be "constrained for the full quarter in a significant way."
The delays were unprecedented for Apple. Since the new iMacs' Oct. 23 unveiling, Apple has had none to sell on its online store, having also pulled the previous generation from the market. Only remaining inventories of the older models -- which were introduced in May 2011 -- were available at Apple's retail stores and those of its authorized resellers.
The most innovative addition to the new iMacs was "Fusion Drive," an option that combines 128GB of flash storage with a standard platter-based hard drive of between 1TB and 3TB. The hybrid drive significantly speeds up some chores, such as starting the iMac and opening often-used applications.
Apple charges an additional $250 for the option when fitted with the 1TB drive that comes standard with each iMac. To boost Fusion Drive to a 3TB drive costs $400: $250 for Fusion, an extra $150 for the move from 1TB to 3TB. The lowest-priced 21.5-in. iMac cannot be configured with Fusion Drive.
Analysts have said that Fusion Drive is likely composed of a Seagate platter hard drive and an SSD, or "solid-state drive" provided by Anobit, an Israeli company that Apple acquired in December 2011 for a reported $500 million.
The new iMacs feature Intel's "Ivy Bridge" 2.7GHz, 2.9GHz or 3.2GHz quad-core Core i5 processors, 8GB of memory, 1TB hard drives, and Nvidia graphics chipsets with 512MB of RAM. The desktops also shun optical drives -- Apple's been dumping the drives from systems as it rolls out new designs, leaving only the non-Retina MacBook Pro laptops and the low-volume Mac Pro tower with built-in DVD/CD drives -- and retained the previous models' screen sizes and resolutions.
While the 21.5-in. iMac has long been the best-selling desktop in the U.S., the line faces increased competition from Windows all-in-ones, said Steven Baker, an analyst with the NPD Group.
"Windows desktops have done well all year, with all-in-ones accounting for 20% to 30% of [Windows PC] retail sales," said Baker in a Thursday interview. "They make great touch devices."
Windows 8, Microsoft's new operating system, emphasizes touch capabilities. Apple's iMacs are not touch sensitive.
The new iMacs can be ordered today from Apple's online store; the 21.5-in. model is available today at Apple's retail stores. A 27-in. iMac ordered Friday will purportedly ship between Dec. 14 and Dec. 21.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com.
Read more about macintosh in Computerworld's Macintosh Topic Center.

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Monday, November 19, 2012

AC/DC finally rocks the iTunes Store


Apple and Columbia Records on Monday announced that AC/DC's complete catalog is available digitally for the first time--exclusively at the iTunes Store. The rock band had long been missing in action from online music stores, but now the entirety of the band's discography is available for digital purchase. All the music has been Mastered for iTunes as well.
According to a press release, all sixteen of AC/DC's studio albums, along with four live albums and three compilations, are now on sale in the iTunes Store.
Two collections are available: The $100 Studio Collection encompasses all of AC/DC's 176 studio-recorded songs, complete with an iTunes LP featuring photos and liner notes. The $150 Complete Collection adds in rarities, demo tracks, the four live albums, and an iTunes LP with "a detailed essay and photos from the era," according to iTunes. The compilation includes 312 tracks.
The iTunes Store also now offers AC/DC ringtones.
The AC/DC announcement comes two years after another significant iTunes hold out finally arrived in the store.

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Saturday, November 10, 2012

Apple, HTC settle patent suits worldwide


Apple and Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC have settled all of their outstanding patent disputes, they said late Saturday.
The settlement includes a 10-year agreement under which the companies will license current and future patents from each other, they said in a brief statement. The terms of the settlement are confidential and were not disclosed.
The patent dispute between the companies, one of many being fought in the mobile device industry, began in March 2010 when Apple filed suits at the International Trade Commission and U.S. District Court for Delaware accusing HTC of patent infringement.
HTC hit back with its own lawsuit and the fight escalated.
The top executives from each company provided much the same commentary in the joint statement.
Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, said, "HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation," while Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "We are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC. We will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation."
Apple was the world's number two smartphone maker in the second quarter, accounting for 16.7 percent of shipments, according to research from IDC. HTC was in fourth place with a share of 5.8 percent, IDC said.
Martyn Williams covers mobile telecoms, Silicon Valley and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address ismartyn_williams@idg.com

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Friday, November 9, 2012

Most memorable tech industry apologies of 2012: From Apple to Google to Microsoft


Tech vendors have been as bombastic as ever promoting the magical and amazing things their latestsmartphonescloud computing wares and network gear can do. When things go wrong, they're naturally a little less visible, but plenty of companies have sucked it up and done the right thing this year (perhaps with a little legal prodding here and there) and publicly apologized for minor and major customers inconveniences.
Here's a brief rundown of the sorry, sorry action so far in 2012:
*Apple Maps flap
Apple has a reputation for not apologizing for much of anything (or even deigning to comment on anything slightly controversial). It even twisted a court order in the U.K. in October into a sort of non-apology apology/advertisement and then a snoozy newspaper ad.
But actually, the company has said sorry numerous times in recent years, for everything from long waits for buyers of the first iPhones in 2007 to the notorious antenna-gate problems with the iPhone 4. This time around, CEO Tim Cook issued an apology in the wake of the company's release of disappointing maps technology in iOS 6. The apology read, in part:
"At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better."
One Apple executive who reportedly didn't want to sign off on the apology -- iOS chief Scott Forstall -- has now left the company in a management shake-up. And Forstall was joined in departing by John Browett, Apple's retail chief, whose group's problems with store staffing over the summer resulted inanother Apple apology
*Cisco stops pushing cloud on customers
Responding to customer backlash over making Cisco Connect Cloud service a default management system for high-end Linksys routers, Cisco apologized and made it so customers need to opt in to the service if they want it. The default is now a traditional setup for management over the LAN.
Customers balked at Cisco Connect Cloud for numerous reasons, including worries about Cisco snooping on their network use and strict terms of service that restricted access to certain content, possibly including spam and porn, among other things.
Brett Wingo, vice president and general manager of Cisco Home Networking, wrote in July:
"We believe lack of clarity in our own terms of service has contributed to many of our customers' concerns, and we apologize for the confusion and inconvenience this has caused. Cisco Connect Cloud and Cisco Linksys routers do not monitor or store information about how our customers are using the Internet and we do not arbitrarily disconnect customers from the Internet. The Cisco Connect Cloud Service has never monitored customers' Internet usage, nor was it designed to do so. Cisco will not push software updates to customers' Linksys routers when the auto-update setting is turned off."
*T-Mobile: Sorry about the sneaky ads
T-Mobile USA begged for forgiveness in April after slipping advertisements onto Android smartphone customers' update notification screens promoting the carrier's free VIP Zone offering. The carrier stopped the practice after the complaints came rolling in.
The apology: "During a recent software update, a message to promote T-Mobile's free VIP Zone was mistakenly sent to certain customers and appeared on the notification bar for some Android devices. After T-Mobile was made aware of this mistake, the company stopped the notifications. T-Mobile apologizes for the inconvenience this may have caused customers."
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*Motorola, Woot clean up their acts
Motorola Mobility in February warned people who bought but then returned Android-based Motorola Xoom tablets between March and October last year that the devices might have been resold by bargain-of-the-day website Woot with the ex-owners' sensitive data still on them. Motorola said that about 100 out of a batch of 6,200 Xoom tablets that it refurbished "may not have been completely cleared of the original owner's data prior to resale." The tablets were resold by Woot between October and December 2011.
Data possibly accessible on the uncleaned tablets could include photos and documents, as well as user names and passwords for social media, email and other accounts, Motorola acknowledged.
The company issued a statement of apology: "Motorola sincerely regrets and apologizes for any inconvenience this situation has caused the affected customers. Motorola is committed to rigorous data protection practices in order to protect its customers, and will continue to take the necessary steps to achieve this objective."
*Google earnings snafu, Gmail outage
When you're a company as wide-ranging as Google, you're always good for at least a few high-profile apologies during the year. Among the 2012 offerings: A hoarse-voiced CEO Larry Page apologizing during an analysts' call in October for the company's accidental release of its numbers too early ("I'm sorry for the scramble earlier today") , and then in April and June, mea culpas issued for Gmail outages. In April, Google apologized "for the inconvenience," thanked Gmail users for their "patience and continued support" and said that it is continually making improvements to its "system reliability," which the company considers "a top priority." However, as many as 4.8 million users were affected by another outage in June. In July, Google found itself apologizing for a Google Talk outage as well. "Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better."
As for the premature release of its earnings statement, Google ultimately pointed to a mistake by financial printer RR Donnelley. Google's stock price got pounded for the error and hadn't quite recovered even a month later.
*Naughty Microsoft
With all the challenges to its Office and Windows products, does Microsoft really need headaches like these, too? Among the issues Microsoft has apologized for in 2012: a coder slipping the term "big boobs" into software code connecting the Linux kernel to Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization product, and a raunchy dance routine that preceded an Azure presentation in Norway. 
As Network World's Paul McNamara wrote about the coding issue: "Some chucklehead working for Microsoft thought it would be funny to slip a thinly camouflaged sexist remark - 'big boobs' -- into software code that connects the Linux kernel to Microsoft's HyperV virtualization product. Naturally, someone noticed -- that was the intent (snicker, snicker) - and, as should surprise no one, criticism has ensued, since the vast majority of grownups have come to recognize that this kind of juvenile nonsense has no place in the business world."
Microsoft issued an apology: "We thank the community for reporting this issue and apologize for the offensive string. We have submitted a patch to fix this issue and the change will be published in a future release of the kernel."
As for the dance routine in June, Microsoft's Azure team issued this apology: "This week's Norwegian Developer's Conference included a skit that involved inappropriate and offensive elements and vulgar language. We apologize to our customers and our partners and are actively looking into the matter."
Once that was settled, Microsoft was able to focus on apologizing for interruptions to Azure service, such as it did in July when its cloud offering went on the fritz in Western Europe. "We sincerely apologize for any issues this caused impacted customers, and will make the necessary adjustments to help prevent a similar issue from occurring in the future. Impacted customers should contact support to file an SLA credit," wrote Mike Neil, general manager, Windows Azure, on a company blog
On the less racy side, Microsoft also apologized to a blogger in March in the wake of a Windows Phone marketing promotion called "Smoked by Windows Phone" that proved unfair when store employees failed to recognize the blogger's Samsung Galaxy Nexus the winner of a $1,000 laptop prize. Microsoft PC evangelist Ben Rudolph came to the rescue, via Twitter, once the story got picked up: "Hey @sahaskatta , @Microsoftstore & I want to make things right. So I've got a laptop & phone (& apology) for you. Email me!," @BenThePCGuy tweeted.
*Amazon cloud crash
People tend to notice when Amazon Web Service's cloud offerings collapse, not that they necessarily realize Amazon is involved. Rather, it's the companies whose websites depend on AWS that get noticed, and often wind up apologizing to their customers.
That's exactly what happened in October when AWS had an outage (its third major one in two years) following a new hardware installation ("latent memory bug" issue) at one of its northern Virginia data centers. Websites such as Reddit and Imgur were left to do the explaining to their would-be website visitors, while Amazon followed up with credits for its customers and a promise to fix the underlying problem, including an overaggressive traffic throttling policy. Amazon also apologized, writing in part on its AWS support site: "We apologize for the inconvenience and trouble this caused for affected customers. We know how critical our services are to our customers' businesses, and will work hard (and expeditiously) to apply the learning from this event to our services. While we saw that some of the changes that we previously made helped us mitigate some of the impact, we also learned about new failure modes. We will spend many hours over the coming days and weeks improving our understanding of the event and further investing in the resiliency of our services."
Amazon was forced to publicly apologize for another outage of its Elastic Compute Cloud lasting several hours in June that it blamed on power outages (caused by storms), software bugs and rebooting bottlenecks. Amazon's team wrote: "We regret the problems experienced by customers affected by the disruption and, in addition to giving more detail, also wanted to provide information on actions we'll be taking to mitigate these issues in the future."
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*LinkedIn passwords free-for-all
LinkedIn, in June, confirmed reports that some of its users' passwords were compromised after reports surfaced that about 6.5 million LinkedIn passwords were compromised and posted online in a Russian hacker forum, in large part because LinkedIn was using a weak hashing algorithm.
The business-oriented social network site quickly updated its security and ensured users who updated their passwords that they'd be in much better shape. Even so, it was hit with a $5 million lawsuit over the breach. 
Here's what one LinkedIn VP blogged, in part: "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our members. We take the security of our members very seriously. If you haven't read it already it is worth checking out my earlier blog post today about updating your password and other account security best practices."
*BlueToad victimized by hackers
Digital publishing company BlueToad revealed in September that the unique identifiers of some 1 million Apple iOS devices that hackers leaked were swiped from its servers. CEO Paul DeHart's admission that his company was the hacking victim helped clear suspicion from the FBI, which the Antisec-affiliated hacking group claimed to have taken the UDIDs from. DeHart said in an interview with MSNBC (and he might be the only exec from any of these companies that apologized on camera) that his company did change its code to comply with stricter Apple guidelines earlier this year, but that the hackers got access to information stored via older code.
DeHart wrote in a blog post that: "We sincerely apologize to our partners, clients, publishers, employees and users of our apps. We take information security very seriously and have great respect and appreciation for the public's concern surrounding app and information privacy. BlueToad does not collect, nor have we ever collected, highly sensitive personal information like credit cards, social security numbers or medical information. The illegally obtained information primarily consisted of Apple device names and UDIDs - information that was reported and stored pursuant to commercial industry development practices."
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*GoDaddy goes down
GoDaddy's internal investigation of a six-plus hour outage on Sept. 10 for website and domain service business and its 52 million customers concluded that it was caused by a "series of internal network events that corrupted router database tables," not a hacker attack, as was first suspected by many after a supposed Anonymous affiliate initially took credit. GoDaddy emphasized that while customers websites went dark, their personal data was not compromised.
CEO Scott Wagner issued an apology in which he wrote in part: "Throughout our history, we have provided 99.999% uptime in our DNS infrastructure. This is the level our customers expect from us and the level we expect of ourselves. We have let our customers down and we know it. We take our business and our customers' businesses very seriously. We apologize to our customers for these events and thank them for their patience."
GoDaddy also awarded customers one month of credits in attempt to keep disappointed ones from fleeing.
*RIM CEO: Sorry about the outage
In the grand scheme of things, RIM BlackBerry network outages haven't been the worst of Research in Motion's problems this year. Rather, the company's loss of market share, weak financial results and new product delays have been front and center.
But RIM did have a three-hour network outage in September in Europe and Africa that affected about 6% of customers and prompted CEO Thorsten Heins to apologize: "I want to apologize to those BlackBerry customers in Europe and Africa who experienced an impact in their quality of service earlier this morning. The BlackBerry service is now fully restored and I can report that no data or messages were lost. Up to 6 per cent of our user base may have been impacted. Preliminary analysis suggests that those customers may have experienced a maximum delay of 3 hours in the delivery and reception of their messages. We are conducting a full technical analysis of this quality of service issue and will report as soon as it concludes. I again want to apologize to those customers who were impacted today."
*Nokia's camera trick
Nokia's big Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 splash in September got off to a rough start when the company overreached in a video promoting the camera's Pureview camera technology. Yes, Nokia resorted to the old not-so-hidden cameraman trick.
As NW's Colin Neagle wrote in September, "Nokia was caught red-handed in a lie, after tech bloggers spotted a cameraman capturing a video the company claimed was shot with its new, highly touted Lumia 920 smartphone. After apologizing, Nokia posted a real video shot with the smartphone, displaying the optical image stabilization (OIS) camera technology that was faked on the first try."
Tech bloggers spotted in the video a reflection of a cameraman with a professional camera actually taking the shot of a women on a bicycle.
The company said its main fault was failing to publish "a disclaimer stating this was a representation of OIS only."
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*Yahoo's massive breach
Yahoo apologized for a network breach in July that involved exposure of some 400,000 Yahoo user names and passwords, among other information. The breach was especially bad because it tied in with Gmail, Hotmail and other online accounts. The group claiming responsibility for the hack said it used a SQL injection. Yahoo's apology went like this: "At Yahoo! we take security very seriously and invest heavily in protective measures to ensure the security of our users and their data across all our products. We confirm that an older file from Yahoo! Contributor Network (previously Associated Content) containing approximately 400,000 Yahoo! and other company users names and passwords was stolen yesterday,July 11. Of these, less than 5% of the Yahoo! accounts had valid passwords. We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo! users and notifying the companies whose users accounts may have been compromised. We apologize to affected users. We encourage users to change their passwords on a regular basis and also familiarize themselves with our online safety tips at security.yahoo.com."
*Path goes down wrong privacy path
Path, a social journal app for iPhone and Android devices, apologized in February after it came to light that the company was grabbing iPhone contact info and sticking it on its own servers. CEO Dave Morin wrote in part: "We made a mistake. Over the last couple of days users brought to light an issue concerning how we handle your personal information on Path, specifically the transmission and storage of your phone contacts. ... Through the feedback we've received from all of you, we now understand that the way we had designed our 'Add Friends' feature was wrong. We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts."
The revelation, in turn, led to more revelations that bigger name apps like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare were doing likewise. Apple took steps to require app makers whose wares are in its App Store to ask permission if they want to take contact info.
*McAfee: Just kidding about that malware






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