Just weeks after Xiaomi overtook Huawei and LG to become the world’s third-largest smartphone maker, The Guardian reports that the Chinese handset maker’s chief executive and founder Lei Jun is out with a bold prediction that his company could move past Apple and Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone maker within the next five to ten years. Expand Expanding Close
Google, according to a report out of Reuters, has agreed to settle all of its patent litigation with the Rockstar consortium, which consists of a variety of tech companies including Apple, Sony, BlackBerry and Microsoft. The Rockstar consortium paid $4.5 billion for Nortel Network Corporation’s huge patent portfolio in 2011, outbidding Google at the time. The Rockstar consortium originally sued Google and a handful of Android manufacturers in October of 2013, claiming that the companies infringed on seven Nortel patents.
Google just bought RelativeWave, the company behind the mobile app prototyping software Form, and with the purchase it’s making the previously $80 Mac app available for free on the Mac App Store. The company made an announcement on its website noting that it will continue working on the Form app after joining Google:
I speak for the team when I say that we’re incredibly humbled by what the community has created with Form. We’ve seen people create designs that we could have never imagined. It’s one of the best feelings in the world to see people using your work.
The team adds that with new help from Google it will be “focused on improving the state of design and development tools.”
Form is a Mac app with an accompanying Form viewer app for iOS, but the company hints an Android version could be in the works noting to “stay tuned” for other platforms. The Form app for Mac pairs with the viewer on a mobile device and allows users to rapidly prototype native mobile app experiences in real-time using easy-to-use presets that the company says “are as powerful as their coded counterparts.” An example of a finished composition using Form is above.
The announcement also notes that users that previously paid for Form can get a refund by emailing support@relativewave.com.
If you’re a retailer, you have two options when it comes to deploying Bluetooth beacons. You can deploy the hardware yourself and build an accompanying mobile app for the experience, or you can open the experience to existing apps that users already have on their device using a beacon network. Some retailers have decided they want to own the experience and have everything go through their own mobile app, but new data suggests that might not be the way to go. Expand Expanding Close
Following its detailed reports on displays used in the new iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, today DisplayMate published a scientific analysis of color accuracy for the six best mobile displays it’s tested this year. Despite ranking high in some categories in the test, Apple’s new entries, the iPhone 6 Plus and iPad Air 2, end up at the bottom of the list overall. Expand Expanding Close
Bloomberg reports that a federal jury has found Apple guilty of infringing on six patents related to outdated pager technology from the 1990s. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has ordered Apple to pay a $23.6 million settlement for violating six patents owned by plaintiff Mobile Telecommunications Technologies LLC in the case. Expand Expanding Close
Although Apple continues to offer the Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Protect despite Google’s acquisition of the smart device company, the iPhone maker has added a competing Wi-Fi-connected smart thermostat to the lineup. Apple has recently added the Ecobee3 smart Wi-Fi thermostat to the Connected Home section of its online store. The smart thermostat, which can be controlled with an iPhone or iPad, is available for $249.95. Expand Expanding Close
AT&T recently ran a promo that offered double data on a select number of its Mobile Share Value plans. As a follow up, the carrier will soon start extending an extra 5GB of data to customers with 10GB plans at no additional charge. The offer starts tomorrow and runs for a “limited time.”
Sony announced a new imaging sensor today that the company says will improve smartphones cameras. The Exmor RS IMX230 is a stacked CMOS sensor that packs 21-megapixels into a small 1/2.4-inch design. One of the key talking points of Sony’s new chip is its 192 point phase detection autofocus, which makes it easier to shoot photos or video of a fast moving subject with your smartphone.
A new Apple-focused meetup for consultants is kicking off its inaugural conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, this coming up May. The event is called the ACEs Conference and it’s put on by two members of the Apple community, Justin Esgar and Luis Giraldo, both of whom run Apple consultant businesses in Manhattan and Canada, respectively. The two describe the event as being for Apple consultants by Apple consultants:
The Aces Conference is the first of its kind. Apple consultants teaching Apple consultants not only tips and tricks of tech, but of business too. Learn how to be a better consultant, a better technician, a better everything at Aces Conf.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5_CrXh227Q&feature=youtu.be]
Same old story, but with a Christmas theme this time around in the latest Apple-bashing Surface ad from Microsoft. Touchscreen, kickstand, USB, etc, Microsoft has given up on comparing its tablets with the iPad and instead wants you to believe Surface Pro 3 is an acceptable substitute for a MacBook Air.
Verizon Wireless has updated its customer agreement with new conditions related to early termination fees. Effective today, new customers that purchase a device on contract will be required to pay a full $350 early termination fee during the first seven months of the contract if it is broken. The fee is reduced by $10 per month between months 8-18, $20 per month between months 19-23 and $60 in the final month of the contract term… Expand Expanding Close
The Wall Street Journal reported today that the United States Department of Justice has been using planes equipped with devices that pose as cellular towers (called “dirtboxes”) to collect data from suspected criminals’ cell phones—and capturing data from innocent bystanders in the process.
The devices are capable of capturing data from “tens of thousands” of phones over the course of a single flight. Because most cell phones are designed to automatically connect to the tower with the strongest signal, these dirtboxes can easily fool phones into latching onto its signal.
Fortune has somehow named Google CEO Larry Page its 2014 Business person of the Year beating out rival Apple CEO Tim Cook who earns the number 2 spot (despite stock prices) on Fortune’s list of 50 executives. Expand Expanding Close
AT&T is scrapping its plans to offer in-flight 4G LTE connectivity services to airlines and passengers in business and general aviation. The company originally planned to build an air-to-ground network across the US to take advantage of spectrum that it already owned.
Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal published an in-depth look at The Home Depot’s recent security breach of its payment data systems, in which 56 million credit card accounts and 53 million email addresses of customers were compromised. A root cause of the security breach: a Windows vulnerability in the retailer’s main computer network. Expand Expanding Close
Apple Watch will include fitness and health tracking features
Update: Fitbit statement below the fold…
If you’re in the market for a Fitbit device and you’re shopping at the Apple Store, you’ll probably have to shop elsewhere to purchase the fitness tracker. Following report from Re/Code last month that Apple planned to drop the Fitbit line of wearable devices from its Apple Store lineup, Apple has today removed the Fitbit Flex and other Fitbit products from its online store following low inventory over the past week. While its unclear why Apple is no longer selling Fitbit products through its retail channels, on the surface the move is similar to Apple’s decision to discontinue selling Bose headphones and speakers at its retail and online stores.
If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, then the designers at Lenovo must adore the iPhone 6.
Samsung has caught a lot of flak for—and been taken to court over—some of its iPhone-like smartphone design choices, but nothing the Korean company has ever produced comes close to the shamelessly derivative Lenovo S90. Not only does the S90 seem to take more than a few design cues from Apple’s latest smartphone, but its entire advertising campaign seems to be a carbon copy of Apple’s own.
Take, for example, the image above (found on Weibo, via PhoneArena). If it looks a little familiar to you, that might be because it’s the exact same thing you’ll find on Apple’s iPhone webpage. There are about ten of these images total, and nearly all of them look like they were ripped right from Apple’s website.
GT Advanced disclosed on Thursday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking information about the sapphire glass maker’s trading activity since January 2013 after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. GT Advanced’s latest Form 8-K report claims that the company is fully cooperating with the SEC during its investigation. Expand Expanding Close
Amazon today announced a new hardware product called Echo. It’s essentially a speaker unit dedicated to being a voice-control system. It kind of sounds like Siri but in a speaker for a single room instead of in your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.
You can set alarms, control music, ask about the weather, search the web, ask questions, and access local news. It streams content via Bluetooth and WiFi, and connects to the Fire Phone (if you have one, lol), iOS via the browser, Android, and desktop computers via the web. Instead of “Hey Siri,” you say “Alexa” to start speaking the device. You’ll need a Fire OS/Android device to take full advantage, but music should work fine via iOS.
The whole concept is very futuristic, and it’s unclear how beneficial this will be to people with voice-controlled phones. But, hey, this comes from the developers of a faux-3D phone and delivery drones, so this is not completely out of left field. The Echo is $99 for Amazon Prime users, $199 for everyone else, and (for some reason) you need an invitation to receive the honor to buy one of these untested things.
[Ed. note: Jason Stern is a Criminal Defense Attorney in private practice in New York City]
8:34 am. A college professor receives a text message threatening to blow up the history building. The professor immediately contacts law enforcement, who trace the origin of the call to a student who lives off-campus.
When FBI agents arrive at the student’s residence, they arrest the student and seize his smartphone. In an attempt to search the device to recover evidence of the crime (and perhaps stop other related crimes), they find the smartphone is protected by fingerprint security measures.
With the suspect in handcuffs, the agent swipes the student’s finger across the phone to access his call history and messages. Once the FBI swipes the suspect’s finger and bypasses the biometric security, the phone asks for the student’s passcode. The FBI agent asks for his password but the student refuses to speak. How can the FBI agent access the phone? Whereas a fictional Federal Agent like Jack Bauer would simply pull out his gun, jam it in the suspect’s mouth and scream, “WHERE IS THE BOMB?”, in our example, the FBI agent would hit the proverbial brick wall.
Yes, the phone could be brought back to the lab for analysis and hacking by forensics personnel, but the suspect in this case could not be forced to disclose the password on the phone… Expand Expanding Close
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today released a report examining three dozen messaging services and ranking them based on what it deemed are seven “security best practices.” While Apple scored the best among what the EFF called “mass-market options”, it didn’t do as well when compared to all 36 messaging services included in the report. Specifically, EFF noted Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime services failed to offer “complete protection against sophisticated, targeted forms of surveillance.” Expand Expanding Close
