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.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkOCeAtKHIc
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…
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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.”
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Following the introduction of Voice-over-LTE technology with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which increases call quality by routing calls through an LTE network opposed to last generation 3G networks, US carriers have experienced a big increase in VoLTE calls. That’s according to a new report from Newfield Wireless that highlights a decrease for calls over 3G by about one-fifth compared to previous generation iPhones and other LTE-capable devices:
The majority of voice calls made on other 4G-enabled devices are currently routed through legacy 2G and 3G networks, due to the fact that not all networks and devices are optimised to deliver next-generation voice services. iPhone 6 devices are VoLTE-compatible and as a result, U.S. networks have experienced a surge in VoLTE calls since the September launch.
The report also shared some other data points from its research noting a few stats for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus uptake compared to previous generations:
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We first told you about Nova, the Bluetooth flash for iPhone, over a year again when the portable wireless flash was crowdfunding on Kickstarter. After being funded in just two days and raising three times its goal in funding from backers, the wireless flash debuted earlier this year as promised.
We reviewed the Nova wireless Bluetooth flash after its launch earlier this year and found its a really clever accessory for iPhone and even iPad users snapping pictures from dark scenes to simple selfies. Now Nova is announcing that it is available through the Apple Online Store for the first time, and will be available at Apple Retail Stores across the United States and Canada later this month.
You can find the Nova Bluetooth flash for iPhone for $59 through the Apple Online Store now in addition to Amazon and Nova’s web store. Details below.
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Image via GigaOm
Jawbone announced two new additions to its family of wearable products tonight. The first new device is the Jawbone Up3, which sports a seven-day battery and a capacitive touch sensor on top, as well as a new set of sensors for tracking health data. The new sensors allow the Up3 to detect data such as skin temperature, respiration, or hydration, although it currently has no way to track a user’s heart rate. That feature is said to be coming in a future update.
The Up3 will cost $180 when it launches, though Jawbone has given no indication of when exactly that will be.
AT&T on Tuesday announced that it will be introducing a longer Next 24 monthly installment program on November 9th alongside its Next 12 and Next 18 plans for financing an iPhone or other smartphone. AT&T customers on Next 24 will pay $0 down and make 30 equal monthly payments between $10 to $50 depending on the device purchased.
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Your Nest smart thermostat should get a little smarter at some point over the next week as the company rolls out version 4.3 of the software, providing improved auto-scheduling and faster access to info at-a-glance.
A single push of the ring displays the information shown above, which includes weather, outdoor temperature and humidity. This has, says Nest, been the biggest customer request, allowing them to check what they should wear before heading out in the morning. Getting access to additional information, like yesterday’s energy usage or tomorrow’s schedule, is now available simply by turning the ring left or right …
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In an interview with the Financial Times, Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page talked about an ongoing debate that he had with Apple’s Steve Jobs: whether their companies were doing too much or too little to affect the lives of their customers.
Page, as is evident in Google’s seemingly unending push into new markets and technologies outside of search and even the web, came down on the side of doing as many things as possible to make an impact in peoples’ lives, while Jobs was insistent that a focused approach on a single set of problems was better for the company and its users.
AT&T announced today that it’s increasing the data allotment on two of its wireless service plans. Starting on Sunday, November 2nd, Ma Bell will begin offering 3GB of data for $40 per month and 6GB of date for $70 a month. Also sweetening the pot, AT&T is tossing in unlimited talk, text and international messaging at no additional charge.
Gazelle has long been a popular choice for conveniently turning a used iPhone or iPad into cash, and today the electronics trade-in service announced its own certified pre-owned store for buying “gently used devices” at a discounted price. While the pre-owned store lists categories including iPhone, cell phones, iPads, and tablets, Gazelle inventory is currently limited to pre-owned Apple devices including iPhone 4 and up, iPad 2 and up, and iPad mini.
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<em>Worldwide unit shipments for the top 5 tablet plus 2-in-1 device vendors over last five quarters</em>
New data from IDC tracking worldwide tablet shipments shows that Apple has maintained its lead during the third quarter despite “a decline in overall iPad shipment volume in 3Q14.” Specifically, Apple grabbed 22.8% of the market with 12.3 million shipments during the quarter compared to 14.1 million units and 29.2% share in the year ago quarter. That compares to Samsung at 18.3% of the market and 9.9 million units shipped up from 19.3% and 9.3 million units shipped in the third quarter last year:
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While the MCX consortium’s CurrentC mobile payment service isn’t due to launch until next year, it has been carrying out limited trials, facilitated by placing the app in the iTunes store. iPhone owners have been expressing their displeasure at the blocking of Apple Pay by MCX members by rating and reviewing the app.
At the time of writing, the app had accumulated 2,856 1-star reviews against a total of just 30 reviews giving it 2 stars or more …
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Earlier this week, retailers CVS and Rite Aid blocked NFC payments at their stores following the launch of Apple Pay because of their existing commitment to MCX’s CurrentC platform. Nevertheless, MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson assures that merchants accepting both CurrentC and Apple Pay “could be entirely possible” in the future.
The blockade has ignited somewhat of a controversy between Apple Pay and MCX, only worsened by the fact that it was confirmed that CurrentC suffered a security breach earlier this morning. MCX, or Merchant Customer Exchange, consists of a number of high-profile retailers that grouped together to work on their own CurrentC contactless payments platform.
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CurrentC, the much discussed infamous competitor to the Apple Pay mobile payments platform, has some more bad press coming its way. According to an email sent out this morning to its pilot program customers, the MCX service has already been hacked. According to the notice, “unauthorized third parties” obtained email address information for an unannounced number of users:
Thank you for your interest in CurrentC. You are receiving this message because you are either a participant in our pilot program or requested information about CurrentC. Within the last 36 hours, we learned that unauthorized third parties obtained the e-mail addresses of some of you. Based on investigations conducted by MCX security personnel, only these e-mail addresses were involved and no other information.
In an abundance of caution, we wanted to make you aware of this incident and urge you not to open links or attachments from unknown third parties. Also know that neither CurrentC nor Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) will ever send you emails asking for your financial account, social security number or other personally identifiable information. So if you are ever asked for this information in an email, you can be confident it is not from us and you should not respond.
MCX is continuing to investigate this situation and will provide updates as necessary. We take the security of your information extremely seriously, apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your support of CurrentC.
For those not following the MCX vs. Apple Pay saga, MCX powers a payments platform utilized by key retailers such as WalMart, CVS, and RiteAid. After initially supporting NFC-based payments via Apple Pay and Google Wallet, those aforementioned retailers shut down their industry standard NFC-based payment processing systems in favor of the CurrentC app from MCX.
MCX has since responded to this controversy on its website, and Apple CEO Tim Cook referred to the entire situation as a “skirmish.” Meanwhile, reports have indicated that retailers are playing along with MCX in order to avoid fines discussed in early contractual agreements. Nonetheless, Apple Pay has already amassed over a million activations, becoming the most ubiquitous mobile payments platform in just about a week.
MCX has confirmed that the email to customers is legitimate and said the following:
Click to enlarge, note Mac interface for scale
Update: The monitor doesn’t actually cost $2,499—that is the Australian price. In the U.S., the monitor will be shipping for a much more reasonable $1,399.
LG Electronics on Tuesday unveiled its new 31-inch Digital Cinema 4K monitor (4096×2160 px) for $1,399. Apple users will be pleased to hear that the monitor is compatible with both Mac and Thunderbolt. The monitor includes a Mini DisplayPort (in addition to 2 HDMI ports and 1 DisplayPort), which uses the same physical port as Thunderbolt enabling Mac users to drive the 4K display over a single Mini DisplayPort 1.2 cable.
[tweet https://twitter.com/ftc/status/527143324269170688]
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has announced that it is suing AT&T for “deceptive and unfair data throttling”. The FTC’s announcement seems to target AT&T’s practice of lowering data transfer speeds for customers with unlimited data plans versus customers with tiered data plans now offered. From the FTC’s press release:
“AT&T promised its customers ‘unlimited’ data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. “The issue here is simple: ‘unlimited’ means unlimited.”
AT&T has called the FTC’s allegations baseless adding that the carrier has been “completely transparent” with its subscribers.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHg6JL5sdaI]
Microsoft has had a great idea for making the next version of Windows better for power users: copy more trackpad gestures from OS X …
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Image via Re/code
T-Mobile CEO John Legere said tonight during a talk at Re/code’s Code/Mobile conference that demand for the iPhone 6 Plus was higher than was originally anticipated, with the larger model grabbing about 45% of orders. He said initial expectations put demand somewhere in the ballpark of 20-25% (Video below)
This unexpected level of demand may have contributed to the supply problems many customers have experienced, and Legere says it will still be a while before iPhone shipments are able to meet demand again.
Legere also said that only about 100,000 people took advantage of the carrier’s ‘test drive’ offer that allowed customers to use an iPhone on T-Mobile for a week completely free of charge. He took a chance to reiterate the points made during his recent Apple SIM tweet storm as well.
Microsoft on Monday announced that it will be eliminating its top-tier cloud storage plan and offering unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 subscribers at no additional cost. The change will begin rolling out today for Office 365 Home, Personal and University customers and will continue over the coming months.
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The White House shared earlier this year that Apple is a participant in President Obama’s ConnectED education program focused on bringing Internet access and technology to schools in need, and today Apple has provided a micro site profiling its effort in the program.
While it was already known that Apple has pledged $100 million to provide iPads, MacBooks, and other products toward the program for schools across the United States, Apple has shared that Apple ConnectED grants are being received by a total of 114 different schools across the country with these schools spread out across 29 states. Apple added that “92% of students from our partner schools are of Hispanic, Black, Native American, Alaskan Native, or Asian heritage.”
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Alpine today announced its first aftermarket in-dash receiver with support for Apple’s CarPlay feature for iPhone users. The new Alpine iLX-007 will be the company’s first display to support CarPlay following Pioneer’s rollout of the feature to its latest NEX displays earlier this month. Alpine’s new in-dash receiver features a 7-inch capacitive touch screen comparable to Pioneer’s high end NEX8000 CarPlay compatible model ($1,400), but at a much lower price point of $800 as it lacks other hardware features.
Alpine’s CarPlay offering is still one of the first on the market yet and joins Pioneer in allowing drivers to have CarPlay without buying a new car. Several automakers have already announced CarPlay availability on certain models of new cars, some of which are already on the road, but will require firmware updates in the future before CarPlay is present.
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The WSJ is reporting that Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus went on preorder in South Korea on Friday, following their official launch this Friday, October 31st, as part of the next wave of iPhone rollouts. Analyst estimates show that presales for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus topped 100,000 units. By comparison, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 recorded a third of that number (around 30,000) in preorders in a similar timeframe when it launched in September.