Crazy For Tech - Gadgets,Cell Phones,Cameras » apple

When Will The Post-PC Era Arrive? It Just Did.

Administrator — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:49:06 +0000

There has been much debate about what the post-PC era is, when it will arrive, or whether it’s already here. But key pieces of new data, emerging last week, are making the case that we crossed the imaginary line from the “PC” era to the “post-PC” era at the end of 2011. According to analysts at Canalys, two major computing milestones were achieved at the end of this year: smartphone shipments outpaced PCs for the first time ever, and Apple became the world’s largest PC maker, if you count iPads as PCs (as well you should). Combined, what these numbers tell us is that the post-PC era is happening now. Right now. And maybe we need to think about how we define “PC.” In Q4 2011, vendors shipped 158.5 million smartphones, up 57% on the 101.2 million units shipped in Q4 2010. For the year, there were 487.7 million units shipped, up 63% on the 299.7 million units shipped in 2010. Meanwhile, the global PC market grew just 15% in 2011 to 414.6 million units. The smartphones have won. The funny thing about that PC shipments number is that, on its own, it doesn’t paint the most accurate picture of today’s PC landscape. There weren’t 414.6 million desktop, notebook and netbook computers shipped in 2011 – those were at 112.4 million, 209.6 million and 29.4 million, respectively. The 414.6 million number includes 63.2 million in “pad” shipments, Canalys’s preferred term for tablets. That means 15% of the “PC” shipments in 2011 were tablets, largely Apple’s iPad. In Q4, tablets were 22% of the total PC shipments. And the tablet segment of the market grew 274.2% year-over-year. Also in Q4 2011, Apple became the leading worldwide “PC” vendor (if you count the iPad as a PC) with 15 million iPads and 5 million Macs shipped, representing 17% of the total 120 million client PCs shipped in Q4. It overtook HP (now #2), Acer, Dell and Lenovo in the process. Overall, the PC market grew 16% year-over-year, Canalys noted last month. Without tablets, it declined 0.4%. Of course, there’s still the question of whether or not tablets should be broken out into their own computing category, positioned against the traditional “PCs” when tracking device shipments. For what’s it worth, I think it’s fine to count tablets as PCs – after all, PC means “personal computer,” not “machine running Windows.” The fact that we still equate the word with a desktop, monitor, keyboard and mouse combo is a testament to the empire Microsoft built, and is now losing. Case in point: netbook shipments dropped 25.3% from 2010 to 2011. Desktops grew a paltry 2.3% and notebooks grew just 7.5%. This is end of the “PC” era in action. While the 209.6 million notebook shipments still make that the largest category of “PCs,” the growth trends here, if sustained, dictate that’s its only a matter of time before the shift to tablets becomes even more pronounced. Think about it: what’s the first “PC” you’re going to buy for your kid, as a new member to the post-PC computing generation? If you respond “ notebook ,” I’d say you’re lying. That kid is getting an iPad, even if they end up stealing yours. If not an iPad, then they’re getting a phone. And smartphones are PCs, too. The most affordable ones. This past quarter, smartphone shipments overtook PCs, a hugely important milestone that speaks volumes about the state of modern-day computing. The computer-in-your-pocket has moved from being “a niche product segment at the high-end of the mobile phone market to becoming a truly mass-market proposition,” explains Canalys of the change. In Q4, Apple broke records by shipping 37 million iPhones – the most ever shipped by a single vendor in a quarter. Previously, Nokia held the record with 28.3 million phones shipped in Q4 2010. What a difference a year makes. But Canalys cautioned that it expects to see smartphone market growth slow in 2012, as vendors exercise “greater cost control and discipline” to focus on profitability. This is the only discordant note to the report. Smartphone growth slowing? No offense to the analysts, but I’ll believe that one when I see it. Just watching Apple’s sales alone, it’s clear you can’t underestimate its power to deliver record-breaking numbers. In addition, just because vendors like HTC and Motorola are going to launch fewer smartphone models in 2012, that doesn’t (necessarily) mean they’ll sell fewer overall phones. If anything, the companies are hoping that their increased focus on “hero” devices will help them increase sales. One thing is clear, however: that post-PC era everyone’s been talking about since the day the phrase slipped off Steve Jobs’ lips has arrived. We’re living it. Anyone who wastes their time debating its existence (tablets are PCs! phones are PCs!) is arguing semantics. The shift itself, whatever you want to call it, is happening. So perhaps “post-PC” isn’t the best terminology. If everything’s a PC, then maybe what we’ve achieved is something more akin to “PCs Everywhere.” Not as catchy, though. Photo credit top: Lokesh Dhakar , flickr; bottom: agirregabiria , flickr

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When Will The Post-PC Era Arrive? It Just Did.

Citing “Short-Term Difficulties”, HTC Forecasts Weak Q1, Significant Revenue Drop

bestcbstore — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:20:27 +0000

Smartphones and tablets maker HTC this morning said it foresees a huge drop in revenue (PDF) in the first quarter, citing “short-term difficulties” as it gears up to – reportedly – launch four new phone models at the Mobile World Congress later this month. The Taiwanese company sees revenue dropping as much as 36 percent in Q1, to between NT$65 billion and NT$70 billion (roughly $2.2 and $2.4 billion) due to this “product transition”. In PR speak, that sound something like this: Despite short-term difficulties, momentum will resume in the upcoming product cycle driven by HTC’s brand strength, innovation, and design/engineering capabilities The smartphone maker also said it expected gross margin to come in at around 25 percent, and operating margin at 7.5 percent, which is down from 27.1 percent and 12.7 percent in the previous quarter. Again, HTC says it expects these margins to “normalize” after the debut of the new phones. In other words, HTC has a heck of a lot riding on these new smartphones selling like hotcakes, as it feels the pressure from Apple’s overwhelming iPhone success and an increasing number of manufacturers churning out and selling competing Android-powered devices by the millions. Also read: It’s About Time: HTC To Refocus Smartphone Efforts Around “Hero” Devices Is HTC’s 20% Revenue Dip Last Month A Sign Of Things To Come?

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Citing “Short-Term Difficulties”, HTC Forecasts Weak Q1, Significant Revenue Drop

More MegaUpload Fallout As BitTorrent Search Engine BTjunkie Calls It Quits

Achilles — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:42:11 +0000

BTjunkie , a popular BitTorrent search service, has been ‘voluntarily’ shut down by its operator(s). In a goodbye message, BTjunkie writes: This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down. We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best! BTjunkie’s founder went into more detail in a conversation with TorrentFreak , stating that the recent legal actions against other file sharing services such as MegaUpload and The Pirate Bay played an important role in the decision-making process. In other words, the war that’s being waged upon file storage and sharing services, many of which are used to upload and distribute copyrighted content, has claimed another casualty. It won’t exactly be the last to falter as a result of the MegaUpload fallout, although you have to wonder how many competitors – or brand new sites – will now be jumping on the opportunity to provide an alternative to BTjunkie users. As Accel Partners VC Max Niederhofer points out on Twitter , the shutdown of BTjunkie follows other abrupt decisions made by the likes of QuickSilverScreen (closed) and FileSonic (file sharing functionality terminated). Of course, there’s also Uploaded.to (suspended service in the United States), FileServe (disabled file sharing functionality, closed affiliate program), and more. With even more likely to follow suit soon enough. Founded in 2005, the sudden, unceremonious shuttering of the site now puts BTjunkie in the deadpool . (Also check out the reddit thread on BTjunkie’s shutdown.) Wow btjunkie.org has shut down where am I going to get my music from now— Marquis Iveys (@kease2kool) February 06, 2012

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More MegaUpload Fallout As BitTorrent Search Engine BTjunkie Calls It Quits

Tech Bowl: Best Buy Spotlights Mobile Innovators, Founders In Super Bowl Spot

Achilles — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:48:33 +0000

Every year, Best Buy runs a big Super Bowl spot, and traditionally they go the route of hiring a big celebrity to hawk their brand message. Last year, it was “the Biebs” and Ozzy Osbourne. This year, Best Buy has opted for something a bit different, choosing to highlight innovators and give more than a nod to geeks in its tech-focused Super Bowl ad. Drew Panayiotou, Best Buy’s U.S. marketing chief, told Bloomberg that the company had initially planned to continue down the celebrity track, but the outpouring of affection for Steve Jobs after the Apple CEO passed away was strong evidence that “Silicon Valley inventors are today’s stars.” So, this year’s Super Bowl ad opens with Philippe Kahn , the current CEO of Fullpower Technologies and the guy credited with inventing the camera phone, next there’s author, inventor, and futurist Ray Kurzweil , who shows himself the father of text-to-speech synthesis. The ad also features the key characters behind Instagram , like Kevin Systrom, Square, Shazam , and Words With Friends . It’s the most Silicon Valley/startup founders together in one advertisement we’ve seen, ever? Best Buy has been struggling over the last year, and many see the company as a foundering ship, so buoying itself on the back of inventors and innovators is certainly an interesting play. Best Buy needs to prove it can go toe-to-toe with Walmart et al, and the idea is to present the idea that the Best Buyers in blue shirts are some of the most knowledgeable geeks in the business. So knowledgeable, in fact, that all these inventors want to line up to back their brand in a Super Bowl ad. Of course, implied is the heaps of cash they were offered to join in on turning Best Buy’s brand around. ( Read more about Best Buy’s future here. ) As for the promo itself, Best Buy is giving a $50 gift card to anyone who volunteers to upgrade their phones from one of four national carriers at a Best Buy store near you. It was good to see Words of Friends founders/brothers Paul and David Bettner poking fun at Alec Baldwin’s now infamous cellphone on a plane incident, in which he refused to turn off his phone, because he was, of course, playing Scrabble With Friends. Pop culture, celebrities, and technology, all together in one weird self-referential celebration. Unsettling, yet geek-tastic.

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Tech Bowl: Best Buy Spotlights Mobile Innovators, Founders In Super Bowl Spot

Facebook – Run from the Bulls?

blogger — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:28:58 +0000

Editor’s note : Guest author Keith Teare is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Labs and CEO of newly funded just.me . He was a co-founder of TechCrunch. Much ink has been spilled these past few days on the Facebook IPO filing . Much of it analyses the details revealed in the S1 initial document . Some of it has focused on revenue and growth ; some of it on control and corporate governance , some on valuation and how reasonable or not it is likely to be, and a little on whether or not the IPO represents the end of Facebook’s growth cycle . So, should you be a bull, and buy? Or should you run as fast as you can away from the bulls? For guidance turn to the risk factors part of the filing. For me, the most interesting part of the document is that part focused on Facebook’s mobile strategy and associated risks, and what that tells us to be alert to in the future. Now, to be clear, Facebook and its employees have done the most wonderful job of riding the transformation of the Internet from a place where anonymous individuals surfed the web, consumed information and media and accessed services to discover relevant things into an Internet where named individuals publish information to each other and discover things from friends. Facebook dominates the modern Internet. Its APIs extend its reach outside of its garden into almost every website on the planet – this one included. It is awesome to behold and it generates significant revenues already, and even more significant profits. Hats off to all involved. This success shouldn’t blind us to the relative size of company we are talking about. Last week Apple reported profits of over $13 billion for a quarter, Google’s revenues were lower than that number, and Facebook’s revenues are lower than Google’s profits. Facebook is huge by startup standards, but not by Internet standards. There is much more in its future. But this article isn’t about that. It is about the context within which the human Facebook IPO is happening. The Facebook S1 is clear on that context. In the risk factors of its filing it states: Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where we do not currently display ads, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results. We anticipate that the rate of growth in mobile users will continue to exceed the growth rate of our overall MAUs for the foreseeable future, in part due to our focus on developing mobile products to encourage mobile usage of Facebook. Although the substantial majority of our mobile users also access and engage with Facebook on personal computers where we display advertising, our users could decide to increasingly access our products primarily through mobile devices. We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven. Accordingly, if users continue to increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected. Facebook initial S1 filing, 1 Feb 2012, page 13 The reason this risk factor jumps out of the page – for me – is that this trend to growing mobile use is inevitable. What is more, it will be both rapid and enormous. How do we know this? Well, human beings are flocking to mobile platforms in droves. This is happening to such an extent that Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker went on the record almost 1 year ago to say that we are now in the 5 th major technology cycle of the past half century (mainframe; mini-computer; desktop; internet and now mobile) and that mobile traffic will “grow 26 times over the next 5 years”. The presentation linked above is 56 slides long and is well worth a read. So the risk that “our users could decide to increasingly access our products primarily through mobile devices,” is not a risk. It is a certainty. When Google reported its financial results for the quarter 2 weeks ago it failed to meet a key metric – Cost Per Click advertising rates. This too was driven by the growth in the relative proportion of traffic derived from mobile. In mobile, ad clicks are fewer and ad rates are lower. Google’s present – and Facebook’s future – involves the painful fact that the very success of mobile platforms in helping human beings be productive, on the go, has a negative impact on the desktop-based advertising programs of the past 10 years. Mobile growth impacts web advertising revenues, except of course for Apple who make money from hardware and software and so benefits from these trends. The reason is simple. We do less ad-centric activities on mobile than we did on the web. And we are less likely to click away on an ad when we are focused on a specific goal on a largely single window device. The challenge faced by any content based mobile platform will be to try and figure out a revenue strategy that can monetize mobile use as mobile minutes cannibalize desktop minutes in the months and years ahead. There are many efforts to figure this out. From virtual goods in the context of games ( Zynga and others); to subscriptions for high quality content ( Wall Street Journal , The Economist ); to advertising and sponsorships in content (see Fotopedia’s “ Japan ” app); and Payment systems ( Square ). None of these are the solution – although all are valid and scalable. The billions spent on the web each year by advertisers will have to find a way to be effectively spent in the place consumers increasing will be – on smartphones. The mobile platform needs an innovation that fits it as closely as Google’s Adsense and Adwords were a fit for the desktop era. One thing we know for sure. Revolutions in computing are harsh on those who fail to adapt to what is new. Photo credit: Camilo Rueda López

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Facebook – Run from the Bulls?

The Wheel: What Is The Foxconn Debate Really About?

vertical8 — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:20:31 +0000

Thirty spokes meet at a nave; Because of the hole we may use the wheel. Clay is moulded into a vessel; Because of the hollow we may use the cup. Walls are built around a hearth; Because of the doors we may use the house. Thus tools come from what exists, But use from what does not. – Tao De Ching There’s a carousel in a small Cape Cod town that we visited this summer and the kids rode it a few times. The carousel is quite old and quite handsome and it makes a great diversion of an evening. I’m reminded now of trying to take pictures of the kids while they rode the carousel. For a while I’d wave and try to get their attention as they roared past, their laughter dopplering around the edge of the curve, and then, after four or five tries I’d give up and just watch. It’s a wheel, an endless circle, designed to delight and enthuse and distract. Reading the recent back and forth between Stephen Fry – an Apple apologist – and Mike Daisey – an Apple user/abuser – I’m reminded of that carousel. The gist is this: Mike Daisey woke up the NPR-listening world with his long piece of Foxconn for This American Life . It was a great piece – dramatic, educational, and eye-opening – but it’s definitely nothing we haven’t seen before. Some could say that it was The Jungle of Chinese manufacturing, a tell-all with just enough outrage to make us rethink a great horror. But the problem is this: Daisey is an actor and knows how to bring out the story, just as John Steinbeck was a writer and knew how to populate the Dust Bowl with Christ figures. That doesn’t make the story less effective – it makes it more so – but it does make the story less true. The problem is the endless circle of blame and apology. Daisey is correct in many of his assumptions, but offers a way forward that is currently unenforceable. But if you argue against Daisey’s points, you’re an apologist. But, as Paul Krugman writes : Such moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization — of the transfer of technology and capital from high-wage to low-wage countries and the resulting growth of labor-intensive Third World exports. These critics take it as a given that anyone with a good word for this process is naive or corrupt and, in either case, a de facto agent of global capital in its oppression of workers here and abroad. We keep going over the same ground here. The argument can be delineated like this: Foxconn is an evil sweatshop. Apple is a huge Foxconn customer. They should change things. Two of those things are true, a third is false. To be clear, I’m with the crowd that says that Apple is, at best, ignorant of Foxconn’s problems and at worst ignoring them. I agree things must change and Apple is in a great position to do it. But I don’t agree with the first point. I’ve seen sweat shops and Foxconn is a factory. If many of the major brands (I recall that Ford was a customer at one factory I visited) knew that their promotional USB keys were made in a building that looked like a gulag, they’d be skewered. Here’s hoping they are, one day. However, Daisey’s Foxconn story – written outside of the factory – and my own research , written inside the factory – don’t jibe. His discoveries that people get sick or are injured in factories are naive and I suspect his sample size of employees who approached him is far smaller than we realize. To go into the Foxconn factory is to see a place staffed by college-age kids and engineers who work 10 or so hours a day building electronics. There is no great Dickensian work house nor are there sad-eyed madonnas of the assembly line chained to the soldering irons. This isn’t the mundanity of evil – this is just mundanity. Nor am I saying that Daisey’s interviewees are malingerers with an axe to grind. I’m sure their lives are ruined or much harder thanks to Foxconn. The value of Daisey’s efforts is his ability to give these people a voice in an environment that would normally quash that voice. He’s doing what artists must do – reflecting a time and place through his own lens. My own opinion is simple: Apple needs to do more for the people in its manufacturing chain. I will not pretend that Apple can simply wave a magic wand and make every Foxconn employee rich and happy, but it has the cash and the wherewithal to further disrupt the Chinese supply chain and improve the lot of Foxconn’s employees. But I also agree with what one Gawker commenter said : “I believe Tim Cook will do more good for those employees (and already has, in point of fact) than Mike Daisey ever will.” Apple on the aggregate couldn’t care less about our existence nor does it deserve our undying respect and admiration. On an personal level there are plenty of folks inside Apple working and worrying about worker’s rights in China, but as an entity we are talking supply chains and price management. Apple makes excellent tools for our digital age, that’s it. To defend or excoriate the company is like screaming into the wind. However, through their constant rejiggering and improvements, they have essentially created a Western, ISO-compliant factory environment in a corporate culture that used to force underperforming employees to stand outside wearing a sign that said “I am a bad worker.” What Daisey did is made us think. Did he do it the right way, using the right tools? Absolutely not. Will he improve the lot of the workers he interviewed? I doubt it. But will his efforts – and the efforts of many who came before him – help bring the Chinese worker out of penury? Sure, eventually. I opened this piece talking about a carousel in Cape Cod, a delightfully bourgeois setting for a piece on poverty wage labor practices. I get to go to Cape Cod and put my kids on a carousel because my job involves dicking around on the Internet all day (I suspect Daisey’s does too). My one wish is that every Foxconn employee, at some point in their lives, will be able to sit down to an unhurried meal, chat with family, and maybe ride a carousel. I think it’s in Foxconn’s best interests to ensure that that happens – and soon – and I think that we’re nearly there. Things will get better, I’m sure of it, and I also feel that they already have.

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The Wheel: What Is The Foxconn Debate Really About?

Motorola Injunction Kicks 3 iPhones And An iPad Off Of Apple’s German Site

Administrator — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:26:46 +0000

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a website called Apple.de. And on this website, in historical Deutschland, there lived three iPhones and an iPad. They were a happy bunch: some wise but slow with old age, others quick and lean, but they all had one tragic flaw in common. According to a court in Germany, all four of them are infringing on Motorola patents related to embedded 3G/UMTS wireless technology, FRAND standards essential patents to be specific. This means that the technology within the patents is now a standard across the industry, and the company that owns said technology is required to license it to competitors under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. That said, the Mannheim Regional Court has enforced a permanent injunction on the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G and the iPad 2 3G. Luckily for German fanbois, the ban only affects Apple’s online presence. Customers can still purchase all four products in various retail locations, including Apple brick-and-mortar stores. This all comes back to a ruling in December , where the Mannheim court issued a preliminary injunction against Apple’s infringing products. German: “Derzeit nicht verfügbar” English: “Not currently available.” You may notice one wireless Apple device — the one that speaks — missing from the list. That’s likely because the iPhone 4S uses a Qualcomm chip as opposed to an Infineon/Intel chip. FOSS Patents suggests that Moto and Qualcomm have a licensing deal already in place, which would mean that Apple is covered by extension with regards to the 4S. In other Apple/Motorola/Germany-related news, Moto also won a permanent injunction today against Apple’s iCloud push email feature. This means Apple customers in Germany will likely be forced to revert back to the old method of push email, rather than using iCloud.

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Motorola Injunction Kicks 3 iPhones And An iPad Off Of Apple’s German Site

Windows Phone 8 Apollo Features Leak

bestcbstore — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:34:37 +0000

A video detailing the new features of Windows Phone 8 Apollo — originally intended for Microsoft’s smartphone partners — has leaked into the hands of PocketNow editors. Yay! In my opinion, Windows Phone Mango is a solid platform that’s quicker and smoother than anything I’ve seen on Android. Still, when looking at devices from Microsoft, Apple, and Google side-by-side, the Windows Phone always seems to lose in the spec department. That said, WinPho boss Joe Belfiore has plenty in store for us come Q4 2012 (the rumored release date of Apollo). As far as hardware is concerned, Microsoft is ready to take it to the next level, adding support for multiple cores, NFC, and full microSD card storage. Apollo will also support four different screen resolutions, though Belfiore apparently wasn’t very forthcoming with specifics on those. Developers are going to love this next part. According to PocketNow , developers will be able to use most of the same code when porting a Windows 8 app over to the Windows Phone platform. Of course, both platforms will share the same Metro-style interface, and that NFC radio will allow for tap-to-share capabilities between various Windows 8 devices. Microsoft used to tout its Tango video chat app , but it would seem as thought that Skype acquisition isn’t going to waste. Windows Phone 8 will have Skype baked right in, taking video chat and VoIP calls to a much higher level of audio/visual quality. Redmond expects at least 100,000 apps in the Marketplace by the time Apollo launches, at which point developers will have native code support and the ability to implement app-to-app communication. Now that most of our data plans are no longer unlimited, keeping track of data consumption is more important than ever. That said, Apollo will offer up a live tile for data usage called DataSmart. According to PocketNow, the feature will give precedence to WiFi connections. IE10 will include built-in server-side compression, which should reduce data usage, and the Local Scout tile will eventually hook you up with real-time locations of nearby hotspots. Windows has always been a powerhouse in the enterprise, and it’s about time the same was true for Windows Phone. That said, Apollo will bring with it BitLocker encryption support for full-disk encryption, along with the option to deploy company-specific apps behind enterprise firewalls. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Windows Phone is on its way people, and with such a hearty update on the way, I’m only that more confident in my prediction. I’m in good company , too.

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Windows Phone 8 Apollo Features Leak

TCTV: In the Studio, Greylock’s John Lilly Examines the Opportunities in Personal Health Data

kram412 — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 01:00:51 +0000

Editor’s note: TechCrunch contributor Semil Shah is an entrepreneur interested in digital media, consumer Internet, and social networks. Shah currently works at Votizen and is based in Palo Alto; you can follow him on twitter @semil “In the Studio” at TechCrunch TV continues today with a guest who was once a Senior Scientist at Apple and CEO of Mozilla Corporation before eventually making the trek up Sand Hill Road, where today he’s a partner at a leading venture capital firm. John Lilly , an investor with Greylock Partners , has kept himself busy. Having invested already in properties like Tumblr, Dropbox, and a series of others through his firm’s early-stage “Discovery Fund,” one of the new areas Lilly is investigating today is world of personal health data and systems. The sheer number of new companies and devices on the market offering consumer-level health solutions is simply staggering. We have an explosion in “computing devices” (phones and sensors), new hardware (like Fitbit ), new software services (like Cake Health ), and social systems and platforms that attempt to weave these all together to form some type of personalized representation of our current state of health and where we’d aspire to be. (Note: There are simply way to many companies in the health space to mention them all here. You can find more comprehensive lists on Quora and by poking around the website of Rock Health , an incubator designed to help launch health-focused startups. ) In this short discussion, Lilly brings some of his latest blog entries on personal health data and social health systems to life. Because he has a background in hardware, sensors, software, and now consumer products, Lilly has a unique perspective on where the real opportunities may lie relative to all the approaches currently on the market. In this talk, he’s able to paint a picture of how hardware, software, and social systems could marry to form a truly personalized health experience for the consumer, especially set against the backdrop of aggregate population data. For those entrepreneurs working away on the health devices, the health software approaches, and the ways in which we’ll share our data in social systems, this talk with Lilly is a great chance to learn from someone who has been thinking deeply about the opportunity a few years down the road, with an eye focused on the convergence of the hardware, software, and social.

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TCTV: In the Studio, Greylock’s John Lilly Examines the Opportunities in Personal Health Data

You Can Also Spy On Someone’s iPhone If You Kidnap Them And Lock Them In Your Basement

Achilles — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:23:54 +0000

Yesterday, Gizmodo ran a story about a supposed bug in iOS, specifically related to iMessage. The title: The Apple Bug That Let Us Spy on a Total Stranger’s iPhone . Essentially, Gizmodo got ahold of an iPhone that was receiving iMessages not intended for that phone. The fact that some of these messages were quasi-sexual in nature and that the phone belonged to a teenage boy made the story more salacious. But here’s the thing, fear mongering aside, this “bug” is something that is so convoluted that it’s almost not worth even addressing. Almost. Here’s what happened: a kid was having trouble with his iPhone. His mother took that iPhone to an Apple Store. When there, an Apple Store employee screwed up. Rather than following protocol and using a test SIM to debug the phone (Apple has test SIMs in their stores for this exact purpose), he oddly used his own SIM. This essentially turned the kid’s phone into the retail employee’s phone. The employee probably thought this was fine since it would only be temporary while he fixed the phone. The problem — which one has to assume he didn’t realize — is that even after you take the SIM out of the phone, the pairing leaves behind an imprint of that SIM. In this case, the iMessage account. iMessage has made a lot of headlines in the past few months as it’s Apple’s brilliant way of helping to destroy the rip-off that is SMS. One key element of iMessage is the ability to pin an Apple account to the service alongside your phone number. This needs to happen in order for users to take full advantage of iMessage. Because of this connection, Apple can automatically figure out whether to use standard SMS or iMessage within the iMessages app. And iMessages has a bonus: the ability to work with many devices at once, ensuring your messages stay in sync. These upsides — trying to make something that’s somewhat complicated as user-friendly as possible — lead to a downside like this. If you happen to be swapping SIM cards, you might transfer your iMessage credentials over to this other phone. But let’s be honest, how many people are going to do that? In the U.S., most people have no idea what a SIM card even is. And if they do, it doesn’t matter since most iPhones are locked. In other countries, SIMs are obviously popular, but this issue would involve you swapping SIMs with someone with an unlocked phone (and not wanting to set up your own iMessages account when you swap back). But none of that is even what happened here. In this case, an Apple retail employee simply made a mistake. Reached for comment, an Apple spokesperson acknowledged this: “This was an extremely rare situation that occurred when a retail employee did not follow the correct service procedure and used their personal SIM to help a customer who did not have a working SIM. This resulted in a temporary situation that has since been resolved by the employee.” The bigger issue here is if your phone is stolen. Ars Technica actually addressed this about a month ago. This is still an edge case (as the vast majority of phones aren’t stolen), but Apple should come up with a way to remotely disable iMessages on a per-device basis. The way to do it right now seems to be to disable your Apple account, which is unfortunate ( see: update ). Of course, having your phone stolen in the first place is unfortunate. And unless it’s remote-wiped immediately (which rarely happens), any crook can get access to things likely much worse than your iMessages. This is a downside of life and scumbags. Speaking of scumbags, it sure was nice of Gizmodo to run several of this Apple retail employee’s private messages and images along with the name that everyone knows him by. Part two of this story will probably involve kidnapping him, locking him in a basement, and liveblogging his emails — which were not secured because Apple doesn’t have a security feature to auto-lock and wipe phones when someone is hit over the head by a two-by-four. Update : Apple has pointed out the following things that can be done if your device is stolen to ensure the problems above don’t occur: Remote Wipe and then call your carrier/de-activate your SIM (de-register must be within 24 hours after Remote Wipe) or Activate a replacement phone with a replacement SIM using your same phone number or Change your Apple ID password (only works if you use an Apple ID with iMessage) [photo: flickr/ anonymous9000 ]

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You Can Also Spy On Someone’s iPhone If You Kidnap Them And Lock Them In Your Basement