Apple Jan. 27 launch event... what will it be?

[Uncle Ted]

iTunes Match... Finding the songs you rip in the iTunes store. "We give that music the same benefits as music purchased in iTunes."







For only $24.99 a year.

[Uncle Ted]

Compared...

[Uncle Ted]

One of the icloud datacenters... Where your digital life will live:

[SCcoug]

Bring on the flame wars in the tech blogs!

[Parrot Head]

Sorry, android. you're #2....

Things that are cool that have less-fruity names:

1. Jimmer
2. Android
3. John Deere
4. Machete
5. Apple

Sorry, Apple, you're #5.

So what does "mobile installed base" mean and how does that compare to Apple being #2 -- per Comscore, same as cited in the pic -- in % of subscribers? I couldn't find a differentiator on their site?

Top Smartphone Platforms
3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2011
Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens

Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
Apr-11

Google 36.4%
Apple 26.0%
RIM 25.7%
Microsoft 6.7%
Palm 2.6%

And when are the finally going to name an OS "The Snarky" or something that suits the Apple personality better than "Lion"?

[Uncle Ted]

Things that are cool that have less-fruity names:

1. Jimmer
2. Android
3. John Deere
4. Machete
5. Apple

Sorry, Apple, you're #5.

So what does "mobile installed base" mean and how does that compare to Apple being #2 -- per Comscore, same as cited in the pic -- in % of subscribers? I couldn't find a differentiator on their site?

Top Smartphone Platforms
3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2011
Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens

Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
Apr-11

Google 36.4%
Apple 26.0%
RIM 25.7%
Microsoft 6.7%
Palm 2.6%

And when are the finally going to name an OS "The Snarky" or something that suits the Apple personality better than "Lion"?

Business Insider explains Fruit's marketing...

Despite evidence to the contrary, Apple wants the world to believe it is not getting clobbered by Android in the mobile world.
To prove its point, it threw up this slide during WWDC which shows iOS with 44% of the mobile installed base. iOS counts towards iPads, iPod Touches, and iPhones. And Apple is including all iOS devices ever sold in the image below.

"To date we have sold -- wait for it -- 200 million iOS devices. And that makes iOS the number one mobile operating system with more than 44% of the market," said Apple SVP of iOS software Scott Forstall.

Uh, no, it doesn't. It shows all the devices purchased, not the devices in use today. We've bought multiple iPhones, but only use one right now. This stat doesn't mean anything, really.

See, it includes all those iPhones people buy. You can't be carry around that old iPhone when a new one comes out.

[Surfah]

And iOS 5 is jailbroken already.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

The iPhone was released on Verizon in early February and Android still gained about 5 percent of the market share compared to about 1 percent for Apple. People are leaving Blackberry in droves and Android seems to be getting most of them.

[Uncle Ted]

The iPhone was released on Verizon in early February and Android still gained about 5 percent of the market share compared to about 1 percent for Apple. People are leaving Blackberry in droves and Android seems to be getting most of them.

Don't forget about Windose Mobile... Windose Mobile is growing, right?

The Windows Mobile picture appears bleaker, as the platform slid to 6.7 percent in April from 7.5 percent in March and 8 percent in January.

OK, never mind.

[Surfah]

Don't forget about Windose Mobile... Windose Mobile is growing, right?



OK, never mind.

Which is why I still don't understand why Nokia jumped into bed with Windows. Nokia was a giant and they're reeling right now because they held onto Symbian far too long and then compounded that mistake. I wonder if it's too late to recover even if they adopt Android now.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Don't forget about Windose Mobile... Windose Mobile is growing, right?



OK, never mind.

It's interesting to watch Microsoft sloooowly get marginalized. It's completely lost out on the tablet and smartphone OS markets. I imagine one of Google's goals is to have an OS arise out of some iteration of Android that will start eating into Microsoft's OS market on desktops and laptops.

With all the treasure MS had, it's amazing to me that there mobile offerings were so shitty. Supposedly, Windows 7 mobile isn't bad -- though I can't say that with any certainty since I didn't even bother trying one out. Apple changed the game in 2007 with the iPhone and would have absolutely dominated the market had it been released on all the carriers. But Android filled in the gaps with the other carriers and earned enough of a customer base to effectively challenge Apple. Now Android has the largest market share with Apple being an extremely strong second.

How did MS eff this up? Did they misprioritize when they were sinking billions of dollars into video games? When the lame Palm Pilots were around back in the late 90s I remember thinking "what's the point of these? Without the internet, who cares? With the internet, well I'd really care about that." When wifi began to proliferate and Blackberry devices enabled email, couldn't MS see where everything was going?

[Uncle Ted]

And iOS 5 is jailbroken already.

Stopping tethered jailbreaking isn't high on Apple's priorities but security is...

Apple iOS: Why it's the most secure OS, period

Apple has repeatedly boasted it has an OS that is more secure than the competition. While security experts have frequently debated whether Mac OS X fits the bill, iOS doesn't seem to raise such questions. Miller, for example, does not disagree with the assessment that the iOS may be the current pinnacle of security for a mass-market operating system. "It's in the realm of truth," he says.

In five major areas, Apple's iOS has better security than desktop operating systems and matches or exceeds the security of its smartphone rivals. iOS has a strong set of security features, including:

- A sandbox isolates programs, and iOS's memory organization makes exploitation more difficult.

- Applications that run on the iOS are vetted by Apple and can be removed if found to be malicious.

- Patches can be quickly applied to the iPhone and iPad to close security holes in the operating system.

- The software is regularly reviewed, especially its open source components.

- The platform has the advantage of attacker psychology -- attackers still target smartphones far less than desktop systems.

[...]

iOS also compares well against its competitors in the mobile space. Google's Android does not have DEP or ASLR, but it does have a strong sandbox and code signing, says Kevin Mahaffey, CTO for mobile security firm Lookout. Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS lacks all but sandboxing. "They all have really good sandboxes in terms on what limits are put on what code can do," Mahaffey says.

Although the inclusion of ASLR and DEP seemingly puts Apple ahead in design, it lacks an advanced feature that helps lock down both Google's Android and RIM's BlackBerry: granular privilege controls. Requiring applications to get specific permissions to access data on the phone can bolster security significantly, Mahaffey says.

[Surfah]

Stopping tethered jailbreaking isn't high on Apple's priorities but security is...

Apple iOS: Why it's the most secure OS, period

How is the cloud going to be protected? I don't recall anything from the presentation yesterday about the cloud's security aside from the files being encrypted while they're pushed up and down. Cloud security has always made me weary and one reason I have yet to accept any dropbox invitation that I seem to get once a week or so. They must offer more storage with referrals.

[Uncle Ted]

How is the cloud going to be protected? I don't recall anything from the presentation yesterday about the cloud's security aside from the files being encrypted while they're pushed up and down. Cloud security has always made me weary and one reason I have yet to accept any dropbox invitation that I seem to get once a week or so. They must offer more storage with referrals.

Of course, documents and other data can be encrypted as they are pushed up and decrypted on the way down using a key stored in your keychain. Therefore, if the iCloud's data gets compromised then it is all still encrypted, hopefully with a really strong password which is becoming harder to create these days given the computing power of GPUs.

The iCloud, however, may help spread the insecurity of one of your iDevices to all your iDevices. For example, if your iPad gets pwned then it may create an app that it pushes up to the cloud and gets then installed on your iPhone and later activated. Therefore the goal may be to not let any of your iDevices get compromised in the first place.

[Parrot Head]

A friend posted a link to an article claiming that the cloud is powered by Microsoft.
http://www.microsoftaddict.com/does-...crosoft-azure/
Does iCloud utilize Microsoft Azure?