Apple Archive

On its website, Apple has just confirmed that its co-founder and former CEO, Steve Jobs, has passed away at age 56. After bringing the company back from the brink of bankruptcy and turning it into one of the world's most succesful technology companies, Jobs lost the battle with pancreatic cancer.

I'm down with the flu at the moment, so I wasn't really looking forward to doing a detailed write-up of all the awesome stuff Apple was going to show off today. So, Tim Cook, thanks for talking about nothing for almost two hours straight. The only mildly interesting thing is a slightly specbumped iPhone 4, dubbed the iPhone 4S, which has a faster processor and graphics chip, better camera, and a few other improvements here and there to bring it in line with Android phones launched earlier this year. Sadly, Apple insists on the teeny tiny 3.5" screen, which is too small even for my girly fingers (I'm not kidding, I have to buy gloves in women's clothing stores). For the rest, it was a long rundown of iOS5 features we already knew, and improvements to voice recognition - which is something WP7, Android, and every other self-respecting mobile operating system does already anyway. They do claim it will sport a more natural feel to it, but only time will tell how well it'll work outside of pre-recorded and widely tested on-stage demos.

So, I kind of mocked this story yesterday, but today an interesting twist has emerged which puts the story in an entirely different light. This week, CNet reported a story about how Apple is working with the San Francisco Police Department to retrieve a lost iPhone 5 prototype. The police and Apple apparently traced the phone to someone's house, and showed up on his doorstep, threatening him and his family. The only problem - the SFPD has no record of any house search or of the case in general - raising the question whether Apple employees falsely impersonated the SFPD, which happens to be a serious crime in California. Update: While I was busy sleeping, the story changed a little bit, but it's still far too shady. After conferring with Apple, the SFPD now states four police officers were involved, and that only the two Apple employees entered Calderon's house. However, Calderon had no idea these two were private non-police people, since he claims they did not identify themselves as Apple employees. Had he known, he would not have let them search his house. So, update or no, Apple employees still impersonated police officers, and issued threats to intimidate Calderon into letting them search his house - without a warrant. I don't understand how people can just accept this sort of behaviour. Don't you have rights in the US? Update II: Perfect summary.

"My neighbor, Steve Jobs, has been in the news lately. The talk of the town is the recent announcement he will be stepping aside to let other seeds grow at Apple. The business press, the general press, the blogosphere, and just about everybody else has waxed poetic about the 'greatest CEO of all time' saying that this 'boy wonder' has shaped the very nature of our lives with his genius. It's all true, but here in Palo Alto, Steve Jobs isn't just an icon, he's also the guy who lives down the street." I like stories that put a human being behind a public figure. As much as I dislike Apple's recent policies, Jobs is still just a regular person, like all of us. It's easy to forget that when you're sitting behind a glass desk 4000 kilometres away.

Why does news like this always come right before I want to go to bed? Steve Jobs has just announced he is stepping down from the CEO position of Apple. He will be succeeded by Apple's chief operating officer, Tim Cook. Steve Jobs will remain at Apple as chairman of the board and director. This is... Strange.

The lure of shiny toys has helped Apple's BSD-based Mac OS X operating system overtake Linux to become the operating system that is the second most used by developers, according to Evans Data.

Petty Apple is petty. Amazon, Kobo, and others have changed their applications to conform to Apple's App Store rules, and if there's one word that describes the situation these booksellers are in, it's petty. Still, it's leading to good things: Kobo has announced it's going to bypass the App Store by writing an HTML5 e-reader for iOS (and thus, for other HTML5-capable mobile devices).

It's still Apple time over here. Apple has not only released Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, but it has also refreshed several pieces of hardware. Both the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini have seen spec bumps, and most interestingly, the Mini no longer has an optical drive (about time - that thing has become useless for me anyway; not even my workstation has one). They also got Thunderbolt ports, of course. Apple also unveiled a new Cinema display, called the Thunderbolt Display, for which a Thunderbolt-equipped Mac is required. Also... The plastic MacBook is no more.

InfoWorld's Galen Gruman provides a look at the best features Mac OS X Lion has to offer, as well as the biggest disappointments of Apple's latest OS. Whole disk encryption, the new Server application, automatic file versioning and locking against accidental saves, iOS-like configuration policies for IT, automatic syncing across Mac OS X and iOS 5 are among the key new features of Mac OS X. But many of the even the best new features still fall somewhat short, including the new contextual scroll bars, issues with sharing automatically versioned documents, the lack of external disk encryption after the fact, and the complexity of new Mac OS X Lion Server app.

"Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2011 third quarter ended June 25, 2011. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $28.57 billion and record quarterly net profit of $7.31 billion, or $7.79 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $15.70 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.25 billion, or $3.51 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 41.7 percent compared to 39.1 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 62 percent of the quarter's revenue. The Company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter, a 183 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 3.95 million Macs during the quarter, a 14 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.54 million iPods, a 20 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter."

Even though I was extremely sceptical of this whole tablet thing, I bought an iPad 2 a few weeks ago. Obviously, this occasion couldn't pass by without a proper review of the thing on OSNews, so here we are. Inside, my view on the iPad 2, and more importantly, how my perception of tablets has been turned around completely.

As we reported earlier this week, YGN Ethical Hacker Group threatened to go full disclosure with a security flaw in Apple's developers' website. Apple has given in to the pressure, and has fixed the flaw. Since it's been fixed, the details of the flaw are now available online.

Well, this just got interesting. There's been a bit of a backlash over Apple's Final Cut X Pro, which is considered a step down from previous versions by many professional videographers, as they claim it lacks countless features - leading to the nickname 'iMovie Pro'. Former Shake product designer and former Apple employee Ron Brinkmann has now weighed in on the situation. His advice to professionals? Don't rely on companies like Apple.

With all the news about Anonymous, LulzSec, Anti-Sec, and so on, you'd almost forget there are more ethical hacking groups out there as well. One such group, YGN Ethical Hacker Group, informed Apple of several weaknesses in its developers website on April 25. Apple acknowledged the flaws, but so far, hasn't done anything about them. YGN Ethical Hacker Group has now stated they will fully disclose the vulnerabilities if Apple doesn't fix them in the coming few days.