Sponsor: New MacX DVD Ripper Pro Giveaway

I'm pleased to welcome this week's sponsor, Digiarty, makers of MacX DVD Ripper Pro back here to TMO. Having a simple, DVD-ripping solution is vital as we all move to consuming our content on iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs. MacX DVD Ripper Pro makes this easy with a single app solution that you can download…

Dell Fails Security 101 with eDellRoot Certificate Flaw

Oops! Dell's PCs are open to phishing attacks. Security blogger Hanno Böck said Dell included a root certificate called eDellRoot Certificate and corresponding private key on its computers, effectively giving attackers everything they need to craft their own valid certificates for webpages. He said, Laptops from the company come with a preinstalled root certificate that…

Finding Apple's missing User Guides

Many years ago, when I bought my first Mac, it was accompanied by a beautiful manual that gave me color instructions for how to hook it up, turn it on, and run the software included in the box. The documentation that came with that Mac and many Apple devices that followed set the bar for…

iFixit Guts Elusive Apple Pencil, Finds Uber-tiny Logic Board

Opening up an Apple Pencil may be ugly, but what's inside is pretty cool Apple Pencil is the companion stylus for the iPad Pro. It's pressure and angle sensitive, and charges in minutes. What it doesn't have is a replaceable battery, or any way to repair damaged components. iFixit had to slice open Apple Pencil's…

Don't Trade Your Privacy for Nothing

Governments and intelligence agencies charged with protecting us are already on edge because of encryption built into iOS, Android, and even individual chat apps, and it's a sure thing that some of those governments will use the Paris attacks to push legislation mandating back doors into encryption systems or simply outlawing encrypted communications entirely. That…

Verizon gets FCC Green Light for Wi-Fi Calling

Verizon gets Wi-Fi calling waiver from FCC Carriers are supposed to file for an FCC waiver allowing Wi-Fi calling because the feature doesn't reliably support TTY systems for hearing impaired calls. T-Mobile and Sprint have offered Wi-Fi calling support for months because they never filed for the waiver, while AT&T only recently got on board…

Apple CEO Tim Cook Reiterates that 'Apple Is Open'

Apple is open.” It was a standalone sentence in a long email from Apple CEO Tim Cook to his employees in the wake of a racial profiling incident at an Apple Store in Australia. That email reiterated a philosophy Mr. Cook has stated many times, that Apple is a company open to everyone, “regardless of…

InstaAgent Pulled from App Store for Stealing User Names, Passwords

Uh oh! More malware found on the App Store! InstaAgent, or more properly Who Viewed Your Profile-InstaAgent, was download more than 500,000 times by people who presumably wanted to know who was looking at their Instagram profile. Instagram is a social networking service owned by Facebook that lets users post photos for others to view.…

Steve Jobs Movie Tanks, Pulled from Theaters

Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs Data from Box Office Mojo showed the weekend gross for Steve Jobs was US$823,000, and that so far it has brought in only $16,684,073—a far cry from its $30 million budget. Mr. Sorkin's script was very loosely—more like inspired—by Walter Isaacson's official biography of Mr. Jobs. That, it turns out,…

Apple Bag Check Class Action Lawsuit Dismissed

Court shoots down Apple employee bag check class action lawsuit The class action lawsuit claimed checking their personal bags was demeaning and embarrassing, and that they should've been paid for the time managers spent looking through their belongings needed to be compensated instead of off the clock. Judge Alsup disagreed saying employees weren't required to…

Amazon Explores the Brave New World of Brick and Mortar Book Sales

Amazon Books in Seattle's University Village Source: Amazon If you're not familiar with Seattle, but University Village rings a bell, that could be because it boasts an Apple Store, which then led to Microsoft opening up one of its retail stores across the street. I'll get into Apple-envy later in the piece, but the first…

GTAT to Clear $439M Apple Debt with Equipment Auction

GTAT equipment auction will settle its score with Apple GTAT struck a deal to make synthetic sapphire glass for iPhones, but failed to produce the quantity or quality Apple needed. Apple fronted $578 million to help the company ramp up its sapphire production and transition from being an equipment maker into a glass supplier, and…

The Hundred Year Old Computer Below the Grand Central Apple Store

The first ever, ever, ever electronic computer? Maybe. Screenshot from The Gothamist video I'll leave it to computer historians to argue the merits of that claim, but it's cool, and according to the same tour guide, “Every year, Apple computer chieftains, ultra super chieftain hoo-has, come down here…they go behind that board, and they literally…

What Tim Cook Really Said about Android Switchers

​Apple CEO Tim Cook Here's the full quote from Tim Cook, which came 45 minutes into the conference call in response to a request for clarification from Steven Milunovich from UBS: For customers who purchased an iPhone last quarter, and [original emphasis] replaced a smartphone, that 30 percent of those switched from an Android device.…

Love it or Hate it, Sorkin's Steve Jobs is an Emotional Ride

Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs First, let's get the elephant in the room out of the way: Michael Fassbender stars as Steve Jobs and no, he doesn't look like the man who gave us the reality distortion field, iMac, and iPhone. That doesn't matter because Mr. Fassbender becomes the Steve Jobs in Mr. Sorkin's tale…

Flash Releases Latest Zero-day Exploit Patch Early

Adobe said the security flaw affects Flash 19.0.0.207 and earlier on Mac and Windows, and 11.2.205.535 on Linux. The company said the exploit is “being used in limited, targeted attacks.” The company promised a fix would be coming this week, but managed to beat its own schedule. The update actually rolled last Friday several days…

Facebook Says Background App Usage Fix is Coming

iPhone battery draining too fast? It's probably Facebook Here's the back story: My iPhone 6 battery was draining noticeably quicker than it should based on my usage, so I looked at my Battery settings to see what was taking more than its fare share of juice. It was Facebook by a long shot and it…

Judge Cote Agrees to Pull Antitrust Monitor from Apple

Apple's antitrust monitor is out this Friday The DOJ filed a letter requesting Judge Cote let Mr. Bromwich's two-year position end without any extension. He had been charged with monitoring Apple's activities to ensure the company didn't engage in anticompetitive practices, and that it set up training programs to teach employees how to avoid anticompetitive…

Silicon Valley Sources Refute Elon Musk Claims about Apple

Elon Musk and Tim Cook Taking a Ride in TMO's Rendering of an Apple Car  “Important engineers?” Mr. Musk told Handlesblatt when asked about Apple poaching employees from Tesla. “They have hired people we've fired. We always jokingly call Apple the 'Tesla Graveyard.' If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple.…

Tesla's Elon Musk Rant at Apple Means He's on to Something Scary

________________________ The sensational, on the surface, news is what Elon Musk said about Apple hiring away his important engineers. Forbes told the story. Important engineers? They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard.’ If you don’t make at Tesla, you go work at Apple. However, all that is just…