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App: Constitution for iPhone and iPod Touch If you love the constitution, the right to privacy, and America, you should support Apple against the government's push to destroy your civil liberties. Although there are many technical nuances that can mire down the discussion around this issue, 3 tried and true constitutional arguments against eroding our…

Reuters/Ipsos Poll First off, let's look at the Reuters/Ipsos survey results, which shows that 46 percent of people agreed with Apple's decision to fight the court order. 35 percent disagreed. The poll broke down results by political affiliation, just 37 percent of Republicans agreeing with Apple, while 45 percent disagreed. For those identifying as Democrats,…

The just released Satechi Aluminum Wireless Presenter is a beautifully designed red LED laser pointer combined with slide navigation buttons, all wrapped in Bluetooth and a rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery. It's available in the matching Apple colors of Silver, Space Gray or Gold. Satechi  Aluminum Wireless Presenter The Laser This is red LED laser with a…

More iPhone unlocking cases are lining up Sources speaking with the Wall Street Journal said the DOJ is trying to get at potential evidence on iPhones with passcode locks in place, much as it is doing in the San Bernardino case. These 12 other cases, however, don't involve terrorist acts, and are essentially on hold…

Pew Survey Chart Pew surveyed 1,002 people, half on landlines and half on cellphones. 51 percent sided with the FBI, while 38 percent thought that Apple should not unlock the iPhone. In reality, Apple has not been ordered to unlock the iPhone, but instead was ordered to create a new operating system that could be…

DOJ to court: Make Apple comply with iPhone unlocking order DOJ prosecutors said Apple is resisting to help in a Federal investigation despite the fact that the company has until February 26 to respond to the court order. According to ABC News, the new filing stated, Rather than assist the effort to fully investigate a…

It's been a bit of a war of words so far. Chairman Wheeler has noted that while the cost of computers has gone down dramatically, the cost of these set-top boxes, typically DVRs, has not, and the customers are paying hefty annual rental fees of about $200. And if the customer wants to cancel service…

Episode #163   It’s been a couple of years since I talked about universal remote control devices and apps. For me, an awesome universal remote control is the holy grail of home automation; having a single device that can mimic every function of all five individual remote controls for my home theatre system is priceless.…

Warning! Creative Cloud bug could delete files without permission The bug deletes the contents of the hidden folder that's alphabetically first on user's hard drive when they log into Creative Cloud. In some cases, that folder holds system-critical files, or in the case of Backblaze subscribers, the data used to keep track of which drives…

This is happening in two stages. First, I have seen the community of Mac users steadily replacing the boot drives in their Macs with SSDs (or direct Flash memory). This started first on the MacBook Air and is now common on iMacs. I first did this in 2010 when I paid an extra US$400 to…

Apple hit with patent infringement lawsuit over haptic feedback features Immersion named the Apple iPhone 6, Apple iPhone 6 Plus, Apple iPhone 6s, Apple iPhone 6s Plus, Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport, and Apple Watch Edition in its lawsuit. The company named U.S. patents 8,619,051 “Haptic Feedback System with Stored Effects,” 8,773,356 “Method and Apparatus…

VoIP-Pal sues Apple over iMessage, WiFi calling patent infringement According to VoIP-Pal's filing the system Apple uses to determine whether conversations in the Messages app should use iMessage or standard SMS, and the system for deciding when to use WiFi calling are covered by patents it owns. The company said Apple, AT&T, and Verizon all…

Autonomous cars are upon us. Sure, it'll be a few years before they are pervasive, but we're already on the leading edge of the technology. For some interesting and informative background, I refer you to the February 2016 issue of Car & Driver, p. 58, “Going to the Dogs.” From the intro: So while we're…

Sonos rounded up 30,000 people from  U.S., Canada, U.K.,Germany, The Netherlands, France, Sweden and Australia to participate in a study conducted by United Minds. Dr. Daniel J. Levitin—a neuroscientist and author of This is Your Brain on Music—was an advisor for the study. The study showed that listening to music out loud (as opposed to…

Hackers ready to buy Apple employee logins An Apple employee told Business Insider, “You'd be surprised how many people get on to us, just random Apple employees. You get emails offering you thousands [of euros] to get a password to get access to Apple.” Hackers are reportedly also targeting Apple employees for company information. Exactly…

To make matters worse, the malware is digitally signed with a valid Apple developer certificate. Intego says that certificate was issued to a “Maksim Noskov.” According to Johannes Ullrich, Ph.D., of the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center, the security researcher who first spotted the malware, Apple has since revoked that certificate. Mr. Ullrich posted a…

Foxconn's bid for Sharp won out over INCJ With its bid getting the green light, Foxconn wants to move quickly to wrap up the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal. If all goes well, Foxconn hopes to finish the transaction in the next few days. Foxconn's strong push makes sense because there's still a…

There are many ho-hum and many good portable battery chargers for our iDevices. Most are just little boxes with a battery, LED lights and USB ports. However, the new Lynktec (5,300 or 8,000 mAh) charger has a multitude of thoughtful features, expansion options and usage profiles. It sets a new standard. This product has so…

GOOGL (Alphabet's ticker symbol) ended Tuesday's trading session at $780.91, a gain of $10.14 (+1.32 percent), on heavy volume of 6.3 million shares trading hands. Shares of AAPL ended the day at $94.48, down $1.95 (-2.02 percent), on light volume of 37.2 million shares trading hands. That left Alphabet's market cap at $537 billion, while…

The study was coauthored by several signatories under the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. It's stated purpose was to evaluate claims by law enforcement and governments, both the U.S. and in other countries, that end-to-end encryption in our communication devices is crippling surveillance efforts. The umbrella term used for this argument…

Apple Maps became big news after Fast Company called out the company for abortion-related search results. The publication said it performed searches in locations around San Francisco and was shown an adoption center outside the city instead of clinics providing abortion services. Abortion search or gun search: both show accurate results in Apple Maps The…

The owners of the 2015 12-inch MacBook have a small problem. There is only one USB-C port and no USB-A ports. The assumption has been that 3rd party hubs would solve that problem, and now, post CES, new ones are shipping. The Satechi USB-C Hub with pass through power and two USB-A ports is small,…

Apple CEO Tim Cook Tim Cook made a series of pointed declarations about Apple's intentions during the current worldwide economic slump. We believe in investing during downturns. Is CEO Cook trying to put a good face on a downturn that could slow the company's growth? The fact is that Apple has dealt with this before,…

Promo shot of Assembly Member Cooper, in the middle Source: Mr. Cooper's website Put another way, Assembly Member Cooper wants to make all of us vulnerable to the hacking of criminal organizations, malicious hackers, and foreign governments, and he's trying to do it in the very state that is home to Apple and Google. From…