News

__________________ To bring myself up to date, I chatted with a Comcast Corporate Communications representative in Philadelphia. It turns out that for the last several years, Comcast has been taking a very pragmatic approach that involves monitoring rather than imposing hard data caps that would result in a specific customer losing service. The representative told…

Megatron's profits jump thanks to the iPhone's success Smartphone manufacturing makes up the majority of Pegatron's profits right now, and CEO Jason Cheng said he's fine taking advantage of that, according to Reuters. “It's definitely not a good thing to be too concentrated on just a few clients. But you can't avoid the fact that…

Here’s how it works: You take one iOS device and set it up as the “host” device. Connect it via AirPlay to the device of your choosing (in my case, the Apple TV hooked to my television). Then encourage others to download the free app, and use that to take photos. Once someone gets a…

______________________ First, there is the Apple Thunderbolt Display, last updated in July 2011. This display is so obsolete and overpriced compared to the competition, I didn't even consider it when I was hunting for a new one. Apple should update it or discontinue it, but not let it linger. The most frequent Apple product that…

Blackberry thinks it's Secutablet has a shot in the tablet market Blackberry is hoping to play off of its reputation to draw in government and business buyers who need high levels of security for their mobile devices, and that may be exactly what they need to find a place in the tablet market. “Security is…

Becoming Steve Jobs Written by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, Becoming Steve Jobs was based in part by interviews with Steve Jobs conducted by Mr. Schelnder over a 25 year period. But the authors also were given interviews by Tim Cook, Sir Jony Ive, Eddy Cue, Pixar’s creative head honcho John Lasseter, Disney CEO Bob…

Apple experienced a rare online services outage Wednesday, an outage that made iCloud, Mac App Store, App Store, iBooks, and iTunes Store inaccessible. The company said in a statement it was due to an internal DNS error, and apologized for the outage. “We apologize to our customers experiencing problems with iTunes and other services this…

“If Apple does it, obviously it's good news for us, Mr. Ghosn said, according to CNet. “The fact that a company outside of the auto industry wants to do electric cars is refreshing.” Mr. Ghosn also said that he was curious about Apple's project. This contrasts sharply with other auto execs who have expressed doubts…

Samsung has also found that no one—and I mean no one—cares for its me-too services and solution-in-search-of-problem software addons to Android. What's a shameless IP thief to do? Well, if you're Samsung, you come out with an innovative service called Samsung Pay, a mobile payment solution that will launch with the Galaxy S6 sometime this…

Apple adds cars to its business description in Switzerland News of the corporate description change comes courtesy of the Swiss website ApfelBlog (English translation). From Apple's updated corporate description: Vehicles; Apparatus for locomotion by land, air or water; electronic hardware components for motor vehicles, rail cars and locomotives, ships and aircraft; Anti-theft devices; Theft alarms…

Don't believe me? Here are two photos of the same subject, some change. Both were taken at maximum magnification on my iPhone and were shot at approximately the same distance to make it easier the see the difference. I've got lots of bright ambient light. I should be able to get razor sharp shots no…

Episode #111   I first heard about Phillips’ Hue Personal Wireless Lighting when the Apple Store began carrying the Phillips Hue Starter Pack in 2012. It promised everything you needed to get started, namely three color-changing LED light bulbs plus a Wi-Fi hub that lets you control bulb color and intensity with an iPhone/iPad app.…

Apple buys, shuts down Camel Audio An official announcement hasn't come from either company. The confirmation for the buyout came via documents found on the corporate registry site Companies House, according to MacRumors. Camel Audio's address is now the same as Apple's in London, and its only director is listed and Heather Joy Morrison, who…

Pebble's new Time smart watch with color display to ship in May The company said Time is about  20 percent thinner than the original Pebble smartwatch, and has a slightly curved body to better fit your wrist. It combines the Pebble's plastic body with the Pebble Steel's metal body for a new look the company…

Some of TMO's readers were among the first to predict Samsung would try to develop its own electric car in response to Apple. Rumors about an Apple Car have exploded in the last 10 days, and Samsung has a storied track record of copying Apple. Cue our editorial image above. But—and that's a really big…

Lenovo had to send out its CTO to do interviews and try to spin mitigate the PR disaster, which would be fine but there was no discussion of how bad the issue truly is. Then the Department of Homeland Security warned against the software, calling out Lenovo by name and urging users to get the software…

There is officially no such thing as computer security. At least from the most sophisticated attackers. Our only hope is that our profile is so low and are activities so mundane that we're off any entity's radar. If you disagree, I present several stories that came to the surface this week. 1. First, at least…

Ignoring the disgusting bit where Lenovo is trying to push shopping/advertising onto their paying customers, this issue highlights the reality that any backdoor baked into any software is accessible by anyone, including malicious hackers. With the U.S. and UK governments both demanding backdoor access to our mobile devices and messaging services, Lenovo's behavior serves as…

A123 Systems sues Apple for hiring its car battery design team A123 named Apple along with the five employees who left for the Cupertino company in the lawsuit. The filing said Apple first hired away their CFO Mujeeb Ijaz, who then brought on board four other employees over an eight month window. The five were…

This is the second major mainstream report claiming Apple is developing a car this week. The Financial Times reported that Apple had hired a top Mercedes-Benz executive to work on the project Both reports follow BusinessInsider's reporting that an Apple employee told that publication Apple was working on something that will “give Tesla a run…

Each social network handles your post-death data differently Facebook Facebook's new policy still offers the memorial page option, but now includes a way for subscribers to assign someone as a caretaker for their account after they're gone. Once Facebook has received notice of your death, your legacy contact can change your profile photo, accept friend…

At issue is Google's long-standing deal with Apple to be the default search engine on Safari. No one who's talking knows exactly when that deal will expire, but there has been increasing speculation that it's “soon.” Like, within-the-next-6-to-18-months soon. And that has companies jockeying for position and observers speculating on who will win that spot…

Twitter blames Apple for 4 million user drop Mr. Noto said during the company's quarterly earnings report, So we said we lost four million monthly active users due to the iOS 8 integration. One million of those monthly active users were Twitter owned and operated monthly active users. And three million were on Safari, what…

Net neutrality protection is coming, but there's still a fight ahead Mr. Wheeler revealed his plans in a Wired op-ed piece on Wednesday. In his piece he said, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open internet protections ever proposed by the FCC. These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking…