As an author who self-published my first book through Lulu I find this very interesting as it’s fantastic when a new publishing medium comes along to encourage budding authors everywhere.

However Wineman’s close inspection of the terms shows that Apple might have their own ideas on what is considered literary genius and how you might want to use their service.  Of particular interest is this paragraph…

Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.

Which means that despite how great people might think your works are, they could be simply rejected by Apple for their own commercial reasons.  Now obviously this clause is intended to weed out offensive or illegal material, however it doesn’t say that.  What it does say is that Apple will decide whether your work is suitable for them.  The fact that they say that they cannot be held responsible for any costs, ie your time and hard work, incurred in writing a book using their tools is another kick.

It’s in the distribution section though that my friend and colleague Ed Bott, a veteran author, has taken special note of one particular clause.

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

• (i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
• (ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

This is the lock-in, the clause that states if you choose to use the iBook store to distribute your work you cannot sell it anywhere else.  Personally, as an author, I wouldn’t want to sign a lock in with any one provider, especially an untested one no matter how successful the Apple stores are at the moment.  When people want to buy books I’d want to be on Amazon and this is clearly where Apple are aiming their guns.

Now if you’re about to submit an angry comment about how anti-Apple I am, hold fire!  I think that Apple’s decision to help and encourage authors is a very welcome one.  Don’t forget I’m an author myself and have self-published a book.  This isn’t an easy process and anything that Apple can do to make the process easier will be very welcome.

Nobody ever reads terms and conditions though and these clauses could be considered both unfair and anti-competitive.  I would imagine that Apple will probably have to back down and it won’t be the first time that a company’s legal department got over-enthusiastic and misunderstood the market a product was aimed at.  I’m not going to say this was deliberate because any executive with a modicum of common sense would know it would never be allowed.

The fact remains that it is currently there and it’s not gone yet.  We will have to wait and see what, if anything, Apple say about this.  But if you want to also sell your works on Amazon, and don’t want to seek Apple’s “separate written agreement”, then you might want to steer clear for now.

This is there the all-in-one PC fitted in nicely, not a laptop and not a tower but a single, stylish machine that could still look good and not out of place in your main living room.

Now new sales figures for the third-quarter of 2011 show that Apple’s iMac apparently secured one third of all sales for all-in-one PCs.  This is a very impressive sales figure for a computer that many believed was slowly dwindling as Apple were moving their focus onto mobile devices.

The figures, reported by Blomberg, put Lenovo, who are fairly new to the all-in-one computer form-factor, in second place with 22.7% of all-in-one sales (Apple had 32.9%) lead by strong sales in China and HP brought up third place with 21.4%.

This is very interesting news and will be welcomed by fans of both Apple hardware and operating systems.  There can be no doubt that consumer PCs might still be ugly boxes had it not been for Apple and the company’s lead designer Jonathan Ive, now Sir Jonathan, as he was recently knighted in the New Year’s Honours list in the UK.

Perhaps odd in these figures is to see what many believed to be the world’s biggest computer company, HP, falling to third place.  HP’s all-in-one computers are of an extremely high quality and have lead the way in introducing multi-touch to PCs in the home.  Comparatively the iMac is some leagues behind, both in terms of power and features.

What the next few years hold for the PC remains to be seen.  As we approach the launch of Windows 8 we will no doubt see many more multi-touch PCs and laptops appear.  This will undoubtedly mean manufacturers focusing more on all-in-one PCs though laptops will begin to feature multi-touch too (my own Dell laptop has a multi-touch screen and I expect many more to appear this year).

Then there’s the ultrabook, which despite Intel’s claims of retailing below $999 doesn’t look set to hit that price point.  Will it be as huge a success as Intel claim?  Unless the price can be reduced significantly this is unlikely but there is talk of PC and laptop manufacturers focusing far more on these high-end products as the margins are much better.

This will probably mean that computer and laptop prices will rise on average in the coming two years and that tablets will fill in the lower end of the market.  These figures should come as congratulations to Apple though, and to Sir Jonathan, for their hard work in redefining the modern computer.

The service has been designed to match a user’s music library with the cloud. You basically point iTunes Match to your local music collection to start the process. Unlike other music synchronization services, iTunes Match tries to identify songs in Apple’s vast library of songs. Songs that match are added from the store which reduces the number of songs that need to be transferred. Any song in the store becomes available automatically, only unknown songs, e.g. free music, mixes or indie artists are uploaded from the user’s computer to make them available on iCloud as well.

Music in the cloud can then be streamed to compatible devices and stored on devices as well in 256 Kbps quality (free of digital rights management drm).

There service offers two interesting features. First the ability to match music to reduce the upload bandwidth and second the ability to download and stream 256 Kbps songs even if the original song was of lower quality. The latter is only true if iTunes was able to match the song.

About the matching feature. Apple does not check if a song of a music collection has been bought, ripped from CD or Internet radio or acquired from P2P networks. That’s great but it does not mean that you can legalize your music collection with an iTunes Match account.

The iTunes Match service has a 25,000 song limitation currently. It is not clear if Apple will raise the limit in the future or offer upgrades to the service to increase the amount of songs that can be hosted in the cloud.

In comparison, Google Music offers space for 20,000 songs (but without payment currently).

Will you be using iTunes Match? Users from outside the US, are you interested in a guide on how to get the service without being in the US?

Now Google’s patent counsel, Tim Porter has admitted that the entire patent system is broken.  In an interview with the San-Francisco Chronicle he said that the lawsuits and counter-lawsuits by technology companies merely wastes time, money and resources.

For too long, the patent office granted protection to broad, vague or unoriginal  ideas masquerading as inventions. That inevitably led to the legal dramas now  unfolding.

One of the most interesting things he said in the interview concerns the subject of innovation I mentioned earlier.  When asked the question ”Google has said these lawsuits and tactics are a threat to innovation.  Do you think the uptake or development of Android has slowed because of these  issues?” Porter told the paper.

I don’t think we’ve seen that happen yet. But the concern is that the more  people get distracted with litigation, the less they’ll be inventing.

He says that all the players have been involved in this and he pointed out that Patents were a way for Microsoft to battle against Linux.  He said.

You can look at the development of the software industry and see a point when  (software wasn’t being patented) and it was a period of intense innovation. You  didn’t see Microsoft’s first software patent until 1988. By that time it had  come out with Word, not to mention DOS.

It is clear that freedoms do encourage innovation and that software innovation has been somewhat stagnant in recent years compared to the 1970′s and 1980′s when new and exciting concepts were emerging all the time.  Porter argues that the current system for patenting software doesn’t make sense.

During the period I talked about, software was protected by copyright and other  legal protections. There are certainly arguments those are more appropriate.

It’s fantastic to finally hear someone at the heart of the ongoing patent wars talking sense about the whole issue.  The only people who can lose in all of this are consumers who will face limited choice and higher prices.  Apple’s attempts to ban the Samsung Galaxy Tab for instance aren’t based on any real fact other than the fact that the Galaxy Tab is a truly superb piece of technology that Apple are afraid of.  They’re attacking it purely because a patent or two that they own means that they have a technicality at their disposal to eliminate their strongest competitor.

The problem is that, while Mr Porter might say these things, actually convincing the major corporations to back off from their lawsuits is another matter entirely.  Apple are still going after Samsung aggressively and Microsoft have recently bought up a load more patents to help them attack their main competitor, Google’s Android operating system.

For now, we can only hope that governments or the judiciary step in to bring some calm and common sense to proceedings.

I’ll start this conversation by getting all teary-eyed.  It’s a huge pity that two operating systems as capable as MeeGo and WebOS both seem to be on their way out forever.  We all know that the worldwide smartphone market is easily big enough to support them, but support is the issue as it costs millions for companies to develop and maintain these operating systems.  This is money that Nokia simply don’t have and that HP may not be willing to pay.

But what will this mean for you in the coming years?  For the moment people who have iPhones seem to want the next iPhone when their mobile contract ends, and people who are on Android seem to like it too.  Windows Phone hasn’t yet been around long enough for anyone to reach the end of their first contract using it but RIM’s Blackberry’s also have a loyal following.

There are several main reasons for smartphone loyalty.  These include people being resistant to change and not wanting to learn something new, just getting really comfortable with an operating system and also having paid a lot of money for all those apps you won’t be able to port to a new OS.

But loyalty and favouritism for the operating system isn’t the whole picture.  There is also loyalty to the handset manufacturer.  Many people love Nokia, or HTC because they’ve always had a good experience with their phones.  Many more people like Sony Ericsson (soon to be just Sony) for their gaming integration and so on.

In the end though we all tire of the mundane and want a change occasionally.  This could mean iPhone users jumping ship to Android or Blackberry users jumping ship to Windows Phone.  In short, it could mean anything and there are a whole lot of factors to consider.  There is also the question of if you have loyalty to any one manufacturer and how you feel about this?  I’m very fond of HTC but I’ve owned phones by LG, Sony and others and all have been very good too.

So I’m interested ot ask here what platform you are currently loyal to, if indeed you’re loyal to one at all and what other ones you would consider in the future if you’ve even thought that far ahead?  To start I’ll say I’m very loyal to Windows Phone but, as and when I get bored I’d consider either the iPhone or a BlackBerry.  This would be for several reasons, I’m not happy with the malware problem that still exists on Android and while I don’t like iOS very much, you can’t easily complain about Apple’s hardware.  For BlackBerry, they’d have to produce another handset similar to the Storm, a full touchscreen as I’d never want a full QWERTY keyboard.

So what are your preferences?

They’re all at it.  Only this week Microsoft bought more patents that mean they will get more and more money from every Android handset sold, rather ironically meaning that they probably now make more money from Google’s smartphone operating system than they do from their own.

Now Apple has had a patent granted from an application they made in 2009, in which they said “A device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on [it].”  Really?  Who’d have thought it!  They go on to say “The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device.”

But what does this mean?  Does it mean a swipe upwards like Windows Phone, a swipe sideways like the iPhone or a pattern swipe like Android?  Well clearly it means all three and begs the question how else are you supposed to unlock a device with a touch screen?

The patent, number 7657549, will give Apple a legitimate way to go after every single manufacturer of smartphones and tablet computers for… well forever probably.  This is just ludicrous that a patent that covers something that is completely obvious everyone will have to do could ever be granted.

The upshot of it is that, in theory, Apple could now be the only company allowed to make a touch-screen device that doesn’t also now have a physical unlock button, which is plain daft.  This won’t happen because Apple will use this to screw yet more money out of every other technology company in revenge for all the money they’ve screwed out of Apple.  What’s more it’s another weapon in their arsenal for their ongoing war with Samsung.

So, why should I care you ask yourself.  Well I’ll give you two reasons why you should not only care, but why you should care a great deal.  Firstly these pointless battles only serve to push up the price of electronic devices as the lawyers and patent fees all have to be paid for.  What’s more it’s the general taxpayer who has to pay for many court costs, including the time that then can’t be allocated to legitimate cases like crime, with all the repurcussions thereof.

Most importantly though it makes it much harder for any new company to enter the market, no matter how cool, exciting or innovative their products may be.  For now, only the big players can afford the extortionate legal costs associated with these patent battles and, as companies pull out of the market (which is inevitable) we could end up in a pretty dire situation for consumers; does anybody remember the tongue-in-cheek franchise wars from Demolition Man?

It’s increasingly difficult for any company now, especially a small start-up, to not only know what has already been patented, or to find something that’s not been done.  Something has got to give, and give soon.  If this doesn’t happen the entire market will suffer.

I wanted to get a debate going here though on capitalism in technology, with particular reference to the ongoing patent wars.  First some background.  Technology companies are different from other big business in that they were generally started by visionary people, like Steve Jobs and Clive Sinclair, who wanted to change the world for the better.  These people wanted to open up access to technology for everybody and largely they’ve done that.  This means that the entire basis for the big modern technology companies hasn’t been money and greed, it’s been helping people gain access to new opportunities.  This is something that sets technology companies apart from almost all of the rest of big business.

However the patent wars are getting in the way.  No better is this highlighted than with the ongoing battles between Apple and Samsung, with the cupertino giant trying to ban, worldwide, sales of any Samsung product that looks remotely like an iPhone or iPad.  These lawsuits, which cost money and therefore push up prices, also have the effect of limiting consumer choice.  The best thing about the modern computing market that we have now is that there is more choice than ever before.  There are more computing devices than ever before, more form-factors and more styles and colours than ever before.

Now it has emerged that some Windows 8 Metro app developers are concerned they may be targeted by a company called Lodsys for patent infringement of in-app billing.  The patent wars have now got to such an extreme state where small, independent software houses now have to worry about it.

These patents are a big problem now because there are so many of them out there, all being owned or traded by multinationals, and there’s no way to be sure that what you do hasn’t already been patented by someone else.   However, when you are creating a smartphone, a tablet or even an app, there are only so many ways to make it look, what size it will be or how certain features operate.  When you take into account operating systems like iOS, Windows Phone and Windows 8 though that are trying to encourage app developers to make apps that look and operate in the same way the situation can only get worse.

Personally, I believe the the patent wars have now gone too far and the big players involved need to back off, stop focusing on the money and allow the innovation not only that people want, but that we all genuinely need.  This can only create more competition, drive down prices and open technology up to more people, the way people like Steve Jobs originally intended for things to be.  If we really want to create access to technology, access to the Internet and access to new opportunities, especially for the developing countries, we need to take this focus away from money now and go back to basics.

I’m very curious what your comments are about this as I feel you’re all either going to agree strongly or you’ll be completely polarised on the issue.  Please leave your comments below, it’s free, it’s open and anybody can take part  ;)

The newspaper claims that the next generation iPhone, due in late 2012 or 2013 will be a Jobs ‘legacy device’. and that he had been working closely on Apple’s next generation cloud services platform during his last few months with the company.

Of the products reportedly part of this four-year roadmap are a touch-screen television that would supersede the underwhelming Apple TV and a new iCloud to take on rivals Google and Microsoft.

To be honest all of this could just be idle speculation and guesswork, as it is relatively simple to determine what Apple’s product roadmap will realistically be in the next few years.  There will definitely be an iPhone 5 announcement sometime around Q4 2012 and Apple will inevitably announce a product to try and capture back some of the living room that Microsoft have so successfully made its mark in during recent years.

It could turn out to be the iCloud that becomes Jobs’ legacy however.  Currently the cloud is owned by Microsoft with it’s SkyDrive, Office Live, Office 365, Hotmail and Xbox Live services being the only truly connected set of cloud services available.  Not even Google, with all of its experience and might in cloud services, has been able to produce something that comes close to rivalling them.

The popularity of Apple’s mobile platforms however could mean that a revamped iCloud of music, photo, backup, sharing and communication, could very well be the next big thing for the company.  It pretty much rests on how interconnected such services would be, how deeply integrated they would be with both OS X and iOS and whether they would be free.  Apple’s previous attempt to charge for their cloud services haven’t proved popular.

Any rumours and speculation that Apple may in the next 12 months release a product with a name or branding specifically aimed at being a tribute to Steve Jobs, such as perhaps a special edition iPhone 4SJ, are just that, pure speculation.  Apple will need to prove that the company is much bigger than one man, something the markets will have little doubt of given the strengths of individuals in the top team that Jobs put together including Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive.  Consumers however might find a Jobs tribute product rather  more an admission of how much the company really needed him.

It will be interesting to see where Apple take their products, not in 2012 as these would be things in which Jobs would have been directly and personally involved, but in 2013 onwards, and how they respond to competitors products such as Windows 8.  Will the magic leave Apple with the death of it’s co-founder?  Probably not, but there will still be a fight on by the current top team to prove that this isn’t the case.

In his resignation letter he said “I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.”

In a statement about his death, Apple said “brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve”.

There can be little doubt of Steve Jobs’ contribution to the world of computing and modern technology.  He was previously forced out of Apple by the then board of directors in 1985 but was brought back when the company was on the bring of bankruptcy in 1996.

Steve Jobs meeting Bill Gates in 1981

After this time he spectacularly turned around the company’s fortunes firstly with the iMac and then with the iPod.  Under his leadership, Apple reimagined a series of spectacularly failed products and made them hugely popular, capturing worldwide markets in smartphones and tablets.  At the time of his death Apple is firmly on top and is also currently the biggest technology company in the world in terms of value.

Jobs had a reputation as a forthright and very demanding CEO who knew exactly what types of products should be released and what they should do.  While many of his decisions have been criticised, including some business practices he instigated at Apple, there can be no doubt his contribution to technology is immeasurable.  This brusque attitude occasionally came to light though, at no time more obviously than the notorious iPhone 4 antennagate affair when he reportedly told a phone owner “don’t hold it that way then.”

It is the general public around the world who Jobs’ work touched so much and there have been tributes pouring into Twitter, some of which are included below.

“You left your mark on our desk, on our ears and in our hands”

“You made the world a more interesting place.  A leading light in technology has been extinguished.”

“It’s sad to find out of your death from a device you created.”

“He had the most gifted mind.”

“Thank you for dreaming, believing and creating a world of infinite possibilities.  Your legacy will live forever.”

“RIP Steve Jobs, sent from my iPhone”

You can read more tributes on Twitter here.

US President Barack Obama said the world had “lost a visionary .  Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.”

Here is an inspirational speech he held in 2005:

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California in February 1955 to a Syrian-born couple and was later adopted by a working-class Californian couple.  In his early working life he worked at both HP and Atari but he dropped out of college and travelled to India for a while where he studied Buddhism.

He founded Apple in 1976 with his school friend Steve Wozinack.  Other high profile companies he has owned previously include NeXT computer and movie animation studio Pixar,

He leaves his wife Lauren and three children.

If you couple this with the recent launch of Apple’s OS X Lion desktop operating system, which includes an iPad-style application launcher and full screen apps, much in the way both the iPad and Windows 8 have it’s reasonable to now ask the question, is the desktop operating system dying out?

Clearly there is a push by the two main operating system companies towards mobile computing in a big way.  The focus is on tablets and other touch devices.  In itself this isn’t such a bad thing as keyboards and mice had their death predicted many years ago, but the fact remains they are still the most effective way to get things done on a computer.  So what does Microsoft’s move mean for the desktop and is the traditional computer now a dying breed?

Well let’s look at the bigger picture for a minute.  It can safely be said that worldwide sales of desktop PCs have been sluggish in recent years as low-power devices such as smartphones and tablets have gained more power and flexibility.  However PCs and Macs are also used everywhere in business.  In fact you will find very few tablets in use in the workplace unless they are employed for very specific industrial roles.  There’s also the simple fact that on Windows 8′s dumbed down Metro interface there’s no scope for controls along the lines of those found in Adobe Photoshop or Sony Vegas Pro.

Clearly then there’s still going to be a need for a desktop operating environment for many years to come.  That is unless Microsoft, Apple and Google find new ways to build more intuitive and functional interfaces, containing more commands, into tablet-focused apps.

In itself this wouldn’t be a bad thing, as innovation in the world of software interfaces has been needed for nearly twenty years now.  For too long we’ve been stuck with a way of doing things that Xerox created in a lab in the 1970′s, it’s way past time things changed.

So is Windows 8′s Metro interface the way forward.  Probably not as it stands right now in fairness, but it will help to act as an catalyst, and so will Apple’s iOS operating system and Google’s stripped-down Chrome OS.  All three are pushing the boundaries of modern interface design and now its up to the software houses to come up with new interface designs that take advantage of these new UIs.  For now it’s just been Apple and Microsoft doing the innovating, with the major software houses including Adobe, content to carry on with the way they’ve been doing things for years.

The ribbon that Microsoft introduced with Office 2007, and that can now be found throughout Windows 8 when you drop down to the traditional desktop, is a good stab at creating an interface that’s both mouse and finger-friendly.  Whether this was by design or purely by chance we may never know, but it’s clear to see how the ribbon would translate to a Metro interface if scaled up a bit.  It would still be recognisable as the ribbon, woulds still work in the same way, and would offer a way forward for software developers to move to a new UI paradigm.

How all of this will sit with the world’s accountants, engineers, publishers, videographers and administrators remains to be seen, they probably won’t like it.  The simple fact remains though that we’ve had the WIMP (Windows, Mice and Pull-down Menus) UIs for thirty years now and the time has come to move on, whether we might like to do so or not.

Steve Jobs has been suffering from pancreatic cancer since 2004 and has now had to take two periods of medical leave from the company.  On each occasion, questions have been asked about how Apple can and will cope without him at the helm, most recently when shareholders demanded a statement on whether he would be remaining with the company or not in early 2011.

Steve Jobs founded Apple with his friends Steve Wozniak and Mike Markkula.  He left the company over arguments in 1984 when he founded NeXT computers and later bought the computer graphics division of LucasFilm, which was later spun off as Pixar.  He returned to Apple to 1996 to turn around the company’s fortunes with the first iMac where he brought new designers and new ideas to the company.  Since then Apple has gone from strength to strength and is now the most valuable technology company on the planet.

It’s unsurprising then that shareholders in Apple and the financial markets would be concerned about any future the company may have without Jobs at the helm.  He has been absent from the company now for a while and obviously the decision has been taken that it’s best for him not to return in a full time capacity.  It is likely that, unless his medical condition has deteriorated in recent months, that he will continue to work with Apple on a part-time basis.

It should be stressed that there is no official confirmation of this news, only a report by the AFP news agency.  There is also no word on Steve Jobs’ health, and nobody should speculate on either.  At gHacks though we would like to wish Steve Jobs well.  He is truly a technology visionary and a very important man in the history of personal computing.

UPDATE —————

This news has now been confirmed.  Jobs has issued a statement saying he “could no longer meet his chief executive’s duties and expectations.”  More details in full, including an official statement from Apple, will no doubt follow in the next few days.

In the documents reported on today by Cnet, Apple is trying to ban, so it would seem, every Samsung smartphone and tablet product including the Galaxy Ace, Galaxy S, Galaxy SII smartphones and the Galaxy Tab 7 and 10.1 tablets.

The complaint demands that Samsung also recall all unsold stock from resellers in the country “within 14 days” because that stock is infringing Apple’s intellectual property.  In the suit Apple say…

“For the record, we mention the fact that by the stock, the offering and/or  selling said Galaxy smartphones [and tablets, red], infringes the intellectual  property of Apple Inc.,”

Cnet asked Samsung for a statement and they replied…

Samsung will continue to actively defend and protect our intellectual property  and to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communication  business.”

Earlier in the month Apple was granted a preliminary injunction in Germany banning the sale of the Galaxy tab 10.1 across almost the whole of the European Union.  That sales ban was lifted this week.  The current ruling allows sales to continue until Samsung and Apple meet in court on August 25th.

The source of the problem appears to be Google’s Android operating system, which Microsoft has also taken issue with over patents.  Google appeared to be in such a rush to get Android out of the door that they allegedly trampled on a few patents owned by their competitors.  However the actual evidence of this is embroiled in legal complications.

Whatever the current situation it is becoming clear that consumers are growing tired of the endless patent battles between the big technology companies over smartphones and tablets.  What consumers want is choice and a good selection of quality products.  It’s very clear that patent squabbles are fuelled by nothing more complicated than money, profit and shareholders dividend payments.  These are things the average man and woman on the street care little about.

There have been discussions previously about the physical resemblance of some Samsung Galaxy phones to the iPhone, though let’s be honest there are only so many shapes and styles a phone can be, and there are only so many materials they can be made from and so many factories equipped to do so.

It is inevitable therefore that some smartphones and tablets will go on sale looking and operating very similarly to one another.  This again isn’t something that consumers care about.

Ultimately Apple, who some commentators have been reporting for a couple of years seems to be heading down a course that will lead them into anti-trust battles with the US government and the EU, don’t seem to care about anything other than the consumer getting an Apple product.  The fact that there are more than enough consumers of technology on the planet to keep all the major shareholders in the big technology companies in absolute luxury seems to be unimportant.

At the moment the question probably needs to be asked if the gentle art of “Patent Tennis”, whereby technology companies lawyers justify their ludicrous salaries by constantly throwing lawsuits back and forth, isn’t getting out of hand.  Android is a major target at the moment with Microsoft already collecting a $10 ‘patent tax’ on every unit sold.  The only losers in all of this will be Google’s Android operating system and the people who want to use it.

Make no mistake the big guns have got it in for the open-source upstart, and they seem determined to destroy Android at whatever the cost.

The new building, known as Campus 2, will take up 2.8 million square feetm contain a 1,000 seat auditorium and research facilities civering 300,000 square feet.

Currently the building, which vaguely resembles an alien mothership, is working its way through the local planning process for the Cupertino city council.  It’s so important to Apple though, that Steve Jobs himself attended the preliminary planning hearing to address the authorities.

Images of the new headquarters are below which is set in extensive woodland with 6,000 trees, up from the 3,700 on the site currently, covering 175 acres close to the 280 highway and has extensive underground parking to help with the overall aesthetics.  I think you’ll agree with me that it’s certainly pretty and resembles a University campus.

There are definite advantages for staff to having everything in one large building too, and this is a style that Apple have copied from world famous security centres including the Pentagon and GCHQ in the UK.

Jobs said at the planning meeting that the company’s current base houses only 2,800 people and isn’t big enough.  The company currently rents offices nearby for its other 6,700 staff.  The new building with augment, and not replace its current campus facility.  The new building will be built on land former occupied by a Hewlet Packard office.

There’s no word yet on when construction might start or the company will be able to move into the new building though they hope to be able to move 12,000 employees into the new site in 2015.  It’s still possible, though unlikely, that changes will need to be made to the plans to satisfy the planning authorities before this happens though as they say they are currently assessing any environmental impact of the plans.

The problems for OS X seem to stem from user privileges.  While Windows 7 isn’t perfect, OS X seems to have more “soft spots” according to a report by Network World.  “OS X networks are significantly more vulnerable to network privilege escalation” according to the researchers, who went on to say that “almost every OS X server service offers weak or broken authentication mechanisms.”

This news will come as a shock to some and a surprise to many.  While Apple still maintain that there is no malware threat on their desktop platform, despite the recent proliferation of the Mac Defender malware, OS X is still generally considered to be more secure than Windows 7 because of it’s Unix origins.

The fact that it’s user privileges and authentication, which is one of Unix’s strongest suits, will cause many great concern.

The researchers say that the latest version of OS X has gone some way to rectifying the problems with new sandboxing, that keeps programs isolated.

The research also looked at the vulnerability count for the two operating systems over the past few years.  In that time OS X has seen 1,151 vulnerabilities with Windows being not much higher, at 1,325.  While this is higher than the count for OS X it’s not significantly so.

On the upside, they also pointed out that Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS, is better at sandboxing applications.  It has a dynamic signing feature which the device has to approve before an application can run.  This is opposed to OS X which will accept certificates that it is given.

Whatever the outcome of this it is further proof that Apple have let their game slip in recent years by being complacent about security in their operating systems, especially OS X.  The line that it’s just secure by design is no longer true as malware these days works on the user rather than the OS itself.  It will be interesting to see how, or even if, Apple respond.

This is fantastic news for everybody and everything (except perhaps the compact disc of course).  The Apple thumb drive will cost $69 but at least means that customers will be able to buy a physical copy of the operating system.

So, as I know you’re thinking this, why if it’s more than twice the price of the OS is this such wonderful news?  We’ll we’ll ignore the price as this will come down in time and eventually we’ll find the things made or cardboard and bundled with cereal packets.  This is exactly why its so cool.  Eventually we’ll see them made of cardboard and bundled in cereal packets!

The USB pen drive has finally come of age with this news and I’m absolutely delighted that Apple have announced it.  It doesn’t matter that they won’t sell many and that it will be mostly tech enthusiasts and collectors that buy them.  What is important is that as Apple are doing this it will all of a sudden become trendy and everybody will want to do it.  This can only drive down the price of USB pen drives and greatly drive down the overall cost of storage on them.

It also means we’ll see ever more interesting form factors for the devices and pretty soon you’ll be buying software, movies and albums like this everywhere.  What’s more it’s a shot in the arm for all those retail industries to rely on having a physical item to sell.  With everything moving into the cloud it’s been looking like those without Internet access might get shut out completely.  Now Apple is helping to make certain they won’t.

So, congratulations again to Apple, I think it’s a marvelous idea and long live the pen drive.  Now, where’s that box of cornflakes..?

The reason for this is tablets and the iPad’s success is significant. 1% of total web browsing may be a tiny percentage overall, with Windows still occupying 88.29% overall, but Android figures are difficult to determine as they’re mixed in with Chrome on PCs and Macs.  Also iOS’s overall share of the operating system market sits at 2.63%, which is almost 50% the total share of the Mac.

In web browsing then Apple are beating, not just Microsoft, but every competitor out there. ANdroid has 0.72%, Palm currently sits at less than 0.009% percent and Blackberry devices at just 0.17%. For the iPhone and iPad to have claimed such a significant share of the overall computing market then is a huge achievement for Apple.

So how has this happened and can it be stopped? Well there are several factors that have contributed to Apple’s success. The first of these, by some significant margin, is great design. If you take the current generation iPad, it is thinner and lighter than any of its competition. Apple are literally streets ahead of every other technology company on the planet, and in the position that Sony held ten to twenty years ago.

The next biggest factor is customer goodwill. Apple has a fantastic name and reputation, and with that comes an enormous volume of goodwill. This is the company’s Achilles heel though as the old adage goes “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”. There have been rumours of anti-trust cases for anti-competitive behaviour. Similar cases for other companies, Microsoft in particular, caused enormous resentment with loyal customers because of all the negative publicity they generate. Should an anti-trust case be brought against Apple, which is now looking like a possibility, there will be negative headlines about the company every week for, possibly a couple of years.

Even so it might be difficult to erode this much customer goodwill. Apple has ridden out the iPhone Antennagate scandal and criticisms over the profit slice they take from apps.

There is one more thing though that can potentially bring the company down, and that is the loss of Steve Jobs. It’s possible that sooner or later he may have to retire, or at least take a permanent semi-retirement on health grounds. Jobs has been hugely important, and personally influential in turning around Apple’s fortunes and bringing the company from the brink of bankruptcy to the position of the wealthiest technology company on the planet.

There can be little doubt that, no matter how important everyone may think Jobs is, from the Apple board and employees to shareholders and customers, he will always put his own health first as this is the most important thing. However a departure from Apple would certainly hurt the company considerably, and everyone knows it, which is why shareholders recently sought assurances he wouldn’t be leaving.

No matter what happens though it’s clear that there really isn’t much that can harm Apple, at least not in the short-term. The rise and rise of the iPad’s browsing figures are an example of the way the company is growing generally. This will get more significant as we move more towards mobile devices and “the computer in your pocket”. It is here that Apple will seriously begin to do harm to Microsoft and I predict that Apple could have an overall operating system market share of 35% by 2015.

These figures are good for Apple, indeed they’re positively fantastic. The rest of the world had better take note of what Apple are doing and raise their game very quickly, if they have even the remotest chance of denting them.

I thought I’d ask here if you are a fan of a particular brand and why that is? I’ll start with myself. I’m aligned with Microsoft goods (though I’d never call myself a fan) primarily for a few reasons.

The first reason is that in recent years Microsoft good have just got better and better. Let’s take Office for example, it’s still the world’s most popular integrated suite by a wide margin, even on the Mac. This is despite the much-derided Ribbon interface and the fact that every other office suite in the world uses traditional menus.

So why is Microsoft Office the world’s best office suite? It simply can’t be just because it sells more than its competitors. For this to happen people first have to believe it’s great, so you can’t just say it’s based on sales figures. We need to understand what drives those figures.

Other software such as Hotmail, which has had numerous improvements in the last two years and is now 20x faster than it used to be, and the excellent Live Essentials Suite are more reasons to like the company. Finally there’s Windows 7 which, in the space of just a short year, silenced all the critics and made the world completely forget about the fiasco that was Vista and the security problems that plagued XP.

It wasn’t always this way though. It’s only in the last year of so that Microsoft have demonstrated they’ve got their mojo back. Before this I was sat between the major camps, and criticising Microsoft as much as anybody.

There are problems I see with Google and Apple though too. With Google I’ve never liked that their online services, which are great, simply don’t interact with each other in the way I feel they should. There’s no joined-up thinking like there is with Microsoft’s online services. I’m also angry that they are attempting to appeal to a mass audience while at the same time not taking malware seriously on any of their platforms.

With Apple it’s even more basic as I feel that every aspect of their operating systems is designed to sell you things. I also don’t like the iTunes lock-in, especially when iTUnes itself reminds me too much of Windows Media Player from ten years ago.

There is a lot to like about Google and Apple though. Google’s products will appeal to huge numbers of people because they’re firstly of a very high quality, but also because they’re all free. People who use Google’s products don’t seem to mind being served up targeted adverts in the way they do, because even though they may get it more than the customers of other companies, other companies do it too, including Microsoft.

Google’s give it away for free attitude is a good one. They’re not seen as the big monopoly that Microsoft are, grabbing everyones money, and huge amounts of it too, for dishing up products that are insecure or unreliable. If there are insecurities in Google’s products, well they were free and how much do you expect for free!?

Apple has even more to like, not the least of which is the hardware design, the easy and simple to use ecosystem and the trendy factor that comes with owning their kit. They are “the place to be” when it comes to modern tech. You can easily forgive that they’re now the largest technology company on the planet because when you’re this trendy, of course you would be.

So many of us have tech camps that we have aligned ourselves to, and we have our own reasons for this. It’s good and even great that we do this. Competition is essential if we’re to continue to get the innovation that we all crave so much, and that drives technology forward. It’s essential that these companies (and I’ve only mentioned three here but let’s not forget Ubuntu, Facebook and many other major tech players who have supporters of equal vigour) continue to compete with each other in the way that they do.

It’s also essential that they continue to differentiate themselves from their competitors in the way they do with different business models. Google for instance will best take off in emerging markets, probably the world’s biggest growth area and one that Microsoft is desperate for a piece of. Why would people in these markets opt for Microsoft though when Google’s products are mostly free?

So which tech camp do you sit in? Which of the major technology companies do you support and why, or do you just find the whole thing a bit of a bore and can’t understand why people get so excited all the time? Post your comments below.

It’s been rumoured for a while now that the company was prepping a black sleek Air to add to its line up in the next few weeks. This is when the next generation Air is due to be released, complete with a new SandyBridge Intel chipset which increases performance while lowering power consumption.

Image Credit, Colorware.com

Now it appears that the black Air has been pulled after an issue with the machine “soaking up bodily oils”. This apparently was happening around the trackpad and is something that nobody really wants to have to look at.

NeoWin reported an email from an Apple employee which said…

The rumors that the next iteration of the MBA’s will have an optional black finish is grounded in truth.

We tried to powder coat the Air’s (and Pro’s for that matter) in black as a test run. There are more than a few floating around campus.

The coating looks good and holds up well, but it also soaks up body oils, making the palm rest look pretty gross. Ultimately that is the reason that the top brass (Jobs) killed the idea… it was just too easy to make the computer look like crap.

At some point we may offer a black coating, but it won’t be powder coat, and it won’t be anytime soon.

The addition of a black MacBook Air to the range would have been a boon for Apple. I’ve recently reviewed the new Samsung Series 9 ultraportable which is their Air equivalent. It’s a lovely metallic black and utterly gorgeous. It’s a great Air competitor too.

This doesn’t mean we will never see a black Macbook Air though. Apple overcame the problems with the white iPhone where the colouring of the case was causing problems with the camera. We can fully expect to see a black Air appear then but it will probably take another year or two.

I’m singling Microsoft out in this article because the other major desktop operating systems don’t seem to suffer from this problem. Apple have a clear policy of only supporting older versions of OS X for so long and, because these (so far at least) haven’t been susceptible to malware in the way Windows has, there has been very little in the way of support that Apple has had to offer.

GNU/Linux, especially Ubuntu the most common name in Linux, changes so regularly that there’s no need to support older versions at all and indeed legacy support almost never happens. Each new version will run happily on the hardware of an older version so people are simply encouraged to upgrade for free.

So where does this leave Microsoft? This company has a bigger problem. Not only is it the market leader with millions more computers around the world running its operating systems, it also faces two other major problems. The first of these is big business, Microsoft’s largest customer group, who traditionally leave it at least a year or two after a new version of Windows is released to upgrade and many of whom are still using Windows XP today, despite Windows 7 having more than proven itself in terms of reliability, security and performance.

Businesses don’t like upgrading very often. They tend to approach these things in an “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” manner because they have all types of bespoke desktop software and intranet services that still require the devil’s browser, Internet Explorer 6 to work, and it’s expensive and time-consuming to bring these up to date. In short, they’d all rather not bother.

Microsoft introduced XP Mode, a fully licenced copy of XP running in a virtual machine for Windows 7, to address this problem but it doesn’t seem to have helped. Businesses just won’t shift in great-enough numbers.

Then we have the developing market for whom computers are an expensive luxury and where running Windows 7 is just something the old 386, 486 and Pentium computers they’re still using won’t run it, at least not well. Many of these people are stuck on XP both because of performance and price. These people simply can’t afford to upgrade despite Microsoft long ago having made available a special version of Windows just for them.

The official policy of Microsoft for product support is that…

Microsoft will offer a minimum of 10 years of support for Business and Developer products. Mainstream Support for Business and Developer products will be provided for 5 years or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer. Microsoft will also provide Extended Support for the 5 years following Mainstream support or for 2 years after the second successor product (N+2) is released, whichever is longer.

This puts Windows XP support ending on April 8th 2014, a massive 13 years after it first went on sale and Windows Vista on April 11th 2017. Many people argue this is simply far too long.

So why is it too long and what are the reasons for forcing people to upgrade sooner? Apple seem to have the right idea on cost. It’s just too expensive to maintain support for these older operating systems. Microsoft could too save money by cutting support for XP earlier and they’d have some increased revenue for those people who are forced to upgrade (business customers on their Software Assurance programme will have already paid for Windows 7 depsite not using it).

It would be better for the man on the street too, knowing that his operating system would be more secure because he simply wouldn’t be using XP… or would it?

The question remains that if Microsoft pulled all support for XP would people actually stop using it? There would certainly be a proportion of people who would upgrade but a great many more, for whom XP is also as comfortable as an old shoe, wouldn’t even necessarily know that support had ended and would carry on using it anyway.

This scenario could create a security nightmare for the world with not only these individuals having their PCs being targeted by virus and malware writers, but also with the huge potential for these machines to be hijacked by botnets to attack larger targets.

It could also be argued that Windows versions would be much cheaper, maybe even approaching OS X levels of pricing ($90 over three years), if many years of additional support staffing didn’t have to be factored into the overall cost.

We can’t say though that we, as a consequence of this being a possibility, all have a responsibility to continue to support XP. Education is needed here for consumers, direct intervention in the form of financial help is needed for the developing world and big business needs a firm kick up the backside. It was big business who forced an extension of the support life for XP after all, and these people have a lot to answer for.

So should Microsoft drop support for a product that’s older than four years in the way Apple do? The answer in my mind is a definitive yes, but with the pressures Microsoft are under we can probably still expect to see computers running Windows XP for many years to come.

There are various workarounds for this problem, but most are hit and miss. There is no one size fits all solution to this problem, but there is one series of changes that works for many Linux users. It builds up to the installation of a program called “ideviceinstaller,” and it works for about 90% of users. If you are frustrated with your iPod/iPad/iPhone and really just want to back things up, it’s probably worth a try.

First, download all the little helpers that you might need along the way. Open up a terminal window and type in the following list:

sudo apt-get install libtool automake autoconf libplist-dev libplist++-dev libplist++1 libzip-dev libclutter-1.0-dev libclutter-gtk-0.10-dev libusbmuxd-dev libglib2.0-dev libgnutls-dev git-core swig intltool build-essential python-dev

That should update your system with almost everything you might need to start installing the programs necessary to get your devices identifying and syncing up with your computer. Next you need to download and install the latest version of a program called “libimobiledevice” which will enable ideviceinstaller to work properly when you install it later. Unlike the last piece of text you inserted into the terminal, take these one line at a time, and make sure your system has finished the process before stepping forward to the next. Again in the terminal:

cd ~/Downloads
wget http://www.libimobiledevice.org/downloads/libimobiledevice-1.0.1.tar.bz2
tar xvjf libimobiledevice-1.0.1.tar.bz2
cd ~/Downloads/libimobiledevice-1.0.1
./configure
make
sudo make install

You now have almost everything that you need to get ideviceinstaller working properly. But before we install the final auxiliary program, install ideviceinstaller onto your system. To do so, type the following into your terminal:

git clone git://git.sukimashita.com/ideviceinstaller.git
cd ideviceinstaller/
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

Now it’s time for one last installation. The program “sbmanager” is the final component necessary for everything to run smoothly. In the terminal, type:

git clone git://git.sukimashita.com/sbmanager.git
cd sbmanager
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

With any luck, your system should now be ready to take whatever your Apple hand helds can throw at it. Close out of your terminal, plug in your devices, and see if it works.

Here are a few of the most important tasks you can do with the program. To run any of them, simply open your terminal window while your devices are plugged it.

idevicebackup backup ~/backup Creates a backup file of your device
idevicebackup restore ~/backup Restores your device to its previous backup state
ideviceinstaller -a [name of application, without brackets]
Creates an archival copy of an app
ideviceinstaller -r [name of application, without brackets]
Restores an app to its previous archived state
ideviceinstaller -l Displays a list of all apps on your Apple device

While most users will be set to go after following these steps, be prepared to spend some time fixing any errors along the way. The most common is that libimobiledevice.so.1 does not exist. To fix this, type the following in your terminal:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libimobiledevice.so.1.0.1 /usr/lib/libimobiledevice.so.1

That should fix 90% of the problems you may encounter in running this how-to. Have fun and good luck!