91890233
submission
anderzole writes:
Brian Merchant’s new book, The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, provides a captivating and intriguing look at how the most revolutionary product of our time was designed and developed. Through a series of interviews with Apple engineers and designers who played an integral role in the iPhone’s creation and development, Merchant maps out how the iPhone came to be after more than two years of non-stop work at breakneck speed.
One of the more interesting revelations from the book is that the iPhone design Apple unveiled in January of 2007 might have looked vastly different if Steve Jobs had his way. According to Imran Chaudhri, a veteran Apple designer who spent 19 years working on Apple’s elite Human Interface Team, Steve Jobs wanted the original iPhone to have a back button in addition to a home button. Believe it or not, the original iPhone could have very well looked like a modern-day Android device.
"The touch-based phone, which was originally supposed to be nothing but screen, was going to need at least one button," Merchant writes. "We all know it well today – the Home button. But Steve Jobs wanted it to have two; he felt they’d need a back button for navigation. Chaudhri argued that it was all about generating trust and predictability. One button that does the same thing every time you press it: it shows you your stuff."
"Again, that came down to a trust issue,” Chaudhri explaind, “that people could trust the device to do what they wanted it to do. Part of the problem with other phones was the features were buried in menus, they were too complex.” A back button could complicate matters too, he told Jobs.
“I won that argument,” Chaudhri says.”
88258637
submission
anderzole writes:
In 2012, Facebook shocked the tech world when it acquired Instagram for $1 billion. At the time, the acquisition raised quite a few eyebrows, along with many more questions than answers. Not only did people wonder how Instagram would fit into Facebook’s existing business, many also questioned if Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had lost his mind by outlaying $1 billion for a company that, at the time, had no revenue.
Nearly five years later, Facebook’s Instagram acquisition not only looks like a bargain, but a full-fledged stroke of genius. Today Instagram still shows no signs of slowing down, Instagram’s active user base jumped from 500 to 600 million in just the last 6 months alone, marking its “fastest growth rate ever.” Incredibly, Facebook saw the longterm potential and impact of Instagram and managed to swoop in and acquire the company long before its user base began to accelerate wildly.
From an economic standpoint, Instagram is already paying dividends via highly targeted and lucrative ads. During the first quarter of 2016, for example, it was estimated that revenue from Instagram checked in at $572.5 million and accounted for 10% of Facebook’s overall revenue. In fact, analysts at Credit Suisse believe that Instagram will have delivered $3.2 billion in revenue for Facebook by the time 2016 comes to a close. That’s not bad for a $1 billion acquisition that Facebook is still in the relatively early stages of monetizing.
86971647
submission
anderzole writes:
Tesla on Wednesday posted its earnings report for the quarter gone by and investors will have a lot to cheer about. While analysts on Wall St. were expecting Tesla to post a loss, Tesla during its September quarter actually posted a profit, and an impressive profit at that. When the dust settled, Tesla posted a quarterly profit of $22 million and EPS of $0.71. Revenue for the quarter checked in at $2.3 billion.
Illustrating how impressive Tesla’s performance was this past quarter, Wall St. was anticipating Tesla to post a loss amid $1.9 billion in revenue for the quarter.
83171583
submission
anderzole writes:
Apple’s earnings report last week saw the company report a year over year decline in profits for the first time since 2003. The biggest contributing factor to the decline, not surprisingly, is that year over year iPhone sales dropped by 16%. Notably, Apple’s most recent quarter represents the company’s first iPhone sales decline in history.
Consequently, the usual contingent of pundits and analysts have come out of the woodwork, all exclaiming that we’ve reached ‘peak iPhone’ and that Apple at this point has nowhere to go but down. In an effort to inject a bit of good news and all-around optimism to a particularly negative Apple news cycle, Tim Cook earlier today appeared on CNBC with Jim Cramer where the Apple CEO teased that Apple’s still has a lot of innovation left to do and some interesting items in the product pipeline.
“We’ve got great innovation in the pipeline,” Cook said to Cramer. “New iPhones that will incentivize you and other people that have iPhones today to upgrade to new iPhones. We are going to give you things you can’t live without that you just don’t know you need today. That has always been the objective of Apple is to do things that really enrich people’s lives. That you look back on and you wonder, how did I live without this.”
82350915
submission
anderzole writes:
With calls for Apple’s upcoming iPhone models to be “spectacular”, it appears that pundits and those who have been quick to proclaim that we’ve reached ‘peak iPhone’ have nothing to worry about. While we’ll know what type of wild new features the iPhone 7 will incorporate in just about three months, a new report from reputed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo provides us with some interesting insight as to what Apple has planned for 2017 when it releases what will presumably be called the iPhone 7s.
According to a research note Kuo provided to investors, Apple is busy working on an iPhone model with curved pieces of glass and an AMOLED display. What’s more, the report relays that Apple also has plans to shake up its iPhone lineup with a model sporting a 5.8-inch display. Further, Kuo believes that the bezels on the iPhone 7s will be smaller than they are on Apple’s current iPhone lineup.
79987973
submission
anderzole writes:
One of the highlights of CES is always the wacky new appliance tech (and associated bickering) from Samsung and LG. This year looks to be no exception thanks to a new "Family Hub" refrigerator from Samsung. The imposing-looking model is equipped with a 21.5-inch, 1080p monitor and cameras inside so that you can watch your mayonnaise go bad in real time. You can even check the contents remotely via a smartphone app to see what's in there while you're shopping, in case you forgot whether you need that jar of sweet pickles or not.
45283205
submission
anderzole writes:
The FDA recently gave clearance to Vital Art and Science Inc. (VAS) to market software which enables people with degenerative eye conditions such as macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy to monitor their vision at home with their iPhone. The software, which is called myVisionTrack, isn't a replacement for regular visits to the doctor, but rather allows patients to keep tabs on their vision in between visits with eye care professionals.
VAS notes that retinal diseases affect approximately 40 million individuals worldwide and 13 million in the United States. While treatments have been developed to deal with degenerative eye conditions, early diagnosis is of paramount importance — which is why the software is so important.
44998787
submission
anderzole writes:
Germany's Federal Patent Court on Thursday invalidated all of Apple's claims for its slide to unlock patent.
They death blow for Apple's slide to unlock patent was likely a Swedish phone called the Neonode N1m that launched well before the iPhone and featured its own slide to unlock implementation. The N1m was released in 2005 while Apple's own patent for slide to unlock wasn't filed until December of 2005.
44087889
submission
alphadogg writes:
A pair of MIT professors and security researchers whose work paved the way for modern cryptography have been named winners of the 2012 A.M. Turing Award, also known as the “Nobel Prize in Computing.” Shafi Goldwasser, the RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and Silvio Micali, the MIT Ford Professor of Engineering, are recipients of the award, which will be formerly presented by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) http://amturing.acm.org/byyear.cfm on June 15 in San Francisco. According to the ACM: “By formalizing the concept that cryptographic security had to be computational rather than absolute, they created mathematical structures that turned cryptography from an art into a science." Goldwasser and Micali will split a $250K prize.
38831719
submission
Dupple writes:
The IC3 has been made aware of various malware attacking Android operating systems for mobile devices. Some of the latest known versions of this type of malware are Loozfon and FinFisher. Loozfon is an information-stealing piece of malware. Criminals use different variants to lure the victims. One version is a work-at-home opportunity that promises a profitable payday just for sending out email. A link within these advertisements leads to a website that is designed to push Loozfon on the user's device. The malicious application steals contact details from the user’s address book and the infected device's phone number.
38825445
submission
Gunkerty Jeb writes:
Initially thought to be merely a module of the now-infamous Flame malware, MiniFlame, or SPE is, in reality, a secondary surveillance tool deployed against specially identified targets following an initial Flame or Gauss compromise.
MiniFlame/SPE was one of three previously unseen pieces of malware discovered during a forensic analysis of Flame's command and control servers.'
Researchers at Kaspersky Lab and CERT-Bund/BSI determined that the program, which has compromised somewhere between 10 and 20 machines, can stand alone as an independent piece of malware or run as a plug-in for both Flame and Gauss.
37512641
submission
Lucas123 writes:
Western Digital subsidiary HGST today announced that after 10 years of development it is preparing to release 3.5-in data center-class HDDs that are hermetically sealed with helium inside. The helium reduces drag and wind turbulence created by the spinning platters, all but eliminating track misregistration that has become a major issue to increasing drive density in recent years. Because of that, HGST will be able to add two more platters along with increasing the tracks per inch, which results in a 40% capacity increase. The drives will also use 23% less power because of the reduction of friction on the spindle. HGST said the new seven-platter helium drives will weigh 29% less per terabyte of capacity that today's five-platter drives. In other words, a seven-platter helium disk will weigh 690 grams, the same as today's five-platter drives.
