Google, Apple remove some restrictions on technology to Iran

Google has told Android developers that they can start offering free apps in Iran, while Apple has removed Iran from among the countries to which sales of its products are prohibited.

“Developers, starting today you can make your free apps available in Iran,” Google said in a Google+ post on Monday.

The move appears to be linked to the U.S decision in May to lift sanctions on the export of a variety of consumer communications devices and software and services including mobile phones to Iran.

Exports of the devices to Iran had been blocked since the 1990s, but ahead of presidential elections in the June in the country, the U.S. decided that its new license would empower the Iranian people as the Iranian government intensifies its efforts to stifle their access to information.

The export of equipment to the Iranian government or to any individual or entity on a Specially Designated Nationals list, however, continued to be prohibited. Technology covered under the new license were fee-based services, software and hardware required for personal communications over the Internet, including instant messaging, email, chat, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing and blogging.

The products, software and services now authorized for export to Iran also include mobile phones, personal digital assistants, satellite phones, computers, consumer network equipment, anti-tracking software, anti-censorship tools, virtual private networks, proxy tools and voice-over-IP and video chat tools.

Google Nexus 7 Tablet (WiFi, 32GB), Black

Google said Monday that the new distribution option for developers is currently available only for free apps and not for priced apps or apps that use in-app billing. The new general license authorizes financial transactions related to the products it covers, said the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. The move by Google will give Iranians access to a number of important tools which activists use to protect themselves from surveillance, but developers have to still opt to make their apps available in Iran, it said.

Google’s competitor Apple has also apparently removed Iran from its list of prohibited destinations for its products like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac and associated software, citing the new general license in May. The list now includes Cuba, Syria, North Korea, and Sudan. On an Apple support community, a user wanted to know how to contact Apple to set up a store in the country.

Labels: Purchase Structured Settlements,Mesothelioma Lawyers San Diego,Secured Loan Calculator,Structured Settlement Investments,Endowment Selling,Mesothelioma Patients,Mesothelioma attorney san diego,Austin Texas dwi lawyers,New York Mesothelioma Lawyers,Phoenix dui lawyers

Hands-on: Apple TV adds music videos, Disney, weather, and more

If you happen to be home on this lovely Tuesday morning, you’ll find a surprise awaiting you on your Apple TV: As first reported by 9to5Mac, an automatic update adds not only the rumored Vevo music-video app, but also the Disney Channel, Disney XD, the Smithsonian, and the Weather Channel. They join a slew of Apple-approved content channels already on the Apple TV, increasing the total number of available services to 20.

Disney Infinity Promotion: Pre-order the Disney Infinity game and receive a free character (value $12.99) It’s no surprise to see apps from Disney on the Apple TV, given Apple’s close relationship with the studio (Disney's sports-based subsidiary, ESPN, has been on the device since June). It’s worth noting, however, that both the Disney Channel and Disney XD apps are locked to your cable provider; to activate, you must open each app, visit Disney’s unlock website, enter a device-specific code, then log in with your cable provider information. Not all providers are supported: DirectTV and Dish subscribers are currently out of luck in the U.S., for one.

You can now stream live Disney Channel shows from your Apple TV.
Disney also joins ESPN, Sky News, WSJ Live, and other apps in letting you watch live television from your Apple TV. You can’t pause or rewind shows, as you would from a DVR, but you can view a list of what is airing next and stream any archived shows.

Meanwhile, the Vevo channel streams live VevoTV—which supports DVR-esque pause/rewind controls—along with individual music videos for the top popular music available worldwide. The Smithsonian app offers full episodes from the Smithsonian Channel, along with featured clips and popular segments.

The Weather Channel is perhaps the most interesting of the new additions: It’s the first third-party offering on the Apple TV that doesn’t simply stream video, but instead acts more like an iOS app, displaying current weather and forecast information.

The channel’s hallmark weather videos are also available, of course, but buttons let you view your current weather conditions, hourly breakdown, and a ten-day forecast. Select hourly or ten-day, and the video screen goes away, replaced with a two-column view of forecasted weather conditions. Though these features alone don’t signify a huge shift in Apple’s treatment for Apple TV apps or the future of Apple TV, they mark an intriguing change nonetheless.

The Weather Channel app offers full forecast information on your Apple TV.
One network we’re still waiting to see appear in Apple’s app lineup is the CW; the network confirmed back in May that it planned to stream shows on the Apple TV the day after air with no cable subscription, but gave no release date for the app.

Vevo is available on the Apple TV in several countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland. Other content channels may also be restricted by country.

Lables: Purchase Structured Settlements,Mesothelioma Lawyers San Diego,Secured Loan Calculator,Structured Settlement
Investments,Endowment Selling,Mesothelioma Patients,Mesothelioma attorney san diego,Austin Texas dwi lawyers,New
York Mesothelioma Lawyers,Phoenix dui lawyers,Secured Loans,Insurance Auto,Phoenix dui attorney,car free insurance
online quote,students debt consolidation loans,Pennsylvania mesothelioma lawyers,data recovery Denver,adverse
credit remortgages,bad credit remortgages,data recovery service los angeles

Apple is the company most targeted by patent trolls

Apple, HP and Samsung have been attacked the most by so-called “patent trolls” within the last five years, a Silicon Valley lawyer said Tuesday. But recent legislative activity may be weakening their power.

Patents represented 5 percent of all U.S. exports in 2009, or $89.8 billion, Michael Brody, the vice chair of intellectual propert at Winston & Strawn, said during a presentation at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University on Tuesday. That’s big business, and represents a jump in patent filings not seen since the Industrial Revolution.

Winston & Strawn
Perhaps not surprisingly, the number of patents filed by semiconductor and software firms have led that charge. Chip patents, as measured by Winston & Strawn, have grown from 15,000 annually to more than 65,000 since 1990, more than 25 percent of all filed. About 125,000 software patents are filed annually.

And that kind of meat has attracted sharks.

“Patent trolls,” also known as “non-practicing entities” or NPEs, don’t actually manufacture products based on their technology. Instead, they either develop technology themselves, patent it, or buy or license the patents from others. The key, however, is that NPEs amass a patent pool, then try to extract license fees from target companies through lawsuits. And that sort of business has arguably stifled the growth of new businesses in Silicon Valley, some have claimed.

Winstron & Strawn
“Ultimately, a patent is nothing more or less than a license to sue someone,” Brody said. “As a result, the generator of all the economic value that we’re looking at is simply that right, that right to create those lawsuits, and the value generated by those lawsuits.”

It stands to reason, then, that the largest tech titans have become the most frequent targets. Apple and HP, followed by Samsung. have become the most frequent targets of patent trolls throughout the last five years, Brody said. In 2012, more than 4,200 separate companies or individuals were sued by NPEs, he said.

Not surprisingly, the largest firms are the frequent target of suits; however, by the number of suits filed, the vast majority, or 63 percent, of those targeted have less than $100 million in revenue. Those smaller companies often pulled in just one or two suits, however, while the largest companies with over $50 billion revenue attracted an average of 7.3 suits in 2012 alone, Brody said.

(Most suits take 30 months to resolve, so that many are settled out of court; the average licensing cost for a case that goes to trial is $7.5 million; the average licensing cost for an out-of-court settlement is $29.75 million.)

Suits fled against larger companies also tend to demand higher amounts of damages; the mean resolution cost, including damages and the cost of the settlement, totaled $7.5 million for companies with over a billion dollars in revenue, and $7.8 billion for those over $10 billion in revenue.

That assumes the cost to defend each suit ranges from $800,000 per suit for startups to an average cost of $7.9 million for the those firms with over $50 billlion of annual revenue. (The median cost of those suits was much lower—$540,000—for the largest companies, indicating that the cost of just a few suits was over $10 million.)

Winston & Strawn


That can hurt smaller companies and larger companies alike, Brody noted. While the costs of suits to those with under $100 million in revenue were on the order of $200,000, those startups had far less revenue to work with.

In total, the annual cost or “troll tax” for defending NPE suits costs $1.04 million annually for those firms with annual revenue under $1 billion, to up to $57.67 million for those with revenues over $50 billion, Brody said.

That’s had a significant impact on smaller companies, with consequences that include product delays or revisions to the product itself, he said. Using a database compiled by RPX and analyzed by Brody, 13 percent of those companies polled either “pivoted” to another business model or closed up shop after an NPE suit.

So why would patent NPEs do what they do? Because it’s profitable. All told, an NPE has a 24.1 percent chance of “winning,” either by negotiating a settlement, winning at court, or at appeal. Even assuming the NPE has its own costs, Winston & Strawn estimated that the “net discounted value” of an NPE suit was $800,000—meaning that it was likely that the suit would itself would net at least that much just by being filed.

“That’s a good business to be in, and that’s why a lot of people are in it,” Brody said.

That doesn’t mean that NPEs are a long-term trend, Brody said. The costs to defend patents have gone down, and litigation has been introduced in Congress to minimize the impact of NPE abuses. Patent aggregators and covenants not to sue have also emerged.

Perhaps the biggest sticks, however, have simply been the fact that injunctions barring the sale of products have been rarely obtained, as have orders barring the sale and import of products by the International Trade Commission.

The NPE phenomenon may in fact be a bubble, Brody suggested. But it’s a bubble with a bite. For Brody, patent litigation of all stripes means a large paycheck. But until NPEs are reigned in—or the patent system is changed—they’ll remain a potential threat. 

Apple and the enterprise: A complicated relationship

When Microsoft shipped Windows 2000 and Active Directory, Apple didn’t really have a solution for identity management or for linking Macs to an enterprise network. The company was just beginning the transition from its classic Mac OS—the first version of which had shipped on the first Mac in 1984—to OS X. Although Apple did ship a public beta of OS X in second half of the year, the final release didn’t arrive until March 2001.

The classic Mac OS was not for multi-user systems. It offered limited user account creation and management for file sharing between Macs, but there was no built-in mechanism for logging into an individual Mac—it booted right to the desktop, where you had full access to the entire file system and all installed software.

Apple did make a couple of attempts to create a multi-user system, however. In the early 1990s, the company shipped At Ease, which provided some multi-user support, first on a single Mac and later for multiple Macs on a network. But At Ease never gained much traction beyond some pockets of the education market for it which it seemed to be designed.

In planning the transition to the true multi-user environment of OS X, Apple added a modicum of multi-user functions in Mac OS 9 that allowed each Mac to support multiple users with basic file permissions, individual user settings and preferences, and limited account-based restrictions. Apple also created Macintosh Manager, which redirected Mac OS 9’s multi-user functions to a server-based data store and copied certain settings and configuration files from that data store to an individual Mac. It wasn’t really an enterprise-grade solution, even when incorporated into the first few releases of OS X Server, but it was a functional pre-OS X stop-gap.

Student Exclusive: Buy a Windows 8 PC and save $100 on your next purchase
Apple’s first real move toward enterprise functionality, including identity management, came with OS X and OS X Server. The first release of OS X was essentially the Unix-based core of NeXTStep with an Apple-inspired GUI on top of it. NeXT gave OS X solid enterprise bones right away, including support for local and network user accounts.

NeXTStep and the first releases of OS X and OS X Server relied on a proprietary user and client management system known as NetInfo. Functionally, NetInfo served many of the same roles as Active Directory. It allowed for centralized user and computer accounts and user authentication for access to network resources; worked with the file system to support a POSIX permissions model; and it could be used to define user settings and experience in the same way group policies do in Active Directory.

Although NetInfo worked and remained in the mix of Apple’s enterprise components for several years, it had some serious limitations. The biggest one: It was proprietary and didn’t integrate with other platforms.

The other achilles heel for NetInfo in early OS X releases was that it didn’t support directory server replication. That meant that either a single server had to support the enterprise identity functionality for an entire organization or multiple servers—each with a unique directory of users, computers and configuration data—had to be deployed. Even though it was possible for Macs to search for enterprise identity data across multiple servers, the process was far from the multi-master replication capabilities of Active Directory domain controllers.

The proprietary nature of NetInfo led Apple to sell a complete end-to-end solution to enterprise IT. Today, Apple is well known for its end-to-end approach to technology; in many ways, it’s been a winning strategy because it allows Apple to maximize profits and create a controlled ecosystem. It’s also the same strategy that allowed Apple to disrupt industries so effectively and deliver some of the most polished products on the market. iTunes, with its link to the iPod and iOS, is the greatest example of what Apple can achieve using it.

Apple didn’t have a lot of luck selling that end-to-end system to enterprise IT. Part of that was because of the proprietary nature of Apple’s solutions. But the company was also still pulling back from its near collapse in the mid-to-late 1990s. At the time, its market share was abysmally low and it was a complete outlier in virtually every business market.

OS X Panther (and Panther Server) was one of the most important releases of OS X from an enterprise perspective. It rectified the limitations of NetInfo by introducing a broad-based solution for enterprise identity and directory services. It also added support for Active Directory. That represented a major shift in Apple’s strategy, as the company quietly acknowledged it couldn’t succeed in business without really offering support for existing enterprise systems.

Open Directory was technically a collection of directory and identity technologies that included NetInfo support, with a connection for legacy NetInfo server as well as for storing local accounts and records as well as an LDAP-based replacement for NetInfo’s proprietary data store. In practice, Open Directory became synonymous with Apple’s LDAP implementation; as that was integrated with Kerberos, it represented a replacement for NetInfo. In addition to being based on open standards, the Open Directory architecture included support for directory server replication. Even so, it remained a master/slave replication environment that was more like Windows NT’s use of a primary server and one or more backup servers than Active Directory.

Panther was one of the most important OS X releases from an enterprise perspective. It rectified the limitations of NetInfo by introducing a broad-based solution for enterprise identity and directory services.
The scalability advances, which continued to improve in later OS X and OS X Server releases, were only part of the advantage Apple gained by deprecating and eventually discontinuing NetInfo. The other was a move to open standards, including LDAP and Kerberos, the technologies at the foundation of Active Directory. As a result, Apple was able to offer Active Directory integration on Macs running Panther and later releases.

Out of the box the integration was pretty limited. Apple’s Active Directory plug-in for Open Directory only mapped three attributes for user account records (username, password, and home directory), but Apple offered three ways to deepen that integration: extend the Active Directory schema to include the new records and attributes used by Open Directory, map the Apple-defined records and attributes to existing but unused Active Directory counterparts, or use what was called the magic triangle. That involved Macs that were joined to the Active Directory domain for enterprise identity and user authentication and to an Open Directory domain for Mac client management.

Apple also allowed third-party companies to produce their own Open Directory plug-ins to support additional directory types like Novell’s eDirectory or provide new capabilities when using Active Directory. Centrify, an enterprise identity management developer, was one of the first companies to offer more powerful Active Directory integration. Its Direct Control for Mac, which is still on the market, allows Active Directory admins to manage Macs using group policies stored in Active Directory without modifying the schema. Group Policy options are available for virtually every Mac client and user management option available from Apple.

2007 was a big year for Apple. It introduced the iPhone that summer and it OS X Leopard that fall. Leopard was among the most feature-packed OS X releases to come out of Apple and boasted more than 300 features and improvements. The most notable enterprise identity change in Leopard was that Apple finally phased out NetInfo, which was until then still used for storing local user accounts on Macs.

Leopard Server, on the other hand, included key features that would eventually determine Apple’s current place in the enterprise. The first was a new option for joining Macs and Mac servers to an Active Directory domain. To streamline Mac integration with Active Directory, Apple created a new type of Open Directory mechanism known as augmented records. It essentially simplified the magic triangle approach. A user’s Active Directory data still managed his or her enterprise identity and authentication, but Leopard Server could automatically include just the Apple-specified records needed for OS X Server services or client management. Everything else was passed to Active Directory.

snow leopard server

This streamlined approach was part of a new form of OS X Server setup and administration. For small organizations or Mac-centric workgroups at a large company, Apple introduced simplified management by way of a new tool called Server Preferences. It allowed users with limited technical skills to set up and manage a server running a subset of the most commonly used business services: file and printer sharing, email and chat, websites and wikis, backup and VPN access.

This approach showed that Apple was willing to work with existing enterprise technologies. Specifically, it showed that Apple was happy to leave enterprise identity in the hands of Active Directory. And it marked one of the first instances of Apple marketing an enterprise product, in this case, Leopard Server, directly to users rather than to IT shops. That approach has been viewed as fueling the success of iOS devices—and the BYOD trend—in business.

Though it wasn’t obvious at the time, Apple was also the beginning to refocus OS X Server as a small business solution rather than an enterprise server OS.

Lables: Purchase Structured Settlements,Mesothelioma Lawyers San Diego,Secured Loan Calculator,Structured Settlement
Investments,Endowment Selling,Mesothelioma Patients,Mesothelioma attorney san diego,Austin Texas dwi lawyers,New
York Mesothelioma Lawyers,Phoenix dui lawyers,Secured Loans,Insurance Auto,Phoenix dui attorney,car free insurance
online quote,students debt consolidation loans,Pennsylvania mesothelioma lawyers,data recovery Denver,adverse
credit remortgages,bad credit remortgages,data recovery service los angeles

Apple acquires Embark, another public-transit app developer

Apple is once again on the acquisition train, if you will. The company confirmed to former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin that it has bought Embark, a Silicon Valley-based maker of public transit apps.

If all this sounds familiar, it’s because exactly a month ago, news broke that Apple had acquired HopStop, another maker of transit-related apps. Unlike HopStop, which sold but a single app that incorporated transit directions for many cities, Embark sells several individual programs for various transit systems, including BART in San Francisco, the MBTA in Boston, the New York City subway, and more. As of this writing, Embark’s apps remain in the App Store—however, the company’s Android offerings, which included iBart and NYC Subway, are no longer available on the Google Play store. A similar fate befell the Windows Phone version of HopStop upon that company’s acquisition.

Combined with the HopStop purchase, it seems a lock that Apple will bring its own transit directions to a future version of iOS—at present, the company’s Maps app still routes transit information through third-party apps (of which HopStop and Embark were but two). And with Apple’s earlier purchase of business-data-location company Locationary, it’s clear that mapping is of intense interest to the company. That’s little surprise, given the public reception of iOS 6’s Maps, unveiled last year, which even prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to apologize.
The only question is when such an update might appear. To date, there has been no mention of substantial Maps improvements to the upcoming iOS 7, which would likely accompany new iPhone hardware expected to be launched next month. That would peg such enhancements to be introduced alongside Apple’s next major iOS update, presumably announced at WWDC 2014.

Of course, Apple has already been on quite the run this year, as far as acquisitions go, and there’s no telling if the company has already set its sights on a new target. Though, to be fair, it may soon run out of quality public-transportation apps to buy. 

Publishers fight Apple e-book ruling

Woman selecting e-book Apple has been ordered to terminate agreements with publishers, which include retail price deals HarperCollins, Simon & Shuster and Penguin are among publishers who have filed a complaint against restrictions imposed on Apple by a US court.

Last month Apple was found guilty of conspiring with publishers to fix the price of e-books bought via iTunes.

It was ordered to terminate deals with five major companies and allow other e-book retailers to sell to iPad and iPhone users for the next two years.

The publishers say they are being punished by the restrictions.

Under agreements put in place between Apple and companies including Hatchett and Macmillan, electronic book price-fixing took place, creating unfair competition for other retailers, the court ruled last month.

At the time most of the publishers reached separate settlements totalling more than $150m (£96m) but Apple said it would fight the "false allegations".

According to the Associated Press news agency, the publishers' complaint says: "The provisions do not impose any limitation on Apple's pricing behaviour at all.

"Rather, under the guise of punishing Apple, they effectively punish [publishers that settled in the case]."

Garner analyst Van Baker told AP that the ruling seemed "heavy-handed".

"It is basically putting a stake through a portion of Apple's business, and I confess to being surprised by that," he said.

"It strikes me as a pretty heavy-handed solution to the issue."

iOS 7 to protect against charger-based hacks of Apple devices

Apple has announced that the newest iOS 7 beta release includes a security update to protect its mobile devices from hacks using a modified phone charger or battery.

Last month, researchers from Georgia Tech revealed that a readily available circuit board could be concealed in a docking station or battery and used to exploit weaknesses in Apple’s mobile security.

154452714-iphone-chargers-290px.jpg
The researchers, who notified Apple of the vulnerability earlier this year, presented a proof-of-concept demonstration at the Black Hat USA 2013 conference in Las Vegas.

The researchers said the proof-of-concept malicious charger was built with a limited amount of time and a small budget.

In a summary of the presentation, the researchers said they had injected arbitrary software into current-generation Apple devices running the latest operating system (OS) software.

“All users are affected, as our approach requires neither a jailbroken device nor user interaction,” the summary said.

At the Black Hat conference, researchers Yeongjin Jang, Chengyu Song and Billy Lau used their proof-of-concept modified charger to infect a connected iPhone with a virus, causing the handset to call the smartphone of a team member.

The method could be used by cyber criminals to steal sensitive data or take control of the device remotely, they said.

The vulnerability does not affect Android devices because Google’s mobile operating system warns users when their device is plugged into a computer.

Apple’s fix, which is available in the latest iOS 7 beta release, is in the form of a notification to users warning them that they are not connected to a standard charger.

The fix will be included in the final version of iOS 7, which is due for release this autumn.

In announcing the security update, Apple thanked the Georgia Tech researchers for their “valuable input”.

Technology suppliers such as Microsoft have been severely critical of security researchers who fail to disclose vulnerabilities before going public.

In June, the company joined the growing list of other technology suppliers offering a bounty to reward those who report bugs to discourage them from selling their discoveries on the open market.

Microsoft said its new bug bounty schemes are aimed at helping to improve the resilience of its products through responsible disclosure of flaws that hackers could exploit.

China investigating IT suppliers linked with Apple for polluting rivers

Local authorities in China are investigating two electronics suppliers linked with Apple and also reportedly HTC of dumping heavy metals in the country's rivers after watchdog groups accused them of damaging the environment.

Last week, five Chinese environmental groups issued a report claiming that factories of Foxconn Technology Group and Unimicron Technology had been polluting rivers in the country's Taihu basin, where the cities of Shanghai and Kunshan are located.

The groups claimed the factories from the two suppliers had dumped large amounts of nickel and copper that had been poisoning the nearby water and soil, and threatening the health of local residents. At the Foxconn facilities, the water was described as black, and carrying an "awful stench". The affected soil had become yellow and red in color, and planted crops were also unable to grow. (A video of the report can be found here.)

On Friday, Kunshan's environmental protection bureau said it would investigate the matter, and monitor the water drained by the facilities. Any violations found will be dealt with, the city said in statement posted on the its official microblog account.

Taiwan-based Foxconn, which builds products for Apple, Microsoft and Sony, said it was aware of the claims made by the environmental groups, but said the waste treatment from its facility in Kunshan was in line with local regulations.

"The river that runs through the middle of that industrial park receives waste water discharges from a number of companies that are based in the park," the company said in a statement. Foxconn also said it was supporting government plans to protect the Taihu lake basin, and advocated other companies should do the same.

Unimicron, another Taiwan-based company, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The dumping of the heavy metals by electronic suppliers usually comes from the manufacturing of printed circuit boards, according to the Chinese environmental groups. Copper toxicity can cause the poisoning of fish and soil, and lead to cardiovascular illness in humans, while nickel is a known carcinogen, the groups added.

In its report, the environmental groups said they suspected Unimicron's facility in the lake basin of supplying to smartphone maker HTC.

In response, HTC said, "The company has been taking a proactive approach to ensure proper and prudent supply chain management," and works to ensure all of its suppliers follows the company's code of conduct.

In recent years, Chinese environmental groups have been critical of electronic manufacturers in the country for polluting. In the past, Apple was accused of failing to prevent its suppliers from damaging the environment. Apple later agreed to jointly audit one of its suppliers' factories in China with a prominent environmental group in the country. Apple did not respond when asked to comment on the investigations by Kunshan's environmental protection bureau.

Boost for Amazon as Penguin agrees to end Apple e-books deal

Penguin has agreed to terminate its e-book agreement with Apple and to allow Amazon to set its own prices for electronic books in a settlement of a European Union antitrust case.

The European Commission accepted the deal with Penguin on Thursday after more than a year of investigations into allegations of cartel price fixing in the e-book market.

Four other e­book publishers -- Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette Livre and Macmillan -- together with Apple were originally included in the investigation, but they agreed to terms with the Commission last December.

The Commission concluded that an infringement had probably taken place when the five publishers and Apple jointly switched from a wholesale model to an agency sale model. Under a wholesale model, the retailer is free to set the price, but with an agency model, the retail price of e­books is determined by the publishers.

It appeared that the alleged cartel wanted to limit retail­price competition, particularly with regard to Amazon, which was the uncontested leader in the retail market for e­books at the time of the change to the agency model, said the Commission.

Like Apple and the other publishers, Penguin has agreed to terminate the current agency agreements and will not hamper e-book retailers, such as Amazon, from setting their own prices for e­books or from offering discounts and promotions for the next two years. Penguin first offered these commitments in April, but they will now become legally binding.

E.U. Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia said the deal would restore "a competitive environment in the market for e-books."

Profits dip again for Apple, while iPhone sales beat record

Apple’s profits fell for a second consecutive quarter, even as the company enjoyed record iPhone sales for the April-to-June time period.

For its fiscal third quarter ended June 29, Apple reported sales of $35.3 billion, with net profit at $6.9 billion. That translated to earnings of $7.47 per diluted share. Apple’s revenue marked a record for the June quarter, ticking up 1 percent from the $35 billion Apple posted in last year’s third quarter. Still, profits fell 22 percent year-over-year, down from $8.88 billion in 2012. Apple also reported a drop in profit during its fiscal second quarter of 2013.

Apple’s performance for the third quarter topped analyst expectations. Analysts were looking for the company to earn $7.32 a share on $35 billion in revenue.

With a tiny increase in revenue but a drop in profit, you’d rightly conclude that Apple’s gross margin dropped: For the quarter, it was 36.9 percent, versus 42.8 percent on the year-ago quarter. That’s because Apple’s most popular products now have lower margins than the top-sellers a year ago.

Apple says international sales accounted for 57 percent of its revenue for the quarter.

The company also says it has issued $18.8 billion in cash to shareholders through dividends and buybacks.

While Apple generally keeps a tight lid on future product announcement, company officials did reiterate a point made during its second-quarter earnings announcement in April—that the company plans to roll out new products starting this fall and into the next year. “We are laser-focused and working hard on some amazing new products,” CEO Tim Cook said in an statement accompanying Apple’s earnings announcement.”

Apple says it sold 32.2 million iPhones—a record for the June quarter. That’s up from 26 million iPhones in the year-ago period. For the U.S., iPhone sales rose 51 percent year-over-year, Apple says.

“iPhone 5 remains by far the most popular [phone], but we’re also very happy with sales of iPhone 4 and 4S,” chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer told analysts during a Tuesday conference call. Those older phones, of course, are lower-margin devices, since Apple charges customers $200 or $100 less for those phones, respectively, compared to the iPhone 5.

Oppenheimer said that iPhone sales remain ahead of expectations, and that Apple is particularly pleased with the iPhone’s strong year-over-year growth in both developed and emerging markets. Apple says that ComScore shows the iPhone holds the top spot in the U.S. market for the three month period ending in May, with a 39 percent share. And the iPhone is the top-selling smartphone in Japan, and the top or second-best selling smartphone in most markets IDC tracks.

With government, business, and education, iPhone holds a 62.5 percent share of the U.S. commercial market.

Cook suggested that Apple is at least open to the notion of trade-ins for smartphones. “I like the environmental aspect of it,” he said, though he stressed that Apple hasn’t announced any plans on that front. Cook pointed out that “residual value of iPhone stays high, and there’s so much demand around it. So that makes the trade-in program very lucrative.”

The picture was less rosy for iPad sales, but Apple has a perfectly reasonable explanation for the 14 percent drop in tablet sales from last year’s third quarter. A year ago, Apple introduced the third-generation iPad and enjoyed a full quarter’s worth of sales to the tune of 17 million units. This quarter, sales fell to 14.6 million iPads.

Still, Apple has plenty of reason to remain bullish on the iPad. Oppenheimer said that the iPad ranked tops in a 2013 U.S. tablet satisfaction survey by JD Power and Associates. And during the quarter, the company inked a deal with the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest district in the U.S., to roll out iPads to 640,000 students.

In fact, the iPad got the bulk of the credit for a strong quarter of sales to U.S. schools. According to Oppenheimer, the last three months generated the highest quarterly revenue ever for Apple’s U.S. education institution business.

Mac sales also fell in the quarter, down 7 percent from last year to 3.8 million units. Still, Oppenheimer pointed out that the 3.8 million Macs sold beat Apple’s own expectations. And Apple’s sales still were ahead of the total PC market, which saw sales contract by 11 percent according to estimates from research firm IDC (which is owned by the same company that owns Macworld). By Apple’s math, the Mac gained market share during the quarter.

The Mac was one of the few product lines to see any changes during the quarter, with Apple updating its MacBook Air lineup at the beginning of June by adding new Intel processors. Company executives had little to say about any impact those new laptops had on overall Mac sales, but Oppenheimer did call it the most successful MacBook Air launch to date, adding that customer response was great.

But during the call, executives implied that there were better things to come. Oppenheimer noted that June’s Worldwide Developers Conference included previews of both the Mac Pro and the next version of OS X, code-named Mavericks.

The iTunes Stores—which includes the App Store, Mac App Store, iBookstore, and the music, movies, and TV sections of iTunes—generated $4.3 billion in billings, Oppenheimer said, culminating in the best week and best month ever for App Store. That translated to quarterly revenue of $2.4 billion, up 29 percent year over year. Total quarterly revenue from iTunes, software, and services generated $4 billion in revenue.

Oppenheimer said that Apple now has over 320 million iCloud accounts, and 240 million Game Center accounts.

As for brick-and-mortar retail efforts, the Apple Store saw revenue of $4.1 billion for the quarter, virtually unchanged from the year-ago quarter. Oppenheimer reported that Apple saw 16,000 visitors per store each week.

For the quarter, Apple had an average of 405 stores, with average revenue per store at $10.1 million—down $1 million from the year-ago quarter. Apple opened six stores across five countries during the quarter, giving it 408 stores around the globe; 156 of those outlets are outside the U.S.

The company plans to open nine new stores during the September quarter, giving it 27 new openings during the 2013 fiscal year. It’s not just about new stores, however: Apple says that it relocated four of its stores to more appealing spots; it will complete 23 such relocations before the end 2013 fiscal year in September.

China has been a particularly critical part of Apple's business in recent years, but that took a hit in the third quarter. “China was weaker” in this quarter, Cook acknowledged, but maybe not as weak as it might seem at first blush, he argued. “Our sell-through in China was only down four percent from the year-ago quarter, when you normalize for channel inventory,” he said. Hong Kong drop was worse, though mainland China was up five percent year over year, “but that’s a lower growth rate than we have been seeing,” Cook added.

“I attribute that to many things, including [the fact that] the economy there clearly doesn’t help us there or others,” Cook said.

Still, China drove $4.9 billion of revenue—about 14 percent of the company’s earnings—Cook pointed out. “And a few years ago, that was within the hundreds of millions. We have a very strong market there.” He added that year-to-date, iPad sales are up 48 percent in China year over year, and half a million developers in China are working on iOS apps. He also said that Apple would double its number of retail stores in China “over the next couple years.”

Cook said that Apple will continue to work to boost iPhone and iPad sales, “both of which are currently lower then where we would like or need them to be. We’re doing that very cautiously, because we want to do it with quality.” He added that, “over the arc of time, China is a huge opportunity for Apple, so don’t get discouraged over the 90-day cycle with economic factors.”

Apple’s not done returning cash to investors. The company’s Board of Directors has announced another cash dividend, this one at $3.05 per share of common stock, payable on August 15 to any shareholder as of August 12.

For the next quarter, Apple is predicting revenue between $34 billion and $37 billion, with gross margins between 36 and 37 percent. That sales figure would put Apple’s performance in line with the $36 billion in revenue it reported in the fourth quarter of 2012. For the coming quarter, Apple also predicts operating expenses will be between $3.9 billion and $3.95 billion, with a tax rate of 26.5 percent.

That may dissatisfy some sections of Wall Street, where the focus is on growth and new products, but Apple’s Cook told analysts on Tuesday that he doesn’t think the company’s goals diverge from investors’ focus on profits.

“We’re here to make great products, and we think that if we focus on that and do that really well, the financial metrics will follow,” Cook said. “We don’t look at those two things as mutually exclusive.”

Apple looks to pick off engineers from Amazon and OpenStack

Apple is on the hunt for cloud infrastructure engineers familiar with building large-scale deployments like those at Amazon Web Services and OpenStack companies, according to a job posting.

The eventual hire will work to "build the next generation infrastructure" to support iCloud, iTunes and other Apple Internet services, the company says. Silicon Valley tech firms pick off employees from competitors all the time, but this job posting points to the emphasis companies like Apple are putting on recruiting experts in the cloud computing field.

The alert calls for an engineer to work on the Apple Site Reliability Engineering Team who will develop standards to automate application development, cluster management, network routes and manage petabytes of storage for "amazing applications that serve millions of customers."

In addition to experience with Amazon Web Services which runs the biggest public cloud in the market Apple is also looking for developers who are familiar with the open source cloud platform OpenStack, and the private cloud open source system Eucalyptus. It's also looking for system administrators who are familiar with automation tools like Puppet, the posting says. From the details of the job posting, it appears Apple is looking for workers to help the company build out its own cloud services and not expertise in using other competitor's cloud.

"We're a small team focused on the development of standards-based software defined data centers and networks at global scale," according to the posting on Apple's web site. "We're looking for candidates with a strong background in system administration and deep experience with IaaS to bootstrap the operational support of these services."

Apple acquires Locationary for local listings

Apple has acquired Locationary, a start-up based in Toronto that provides a platform for aggregating and managing local business listings.

Apple confirmed the acquisition Friday, but declined to disclose additional details about the plans it has for the company or its business information management technology, which is called Saturn.

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," said Alan Hely, Apple's senior director of corporate communications in Europe, via email.

According to Locationary's website, its Saturn platform manages 175 million business profiles from 253 feeds and repositories. The technology's goal is to standardize the data and keep it up to date.

Apple faced widespread criticism last year regarding the quality and accuracy of its Maps service in iOS 6. The backlash even prompted a public apology from Apple CEO Tim Cook who promised that the service will be improved.

The acquisition of Locationary may be related to that effort.


Apple Maps is already using data from Yelp, a provider of local business information and user reviews. However, Locationary's Saturn platform may allow Apple to add such data from other sources as well, and more importantly, keep that information up to date.

This Week's Apple Rumors, Ranked From Dumbest to Most Plausible

Each week, there are dozens of Apple rumors, reports, and patent filings that hint at what’s coming out of Cupertino next. Some are legit, but most are totally bogus. We parse the week’s rumors for you, ranking them in order from “utterly ridiculous” to “Duh, of course.” First up…

DON’T COUNT ON IT: Leaked photos of the iPhone 5S shell, plus specs
A Chinese-language site called C Technology (reposted by BGR) published pictures of what could be the iPhone 5S shell. There’s no way to verify these photos as being accurate, as they look pretty much identical to the iPhone 5, and we’ve seen how easy it is for other manufacturers to ape the iPhone.

As for specs, a “4-inch IGZO display with the same Retina resolution as the iPhone 5, an A6 processor clocked a bit faster than the current model, quad-core SGX 554MP4 graphics, 2GB of RAM and an upgraded LTE radio,” they sound pretty reasonable, but simply can’t be verified at this point.

DON’T COUNT ON IT: Apple may delay the introduction of the iPhone 5S
Apple could be upgrading the next iPhone to a 4.3-inch Retina display screen, and that could delay the launch of the next handset until the end of the year, according to the Taiwanese newspaper the Commercial Times (as reported by Bloomberg).

Apple just upped the screen size of the iPhone last year, giving developers a new 4-inch screen size to accommodate. Apple is also revealing a revamped iOS 7 interface in the fall that will require a lot of app developers to redesign their apps so they fit in with the new look. So, another form factor for developers to have to wrangle? No. It’s too soon. Apple also traditionally iterates on the form factor every other generation, which would mean the next iPhone would share the same design cues and dimensions as the current iPhone 5.

VERY DOUBTFUL: Apple patent details in-display fingerprint technology — and it’s delaying the iPhone 5S
Apple patent filings are hit or miss. A patent could be an indicator of a technology the company is dedicating significant resources towards, or it could be a decoy to lead competitors (and the press) away from what it’s actually working on. One of the latest is that Apple is working on in-display fingerprint sensing technology. Apple’s been rumored to be including biometrics in upcoming iOS devices since it acquired fingerprint security firm Authentec in the fall of 2012. It’s possible that Apple could include this technology in an iOS device this year or next.

A related report suggests that iPhone 5S production is delayed because of poor fingerprint sensor yields, pushing the launch of the next iPhone into September. September, you say? The same month the iPhone was released in 2012? Wow, it really does sound delayed.

ASK AGAIN LATER: Apple pitching ad-skipping as part of its new TV service
This report lands in the middle of the list because well, Apple’s TV doesn’t exist yet, but the source is strong. Former WSJ reporter Jessica Lessin writes on her own blog that Apple has been talking with cable companies and television networks about allowing users to skip the commercials, as long as those skipped ads are paid for.

Apple’s been coy about its endeavors in the TV space, and various rumors and reports have been swirling since 2011. It seems the major snags holding up the platform’s launch are in deals with TV and cable networks, if all the rumors and reports are to be trusted.

SIGNS POINT TO YES: Apple is aggressively hiring for its smartwatch project
Apple is on a hiring spree to dedicate personnel and resources to its rumored smart watch project, says the Financial Times (via MacRumors).

The smartwatch project itself is akin to Apple’s television project — a lot of signs are indicating there’s something in development, but there’s no hard proof yet. However, based on Apple’s recent hirings, it does seem the company is working on a wearable device of some kind. 9to5Mac detailed a number of sensor and fitness experts that have gone to work for Apple recently. Apple also snatched up former Yves Saint Laurent CEO Paul Deneve to work on “special projects.”

WITHOUT A DOUBT: Apple is ramping up next-gen iPhone production
According to Jefferies analyst Peter Misek and sources familiar to AllThingsD, Apple is kicking up production levels for its next iPhone. Considering the last iPhone was released in September 2012, and Apple seems to have moved to a fall release date for its flagship handset, this report is spot on with where we’d expect Apple to be at this point in the year. Or: Duh, of course Apple is ramping up iPhone production right now.

The Boss: From Apple to Nest Labs, Always a Designer

During summers, we would return to Detroit, where my grandfather, a high school teacher and later a school superintendent, would teach my brother and me how to fix things around the house and build projects, like a soapbox racer, in his workshop.


Computers have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. In grade school, I took a summer programming class, using a mainframe computer with punch cards. My grandfather helped me buy an Apple II; he didn’t know anything about computers but recognized that, for me, it was an important tool — just like his hammers and drills. In high school, a friend and I started a small company, Quality Computers. We worked from his parents’ basement, reselling Apple II hardware and writing software.


In 1987, I entered the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, to study computer engineering. But my classes didn’t satisfy my interest in computers, so I founded an educational software company and another company to design computer processors for the Apple IIgs model.


After I graduated in 1991, I moved to Silicon Valley to pursue my dream job: working with General Magic, whose founders created the first Apple Macintosh. I knocked on their door until they hired me later that year. I spent four years there, developing hardware and software to create personal hand-held communications devices, including Sony’s MagicLink. In 1995, I pitched a hand-held product to the C.E.O. of Philips, the Dutch electronics giant. He hired me to build its mobile computing group to develop the Velo and Nino personal digital assistants.


Music has always been one of my passions. Philips wanted to expand in the United States, and the company named me vice president for business development to manage its digital music strategy and investments. Being a corporate guy wasn’t enough for me, so I left to start Fuse Systems, a consumer electronics company. But it foundered when the Internet bubble burst in 2001. That same year, Apple Computer hired me as a consultant in designing what would become the iPod digital music player. Computers plus music plus Apple — it was another dream gig.


Eight weeks later, I approached Steve Jobs with the initial iPod concept and was put in charge of building and leading the development team. One iPod led to another, eventually becoming 18 generations of iPods — and then three generations of the iPhone.


My wife also worked at Apple. Eventually I wanted to spend more time with our two children, and I also wanted a break. So in 2008, I stepped away as senior vice president of Apple’s iPod division and became a strategic adviser to Mr. Jobs. He was an incredible influence on how I think about bringing products to market.


After leaving Apple, we decided to build a “green” home in Lake Tahoe, Calif. While researching heating and cooling systems, I realized that the thermostat was ripe for innovation. I founded Nest Labs to build the self-programming Nest Learning Thermostat. When owners are away, sensors adjust the temperature to save energy. The thermostat has been selling in the United States and Canada for 20 months, but because the device is Wi-Fi connected, we know that it is being used in more than 80 countries.


We designed the thermostat for do-it-yourself installation, and we even include a custom screwdriver in each box. I think my grandfather would have liked that. 

Apple Buys 2 Mapping Companies

Apple is deepening its mapping skills, buying two start-ups that specialize in location technology.
Apple said on Friday that it had bought the two small companies, HopStop and Locationary, giving Apple more expertise in an area where it has struggled. HopStop is an application that can be used to get directions within cities and shows real-time traffic delays. The other start-up, Locationary, is based in Toronto and specializes in maps and mapping data, according to its Web site.
 Hopstop’s iPhone app. Apple would not disclose terms of the deals. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time,” said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman, “and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

Apple has been deepening its mapping software since it introduced Apple Maps on iOS devices last year. The company promoted the new maps as a major feature of the iPhone 5. But the software was filled with problems, often sending people in the wrong direction and making some satellite photos look like modern artwork rather than maps.

In September, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, posted an apology letter on the company’s Web site saying he was “extremely sorry” for the anguish caused by the app. Some problems still plague the app, and these acquisitions are most likely part of Apple’s effort to improve its service.

HopStop was founded in 2005 with the idea that someone could type two addresses into a Web site and get reliable directions for public transportation. The company overhauled its mobile app in 2013 to add traffic data. The app’s traffic data is based on updates from people using the application, much like Waze, a company bought by Google last month for about $1 billion. 

Is Apple killing paid upgrades?

Apple’s release of Logic Pro X has brought users of the company’s audio authoring software a slew of new features. By all accounts, it seems to be an excellent update to a very popular app used by thousands of artists, famous and otherwise.

One thing that’s not included in the package, though, is an option for existing customers to upgrade from Logic Pro 9 for a reduced price. Regardless of whether you’re approaching Logic for the first time, or you’re a long-running user of the app, getting your hands on this latest version will set you back a cool $200—no exceptions.

In a sense, this was to be expected. Logic, like almost every other piece of software Apple offers, is now distributed exclusively through the Mac App Store, which doesn’t make allowances for any upgrade mechanism—something that developers and users have complained about almost from the moment the store was announced.

Until now, many of Apple’s consumer apps have received free updates—the one notable exception being OS X. This approach, however, cannot work for higher-priced “prosumer” software, which reaches a smaller market and cannot easily be justified simply as a way to incentivize customers to purchase the company’s hardware.

And, while the folks in Cupertino could have probably made a one-time change to the way the store works for their own benefit, it’s likely that the uproar over giving its own software preferential treatment—while forcing all other developers to live sans upgrades—would have been significant, and rightfully so.
Logic Pro X: One price fits all

  One way or another, it’s been clear for some time that Apple has set its sight on paid-upgrade cycles, and that the tech giant is intent on making those cycles a thing of the past.

There are at least a couple of reasons why this makes sense from the company’s point of view. The first is that upgrade pricing introduces confusion in the customer’s mind: If someone can buy a piece of software at a lower price, why can’t everyone? In addition to signalling that software is worth less than its full price tag claims, upgrades create an artificial barrier to entry for new customers, leading to reduced adoption and higher support costs.

Obviously, the lack of paid upgrades also pushes developers to offer more free updates, which plays into Apple’s attempt to create an ecosystem where software for its devices is cheap and plentiful, making it easier for consumers to swallow a premium price for its hardware.

Consumers have benefited from Apple’s scheme by enjoying generally-lower prices. Just a few years ago, Logic Pro cost $500—which means that, assuming that the new pricing holds, you now would have to buy three versions of the software before you’d spend as much money as just one at the old price. The same goes for many of Apple’s consumer-level apps as well, including OS X, which will now set you back a fraction of what you would have spent just a few versions ago.

For developers, the bag is decidedly more mixed. Coupled with the App Store’s generally depressed (and depressing) prices, its lack of support for paid upgrades makes life very hard for companies that have an established customer base long accustomed to incremental pricing. And even those who are publishing their app for the first time directly on the Mac App Store face an uphill battle trying to sell customers on the idea that they should fork over the entire purchase price again to get their hands on a new release.

This makes Logic Pro X’s release that much more relevant, particularly if the lack of upgrade pricing becomes part of a trend: The fact that the world’s largest tech company may have foregone the traditional approach towards upgrades can only signal to customers that a fairly-priced app is a good idea even if you have to fork over the full price every time a major update comes out.

And there is reason to believe that this will trickle down to third-party developers, who can jump on the bandwagon and adopt a distribution strategy in which small updates are free, and major releases are priced independently as separate products. In the long run, this might mean both higher revenues and a customer base that is more receptive to prices that are reasonable for both sellers and buyers. 

Apple should lead the move to DRM-free ebooks

I like books. I also own a lot of them. When moving recently, I realized just how many: Even after disposing of a third of my collection, I still have a couple of thousand. And boy, do they take up a lot of space—it’s one of the things that makes ebooks so attractive.
On the other hand, those dead-tree books are free from one of ebooks’ most onerous encumbrances: digital rights management. That lack of DRM means I can read them wherever and whenever I want—well, as long as I have light. For ebooks with DRM, though, the publishers and retailers get to dictate how they can be used, read, and shared.
I’ve embraced ebooks, in part to save on buying more shelving. But because DRM prevents ebooks from having the same flexibility as print books, I’m loath to buy them for anything more than books I only plan on reading once. But that doesn’t have to be the way it is, and Apple could lead the way to change—it’s done so in the past.
It seems at times unbelievable that we’re all now used to having music without DRM, but still have books that depend on what platform we use.
Granted, not all publishers or authors sell their books with DRM. As an author of several Take Control ebooks, I’m very happy that these books are not locked down. Users can purchase these books in PDF, ePub, and MOBI format, and read them on just about any ebook reader, tablet or computer. While some well-known authors and publishers sell unrestricted ebooks, such DRM-free titles remain just a drop in the ocean of ebooks.
The publishing industry’s road to digital has been rocky. Amazon has long sold ebooks at a loss; in the long run, that’s changed the perceived value of books and it’s coincided with a drop in the sales of hardcover fiction. Apple’s not without blame either: the recent antitrust decision against Apple found the company guilty of colluding with five major publishers to set ebook prices, part of what seems to be a concerted effort to bite into Amazon’s market-dominant status.
Though we can’t change the past, it’s not hard for me to imagine a way that this might have gone differently. In February 2007, Steve Jobs penned Thoughts on Music, an open letter to the music industry about DRM and digital music. If I take an excerpt from that text and change a few of the key words, it might instead read like this:
“Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free books in open licensable formats. In such a world, any ebook reader can display books purchased from any store, and any store can sell ebooks which are readable on all ebook readers. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big publishers would license Apple their books without the requirement that they be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free books on our iTunes store.”
(As an interesting experiment, read the entire open letter, mentally substituting “books” for “music.”)
Of course, one of Jobs's points in that letter was that it was incumbent upon the record labels to make it possible for Apple to sell DRM-free music. Apple can’t unilaterally decide to sell ebooks DRM-free without the publishers agreeing. But Apple can—and should—apply pressure and make the case to publishers, because in the long run it will benefit Cupertino’s own customers.
I can listen to my digital music files on just about any device; I want to do the same thing with my books. I can lend my music to my friend; why can’t I lend her a book I bought on my Kindle or iPad? (Amazon, to its credit, offers a lending option, but it’s so crippled and feature-limited as to barely register above “useless.”) Above all, why can’t I read any ebook on any device of my choice?
I use two types of devices to read ebooks: I have a Kindle Paperwhite and two iPads (one full-sized and one mini). These devices aren’t interchangeable.
But I can’t read all of my ebooks on the Kindle Paperwhite because of DRM; I can only read books purchased from Amazon or those rare DRM-free books sold in the MOBI format that Kindles support. Likewise, I can’t easily take my iBookstore-purchased ebooks outside to read, because they aren’t compatible with my Kindle. (The iPad, though, does have a leg up, in that it supports apps for reading ebooks purchased from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, and other stores.)

Because of these limitations, I consider two variables when I want to buy an ebook: If a book is a lot cheaper in the iBookstore, I’ll get it there. But because Kindle books offer the option to be read on multiple devices—including outdoor-friendly e-ink Kindles, I generally pick Amazon’s offering, unless I’m certain I’ll be reading exclusively on the iPad.

Music has lost its DRM fetters; it’s time for ebooks to do the same. But in order for that to happen, consumers need to be the ones to demand that this DRM, and the platform lock-in it engenders, be eliminated.

Apple could take the lead, as the company did with DRM-free music, and help change another market that needs it. This could be good for Apple itself, too, given the perception of the company in the wake of the ebook price-fixing ruling.

But above all, what should matter to Apple is that ending ebook DRM would be good for consumers. It would lead to true competition among ebook retailers, since any retailer could sell books that could be read on different devices, just as any bookstore can sell dead-tree books that anyone can read. We would be able to choose the device we want to use to read a new book. We wouldn’t have to worry about being able to access our digital libraries in the future.

And the next time I move, I wouldn’t have to worry as much about how many books I’m schlepping from one home to another. 

Apple guilty of e-book price fixing

Apple has been found guilty of conspiring with five publishers to raise the prices of e-books to compete against Amazon and challenge its dominance of the market.

The three-week non-jury trial began in New York in June in which the US Department of Justice (DoJ) charged Apple with conspiring with publishers to adopt the so-called agency model.

Switching to the model meant that publishers set the price of e-books directly, effectively ending Amazon’s ability to set its own prices.

The five publishers were originally named as defendants alongside Apple, but have already reached settlements.

Penguin settled its case for $75m and Macmillan settled for $26m, while Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster created a $69m fund for refunds to consumers.

New York judge Denise Cote found that Apple had played a central role in facilitating and executing the conspiracy and ordered a new hearing to set damages to be imposed on Apple, according to the BBC.

US Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer called the ruling "a victory for millions of consumers who choose to read books electronically".

But Apple maintains that it brought innovation and competition to the market without restricting it and said it plans to appeal against the rule and continue its fight against “false allegations”.

If Apple fails to get the ruling overturned, the company could face a separate trial by state attorney generals and consumers pursuing class actions and seeking monetary damages.

Apple last year settled an e-book price-fixing antitrust case with the European Commission.

Nokia's Stephen Elop Battles Apple and Google With Megapixels

These are the days in Helsinki when the sun never seems to set. So maybe it’s not so surprising that Stephen Elop, the CEO of the beleaguered Finnish phone giant Nokia, rejects the conventional wisdom that his company is as lifeless as the salted cod served in local restaurants. Instead, he sees a moment ripe with opportunity.

Apple’s pioneering iPhone has not seen a major reset in many months. Samsung, the dominant player in the Android system, just released a flagship phone with a chaotic blur of features, none of them truly memorable.

So Nokia’s unveiling today of the Lumia 1020 represents a chance — maybe the last, best one — to make its case to users, and to demonstrate that there’s actually room for the “third ecosystem” that Elop hopes Nokia will become. The case for the previous Lumias –- the well-received WinPhone operating system, a slick design, and some other nice features — has won a foothold but not much more. For Nokia to gain true momentum, it must provide something new and big. Something that people can not get elsewhere. Something technolust-worthy. Something actually useful. To engage in Elop-speak: a true differentiator.
“The tonality has changed a little bit in the industry. Look at the recent products launched. Their makers say: ‘This is the next one.’ But is it that innovative? Have they really differentiated this current generation from the previous generation product?”
“The basis we’ve chosen to compete on is innovation and differentiation,” he says. “We have to set ourselves apart from the people who are leading the smartphone industry. The tonality has changed a little bit in the industry. Look at the recent products launched. Their makers say: ‘This is the next one.’ But is it that innovative? Have they really differentiated this current generation from the previous generation product?”

The Nokia 1020 — to be released on July 26 for $300 and a two-year AT&T contract — does have something genuinely unique. It boasts a suite of imaging features built around a technology called PureView, involving what Nokia describes as a “41-megapixel backside illuminated sensor.” Cut the jargon and what you get is a leap in camera tech.

As I saw first-hand at Nokia’s research center in Tampere, Finland, the PureView sensor captures so much information that you can do a detailed zoom after you take the picture. It’s like a real-time implementation of all the rigmarole that the photographer in the 1966 movie “Blow Up” went through when he noticed a detail in his photo that proved evidence to a murder. Years after the fact, information stored in these “superpixels” could unearth similarly amazing, if not incriminating, artifacts.

The Lumia 1020 is also augmented with a Xenon flash that grabs sharp pictures in low light that the iPhone and the Samsung portray as blurs. Nokia has augmented its already excellent capabilities in image stabilization to allow users to capture steady high-def video, even in rocky conditions. And it will be a platform for an endless parade of nifty features. One example available on launch is the ability to use part of an image as an animated GIF while the rest of the image remains a static photo.

PureView really is a differentiator. When I got a demo of it early last year in Nokia’s research lab, it was clear that this could make a difference to a lot of users. After all, taking photos is a core smart phone activity. But I was disappointed to learn that Nokia’s first implementation of the technology would not be appear in the Lumia series of Windows phones that represented the company’s future. Instead, Nokia chose to put its most amazing advances in the PureView 808 — a phone running the doomed Symbian operating system. It was like opening a new Danny Meyer restaurant in Chernobyl.

Elop defends the move now by saying that the 808 was successful on its own terms. “It sold well,” he said, while not giving any numbers. (But I’ll bet most of you have never seen one in the wild.) Its photography-crazy users loved it. But 808’s real value was as a test bed for PureView. Nokia was able to gauge from real users how to improve the technology for the next iteration, the one now on the 1020.

Sure enough, this version of PureView seems ready for prime time. To accommodate the advanced camera, the 808 had a hideous unsightly bulge in its middle. It looked like it was momentarily about to give birth to an MP3 player. The 1020 has only a modest rise where around the lens — it reminds me of the stoic eye of HAL in Kubrick’s “2001” — and is around the same thickness as the trim Lumia 920.

If this powerful imaging technology had been part of the last iPhone release, the internet would have exploded with Blogosphere hosannas and the lines outside Apple stores would have clogged entire metropolitan areas. But can innovation and differentiation really help Nokia make today’s one-on-one smartphone battle into something more à trois? Skeptics — and plenty of people not normally inclined to skepticism — will probably stick to their view that at this point there is nothing Nokia can do to turn things around, and that the Finnish giant will wind up, with Blackberry, in high-tech’s dustbin.

But Elop has a point to make about tables turning. “If you had asked anyone in the smartphone world on January 1, 2007, they would have said Nokia was incomparable,” he says. “It had such a strong share, so much lock-in, so much brand awareness that no one could challenge it. And yet innovation, disorientation, disruption changed that. It set Nokia on an entirely different trajectory.”

That trajectory turned downward so precipitously that Nokia’s very survival is at stake. But Elop believes that PureView — along with future differentiators he says are in the works — will help him paint a very different picture. With 41 megapixels.

Pogue’s Posts Blog: A Better Google Maps App for Apple and Android Devices

Google Map’s new directory buttons.
Our story so far: Last September, Apple decided to dump the Google Maps app that had been on the iPhone for years. Apple replaced it with its own Maps app — software with so many problems that Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, apologized and even recommended that people use other apps until Apple could fix its own one.

In December — incredibly quickly — Google responded by introducing its own Maps app for iPhone. It’s a spectacular app, among the best apps ever written. It’s fast, beautiful and so good at guessing what you mean when you start typing a destination, it’s almost mind reading. You can read the details here.

Today, that delightful news gets even better. Not only has Google improved Google Maps for iPhone, it’s also brought that same free app to three machines that never had it: the iPad, Android phones and Android tablets. (The Android versions are available for download today; it requires the Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean version of Android — recent versions, in other words. The iOS versions will be available shortly.)

For Androidians, the biggest news is the design of the app itself. It’s modeled on the iPhone app, the one that’s simple and fast and elegant. It’s also uncluttered by the morass of menus that have always plagued the existing Maps app for Android.

But for practitioners of all religions — tablet, phone, iOS, Android — the other news is the new features that today’s new version brings. They include:

* Greater speed. All app versions are faster than before.

* Better place information. Half the time, you don’t even need navigation instructions; you just use Google Maps as the world’s smartest Yellow Pages, to find a nearby restaurant, movie theater, drugstore or whatever.

The details for found places now include a one-line description (“Chinese restaurant famous for dim sum”); a five-star rating system (including a decimal — “4.3,” for example — because, let’s face it, almost everything these days winds up with a four-star rating); the ability to upload your own photos of a place; and a more complete integration of the Zagat guides, which Google bought.

* Greater emphasis on exploration. Google Maps has always excelled at getting you to a known destination. But Google now wants the app to help you choose a restaurant, bar, store, recreation center or hotel, at least in major United States and European cities.

If you tap in the Search box without typing anything, new, photographic buttons appear: Eat, Drink, Shop, Play, Sleep. Each opens lists of corresponding facilities, sorted by criteria like Local Favorites, Popular with Tourists and so on. (Google says that these recommendations are never paid placement.)

* Traffic incidents and auto-rerouting. At last: Google Maps shows more than colored lines indicating current traffic speeds on major roads. Now it also displays tiny icons that represent accidents and construction. Tap one to read the details: “Right lane blocked on 680,” for example. (In case you were wondering, the information on traffic incidents doesn’t come from Waze, the traffic-incident app that Google recently bought. That data has yet to be incorporated into Maps.)

Better yet: Maps now looks ahead for traffic jams on your route, and interrupts your drive with a dialog box that offers to route you around it (if the new path would be quicker, of course). On its own.

* Offline maps. This feature is something of an Easter egg. It’s undocumented, a feature inserted by Google engineers simply because they wanted it. You can access it only if you know the secret. But wow, is it worth it.

This feature memorizes the map data for whatever area is displayed on your screen right now (up to a whole city in size). That way, you can use Google Maps even when you’re overseas and don’t want to turn on data roaming (because that’s insanely expensive), or when you’re in an area where there’s no cell reception. It’s very handy.

To capture a map snapshot like this, tap in the Search box. Use the speech-recognition button and say, “OK Maps.” (It’s a riff on the command “OK Glass” that prepares Google Glass, the company’s “smart headband,” for voice commands.)

A message quietly lets you know you’ve successfully stored the displayed area.

*Nice tablet layouts. On a tablet, Maps really shines. The app smartly reformats itself to take best advantage of whatever screen shape you have: two or three columns of place listings, for example, and luxuriously displayed photos and reviews for each business.

This new, improved Maps app works identically on both major flavors of phone and tablet. You know what? I don’t care how much you distrust Google and its motives. This is crazy good software, some of the best work Google has ever done.