"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life." Steve Jobs
The Japanese Apple Store in Tokyo’s upmarket Ginza district had to be evacuated and a promotional event canceled over the weekend after it received a bomb threat. The event was a Sunday promotional event featuring the movie director Isao Yukisada, who last directed the Chinese romance-suspense film Five Minutes to Tomorrow in 2014. It’s not […]
(via Cult of Mac – Tech and culture through an Apple lens)
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Microsoft leads EST, FBI, Interpol and Homeland Security to victory in taking down the million strong Win32/Dorkbot. Over the last six months the malware had been infecting over 100,000 PCs a month. Read more…
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Microsoft leads FBI & Interpol coalition to destroy million strong botnet
A coalition of authors and well-known booksellers have come forth to back Apple in a petition to overturn a recent ruling that stated the company was liable in conspiring to fix the prices of electronic books when its iBooks store launched on the iPad in 2010 (via Cult of Mac).
Together, the Authors Guild, Authors United, the American Booksellers Association, and Barnes & Noble have filed a 37-page amicus brief that states Apple was in fact enhancing competition and benefiting its customers.
“We are pleased to lend our support in this matter, critical to anyone interested in a competitive and diverse literary marketplace,” said Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the Authors Guild, in a statement. “We fundamentally question the wisdom of the Second Circuit’s use of antitrust law to punish a business arrangement that demonstrably increased competition in the e-book marketplace.”
The brief falls in line with Apple’s petition of the Supreme Court to review the case this past October, after first being found guilty of conspiring to artificially inflate the prices of e-books back in 2013, when the case started. The amicus brief filed by the authors and booksellers backs up Apple’s attempts at overturning the ruling, stating that a positive outcome for the case is „critical to maintaining a healthy marketplace for the ideas and First Amendment-protected expression that authors and bookstores facilitate.“
The groups even mention Amazon as more of a „disruptive“ force in the e-books market, with a „loss leader“ strategy that led to domination over the digital bookselling marketplace. The groups use Amazon’s recent public battles with publishers like Hachette, where it essentially ceased selling any of their novels due to a price point disagreement, as a primary example. They also look at the market monopoly Amazon held before Apple entered with iBooks in 2010.
“With a 90% market share, nearly every customer who wanted to purchase an e-book had to do so through Amazon,” the brief states. “Amazon could exercise this power to suppress specific publishers, authors, or messages with which it disagreed, with impunity. It also could steer the culture toward the ideas it valued. Amazon controlled what e-books were promoted on its home page, what e-books were recommended to consumers, and what books appeared at the top of a consumer’s search results when she searched for e-books on the Amazon.com website.“
With no response yet from the Department of Justice regarding Apple’s filing for a review, the company still has an uncertain future in the two year-long case. All respondents have until January 4 to file a response in opposition to Apple’s petitioning of the Supreme Court, so the next leg of the case is just over a month away.
Tags: lawsuit, antitrust, e-books
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Authors Believe Apple’s Entry Into E-Book Market Wasn’t Anti-Competitive
Johann Jungwirth has been appointed as the head of Volkswagen’s new Digitalization Strategy Department in the company’s Germany-based headquarters. In the past, Jungwirth worked for Mercedez-Benz and Apple, where he led the Mac Systems Engineering team.
More specifically, Jungwirth supported Apple’s Special Projects Group, a tie that has connected him in the past to Apple’s long-rumored Apple Car project. Although the German native could have left Apple solely for a job that brought him closer to home, it’s still unclear exactly why he decided to leave the Cupertino-based company – where he was allegedly working alongside the Apple Car team – for Volkswagen.
Jungwirth was named Director, Mac Systems Engineering at Apple in Cupertino, CA (USA), in 2014. He was responsible for innovation in design and engineering in product development as well as hiring, growing and leading a multicultural research & development team and supporting the Special Projects Group.
According to Volkswagen’s press release, Jungwirth will help the car manufacturer look towards the future with a focus on digitilization in the automotive industry. The hire comes on the heels of Volkswagen’s big diesel scandal that’s plagued the company for the past few weeks, in which it was discovered that it cheated on emissions tests in a number of its diesel cars.
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Former Apple Car Hire Johann Jungwirth Joins Volkswagen as Head of Digitalization Strategy
Apple this week informed a federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn, New York that it „would be impossible“ for the company to access data on a locked iPhone running iOS 8 or later, reports Reuters. Apple was responding to a request from the judge, James Orenstein, to help him decide whether to fulfill a U.S. Justice Department request that would have forced Apple to help authorities gain access to a seized iPhone.
Apple’s response is not a surprise, as it is the same thing the company has said several times in the past. Since iOS 8, Apple has stopped storing encryption keys for devices, making it impossible for the company to unlock iPhones and iPads under police request. Without an encryption key, Apple cannot bypass a passcode to gain access to an iOS device.
In a brief filed with the court, Apple said 90 percent of its devices are running iOS 8 or higher and are thus inaccessible. Apple is able to access the 10 percent of devices that continue to use iOS 7 or below, but the company told the judge that being forced to comply with the Justice Department’s request could tarnish its brand.
„Forcing Apple to extract data in this case, absent clear legal authority to do so, could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand,“ Apple’s lawyers wrote.
Apple’s encryption changes, implemented in 2014 with iOS 8, have been unpopular with some law enforcement officials. FBI Director James Comey has expressed concern that encryption implemented by companies like Google and Apple lets people „place themselves above the law.“
Just yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook told an interviewer encryption is a necessity and that software backdoors are unacceptable, reiterating Apple’s long-standing opinion on the subject.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
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Apple Reiterates Inability to Unlock iOS Devices Running iOS 8 or Higher in New Court Filing
The FTC is said to be investigating Google over concerns that the company has restricted competition on Android by prioritizing its own apps and services over those of its rivals. Read more…
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The FTC is reportedly investigating Google over Android antitrust concerns
The Pope’s visit to New York City and Philadelphia later this week may delay iPhone 6s and 6s Plus deliveries with Apple reportedly sending out warning emails to affected customers. Read more…
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Apple warns iPhone 6s deliveries may be delayed due to Pope visit
Apple is reported to have met with officials at California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to discuss plans to test its self-driving Apple Car on public roads. What does this mean? Quite possibly that we’re set to get a glimpse of the Apple Car a lot sooner than most people figured. According to the Guardian, the fact […]
(via Cult of Mac – Tech and culture through an Apple lens)
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Apple senior legal counsel Mike Maletic held an hour-long meeting with the California Department of Motor Vehicles last month to review „autonomous vehicle regulations,“ according to internal documents obtained by The Guardian. The revelation comes amid widespread rumors that Apple has hired hundreds of employees to develop an electric vehicle over the past several months.
California DMV headquarters in Sacramento
Maletic reportedly met with a trio of DMV executives familiar with self-driving cars, including deputy director Bernard Soriano and chief of strategic planning Stephanie Dougherty, who are co-sponsors of California’s autonomous vehicle regulation project. Brian Soublet, the department’s deputy director and chief counsel, was also in the meeting, according to the report.
California’s DMV is developing regulations for the eventual deployment and public operation of autonomous vehicles. These rules will establish requirements that manufacturers must meet to certify that their driverless vehicles have been successfully tested, meet safety criteria, and are ready for consumers to operate on public roads.
Apple would be required to obtain an Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permit from the California DMV to test autonomous vehicles on public roads, which Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Google, Tesla Motors, Nissan, BMW, Honda and others have already done. Given the Cupertino-based company’s culture of secrecy, however, that is an unlikely scenario.
If Apple does seek a testing permit for its Project Titan self-driving car, it will have to sacrifice much of its legendary preference for secrecy. Manufacturers applying for a permit have to detail the make, model and vehicle identification number (VIN) of cars they want to test, share details of autonomous features and capabilities, and identify test drivers by name.
If rumors about Apple testing an electric vehicle are true, it is more likely that the iPhone maker will use a private testing facility such as GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base in the San Francisco Bay Area run by the Contra Costa Transportation Authority. Apple could also use its own property to test vehicles with complete privacy, something it may already be doing.
Apple’s rumored „Project Titan“ electric vehicle research and development could be based at a top-secret office and lab complex in Sunnyvale codenamed SG05, the report corroborates. Bloomberg reported in February that Apple aims to begin electric car production as early as 2020, but the company’s roadmap is not entirely clear due to the highly secretive nature of the project.
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Apple Met With California DMV to Review Autonomous Vehicle Regulations
A battalion chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection was reunited with his family after they fled their burning home — thanks to Apple’s “Find my iPhone” feature. Paul Duncan was on a job fighting a forest fire in Hidden Valley, California, when he received a panicked call from his wife saying […]
(via Cult of Mac – Tech and culture through an Apple lens)
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Find My iPhone reunites family that escaped California wildfire