Teardown finds Microsoft Surface RT tough to get into, with modular options inside

Microsoft's Surface RT may be handicapped with the new RT version of Windows 8, but should it break, is it more likely to wind up in a repair shop or a landfill?

As is its custom whenever a new mobile product hits the market, repair site iFixit has delved into the guts of the Surface RT, taking a look at the parts and repairability of Microsoft's tablet. The basic gist of iFixit's findings? Surface RT is difficult to enter, but once inside, you'll find a number of approachable repair opportunities.

Do not cross

As with Apple's iPad, the Surface RT takes some time and skills to break into, making it painfully obvious that getting into the device is not encouraged. The tough-to-remove camera cover hides seven crucial Torx screws on top of another ten placed throughout the device.

After removing the screws you'll have the break the "Surface" tamper-evident seal to get inside. Bye, bye warranty!

Modular love

Luckily the 7.4 V, 31.5 Wh battery is much easier to remove than the one powering the iPad. It's lightly glued down but with the help of the trusty spudgerand a couple minutes of patience, it's out.

If your speakers die out, you'll be happy to know those are modular, too. Just a little more prying and they come right out, leaving the Surface soundless.

Other odds and ends are easy to remove, such as the Surface's headphone jack and volume buttons that share the same ribbon cable. The front- and rear-facing cameras are easy to remove, but only after the motherboard is taken out to reveal the plastic bezel that pins them down.

Screen fusion

When a tablet needs repairs, chances are it's the screen. In the Surface's case, iFixit notes that the LCD and the glass plane are fused together, making separate repairs of the parts impossible. That drives up the cost.

Even if you do want to go ahead with the screen replacement, it will require a heat gun and a saint's patience to get to it. Long story short: don't break the screen.

The takeaway

The Microsoft Surface RT may take after Fort Knox by being a pain to break into it. But once inside, iFixit found plenty of removable and replaceable modular parts. However, that stops as soon as you reach the LCD and glass pane screen. The fused components will need to be replaced for a hefty price if you aren't careful with your tablet.

Source: pcworld.com

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Microsoft Surface goes on sale to cheering crowds

Microsoft’s Surface debuted to crowds of early adopters across the U.S. Friday, as the Windows RT-powered tablet went on sale.

About 100 people waited outside Boston’s Microsoft Store to buy the Surface tablet, which runs a new version of Windows.

Unlike previous versions of the operating system, Windows RT runs on an ARM processor, typically found in mobile devices, instead of an x86 processor, which is used in traditional desktops and laptops. One of the major drawbacks of Windows RT is that it won’t run any old software. All applications will need to be downloaded from the Windows Store, but that didn’t deter some Boston customers.

“It has Microsoft Office, which is the most important reason I’m upgrading from my iPad,” said Joshua Jasper, a veterinary hospital manager who was waiting to buy the tablet. “My biggest concern is app selection, but I know that will grow over time.”

Customers try out the Surface at a Microsoft store in Palo Alto, Calif.

IDC analyst Bob O’Donnell shared Jasper’s concerns. “When I looked in the Windows Store I thought, ‘Wow, there’s not much there,’” said O’Donnell. “There were a lot of cheesy phone-like games in the store, but of course Office is huge,” he said.

“My biggest concern is that people are going to get these tablets, realize their limitations and then return them in droves,” he said. He said that the biggest challenge for Microsoft is explaining the difference between Windows 8 and Windows RT to consumers “because they are very different.”

O’Donnell predicts about 10 percent of buyers in the PC and tablet markets want a PC-tablet hybrid.

A sign in the window lets Palo Alto customers
know that the Surface has landed.

Across the country in Palo Alto, Calif., the surface attracted a line of about 100 people outside the Microsoft Store in the Stanford Shopping Center, the closest Microsoft-run full-time retail outlet to San Francisco. The line began forming about six hours before the store’s opening.

First in line was Matthew Dien, who said he made a two-hour journey from Sacramento to be among the first on the U.S. West Coast to buy the tablet computer.

“I’m very excited about it,” he said. “It’s Microsoft’s very first hardware and they are coming up against Apple. I’ve always liked Windows products and so I was very excited when I heard they were coming out with hardware.”

Dien left the store about 30 minutes after it opened with a new Surface in his hands.

Most of those in line appeared to be waiting for the Surface and not Windows 8, which also went on sale Friday. There’s less buzz for the new operating system, likely because many would-be users can download copies from Microsoft.

Microsoft offered a sweetener to those willing to queue: a yearlong subscription to the Xbox Music Pass worth $100 for the first 100 customers who made a purchase.

Back at the Microsoft Store in Boston, about two dozen Surface tablets were available to try out. The interface was fluid and responsive for the most part. The screen was bright and vibrant and text was very easy to read. Some of the apps took longer to launch than expected, though. For example, it took the Xbox Games app about 10 seconds to fully load.

One of the accessories available for Surface is a keyboard that doubles as a cover. It costs $100 when purchased along with the tablet. It will likely take some getting used to as there’s no tactile feedback when a key is pressed. The cover is surprisingly thin and clips securely onto the tablet. There were no wires or pairing needed for the keyboard to work.

The first customer in line at the Boston store wanted to buy the Surface because he thinks Microsoft’s ecosystem is broader than Apple’s.

“I had a MacBook Pro for a while, but I switched back to Microsoft,” said Mounir Koussa. “I can have a desktop, a laptop, a phone, a tablet and [the Zune] music service all in one.”

O’Donnell said that there will be “huge sales and lots of confusion” in the tablet market in the coming months. He thinks that Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Google’s Nexus 7 have good chances at capturing some of the market, but he believes that Apple will continue to dominate.

The Surface has a 10.6-inch display and weighs 1.5 pounds (680 grams). It starts at $499 with 32GB of storage.

Source: pcworld.com

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Tumblr takes a tumble, stumbles back to life

Tumblr is back online after an hours-long outage Friday morning.

Just a week following its last outage, Tumblr on its Twitter account said it was “experiencing network problems” due to an issue with one of the site’s uplink providers.

According to service monitoring site Down Right Now, the outage began shortly after 8 a.m. EDT on Friday.

hortly after 2 p.m. EDT, Tumblr tweeted that the site was back online and a “full postmortem regarding today’s service interruption will follow.” No explanation has yet been posted.

The Internet is having a rough week. Amazon Web Services Monday experienced an outage that took down Netflix, Pinterest, Reddit, Airbnb, and Flipboard, among others hosted on the service.

Dropbox and Google App Engine were down for some but operational for others on Friday morning, and some users reported issues with YouTube as well. Even Apple had issues this week with its iMessage service. iOS users reported a Thursday afternoon outage, though Apple didn’t confirm or clarify the reasons behind the glitch.

Internet Traffic Report documented significant packet loss and a steep dip in Web traffic across North America on Friday morning, though it’s unclear what caused the anomalies, and it seems things are back to normal.

The outages have thus far been unrelated. Tumblr’s outage last week was due to issues with its Dashboard, while Amazon Web Services had server trouble at its Virginia data center.

Why do outages freak some users?

The response to these outages, some of which last for less than an hour, may say more about the always-on nature of the Internet than about the sites themselves. Tumblr users took to Twitter to mourn the site’s absence in either snarky (“I can’t post my new ‘tumblr-is-down’ gif because tumblr is down”) or plaintive (“tumblr is still down why am I breathing”) tones.

The pitfalls of living in a constantly connected culture have been well documented. Speaking in a March TED talk, Professor Sherry Turkle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said people turn to social networking platforms to feel connected and understood.

“That feeling that ‘no one is listening to me’ makes us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us,” said Turkle, who studies the way technology is changing the way humans interact with each other.

When Tumblr and Pinterest are unavailable, when iMessages stop working for a few hours, stream of connections are severed, even if only briefly.

Source: pcworld.com

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Google, Microsoft and Yahoo fix serious email weakness

Use of weak DKIM signing keys could allow spoofed email messages to look legitimate, US-CERT warned

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have remedied a cryptographic weakness in their email systems that could allow an attacker to create a spoofed message that passes a mathematical security verification.

The weakness affects DKIM, or DomainKeys Identified Mail, a security system used by major email senders. DKIM wraps a cryptographic signature around an email that verifies the domain name through which the message was sent, which helps more easily filter out spoofed messages from legitimate ones.

The problem lies with signing keys that are less than 1,024 bits, which can be factored due to increasing computer power. US-CERT said in an advisoryissued Wednesday that signing keys less than 1,024 bits are weak, and that keys up to RSA-768 bits have been factored.

The issue came to light after Florida-based mathematician Zachary Harris was sent an email from a Google recruiter that used only a 512-bit key, according to a report published Wednesday by Wired magazine.

Thinking it might be some clever test by Google, he factored the key, then used it to send a spoofed message from Sergey Brin to Larry Page, Google's founders.

It wasn't a test but in fact a serious problem, one in which emails that could be bogus would be trusted. According to the DKIM standard, email messages that have keys shorter that 1,024 bits are not necessarily rejected.

Harris found the problem wasn't limited to Google, but also Microsoft and Yahoo, all of whom appeared to have fixed the issue as of two days ago, according to US-CERT. Harris told Wired he found either 512-bit or 768-bit keys in use at PayPal, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Apple, Dell, LinkedIn, Twitter, SBCGlobal, US Bank, HP, Match.com and HSBC.

Weak signing keys are a boon for cybercriminals. They selectively target people with emails containing malicious links in an attempt to exploit a computer's software and install malware, a style of attack known as spear phishing. If an email contains the correct DKIM signature, it's more likely to end up in a recipient's inbox.

US-CERT also warned of another problem. The DKIM specification allows a sender to flag that it is testing DKIM in messages. Some recipients will "accept DKIM messages in testing mode when the messages should be treated as if they were not DKIM signed," US-CERT said.

Source: computerworld.com

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Apple iPad Mini: All the iPad at (nearly) half the cost

s the Apple iPad Mini the right tablet for business? Perhaps. It depends on whether you’re in the market for a tablet in general, or if you’re really only in the market for an iPad.

Many expected Apple to offer the iPad Mini at about half the cost of the $499 iPad. Instead,the iPad Mini is $329—or about 65 percent of the price of the larger iPad. It’s not $250, but at $329 the iPad Mini could still be a cost effective option for businesses.

If you’re already deploying, or considering deploying iPads to your users, then you’re probably already beyond the point of evaluating different mobile platforms, and determining whether alternative tablets will work for you. In that case, you should certainly stop and take a closer look at the iPad Mini.

There are cheaper 7-inch tablet options out there,
like the Google Nexus 7

Aside from a price that’s 35 percent less than the 16GB Wi-Fi third-generation iPad,the iPad Mini is almost 25 percent thinner, and more than 50 percent lighter than it’s larger sibling. Yet, it still has access to all 275,000 of the apps developed specifically for the iPad, and it still has Siri and FaceTime HD. Unless there’s a specific reason you’re mobile users must have the larger display, the iPad Mini still gives you all the features and capabilities you’re looking for in a smaller, less expensive package.

Of course, if you’re actually just interested in 7-inch tablets for your workforce and you aren’t committed to the iPad, there are other options out there. The Google Nexus 7 starts at $199, and costs only $249 for a 16GB model—rumor has it that it will soon be 32GB at that same price point. A 32GB Google Nexus 7 for $249 presents a very compelling argument against investing $329 for a 16GB iPad Mini.

The Google Nexus 7 also has a number of advantages over the iPad Mini in terms of features and functionality. It has GPS and turn-by-turn navigation (only available in the more expensive 4G models of the iPad Mini), a quad-core processor, and greater pixel density compared to the non-Retina display of the iPad Mini. Some 7-inch alternatives, like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, also offer expandable storage through a microSD memory card slot.

The iPad Mini is the thinnest and lightest of the established 7-inch tablet rivals, though. It’s also one of the few 7-inch tablets with both front and rear facing cameras. If your mobile users need to be able to take and catalog photos from their tablet, a rear-facing camera is an important element.

The iPad Mini is the only device among the 7-inch tablets that even offers 4G cellular connectivity as an option—although you have to pay an additional $130 premium to get it. $459 is substantially more than $199 or $249, but if your users need GPS capabilities, or to be able to connect to sites and resources without access to a Wi-Fi network or without relying on a smartphone or portable hotspot device to provide the connectivity, the iPad Mini is the only viable option.

If your business has already embraced the iPhone and iPad, and has already invested in iOS apps to get the job done, the iPad Mini might be a perfect combination of price and capabilities for your tablet needs.

Source: pcworld.com

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Apple announces hybrid drive technology in Macs

With 128GB of NAND flash, this hybrid solution is far ahead of the competition

Along with the long-awaited iPad Mini announcement today, Apple revealed what it called its Fusion Drive, which combines the high performance of NAND flash memory with the storage capacity of a hard disk drive (HDD).

The Fusion Drive will be available in the new iMac and Mac Mini desktops. Apple's OS X operating system and pre-installed applications will run on the SSD by default, while documents and media will run off the hard disk drive.

The new Fusion Drive combines a massive 128GB of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash capacity with either a 1TB or a 3TB hard disk drive, but the two media appear as a single storage volume. With 128GB of NAND flash memory, this hybrid offering puts Apple ahead of the competition.

Apple claims the Fusion Drive offers performance similar to a pure solid-state drive (SSD), but with the mass storage capacity and lower cost of a hard disk drive.

Apple did not respond to a request for additional information about the Fusion Drive at deadline.

Apple is likely using
flash technology it acquired
when it purchased Anobit,
such as this Anobit
Genesis 2 T-Series SS

Based on the amount of flash capacity offered by Apple, industry analysts do not believe its Fusion Drive is a hybrid drive, which combines flash and spinning disk in a hard drive form factor. Seagate sells the most popular version of a hybrid drive on the market -- the Momentus XT, which has 8GB of single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash along with up to 750GB of spinning disk capacity.

Western Digital has also announced a thin hybrid drivefor ultrabooks with up to 500GB of capacity.

The Fusion Drive's 128GB of flash capacity would require a great deal of space inside an HDD form factor, said Fang Zhang, an analyst with research firm IHS iSuppli.

"I think you can call it a hybrid solution," Zhang said. "Basically you have two drives: one SSD and one HDD, but with a controller and software that can manage where the data goes."

"Anobit is their source for SSD, and the HDD is still from Seagate," Zhang continued. "The controller could come from Marvell."

Apple was already the industry's largest NAND flash consumer when, in December 2011, it acquired Israeli-based SSD maker Anobit.

Prior to the acquisition, Anobit had been focused on making flash storageproducts for data center use manufactured out of consumer-grade NAND flash memory.

Anobit's most valuable intellectual property -- its secret sauce -- is its firmware that it calls Memory Signal Processing (MSP), a type of error correction code (ECC). Like other ECC technology, Anobit's MSP gives it a means of addressing the reliability issues that arise as solid-state memory components shrink in size.

The smaller NAND flash systems get, the more chance there is that electrons will pass through thin cell walls and create data errors.

Anobit has produced two generations of Genesis SSD technology.

The purchase of Anobit addressed several issues for Apple. For one thing, it freed the company from dependency on flash component makers such as Samsung and Intel, which lead the market in NAND flash production. And, it gave Apple access Anobit's ECC software, enabling the company to use the least expensive NAND flash while still maintaining high performance and endurance levels.

If Apple is using Anobit SSD with Seagate HDD, it would not be a first.

Laptops that sport two drives -- a high-capacity hard drive and a low-capacity solid-state "cache" drive -- are already shipping and are expected in droves with the release of ultrabooks. But ultrabooks tend to have smaller "cache" SSDs with 20GB to 50GB of capacity, so Apple's 128GB SSD is enormous by comparison.

Also, cache SSDs come in several sizes. Most are 2.5-in. mini-SATA drives, just like a typical laptop hard drive.

The cache SSD works in the same way as Seagate's Momentus XT: The operating system and the most frequently used applications are loaded from the flash memory, while files and other less frequently used data are stored on the HDD. The result is a lower-cost computer with similar performance to a system with just a pure SSD.

Intel, Micron and OCZ are putting out cache SSDs, while Lenovo, Asus, Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Dell are beginning to build laptops and ultrabooks that use them. For example, a number of Lenovo's ThinkPad and ThinkPad Edge notebooks support cache SSDs.

The Asus Zenbook UX32VD ultrabook combines a hard drive that holds up to a 500GB with a 24GB SSD. In fact, according to Intel's specifications, in order to be called an ulatrabook, a device must use either a cache SSD or a full-size SSD to achieve the required level of performance.

Source:  computerworld.com

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Apple plays hardball with iPad mini reveal

In staging an Apple event on Tuesday to unveil the long-awaited iPad Mini (and, perhaps, updated iMacs and MacBook Airs), Apple is poised to steal a lot of Microsoft’s thunder later in the week. On Thursday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer willrelease Windows 8 to the masses and launch Microsoft’s first tablet, the Surface RT.

The Surface and similar tablets designed and manufactured by Microsoft’s OEM partners—including some tablet/laptop hybrids—are supposed to represent the company’s response to the iPad. All are designed to be lightweight and portable, offer extended battery life and will run the new Windows RT—a version of Windows 8 designed for ARM-based devices that includes a touch-enabled, non-commercial version of Office 2013. The devices will attempt to compete with the iPad on look and price and offer a range of features that appeal to consumers and business users alike: higher storage capacity, standard USB ports and expandable storage via SD cards.

Microsoft’s event should be a shot across Apple’s bow that says Microsoft can deliver a tablet experience as good as, if not better than, Apple’s iPad. Microsoft has spent months developing and planning for the launch to ensure its message is loud and clear.

Another Apple frenzy

There’s just one problem. Apple, which can create a media frenzy by inviting a select group of technology journalists to an event without even indicating what it will say, has done just that right before the Windows 8 launch. It will almost certainly be an event where Apple will wow the audience with news about how it is expanding its tablet lineup to include new form factors with lower price tags. Apple could even update its current full-size iPad lineup.

If nothing else, Apple will be able to preemptively remind everyone that it defined the tablet market with the original iPad in 2010, that it has the most robust app ecosystem in the world, and that Microsoft is more than two and half years late to the party. That’s a pretty powerful message, and one that the mere existence of an Apple iPad Mini delivers without anyone saying anything about Microsoft, Windows 8 or the Surface at all.

Apple’s playing hardball, something it’s been doing more of lately.

After Steve Jobs died a year ago, there was a constant buzz about what would happen at Apple—and to Apple. For months, each day brought new headlines questioning whether or not CEO Tim Cook was up to the task of running Apple. Each new product announcement, every response that Apple made to labor and environmental critics, and missteps like the iOS 6 Maps fiasco were fresh fodder for the “Steve would have…” musings by media pundits.

Most of those who weighed in assumed that Jobs would have done a better job handling the event or crisis du jour. But by making that assumption, critics missed an important consideration: Maybe Cook’s leadership is actually better for Apple.

Cook may not be the firebrand that Jobs was, but it has become very clear over the past few months that Apple under his leadership remains a force to be reckoned with.

The timing of the iPad Mini announcement—rumored to have been delayed by manufacturing issues but possibly pushed back to control this week’s tablet narrative — sends a simple message to the Apple’s competitors. That message: We are the most successful technology company in the world, we have more resources than you, and we’re prepared to bring anything to the table to compete. You are playing on our turf now.

An invigorated Apple

That’s a far cry from the Apple of 10 years ago, the one Jobs rescued from ruin and that had only just unveiled the iPod. It’s even a far cry from the Apple of five years ago, when it had just released an iPhone that was almost laughable due to limitations like no third-party apps, no 3G connectivity, and its ties to a single carrier (AT&T). In fact, the Apple of today has something of the swagger of the company that brazenly welcomed IBM to the PC market more than three decades ago.

The timing of this week’s iPad Mini event is just one way in which Apple is using all of its resources to compete.

Dropping Google Maps

Dropping Google Maps, which resulted in the work-in-progress Siri-integrated Maps app in iOS 6, was another great example of this new attitude as well as an important strategic move. Google wasn’t providing features that Apple needed to compete—turn-by-turn navigation being the biggest example. That meant Google was using its mapping technology to give itself a real edge over Apple in the mobile landscape.

Beyond that, every time an iOS device owner used location services and map data—whether or not that use was in the Maps app itself—he or she was delivering a wealth of personal and geographic information to Google. Where is the user? What cell towers and Wi-Fi networks are nearby? What generation iPhone and what version of iOS is he or she using? What is he or she looking for—restaurants, bars, hotels, libraries, offices, shoe stores? What route does the user prefer to get someplace? That’s invaluable data for Google to apply to improving its mapping systems, but it’s also a ton of demographic data—the type of information that is at the heart of Google’s advertising business.

That’s information over which Apple had little control. More importantly, it’s information that Apple can now use to grow its own mapping and navigation systems, speech recognition technologies, iAd business and marketing plans.

In short, the deal gave Google significant advantages and held Apple back. Kicking Google to the curb and accepting the potential fallout was a ballsy but necessary move, even if it meant taking jabs over its Maps app.

Fighting Android

Of course, if we’re going to talk about Apple playing hardball with Google, we have to note the range of patent suits Apple has brought around the world to fight Android.

There’s the oft-quoted passage in Walter Isaccson’s biography of Jobs where Jobs says that he’s willing to “go thermonuclear” to stop Android. For him, Android represented a personal betrayal of trust and one that tugged at the psychic wound inflicted by Microsoft’s development of Windows. It was a battle that Jobs would almost certainly press to the highest courts in every possible country were he still alive.

Apple hasn’t backed down from that fight under Cook’s leadership, but it hasn’t made the victory against Samsung this summer personal, either. The company’s responses have been well thought out, calmly delivered statements about how Apple led the way with certain technologies or concepts and incurred R&D costs that competitors didn’t had to pay.

The Apple message is clear: It will use all of the resources at its disposal to compete. In this case, one of those resources is the U.S. patent system and the sheer volume of patents that Apple owns. You can argue about whether the patent system in the U.S. is broken or whether Apple should have been granted some patents. But the fact is that Apple has the patents and will use them. Doing anything less would put Apple at a strategic disadvantage.

The idea of using every strategic advantage even applies to recent reports that Apple has removed Samsung from the design process of the A-series chips that power iOS devices, relegating its mobile device competitor to simply manufacturing the chips and nothing more.

Ultimately, Cook’s leadership at Apple so far appears to be a calculated effort to retain the company’s prominence in the technology sector, the business world and on the international stage. That’s different than Jobs, who offered a more passionate style of leadership. But Cook’s take is equally successful and show how he is very adept at identifying and using each strategic advantage possible. That results is a more rational and reasoned company, one that clearly recognizes its power and potential and will use it effectively.

And that confidence will be very much on display this week.

Source: macworld.com

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iPhone users sue Apple for locking them into AT&T

Apple's much-maligned iPhone exclusivity agreement with AT&T Mobility, started in 2007 but now ended, is once again the target of a class-action suit.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeks for Apple to be barred from selling "locked" devices, or those that only work on a certain operator's network, and pay monetary damages.

Apple violated the section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 when it agreed to work only with AT&T Mobility for five years since consumers were not aware or asked if the contractual arrangement, where they could not switch providers, was acceptable, the lawsuit said.

The class-action suit, filed by Zack Ward of Los Angeles and Thomas Buchar of Chicago, addresses devices purchased between October 19, 2008, and February 3, 2011. Ward bought his iPhone in October 2009, and Buchar bought one around June 2009.

Some of the circumstances the lawsuit seeks to change are now irrelevant given changes by Apple and AT&T, although Apple could be made to pay damages for previous arrangements.

Apple's first three iPhone models—the iPhone 2G, 3G and 4—could only operate on AT&T's network and required a special code in order to be "unlocked," or capable of operating with SIM card from a different operator.

The company later released a version of the iPhone 4 in February 2011 that worked on Verizon's network, which appeared to mark an early end to the five-year exclusivity contact, according to the lawsuit. In June 2011, Apple for the first time in the U.S. began selling unlocked iPhones interoperable with carriers with GSM networks.

AT&T, however, had refused except in special circumstances to unlock an iPhone even if a user's contract had ended, tying those users to the carrier even after their obligation had been fulfilled. In April, AT&T reversed its position and agreed to unlock out-of-contract iPhones.

Apple's latest iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4S are available through the three main U.S. operators: AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.

Apple was first sued in October 2007 over its exclusivity agreement with AT&T, which eventually became a class-action suit.

Source: macworld.com

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Apple Manufacturing Jobs Are Not Coming Back and That's OK

Everything about Apple is as American as apple pie, even its decision to send manufacturing and unskilled-labor jobs to China. What matters more is that Apple products have spawned high-paying jobs for skilled workers in America, writes CIO.com's Tom Kaneshige. That's why the Apple name keeps popping up in this year's presidential election.

These days, everyone wants to invoke Apple to score some political points—and for good reason.

Apple has become the standard bearer for American-style capitalism, becoming the most valuable company of all time. The iPhone has become the symbol of America's dominance as an innovator. And the late Steve Jobs has become a true legend: a college-school dropout who started a company in his parents' garage and became one of history's greatest CEOs.

But the political discourse around Apple is about more than celebrating a great American company. Apple has become a microcosm, a roadmap for competing in the new global economy where skilled workers, entrepreneurs and innovators can prosper, but unskilled American labor faces tough times ahead.

Apple rose to lofty heights during the worst economic climate since the Great Depression and has become a beacon of hope and recovery. It's no wonder President Barrack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney mention Apple at nearly every major event as they vie for the presidency.

August 27, 2012: Republican National Convention

Governor Romney pointed to Steve Jobs as a heroic risk taker who achieves the big payoff: "Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving... It is about dreams. Usually, it doesn't work out exactly as you might have imagined. Steve Jobs was fired at Apple and then he came back and changed the world."

September 6, 2012: Democratic National Convention

President Obama cited Steve Jobs as someone who embodies the American Dream: "We believe the little girl who's offered an escape from poverty by a great teacher or a grant for college could become the next Steve Jobs or the scientist who cures cancer or the President of the United States, and it is in our power to give her that chance."

All the Apple cheering, though, took a more serious tone this week during the second Presidential debate, raising important questions about America's future.

October 16, 2012: Second Presidential Debate

Moderator Candy Crowley asked: "iPad, the Macs, the iPhones, they are all manufactured in China. One of the major reasons is labor is so much cheaper (there). How do you convince a great American company to bring that manufacturing back here?"

Governor Romney responded: "The answer is very straightforward. We can compete with anyone in the world as long as the playing field is level. China's been cheating over the years. One by holding down the value of their currency. Number two, by stealing our intellectual property; our designs, our patents our technology."

President Obama responded: "Candy, there are some jobs that are not going to come back. Because they are low wage, low skill jobs. I want high wage, high skill jobs. That's why we have to emphasize manufacturing. That's why we have to invest in advanced manufacturing. That's why we've got to make sure that we've got the best science and research in the world."

It's true that Apple and virtually every other tech gadget maker sends manufacturing to China, where Chinese laborers are paid very little to put iPhones and iPads together. Saturday Night Live did a funny skit recently on this.

It seems Governor Romney's call to pressure China would be part of a larger plan to take away the financial incentive for U.S. companies to outsource manufacturing overseas, thus hopefully bringing back manufacturing jobs. President Obama, on the other hand, doesn't even want those jobs back.

What's missing is the other side of the Apple equation: The iPhone and iPad, along with the iOS app and hardware peripheral ecosystems, have spawned many high-paying jobs for skilled workers.

In a landmark study, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that Apple keeps most of its high-wage functions, such as product design, software development and product management in the U.S. All tallied, Chinese workers add $10 or less to the value of an iPad compared to American workers who add $160 worth of value.

"In America, when we talk about manufacturing, we should be talking about advanced manufacturing jobs for highly skilled workers that require a solid education and pay wages on which you can support a family," writes Arik Hesseldahl at AllThingsD. "And the fact is, there's a lot of American work that goes into an iPad or an iPhone or a Mac."

Too much has been made about Chinese workers who work on only the final stage of a complex product. Apple is an American icon because it creates jobs for highly-skilled Americans and showcases American ingenuity to the world, as well as makes a boatload of money.

Whether or not there are enough high-skilled jobs to go around or highly skilled Americans to do them is another issue, but one thing is certain: Apple has laid down the blueprint for the next-generation economy in America, and low-skill assembly jobs are not part of the equation.

Source: cio.com

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iPhone 5 sliding button problem, and a workaround

When you get a new iPhone there are a lot features to turn on and off as you customize the device to your liking, most all of which are controlled using sliding on/off buttons similar to the iPhone's iconic swipe-to-unlock feature. Problem is, the sliders often don't work on the iPhone 5.

We've tested four devices in the office and everyone of them suffered this glitch. When you go into settings, for example, to specify which notifications you want on or off, you get a list of options for everything from messages to reminder, calendar, weather, mail, etc. If you want to have the phone get your attention when something pops in one of these applications, you slide the button from off to on.

That usually seems to work. But if you change your mind and want to turn it off again, good luck. Many times the slider simply refuses to acknowledge your finger swipe. If you do it two, three, four, five times, you might get lucky and get the device's attention.

At first we assumed this was a problem with one phone, so we went hunting through the office for others, and sure enough the next one displayed the same problem. OK, it could still be a fluke, so we looked for more. After reviewing four phones, each of which displayed the same annoying problem, we concluded this endemic.

But we also discovered a workaround. One user said he hadn't happened upon the problem because he doesn't slide the sliders, he taps on the on or off word. Sure enough, that seems to work.

So, until Apple fixes this glitch, tap instead of slide and you can customize that shiny new device in a heartbeat.

Source: networkworld.com

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iPhone hacker 'Comex' let go from work with Apple

Comex said he forgot to reply to an email from the company, but revealed few other details

The famed iPhone hacker "Comex," who engineered ways to hack Apple's mobile operating system, is no longer doing work for the company, according to Twitter postings.

"So...no point in delaying. As of last week, after about a year, I'm no longer associated with Apple," wrote Comex, who has more than 196,000 followers.

He wrote the reason is that he failed to respond to an email from the company. It's rare but not unprecedented for someone who has a hacked a company's software to end up working there. Comex couldn't be immediately reached for comment.

Later on Thursday he tweeted: "Now I feel like a big damn drama queen."

Comex is widely respected in the iPhone hacker realm for his work with the JailbreakMe applications, which exploited Apple's software to allow the installation of programs not vetted by the company in its App Store, a modification known as "jailbreaking." Apple doesn't like the practice, although it is legal in the U.S. under an exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

In July 2011, Comex and his team released JailbreakMe 3.0, which used a pair of vulnerabilities to install unauthorized software on iOS versions 4.3.3 and prior. It worked with the first and second versions of the iPad and the iPhone.

Comex also delivered in July 2010 with JailbreakMe 2.0, which also used two vulnerabilities to exploit iOS. Apple patched the problems shortly after JailbreakMe 2.0 was released.

Elite iOS hackers are still at work to develop a jailbreak for iOS 6, Apple's latest version which was released last month. A "tethered" jailbreak exists, but an iOS 6 device must be connected to a computer when the attack occurs.

The more graceful way is to engineer an untethered jailbreak. iPhone hackerssaid at the Hack in the Box security conference last week that Apple has improved the security of iOS making it more difficult, but not impossible, to eventually perform an untethered jailbreak.

Source: computerworld.com

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