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Tom Briant

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Monday, January 9, 2017

Senior Correspondent Arnold Woodworth's Weekly Web Wrap-up for Sunday, January 8, 2017

Apple Advertisement says iPhone 7 Plus can make you absurdly popular
 
Unlike too many Apple ads of late, this one is beautifully conceived. It enjoys perfect performances and a touching, winning atmosphere.
 
 
 
 

iPhone at ten: the revolution continues

 
January 9 marks the tenth anniversary of iPhone’s blockbuster debut. At Macworld 2007 in San Francisco, Steve Jobs introduced the world to iPhone as three products in one — “a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone and a breakthrough internet communications device.” In the ten years since, iPhone has enriched the lives of people around the world with over one billion units sold.
 
 
 
 
Apple celebrates 10 years since Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone
 
Monday, Jan. 9, marks exactly 10 years to the day since the first iPhone was unveiled at the Macworld 2007 expo by Steve Jobs.
 
Competitors scoffed and initial sales were tepid, but by the time the formula was refined for the iPhone 3G, the iPhone quickly began to take off and ultimately defined the modern era of personal computing. Today, the iPhone is the single most important product in Apple's entire lineup.
 
 
 
 
10 years ago, Steve Jobs revealed the very first iPhone

I wasn’t present at the unveiling. At the time, I worked for PCMag.com and, though we covered Apple and its products, we didn’t always attend MacWorld (back then, Macs held just a fraction of the then critical desktop market). We were aware that Apple had smartphone ambitions, but they were entering a market dominated by BlackBerry, Palm, Microsoft and Nokia (for less-smart “feature phones”).
 
What I remember is that [months later] when I finally touched the iPhone, the earth seemed to move.
I knew that nothing in the smartphone universe would ever be the same.
 
The iPhone also turned into a category killer. People started to leave their point-and-shoot cameras at home and share far more images than they ever did with those digital, but largely disconnected, devices.

There's no question that the growth of the iPhone coincided with the fall of handheld-gaming leader Nintendo.
 
Today, virtually every new smartphone on the market is either a pale imitation of the iPhone or owes its success to the iPhone’s influence on smartphone design.
 
 
 
 
Slide Show:
The evolution of iPhone through the years
 
 
 
 
10 years of the iPhone: How Apple changed pretty much everything
 
“I think the iPhone was probably one of the most impactful pieces of technology to come into the Information Tech (IT) world since computing,” said VMware VP and chief information security officer Alex Tosheff, commenting on the 10th anniversary of the Apple iPhone, which was introduced on Jan. 9, 2007.
 
 
 
 
10 ways the iPhone changed everything
The world is a different place a decade after Apple introduced its popular smartphone -- in both good and bad ways.
 
Here are some ways the iPhone has changed the way we live:
1.   We're always on
2.   Tablets, watches and headphones
3.   The App Store made the iPhone a must-have device
4.   The iPhone replaced most people’s cameras.
5.   The iPhone can send live video via web sites.
6.   The iPhone had a “touch screen” before other smart phones did.
7.   Google Maps and Apple Maps are two of the most-used apps on the iPhone.
8.   iPhone games — such as Angry Birds
9.   Apple Pay
10. But wait -- there's more
 
 
 
 
Why Samsung Wants The Next iPhone To Succeed
 
AW comment:
This is a surprising article in view of the patent fight between Apple and Samsung.
 
Why are South Korean companies helping Apple?
 
Because Samsung is a huge, huge conglomerate with a ridiculously sprawling empire -- it's got its own baseball team and theme park, for example --  mobile phones are just a small portion of the pie.
 
While smartphone lovers such as myself, and many other tech sites, focus on mobile phones mostly and believe that Samsung and Apple are constantly at each other's throats, the reality is the big picture makes the mobile battle seem puny.
 
 
 
 
Dear Tim Cook: Letter from an American Dad, Apple iOS Parental Controls
 
Bottom line. Being a parent in a tech world isn’t easy. Being a parent to a kid with an iDevice is an order of magnitude tougher. Frankly, I need more help from Apple and I know I’m not alone. I want to let my son play with his devices and not have to make him check them in and out from me every time. I need your help to do this right, though.
 
For starters, I need to be able to lock down apps — and please let me select exactly which ones. And I need to be able to lock them down to a master time limit and maybe even a time limit of daily use per app.  I need to be able to tell my son’s Apple iPod and Apple iPad that he should only be able to use these devices and the apps on them during times I specify.
 
And that’s just for starters.
 
 
 
 
The 50 best iOS Games of 2016
 
 
 
 
Those dental floss lookalikes might just pay off for Apple AirPod lovers
 
Social media users were quick to mock Apple's AirPods when they were first unveiled back in September, calling them electric toothbrush heads and their containers, dental floss dispensers.

But who's laughing now, huh? AirPods enthusiasts, that's who. It seems that the dental hygiene similarities have an upside: Disguise.
 
 
 
 
Does the iPhone still matter? Huawei, not Apple, now drives the mobile conversation
Cupertino is a victim of its own success and is fully responsible for creating the Chinese Android monster.
 
Five big Chinese companies will become big challengers to Apple in the next few years.
 
A lot of the Asian smartphone brain trust ended up at five very large Chinese companies -- Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Xiaomi, and Oppo -- that leveraged much of the same manufacturing capabilities Apple effectively ceded.
 
Apple is actually a victim of its own success. It has made so much money from iPhone that it has become complacent.
 
What do you expect when you put a supply chain genius at the helm of a company known for its innovation, one that traditionally was never afraid to throw its babies out with the bathwater every five or ten years or so?
 
Unlike Tim Cook, a.k.a. Mr. Data, Steve Jobs was the Silicon Valley god of product line sacrifice ... he had an incredible ability to drive his company to do disruptive things.
 
Apple is one of the jewels of the U.S. technology industry, and it is critical to that industry's survival that Apple remains a center of innovation. 

I don't want any of our technology leaders to fail. But now that it has created the Chinese monster, Apple needs to make course changes and disrupt from within -- or all mobile industry conversations going forward will be Chinese.
 
 
 
 
iOS 10 Jailbreak Release Date News: Yalu Now Works on SE; Support for More Devices Comes Soon
 
After several months of waiting since iOS 10 was announced and went live, reports now gather that the jailbreak tool created by hacker Luca Todesco has been tweaked to work on the iPhone Special Edition. Todesco revealed that more devices will be supported soon.
 
Todesco revealed that he has no plans for a jailbreak tool on iOS 10.2. But on the brighter side, he admits that he plans to expand the list of iOS devices supported by his Yalu jailbreak tool. He said, "Yes, support for 5s and 6 will be added, but not a priority."
 
 
 
 
"My fix for the issues in the 10.1 jailbreak will be to add support to 10.2. It will however not work on iPhone 7 on 10.2, just 10 and 10.1.”
 
 
 

Apple MacBook Pro 15-Inch With Touch Bar (Late 2016) Review: Is It Worth The Price?

Reviewed: $2,399 MacBook Pro (15.4-inch) with Touch Bar.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2017/01/08/apple-macbook-pro-15-inch-with-touch-bar-late-2016-review-is-it-worth-the-price/



MacBook Pro saves life of man in Florida airport shooting

This article has a picture of his MacBook with a bullet hole in it.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/apple/macbook-pro-stops-bullet-in-florida-shooting/
 
 
 
Resurgent MacBook Pro Hobbled By Intel's New Technology
 
As expected, Intel's formal announcement of its seventh-generation 'Kaby Lake' Intel Core processors at the Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has set the tone for this year's generation of high-end laptops.
 
Given the huge volume of sales that the 2016 MacBook Pro machines have achieved and Apple's desire to have a new family of machines ready for the festive period, it went for the latter.

In terms of turnover, market position, and revenue generation, Apple made the right business choice to release the MacBook Pro machines in November last year.
 
Yet the feeling of 'brand new MacBook' that millions now have is being tempered with the news that the heart of the laptop has been superseded [by Intel’s announcement], in many cases less than two weeks after finding the laptop under the Christmas tree.
 
 
 
 
Apple Watch Sales Were Way Up Over The Holidays
 
Watch sales were up 111% during November compared to November 2015. Sales of the device during December were up 55% from last year.
 
 
 
 
 
Apple, for the first time in over a decade, simply isn’t firing on all cylinders. Please don’t interpret that as “Apple is doomed” because it’s not, but there are things it’s doing a lot less well than it could — and has. Apple’s out of sync with itself.
 
Here are a few of the things I think indicate Apple has gotten itself out of kilter and is in need of some course correction.
 
1.  Missing ship dates
2.  Languishing Products — such as Airport and the Mac Pro (nicknamed Trash Can)
3.  Apple is relying on data too much
4.  Apple is getting sloppy
 
It’s been over a thousand days since The Mac Pro has seen an update. As Apple’s high end flagship, this is unconscionable. It shows a lack of respect for its high end power users that have depended on it.
 
These are signs to me that Apple doesn’t understand its users as well as Apple thinks it does, which is a huge problem.
 
Is Apple broken? Nope, not even close. It’s not firing on all cylinders, though, and it needs to do some internal thinking and realignment to get back to where it was a few years ago.
 
Apple’s always been good at is looking beyond the numbers to the things they don’t say — and I worry they’ve lost that. They need to get it back.
 
 
 
 
Russia Demands LinkedIn App Takedown, Apple and Google Comply
 
Russia has forced Apple and Google to remove the LinkedIn mobile app from their Russian application markets, the latest chapter in a months-long campaign against the professional networking site.

A recently-passed Russian law requires that any company holding data on Russians house that data within Russia. Russia began blocking LinkedIn's website last November under that law, which some critics argue is an indirect form of censorship.
 
Though some American companies have stuck to their free-speech principles when called on to censor content, that resolve could be seen as weakening.
 
 
 
 
Senator slams Apple for removing New York Times app from Chinese iPhones
 
Senator Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, slammed the company in a statement for being, in his words, "complicit in Communist censorship of an American newspaper."
 
 
 
 
This Vicious New Malware Freezes Apple Computers
 
Apple computer users should be extra diligent when surfing the web.
For the past few weeks, people have been tricked into visiting a phony website embedded with malware that can freeze Apple computers, according to a report this week by the cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes.
 
Complicating matters, the malware targeting Apple computers leaves a dummy message in either the email draft or in the iTunes player that tells people to call a fake Apple support phone number to fix the problem.
 
Those who upgraded their operating systems to the latest versions seemed to be safe from the variant of the attack that creates draft emails. The iTunes variant, however, appears to be triggered regardless of whether a person’s operating system is up to date.
 

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