Apple

The hidden iTunes Store power search

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Fantastic find from Kirk McElhearn. I’ve been playing with this feature and it works incredibly well (on your Mac, not your iOS device).

SXSW Festival to use iBeacons for first time

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EventBase has been supporting SXSW with a native mobile app since 2011, allowing attendees to filter events by track or topic, then build and share their event schedules with their friends. This year, they’ve added iBeacons to the mix.

Apple’s iPad is targeted in new patent troll lawsuit

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A patent troll by the name of Penovia LLC has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple. The lawsuit claims that Apple’s iPad infringes their acquired patent that’s about a maintenance technique that monitors office machine status without personal attention. This is the typical type of case that the Federal Trade Commission is now studying to find ways to assist tech companies from having to waste their time fighting such suits.

When I see the phrase “acquired patent”, I see red. In my opinion, this type of lawsuit is destructive and serves simply to line someone’s pockets. This needs to be fixed.

Google locking down approval process for Chrome add-ons

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This might seem like an obscure change in a small part of the Google universe, but it might just be signaling a sea change in Google’s stance on the apps and add-on approval process.

Google has been talking up the auto-removal of unsanctioned extensions since November, when the company characterized the policy as a security necessity, claiming that “bad actors” were using loopholes to continue installing malicious add-ons without user approval or knowledge.

WSJ publishes excerpt from new book, “Haunted Empire, Apple After Steve Jobs”

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Author Yukari Kane adapted a chapter from her new book for the Wall Street Journal. I think the excerpt is well written and it’s certainly interesting. My only gripe is that it seems a little one sided and one-dimensional. It dehumanizes Tim Cook, focuses on anecdotes that paint him as a harsh taskmaster, anecdotes that are not supported by personal account but as hearsay.

Final Cut Pro X and the Firebird Suite

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Fabrizio Fracassi left Final Cut Pro when Apple made a left turn back in 2011 with the release of Version 10. Happily, Apple addressed the criticism it received from that release and Fabrizio is back in the fold. He explains his logic with a beautiful analogy.

Apple wins dismissal of $2.2 billion German patent troll suit

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The rulings are a blow to Munich-based patent holding company IPCom which has sued mobile-device makers over technology it acquired from Robert Bosch GmbH in 2007. The “100” series patents, which also apply to methods helping to place emergency calls, are the central piece of its portfolio.

IPCom, which doesn’t make any products, is one of a group of firms that license its patents and file lawsuits to generate revenue, earning the moniker “patent trolls” from its targets. Apple was among 19 companies and associations that petitioned the European Union in a letter this week to weaken the ability of non-manufacturers to win injunctions in intellectual-property cases.

“IPCom’s story has come to an end” with the ruling, said Martin Chakraborty, HTC’s attorney.

I love the phrase “IPCom, which doesn’t make any products”. Goes to the heart of the definition of a patent troll.

Apple expands “Made for iPad” program to include iBeacon

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Smart move on Apple’s part. They have opened enrollment for an iBeacon version of its Made for iPad program. If you want to use the iBeacon name, you have to meet the iBeacon criteria. This insures the level of quality stays high.

Skier loses iPhone on slope, comes back with metal detector

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[VIDEO]This really hit home for me. Once, long ago, I was night skiing, and my contact lens popped out of my eye. It was a hard lens (do they even make those anymore?) and it was tinted blue. I searched and searched, on my hands and knees. It was cold and windy, but very well lit. After about a half an hour, I actually found the lens. And, I believe, I acted exactly the same way as this guy did.

If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, once he starts searching, jump to about 2:30 for the finding part.

How to minimize the harm from the theft of your Mac

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If you own a Mac, this is well worth reading.

My residence was recently broken into (the alarm malfunctioned on entry and only went off as the thieves left) and two Mac laptops were taken. Luckily, I have good insurance and had an up to date Time Machine backup.

Over the past week, I’ve learned some additional things I could have done to prepare for this eventuality. My house had also been broken into ten years ago.

Here’s a summary of what you should do to prepare your Macs right now for the possibility of theft. It won’t eliminate theft but it will greatly reduce the damage from such events and make it more likely that your device will return to you.

One thing that I did not know was how easy Apple has made it to encrypt your external backup drive. Here’s a link to show you how to do that.

Good stuff.

Hometown hero Tim Cook profiled in his local paper

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There’s much to enjoy in this profile from Robersdale, Alabama’s Baldwin Register. I think what I liked the most was the sense of incredible pride that clearly came across, pride in their hometown hero. Don’t miss the slide show at the top with pics of Tim Cook in high school.

iOS background monitoring exploit

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The FireEye blog announced an iOS proof of concept that was able to run in the background and record a user’s actions:

We have created a proof-of-concept “monitoring” app on non-jailbroken iOS 7.0.x devices. This “monitoring” app can record all the user touch/press events in the background, including, touches on the screen, home button press, volume button press and TouchID press, and then this app can send all user events to any remote server, as shown in Fig.1. Potential attackers can use such information to reconstruct every character the victim inputs.