The next two generations of iPhones were designed before Steve Jobs died in October of 2011, according to San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who reportedly gleaned this little tidbit during a rambling conversation with Apple’s government liaison, Michael Foulkes. The San Francisco Examiner reports that the D.A. was told the future iPhones “have already been developed” and “preceded Tim Cook.” Gascón was talking to Apple to get its backing for a kill switch that would disable cell phones and tablets when they’re reported stolen. The idea is to make the widgets less attractive to thieves. Devices such as iPhones were involved in half the city’s robberies last year but the D.A. isn’t getting much support for the idea from widget makers or service providers.
The next two generations of iPhones were designed before Steve Jobs died in October of 2011, according to San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who reportedly gleaned this little tidbit during a rambling conversation with Apple’s government liaison, Michael Foulkes. The San Francisco Examiner reports that the D.A. was told the future iPhones “have already been developed” and “preceded Tim Cook.” Gascón was talking to Apple to get its backing for a kill switch that would disable cell phones and tablets when they’re reported stolen. The idea is to make the widgets less attractive to thieves. Devices such as iPhones were involved in half the city’s robberies last year but the D.A. isn’t getting much support for the idea from widget makers or service providers.
After Judge Lucy Koh cut $450.5 million off the original stunning $1.05 billion in damages a jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple for infringing its patents, Apple checked the judge’s arithmetic and wants to file a conditional motion to reconsider. It complains it’s been gypped of $85 million and that two Samsung phones were on the market during the time required for Samsung to disgorge its profits. Apple says it’s really entitled to damages of at least $685 million. FOSS Patents says Apple is only bringing the issue up now to pre-empt the partial final judgment requested by Samsung. Aside from the appeals that have been lodged by both Apple and Samsung, Koh has ordered a new trial to recalculate the damages and that means the total damages could ultimately go up or down.
A coalition of news organizations and media advocacy groups including Bloomberg, The New York Times and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has asked the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold District Court Judge Lucy Koh’s order that Apple and Samsung unseal financial documents filed in Apple’s patent infringement litigation against the Korean giant. Reuters says such a decision “would set an important precedent for high-level intellectual property cases” where sealing documents to keep them from the press is a knee-jerk reaction.
A coalition of news organizations and media advocacy groups including Bloomberg, The New York Times and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has asked the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold District Court Judge Lucy Koh’s order that Apple and Samsung unseal financial documents filed in Apple’s patent infringement litigation against the Korean giant. Reuters says such a decision “would set an important precedent for high-level intellectual property cases” where sealing documents to keep them from the press is a knee-jerk reaction.
After Judge Lucy Koh cut $450.5 million off the original stunning $1.05 billion in damages a jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple for infringing its patents, Apple checked the judge’s arithmetic and wants to file a conditional motion to reconsider. It complains it’s been gypped of $85 million and that two Samsung phones were on the market during the time required for Samsung to disgorge its profits. Apple says it’s really entitled to damages of at least $685 million. FOSS Patents says Apple is only bringing the issue up now to pre-empt the partial final judgment requested by Samsung. Aside from the appeals that have been lodged by both Apple and Samsung, Koh has ordered a new trial to recalculate the damages and that means the total damages could ultimately go up or down.
As much as we try to avoid performance problems, they do happen. It is inevitable. But it is possible to learn to react fast, and in some occasions fast enough that the impact on the end users is negligible. Despite operators’ best efforts, 73% of performance issues are reported by users, according to "APM: Getting IT on the C-Level’s agenda" report by Aberdeen Group. This number is quite large considering that less than 5% of all users typically bother to complain at all. User Experience has a significant impact on business success. According to the Aberdeen report, poor performance of applications can reduce revenue by 9% and productivity by 64%.
This book is what it claims to be and that is a cookbook on advanced topics. I would follow the author's advice and if you are a beginner with Objective-C or iOS, this book is not the one you want to start with. This book is however an excellent book for experienced developers. The first chapter kicks right into overdrive with a really nice overview of device specific development. It shows you how to get device capabilities and how to take advantage of that information in your applications. It continues on with 12 more excellent chapters which I have listed below.
This book is what it claims to be and that is a cookbook on advanced topics. I would follow the author's advice and if you are a beginner with Objective-C or iOS, this book is not the one you want to start with. This book is however an excellent book for experienced developers. The first chapter kicks right into overdrive with a really nice overview of device specific development. It shows you how to get device capabilities and how to take advantage of that information in your applications. It continues on with 12 more excellent chapters which I have listed below.
We’ve all known the person that believed they knew everything there was to know about topic X. In IT this person is so commonplace that I have wondered if there isn’t an advanced cloning device that spits them out on a daily basis. While this self confidence (or bravado, whichever) in the right individual, at the right time, has done some amazing things in world history and specifically in the history of computer science, most of the time it is merely annoying. When any attempt is made to explain even what the individual doesn’t know, they tend to walk away thinking you’re too dumb to understand. That passes annoying and enters dangerous. Not dangerous in the sense that someone is going to get hurt, but dangerous in the sense that this person with incomplete knowledge and overweening arrogance is working on your IT systems. Without the complete picture.
It's interesting - and almost amusing - to watch the circle of technology run around best practices with respect to performance over time. Back in the day caching was the ultimate means by which web application performance was improved and there was no lack of solutions and techniques that manipulated caching capabilities to achieve optimal performance. Then it was suddenly in vogue to address the performance issues associated with Javascript on the client. As Web 2.0 ascended and AJAX-based architectures ruled the day, Javascript was Enemy #1 of performance (and security, for that matter). Solutions and best practices began to arise to address when Javascript loaded, from where, and whether or not it was even active.
Oracle said Monday that it’s buying Tekelec, which makes mobile broadband software that service providers use to manage and monetize multimedia applications and the increased mobile data traffic they’re seeing. Tekelec claims 300 SP clients in 100 countries. Terms were not disclosed. Seeking Alpha speculates that because Oracle has suddenly turned to the telecom sector – signaled by its recent deal to buy Acme Packet – that maybe its SaaS interests – distinguished by, say, Taleo and Rightnow – aren’t going too well – given the lack of growth in its licensing. It thinks SaaS rivals are getting away with rustling Oracle’s enterprise customer base.
Apple has gotten sued for patent infringement again, but this time the charges are coming from Intertrust Technologies Corporation, now owned jointly by Sony and Royal Philips Electronics NV, which got Microsoft to settle a broad claim back in 2004 for $440 million. The suit against Apple sounds a lot more expensive. It says Apple is in violation of 15 of its fundamental patents naming the iPhone, iPad, Macs, Apple TV, iTunes, iCloud and the App Store as the offenders. Intertrust has taken its 44-page complaint to the federal court for Northern California after talks with Apple going back to ’05 failed. Its software called Marlin, is used to protect digital content, and companies like Samsung, Nokia, HTC and Huawei either license it or the IP underneath.
Google Apps Script is a cloud based JavaScript environment which allows you to write powerful applications and workflows around Google Apps such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, Sheets and more. The development is entirely within a browser and it's free and easy to get started. At this session, Cloud Expo delegates have the opportunity to learn all the capabilities of Google Apps Script. Walk away being able to write your first script!
Achmea Holding, one of the largest providers of financial services and insurance in the Netherlands, has made large strides in running their IT operations like an efficient business itself by rearchitecting its IT operations based on clear metrics. Gardner: Why is running IT more like a business important? Why does this make sense now? Aarnink: Over the last year, whenever a customer asked us questions, we delivered what he asked. We came to the conclusion that delivery of every request that we got was an intensive process for which we created projects. It was very difficult to make sure that it was not a one-time hero effect, but that we could deliver to the customer what he asked every time, on scope, on specs, on budget, and on time. We looked at it and said, "Well, it is actually like running a normal business, and therefore why should we be different? We should be predictive as well."
Apple has gotten sued for patent infringement again, but this time the charges are coming from Intertrust Technologies Corporation, now owned jointly by Sony and Royal Philips Electronics NV, which got Microsoft to settle a broad claim back in 2004 for $440 million. The suit against Apple sounds a lot more expensive. It says Apple is in violation of 15 of its fundamental patents naming the iPhone, iPad, Macs, Apple TV, iTunes, iCloud and the App Store as the offenders. Intertrust has taken its 44-page complaint to the federal court for Northern California after talks with Apple going back to ’05 failed. Its software called Marlin, is used to protect digital content, and companies like Samsung, Nokia, HTC and Huawei either license it or the IP underneath.
Everyone has an argument for the ideal technological approach to cloud computing: public vs. private (vs. hybrid), open vs. closed, vertical vs. horizontal, etc. Larry Ellison’s thoughts on the proprietary cloud aside, an open cloud environment is inevitable. Companies will have a variety of tools and technologies working together to comprise the future cloud landscape. But, to be successful, a company using cloud technologies requires an open organization where the IT department and line of business embrace each other as partners in the venture. Therefore an investment in cloud computing, more than previous technology shifts, requires an investment in the IT department’s people and processes.
A component is a reusable software entity. A component is a deployable piece of software that can be independently developed and maintained. In the previous article –Componentizing a Monolithic Application in Java, we discussed the need for componentizing applications to get the benefits of reusability and modularity. We also looked at how an E-Store application can be componentized using a simple component model developed by the authors using a factory whiteboard pattern and a simple repository. In Part 1 of this article we will try to understand various component models in Java and provide a brief comparison of the features provided by them. Traditionally to explain component-based software engineering (CBSE) principles, popular component frameworks like CORBA, DCOM and JavaBeans are used. Instead of this traditional approach, this article will focus on the latest and widely adopted component models and frameworks specific to Java platform such as Enterprise JavaBeans Component Model (EJB), OSGi Component Model (OSGi), Spring Component Model (spring) and Component Model using Service Component Architecture (SCA).
Apple polished its reputation as a contrarian Tuesday when the news broke because of an SEC filing that it had hired Adobe’s CTO Kevin Lynch to be VP of technology and reportedly coordinate its hardware and software teams. Adobe confirmed his departure effective Friday, March 22. He will report to SVP Bob Mansfield, Apple’s core hardware maven, who leads Apple’s Technologies Group, which includes its wireless and semiconductor interests. Provocatively Mansfield is scheduled to retire from Apple for the second time next year. Lynch, a Macromedia legacy, violently backed Mobile Flash to the hilt as a sine qua non platform long after Steve Jobs famously blasted the widgetry’s reliability, security, performance and battery life problems, chalking it up as bad, inelegant software and barring it from the iPhone and the iPad. The news of Lynch going to Apple lit up the blogosphere but left the question of why Apple hired him unanswered.
Apple polished its reputation as a contrarian Tuesday when the news broke because of an SEC filing that it had hired Adobe’s CTO Kevin Lynch to be VP of technology and reportedly coordinate its hardware and software teams. Adobe confirmed his departure effective Friday, March 22. He will report to SVP Bob Mansfield, Apple’s core hardware maven, who leads Apple’s Technologies Group, which includes its wireless and semiconductor interests. Provocatively Mansfield is scheduled to retire from Apple for the second time next year. Lynch, a Macromedia legacy, violently backed Mobile Flash to the hilt as a sine qua non platform long after Steve Jobs famously blasted the widgetry’s reliability, security, performance and battery life problems, chalking it up as bad, inelegant software and barring it from the iPhone and the iPad. The news of Lynch going to Apple lit up the blogosphere but left the question of why Apple hired him unanswered.
Oracle, which was promising growth in its third fiscal quarter, missed across most product categories and all regions except, perversely, EMEA. Its stock dropped close to 8% after-hours to $35.76. It blamed its salesforce for its poor showing. Co-president Mark Hurd, the former CEO of HP, has hired 4,000 new sales people in the last 18 months and Oracle says they’re not acculturated yet and displayed little urgency about the quarter, transferring their ambitions to Q4, historically Oracle’s biggest quarter.
When the operations team gets an alert about potential performance problems that users might be experiencing, it is usually either the infrastructure or the actual application that is causing those problems. Things get interesting when neither the ISP nor the application provider is willing to admit fault. Can we tell who is to blame? Could it be that it is neither the ISP nor the application provider? The IT department of our customer, SerciaFood, a food production company from Sercia (names changed for commercial reasons), received complaints about the performance of one of its applications. The IT department suspected network problems while the local ISP stood firmly behind its infrastructure and blamed the solution provider.
Dropbox, the cloud storage outfit, has spent something like a reported $100 million in cash and stock pushing Yahoo and Facebook out of the way so it could buy a little 14-man e-mail management start-up whose early-stage widgetry, out maybe a month, can’t really scale so couldn’t meet initial demand and is thin on platform support. It’s also got a lot of features left on its to-do list.
Dropbox, the cloud storage outfit, has spent something like a reported $100 million in cash and stock pushing Yahoo and Facebook out of the way so it could buy a little 14-man e-mail management start-up whose early-stage widgetry, out maybe a month, can’t really scale so couldn’t meet initial demand and is thin on platform support. It’s also got a lot of features left on its to-do list.
Speculation is back in circulation that Apple – enflamed by Samsung’s “slavish copying,” the ensuring worldwide patent litigation and Samsung’s increasing dominance in smartphones and tablets – is weaning itself off its component dependency on Samsung and moving its A7 chip production to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Intel. The Intel part may, of course, just be wishful thinking especially on Intel’s part. DigiTimes, which is spreading the current crop of rumors, says institutional investors figure Intel, which wants to rent out its ovens because of the PC downturn, could get 10% of Apple’s next-generation A7 processor orders. In that case TSMC could get 40% leaving Samsung with the remaining 50%. Apple has also been shifting orders for DRAM, mobile RAM chips and panels away from Samsung.