Linked List: August 7, 2012

Tuesday, 7 August 2012

John Paczkowski:

As part of its case against Samsung, Apple has shown snippets of an internal Samsung document comparing the original Galaxy S phone with the iPhone. On Tuesday, Apple managed to get the whole 132-page document admitted into evidence. And it’s a doozy. The 2010 report, translated from Korean, goes feature by feature, evaluating how Samsung’s phone stacks up against the iPhone.

Authored by Samsung’s product engineering team, the document evaluates everything from the home screen to the browser to the built in apps on both devices. In each case, it comes up with a recommendation on what Samsung should do going forward and in most cases its answer is simple: Make it work more like the iPhone.

Paczkowski uploaded the whole thing to Scribd. You really have to read it to believe just how audacious it is.

Wired: Apple Suspends Over-the-Phone AppleID Password Resets ★

Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Mat Honan, writing for Gadget Lab:

An Apple worker with knowledge of the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Wired that the over-the-phone password freeze would last at least 24 hours. The employee speculated that the freeze was put in place to give Apple more time to determine what security policies needed to be changed, if any.

Compromising on ‘No Compromises’ ★

MG Siegler on the news that Office 2013 RT for Windows RT will be missing a bunch of features from Office 2013 for Windows Regular.

Malfunction, Not Confusion With iPad, Played Greater Role in Galaxy Tab Returns ★

Steven Musil, reporting for CNet:

The study was entered into evidence today in the high-stakes patent trial between Apple and Samsung. There had been suggestions that unhappy customers were returning Samsung’s tablet because they originally thought they were buying an iPad, but the newly released study reveals a different set of motivations.

The study, conducted last year at 30 Best Buy stores in New York, Los Angeles, and Florida to determine why consumers were returning the tablet, found that 25 percent of the returns cited malfunctions such as browser freezes, lack of screen sensitivity, and poor Wi-Fi connectivity. Another 17 percent cited issues such as screen lagging, short battery life, and inability to sync with PCs.

Uh, good news for Samsung?

Amazon Closes Account Security Hole ★

Nathan Olivarez-Giles, writing for Gadget Lab:

On Tuesday, Amazon handed down to its customer service department a policy change that no longer allows people to call in and change account settings, such as credit cards or email addresses associated with its user accounts.

Amazon officials weren’t available for comment on the security changes, but during phone calls to Amazon customer service on Tuesday, representatives told us that the changes were sent out this morning and put in place for “your security.”

Now it’s Apple’s move.

Speaking of the New Mountain Lion ‘Save As’ Command ★

Mac Performance Guide:

If one edits a document, then chooses Save As, then BOTH the edited original document and the copy are saved, thus not only saving a new copy, but silently saving the original with the same changes, thus overwriting the original.

If you notice this auto-whack, you can “Revert To” the older version (manually), but if you don’t notice, then at some later date you’ll be in for a confusing surprise. And maybe an OMG-what-happened (consider a customer invoice that was overwritten).

Matt Neuburg points out this change in his aforelinked examination of document-model changes in Mountain Lion, but it deserves attention in and of itself. I’m hoping this is a bug or oversight in 10.8.0, because I honestly can’t see why anyone would want Save As to work this way.

With nearly all of these changes in 10.7 and 10.8 regarding documents and saving, it’s easy to see the tradeoffs involved. Maybe you prefer the old way, but you can see how other users (especially new Mac users) might benefit from the new way. But with this change to Save As, I can’t see how anyone benefits.

The Very Model of a Modern Mountain Lion Document ★

Matt Neuburg:

In the recently released OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Apple has done something I thought they’d never do: they backtracked — sort of. They heeded the objections of users to a major feature of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, and took steps to meet those objections. They didn’t remove the feature — that, I suppose, would be asking too much — but they changed the interface and provided an increased range of user choices and capabilities.

In this article, I’ll sketch out how Mountain Lion is different from Lion with regard to this feature, and why, therefore, I personally like Mountain Lion much more than Lion.

Detailed treatment of some very significant changes to document handling in Mountain Lion.

The Security Flaws in Apple’s iCloud Account Reset Policies ★

Marco Arment:

Amazon’s system is partially at fault, but the weakest link by far is Apple. It’s appalling that they will give control of your iCloud account to anyone who knows your name and address, which are very easy for anyone to find, and the last four digits of your credit card, which are usually considered safe to display on websites and receipts.

At the bare minimum, for this level of recovery that bypasses security questions, they should require confirmation of the entire credit-card number and verification code, no matter what they need to do to remain PCI-compliant and pull that off.

Apple needs to address this, and quickly. I can only wonder how many nogoodniks have been trying this scam in the last day now that it’s been widely publicized.

Update: I should point out that I disagree with Marco, though, about Apple requiring more credit card digits. This whole strategy of verification is fundamentally flawed. I wouldn’t write my iCloud password on a piece of paper in my wallet, but my wallet contains my home address and credit cards. Someone who finds my wallet should not be able to take over my iCloud account with nothing more than my driver’s license and credit card.

Apple’s Motivation for Suing Samsung ★

Jim Dalrymple:

In a column on The New York Times last weekend, Nick Bilton wrote that Apple is doing itself more harm than good in suing Samsung.

“By showing the public how it designs products that twice radically changed the electronics industry, Apple could risk losing some of its magic,” said Bilton.

I’m not going to say that Apple doesn’t care at all about keeping its secrets, but this is a case of dealing with the lesser of two evils. Sue Samsung now and show some old prototype photos but stop them from copying future products, or let them continue copying.

Agreed. The lawsuit is about Samsung’s actions over the past few years, but Apple’s goal is about what Samsung and other like-minded competitors will do over the next few years. The stakes are far higher than the $2+ billion Apple is seeking in damages.

Samsung Investigating Alleged Child Labor Abuse at Chinese Factory ★

Avram Piltch, writing for Laptop Magazine:

It looks like Apple and Samsung have another thing in common, aside from their love of rectangular tablet designs: alleged labor abuses at the Chinese factories which make their products. In a scathing undercover report issued last night, activist group China Labor Watch detailed a litany of alleged abuses, including employing workers as young as 14, at Samsung supplier HEG’s factory complex in mainland China.

I’m sure this will get just as much media attention as Apple’s supply chain labor practices have.

Samsung: Power, Corruption and Lies ★

Mic Wright, writing for The Kernel:

The idea that South Korea is a shiny futurescape of democratic wonder is ultimately the result of sitting next to the fetid, Communist disaster that is North Korea.

The South looks better, thanks to the success consumer technology and semiconductors has brought, it but the grip of the chaebols is pernicious and corruption lies beneath every facet of Korean society.

You’re welcome to love Android and hate Apple. Just don’t be fooled into thinking Samsung are the good guys.

Acer Chief Takes Aim at Microsoft Surface ★

Robert Budden and Sarah Mishkin, reporting for the Financial Times:

JT Wang, chairman and chief executive of Acer, said Microsoft’s plans to launch its own “Surface” tablet in October — in direct competition with his company’s Iconia or HP’s TouchPad tablets would be “negative for the worldwide ecosystem” in computing. He is the first head of a big PC maker to criticise Microsoft’s move publicly.

“We have said [to Microsoft] think it over,” he told the Financial Times. “Think twice. It will create a huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction. It is not something you are good at so please think twice.”

A little late for that now.

Campbell Kan, Acer’s president for personal computer global operations, said the Taiwanese company was debating internally how to respond to the Surface and any further challenges that could arise if Microsoft expands further into hardware.

“If Microsoft … is going to do hardware business, what should we do? Should we still rely on Microsoft, or should we find other alternatives?,” Mr Kan said.

Here’s the problem for Acer and all the other PC makers — what alternatives? Linux? No one wants it. Android? Google’s in the hardware business now too. That’s why Microsoft can make this play — the PC makers have no leverage.

The Computing Tech Specs of NASA’s Curiosity ★

Sebastian Anthony, writing for ExtremeTech:

In Curiosity’s case, the CPU is a PowerPC 750 (PowerPC G3 in Mac nomenclature) clocked at around 200MHz — which might seem slow, but it’s still hundreds of times faster than, say, the Apollo Guidance Computer used in the first Moon landings. Also on the motherboard are 256MB of DRAM, and 2GB of flash storage — which will be used to store video and scientific data before transmission to Earth. […]

On the software side of things, NASA again stuck to tried-and-tested solutions, opting for the 27-year-old VxWorks operating system. VxWorks, developed by Wind River Systems (which was acquired by Intel), is a real-time operating system used in a huge number of embedded systems. The previous Mars rovers (Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity), Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft all use VxWorks. VxWorks also powers BMW iDrive, the Apache Longbow helicopter, and the Apple Airport Extreme and Linksys WRT54G routers (really).

Fascinating, really, that these specs seem so humble — especially storage capacity.

iPhone Caused ‘Crisis of Design’ at Samsung ★

Mike Isaac:

It’s a memo that Samsung didn’t want admitted into the trial, and until now had kept it out. But this morning, when Samsung legal counsel John Quinn mentioned the “crisis of design” moment in a question to Samsung strategist Justin Denison, all bets were off, and the memo was in.

“Influential figures outside the company come across the iPhone, and they point out that ‘Samsung is dozing off.’ All this time we’ve been paying all our attention to Nokia, and concentrated our efforts on things like Folder, Bar, Slide,” Shin wrote. “Yet when our UX is compared to the unexpected competitor Apple’s iPhone, the difference is truly that of Heaven and Earth. It’s a crisis of design.”

Not sure what they were worried about. It’s just black rectangles.

Should We Assume That Apple Killed the iOS YouTube App, and Not the Other Way Around? ★

Jeff Jarvis:

Apple killing YouTube on iPhone just happens to be the last straw. Went into the AT&T store today to begin switch to my Android phone.

Jean-Louis Gassée, in response:

How do we know Apple “killed” the iOS YouTube app? What if it is the other way around?

The iOS YouTube app had no ads. What if Google wanted ads and Apple said no? Next, a YouTube app from GOOG, with ads.

We don’t know. No one (outside Google and Apple) knows what the previous licensing terms were, and no one knows what terms (if any) were proposed going forward. And for that matter, I don’t think anyone should assume that the YouTube experience on iOS is necessarily going to be worse without this app built in.