Linked List: July 6, 2015

Monday, 6 July 2015

Apple Stores Revamping Third-Party Accessory Selection With Apple-Designed Packaging ★

Mark Gurman:

Apple is looking to own yet another aspect of its product experience. The company is gearing up to revamp its third-party accessory selection across all of its retail stores by next week by reducing the amount of accessories available in stores to ones sold in packaging co-designed by Apple. Apple has been working with select third-party accessory makers over the past six months to redesign boxes so that the experience more closely matches the boxes of Apple’s own products.

Seems odd to make everything in the store look more Apple-y whether it’s made by Apple or not, but it’s yet another sign of Apple’s increasing power and influence.

Amazon ‘Prime Day’ ★

Amazon PR:

“Prime Day is a one-day only event filled with more deals than Black Friday, exclusively for Prime members around the globe. Members tell us every day how much they love Prime and we will keep making it better,” said Greg Greeley, Vice President Amazon Prime. “If you’re not already a Prime member, you’ll want to join so you don’t miss out on one of the biggest deals extravaganzas in the world.”

Genius idea.

Hacking Team Hacked ★

Steve Ragan, writing for CSO:

Specializing in surveillance technology, Hacking Team is now learning how it feels to have their internal matters exposed to the world, and privacy advocates are enjoying a bit of schadenfreude at their expense.

Hacking Team is an Italian company that sells intrusion and surveillance tools to governments and law enforcement agencies.

Christopher Soghoian’s tweets the past few days have been chock full of links and information on this story.