Apple iMac 27-inch (Intel Core i5-4670)

Pros Fusion Drive is SSD+HDD, but smart. Stunningly thin design. Impressive low-glare display. Top-of-the-line processor and graphics card offer best-in-class performance. User serviceable memory slots. Ports include Thunderbolt and USB 3.0. Can work as a monitor for Thunderbolt Macs.

Cons No Touch Screen. SD card slot in back. No internal upgradability beyond RAM. No height adjustment. Requires adapter for HDMI. Bottom Line Though it's mainly a speed bump, the inclusion of the latest 4th-generation Intel Core i5 quad-core processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 775M Kepler graphics bump the Apple iMac 27-inch (Intel Core i5-4670) back to the top spot on our high-end all-in-one desktop list.

By Joel Santo Domingo

Though it's mainly a speed bump, the inclusion of the latest 4th-generation Intel Core i5 quad-core processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 775M Kepler graphics made a world of difference for the Apple iMac 27-inch (Intel Core i5-4670) ($2,199 as tested). The newest iteration costs much less than previous iMacs costing significantly more (such as the Apple iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M), which listed for $3,099), but it's just as fast, if not faster. The newest iMac (Intel Core i5-4670) even surpasses the previous all-around EC for high-end all-in-one desktops. Thanks to its improved performance and features, the latest Apple iMac 27-inch is also our latest Editors' Choice for high-end, all-in-one desktops.

Design and Features
The new Apple iMac looks identical to last year's Apple iMac 27-inch (Late 2012) ($2,668), and no wonder. Apple introduced the new iMac chassis last year, which is still all aluminum and glass, and still tapers down to about 5mm on all four edges around the screen. Apple was able to do this by eliminating the built-in DVD SuperDrive, saving quite a bit of heft. Apple likewise moved the SD (SDXC) card reader from the side to the back panel. While not a deal-breaker, moving the SD card slot to the back makes it inconvenient for users who simply want to transfer their pictures to from their camera to their iMac. In contrast, the previous high-end, all-in-one Editors' Choice Dell XPS 27 Touch All-in-One (2720) ($2,099) has a tray-loading DVD burner, the SD card reader, and a selection of ports on the side; hence the Dell is much thicker along the edge.

The base model of 27-inch iMac (Intel Core i5-4670) comes with a 3.4GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory, 1TB (non-Fusion hard drive (non-Fusion), 2,560 by 1,440 resolution 27-inch screen, and GeForce GTX 775M, and retails for $1,999. Apple sent us an upgraded model with a 1TB Fusion Drive with a total price of $2,199 (a $200 premium over the base model). The 1TB Fusion Drive is a paired set of a 1TB 7,200rpm SATA hard drive along with a 128GB PCIe Flash Storage unit (similar to a SSD). To get our exact review configuration is to go to Apple's online store, select the 3.4GHz version of the 27-inch iMac ($1,999), then click on the 1TB Fusion Drive button under "Storage." This should add $200 and make the subtotal $2,199. The Flash Storage stores OS X and any other system files all the time, while the OS monitors which apps and documents you use often. The system then shifts these oft-used files automatically to the Flash storage, so they are available without too much waiting time. Less used files and programs are physically stored on the spinning hard drive. In practice, this means that startups and application launches only take seconds, compared with up to a few minutes on older hard-drive-only system. Unlike a HDD+SSD setup on some Windows PCs, users won't have to do any file management themselves; the OS does that for you. The Macintosh HD icon shows all the files on both physical drives, so you don't have to remember if you saved your file to the Flash or to the hard drive. For more on Fusion drive, please read our article, 5 Things to Know About the Apple Fusion Drive. Depending on your budget, you can upgrade to a 3TB Fusion Drive, or even forgo the spinning hard drive and configure an iMac with up to a 1TB flash storage drive. You'll pay $1,000 over the $1,999 base price for the privilege.

As expected, the iMac (Intel Core i5-4670) doesn't have too much internal access for the end user. You can buy tools from sites like ifixit.com to get into the system, but like the original Macintosh of mid-1980s vintage, the end user isn't meant to open the iMac and perform upgrades. The only upgrade available is under a door on the back panel, which exposes a set of four SO-DIMM slots. The system has 8GB installed, with a potential for 32GB total. If you need internal expansion, then systems like the HP Z1 Workstation ($5,673) would be a pricey option. Granted, the Z1 is an ISV-certified professional workstation that has a premium price for premium features like the internal accessibility, Xeon processor, and Quadro graphics. People that want such features like Xeon and Quadro in a Mac would be advised to wait for the upcoming redesigned Mac Pro when that is released, hopefully soon.

Like the previous model, the 27-inch iMac's screen is a bright IPS display with a 2,560-by-1,440 resolution. This matches the XPS 27 Touch's resolution, and both have far more pixels on the screen than any 27-inch system with a 1080p screen, like the Acer Aspire 7600U (A7600U-UR308) ($1,899) or the semi-portable Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon ($1,849.99). The higher resolution screen means that you can show more of a high pixel RAW image or show a full 1080p HD video while still displaying toolbars for editing that video. The iMac's glass is essentially bonded to the IPS panel, so internal reflections are minimized. Though technically the chassis is made of several pieces, the welding technique Apple uses means that the system effectively appears as a single piece. This helps rigidity and contributes to the thinness of the system.

Like other Macs, the iMac comes preloaded with iPhoto, iTunes, Mail, etc. The iMac has a one-year warranty. One future-proofing plus is that the iMac can work as a monitor for a future Thunderbolt-equipped Mac. Using one of the two Thunderbolt ports, the iMac's monitor can display video for a MacBook, Mac mini, or other future Mac. You can of course use the Thunderbolt ports and the four USB 3.0 ports for hard drive and peripheral expansion. This ability to use the iMac as a monitor almost makes up for the fact that you will need adapters for DVI, VGA, and HDMI displays in multi-monitor setups. Mini-DisplayPort, and Thunderbolt monitors will work natively, of course.

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BlackBerry readies BBM messaging app for Android, Apple

BlackBerry will this weekend take a historic fork in the road as it makes what was once its distinguishing application, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), available for download to Android and Apple smartphone users.

Announced as an intention several weeks ago, Android 4.x users are expected to get access to the app on September 21 from Google's Play, followed 12 hours later for iPhone users from Apple's App Store.

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The move is an extraordinary moment for Blackberry and given that BBM messaging will be free also between users running the app, potentially disruptive for the mobile market as a whole if it can grab new users. There are currently no plans for a Windows Phone app.

The firm's strategy of turning BBM into a larger social platform explains why it has taken the interesting if risky decision to untether its messaging system from its own declining hardware and software platform.

"Later this year, BBM Channels will provide a forum for active, real conversations between you and the people, brands, celebrities, artists, service providers, communities and more, that matter to you," blogged BlackBerry's Donny Halliwell.

"By creating a Channel, individuals and brands can engage their friends and communities in conversations sparked by their thoughts, ideas and passions," he said, underlining BlackBerry's hope that BBM can become a mobile social network under the radar of operators as well as Google and Apple.

Since the company announced the move some time ago, it has been generally well received by the industry.

"The news that BBM is to appear on the Android platform suggests that the writing may be on the wall for BlackBerry as we know it," said AppSense chief development officer, Keith Turnbull at the time.

BBM's managed security environment could be another big lure for some users; BlackBerry will only make money if business users continue to pay license fees to use the server software, underwriting free consumer access.

"BlackBerry's greatest strength remains its popularity amongst enterprises due to a strong reputation for robust security. Recent independent research commissioned by AppSense revealed that only 12 percent of UK enterprises saw BlackBerry's as a potential security risk compared with 63 per cent of businesses believing that Android a high security risk," said Turnbull.

This security isn't as watertight as might have once been assumed, with a German newspaper recently claiming that there is evidence among the leaks made by Edward Snowden that the NSA might be able to access messages sent through the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES).

Elsewhere the news has been dire, with US media has reported that the firm is preparing to lay off 40 percent of its 12,700 workforce, a grudging confirmation by the old-style BlackBerry is now in deep trouble.

The company isn't giving up that easily, this week announcing its most powerful smartphone to date, the Z30, due for release later in 2013.

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Apple iPhone 5c (Verizon Wireless)

Pros Bright and cheerful new colors. Solid value. iPhone 5 internals are still solid. Stronger RF reception than iPhone 5. iOS 7 is a dramatic upgrade.

Cons That 4-inch screen is starting to feel small. No significant new hardware features. Bottom Line The colorful, plastic iPhone 5c is a welcome upgrade for existing iPhone 4 and 4S owners, and a great introduction to Apple's awesome app platform at a nice price. It's the best $99 phone you'll find on Verizon Wireless, but otherwise, there's not much new to see here.

By Sascha Segan, Jamie Lendino

If you think you know the new Apple iPhone 5c ($99 for 16GB/$199 for 32GB with contract), you do. It's the guts of the iPhone 5 wrapped in a colorful enclosure, with a new front-facing camera and battery. That's basically it. Still, the iPhone 5c marks the first time you can get an iPhone in an array of bright colors, recalling the cheerful iMacs and iBooks of the late 1990s. The 5c is a solid play for existing iPhone 4 and 4S owners, as well as those with older Android and BlackBerry phones, and it's a terrific introduction to Apple's app platform at a reasonable price. It's the best new smartphone you can get on Verizon Wireless for $100. But there's zero gee-whiz factor surrounding the iPhone 5c; for that, you need to cough up $100 more for the iPhone 5s—or, for that matter, the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Design, Enclosure, and Case
What's intriguing here is that typically, Apple doesn't sell a newly designed phone for $99; instead, it lowers last year's flagship model to $99, and introduces its new top-of-the-line product with a $199 start price. This time around, the company discontinued the iPhone 5 after just one year, replaced it with the iPhone 5s at $199, and introduced this new lower-price iPhone 5c.

With that out of the way, let's talk details. The iPhone 5c is slightly thicker and heavier than the iPhone 5 and 5s. It measures 4.9 by 2.33 by 0.35 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.65 ounces. Compare that to the iPhone 5s, which measures 4.87 by 2.31 by 0.30 inches and weighs 3.95 ounces. It doesn't make much of a difference, unless you're really picky. Notably, all five color options (blue, green, pink, yellow, or white) are bright and cheerful; there are no neutrals, earth tones, or Droid-esque dystopian-future shades available. Each model also comes with matching home screen colors and wallpaper, which is a nice touch.

But the strangest thing about the iPhone 5c is that it's slippery. You're aware of it while holding it, and you can actually slide it across a desk, in a way that you can't with a Galaxy S 4. It's something about the glossy clearcoat finish over the polycarbonate. It definitely looks and feels smooth and solid. The hardware controls are mostly the same, with the only difference being the volume controls, which are long and thin instead of round. The enclosure also seems more durable; aluminum-bodied iPhones feel richer and more luxurious, of course, but they're also known for getting pretty scratched up if you don't buy a case. There's a reason Samsung has stuck with polycarbonate bodies for its Galaxy phones all this time.

Speaking of cases, Apple's $29 silicone case for the iPhone 5c is much grippier. It's easy to slip the iPhone 5c in and out of, and it lets some of the original color through, thanks to the neatly arranged circular cutouts on the back. The case itself is lined with microfiber, which cushions the phone nicely, and you can get it in an array of colors, which means you can make your own custom color combo. (For more iPhone 5c cases, check out our roundup.)

Connectivity, Call Quality, and Reception
Internally, almost everything in the iPhone 5 is in the iPhone 5c, including the A6 processor, LTE compatibility, 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with f/2.4 aperture, and the 1,136-by-640-pixel 4-inch display. None of these features are suddenly lacking; the iPhone 5's camera remains one of the best you can get, and all current iOS apps run as fast as they need to here. The display is sufficiently sharp, and the new iOS 7 fonts look terrific. But you could definitely argue it's time the display was bumped up in size. Four inches can feel mighty small if you've spent any length of time using a late-model Android phone.

Performance-wise, the iPhone 5c is identical to the iPhone 5. That means it's snappy in day-to-day use, and especially smooth with iOS 7, which features nifty movement and parallax tricks that weren't in the old OS. Downloading Web pages and firing up apps are just as fast as usual, and the iPhone's sensitive multi-touch support and ultra-smooth page scrolling are still the best in the business.

That said, connectivity, call quality, and reception are the places where the iPhone 5c can differ from the iPhone 5, so let's focus on those.

I tested the iPhone 5c side by side with a Verizon iPhone 5 running iOS 7 (more on that later). In a series of speed tests around midtown Manhattan, the iPhone 5c generally pulled in the same disappointing LTE results of 1-3Mbps down and about 1Mbps up that the iPhone 5 scored. But there's a marked, if sometimes inconsistent, improvement in reception; taking both phones out of my pants pocket, the iPhone 5c almost always locked onto LTE faster, while the iPhone 5 waffled between 3G, LTE, and sometimes even 1x for a while.

In our office building's basement, we made test calls and ran data speed tests with the iPhone 5c, 5s, 5, the LG G2, and the Samsung Galaxy S4. The LG G2 had the most trouble connecting calls, and the Galaxy S4 the least, and the newer iPhones leading the iPhone 5.

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Apple iTunes 11.1

Pros Sleek design. Largest catalog of music and video around. Internet radio with large selection of genres. Excellent mini-player. iCloud integration makes all your music more easily available. Support for 1080p HD movies and TV shows. iTunes in the Cloud free for iTunes-bought music. Wi-Fi syncing for mobile devices. Huge store of media for sale and video for rent. HD TV program rentals. iPhone and iPad app organization.

Cons Large disk space requirements for a media player. Pushes you toward purchases a bit too much. Device Authorization limit can be a problem for people with many devices. No music subscription service. Bottom Line Apple iTunes is still the mother of all media applications, with the biggest music and video store, and now a free Internet radio option.

By Michael Muchmore

With each new iPhone or iPad model and iOS update also comes an iTunes update—if for no other reason than to add support for the new device. But this time around, with iTunes 11.1.0, the Swiss army knife of desktop media playing software actually gets a significant new feature of its own—iTunes Radio. Trying to emulate the success of Pandora while leveraging its installed player software, Apple claims that iTunes Radio uses real genre DJs rather than just Pandora-like algorithms alone. Joining Radio, though not as earth-shattering, are a couple more new features: Genius Shuffle, to organize your like-minded tracks and Podcast stations. And those are just what's new in this one-stop-shop for all you media enjoyment needs.

iTunes Radio
When you first take iTunes up on its offer to try Radio, you'll see featured DJ stations across the top, and a box with a big plus sign in the bottom where you can enter your own favorite artist to start a station a la Pandora. Apple's website claims more than 250 curated stations, but I only saw 24. I started by playing DJ @iTunes: Electronic. At first I was worried that there was no Skip button, but, thankfully, the Fast Forward button next to the Pause button in the player does in fact let you skip. It even tells you how many skips you have left when you start running low. After six skips (that's how many you're allowed within an hour), the Fast Forward button became grayed out.

If you have a $25-a-year iTunes Match subscription, you won't hear any ads interrupting your iTunes Radio listening; that compares well with the $47.88 a year you'd pay for an ad-free Pandora One subscription, which doesn't include the cloud-based music locker of iTunes Match (see below). After disconnecting my Match account from iTunes, I did hear one advertisement, for the iTunes Festival in London—far less obnoxious than Pandora's localized ads, but Apple's just starting in this game. Later, I saw a full-window video ad for a Nissan car.

Pressing the star button next to the pause button shows Radio that you'd like to hear more similar tunes, the skip and star buttons take the place of the explicit thumbs up and thumbs down buttons in Pandora and Rdio. There's no reminder that you've previously liked a song, as you get in Pandora's thumb icon, which turns blue. Of course, there's a priced Buy button right next to the song name in the song info panel. The scrubber appears here, too, but you can't use it to advance or rewind within a song, as you can in Rdio.

When you go to create a musician- or song-based station of your own, iTunes actually proposes more genres in a dropdown of thumbnails. Start typing, and you'll see a top hit, then artists, and then songs listed. Once you select the artist or song to base your station on, you'll see a larger album cover and a discreet "Allow Explicit" option button to the right, which you can enable or not, depending on your level of prudery. Clicking on the album cover drops down a colored panel similar to the one iTunes 11 introduced for albums in your library, but for Radio it shows listening history with track info, a buy button, and a share button that generates a link or email.

Unlike when you're playing music from your library, the dropdown that shows the Up Next list only shows history—you don't even get to see the next track in order, as you can in Pandora. I was impressed, though, that you could go back and re-play any song in your history. Most of the Internet radios only show you the next track in line. Clicking the > that appears next to the song name at top offers new, radio-relevant choices—New Station from Artist, and New Station from Song. What you don't get is artist information or lyrics, which other services like Slacker offer.

My custom station, based on British electronica group Orbital, cranked out the expected artists—Boards of Canada, Ulrich Schnauss, Aphex Twin. Less mainstream options such as renaissance choral music and Bix Beiderbecke also engendered some relevant selections, but the library or algorithm played some romantic vocal music on the renaissance channel. I was only mildly impressed with the Apple DJ's electronica selections—they fell short of the excellent SOMAfm Internet radio stations. But the sound quality was all I could have hoped for. In all, iTunes Radio is a feather in iTunes' cap, though it's short of the full subscription service we've long been clamoring for. It's an especially appealing perk for existing Match subscribers.

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Apple exhausts initial supply of iPhone 5S

September 20, 2013 10:21 AM ETComputerworld - Within minutes of its sales debut early today, Apple's iPhone 5S was already in short supply, with shipping dates 7-10 business days from ordering in the U.S.

The gold-tinted model was in the shortest supply: Apple's online store said the somewhat-flashier smartphone would not ship until an undisclosed date in October.

Apple kicked off online sales of the iPhone 5S at 12:01 a.m. PT, 3:01 a.m. ET.

A Computerworld editor who placed an order for a gold iPhone 5S just two minutes after the virtual doors opened was told his smartphone would ship in 1-3 business days, and that the phone would arrive between Sept. 30 and Oct. 2.

He was among the lucky. Not long after that, inventories emptied and shipping dates slipped, with first the gray model selling out, then the white. By 9 a.m. ET, the gray and white models were showing 7-10 business days before shipping in all storage space configurations for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.

Other markets saw the same sell-outs. In Hong Kong, the gold iPhone 5S was marked "currently unavailable," while the other tints were to ship next month. In China, the gold iPhone was expected to ship in October, while gray and white models displayed a 7-10 business day delay.

Europeans will have to wait as well: At 9 a.m. ET, all models of all colors of the iPhone 5S were tagged as shipping next month in France, Germany and the U.K.

iPhone shortages are nothing new: When the iPhone 5 went on sale a year ago -- Apple took pre-orders for its flagship in 2012 -- the company drained stocks within an hour and shoved back shipping dates by two weeks.

It sometimes takes months for Apple to reach a supply and demand balance.

Most analysts, however, believed that the iPhone 5S would be in especially short supply due to a component pinch of some kind, most likely the new fingerprint scanner or the A7 system-on-a-chip (SoC) at the core of the phone. They have speculated that Apple passed on pre-orders for the flagship this year because of the smaller-than-usual stocks.

Apple's retail stores, those of its partners -- including Best Buy and Walmart -- and the mobile carrier's outlets also start selling the iPhone 5S today. If the past is any clue, the brick-and-mortar stores will sell out if not today, then during the weekend.

Some Wall Street experts predicted bullish sales numbers, but have included the less-expensive iPhone 5C in their tallies. In a note to clients early Friday, Brian White of Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. predicted that Apple would sell between 6 million and 6.5 million new iPhones over the weekend, a 20% to 30% increase over 2012's 5 million in the same period.

Apple began taking pre-orders for the iPhone 5C, which starts at $99 with a two-year contract in the U.S., or $549 without one, a week ago, on Sept. 13.

The iPhone 5C is in much greater supply: In the U.S., Hong Kong and China, all five colors of the plastic-cased smartphone showed shipping times of 1-3 business days after ordering.

Assuming Apple follows past practice, it will announce opening weekend sales numbers on Monday, Sept. 23.

Apple ran through its iPhone 5S inventory of gold-colored smartphones in just minutes, and now shows a shipping date some time in October.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

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Apple iOS 7

Pros Heightened security. Fresh design. Wonderful improvements to Control Center, Notification Center, and multitasking bar. Can download over Wi-Fi. Free.

Cons Missing photo management and organization capabilities. Quirky implementation of blocked numbers feature. Bottom Line iOS 7 marks a major turn for Apple's mobile operating system, both visually and in all it has to offer. Users will embrace the long list of new features with open arms, and the design is a breath of fresh air. There's still room for improvement, to be sure, but iOS has truly blossomed in this release.

By Jill Duffy Launching iOS 7 (free) for the first time feels like stepping into some far-away land. It reminds me of the moment Dorothy first finds herself in Oz. She feels uncomfortable in this foreign world. Yet it's mysterious and fantastical. There's a moment of hesitation, of maybe wanting to go back home where everything will be safe and predictable, before she finds her footing. The draw is too great to turn back. Apple's iOS 7 shimmers and glides. The so-called flat design looks cold initially, but soon seems cutting edge. Dive into the settings, and you'll uncover wonderful improvements in security. A new "share sheet" comes off as much more intuitive than the buttons we've come to know so well. Everything's different, but this is a time for closing your eyes, making the leap, and embracing change.

Yes, several of the changes mimic Android. Why deny iPhone and iPad owners of features that set the bar? I don't mind seeing best practices implemented wherever they make sense, and in iOS 7, they do. This is one mobile operating system that has blossomed into adulthood, and everyone with a compatible device should be excited to install it and explore it.

iOS 7: The Basics
iOS 7 is available to install on compatible Apple devices, which covers iPhone 4 and later, iPad 2 and later, and fifth-generation iPod touch. For a model-by-model list, see the complete list of devices that will run iOS 7. iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s will come with iOS 7 already installed on them.

Not all iPhones will get every single new feature, because some older phones aren't capable of them. For example, iPhone 4 does not include Siri, and thus won't see any of the improvements made to Siri. The most exciting changes, however, are universally applicable across all devices, and I honestly don't think iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, and iPhone 5 owners are missing out on anything massive.

Apple released the final code for iOS 7 on September 18, and it's free to download to any compatible device. There are a few ways to download it, and you'll want to backup your device before you do! We have a complete set of instructions in the article "How to Download iOS 7." If you're ready to roll now, just go to Settings > General > Software Update to install the new OS.

Design
iOS 7 looks stunningly different. The  stark differences between iOS 6 and iOS 7 are most apparent when you look at before and after images back-to-back. You'll notice a lack of 3D. Icons sit in a flat layer that seems to hover just above the screen's background—and changing the wallpaper to suit the new design is a must in my book. (Experiment: Set that old water droplet wallpaper behind the new app icons, and watch the horror of the two worlds colliding.) 

The design of iOS 6, and really all versions of iOS prior to version 7, had icons that looked like buttons. As some design experts have pointed out, there's even an imaginary outside source of light that shines down on the app icons. It evokes the feeling of physicality, played up more by skeuomorphism. Buttons look like they are what they represent, rather than just images on a screen. In iOS 7 that external source of light casting shadows and so forth is gone. The new look evokes computers and a true digital experience that has little to do with real-world physicality.

The Calendar app icon is the perhaps the best example. Its background is solid white with no shading or shadows. Other icons, such as those for Settings, App Store, and iTunes Store, have some color change from top to bottom, but it's subtle and not meant to look like light is coming from outside. Rather, the color gradation seems to be coming from the apps themselves, almost like they are softly glowing.

Interaction and Controls
I love the new control center in iOS 7. iOS 6 didn't have much of a control center to speak of, but if you double-tapped the home button while the phone was locked, you could access a few buttons for your music or media: play/pause, skip forward or backward, and AirPlay. In iOS 7, a fully formed control center is just an up-swipe away at any time, whether the phone is locked or not. Here you'll find quick access to the media buttons, as well as a screen brightness slider; Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, flight mode, "do not disturb," and rotation lock on/off switches; a shortcut to the timer, world clock, alarm, and stopwatch; and a shortcut to the camera.

I'm not convinced that leaving the Bluetooth button accessible while the device is locked is a good thing, but the overall utility of having a true control center in the first place is definitely a huge step forward.

App folders look totally different when you open them and arrange icons in them. Tap one, and it spreads across the screen, much larger than before, to reveal multiple pages of apps within any folder. No more 12-app limit. I wanted to see if there was a limit, but when I got to 45 apps in one folder, I quit trying. These new folders are expansive.

One of the most Android-esque features is iOS 7's revamped multitasking bar, which now shows a preview of all your open apps, rather than just the icons for them. Swipe the multitasking bar left and right, and flows gracefully, rather than showing the next set of apps that fits on the screen and then coming to a halt as it did in iOS 6.

A new notification center in iOS 7 shows your daily summary: appointments and reminders for the current day, as well as a summary of what's happening tomorrow. That's only the first tab, though. The next two, called All and Missed, show custom notifications from whatever apps you want to include.

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With new iPhone 5s, Apple launches the 64-bit smartphone war

September 13, 2013 03:37 PM ETComputerworld - The 64-bit smartphone clash has been joined between rivals Apple and Samsung. But will everyday smartphone buyers even care, much less notice?

Not in the short term, but then technology is often ahead of buyer awareness or popularity.

Samsung this week confirmed it will have ARM-based 64-bit processors in its next top-line Galaxy-branded smartphones. That move came almost immediately after Apple on Tuesday announced the iPhone 5s, saying it will ship Sept. 20 with a 64-bit A7 processor. The iPhone 5c and the older iPhone 5 use a 32-bit A6 chip.

Down the road, a 64-bit processor would be able to handle code for more demanding high-end games or health-related apps using bio-sensors that spit out tons of data. It could help in data-intensive video editing or for playing ultra high-definition 4K video, which has potential for businesses as well as consumers.

"Yes, our next smartphones will have 64-bit processing," JK Shin told the Korea Times shortly after the iPhone 5s was announced. He also said that Samsung, based in Korea, should be trying harder for Samsung sales in China, a renewed target for Apple.

In one sense, Samsung's move to match Apple in 64-bit computing indicates that 64-bit is an important advance for smartphones, similar to the way that PCs went from 32-bit to 64-bit several years ago.

But with 64-bit apps for smartphones not available yet and with puny memory allotments of 2GB or less in most smartphones, Apple's move -- and therefore Samsung's planned move -- are seen by many analysts as more of a marketing play than anything else.

"64 bits only adds memory addressability, nothing else, and that doesn't bring any value to mobile today," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. "Right now, the 64-bit race is silly, as it doesn't bring anything to users.... Tomorrow, as memory densities get higher and apps get more sophisticated, there will [be benefit]."

British chip designer ARM first announced the ARMv8 architecture, which is being licensed by Apple and others, in 2011. Moorhead and other analysts believe that these same 64-bit ARM-based chips could be used to replace Intel chips in laptops, or used in a coming Chromebook.

Apple's iOS 7 update, rolling out for free to iPhone 4 and later versions on Sept. 18, is designed to handle the A7 64-bit architecture. But analysts noted that Samsung and Google don't even have Android ready yet for 64-bit hardware.

"It seems to me that Samsung is more interested in showing they can technically do 64-bit, too, although...Android is not being built for 64-bit," said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner. It's likely that Android 5.0 will be the first version to fully take advantage of the ARMv8 design, according to various sources.

It was an interesting move by Samsung to seek to compete with Apple on 64-bit smartphones, analysts said, given that Samsung has so done well with phones and phablets that focus on larger displays, while Apple has stuck with a 4-in. display -- even in the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. The Galaxy Note 3, announced by Samsung earlier this month, will sport a 5.7-in. display with a digital stylus and is set to ship in the U.S. in October.

Consumers will probably be far more interested in having a larger display than a 64-bit processor, analysts said, which should give Samsung and Android, and future Android apps, plenty of time to catch up to Apple.

"Other smartphone features will probably be more meaningful to buyers than 64-bit," said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates. "But in a mature market where every marketing ploy is useful, 64-bit is one more weapon for Apple to wield. How important it will be remains to be seen, but it could sway some consumers."

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Apple sneaks in changes to AppleCare+

Alongside Tuesday's iPhone 5c and 5s announcements, Apple snuck in some changes to its AppleCare+ protection plans -- some for the better, some not so much.

First off, dropping your pretty new iPhone just got a bit more expensive, as noticed by TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino. Although the purchase price of AppleCare+, the special variety of AppleCare for Apple phones and tablets, still costs $99, the price for each accidental-damage iPhone repair has increased from $49 per incident to $79. (You're allowed two such repairs over the two-year life of the plan.) The price of iPad accidental-damage repairs appears to be unchanged at $49 per incident.

[ Also on InfoWorld: All you need to know about the new iPhone. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ]

Newly purchased AppleCare+ plans also no longer cover any headphones included with your device. Existing iPhone AppleCare+ plans presumably maintain the coverage and pricing promised at the time of purchase. (We've asked Apple to confirm this; we'll update this article with any information we receive.)

In positive news, the company also brought AppleCare+ to iPod models for the first time on Tuesday -- specifically, the iPod touch and the iPod classic. Apple previously offered standard AppleCare plans for these models for $59 each. The same $59 now buys you AppleCare+ which, as with the iPhone and iPad versions, now covers accidental damage -- although with a lower $29-per-incident fee (again, limited to twice over two years). Unlike the iPhone plan, however, the iPod version appears to cover headphones. Do current iPod touch/classic AppleCare customers get upgraded to AppleCare+, or is that only for new plans? Good question -- we asked Apple about that too.

The iPod touch is a natural candidate for AppleCare+ coverage, thanks to its just-as-easy-to-crack-as-an-iPhone's screen and nearly identical form factor. And the iPod classic, as the one mechanical hard drive-based iPod left, is a natural fit -- it's only a drop away from total failure.

As before, all AppleCare+ plans must be purchased at the same time as your hardware or within 30 days of purchase. The latter requires that you verify your purchase date and submit your iPod for inspection -- for example, at an Apple retail store -- to rule out any pre-existing conditions.

Alas, Apple appears to have dropped AppleCare for the iPod shuffle and nano altogether, though Panzarino notes that Apple has finally brought AppleCare to the UK, France, and Italy on Tuesday.

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Missing the point: What pundits don't get about Apple

Credit: Reuters/Beck Diefenbach

Yesterday's iPhone announcements have caused Apple's stock to drop significantly, as now seems to happen each year after a major Apple announcement. Pundits are angry at Apple for not reinventing the smartphone, claiming Apple's glory days died with Steve Jobs. Many financial investors are mad at Apple for not introducing cheap iPhones that make no money but would radically grow its market share.

Most of the commentary is just stupid.

Yes, the iPhone 5c is just the iPhone 5 in a colorful new case, to make last year's model look new. That may be a smart sales strategy to goose demand in the U.S. where the $99 subsidized price will matter, but it's just a sales strategy. Still, selling stuff is what a product company is supposed to do.

And yes, the iPhone 5s is a souped-up iPhone 5, but with two innovations that are underestimated. One is the move to a 64-bit processor (and a 64-bit OS), which sets the stage for Apple devices to replace PCs in the next few years, removing one of the performance caps in current models. (ARM, which designs the basic architecture used by Apple and others, is moving to 64-bit designs as well, but for servers first. So the 64-bit A7 is Apple's early move on that trend in the mass market ARM isn't focused on.) The performance gap between an iPad and a PC is already not that great; I bet it will disappear in a couple years.

The other is the M7 motion coprocessor, which people seem to have missed in the iPhone 5s analysis. It's Apple's entry into the wearables market. The very notion of a motion coprocessor is a radical one, and it says clearly that Apple believes in movement-tracking as a core capability. It debuts on the iPhone 5s, where it should enable a whole raft of medical and fitness sensors, as well as bolster navigation services and more. Apple is not alone in doing this; the Motorola X8 processor package has a similar notion, except it takes the "big chipset" approach that will be harder to apply to small, wearable devices than a discrete coprocessor like the M7.

Everyone seems to want Apple to make a smart watch, but Apple is clearly building a strategy for pervasive wearables. My bet is that this is its next wave, and we won't see it realized until Apple makes that shift with the equivalent of the first Mac, first iPod, first iPhone, or first iPad. But like any wave, it takes time to build, and the M7 is first visible ripple at Apple.

People also forget that Apple's brand is not so much about technology innovation but innovation in service of user experience. People get addicted to the experience, not the specific technology enabling it. But most pundits are geeks who love technology, and forget that the rest of the world loves experience. Just think about a car: What ultimately matters is how it drives, and that's what people focus on after the initial technology bamboozling has passed.

On the financial-strategy side, Apple is a company that makes lots of money, which is why companies are supposed to exist in the first place. In fact, it makes nearly half the PC industry's profits with a Mac market share well under 10 percent, and three-quarters of the mobile device industry's profits with a market share in the mid-teens. That's an amazing feat.

Pundits also tend to forget history. In Apple's early days, its Mac and Lisa computers were horribly expensive, and the cheaper-by-comparison IBM PC and then the clones left Apple in the dust. That memory fuels a lot of the cry for cheap, mass-market products today. And Apple was way out of kilter in that era. But most people forget what happened next: Apple created Macs that were just like the PCs of the era, and they offended existing Mac customers due to their poor user experience and didn't attract new customers because they were, after all, just PCs. The latter people kept buying regular PCs. I have no doubt that if Apple delivered a crippled iPhone to be cheap, it would damage its iPhone business immeasurably, and those folks looking for a $75 smartphone would still get a Nokia Asha or barely functional Android device.

I certainly don't mean to suggest that Apple is doing everything right. And the geek in me would love a game-changing iPhone. But if Apple starts basing its technology and product strategy based on tech bloggers' and financial analysts' advice, it'd be out of business soon. Most spew nonsense, and shouldn't be listened to. Apple is about the highly profitable, highly addictive long term -- which means we can't tell today if it's doing the right thing. But we can know that asking it to be shortsighted is a waste of time. If Apple fails, it'll be doing so on its own terms, not ours.

This story, "Missing the point: What pundits don't get about Apple," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Apple faces threat from China, bellwether in battle against Android

Computerworld - Apple faces a threat from an unexpected quarter: Chinese developers crafting Android apps, an analytics firm said today.

Chinese developers build nearly two-thirds of the mobile apps used by Chinese consumers -- an even higher percentage than U.S. developers contribute to U.S. consumers' app usage patterns -- illustrating not only the difficulty outsiders face in breaking into the massive market, but reinforcing one analyst's claim that Apple will face a crisis next year if it continues to shed smartphone share.

According to Flurry, a U.S.-based mobile analytics firm, U.S. developers are losing their grip on the mobile app ecosystem, and have accounted for just 36% of all smartphone and tablet apps published so far this year. That's down from 45% over the last two years.

The U.S.'s contribution to the overall app market -- Android and iOS -- looked better when Flurry weighted the data by time spent with apps: There, U.S. developers accounted for 70%. But that, too, was smaller than in years prior, when U.S. programmers held app usage shares of 75% and 76% in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

While Flurry's data was meant to push U.S. developers to think globally -- something they've not done nearly as successfully as those in other countries -- it also revealed an interesting trend in China.

China, said Simon Khalaf, president and CEO of Flurry, is not a big software exporter at the moment. But that will change.

"The software export market [for China] is nascent now, it doesn't look like a big software exporter yet," said Khalaf in an interview. "But Chinese developers are starting to see some adoption in Japan and Korea. That's their focus now: CJK [China, Japan and Korea]."

And Chinese apps, localized for export, will continue to grab global share by expanding into other neighboring markets, including Southeast Asia, India and Indonesia. "The sheer numbers in India ... that's a lot of market [for Chinese apps]," said Khalaf.

The Chinese maneuver may seem inconsequential to Apple at first glance, but Khalaf begged to differ.

That's because Chinese consumers are more likely to be using an Android-based smartphone, one tied to the Android ecosystem, than they are to own an iPhone and rely on Apple's app market. In earlier studies by Flurry, the firm pegged the Android-iOS split in China at about 2 to 1, with Apple's installed base accounting for just 35% of the country's total. The remaining was all Android.

And Chinese developers, like all developers, follow the money. If Android dominates the installed base, Android is what developers will write for.

"When you look at the apps being submitted to Flurry, you do see an interesting shift happening, with Chinese developers releasing Android and iOS apps at the same time," said Khalaf. "But an 'Android-first' release could be the next shift down the road."

And that's where things start to get ugly for Apple. Or so Benedict Evans, an analyst with U.K.-based Enders Analysis, has argued.

In a report published in early August, Evans maintained that without a low-priced iPhone in its portfolio -- and by low, he meant as low as $200 to $300 -- Apple risked losing mind share among developers. In other words, Apple needs market share as much as profit margin for the iPhone to continue being a credible smartphone brand.

Like Khalaf, Evans saw the danger stemming from developers' decisions.

"Developers are starting to move from creating new products on the basis 'iPhone, then maybe Android' to 'iPhone and then Android' or even 'iPhone and Android at the same time,'" Evans said in his report. "We do not see Android becoming a first choice this year, but it is no longer optional for any publisher seeking real reach. If total Android engagement moves decisively above iOS, the fact that iOS will remain big will be beside the point -- it will move from first to first-equal and then perhaps second place on the roadmap."

If that happens, Apple is in a world of hurt.

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If you sell 36 million Samsung or Apple smartwatches, are you successful?

Network World - Sales of so-called "smartwatches" will surge from 1 million to 36 million in five years, according to a speculative new report from Juniper Research. But whether that defines "success" remains an open question.

Yet despite the frenzy of expectation around the rumored Samsung Gear and Apple "iWatch," even Juniper acknowledges smartwatches "will only appeal to a niche demographic when compared to tablet and smartphone for example and hence the market potential will be comparatively limited." There are two reasons for that limitation.

One is that the utility and even usability of smartwatches hinges on their wireless connections with companion smartphones or tablets. Another is that most of the apps touted for the smartwatches appeal to a relatively small subset of consumers, such as heart rate monitors and calorie counters for fitness enthusiasts.

[NEWS:Samsung lays ground for a 'Galaxy Gear' smart watch

MORE:Inside look at the Apple iWatch

MORE:15 high- tech wristwatches that would make Dick Tracy jealous]

The full market study is available only for purchase, but Juniper posted a "white paper" that summarizes some of conclusions.A

Juniper defines a smart watch as "a smart wearable appcessory that can be worn on a user's wrist, offering a range of smart functionalities in conjunction with an external platform, such as the smartphone or tablet." Those functions include displaying call, text and email alerts, accessing stock and weather information or "any fitness, sports or commerce applications such as heart rate monitoring, payments or ticketing."

One category of smart watch is what Juniper calls the "dashboard/console watch," which is simply a "dumb terminal" acting as a display for information and data from another companion device. One example is the CooKoo watch, with the CooKoo Connected App for iOS. It uses Bluetooth 4.0 LE wireless technology to connect with Bluetooth SMART READY devices including iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPad mini, and 3rd, 4th, and 5th generation iPads.

The CooKoo displays incoming calls, missed calls, Facebook messages and posts, Twitter mentions, Google Voice SMS, email notification and more. Press a button and you can check-in to Facebook, remotely snap photos or record video, and control music played on your phone or tablet, and tag your location on the CooKoo Connected App map.

By contrast, according to Juniper, "multi-function" smart watches can do a bunch of things on their own, in addition to working with the phone or tablet. Juniper didn't give an example but the Pebble E-Paper Watch, a Kickstarter darling, is certainly one, offering "beautiful downloadable watchfaces and useful internet-connected apps," according to the website spiel. "Pebble connects to iPhone and Android smartphones using Bluetooth, alerting you with a silent vibration to incoming calls, emails and messages." Another is the Italian-designed i'm Watch.A

Reprinted with permission from NetworkWorld.com. Story copyright 2012 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Apple iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M)

Pros Stunningly thin design. Impressive low-glare display. Top-of-the-line processor and graphics card offer best-in-class performance. User serviceable memory slots. Ports include Thunderbolt and USB 3.0.

Cons Pricey. No internal upgradability. No HDMI-in or out without an adapter. No height adjustment. Needs external Thunderbolt drive for more storage. Bottom Line With a memory bump, the Apple iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M) shows that it is still capable of running with the big dogs. It's the highest performance Mac we've seen, for now.

By Joel Santo Domingo

The Apple iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M) ($3,099 direct) desktop is a powerhouse system for those who need high-octane performance. It can be upgraded to 32GB of memory and a high-end third-generation Intel Core i7 processor. When combined with speedy Flash storage, it is the kind of configuration that will excite your graphic design and scientific users, at least until the next iteration of the iMac shows up later this year (probably).

Design and Features
On the outside, the latest iMac 27-inch is identical to the Apple iMac 27-Inch (Late 2012) ($2,688 direct) that we looked at last year. It has the same 20.3-inch-tall aluminum chassis with built-in tilting stand. Again, you'll have to budget about 25 inches of width and 8 inches of depth on your work surface for this behemoth. The current high-end all-in-one desktop Editors' Choice the Dell XPS 27 Touch All-in-One (2720) takes up roughly the same amount of space, within two inches in any given dimension. The iMac is thinner than the Dell XPS 27, particularly at the edges, where the chassis tapers down to a few millimeters. As such, there is no room for an internal optical drive, though Apple still carries its external USB SuperDrive DVD burner for $79.

Both the Dell XPS 27 Touch and the iMac 27-inch have better than 1080p HD IPS screens, with a 2,560-by-1,440 resolution. This means you can view and edit a full HD 1080p movie with plenty of room left over for toolbars and the like. Other 27-inch all-in-one desktops like the Vizio 27-inch All-in-One Touch PC (CA27T-B1) ($1,549) and Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon ($1,849) make do with only 1,920-by-1,080 resolution screens, which are to their credit, still full 1080p HD. The iMac 27-inch models don't have touch screens. The OS X operating system isn't optimized for touch screens, and for the time being Apple has limited touch to iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone. Like all current 27-inch iMacs, the system has a laminated glass cover for the screen, which reduces reflections.

The iMac 27-inch has four USB 3.0 ports, two Thunderbolt ports, a SDXC card reader, headset jack, and Gigabit Ethernet on the back. There is an access panel on the back for access to the memory slots, but the system we reviewed came with them filled to the current maximum of 32GB. Any other expansion has to be done via Thunderbolt or USB 3.0. For the fastest throughput rates, we'd recommend one or more Thunderbolt SSD drives or arrays, but you can hook up everything from a 128MB USB 2.0 stick up to multiple Thunderbolt five-drive disk arrays for extra data storage.

The configured-to-order (CTO) system we reviewed came with 256GB of Flash Storage, which is totally enough for a single-use desktop like an audio engineer's workstation (with Apple Logic Pro X), as long as you have external storage for your music data files. For general-purpose use like a graphics artist's workstation, we'd recommend the Fusion Drive setup seen in last year's review, since that configuration has 1TB of internal storage for personal files like music and downloads. The iMac 27-inch comes with 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi networking in addition to the physical gigabit Ethernet port. You can use the Thunderbolt ports to connect up to seven devices each (including up to two Thunderbolt or mini-DisplayPort monitors). You'll need a third-party adapter for mini-DisplayPort to HDMI or one of Apple's mini-DisplayPort to VGA or DVI adapters to use the iMac with other screens. You can use the iMac's display with most recent Thunderbolt-equipped Macs (Mac mini, MacBook Air, etc.), so you stretch the life of the system's display once the internal components are obsolete. That said, Thunderbolt isn't as accommodating as a plain HDMI-in port like the one on the Dell XPS 27 Touch, which can connect to more devices like laptops, smartphones, game consoles, cable boxes, and anything else with a HDMI-out port.

Like all current Macs, the iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M) comes with OS X 10.8 and Apple's iLife suite (iTunes, iPhoto, etc.). You'll be able to upgrade the iMac to OS X Mavericks (aka OS X 10.9) when it is released later this year, though the pricing and availability on the upgrade hasn't been released yet. The iMac comes with a standard one-year warranty.

Performance
The iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M) we reviewed has 32GB of DDR3 1,600-MHz memory, a third-generation Intel Core i7-3770 processor, 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 675MX discrete graphics, and 256GB of Flash Storage instead of a hard drive. As a result, this system screams through some of our benchmark tests. It's in a dead heat with the 4th-generation Intel Core-equipped Dell XPS 27 Touch (2720) on the Handbrake video encoder test and the Photoshop CS6 test. Both are over a minute faster than the mobile processor-based Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon.

The iMac also turns in quite playable scores on the Heaven 3D gaming benchmark test. The iMac turned in a barely playable 31 fps at native resolution, but when stepped down to a more reasonable 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, the iMac returned a playable 55 fps. This tells us that this iMac is capable of playing strenuous AAA game titles fairly easily. You should be able to find a sweet spot that trades between resolution and rendering quality. It certainly blows away the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 in the Vizio 27-inch All-in-One Touch PC (CA27T-B1). With more memory and Flash Storage, this iMac is a bit faster than the system we reviewed last year, particularly on Photoshop CS6 and CineBench, which renders 3D using the CPU and system memory instead of the graphics card.

The Apple iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M) certainly makes a case for itself, you'll certainly get better performance when you max out the memory and use Flash Storage. If you're a Mac maven who already has external Thunderbolt storage, this is a good intermediary upgrade until the Mac Pro ships later in 2013. However, on a price and feature comparison, the Dell XPS 27 One (2720) holds on to its Editors' Choice for high-end all-in-one desktops. It matches the iMac on screen resolution and multimedia performance, trumps the iMac on port selection (which is the primary expansion method for all in ones), lags on 3D gaming performance, but more than makes up for it on storage capacity and in the final price tally. Essentially, if you're in the market for a high end Mac, this is the powerhouse system, but if you just need a high-end all-in-one desktop PC, the XPS 27 One (2720) wins the bang-for-the-buck challenge.

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Report: Apple buys Embark, yet another mapping app

Apple is reportedly acquiring mapping app developer Embark, in a move that could lend more real-time navigation features for public transit to Apple's own Maps app.

The acquisition, which was first reported by tech journalist Jessica Lessin, follows several other recent mapping purchases for Apple: HopStop, another maker of apps for public transit directions; and Locationary, which provides data about local businesses; and WifiSLAM, an indoor location and mapping company.

[ Apple's Cook: Use Google, Bing, Nokia -- anything but Apple Maps. | For quick, smart takes on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld Tech Brief -- subscribe today. | Read Bill Snyder's Tech's Bottom Line blog for what the key business trends mean to you. ]

Apple did not directly confirm its acquisition of Embark, but in an emailed statement said, "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Apple declined to comment further on the deal.

Apple has faced some serious challenges over the past year in providing a consistently solid mapping product with its Maps app. Last September Apple CEO Tim Cook was forced to publicly apologize for a series of issues plaguing the company's Maps app in Apple's iOS 6 operating system.

Embark is a company based in the San Francisco Bay Area that makes a mobile mapping app designed to help people navigate mass transit systems. The company's app provides "tailored trips" specific to the user's region, along with notifications for late-running trains and other advisories and closures.

Embark's technology, if it does find its way into a future Apple product, could enhance Apple's mapping products and make the company a stronger competitor to rivals like Google. Google's Maps app already offers real-time public transit navigation features, as do some smaller players like iTransitBuddy.

Embark's app is available for free on the iPhone for 10 transit systems including Boston's MBTA, Chicago's L, the New York City Subway, and San Francisco's BART and Caltrain systems, with more on the way, according to Embark's website.

It is not clear whether Embark's app will be shut down as part of the acquisition. The app was still available in Apple's App Store at the time of this article's posting.

Embark's team could not be immediately reached to comment on the deal.

Google, meanwhile, has been rolling out a series of enhancements to its Maps app in recent weeks. The service got more real-time traffic alerts just this week, based on Google's recent acquisition of crowdsourced mapping developer Waze. Separately, the Google Maps app received some other navigation tools last month, which came from other data providers such as TomTom.

Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com.

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Icahn to press Apple CEO Tim Cook on stock buyback over dinner

Computerworld - Carl Icahn, the billionaire activist investor, said yesterday that he and Apple CEO Tim Cook will dine together next month, when they will discuss Icahn's proposal to boost the company's stock buyback program.

"Spoke to Tim. Planning dinner in September. Tim believes in buyback and is doing one. What will be discussed is magnitude," tweeted Icahn Thursday during the hours-long outage of the NASDAQ exchange.

It was the third time in the last week-and-a-half that Icahn, known as a corporate raider and investment agitator, used Twitter to announce dealings with Apple. On Aug. 13, Icahn revealed that he had acquired "a large position" in Apple, that he believed the stock to be undervalued, and that he had spoken with Cook about an increase in the company's already-under way buyback initiative.

Thursday's tweet was classic Icahn, said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

"It's all part of the Icahn playbook. Upping the ante," said Moorhead in an email.

Moorhead, who has been critical of Icahn's part in the continuing saga of Michael Dell's attempt to take his company private, had earlier said the investor's interest in Apple was nothing but trouble.

"This is absolute trouble," Moorhead said two weeks ago when Icahn disclosed he had bought Apple stock. "There's not one single positive thing [Apple] can take away from his interest, no matter how much you search."

Moorhead has said that, at best, Icahn will be a distraction to Cook and Apple.

Icahn typically buys a stake in a company to demand management changes and advocate the use of cash reserves to boost the share price, including paying higher dividends or buying back shares. The latter seems to be Icahn's strategy with Apple.

The Cupertino, Calif. company is in the midst of an aggressive buyback program. Last year, Apple said it would use $10 billion to fund buybacks that would retire shares and thus increase the value of those still remaining. In April, the Cupertino, Calif., company increased the buyback program to $60 billion, which is to be spent through 2015.

Icahn, however, wants even more money spent on buybacks -- even if Apple has to borrow to do so -- and to accelerate its schedule.

Icahn had not revealed the size of his holdings. In filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the quarter ending June 30, Icahn said he owned no Apple stock, meaning that his purchases began on or after July 1. He is required to disclose his holdings each quarter, so Icahn's holdings will be made public in October, after the close of the third quarter.

That Icahn tweets about Apple and his investment interest is unusual -- enough that some on the investment site SeekingAlpha have wondered why it's not considered stock manipulation -- but it is perfectly legal.

In April, the SEC ruled that companies may use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to make announcements.

A day before his first tweet about Apple, Icahn's website noted that he would use his Twitter account. "It is possible that the information that Mr. Icahn posts on Twitter (which may include information regarding companies in which we and/or Mr. Icahn have or may be contemplating an investment position) could be deemed to be material information," the site stated.

Icahn's dinner date with Cook hasn't come cheap -- estimates have pegged his stake at between $1 billion and $1.5 billion -- but then neither is Cook's time.

In May, an anonymous bidder plunked down $610,000 at an online auction to win a 30- to 60-minute meeting with Cook over coffee. Cook's offer was part a celebrity auction on CharityBuzz to raise money for the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, an international human rights organization based in Washington, D.C.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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Apple, Samsung nearly neck-and-neck in smartphone customer retention

Apple and Samsung were almost equally able to keep customers in their respective smartphone folds over the last 12 months, an analyst said Monday.

"Apple has built one of the world's most successful brands, and it's well known for the loyalty of its customers," said Michael Levin, co-founder of Chicago-based Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP). But Samsung's not that much different.

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"You can hate each other as much as you want, but you're the same," said Levin of the two groups.

According to CIRP, 42 percent of iPhone buyers over the last year had upgraded from an older iPhone, a sign of customer loyalty.

But Samsung's ties were nearly as strong: 38 percent of Samsung smartphone buyers had come from an older Samsung smartphone.

The nearly identical statistics for Apple and Samsung were unexpected. "It really surprised us, that Samsung's brand loyalty was nearly equal Apple's," Levin said.

For those figures and others Levin cited, CIRP had tallied four quarterly surveys conducted between July 2012 and June 2013; each survey polled 500 Americans who had bought a smartphone in the preceding 90 days.

Levin attributed Samsung customer loyalty to its aggressive brand marketing, including in-store placements and a strong string of television ads. "Samsung threw a lot of money at [brand awareness], and to a large extent, they succeeded," he said.

There were differences between the two companies' ability to woo each other's customers, however. Among people who switched brands, Apple was able to pilfer three times as many Samsung customers (33 percent) as Samsung was able to steal from Apple (11 percent), Levin said.

Meanwhile, Samsung had the advantage over Apple in drawing customers from so-called feature phones, the basic models whose sales were eclipsed by smartphones for the first time in the quarter that ended June 30. CIRP's data said that 37 percent of Samsung smartphone owners had upgraded from a feature phone, while only 26 percent of Apple customers had dumped a basic model for an iPhone.

Levin credited Samsung's broader smartphone portfolio -- it has many more models than does Apple, with a wider range of prices -- for the company's ability to attract feature phone owners.

Other data collected by CIRP included PC and Mac ownership -- as expected, iPhone owners were more likely to own an Apple Mac, while Samsung customers were more likely to own a Windows PC -- age, income, and education.

Generally speaking, Apple smartphone owners were slightly younger than Samsung's customers, and more likely to have an annual income over $75,000 and a college or advanced degree.

Apple and Samsung are nearly neck-and-neck in their ability to hang onto customers.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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Apple and the enterprise: A complicated relationship

Computerworld - When Microsoft shipped Windows 2000 and Active Directory, Apple didn't really have a solution for identity management or for linking Macs to an enterprise network. The company was just beginning the transition from its classic Mac OS -- the first version of which had shipped on the first Mac in 1984 -- to OS X. Although Apple did ship a public beta of OS X in second half of the year, the final release didn't arrive until March 2001.

The classic Mac OS was not for multi-user systems. It offered limited user account creation and management for file sharing between Macs, but there was no built-in mechanism for logging into an individual Mac -- it booted right to the desktop, where you had full access to the entire file system and all installed software.

Apple did make a couple of attempts to create a multi-user system, however. In the early 1990s, the company shipped At Ease, which provided some multi-user support, first on a single Mac and later for multiple Macs on a network. But At Ease never gained much traction beyond some pockets of the education market for it which it seemed to be designed.

In planning the transition to the true multi-user environment of OS X, Apple added a modicum of multi-user functions in Mac OS 9 that allowed each Mac to support multiple users with basic file permissions, individual user settings and preferences, and limited account-based restrictions. Apple also created Macintosh Manager, which redirected Mac OS 9's multi-user functions to a server-based data store and copied certain settings and configuration files from that data store to an individual Mac. It wasn't really an enterprise-grade solution, even when incorporated into the first few releases of OS X Server, but it was a functional pre-OS X stop-gap.

Apple's first real move toward enterprise functionality, including identity management, came with OS X and OS X Server. The first release of OS X was essentially the Unix-based core of NeXTStep with an Apple-inspired GUI on top of it. NeXT gave OS X solid enterprise bones right away, including support for local and network user accounts.

NeXTStep and the first releases of OS X and OS X Server relied on a proprietary user and client management system known as NetInfo. Functionally, NetInfo served many of the same roles as Active Directory. It allowed for centralized user and computer accounts and user authentication for access to network resources; worked with the file system to support a POSIX permissions model; and it could be used to define user settings and experience in the same way group policies do in Active Directory.

Although NetInfo worked and remained in the mix of Apple's enterprise components for several years, it had some serious limitations. The biggest one: It was proprietary and didn't integrate with other platforms.

The other achilles heel for NetInfo in early OS X releases was that it didn't support directory server replication. That meant that either a single server had to support the enterprise identity functionality for an entire organization or multiple servers -- each with a unique directory of users, computers and configuration data -- had to be deployed. Even though it was possible for Macs to search for enterprise identity data across multiple servers, the process was far from the multi-master replication capabilities of Active Directory domain controllers.

The proprietary nature of NetInfo led Apple to sell a complete end-to-end solution to enterprise IT. Today, Apple is well known for its end-to-end approach to technology; in many ways, it's been a winning strategy because it allows Apple to maximize profits and create a controlled ecosystem. It's also the same strategy that allowed Apple to disrupt industries so effectively and deliver some of the most polished products on the market. iTunes, with its link to the iPod and iOS, is the greatest example of what Apple can achieve using it.

Apple didn't have a lot of luck selling that end-to-end system to enterprise IT. Part of that was because of the proprietary nature of Apple's solutions. But the company was also still pulling back from its near collapse in the mid-to-late 1990s. At the time, its market share was abysmally low and it was a complete outlier in virtually every business market.

OS X Panther (and Panther Server) was one of the most important releases of OS X from an enterprise perspective. It rectified the limitations of NetInfo by introducing a broad-based solution for enterprise identity and directory services. It also added support for Active Directory. That represented a major shift in Apple's strategy, as the company quietly acknowledged it couldn't succeed in business without really offering support for existing enterprise systems.

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'Jekyll' test attack sneaks through Apple App Store, wreaks havoc on iOS

Acting like a software version of a Transformer robot, a malware test app sneaked through Apple's review process disguised as a harmless app, and then re-assembled itself into an aggressive attacker even while running inside the iOS "sandbox" designed to isolate apps and data from each other.

The app, dubbed Jekyll, was helped by Apple's review process. The malware designers, a research team from Georgia Institute of Technology's Information Security Center (GTISC), were able to monitor their app during the review: they discovered Apple ran the app for only a few seconds, before ultimately approving it. That wasn't anywhere near long enough to discover Jekyll's deceitful nature.

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The name is a reference to the 1886 novella by Robert Louis Stevenson, called "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde." The story is about the two personalities within Dr. Henry Jekyll: one good, but the other, which manifests as Edward Hyde, deeply evil. 

Jekyll's design involves more than simply hiding the offending code under legitimate behaviors. Jekyll was designed to later re-arrange its components to create new functions that couldn't have been detected by the app review. It also directed Apple's default Safari browser to reach out for new malware from specific Websites created for that purpose.

"Our research shows that despite running inside the iOS sandbox, a Jekyll-based app can successfully perform many malicious tasks, such as posting tweets, taking photos, sending email and SMS, and even attacking other apps all without the user's knowledge," says Tielei Wang, in a July 31 press release by Georgia Tech. Wang led the Jekyll development team at GTISC; also part of the team was Long Lu, a Stony Brook University security researcher.

Some blogs and technology sites picked up on the press release in early August. But wider awareness of Jekyll, and its implications, seems to have been sparked by an Aug. 15 online story in the MIT Technology Review, by Dave Talbot, who interviewed Long Lu for a more detailed account.

Jekyll "even provided a way to magnify its effects, because it could direct Safari, Apple's default browser, to a website with more malware," Talbot wrote.

A form of Trojan Horse malware, the recreated Jekyll, once downloaded, reaches out to the attack designers for instructions. "The app did a phone-home when it was installed, asking for commands," Lu explained. "This gave us the ability to generate new behavior of the logic of that app which was nonexistent when it was installed."

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Radical ideas for new Macs from before Steve Jobs returned to Apple

If you have watched the movie "Jobs," you know that design was a big deal to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and the return of design to Apple through the collaboration of Jobs and Jonathan Ive is the achievement that caps the movie (though it's not the story that "Jobs" should have focused on). If you saw the preview ad at the movie for Apple's upcoming Mac Pro, you know that gene lives on despite after Jobs's death.

But there was a time, in the late 1990s, when Apple was making butt-ugly Macs that looks like PCs -- and not good ones. Models like the Performa marked the nadir of design thinking at Apple, a decade after Jobs was forced out. The state of design at Apple was so dire, in fact, that while I was co-executive editor of Macworld, my colleague Arne Hurty, design firm Frogdesign, and I created two radical concepts to inspire Apple to do innovative design again.

Apple was very unhappy about the cover-story project, as you might expect, but it did get us a meeting with Jonathan Ive afterward, in an attempt to show us that design was alive and well at Apple. What we saw were brilliant designs but an Ive who seemed dejected and whose guidance was not heeded. We'll never know for sure if that was Ive's mindset at the time, but a year later, Jobs discovered Ive upon his return to Apple and soon made him his creative partner. A few years later, the candy-colored all-in-one iMacs debuted, rethinking how a computer should look, and the iPod, iPhone, and iPad all followed over the next decade.

Macworld's 1996 laptop Mac concept

Macworld's 1996 desktop Mac concept

This story, "Radical ideas for new Macs from before Steve Jobs returned to Apple," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Review: Kookamunga Crunch Apple Cinnamon Kettle Corn

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Taste: This popcorn looked a lot like caramel corn at first, with a golden color, but a closer look revealed small bits of apple stuck to some of the kernels. The kernels were all individual; none were stuck together. It was hard to tell from looking whether this was kettle corn or coated popcorn, as some of the kernels appeared to have just the slightest amount of sugar, while others were more heavily coated in sugary stuff. I crunched in to find that it was maybe a combination of both, as if they took kettle corn and then added small bits of cinnamon-enhanced apple. The texture varied from somewhat crisp to somewhat mushy, maybe depending on how much of the apple had been added to any given kernel. More crispness would have definitely helped, but the apple and cinnamon taste was quite nice, so this pretty good. It got lots of thumbs-ups from our snackers.

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Aroma: Smells like apple sauce.

"100% Natural Made With Real Fruit" ... "Gourmet Kettle Corn with apple and cinnamon is simply irresistible, and made with the finest all natural ingredients! Sweet and salty kettle corn is mixed with a combination of apples and cinnamon, creating irresistible treat. You'll be hooked!"

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