As the market just begins to open today, Apple’s market cap crossed the $600 billion threshold. Today’s accomplishment comes just a month after the company hit the $500 billion threshold. The market overall is down.
To compare, Microsoft holds the record for the highest market cap ever of $619 billion in 2000 (over $800 billion in today’s dollars). At the time of this writing, Microsoft is sitting at a $250 billion market cap. If some analysts are to be believed, the AAPL train will keep rolling to a $1 trillion market cap in the coming years.
Apple now dwarfs the No. 2 company, Exxon, by a comfortable $200 billion. We are looking forward to April 24 when Apple will talk Q2 2012 numbers.
Over the past few weeks, security experts have warned Mac users of a new virus making its rounds called the “Flashback” trojan. Flashback is allegedly on over 600,000 Macs, which is roughly 1-percent of the 45 million out there. Flashback exploits a pair of vulnerabilities in older versions of Java. Apple may have patched it, but it is still out there and running on many machines.
How do you know if you are infected? F-Secure has a few Terminal commands to check your machine. For the many who are not adept at keeping their Java updates fresh, terminal commands are going to be even more foreign. Luckily, ArsTechnicapoints us to a free Flashback checker available on github. The app runs the same checks as you would in Terminal, but automates it for you.
We ran the test ourselves and were clean, but one of our readers found that he had the virus last week. It is definitely worth checking out. If your Mac does have Flashback, F-secure offers a great guide on how to remove it.
Apple hired a new leader for its tax department, according to an SEC filing this morning. Phillip Bullock, formerly Symantec’s Chief Accounting Officer, chose to leave the company he joined in 2006 to join the winning team in Cupertino.
Phillip A. Bullock, who was appointed as Symantec’s Chief Accounting Officer in September 2009, announced he will be leaving the Company to lead the tax department at Apple, Inc., and not due to any disagreement with the Company on any matters relating to the Company’s operations, policies or practices.
Bullok has years of experience in the industry, serving as Vice President of Tax and Trade Compliance starting in 2006. He took responsibility for Symantec’s corporate risk assurance function in March 2007, and then he became Chief Accounting Officer in 2009. Before Symantec, he worked for a small tax practice.
This looks to be Apple’s third major hire this year after it hired John Browett from Dixons Retail to head its retail department. Apple also hired Robin Burrowes from Xbox to head App Store marketing in February.
Apple is known for finding the best in the industry, so we suspect it is no different here. Just in time to submit those taxes.
Analyst John Kinnucan is charged with two counts of securities fraud, two counts of conspiracy, and insider trading for leaking sales numbers from Apple, reportedReuters. The lawsuits against the analyst were filed in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan, and he was arrested on Thursday.
Kinnucan received tips from Apple’s suppliers SanDisk and Flextronics so he could leak sales numbers and forecasts to hedge funds. One SanDisk executive, Don Barnetson, is also in court on counts for insider trading. Kinnucan leaked the secret information about the iPhone’s sales between 2008 and 2010, and he would get the information by bribing suppliers. He is rumored to have earned $1.58 million for leaking Apple’s trade secrets.
Between 2008 and 2010, investigators said, Kinnucan paid insiders with cash, trips and other benefits to get secret information, including sales trends for Apple Inc’s iPhone. Kinnucan then funneled the information to hedge fund traders in California and New York in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars, investigators said.
Kinnucan’s arrest is part of a bigger crack down on insider trading within hedge funds. Over 60 people were already arrested during the operation, dubbed “Operation Perfect Hedge,” including a Flextronics executive for leaking iPhone sales numbers.
Pitchers and Catchers are set to report over the next few days and MLB is getting its 2012 App ready
Baseball fans will be happy to hear that Major League Baseball is again bringing the MLB at Bat app back to the App Store so they can enjoy every game throughout the season on their iOS device. In previous years, the MLB at Bat app on the App Store made available audio of the games and in-game statistics. A premium package could open video for all games. This year, MLB is changing the way they bring you games.
Luckily for this season, MLB confirmed with EverythingiCafe that MLB at Bat ’12 would be available for free on the App Store for both the iPhone and iPad— as long as you pay for the one time subscription. The app will stream both audio and video and bring in-game stats.
MLB at Bat ’12 will be available Feb. 29 for free. However, if you want to use the app, you will have to pay a once-a-year $119 subscription as a returning customer or $125 as a new customer. Those who subscribe can view 150 Spring Training games and all 2,430 regular season games, though some are subject black outs. You can now sign up for the MLB.TV season on the MLB website. The first game will stream March 3.
Apple began its full assault on education when it launched the iPad a few years ago. The iPad offers students apps and books that are used in the classroom to help students raise their test scores. While it is still on the way to seeing a larger adoption, Apple also introduced iBooks in January to help more in education, but how effective is the iPad in student learning?
To put some numbers behind the education work Apple is doing, The Loop profiled a report based off a study done throughout a Maine school district that indicated the iPad is improving kindergartner’s literacy scores.
The school district in Auburn, Maine assigned 16 iPads to a classroom of 16 kindergartens over a 9-week period. A total of 236 students were given literacy test before the 9-week testing period for the iPad began. Over the 9 week period, 129 students were taught using an iPad, while 137 students were taught the old fashion way. The school district found that students using an iPad out-performed students not using an iPad in every literacy test by a significant margin.
Principal Sue Dorris told how the iPad benefited the kindergartners in her school, “We are seeing high levels of student motivation, engagement and learning in the iPad classrooms.” Ms. Dorris also told of how they use apps to specifically target a child’s needs, “The apps, which teach and reinforce fundamental literacy concepts and skills, are engaging, interactive and provide children with immediate feedback. What’s more, teachers can customize apps to match the instructional needs of each child, so students are able to learn successfully at their own level and pace.”
Portuguese language blog BlogdoiPhoneleaked reported screenshots of the iOS 5.1 ‘pre-GM’ (viaMacRumors)that it claimed to receive from a local carrier. We already postulated iOS 5.1 is most likely going to launch with the iPad 3 on the rumored March 7 date. Today’s leaked screenshots reveal two more features in iOS 5.1, such as a new camera button on the home screen, and Japanese Siri.
On earlier versions of iOS, double clicking the home button revealed the camera button that you can click, but today’s leaked screenshots (above, left) show iOS 5.1 will now have a camera button that slides up to turn on the camera. This change eliminates accidental clicks.
Earlier this week, we discovered that Siri revealed the Japanese language is on its way to the voice-activated assistant. Today’s leaked screenshots also show that Japanese Siri support is included in iOS 5.1 (above, right).
The iPhone is great in many ways, but perhaps one of the best cases is in a medical emergency. KVALreported a 57-year-old Oregon man was suffering from a diabetic reaction while driving down a local highway. (Video link here.)
When two medical responders came to the scene and tried to assist the man, they ran into quite a language barrier. The man only spoke Chinese, but luckily, one of the responders knew to reach for his iPhone. He fired up Google Translate and was able to speak Chinese with the man to figure out his condition and give him the help he needed.
The app development world went into a frenzy when social network app Path was caught uploading users’ address book information without asking for permission last week. We already gave our view on the matter, but Forbesreported on a study by University of California at Santa Barbara yesterday that found Cydia apps leaked private data less than apps available on the iTunes App Store.
The group built a tool called PiOS that analyzes iOS apps for private data leaks. It looked at 1,407 free apps: 825 apps from the App Store; and, 526 apps from Cydia’s repository the BigBoss.
The findings indicated 21 percent of the App Store apps tested uploaded a users’ iOS device’s UDID, 4 percent uploaded location information, and .5-percent uploaded users’ address book—like Path did. When it came to the 526 apps tested on the BigBoss repo, only 4 percent leaked users’ UDID, and only one app leaked location and address book data.
Numerous online stores in China took the iPad off their shelves after Proview said Apple was breaking its trademark on the term “iPad.” The fight continues in court, but Apple released a statement today to China Daily about Proview’s allegations on Apple allegedly breaking the trademark.
“We bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago. Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple, and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter,” according to the statement, which also said the case is still pending on the Chinese mainland.”
Apple said it purchased Proview’s iPad trademark over several years ago in 10 different countries. Proview is refusing to transfer the trademark, but Hong Kong courts have already sided with Apple, according to the statement.
Apple just released six printer driver updates for almost every major printer manufacturer. If you are an owner of a Canon, Samsung, Gestetner, Ricoh, Infotec, or Lanier printer, open Software Update to grab this latest update.
Tim Cook is speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, where he just said that 80 percent to 90 percent of his time is spent on an iPad, either working or consuming media.
Speaking more to the iPad, Tim Cook said he also believed the tablet market will out pace the PC market— as we saw in Apple’s holiday quarter. With this large amount of iPad sales, Tim Cook said that the iPad has cannibalized Mac sales, but it has cannibalized more Windows PCs.
Tim Cook also said that price is rarely the most important thing and that he enjoys competition as long as people invent their own stuff (could he have been talking to Samsung?).
“People at the end of the day, they want the great product… I think they’ll [Amazon] will sell a lot of units. Our customers are not going to be satisfied with a limited-function product… as long as people invent their own stuff, I love competition.”
Apple usually disables jailbreaks in new software releases. That is part of the reason why it took so long for Absinthe to debut for the iPhone 4S. It appears that Apple is also trying to break Siri running on unsupported devices, such as the iPhone 4. Many people who use Spire, the popular Siri port for the iPhone 4, have reported Siri is now disabled on their unsupported device. Has another cat and mouse game begun?
Historically, to get Siri working on an older device, you only need a server host and an iPhone 4S certificate. However, Apple apparently added a “SetActivationToken” that breaks services like Spire.
Just as quick, hackers have found a temporary workaround to get Spire working again. The fix is simply to delete “com.apple.assistant.plist” and the service should work again.
Apple iPad 3 rumors indicate a March 7 announcement with a 2,048-by-1, 536-pixel Retina display, quad-core A6 processor, improved cameras, and now LTE chip. The over-all design of the tablet will remain the same, according to the consensus, but the big new feature will obviously be the new Retina display. Rumors also indicate LG and Samsung are manufacturing the display. ChinaTimes said in a new report this evening that Apple ordered a whopping 65 million 264PPI Retina displays from both LG and Samsung. Both have reportedly already begun production, as well. It is not clear if this number includes orders from Sharp, who is rumored to be building displays from the iPad 3.
For comparison, Apple ordered 40 million displays for the iPad 2. Today’s report indicates a substantial 60 percent to 70 percent increase over iPad 2. If these reports are true, Apple is thinking big for its new tablet.
The iPad 2 is currently the world’s hottest tablet due to selling 15.4 million during the holiday quarter. With a big feature like the Retina display, Apple could potentially blow these numbers out of the water. China, and other emerging markets, could contribute to the influx of sales.
Adding to earlier reports today, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Verizon and AT&T will carry the iPad 3 rocking LTE. Also backing up earlier claims, WSJ said Apple would hold its media event to unveil the iPad 3 during the first week of March.
Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. will sell a version of the coming iPad that runs on their newest fourth-generation wireless networks, according to people familiar with the matter, as the battle to cash in on big investments in mobile broadband heats up.
It is not certain if Sprint will carry the LTE version on its upcoming LTE network, according to the publication.
One of its sources is the infamous Captain Obvious:
When LTE isn’t available, the new iPad will default to a slower network technology, one of these people said.
The iPad 3 is rumored to feature Apple’s A6 quad-core processor, Retina display, LTE, upgraded camera, and more, according to multiple sources. iMorereported today that the iPad 3’s announcement will occur specifically on March 7 with a launch shortly after.
The United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (via The Loop) is turning the tide in its IT department. Doing what many companies are doing these days, NOAA plans to ditch RIM’s BlackBerry in favor of Apple’s iPhone and iPad. NOAA’s support for the BlackBerry will end May 12, 2012, according to a memo sent to CIO Joseph F. Klimavicz. NOAA did not give a time frame for the roll out.
This is a broader move in the “consumerization” of IT. Apple makes very little effort to woo IT departments, instead making products that consumers want to bring to work (Read: the CxOs want iPhones). Coupled with the crashing market share and outlook for RIM, smart IT departments are getting ahead of the curve by moving to iOS.
Oil company Halliburton is also making similar moves over the next two years by dumping the BlackBerry platform and moving to the iPhone. In an internal memo, Halliburton said after “significant research,” the iPhone is more favorable than Android.
The web exploded yesterday after blogger Arun Thampi discovered the app Path sends every contact in a user’s address book to Path’s servers via a. plist upon registering for the service. The .plist includes full names, phone numbers, and e-mails. Path did not ask users to accept the feature, and it went ahead and saved contact information without telling them. Obviously, people have the right to be worried.
Path’s CEO Dave Morin issued an apology today after yesterday’s data scare and tried to reassure users about Path’s stance on protecting privacy.
We made a mistake. Over the last couple of days users brought to light an issue concerning how we handle your personal information on Path, specifically the transmission and storage of your phone contacts.
As our mission is to build the world’s first personal network, a trusted place for you to journal and share life with close friends and family, we take the storage and transmission of your personal information very, very seriously.
Path released a new update to the iTunes App Store (version 2.0.6) to help remedy the situation that let’s users opt in or out from Path storing address books on its server. If you opt in at first, and then later realize you would like to opt out—you can email Path and it will remove the address book from its servers.
Path also deleted the data it stored.
We believe you should have control when it comes to sharing your personal information. We also believe that actions speak louder than words. So, as a clear signal of our commitment to your privacy, we’ve deleted the entire collection of user uploaded contact information from our servers. Your trust matters to us and we want you to feel completely in control of your information on Path.
Path users (that have not bailed on the service) might want to visit the App Store for an update.
Apple released EFI firmware updates for the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and iMacs this evening. The updates bring Lion Internet Recovery to the 2010 models of the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and iMac. You can open up Software Update or download the updates directly from Apple’s website.
This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection on MacBook Air (Late 2010) models and addresses an issue where the system could restart if the power button is pressed immediately after waking from deep sleep.
This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection on iMac (Mid 2010) models.
Lion Internet Recovery was introduced by Apple in Lion to re-download the OS directly from Apple’s servers over an Internet connection when all else fails.
Blogger Arun Thampi discovered something that may or may not sit right about the free social media app Path while packet sniffing the app last night. Upon first installing the app and registering for an account, Path sends each one of your contacts in your address book to their server via a. plist. The .plist includes full names, phone numbers, and e-mails.
Path makes the call “https://api.path.com/3/contacts/add” when you first create an account, and it uploads all your contacts to its server. In most people’s mind, this obviously makes them feel a little uncomfortable. Thampi details the technical aspects of this, and how you can recreate it yourself, in his blog post.
Path’s Cofounder and CEO Dave Morin commented on the situation and said iPhone users will soon be able to opt-out of the setting in an update that will roll out to the App Store shortly. Nevertheless, does that really change anything? He did not really explain why Path is doing this, and your entire address book is still on their servers. You can read Morin’s comment after the break:
Google reportedly poached an Apple employee to hire on its own staff. VentureBeatreported that Google hired Apple’s (now former) Senior Director of Product Integrity Simon Prakash for a secret project, where he would work perhaps alongside Google’s cofounder Sergey Brin. Prakash could even work under Motorola Mobility, whom Google is working to acquire, to head hardware projects.
Prakash worked at Apple for over eight years, and was responsible for the product quality across Apple’s products—from iPhones to Macs. To boost his reputation, you may recall that Apple was voted top among product quality in a recent JD Power and Associates Award for the sixth consecutive last year. It is obvious why Google would go after such an employee.
Prakash could be joining Google to work on Google X’s wearable heads up display glasses we showed you in December. Former Apple employee Richard DeVaul, a PhD. scientist from MIT with a focus on building wearable technologies, also left Apple to join Google X’s team. Is Google building up a huge and talented team for such a large product?
Research firm comScore is out with its latest numbers for the month of December, giving us a glimpse at the current United States mobile market. The report indicates that mobile sales are up-and-rising for the holiday month. comScore found that Google’s Android is leading with a 47.3-percent OS market share (rising 2.5 points) and Apple’s iOS is in second with a 29.6-percent market share (rising 2.2 points).
When it comes to device market share for both smartphones and non-smartphones on the OEM side, Samsung tops the charts with a 25.3-percent market share, which did not change from the previous month. LG and Motorola place second and third, both losing a small amount of market share during December. Apple comes in fourth in market share, and now boasts 12.4-percent of total mobile subscribers (rising 2.2 points).
The U.S. still ranks in as one of the world’s most important places for smartphones, with 97.9 million people owning smartphones during Q4 2011. When it comes to worldwide sales, Research Firm IDC yesterdayreleased its estimates for December. They found that Apple passed LG to become the third-largest smartphone manufacturer worldwide, with an 8.7-percent market share in Q4 2011, and a 6 percent market share in 2011 as a whole. Nokia remains in the top spot with 26.6-percent, followed by Samsung who has 22.8-percent. You can check out the graphs after the break for the full run-down:
FileVault has been included in Macs by Apple since the release of Panther many years ago. In Apple’s most recent release, OS X Lion, the company included FileVault that brought new ways of encryption. FileVault lets you encrypt your entire drive with a master password to protect key-chain passwords, files, and more. FileVault 2 uses a separate partition to store the FileVault login information.
Cnetpointed us to a new report from password recovery company PassWare, who claimed it can decrypt Apple’s FileVault 2 in under 40 minutes. Obviously, this is a big concern because FileVault contains so much of users’ information.
PassWare decrypts FileVault by going in through the system’s firewire connection and using live-memory analysis to extract the encryption key from the FileVault partition (so the machine must assumedly be running?). From there, a user can uncover keychain files and login passwords that can be used to unlock the whole HDD/SSD.
PassWare conveniently makes PassWare 11.3 available to do this, but you will have to throw down a lofty $995 to get the software. PassWare makes this software primarily available for law enforcement.
Earlier this month, we reported that China Telecom earned the necessary approvals to launch the iPhone 4S on China’s third-largest carrier. Today, the China Telecom subsidiary Beijing Telecom issued a press release (via China Daily) and said the Beijing-based company will launch the iPhone 4S as early as the end of February or beginning of March.
A CDMA version of the iPhone 4S will launch on the network. The press release gave no word on pricing for the device, but it will likely fall in line with the other networks.
China Telecom currently boasts 36.3 million 3G subscribers, while in comparison the nation’s largest carrier China Mobile Ltd., boasts 51.2 million 3G subscribers. Obviously, the launch of the iPhone 4S brings a lot of excitement in China, and it gives Apple the chance to add new customers. Moreover, launching on China Mobile would add an abundance of new customers, but that does not look to be happening anytime soon.
