Month: February 2019

Apple’s new iPhone owners demand cheaper iPhones

CompuScoop Staff February 28, 2019 0

[Forbes]: Apple’s latest iPhones have had a rough time since they were announced in September 2018. Q4 numbers led to an unprecedented profits warning from Tim Cook and his team. But there are signs that the second quarter of 2019 will show an improvement.

While this is good news in regards to higher than projected sales, the breakdown of which units are popular with customers is going to make for uncomfortable reading. The new iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR handsets are expected to be shunned for the older and cheaper models - namely the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 families. Apple Insider’s Roger Fingas reports on the last numbers from analysts at UBS:

UBS is boosting its June-quarter iPhone estimates from 32.5 million units to 34.5 million, though mostly on the basis that Apple is expected to sell more pre-2018 models. While UBS is predicting 3 million more iPhone XR sales, it's expecting an equal decrease in iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max shipments.

That’s going to lower Apple’s average selling price per handset, and limit the use of ‘gee-whizz’ technologies such as FaceID which are not present on the older models. And while iOS does offer support to older devices, there’s nothing the software can do to replicate newer technology that can pull the platform forwards and match up to the latest offerings from Android-focused manufacturers.

iPhone 8 Product (Red) (image: Apple PR)

Where does this use case cause the most difficulty? China. Irrespective of the feature set or the power of iOS, the Chinese market is focused on the brand new, very high-end specifications, and if a piece of hardware runs WeChat. The latter is pretty much universal and iOS offers no advantage, while the former areas have seen Apple outclassed since the launch of the iPhone XS and XS Max.

The mid-cycle pick up is simply not there for the new design of iPhones which placed their focus on premium features and premium pricing. Apple may be holding steady in the saturated markets of the US and the EU, but its strategy is counter to the needs to the countries where there is still capacity for significant growth.

The Feds favorite ‘backdoor tool’ for iPhone is for sale on eBay

CompuScoop Staff February 27, 2019 0

When eBay merchant Mr. Balaj was looking through a pile of hi-fi junk at an auction in the U.K., he came across an odd-looking device. Easily mistaken for a child’s tablet, it had the word ‘Cellebrite’ written on it,” Thomas Brewster reports for Forbes. “To Mr. Balaj, it appeared to be a worthless piece of electronic flotsam, so he left it in his garage to gather dust for eight months.”

“But recently he’s learned just what he had his hands on: a valuable, Israeli-made piece of technology called the Cellebrite UFED,” Brewster reports. “It’s used by police around the world to break open iPhones, Androids and other modern mobiles to extract data. The U.S. federal government, from the FBI to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been handing millions to Cellebrite to break into Apple and Google smartphones.”

“Mr. Balaj (Forbes agreed not to publish his first name at his request) and others on eBay are now acquiring and trading Cellebrite systems for between $100 and $1,000 a unit. Comparable, brand-new Cellebrite tools start at $6,000,” Brewster reports. “Cellebrite isn’t happy about those secondhand sales. On Tuesday, two sources from the forensics industry passed Forbes a letter from Cellebrite warning customers about reselling its hugely popular hacking devices because they could be used to access individuals’ private data. Rather than return the UFEDs to Cellebrite so they can be properly decommissioned, it appears police or other individuals who’ve acquired the machines are flogging them and failing to properly wipe them.”

Read more in the full article here.

Apple self-driving car layoffs give hints at division’s direction

Reuters News February 27, 2019 0

(Reuters) - Apple Inc said on Wednesday it planned to lay off 190 employees in its self-driving car program, Project Titan, changes that provide a rare window into the automotive technologies the company has been pursuing.

The tech firm said in a filing with state regulators that it planned to lay off people from seven different Santa Clara facilities near its Cupertino, California headquarters, as of April 16. A company spokesman confirmed that the reduction was from the self-driving car program.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Apple removes VoIP app clones from App Store

CompuScoop Staff February 27, 2019 0

“Following my report from yesterday, Apple has removed many of the apps I pointed out,” Romain Dillet reports for TechCrunch. “When you try to find them on the App Store, they are no longer available.”

“App Store Review Guidelines are very clear when it comes to app duplicates. According to rule 4.3, you can’t release the same app multiple times on the App Store has it is considered as spamming,” Dillet reports. “But that rule has been poorly enforced and some companies have taken advantage of that. In my original report, I focused on one category in particular — VoIP apps that let you get a second phone number and send and receive calls and texts from that new number.”

“Developers release multiple versions of the same app so that they can use different names, different keywords and different categories. This way, they can cover a wide range of keywords when you’re searching for an app in the App Store,” Dillet reports. “Companies have released clones of their apps and benefited from that strategy for many years. The main issue here is that App Store rules aren’t enforced consistently.”

Read more in the full article here.