32GB iPhone 7

Hey, 32GB iPhone 7, I already hate you

The base-price iPhone 7, according to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal, will have an amount of storage that will make it usable. Not great, not amazing, not best in class, but usable. How exciting is that?

Well, it depends on your expectations.

If you expect the iPhone 7, the latest and greatest Apple will have to offer, to finally catch up with every other post-2014 phone out there (even the Chinese ones which cost less than half the iPhone's price), then go celebrate.

I expect the iPhone 7 to be among the best phones out there, and to achieve that, Apple would finally have to do something unexpected — even if it's so simple as jumping from 16GB base storage to 64GB for the cheapest option.

At this point some of you may be dismissively waving your hand, thinking you can never please these tech journalists. But hear me out.

Apple first introduced a 16GB iPhone in February 2008. Remember 2008? George W. Bush was still president of the U.S., USB sticks still came in 256MB sizes and smartphones were a new thing. And that was the first-generation iPhone, upgraded a year after launch, mainly to accommodate users' ever-increasing hunger for storage.

In 2012, with the release of the iPhone 5, Apple introduced 16GB as the base storage option. It was followed by iPhone 5S and 5C, then iPhones 6 and 6 Plus, then iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, and finally with the iPhone SE — all of which started with 16GB of base storage.

Hey Apple, when's the last time we had a pleasant surprise?

Apple has been waiting way too long to upgrade the storage, and it's time to double down. 32GB is not a disaster by any means — after all, most smartphones start there (though, in fairness, most of them also offer a sizable memory expansion via microSD memory cards). But apps are getting bigger, photos are getting bigger, videos are getting huge (try recording 4K video on a 32GB phone and see how far you'll get). Next year, all the flagship Androids will start at 64GB, mark my words.

There's also the simple matter of being fair to your customers. Unlike most smartphone manufacturers Apple has a hump in memory storage between its cheapest and second-cheapest model. Currently, the iPhone 6S starts at 16GB, then jumps to 64GB and, finally, 128GB. Rumors have it that the iPhone 7 will come with 32GB, 128GB and 256GB memory options.

But why the hump? Simply because Apple has traditionally been using its cheapest iPhone as bait to lure customers to buy the mid-range model. The somewhat sleazy practice became downright annoying when it became painfully obvious that 16GB of storage don't cut it anymore — sometime around the iPhone 6 — and then Apple did it again next year.

Most importantly, iPhone's overall specs just feel weak. Yes, it's a great phone, but the current model lags behind basically all competitors in terms of every spec you can think of. RAM? The Samsungs and the HTCs and the LGs have more than the iPhone 6S's paltry 2GB. Screen resolution? 4K phones leave iPhone's Retina in the dust. Battery size? You can easily find phones with twice the battery capacity for half the iPhone's price. With memory prices constantly falling, at least upgrading the storage memory should be easy. You have to wonder if Apple likes to stay behind on purpose.

It will happen, but when?

Rumors aside, I'm certain Apple will upgrade the storage for the cheapest iPhone 7. The company would get ripped to shreds by the press (and annoyed users) if it didn't. But with the rumors that the iPhone 7 will be far more evolutionary than a revolutionary upgrade, having it start at 64GB would be a really nice touch, instantly propelling it to the top of the smartphone chain when storage is concerned. Apple faithful have been waiting for their phone to be leading in some area for quite some time, and they deserve it.

Here's the more realistic option, though: The iPhone 7 will start at 32GB, and so will the iPhone after that, and the one after that — until we collectively start pulling our hair and crying out for more storage. It's just Apple's way.




source: www.mashable.com

Apple urges organ donation

Apple urges organ donation via new iPhone software

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple wants to encourage millions of iPhone owners to register as organ donors through a software update that will add an easy sign-up button to the health information app that comes installed on every smartphone the company makes.

CEO Tim Cook says he hopes the new software will help ease a longstanding donor shortage. He told The Associated Press that the problem hit home when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs endured an “excruciating” wait for a liver transplant in 2009.

Apple is adding the option to enroll in a national donor registry by clicking a button within the iPhone’s Health app, which can be used manage a variety of health and fitness data. The software will come to all U.S.-based iPhones when the company updates its mobile operating system this fall.


source: www.washingtonpost.com

OnePlus 3 Oxygen 3.2 Update

OnePlus 3 Oxygen 3.2 Update Brings Improved RAM Management, sRGB Mode And More.

OnePlus 3 was supposed to be a great phone, and thanks to a recent OTA update, it might become one. The latest Oxygen OS will fix the lacking RAM performance and unsatisfying color rendition, among providing other enhancements.  ( OnePlus )

OnePlus 3 is set to receive a significant update to its Oxygen OS, and the improvement is expected to bring sRGB mode, enhanced RAM management and sharper GPS performance to the handset.
The much expected OTA was promised by the manufacturer in the wake of increased criticism concerning the phone's color rendition and poor RAM memory performance.
The improvements first reached reviewers on June 23, via a special Oxygen 3.1.4 OTA update.
Despite lacking an official announcement, multiple reports showed that Oxygen 3.2 is landing on consumers' phones. Keep in mind that the update pulls a hefty 396 MB, so you might want to go for the OTA using a Wi-Fi connection.

Take a look at the changelog, below:
• Enabled sRGB mode in developer options
• RAM performance and management boosted
• GPS performance is enhanced in both accuracy and speed
• Audio playback quality suffered radical improvements
• Custom icon packs were updated
• Some notification issues were resolved
• Camera functionality and quality of pictures got revamped
• Gallery issues were resolved

What is more, the new update to the Oxygen OS contains the newest Google security patches and a fix for bugs that appeared in the Clock/Music apps.
Users from the dedicated forums report that the update also takes care of an issue causing the magnetic sensor on the OnePlus 3 to misfire. This used to be a particular problem when the device was used with VR headsets such as Google Cardboard.
The OnePlus 3 was greeted with big hype when it launched, especially because of its promised AMOLED technology and solid 6 GB of RAM. However, the two features did not live up to the promise, disappointing the smartphone community as a whole and the brand's fans in particular.
In fact, the OnePlus 3 was recently pitted against the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, which only sports 4 GB of RAM. In spite of the 2 GB of extra RAM, OnePlus clearly lost the faceoff.
OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei explains that the subpar performance of OnePlus 3 is its unique RAM coding system that should "benefit battery life." That might be great news for phone owners who do not want to be dubbed "wall-huggers," but an extra oomph from the 6 GB of RAM is a legitimate demand, as well.

Some enterprising owners of the OnePlus 3 fiddled with the device until they discovered a workaround for the performance issues. According to a post from the XDA Developers forum, users can tap into the full potential of the handset's massive memory until the OTA update arrives.
Are you looking forward to the sizeable update? Let us know about your experience with the OnePlus 3 in the comment section.



source: www.techtimes.com

Spotify and Apple are staring each other down while flipping the bird

Spotify and Apple are staring each other down while flipping the bird

Figuratively, of course.

The companies are at it again, and this time it’s not only bothersome to the businesses themselves, but to the end consumer.

Going to the next level in an ongoing spat over Apple’s subscription rules, it would appear that Apple has rejected Spotify’s latest update to its app in late May, citing business model issues. Shortly before that, Spotify turned off billing within the Spotify iOS app altogether, cutting off free users ability to upgrade and even shutting off existing premium mobile users payments, forcing online upgrades. With it, Spotify cut off Apple’s full source of revenue from the Spotify service.

WhatsApp’s 1 billion users now make 100 million calls every day

WhatsApp’s 1 billion users now make 100 million calls every day

WhatsApp is keen to stand out amongst its rivals as more than just a messaging app. In an effort to promote its additional features, it has announced some impressive figures in regard to its voice-calling function, which was rolled out just over a year ago.

The app states that its users across iOS and Android now make 100 million calls a day. WhatsApp did the math and worked out that totals a whopping 1,100 calls a second.

The numbers are notable, but hardly surprising. After all, the app boasts 1 billion users, making it the biggest chat platform in the world. It only became a comprehensive communications platform by adding VoIP in April of last year, playing catch up with the likes of Skype, and Viber.

Since its acquisition by Facebook for a staggering $22 billion in 2014, WhatsApp has continued to operate independently under the leadership of co-founder and CE Jan Koum.

Despite dominating the overseas market — in particular India, Brazil, and Africa — WhatsApp is still struggling to gain a foothold in the U.S. where it faces stiff competition from apps including Facebook Messenger, and iMessage. America is high on Koum’s global domination agenda. In fact, he wants everyone who owns a smartphone to use WhatsApp.

“We’re nowhere near that,” Koum told USA Today. “But we hope that over a certain period of time we will get that critical mass.”

WhatsApp is no stranger to mass usage. At present, its users send 42 billion messages, 1.6 billion photos, and 250 million videos each day. So how exactly does Koum plan to overcome the U.S. stumbling block? As always, he’s relying on organic growth.

“As long as our user base continues to grow, at some point it will have critical mass, and at some point it will tip and at some point people will just have to use WhatsApp because their friends are using WhatsApp,” states Koum.

To that end, social media sites such as Facebook may even be aiding his plans. As WhatsApp’s parent company pointed out recently, it is influencing people to connect across the globe like never before. If you end up making a new friend overseas and plan to message them, chances are you’ll need to download WhatsApp.



source: www.digitaltrends.com

Dropbox launches a new way to scan documents with your phone

Dropbox launches a new way to scan documents with your phone, and other sharing features

Dropbox today is releasing a slew of new enterprise features as it continues to try to woo larger businesses in an effort to build a strong new line of business.

The most interesting new feature is probably a tool in its mobile application that allows business users to scan documents and upload them directly into Dropbox. The idea is that there is still a lot of activity and business development that happens in the real world, and Dropbox hopes to seamlessly extend that into its services.

“We all still love using analog tools, writing on white boards and using sticky notes and printed pieces of paper,” head of product Todd Jackson said. “We want to take analog info, help users get it into Dropbox, and make it more searchable and accessible.”

Here’s one of the more unique aspects: the company uses optical character recognition (or OCR, for short) to recognize text on the document that it’s scanning. That makes content within those documents — if it works — actually searchable inside the app. Given that Dropbox’s strength has generally been its core technology, and its quick synchronization tools, the company is clearly leaning on that in order to build a differentiated product.

“The way we view our job is to take all this complexity that exists in real world and get to simple, that’s what separates Dropbox from other companies,” head of product Todd Jackson said. “We sweat the details, launching new features and products is just table stakes. The hard part is how you integrate into workflows and help make work simple.”

There are plenty of use cases for something like this. A lot of design happens on real-life media and in conference rooms, for example. But all that information has to be stored somewhere, eventually, and be easily accessible. If Dropbox can make that experience more seamless, it might find a user base that rapidly adopts the technology in favor of traditional flatbed scanners — or, worse, huge binders full of documents.

Starting off, the scanner — and other tools — will be available for iOS users. The tools aren’t on Android just yet, and the company didn’t have a direct response as to when they might be available to Android users.

The company is releasing a slew of other features for its business customers, as well. One is a big “plus” button at the bottom of the app, placed front and center in the same way Instagram’s photo button is placed, that’s used to make new Office documents. From the app, users can create Word, PowerPoint or Excel documents. Users can also import those documents they scanned into the Office documents.

Another feature available today is the ability to view previews of previous versions of documents. That, in theory, makes it easier for business customers to review which versions of documents they want to revert to without having to revert to each one, one by one, to find the base case they are looking for after iterating on it a lot. One new tools, which aren’t available yet, are the ability to add area-specific comments to documents, as well as the ability to share view-only folders.

All of these are basically built out to make Dropbox a more rich enterprise experience. And for good reason: Basic online storage is becoming commoditized, especially as companies like Apple and Google are ever-increasing the free storage they offer to their users. So Dropbox has had to make a pivot of sorts (though it is still finding new features for its basic users) to building robust tools for enterprise customers in order to generate new business for the company.

It’s a tricky balance, however. There’s an enormous amount of competition in the space, whether that’s Box’s collaboration tools or simply going with Microsoft’s tools — though there are a lot of integrations into Dropbox, and the company focuses on finding ways to work with those companies rather than directly compete. Nonetheless, Dropbox faces an uphill battle convincing enterprise customers to adopt its tools.

Dropbox has found itself in an interesting position. Its customer base has traditionally been geared toward traditional consumers, but some of its recent consumer apps — like Carousel and Mailbox — have been whiffs and the company has had to do some soul-searching on which tools it wants to focus. The user implications for tools like these are obvious, and the market is certainly large, but the question is whether they’ll find widespread adoption in businesses.

The company says it has 500 million registered users, and Jackson was quick to note that it already has a sizable presence in larger businesses. Dropbox has said it has around 150,000 paying enterprise customers, and a majority of the Fortune 500 are currently using Dropbox in some fashion (including the free services), Jackson said.

There’s another challenge here: convincing much larger businesses, which traditionally move very slowly, to adopt these tools. It appears the bet is by making it simple for potential customers, it’ll attract attention from both the bottom up and top down. That’s going to basically be a core requirement for Dropbox’s new products to find widespread adoption. Dropbox has also made some other novel moves recently migrating its data to its own infrastructure. Jackson said that the move hadn’t necessarily had a large impact on the company’s relationship with businesses.

“That’s certainly been great for Dropbox in terms of business model, I don’t know that our business customers really feel one way or the other,” he said. “They trust Dropbox to keep their data safe.”

That’ll be important for the company as it continues to move forward. There’s a huge question mark for CEO Drew Houston, and whether he’ll be able to build a strong sustainable business given the commoditization of online storage. Houston said earlier this month at the Bloomberg Technology conference the company had become cash-flow positive, though that definition is certainly going to be scrutinized in multiple ways by Silicon Valley observers.



source: www.techcrunch.com

Mark Zuckerberg Covers His Laptop Camera

Mark Zuckerberg Covers His Laptop Camera. You Should Consider It, Too.

A Palestinian hacker who said he had breached Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile showed the page in 2013.

Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most powerful men in the world because billions of people give Facebook, which he founded, free access to their personal data. In return, users receive carefully curated snapshots of his life: baby photos, mundane office tours and the occasional 5K.

On Tuesday, observers were reminded that Mr. Zuckerberg, 32, is not just a normal guy who enjoys running and quiet dinners with friends. In a photo posted to his Facebook account, he celebrated the growing user base of Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. An eagle-eyed Twitter user named Chris Olson noticed that in the image’s background, his laptop camera and microphone jack appeared to be covered with tape.

Other publications, including Gizmodo, used the tweet to raise the question: Was this paranoia, or just good practice?

3 things about this photo of Zuck:

Camera covered with tape
Mic jack covered with tape
Email client is Thunderbird pic.twitter.com/vdQlF7RjQt

— Chris Olson (@topherolson) June 21, 2016

The taped-over camera and microphone jack are usually a signal that someone is concerned, perhaps only vaguely, about hackers’ gaining access to his or her devices by using remote-access trojans — a process called “ratting.” (Remote access is not limited to ratters: According to a cache of National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, at least two government-designed programs were devised to take over computer cameras and microphones.)

Security experts supported the taping, for a few good reasons:

• The first is that Mr. Zuckerberg is a high-value target.

“I think Zuckerberg is sensible to take these precautions,” Graham Cluley, an online security expert and consultant, wrote in an email Wednesday. “As well as intelligence agencies and conventional online criminals who might be interested in targeting his billions, there are no doubt plenty of mischievous hackers who would find it amusing to spy upon such a high-profile figure.”

• The second is that covering photo, video and audio portals has long been a basic and cheap security safeguard.

“Covering the camera is a very common security measure,” Lysa Myers, a security researcher at the data security firm ESET, said in an email. “If you were to walk around a security conference, you would have an easier time counting devices that don’t have something over the camera.”

• Third, Mr. Zuckerberg is not immune to security breaches.

A recent hacking of his Twitter and LinkedIn accounts shows that he most likely committed two basic privacy faux pas: He may have used the same password across several websites and did not use two-factor authentication.

Judging from his photo, however, it appears that Mr. Zuckerberg was taking simple precautions to protect himself from anyone who may try to gain remote access. The practice is fairly technologically simple: Hackers trick people into clicking on links or unfamiliar websites containing malware that allows them access to the devices.

Mr. Zuckerberg is not the only high-profile case: James Comey, the director of the F.B.I., also puts tape over his computer’s webcam, for surprisingly simple reasons, according to NPR:

“I saw something in the news, so I copied it,” Mr. Comey said. “I put a piece of tape — I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop — I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera.”

People who are not billionaires or high-ranking government officials are not without risk, said Stephen Cobb, a senior security researcher at ESET.

“For people who are not C.E.O.s, the threat is people scanning the internet for accessible webcams for a range of motives, from voyeurism to extortion,” Mr. Cobb wrote in an email.

Experts don’t have a good estimate for how often such attacks occur, but according to a 2015 report released by the nonprofit Digital Citizens Alliance, the practice is a growing problem for consumers, especially young women. The report also said that trojans account for some 70 percent of all malware.

“They’ve been one of the most popular types of malware on every operating system, for quite a long time,” Ms. Myers, of ESET, said. “The best ways to protect against them are to update all your software on your machine regularly, and use reputable security software, including anti-malware and a firewall.”


source: www.nytimes.com