Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Thinks Cloud Computing Will Be 'Horrendous'

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak prefers to feel like he "owns" his digital data and feels uncomfortable uploading it to or downloading it from another company's cloud servers.
That's why in a recent Q&A session held after Mike Daisey's play, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," Wozniak warned the audience of the dangers in cloud computing.
"I really worry about everything going to the cloud," he said, per Agence France-Presse. "I think it's going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years."
According to ZDNet, making a purchase via cloud often means consumers are not actually buying a product, but instead buying a license to use it. This is true even in the Apple App Store's Terms and Conditions, which reads "Apple is the provider of the App and Book Services that permit you to license software products and digital content."
Apple has used cloud technology since the early 2000s, including services such as MobileMe, which then morphed into iCloud last fall. The feature promises to do more than "just store your content," but to also "seamlessly integrate" all iOS devices, per the Apple website.
So is Wozniak knocking the company he helped create?
Maybe -- and that wouldn't be the first time. Earlier this summer, Wozniak criticized Siri, the iPhone's voice-controlled assistant, telling the Times Union that he was a bigger fan of the program when it was simply a downloadable app not owned by Apple.

But his cloud concerns are not completely far-fetched. Just this last weekend, tech blog Gizmodo's Twitter account was hijacked by a hacker who had breeched former contributor Mat Honan's iCloud account, allowing the hacker access to Honan's Macbook Air, iPhone, iPad and Twitter account. Ultimately this linked the hacker to passwords used for Gizmodo's resources.
"A lot of people feel, 'Oh, everything is really on my computer,' Wozniak stated at the Q&A. "[B]ut I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it."

Journalist blames Apple tech for allowing iCloud hack

Former Gizmodo reporter says device wipes and Twitter breaches occurred after an AppleCare technician fell victim to a bit of social engineering.

Former Gizmodo reporter Mat Honan is blaming an AppleCare technician for allowing his personal e-mail and Twitter accounts to be hacked, as well as the tech blog's official feed.
The Gizmodo breach, apparently perpetrated by a person or group of people calling themselves Clan W3, was brief but resulted in racist and offensive tweets being sent to the tech blog's 415,000 followers on Friday. Gizmodo initially blamed its former reporter for the tweets and quickly regained control of its account.
But Honan, who currently works for Wired, was not so fortunate. He described in a blog post how he had learned his iCloud account had been breached by a hacker who wiped his devices and gained access to his Gmail and Twitter accounts. Now he says an Apple technician fell victim to social engineering, a technique of manipulating people instead of computers to perform a task or divulge information:

I know how it was done now. Confirmed with both the hacker and Apple. It wasn't password related. They got in via Apple tech support and some clever social engineering that let them bypass security questions. Apple has my Macbook and is trying to recover the data. I'm back in all my accounts that I know I was locked out of. Still trying to figure out where else they were.

Honan says the hacks occurred Friday evening when someone gained access to his iCloud account and reset his password. That led to the remote wipe of his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air and hijack of the Twitter accounts. The blog also describes the challenges he faced in regaining control of his devices and accounts.
He said he initially suspected the hacker used brute force to learn his seven-digit alphanumeric password, but Honan said in a blog update that someone claiming to be the hacker contacted him, saying he "didnt guess ur password or use bruteforce. i have my own guide on how to secure emails." 

 

Windows 7 poised to topple XP as leading OS

The current flavor of Windows came close to surpassing XP in July but will have to wait another month for the title, according to Net Applications.

(Credit: Net Applications)

Windows 7 and XP are virtually neck and neck in their battle to be the dominant OS, according to Web analytics firm Net Applications.
For the month of July, Windows 7 grabbed 42.21 percent of all network traffic recorded by Net Applications. Windows XP eked out a slightly higher share, capturing 42.86 percent. As Windows 7 has been catching up to its 11-year-old counterpart, it will certainly reach the top spot sometime this month.
The latest results show a huge difference over July 2011 when Windows 7 held just 29.6 percent of Net Applications' mobile traffic, while Windows XP had more than 52 percent.
For an operating system launched in 2001, XP has enjoyed a good run. Many businesses and consumers perfectly satisifed with the OS and turned off by Vista had stuck with XP far longer than anticipated. But more people and organizations are migrating to Windows 7, likely for a number of reasons.
Microsoft is cutting off extended support for Windows XP in less than two years, specifically April 2014. That means large companies must upgrade their installations to Windows 7. Otherwise, they face potential security risks when patches, updates, and bug fixes are no longer available for XP.
Microsoft's latest applications have also been giving the cold shoulder to XP and even Vista. Internet Explorer 9 doesn't support XP, while IE10 won't support XP or Vista. Office 2013 won't run under XP or Vista. Of course, these slights are all part of the company's strategy to force people to bump up to Windows 7.
Still, XP will be around for the foreseeable future. I notice a lot of computers running XP at doctor's offices, hospitals, and similar facilities. Such organizations rely on legacy applications and equipment that may not function under Windows 7. And even though Windows 7 offers an XP mode for compatibility, coaxing these companies to totally migrate from XP will continue to be a challenge.
Overall, Windows accounted for 92 percent of all the traffic on Net Applications' network in July. Mac OS X won a 7 percent share, up from less than 6 percent a year ago.

Safari 6 crashing in Mountain Lion

A rare combination of proxy settings and the popular password manager 1Password may result in Safari crashing.
Some Mac users who have upgraded to OS X 10.8 have found that Apple's Safari Web browser is crashing. From the crash reports it appears that the problem is rooted around the use of the password manager 1Password; however, upon further investigation the problem has been found to be on Apple's end.
The crashes only seem to happen for a small number of 1Password users, indicating that the problem is not a major bug in the program but rather a conflict with a specific configuration.

Uncheck these two options in the OS X Proxy configuration for each of your used network ports to prevent the crash from occurring.

After reports surfaced of the crashes, the 1Password development team investigated the issue and found that a bug exists in Mountain Lion's handling of proxy server configurations that can cause a crash for users of its software. Proxy settings are rarely needed for home users, and are instead used by corporations to provide network access to various online services.
If you are experiencing this problem, then there are two routes available that you can take. The first is to disable the automatic proxy discovery option in your network configuration. To do this, go to the Network system preferences and select your active network connection (it should have a green dot next to it). Then click the Advanced button and go to the Proxies tab. In this section, locate the "Auto Proxy Discovery" option and uncheck it. You might also need to uncheck the option for "Automatic Proxy Configuration."
If you do need your proxy settings, then the alternative option is to remove the 1Password extension from Safari until Apple fixes the proxy settings bug, which can be done in the Extensions section of the Safari preferences.

The Mac's mobile-only future

Let's look at what's happened to the Mac platform over the last several years.

• A modern file system - ZFS - promised and then killed.
• A doubling-down on 1980's HFS+ that locks it in.
• A storage black box - Core Storage - that outside developers can access only through limited APIs, unlike earlier options.
• 2 OS versions - Lion and Mountain Lion - with NO kernel investment. The aging Mach kernel was never designed for multi-processor systems and doesn't scale well beyond 4 cores.
• Focus on Macbook hardware, not desktops.
• Cancelling almost every "enterprise" product, including servers and storage arrays.

The Mac is now Apple's poor relation: a few billion in revenue and margin; but not strategic in an Apple world dominated by iPhones and iPads. That's why Mac investment has gone to mobile devices that don't scale. They don't need to: the money is in mobile, not desktops. Which is fine if Macbooks do everything you need.
Implications

• Forget about a new Mac Pro. Grand Central Dispatch - which was supposed to make the Mac's Mach kernel work with manycore systems - hasn't seen wide enough adoption to warrant more work.
• Forget about significant enhancements to the OS X kernel. What you see is what you'll be getting for years to come.
• Apple's Mac application ambitions will scale down too. You can always get more jelly beans in a big box than a little one, so the days of using Final Cut Pro to produce Hollywood movies are coming to a close. If you can't do it on a top of the line MacBook Pro, you can't do it on a Mac.

The Storage Bits take
All this is bad news for people, like FCP editors, who've invested years in learning the Mac and their key apps. But you aren't the future of the Mac, so get over it.
From a financial perspective this all makes perfect sense. Which is why finance people seem to be such jerks: they don't count the human cost of their "rational" decisions.
People who supported the Mac platform over the last decade will feel burned by the Mac's shrinking role. Apple could afford to invest in the Mac, and they do, but in shiny hardware rather than state-of-the-art software that consumers don't understand.
I've worked in corporate engineering groups for a couple of decades, through many product and budget cycles. And following the money tells you what's really going on.
Apple has given up competing with Windows. Will that damage their mobile aspirations? Probably not, but the Mac is becoming an appliance, not a general purpose personal computer.

Apple reports three million Mountain Lion downloads in four days, 'most successful OS X release'

Apple's latest operating system, OS X Mountain Lion, has set a new sales record.
The company announced today that Mountain Lion was downloaded over 3 million times in its first four days of availability, "making it the most successful OS X release in Apple's history."
Apple launched Mountain Lion last Wednesday for $19.99. The operating system, which is available in the company's Mac App Store, comes with over 200 enhancements, including wide-ranging integration of iOS features, like Notification Center, Apple's Game Center, and iMessage. Facebook integration is making its way to the operating system in the fall.
AirPlay Mirroring, notes, and reminder apps have also made their way to the platform. A Power Nap feature will ensure Macs stay up-to-date even while asleep, and a new security tool called Gatekeeper will help fend off malware by controlling application installation.