Apple products aren’t so secure anymore

The days of buying something from Apple and knowing it is secure is now long gone. CVE Details is probably the most common site to keep track of vulnerabilities in computer software.

They claim that OSX, used on Apple Macs, are the most vulnerable software of 2015, followed closely by iOS used for iPads and iPhones.

OS X had 384 vulnerabilities followed by 375 for iOS. 2014’s “winner”, Adobe Flash Player, dropped to third place with 314 vulnerabilities.

While Microsoft’s software in total had more vulnerabilities [1561], it is only because they also have a lot more software to support. Adobe was second with 1504 followed by Apple with 1147.

Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which was often referred to as the most-attacked desktop platform out there, had one version in the top 10 [Windows Server 2008 with 155 vulnerabilities].

Internet Explorer continues to be the most vulnerable browser on the market with 231 vulnerabilities with Google’s Chrome right behind with 187 and Firefox at 178.

Of note, Ubuntu Linux had 152 vulnerabilities.

Oddly Windows 8.1 [151] had more vulnerabilities than Windows 8 [146] and Windows 7 [147]. Windows Vista was actually the lowest of the supported Windows operating systems [135] other than Windows 10, which only came out in late July [already picked up 53 vulnerabilities]. Note that as more features are added, more vulnerabilities can appear.

Does the world really need an Apple watch?

Apple is ready to unleash their watch on us. Question is whether anyone will buy this expensive gadget other than the fanbois and fangurls.
Seems they want to pack everything in a watch that has a screen probably under 1.5 inches wide when you could do the same thing on your phone – with a larger screen.
All the standard bells and whistles will be possible with the watch: Apple payments, health features, Emails, etc. But many of the features will require you to pair the watch with an iPhone [I didn’t hear which models of iPhones are supported].
Apple claims 18 hours per charge. But in most cases when the manufacturer gives you an amount, the actual usage life in a charge is maybe two-thirds. So it’s good for 12 hours. [Why two-thirds? Because manufacturers find the item with the best battery life and then tweak the hell out of it to get the maximum time. That means the least amount of applications or services running. Dim the display to save power. Set the CPU usage to the lowest speed. You get the idea.]
Need to call or listen to music? Must be paired with a watch. Personally less cumbersome if your headphones are on the side of your body than on your wrist [will get in the way].
You can maybe stretch the watch to 5 days but you really have to use it as a watch using reserve power mode.
Prices start around $400 US for the base model.
If you have loads of cash there is a gold edition for $10,000.

Predictions for 2015

So with about 0.20% of the year gone, here are some of my predictions [some incorporating rumors that started in 2014, some of them less likely, some are probable]:

In technology:

• Apple will release a new iPhone in the spring – probably a slightly remade iPhone 5S. They did the same thing with the iPhone 5C which as a rebranded and slightly upgraded iPhone 4S [I think].
• Apple will also have a major issue come to one of their products causing major problems. This would be as surprising as since Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs, quality control has been less than stellar.
• While Windows 10 does come out with plenty of fan fare, it still ends up being only a partial success as it still forces many desktop users to go though the tiles/modern interface too often.
• Meanwhile, Microsoft decides to give a slight discount for some Windows 8.x users but not enough to satisfy them.
• The Windows Server 2003 comes to a close in July but nasty bit of security attacks force Microsoft to further release some security updates after the end of support for the OS.
• Google decides that it has had enough and begins to back away from both Google+ and the Chrome OS development. Both are bleeding the company dry even with Google’s advertising arm firmly entrenched in Google+.
• Not really a surprise but there will be another major cloud breach similar to the one that hit Apple this past year [remember the celebrity nude pictures?]. One still wonders why people put nude pictures of themselves in the cloud.

In entertainment:

• Yet another breach in an entertainment company, not as serious as Sony, but still high profile.
• This will also be the year where movie distributors stop gauging the buying public and release Blu-ray movies at very similar pricing as a DVD.
• The music shoppers will begin to get tired of the boy bands and scantly clad female singers that seem to come and go quite fast.
• Justin Bieber will finally get arrested [he hasn’t already]?
• Miley Cyrus will do something so wrong/disgusting that fans will turn their back on him.

In politics:

• Vladimir Poutine [Putin] will finally cave in and force the Russian “separatists” in eastern Ukraine to come back to mother Russia or be left on their own. Still nothing resolved for Crimea. All this as the oil pricing by OPEC and the financial punishment still cripples Russia coupled by growing unrest by Russian citizens as price of goods continue to rise.
• Putin gets tired of having OPEC dictating oil prices by trying to start “his” own oil council but fails.
• In US politics, the early stages of preparations for the primaries in both Democratic and Republican parties fizzle as Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush are almost crowned before they start. Meanwhile the Republicans get hit with a few scandals along the way as the Tea Part branch causes further strains within the party.
• In Canadian politics, an early fall elections has current Prime Minister Stephen Harper ousted with Liberal leader Justin Trudeau taking over with either a slight majority government or a near majority minority government. The NDP party, getting blown back to smaller party status will prop up the Liberals [if a minority government] – this after the Conservative party saying throughout the election that the Liberals and NDP would form a coalition government after they see the writing on the wall and see no chance in forming a government.
• Devastated by the loss, Harper would end up resigning his leadership with eventually leaving politics in late 2015 or early 2016. As well, NDP leader will decide to leave as leader of party but will stay around.

Maybe the death of the tablet

[Well, they said the same thing about the PC.]

In case you never noticed, I have never been a fan of these “research” firms who speculate about the various trends. Most seem to look at something and say “Oh it increased by 10% this year. OK next year it will be 20% and 30% the following year.” Generally with little to back up their “research” [in my opinion]. Maybe it’s because of my math background, who knows.

If you haven’t noticed, things are beginning to reverse what was happening the last few years. In the greater PC market [laptops, desktops, tablets, etc.], up until recently, the desktop and laptop markets were in a bit of a decline while tablet sales were taking off.

Let’s go back to August of 2013. Forrester research announce [or predicted] that tablets will become a mainstay of households in developed markets by 2017, with 60% of online consumers in North America and 42% in European owning one by 2017. Or by percentage, roughly a 25.6% increase compounded annually to maybe 381 million by 2017.

A few months prior, IDC said that the increase would be even larger – at 410 million by 2017.

Now who was it that said that the “PC” [as in laptops and maybe desktops] is dead?

The latest sales figures have tablets dropping 16% since September and grew just 7% all year according to that same “research” company IDC. Tablets grew 53% last year.

7” tablets declined 40% since September. Not surprising. Screen is too small for most.

iPad sales have shrunk three straight quarters and the sales in the last quarter was the smallest in two years. [On the other hand, Apple’s iPads are released in the fall every year. So we’d expect a decline as the new models are about to be released.] Apple though they’d get a boost with the two new models iPad Mini 3 and iPad Air 2 – but that didn’t happen.

Interesting to note that of all things, the Microsoft Surface tablets are doing well in the last three months with a 11% increase – but they could really only go up.

Regarding these so-called “research” companies, let me put it in another way: In 2007, came the netbook. Small, low cost but not too fast. Call them the precursor to the tablet. According to ABI Research, in 2013, 139 million would be sold. In fact very few were as the netbook lines by Asus, Acer and others died. In 2013, they were dumping their leftover inventory. ABI pulled their research from their web site in 2011 as they probably were too embarrassed to keep it. ABI claimed that sales would double by 2013.

What killed the netbook? Tablets, economy, other light weight laptops with more power, profits for the manufacturer.

What is killing the tablet? Good question. Maybe the fact that some found out that tablets can’t do everything. Maybe everyone who bought one don’t need another one.

 

More privacy issues – this time from Apple

Seems Apple has opened another can of worms. This time it is a privacy issue. Apple’s latest operating systems, OS X Yosemite for laptops and iOS 8 for their gadgets, both transmit your search terms back to Apple [and Microsoft!] by default.

If you use the Safari browser [does anyone really use it?], Apple not only knows what you did search for, but they can also see what you were thinking before you ever submitted your request.

If you type in the Spotlight box OS X Yosemite or iOS 8, it will cause your search terms to go to Apple, Microsoft’s Bing, and whatever search engine you have selected. They request goes to Apple so that you can see results from Apple properties and then the request is sent to Bing as a way of getting you quick, relevant search results based on partial queries. Once you press the Enter key, whatever you have is sent to the search engine you choose.

If you have Location Services enabled, it will transmit your location along with your search terms.

To turn off Spotlight search queries:

• OS X: Deselect the checkboxes for Spotlight Suggestions and the Bing Web Searches in the Search Results pane of Spotlight preferences in System Preferences. [With them disabled Spotlight will search the contents of only your Mac.] There is also a third one in Safari’s preferences where “Include Spotlight Suggestions” will also invoke this behavior.
• iOS8: Similar preferences have to be checked: General, Spotlight Search, Spotlight Suggestions, and Bing Web Results needs to be unchecked. The third option is harder to get to – in Privacy, Location Services – scroll all the way to the end to System Services and turn off many options like Spotlight Suggestions.

Some are suggesting that while Apple seems to champion privacy issues, they don’t think that this is a major concern. But others do.

Wait a bit before updating your iPhone and iPad

If you have an iPhone or a iPad, iOS 8 should be available from Apple. If it is like previous releases you may want to hold off a bit for a number of reasons:

• The amount of people trying to upgrade their devices.
• Verify the compatibility between iOS 8 and your applications.
• Do you really want to be a guinea pig? Judging from previous versions, there has always been some issues.
• Over The Air [ITA] upgrading requires you to have extra disk space. Upgrading to iOS8 requires between 4.7 GB and 6.9 GB of space available on your device.
• If your iPhone is not owned by you, you may need to check with your company’s IT department before upgrading.
• You cannot go back to the previous iOS version once you upgrade.
• Older models [the ones that barely made the upgrade cut] may not work as fast as they use to be.
• The OS may still have some quirks or bugs that weren’t found in the testing cycle.

A good suggestion is wait a week or two while the dust in the upgrading settles. By that time, the majority of issues should be made public and then you can decide to upgrade or wait for the first update.

Of course the fanbois and fangurls who want the latest and greatest won’t care.

Apple making it really easy for some

As per the biography released about Steve Jobs a few years back, Jobs reasoning for reducing the number of features that can be modified [or upgraded] was to curb support costs. After all it is easier to support 4 products than 40.

The same could be said on the software side. He wanted the operating system to be the simplest to use. So anyone from a young kid to a senior citizen could use it quite easily.

Of course for some of those who are more technical, they aren’t thrilled with the limitations.

[Adding to the fact that you can’t officially change batteries in Apple products and in the case of some laptops, you can’t change the hard [or SDD] disk or memory because they are soldered down.]

This brings us to the Apple’s announcement of the iPhone and Watch last week. Towards the last portion of the presentation, CEO Tim Cook brought in the band U2 to do some promoting and to do a short set of songs. They also announced that the first 500 million [you read right] iTunes subscribers will get a free copy of U2’s next album that will be released in 5 weeks from now [but iTunes get it as an exclusive until it gets to the stores].

What miffed some was that the album [11 tracks] were automatically added to current subscribers without approval.

Now I am not an Apple expert, but if Jobs wanted things to be done easily, removing the album [assuming U2 isn’t your cup of tea] should be quite easy.

Instead Apple decided to release a “tool” that with what is described as a one click removed the album, instead of the few steps it would take to do it manually. [Maybe Bono’s voice should come on after the album is removed from the library with him saying: “I am not happy with your decision but Tim Cook forced me to do this.”]

Actually if you go to the removal link, you will notice it’s more than a click.

To date about 33 million copies have been used. When release in retail stores, the same tracks will be available on CD or other digital media formats. In addition there will be a “deluxe” edition with more tracks released on CD and probably on iTunes. This is just the beginning of Apple’s partnership with U2 that includes an upcoming ad campaign rumored to cost $100 million.

Oddly, if a reported 33 million have received a copy from their library, why did they bother with 500 million copies? I don’t think they have 500 million iTunes customers.

[Sometimes I wonder why the likes of Jessica Simpson or Britney Spears weren’t hired to promote Apple products. After all they don’t seem to possess a decent IQ. “Like look. If we can do it, then, like, so can you do it.” Or maybe Tom Hanks to reprise his role as Forest Gump – after all Gump had shares in the company.]

Scammers taking advantage of iCloud controversy

Not surprising, after the breech in Apple’s iCloud security, phishing scams have started to circulate. In one case, an Email from Apple claims someone is Russia downloaded a movie using your Apple ID.

Apple requires you to log in and verify. But the link is using a public shortened URL that directs you to a phishing page that resembles an Apple web site login page.

Clues of a phishing scam:

• You don’t have an Apple account.
• Apple would never use a public shortened URL.
• Message claiming your account has been hacked, temporary closed, restricted or needs to be updated.
• The phishing page isn’t coming from the apple.com domain but maybe apple-store.com or something like that.

The Windows XP Catch-22

Here’s a bit of an odd one.

I was at someone’s house recently. Seems she got notified that Yahoo Mail wouldn’t support Internet Explorer 8 anymore. [I’m guessing they haven’t supported Internet Explorer 7 and before for a while.]

So, that would be normal since Windows XP is not supported by Microsoft but Internet Explorer 8 is also still used on Windows Server 2003 as well could be used on Windows Vista,  Windows Server 2008 and even Windows 7 [RTM]. [Now I didn’t see it say specifically Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP – just Internet Explorer 8.]

The person was already using Safari [ya, I know] on her iPad. So, install it for Windows XP as she would be a bit familiar with it. I could barely find any reference on the Apple web site for it [to install] and ended up going to grab a copy from a shareware site.

Installed and then went to Yahoo Mail. Same message. Unsupported browser. As this is the latest I could find for Windows XP [version 5.1], I guess Apple gave up on Safari for Windows.

So, down to two major browsers. Firefox and Google’s Chrome. I asked, she had no opinion. I suggested Firefox. Chrome is too buggy in my opinion.

So if you are still running Windows XP, you may see issues like this appear as well.

A reminder that while support for Windows XP has died, some software will still be supported at least until July 2015 – but will vary by the developer.  After July 2015, it will get even harder to get updates or things to work.

PS – Google’s Gmail had dropped Internet Explorer 8 long ago. If they keep their support policy of supporting the current [IE11] and previous [IE10] version, then Internet explorer 9 isn’t supported either. Of course their major version numbering changes within a couple of months.

Windows 8.x for free? Don’t count on it

According to analyst firm IHS, Microsoft should make its latest Windows 8.1 operating system free to all Windows users. The analyst claims that Apple is doing it, why can’t Microsoft.

Yes. The OS X 10.9 is free. But where can you install it on? Oh. Just Apple’s hardware. If OS X was installable [legally] on any hardware, this would be different.

Additionally Windows 8.1 improves things and the update [Windows 8.2?] that updates Windows 8.1 is said to bring back the full Start Menu back where it belongs.

I can’t see too many Windows 7 users upgrading. They are happy. Windows Vista users could upgrade but that is a small group.

Windows XP could upgrade but only if they had a decent system. A system built 8+ years ago probably won’t cut it [at least not without a memory upgrade].

As well, Microsoft is a software company while Apple is primarily a hardware company.

Apple has stopped supporting any version older than 10.9.0 [this has opened a huge security hole]. Microsoft has always supported its Windows products [and majority of the rest] for at least 10 years.

[As a minor disclosure (if you haven’t read any of my rants), I really dislike these analysts. Half of the time they make no sense and the other half they are making too many assumptions like if a product’s sales increased 5% in 2012 and 10% in 2013, they assume 15% in 2014, 20% in 2015, etc. Just plain dumb.]