AI, Mobile, and Eveything Around the Cloud

According to the  Los Angeles Times , the FBI has joined the hunt for the culprit or culprits who leaked nude pictures of mostly female celebrities.  I didn't say actors because I have no idea who a couple of the names I read are.  Maybe they were sports figure. Anyway, if this could happen to them, it could happen to anyone - opening us up to potential blackmailing or other sorts of crime.  At best, just embarrassment.  This is a kind of sexual predation. Privacy is a big deal to me and I think we need to keep any eye out on this. If companies are not being careful about our cloud privacy and security, a large scale and very public case like this should.  So, let me go back a bit and explain in a couple of sentences what happened in case you like myself was away from the Web or television for this Labor Day weekend in the US. Apparently, someone hacked into an online photo account, with iCloud being named as the source of these pictures (there was ta...

So far, we've seen tons of leaks regarding for the next iPhone.  Plenty.  They're mostly for the supposedly 4.7" iPhone 6.  And come to think of it, there has not been a lot of information on the 5.5" iPhone either. So, why is that? This is a wild guess but I think I might know why. Both the 5.5" iPhone and the iWatch are going to be premium devices out of the gate.  So, what? Well, first let's go over what an $500 or more iWatch or $800-$1000 5.5" iPhone means. The two high-end iOS devices will be limited to some countries.  Not many countries are going to be able to afford a large influx of these devices.  It'll eventually expand but on a slow rollout schedule. Because of the price entry, markets like the US, Canada, some EU markets, and only the elite and status conscious in China and Hong Kong are will to shell out money for it. There has been talk that the sapphire covers Apple plan on using for the next generation iOS devices will be ...

Techcrunch's post regarding Xiaomi's blatant copying of Apple and casually throwing in Apple's copy of Xerox's GUI and mouse is very much erroneous and trying to equate Apple's past with Xiaomi is just wrong. First, I would like to acknowledge that Apple did in fact copy Xerox. It's a very well known historic fact. However, it was Apple that used that concept and brought it to the consumer market at a time when the GUI was still sitting in a PARC lab.  There was no Xerox version of the Mac in 1984 or at any other time before that. If anything, Microsoft's copying of Mac OS is closer to what Xiaomi is currently doing in copying what Apple does, what its products feel like, and the UI experience. And the "one more thing" slide that Xiaomi even used on its product launch event (which Steve Jobs is famously known for), Apple has never gone as far as to place competitor logos on its website and claiming as its own.  Just as TC's post mention...

Source:   9to5Mac . Here is yet another example of Chinese consumer tech companies demonstrating their inability to innovate and using government shields to copy Western companies like Apple.  Here is its Miui 6 skin that runs on top of its own Android variant (san Google apps) where it copied the look and feel of Apple's iOS. What's worse as it has been reported previously by various media outlets is that it even copied the look and feel of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S. However, don't look for Apple to do anything about this in China anyway.  It's unlikely Chinese courts under Beijing's control will issue favorable rulings to foreign companies.  If anything, should Xiaomi become a threat outside of China, look for Apple legal to go to bat once more. However, this is just one example of how Chinese companies are unable to innovate all on their own.  For one thing, the OS Xiaomi and other phone/tablet makers are using are Google's Android.  That in ...

In the mobile market, a quarter can be a life time let alone a year.  So, why am I talking about the rest of the decade?  Frankly, a quarterly misstep or two could be enough for a company to start sliding but with all the corporate cash companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft have, any decline could be stave off for years. Sure that could also mean that companies have a better chance to survive any downturn or misstep and maybe innovate its way out of corporate death much like Apple did.  However, there are a couple of companies that I think are not going to disappear within the year but could very likely be gone by 2020. I'm talking about Blackberry and Yahoo.  Blackberry and Yahoo has 2.68 and 2.78 billions of cash on hand.  Blackberry has been bleeding money while Yahoo has managed to eek out some profit.  However, each of these two companies have critical decisions to make. The decisions each of their respective CEOs make will determine whethe...

The market, by that I mean the financial as well as mobile, is used to Cupertino release new iPhones along with a new version of iOS to go along with it.  However, I think for the sake of market disruption, I would love to see Apple release a new iPhone even without a new iOS in the fall, say, this summer.  That would really kick things up for its fans and really screw things up for its competitors.  Has this happened before?  Sure, the iPad.  What if there are new features that are specific to the new iPhone hardware?  Well, then Apple simply (okay, I know it's not simply but the talented hard working Apple employees sure make it appear that way) update apps and release codes for this new iPhone. As it is now, it's the hardware that catches up to the software.  Beta versions of iOS are released in the June to coincide with Apple's World Wide Developer Conference.  Then new iPhones are released later in the fall that support new features.  Ta...

I'm always been a bit jealous of the camera capability of the high-end Lumia devices running Windows Phone from Nokia.  I want those features.  I mean the camera on the 1020 is just crazy.  Sure, the iPhone 5S camera rocks but there are still new tricks the next iPhone can pick up. It's why Apple hired away from Nokia its top camera expert, Ari Partinen.  With Nokia having sold its mobile division to Microsoft, it was a perfect tiemf or Mr. Partinen to move to sunny California.  And he's exactly the type of new blood that Apple can use.  Imagine what he can bring.  Just looking at Nokia's Lumia 1020 page, I want it all.  Lossless zoom.  Better pics in poorly lit environments.  Better flash.  Truer colors.  Of course, he'll have to really be creative and innovate in ways that he was not familiar with or expected to at Nokia.  There is the design element that the new Apple hire will have to deal with.  He won't have the...