Posted on 01/08/2015 7:21:49 PM PST by Swordmaker
The answer is multifold. . . Jacquej.
First of all, you are correct. The government is royally p!55ed at Apple for making it impossible for them to get into Apple devices, computers, and the iCloud. Apple's encryption is essentially unbreakable since it uses AES 256 bit encryption with keys based on the user's passwords entangled with the 128 bit UUID of the device. The number of years required to decrypt such an encryption is literally measure in not in centuries, but in eons. Various bureaucrat types have demanded that Apple make backdoors into this encryption failing to understand it is literally not possible. They are making life difficult for Apple in the courts. Anytime you hear a bureaucrat claim it is for the "benefit or safety of the children," watch out for your wallet or your rights.
Secondly, look to Apple's successes in market share gains lately. In the last quarter, prognosticators are predicting blow-out figures for Apple in both mobile and computer sales. Activations in world-wide mobile devices in the week leading up to Christmas showed that 51% of all mobile devices activated were iOS devices. . . a remarkable gain over Android.
"“The market share of Android — the mobile operating software developed by Google – fell by 2 percentage points, year-on-year, in the U.S. over the three months ending November 2014, according to Kantar Worldpanel on Wednesday,” Clinch reports. “It also slipped by over 3 percentage points across Europe’s five biggest countries, and tanked by 6.7 percentage points in the U.K.” — Source: CNBC, January 7, 2015
And that was for the three months ending in November, not even counting the Christmas shopping of December! Meanwhile, Samsung, who had a $14 billion mobile device advertising budget last year, of which only $4 billion was in print and TV advertising, yet:
Samsung said its fourth-quarter operating profit is likely to be 5.2 trillion won ($4.74 billion), beating a mean forecast of 5 trillion won from a Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S survey of 44 analysts.The outlook means Samsung's 2014 profit will probably be 25 trillion won (~$23 Billion), the weakest in three years, although it marks a rebound from the third-quarter's 4.1 trillion won ($3.76 Billion) profit which was the firm's lowest quarterly result in more than three years. The company is expected to release its annual results around the end of January.
The mobile division's contribution to Samsung's profit has slipped from about 68 percent at its peak in 2013 to about 44 percent in the third quarter, as its high-end offerings lost out to Apple's iPhones. Meanwhile buyers in booming emerging markets like China have opted for cheaper devices rather than Samsung's flagship Galaxy series.
The mobile division's fourth-quarter profit improved slightly from the previous quarter due to a pickup in sales of premium products like the Galaxy Note 4 and lower marketing costs, the person with knowledge of the matter said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But overall smartphone shipments fell, the person added.
Analysts say the company's new focus on mid-to-low tier smartphones will squeeze margins and cap profits, offsetting the benefits of the expected increase in sales. — Source: Reuters
In other words, Samsung has been expending $14 Billion more on non-media advertising, 56% of the after operating profits, of which $10 billion is NON-media spending! Where, exactly do they spend $10 billion dollars in advertising??? Pundits have speculated it is in funding a massive FUD campaign against Apple and iOS phones by paying "journalists" (some of whom have admitted being paid for their opinions, bloggers, posters on websites where they post endless negative comments on Apple or Microsoft phones, etc. It has to go somewhere. A large portion goes to sales "Spiffs" and bonuses for carrier sales people to push Samsung phones and tablets over competitors (read iPhones). Apple does not offer bonuses and spiffs for the sales of their products to these sales people. They also hide a lot of their BOGO (Buy one, get one, two or three free) offers in their advertising budget. But a LOT of the FUD comes from these campaigns.
Thirdly, Apple is selling a lot of computers compared to what they were selling before and are making inroads into Microsoft's stronghold. It is estimated that this last quarter ended December 27th, Apple may have sold as many as 6 million Macs. In 2010, Apple sold 6 million Macs for the whole YEAR. . . and now they are selling that in a single quarter! That means that the PC sellers are running scared. They too are having their captive press write negative Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt articles about Apple. . . and lots of positive articles about Windows PCs. . . such as the ones claiming that the Microsoft Surface Pro outsold the MacBook Air, when in the last quarter the MS Surface Pro perhaps sold slightly under 1million but the MacBook Airs sold better than 3,000,000. Outsold? In whose Universe? But that is the state of "journalism" when it is "FOR SALE" to the highest bidder. . . and based on press releases rather than real research. Another example was the flurry of headline articles from a couple of months ago claiming that Chromebooks were claiming the Education Market over Apple iPads, based on ONE School District's purchase of Chromebooks over Apple iPads, ignoring the hundreds of others that had elected to go with iPads. Again, malpractice in Journalism won the day. . . or was it payola from Google? Something stank. The "news" certainly did not reflect reality. . . but it was what was reported for around a week.
Fourthly, any time there is a significant probability that Apple sales will increase, or a significant Apple event is announced, there will be a three week FUD fest unleashed. Christmas Season is one of those periods. If Apple announces there is going to be announcements coming, the FUD fest starts. . . or if the World Wide Developers Conference is due, FUD season is in session. These are like clockwork. Right now the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is in Session. . . and Apple, although not attending, is dominating it as usual. . . So, lots of FUD is out there.
Finally, Apple is a click magnet for any article in which it is mentioned. . . even articles that have only peripheral connection with Apple can pull in more advertising dollars if the headline mentions Apple. . . especially if the article is in anyway negatively attached to Apple, no matter how stretched the author or editors can make it. It is this reason that organizations such as Greenpeace always use Apple as their whipping boy, even though they have a far more exemplary record than any other tech company in meeting green goals. . . or China Labor Wath attacks Apple using video from non-Apple manufacturers and then attributes it to an Apple manufacturing plant and blames Apple for all the labor ills in China, even though Apple has done far more for the benefit of Chinese factory workers than any other contract holder in Electronics, even putting in their contracts demands for trebling the pay of workers on their assembly lines, limiting overtime, and other worker conditions AND putting Apple employees on site to monitor that these demands are met! Apple draws attention. . . and using Apple as a "bad" example in the FUD articles gets clicks for the "journalists, because people read it, when they would not if the headline read "Microsoft" or "Sony" or "HP" instead. Those are just the facts of being the worlds most valuable company. You become a target.
I hope this gives you some insight as to why there are so many negative articles, particularly right now. . . and with this information, you can generally predict when another anti-Apple FUD season will occur.
It would take quite an effort to install malware into a standard e-cig. It could be done, but it would not be a very good e-cig. LOL! I saw those articles on that potential at the time and thought it was more likely another front on the anti-ecig wars. . . and not a serious threat. Most people who buy e-cigs will charge them with the charger than comes with their e-cigs, not with their computers.
I recall that many years ago, under MacOS 7 or so, when the UK version of MacWorld magazine was sold including a CD on their monthly issues, one of the issues came with a publisher installed virus unknown to the publisher. Can you imagine the embarrassment on the part of the editors and publishers? Not good for their subscribers or newsstand purchasers.
Naw, they could do that at any time. Hell, they put the ROMs in from the get-go. This is a one-off exploit where someone wants to watch what you do. . . steal data, credit-card numbers, Identifity theft, secret formulas, etc.
If they really wanted to screw with us, they could imbed a time-bomb code in all of our computers set to go off on a specific date. . . and just kill everything from working at a specific time, coordinated for time zones. In the chaos created, walk right on in with the People's Army.
I'm willing to bet, not fine enough. . . considering the exploits the found about six months ago in USB.
Ha-ha, good one. I've encountered sloppy security at many places. One time one of my daughters was working as an editor at a magazine publishing company. She would bring me copies of the latest issues. So I was curious about an issue I hadn't received yet where she had written an article. Via the Internet, I checked their website, and with some tinkering (I used to be a network guru) I got into their internal networks and saw everything they were working on. I could have changed anything if I wished. Yup, they had factory default passwords on routers and servers. Got the latest stuff, told my daughter and she went pale! Via my daughter, it was brought to the bosses attention and fixed pronto!
Security is only as good as the people guarding the systems, some of which are asleep or lazy.
All of you with Macs will have to put up with this until you buy a Windows PC with Windows 10m on it later this year : )
(smiles)
Where are most hard drive manufactured? That alone should give one pause.
bttt
Read the thread and information there in, but don't worry too much about it. It isn't a problem. Don't even bother to install any anti-virus on YOUR new MacBook Pro. I manage dozens of Macs and none of them have been crippled by installing Mac Anti-Virus software ever and not one of them has ever had any malware infect them. The OS X Mac operating system will warn you if you attempt to download, install, or run a known trojan horse application. . . and those are all you really have to worry about on a Mac.
One pitfall new Mac users who were Windows users fall into is they think they have to "protect" their Mac from malware the way they had to protect their Windows box. It is unnecessary.
Thanks for the bigger picture perspective. I was definitely going to ask you about it!
Hi guys! Just dropping in to touch base.
A few weeks ago, we purchased the MacPro laptop and had a devil of a time getting it up and running. HOWEVER, we called the customer service, and were greatly impressed, because they actually DO give service.
Our situation was screened by a number of automated menu questions and apparently we were judged as to having genuine need for serious help. The guy who was head of the department helped us! He got us up and running.
There have been a few other questions, but largely have been able to surmount them, if they are apple issue. Otherwise, on some programs, I’m having to contact the program writers to get assistance.
Right now I’m wondering what to do to get my apple hooked up to my printer. The little I’ve been able to surmise is that the easiest thing I can do to get printed material is to directly hook it up to my printer, which I’m happy to do do. Only problem, is I don’t know what kind of wire or cable equipment I need to get to have that happen.
I was hoping one of you guys could advise me!
Thanks!
PS... today, when I was plunking around, I noticed a black dot under some of the icons on the bottom of what I think is called the “dock.” What are those?
There are two networked approaches and one direct connect approach. The USB cable for the direct approach should come with the printer.
If your printer is fairly recent (within the past five years), your MacBook Pro should recognize it automatically and set it up for you. Just select the Printers&Scanners preference pane, unlock it by clicking the padlock on the lower left of the window, which will require an administrator user's name and password, and then clicking the plus (+) in the window of the list of printers available and then it will search for available printers. If you have plugged in your USB cabled printer and turned it on, the Mac will find it and configure it for you.
If you have a WIFI printer that has been configured to see your WIFI network, the Mac will also see that and set it up automatically.
More complicated is setting up a Network printer using Ethernet . . . You will need to know the TCP/IP address of the printer (it should be set to the same domain as your home Ethernet network) and then you can add a network printer in the same area using the Other printer . . . Once you have put in the TCP/IP address, the Mac will identify the printer and auto set-up or ask for an install disk or offer to search the web for drivers. Most times it will already have the drivers on the Mac and just auto-setup. Done.
That should do what you need.
The only cables you may need are either a USB cable from the computer to the printer or an ethernet adapter and cable to a router. I hope this helps.
Dear Swordmaker,
That is so helpful! Thank you so much. You said, “The only cables you may need are either a USB cable from the computer to the printer or an ethernet adapter and cable to a router..”
So when I go to a computer store, what do I ask for? I did locate an available USB port on our recent model Brother printer. For the cable, I suppose I need the USB male on one end for the printer, but what is on the other end of the cable to plug in to the laptop? The cable that came with our printer is already in use with our desktop. But right now, I’m not sure which laptop port I would need to be accessing with the cable to hook it up to the printer. Do I need to get this cord from Apple, or is it a generic cord that can be used by any similar device?
Thanks again!
Any generic USB cable. However, a lot of fairly recent Brother printers have WIFI capabilities. You might want to check for that.
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