Free Republic

Apple said Thursday that its mobile, desktop and Web services weren’t affected by a major flaw in a set of security software used by hundreds of thousands of websites. The flaw, codenamed “Heartbleed” and first reported by Web security firm Codenomicon, was discovered in a technology called “OpenSSL” — a set of encryption software used by Web companies to safeguard user information. Sites that use OpenSSL will display a small “lock” icon in the top left-hand corner of your Web browser’s address bar (though not all sites showing this lock use OpenSSL); the technology is used on more than two-thirds...

It is the talk of the Valley. A high-stakes negotiation is taking place in Silicon Valley among some of the biggest names in the industry — Apple and Google among them — over accusations that they were involved in a collusion to prevent their employees from being hired at rival companies. The employees filed a class-action suit, contending that the illegal hiring practices cost employees $9 billion in lost wages. Now the companies are locked in mediation sessions, hoping to settle the case in the next several weeks. The question being whispered all over town now is how much will...

<p>Global Equities' Chowdhry is obsessed with the idea that Tim Cook must go.</p> <p>For Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster it's Apple television. For Bernstein's Toni Sacconaghi it's Apple's cash hoard. For Global Equities' Trip Chowdhry, it's Jon Rubinstein.</p> <p>Yes, Jon Rubinstein, called the "Podfather" for his role in developing Apple's portable music player.</p>

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is hard at work laying the groundwork for an almost certain presidential campaign in 2016, but as he broadens his support among libertarian and younger voters, there’s a budding countercampaign to take him down if he becomes a threat to actually win the nomination. At the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) meeting in Las Vegas this weekend, Paul was nowhere to be found, but his presence was felt in the form of a straw man — and frequent worry. Speaker after speaker, from former Florida governor Jeb Bush to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, laid into Paul’s...

Love him or hate him, there's no doubt Steve Jobs was a fascinating, complex and contradictory figure. Two years on from his untimely death, you can now watch biopic Jobs on Netflix in the US. Ashton Kutcher dons the black turtle-neck in a dramatisation spanning Jobs' early life as a college drop-out in the 1970s to the launch of the iPod in 2001, taking in the period he left to start a rival firm and his eventual triumphant return. Director Joshua Michael Stern isn't afraid to portray the uncompromising Apple co-founder in an unsympathetic light, but moves too briskly through...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday rejected Apple's request for a permanent sales ban in the United States against some older Samsung smartphones, a key setback for the iPhone maker in its global patent battle. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, ruled that Apple Inc had not presented enough evidence to show that its patented features were a significant enough driver of consumer demand to warrant an injunction. Apple and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd have been litigating for nearly three years over various smartphone features patented by Apple, such as the use of fingers...

I just downloaded IOS 7 on my iPhone, and I cannot stand it. It is draining my battery. I cannot delete messages or voicemails easily. The calendar function is difficult to navigate. I just plain don't like it. I tried to restore a backup, but that only restores contacts and music, not the firmware. Thanks.

The Western institutionalization of sharia norms. A Swedish art professor has applauded Apple’s promise to diversify its emoticon options, including figures wearing religious headgear such as the hijab. “It’s great, we need people with different skin colours among the emojis, and people with different clothes, from the hijab to the kippa,” illustration professor Joanna Rubin Dranger at Stockholm’s Konstfack academy told the TT news wire on Thursday. The website DoSomething.org first let the battle cry sound, asking Apple to take a closer look at its 800 emojis. “The only two resembling people of colour are a guy who looks vaguely...

“Apple has been known to mark big numerical milestones, celebrating the 50 billionth download from its App Store last May and the 30th anniversary of the Mac earlier this year,” Mark Rogowsky reports for Forbes. “But it appears to have quietly let a big one pass within the last few weeks as somewhere on earth, the 500 millionth iPhone was sold. Despite much consternation in the media that the high-end of the market is reaching saturation, this data point demonstrates that iPhone sales continue to accelerate for Apple even if the rate of that acceleration is less breathtaking than it...

A new report suggests bigger isn’t better, when it comes to watching television programming. Deloitte found that Millennials rather watch movies and television shows on computers, smartphones, and tablets. These details were recently published in the firm’s annual Digital Democracy Survey. Those between the ages of 14 and 24 only watch TV shows on an actual television set 44 percent of the time. Thirty-two percent of the time, TV shows are consumed on a desktop or laptop. Smartphones and tablets make up another 16 percent, while gaming devices are used 8 percent. This is the first time computers, smartphones, and...

Jobs's Ultimatum: Lay Out a Vision Fast or Lose the Project In February 2005, Apple Inc.'s then chief executive, Steve Jobs, gave senior software engineer Greg Christie an ultimatum. Mr. Christie's team had been struggling for months to lay out the software vision for what would become the iPhone as well as how the parts would work together. Now, Mr. Jobs said the team had two weeks or he would assign the project to another group. "Steve had pretty much had it," said Mr. Christie, who still heads Apple's user-interface team. "He wanted bigger ideas and bigger concepts." Mr. Christie's...

Apple may be the most valuable company on the planet, but two and a half years into the Tim Cook era, it already looks like a different outfit. Though Cook has brought revenue up 58 percent, and profits up 40 percent, the Steve Jobs-led fervor to innovate seems to be subsiding. Apple is in an industry where it has to keep coming up with daring new breakthroughs, and the famously bland Cook doesn’t seem like the man to deliver them. Revenues in the last fiscal year were up only 9.6 percent, the slowest increase in a decade, and earnings fell...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I saw a promo the other day for Google (GOOG) Work. Sadly, I can't locate it or I would have inserted it here so you could see it for yourself. However, it might be fitting that you can't see the promo. Because Google's assault on Microsoft (MSFT) continues to fly under the radar. For whatever reason, it's the most under covered story in tech ... in finance ... and for the sake of extraneous ellipses ... the world. But it's real and it's happening. And Microsoft has no idea what to do in response. How could...

Apple has revealed that iOS 7 is now running on an impressive 85% of iOS devices, compared with just 2.5% of Android devices running the latest version, KitKat. In a change to its developer website at the end of on 25 March, Apple revealed that its newest mobile operating system is now running on 85 per cent of iOS devices, according to data collected over the 7-day period ending 23 March. That's up from the 74 per cent Apple boasted at the beginning of December, and the 78 per cent touted at the beginning of January. The increase comes at...

Apple blew up the rules of branding because Jobs simply didn't recognize them. He didn't follow the approved checklist, and he never did what he was supposed to do. He knew that someone else's success wouldn't be his own, not because of his ego, but because it's a fact that imitating others has never resulted in great successes. He left it to Apple's competitors to produce lame, unsold computers with colorful lids, knockoff ads that inadvertently made Apple look better and a world of smartphones and tablets that look like iPhones and iPads. In doing so, Apple focused on doing...

Fresh out of Stanford Business School, I started a software company, T/Maker, with my brother Peter. He was the software architect and I was, well, everything else. Our little company was among the first to ship software for the Macintosh, and we developed a positive reputation among the members of the nascent developer community, which led us to expanding our business by publishing software for other independent developers. Two of our developers, Randy Adams and William Parkhurst, went to work for Steve Jobs at his new company, NeXT, and that’s how I ended up head to head with Steve Jobs....

Who’s the mystery tenant moving into San Jose's biggest-ever office park? That’s the million-dollar question everyone in Silicon Valley is scrambling to answer. Speculation started flying as soon as San Jose city officials approved the 2-million square-foot office project on North First Street and Brokaw Road in North San Jose on Wednesday. The list of potential occupants includes everybody from Seattle-based Microsoft and Amazon, to locals Apple, Google and Facebook. So far, the only person at City Hall who reportedly knows the name of the company is San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, and he’s not talking. "The company name is...

Starting today, Apple will no longer sell the iPad 2. Even though the iPad 2 launched in early 2011, Apple has kept it around at a lower price. When Apple started selling the current iPad Air last fall, it still sold the iPad 2 starting at $399. Now, Apple will sell the iPad with Retina display, commonly referred to as the "iPad 4" because it was the fourth generation of the product, starting at $399. (The iPad 2 did not have the super-sharp Retina display.)

Full Title: iPhone users are disappointed with the iOS 7.1 software update that's draining their batteries, erasing their contacts, and flipping their keyboards With every new I-phone software update comes the potential for problems and the iOS 7.1 released on Monday is no exception. Customer's say it's killing their phone batteries among other pesky glitches. The iOS7.1 is the first major update to Apple's newest operating systems for iPhones and iPads and the apple community is lamenting poor battery charges, disappearing contacts, bad Bluetooth connections, keyboards oriented the wrong way, and the list goes on, reports the Huffington Post.

A long time ago, Facebook launched an app store. If you didn't know that fact, don't be alarmed. People don't talk much about the Facebook App Center any more. That's because almost everyone downloads the apps they need from Apple's App Store and the Google Play store on Android. It's a powerful duopoly, and everyone is used to it. Apps and downloads are one of Apple's fastest-growing, least-talked about businesses. They generate $4.4 billion per quarter, and are projected to be more profitable than iPads and Macs. Android and the Google Play store that supplies it run on up to...