Remote Kill Switches are a Bad Idea
Thursday, May 29th, 2014
Recently I’ve been hearing about government support for remote kill switches, say in automobiles for law enforcement use, or in cell phones for when they’re stolen. And my first thought is always that some hacker is going to find a way to trigger the switch and cause all kinds of problems.
Apparently the hackers had the same thought. The linked article covers a situation where stolen iCloud credentials were used to lock out iPhones via the “Find My iPhone” anti-theft feature.
Link: http://time.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
If you get an email from Apple talking about a $5 settlement, don’t dismiss it as spam—there’s a good chance it’s legitimate. The settlement is for people who made purchases within an app (say for game aids). See the linked articles for more information.
The author of the linked article argues that most tablet manufacturers are making a mistake by trying to cram as many high-tech hardware features as possible into their tablet computers. He contends that, aside from a small number of gadget-loving technophiles, users don’t care about those features. He then goes on to say that Apple and Amazon have the right idea, which is to create a solid base of services that integrate with the tablet, and that this infrastructure is what’s making their tablets successful. His argument makes sense to me, and if he’s right, I think we can see a shakeout in the industry within two or three years.
There’s just something magical about buying a product for 99¢. And in the digital world, where the cost of producing another copy is essentially zero, you can make serious money from a quality item that’s priced at 99¢. Steve Jobs figured this out, and it’s part of what made the iTunes Store so popular. Later, when the music labels wanted to raise the price slightly on newer songs, he fought them tooth and nail, saying that even a small price increase would ruin things. The labels won that battle, but that doesn’t have to be the case with self-published books on Amazon. The profit on a 99¢ book is 35¢, and it really adds up if you sell a few hundred thousand copies. The linked article is a bit old, but it reinforces the benefits of this sales model where you sell many, many digital copies of an item for a low price. The author of the article, for instance, saw his sales of 
Remember how Apple flat out refused to allow 
Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we use 
Breaking AT&T’s monopoly on the iPhone in the United States, 