Category Archives: News

News

Apple preparing to pull Aperture from the Mac App Store

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A recent update to the official Aperture website points to the end of the pro app. On the product page Apple has stated that “When Photos for OS X is available this spring, Aperture will no longer be available for purchase from the Mac App Store”. We were warned that this day would come during 2014’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) where Apple briefly showed on stage Photos for OS X – the successor of both Aperture and iPhoto.

Photos for OS X is the desktop counterpart to the Photos app that ships with your iOS device. Just like its mobile version, the software will have built-in support for iCloud Photo Library – Apple’s solution to storing all of your photos and their non-destructive edits in the cloud and making them available on all of your devices. In terms of functionality, we expect that Photos for OS X will be a suitable replacement and even an upgrade for iPhoto users, but may leave professional photographers and fans of Aperture disappointed. In addition to the built-in features, the app will also serve as a system-wide platform for photo manipulation by allowing OS X and iOS developers to create photo extensions which can be used directly inside the Photos app.

In terms of visuals, Photos for OS X feels at home in Yosemite thanks to its flat and translucent interface. The app’s layout is very similar to its iOS counterpart – you have all of your photos organized into Moments, Collections and Years. The Shared and Albums tabs are also present and allow you to organize the photos you’ve taken and view images shared by your friends and family. A new addition that’s only available on Photos for OS X is the Project tab, a place where you can create slideshows, calendars, photo books, cards, print orders, etc.

The new desktop application is expected to ship this spring with the release of Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, most likely during a special event where it will be demonstrated on stage once again. Apple recently released its first beta of 10.10.3 to developers and Photos for OS X is indeed present.

Even though the introduction of the desktop Photos app marks the end of Aperture, The Loop reports that Apple has no plans to discontinue their other pro apps – Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. So you need not worry if one of those two apps is critical to your workflow – they’re not going anywhere. If you’re a photographer, on the other hand, you may want to look into alternatives to Aperture like Adobe Lightroom. While the current version of Aperture does work on Yosemite and will continue to do so after it’s retired, there are no guarantees that it will support the next major version of Apple’s desktop operating system.

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After recent update Wi-Fi issues continue to plague OS X users

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Ever since the official launch of Mac OS X Yosemite in October 2014, numerous users have been plagued by Wi-Fi connectivity and reliability problems as evidenced by the lengthy thread in the Apple Support Communities forum. Currently there are 2,570 replies to the thread and over 834,000 views. Even after the releases of OS X 10.10.1 and the recent 10.10.2 system update, both of which contain Wi-Fi improvements, many Mac owners still do not have fully functional machines.

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10.10.2 OS X update that acknowledges a Wi-Fi Issue / Fix

The issues reported range from a noticeable lag and a reduction in Wi-Fi speed to an outright lack of connectivity. While we have not experienced such problems on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, others have been much less fortunate. Macworld’s Karen Haslam recounts the challenge she was facing as she was trying to apply the 10.10.2 system update to her MacBook Air while having a non-existent Wi-Fi connection. Hers was a particularly dire situation since MacBook Air model don’t come with an ethernet port, so the main way of going online is via Wi-Fi. She managed to update her laptop by using her iPhone’s LTE connection over USB. Unfortunately, 10.10.2 did not remedy her Wi-Fi woes.

So is there a solution?

If your Wi-Fi has been unreliable since you upgraded to OS X Yosemite and you’ve tried the different suggestions found in Apple’s Support Communities, it may be worth wiping your Mac and installing a fresh copy of Yosemite.

It is always a good idea to do a clean install of new operating systems, rather than to just upgrade your existing one since all kinds of files and preferences get carried over and not all of them are beneficial. In fact, if you’ve been upgrading your operating system for a few generations already, your Mac will be slower than expected, will have suboptimal battery life and may experience odd glitches and reliability problems.

Unfortunately, with each new release of OS X, and especially after the introduction of the Mac App Store back in the beginning of 2011, Apple has been making it increasingly difficult to perform a clean installation of Mac OS X. If you decide to go down this route, we strongly recommend that you install OS X Yosemite directly, rather than using the installation media or recovery disk that came with your MacBook.

While doing a clean Yosemite install is possible, it requires some extra steps. For an easy to follow tutorial on how to create a USB thumb drive containing the OS X installer, check out guide here. Alternatively, you can perform Internet Recovery which doesn’t require additional hardware. A step by step tutorial can be found here.

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Apple reportedly agrees to security inspections by the Chinese Government

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A rumor was sparked recently with an article published in The Beijing News and later covered by IT World where an anonymous source claims that Tim Cook has agreed to have Apple products be subjected to spontaneous inspections. Those inspections would have the goal of verifying that there are no backdoors and that the data stored on Macs and iOS devices is indeed secure.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook met with the head of China’s State Information Office Lu Wei last November to discuss Apple’s products and the Apple Watch in particular as well as China’s security concerns when it comes to Apple and its software and hardware. The anonymous source cited in The Beijing News article has revealed that Tim Cook had openly stated: “We do not, and will not provide a back door”, while Lu Wei has insisted that “We need to draw conclusions, so that consumers must be assured”. In the end, the Cupertino CEO is said to have agreed to spot checks that should:

Ensure information security and privacy of users, while maintaining national security.

While we have no solid evidence that Tim Cook has agreed to such inspections, it is not as outlandish as it may sound. Even though letting Chinese government officials in on Apple’s secrets is a big risk due to China’s lax copyright law enforcement, the Chinese market is a crucial one for the Cupertino company’s long-term success since it provides a lot of potential consumers and is projected to grow in the next several years. So in that sense the rumor falls into the realm of possibility, if not probability.

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For the last few years Apple has been pushing to increase its appeal to the Chinese market in every way they can – from just recently opening their largest Apple Store on the Asian continent in Hangzhou, China, to releasing new products in China on the same day as Apple does in the US, to introducing new Siri languages and features aimed directly at the Chinese consumers such as the addition of Baidu as a search provider, an improved Chinese input method, a new dictionary, sharing capabilities to the Sina Weibo microblog as well as the Youku and Tudou video sites.

So what are the implications if the alleged agreement turns out to be true? The bad news for Apple is that it will be sharing private code and internal hardware designs with multiple Chinese officials assigned to investigate its products until they are satisfied that there are no backdoors or other unwanted software that endangers the consumers’ privacy. The silver lining, at least for us consumers, is that such an investigation will add a layer of transparency to Apple’s internal procedures and possibly reassure us that our data is secure.

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Apple files SEC Report, detailing executive team income for 2014

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On January 22, Apple filed a report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in which it detailed the monetary and equity compensations that have been paid to the top ranking company executives. According to the report, which is available for online viewing here, Tim Cook took home $9.2 million which is twice as much as last year. While the basic salary of Apple’s CEO was $1.75 million, he was also awarded a non-equity incentive compensation of $7.45 million.

Peter Oppenheimer, the company’s former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, had a base salary of a little under a million and $3.4 million in incentives for a total of $4.5 million. His successor, Luca Maestri, started off with a base salary of $711.211, an incentive package of $1.6 million and $11.3 million in Apple stock. This made his total income for the year a little over $14 million.

Often seen on the keynote stage, Eddie Cue was awarded a total of $24.4 million. With a base salary just shy of one million, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services was given an additional $3.4 million in non-equity incentives as well as $20 million in stock. The Senior Vice President of Operations, Jeff Williams, saw a very similar reward for his work – a total of $24.4 million. Starting off with a base salary just under one million, he was given a non-equity incentive compensation of $3.4 million as well as $20 million in stock.

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Source: SEC

The newest addition to company’s executive team, Angela Ahrendts started her career at Apple with a base salary of $411.538, a $500.000 bonus, a non-equity incentive plan compensation of $1.6 million and a whopping $70 million in Apple stock. Leaving her old position as the CEO of the luxury clothing company Burberry, Ms Ahrendts joined the Cupertino team in May of last year as the Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores, becoming the first female in Apple’s top ranks and making $73.3 million in the process.

If you haven’t paid (pardon the pun) much attention to the earnings of Apple’s top executives, you may be surprised to find out that Tim Cook, the CEO, isn’t the one getting the most money this year. In fact, he’s fifth on the list. And to make things even more bizarre, the newcomer Ms Ahrendts made eight times more. There is, of course, a perfectly reasonable explanation for the difference in numbers: whenever a new employee starts his or her contract, they are given restricted stock units (RSUs). These are stocks that become unlocked over time as the contract of the person progresses. For example, in previous CES filings we can see that Tim Cook was awarded an astonishing $376 million in stocks alone when he was named CEO back in 2011.

That explains compensations of Angela Ahrendts and Luca Maestri, but what about Jeff Williams and Eddie Cue? They both received $20 million in stock despite being with the company for a while. It comes down to talent retention. As observed by John Gruber of Daring Fireball and Guy English, since the release of the iPhone and iPad, many very talented people have left Apple in search of the next big thing. In that sense, it is perfectly understandable why Apple would attempt to retain its most talented employees by giving them more money and stocks, making them literally invested in the company.

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New Mac OS X vulnerabilities publicly disclosed by Google’s Project Zero Team

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Ars Technica reports that Google’s Project Zero team has made public three security vulnerabilities found in Mac OS X. Fortunately, Apple has been made aware of the issues prior to their public release and has already fixed one of the vulnerabilities while the other two will be fixed in the upcoming release of Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 which is currently in beta.

Project Zero is a white hat hacking group formed and funded by Google that attempts to breach the security of all major systems that everyday users depend on. Once the group finds a system vulnerability, they get in touch with the company that maintains the software, informs them of the problem and even gives them proof-of-concept source code that demonstrates the issue. The developers of the software product then have three months to implement patches and release them to their customers. As soon as the three months expire, Project Zero publishes the “0day” vulnerability on their website along with the proof-of-concept source code.

Apple is not the only company that has had their vulnerabilities publicly released. Microsoft has also recently experienced the uncomfortable situation of having unpatched Windows bugs in the wild. Fortunately for Apple customers, the issues discovered by the Project Zero team are rather isolated since they require the attacker to have local access to the Mac. In other words, either someone needs to have physical access to your machine in order to hack it, or they need to combine the 0day exploits with other vulnerabilities that will grant them local access.

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The three exploits found by the Project Zero team are the following:

– The first issue has to do with a sandbox bug.

– The second vulnerability exposes an exploitable NULL pointer in the kernel.

– The third 0day bug has do to with a security loophole in Apple’s Bluetooth stack.

Leaving aside whether it’s good of the Project Zero team to publicly release information about vulnerabilities that will soon be patched, these recent events have once again raised the question: Is Apple doing too many things at once and not devoting enough time to solidify the performance and security of its platforms?

A growing number of users support the opinion that Apple has too many balls in the air and the amount of time it can spend on each one is very limited. Between the annual software release cycles of iOS and OS X (and possibly Watch OS going forward), Apple engineers have less and less time to iron out bugs and streamline the operation of the operating systems. The solution brought forward is that Apple needs to take a year during which to focus not on new features, but on making sure that all the features and functionality “just work”. We’ve already seen the Cupertino company do this with the move from Mac OS X Leopard to Mac OS X Snow Leopard.