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They are still making loads of money with the iPhone - but their global market share is shrinking relentlessly. This is just proof that they have seen the writing in the wall.

ORLY?

Then how do you explain THIS, or THIS?

This seems very similar to the Doze feature that is coming in Android M.

"... it's not the disaster that people are making it out to be."

One of the issues is this: "people" are saying negative things. Apple has become a gay-supporting, headphone-selling, watch-making corporation that announces products before they are ready.

Apple's Tim Cook profiled as "most powerful gay man in Silicon Valley"

5 Reasons Apple Headphones Are The Actual Worst. We are all victims.

Exclusive: Corrupt Apple Store Employees Come Forward Across America (12/20/12)

Apple CEO Tim Cook is apparently not someone who can handle being a CEO. A capable CEO would not run a company in a way that gets so much negative or distracting publicity.

Does Tim Cook deserve to be paid so much? "Cook's pay package was valued at $378 million when he became Apple's CEO."

Yes, it tells the time. The watch shows text messages on an iPhone so that it isn't necessary to take the phone out of a pocket. But, does that justify paying $500 or $1,000?

Would you want your company to suffer the destruction of reputation faced by Apple?

Seven problems facing the Apple Watch

Apple Watch: Issues We Know Of And Possible Fixes.

Opinion: One month later, fixing 15 early Apple Watch problems seems straightforward

These 8 problems with the Apple Watch are 'infuriating'

9 of the biggest complaints about the Apple Watch so far

8 Infuriating Problems With The Apple Watch

And Apple shares have outperformed Gold, so by this logic, the world should switch to using Apple shares as currency?

What is this "Apple" of which you speak? Oh, you mean the gay-supporting, headphone-selling, law-breaking, watch-making Apple that hasn't updated the Safari browser, and now announces products before they are ready?

You can see why Google had to shaft Apple and push Android though. Imagine the situation they would be in now if Apple dominated all mobile and they were dependent on their 'generosity' to allow advertising and services through...

To a large extent Google's mobile advertising business is already dependent on Apple's "generosity". Up to 75% of Google's mobile ad revenue is dependent on Apple's continued placement of Google as the default search engine on its iOS devices http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05... - a treasured position which Google pays Apple an estimated $2 billion a year to hold onto http://bgr.com/2015/05/27/ipho.... The loss of of mobile advertising revenue from iOS platforms would knock over 13% off Googles total revenue (nearly $9 billion in 2014 numbers)

Yes, things could be a lot worse if Google had not entered the market with its own mobile operating system... But with support for ad blocking, Apple is going after Google, not Android (after having earned 90% of the smartphone profits in 2014, Apple needs Android as much as Microsoft needed the Mac in the late 1990's to stave off the scrutiny of regulators around the world).

According to Jason Calacanis https://www.linkedin.com/pulse..., Tim Cook is slowly getting revenge on Google on behalf of Steve Jobs - without doing it directly... "We did not enter the search business," Jobs said. "They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them..." So, Tim Cook is playing the slow revenge game....

Given the revenue challenges that all Android OEMs are facing (with the obvious exception of Samsung), by going after Google's ability to remain Android's the benevolent benefactor - i.e. ad revenue - Apple may yet give Steve Jobs the revenge he sought... only it will not be the thermonuclear victory he envisaged... its a slow war of attrition.

A rising tide will lift all boats," he added. "It's the beginning of an amazing moment for our industry."

Anyone remember Apple Pay with the already available credit card information? Well, according to some, it looks like a dud already. This could well be the same because I for one, have no intention of ever being a subscriber. I am sure I am not alone.

http://www.techradar.com/news/...
http://bgr.com/2015/02/13/ios-...

Not absolutely convinced they are that accurate, but none of the rates I've seen show much difference between the two platforms and you'd expect them to be very different if fragmentation was a problem.

I'm not convinced these are particularly reliable, but if fragmentation was the bogeyman issue it's claimed to be then you'd expect these rates to significantly favour iOS, and they don't, or even tend the opposite.

http://www.techradar.com/news/...
http://bgr.com/2015/02/13/ios-...

Especially if BlackBerry's treatment of this Samsung device doesn't remove the backdoors in the baseband firmware...

I know this is the second, uh, let's-just-say-"story" about Blackphone in four days, but I think it should be noted that the stolen Gemalto keys may have included "OTA keys" that can be used for over-the-air SIM card upgrades:

Access to these encryption keys do not give governmental agencies only the power to monitor cellular communications, including calls and data, but they also come with additional perks, such as the power of instructing a device to install specific programs.

Spyware could be installed on the SIM card itself, and then it could be used to install additional spy apps on a phone without the user's knowledge, or to retrieve data from it.

From the Verge story:

Manufacturers can send a binary text message directly to the SIM card, and as long as it's signed with the proper OTA key, the card will install the attached software without question. If those keys were compromised, it would give an attacker carte blanche to install all manner of spyware.

So apparently it does matter.

One of the reason people developed for iOS first was the platform had users who on average had higher incomes and spent more money on apps. So if you were trying to develop an application to sell it was more likely to show a return. Also there is more piracy of apps on Android.

It depends how you get your return. This of course does not apply to free applications. And most are free.
Most non-gamers do not pay for software on their PC either. Except Windows and Office, most used software is free. Web Browser, media player, text editor, file archiver, chat/video client, PDF reader, even most developer tools (IDE, compilers, version control).
I don't understand why people are expected to buy more software on their phone then on their PC.

One of the reason people developed for iOS first was the platform had users who on average had higher incomes and spent more money on apps. So if you were trying to develop an application to sell it was more likely to show a return. Also there is more piracy of apps on Android.

It depends how you get your return. This of course does not apply to free applications. And most are free.
Most non-gamers do not pay for software on their PC either. Except Windows and Office, most used software is free. Web Browser, media player, text editor, file archiver, chat/video client, PDF reader, even most developer tools (IDE, compilers, version control).
I don't understand why people are expected to buy more software on their phone then on their PC.

One of the reason people developed for iOS first was the platform had users who on average had higher incomes and spent more money on apps. So if you were trying to develop an application to sell it was more likely to show a return. Also there is more piracy of apps on Android.

One of the reason people developed for iOS first was the platform had users who on average had higher incomes and spent more money on apps. So if you were trying to develop an application to sell it was more likely to show a return. Also there is more piracy of apps on Android.

But what patents do Samsung and Google have in this regard? Surely they didn't go to market without IP protection and therefore the prior art argument?

Samsung going into a market where they know they infringe on patents? Why, never. http://bgr.com/2014/05/06/samsung-patent-lawsuit-history/

I learned that Microsoft PAYS people to use Bing search! But people only get paid if they do Bing searches directly, not through Yahoo.

I don't understand how that works. Can someone make a software robot to do searches and visit ads, and then get paid? Why have a job when your computer can make money unaided?

Microsoft pays Yahoo, Yahoo then paid Mozilla Foundation to sneakily make Bing the default search engine, and not Google search, realizing that most people don't have the technical ability to know why their search results have begun to be less relevant.

So:

1) To get people to use its search engine, Microsoft feels that it is necessary to pay. That is an acknowledgement that Microsoft's Bing search is not of sufficient quality to do well without payment.

2) 31% of Yahoo's revenue comes from Microsoft paying it to use Bing.

3) That, basically, is an ad campaign to sell other browsers. As mentioned above, Yahoo paid Mozilla Foundation to change the search configuration of Firefox, without notice. I imagine that most people won't know what went wrong or how to re-configure Firefox. When people have problems with Firefox, they may switch to another browser, like Google's Chrome, or Pale Moon's 64-bit version of Firefox.

4) People may think they are using Yahoo search, but there is no such thing as "Yahoo search". Actually, without being notified, Yahoo customers are using Microsoft Bing search, and their search information is being given to Microsoft.

5) Microsoft pays Yahoo to use Bing. Yahoo pays Firefox to use Bing. Eventually, when the news about why Bing use is increasing is more widely known, people who don't feel comfortable with that sneaky behavior may switch to Google Chrome. In effect, Microsoft is paying for a powerful ad campaign to get people to switch to another browser.

6) Those who want to be paid by Microsoft must use Bing directly, not through Yahoo.

7) The trickiness and dishonesty may cause further collapse of Yahoo. In effect, Yahoo is being paid by Microsoft to decrease the popularity of Yahoo.

8) In effect, Microsoft is paying Mozilla Foundation to make Firefox less popular.

9) That may be a way to artificially increase Bing's search traffic, But It's Not Good (BING). To me, that's another example of Microsoft DIE, the Dastardly Insertion of Evil.

10) And, of course, all of that is bad for Microsoft's already bad reputation because of being adversarial to customers, decreasing the popularity of anything from Microsoft. So, Microsoft is paying to decrease the popularity of Microsoft.

That is so WEIRD that I feel compelled to joke about it. (WEIRD = When Every Idea Rates Dumb)

Let's see if it does.

Oh Say Can You See. And just after Apple Christmas break ended too, huh! Who would have thought it. Oh wait, I did.

I guess it's YOU who are the "special little snowflake" emphasis on Special... do you ever get tired of being totally unable to predict easily predicted events? Isn't it kind o hard to live life where every single thing that happens is a total surprise and against your instincts?

As always, ignoring responses from idiots. You can guess what I will do with your response.

Even though the Pirate Bay move to North Korea was a hoax, but if North Korea really wanted to exact revenge on the industry why wouldn't they take an approach that would really hurt them and actually host pirated content?

While we're talking about Samsung, cheaters still find ways to cheat benchmarks.. I wonder if Nvidia could sue over stealing their benchmark cheating methods too...

"It is very illegal for a merchant to store your credit card number"

http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/22/news/companies/target-credit-card-hack/

http://bgr.com/2014/09/22/home-depot-credit-card-hack/

Then how do these CC thefts occur?

Well this is the same guy that said that the iPhone would never sell. Also the iPad was a "bubble". At the time I thought he was just cheerleading for MS and Windows because he was CEO. Now upon hearing that he's purging the LA Clippers of all non MS gear it appears that he has a strong bias.

[citation needed].

Apple includes of an undocumented file-relay service in iOS that is only useful for spying.

"Its sole purposes is to dish out data, bypass backup encryption, and give you almost the same amount of personal data you get from a backup on the phone, in some cases even more. We really need someone at Apple to step up and explain why this is here. There's no logical reason why it should be there on 600 million devices," points out Zdziarski.

http://www.techtimes.com/artic...

The NSA may be responsible for iOS 7’s biggest security vulnerability.

According to a tweet from Jeffery Grossman, this vulnerability has been present in the software since iOS 6. Based on the leaked PowerPoint document which exposed PRISM, Apple and its devices were added to the NSA program in October 2012, just one month after the release of iOS 6. Whether or not the NSA planted the exploit itself, Gruber believes there is a chance the government agency was aware of it and took advantage of it to gain access to private information.

“Once the bug was in place, the NSA wouldn’t even have needed to find the bug by manually reading the source code,” wrote Gruber. “All they would need are automated tests using spoofed certificates that they run against each new release of every OS. Apple releases iOS, the NSA’s automated spoofed certificate testing finds the vulnerability, and boom, Apple gets “added” to PRISM.”

http://bgr.com/2014/02/25/appl...

Google/Motorola trying to extract four billion dollars out of Microsoft for some .mp3 patents?

Nope. You are thinking of Alcatel/Lucent. And technically Alcatel/Lucent couldn't ask for a specific amount of money; the award was 1.5 billion dollars but could have been 4.5 billion dollars had the jury decided it was willful infringement.

Microsoft isn't an angel, but they do pay license fees on patents, and they were paid up on MP3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel-Lucent_v._Microsoft_Corp.

Samsung being told by the EU that they could face a fine up to $17 billion unless they stop trying to use their patents in anti-competitive ways?

Yep. Actually up to $18.3 billion per this article:

http://bgr.com/2013/12/09/samsungs-patent-settlement-concessions-eu/

Gramatically speaking you're right, there is ambiguity. But practically speaking it should be quite clear they're talking about Nuance.

Except that Samsung substantially missed their predicted quarterly earnings for the quarter, whereas Nuance hit the midpoint of their projections.

The article says that it sold less in its first month than Apple sold iPhones 5S in the same month. http://bgr.com/2014/07/16/gala...

Samsung managed to sell 11 million Galaxy S5 units in the first month, beating the Galaxy S4 first month sales by 1 million units.

http://bgr.com/2014/05/15/gala...

Haha, 5 million in one story, 11 million in another. They can't even keep their story straight!

Nice choice of credible sources there, Apple guy. Methinks the RDF may have fogged your judgement...

The article says that it sold less in its first month than Apple sold iPhones 5S in the same month. http://bgr.com/2014/07/16/gala...

Samsung managed to sell 11 million Galaxy S5 units in the first month, beating the Galaxy S4 first month sales by 1 million units.

http://bgr.com/2014/05/15/gala...

Haha, 5 million in one story, 11 million in another. They can't even keep their story straight!

Nice choice of credible sources there, Apple guy. Methinks the RDF may have fogged your judgement...

Not sure about other products, but here is the recent article about Samsung Galaxy S5. Samsung sold 5 million Galaxy 5S phones in the entire month of May (which was evidently the first full month of sales) The article says that it sold less in its first month than Apple sold iPhones 5S in the same month. http://bgr.com/2014/07/16/gala...

I know there is always a "many Android phones vs one Apple" argument. But numbers are what they are.

There's also two Iphone 6's. If you're going to break it down, you should break it down.

However, the argument is usually Apple vs Google. In which case you can count both Iphone 6's vs a given generation of Android phones.

Yes, wouldn't it be wonderful is somebody released a Water resistant or waterproof mobile.

(more standardized wireless charging would be nice though)

Listen Apple, you didn't build a phone that people wanted, you built a phone that the press wanted. Not because they wanted it as a phone, but because they need to write stories about something. These are the same idiots that spent 20 years calling you beleaguered and taking bets on when you would go bankrupt. A larger phone won't do shit except change the narrative from "they need to release a larger phone" to "out of ideas and copying samsung"

Except 42% of US smart phone users handed money to Apple for the phones that nobody wanted. Apple earns 60% of profit for the whole smartphone segment. Yeah right, a product nobody wants but a lot of people are willing to pay a shitload of money for.

Because of things like this:

http://bgr.com/2014/08/15/appl...

Investors have filed a lawsuit against Apple alleging that the companyâ(TM)s various anti-poaching agreements ultimately hurt the companyâ(TM)s stock. The class action suit was filed last week by Apple shareholder R. Andre Klein and it alleges that the anti-poaching agreements then-CEO Steve Jobs put in place with Google, Intel and other companies were a breach of Appleâ(TM)s responsibility to Shareholders. Klein says the agreements were misleading to investors and ultimately damaged the value of the company.

There is no legal obligation to focus on profits. But there is a legal penalty for losing a shareholder lawsuit. So what happens is, a company announces some new method, described vaguely, for increasing future profits. Shareholders buy. stock prices barely move, or drop because revenue doesn't increase as announced. Now it's fraud.

As a company, traded or not, for the longevity of the company, they have to be focused on profits. If they also give a forward looking statement, even though disclaimers follow, the general idea is that they announced higher future profits, and must deliver. No penalties if they don't, unless a shareholder suit comes along.

*slow clap* because anecdotal evidence

I hate to break it to you (actually no, I enjoy it) but Blu-Ray is a dead format, Sony won the physical media war just in time for digital media to enter the scene

http://www.zdnet.com/whatever-...

Want an eye opener? Ok!
Blu-Ray sales (ending June 29th)
http://www.the-numbers.com/wee...
Biggest seller? Frozen with 7 million units

DVD sales (ending June 29th)
http://www.the-numbers.com/wee...
Biggest seller? Transformers with 16 million units, oh and there are more big numbers in that list adding up to an overwhelming difference in per unit sales

Maybe it's just a slow month you say? Here are the numbers for 2013:
http://www.the-numbers.com/hom...
http://www.the-numbers.com/hom...

Same story. DVD is still consistently moving more units, much to my surprise, I honestly thought it would be closer.

All this format war / pissing match conversation is pointless anyway because the day of the disc is done and digital sales will continue to increase.

http://bgr.com/2014/01/08/digi...

Turns out a stream from Netflix is good enough for most people, packaged media is dead meat

Personally speaking, I prefer the BluRay copy of "Breaking Bad" then a not quite always HD stream... then again I have a record collection, so what does that say about me

I'm sorry but you're incorrect. In 2007 Windows Mobile had the largest market share of any OS for mobile devices, with 42% of the market:
http://bgr.com/2011/12/13/appl...

They had tied Blackberry the year before, and edged them out in 2007 which was when iPhone was released. Then the next year iPhone took over.

Going back pre-smartphone, when the only real players in the PDA arena were Palm and Microsoft, Microsoft surpassed Palm in 2004, and from then on it was all downhill for Palm as they tried to update an archaic OS to utilize advances in hardware.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/65...

Microsoft soundly won the PDA war, but then were totally decimated soon after the PDA market transitioned into the Smart Phone market. In turn, Palm, then Blackberry, then Microsoft all owned the market and then stagnated, failed to innovate, and were superseded by new OSes that didn't have legacy issues (or trying to maintain backwards compatibility, etc).

Except for the fact that Apples handing all of your data over to the NSA anyway. Apple has a very cozy relationship with the US federal government. http://cdn.bgr.com/2013/11/app...

According to that table there were 0 - 1000 cases in which "some" content data was disclosed to law enforcement in the US (and 1 in the UK and 0 in about 30 other countries). You call this "a very cozy relationship"? With 313 million citizens in the US there were less than 1000 requests granted. What's "cozy" about that?

Not to mention that this number includes all requests for tracking down stolen phones and those from missing persons.

We're missing a number here - how many requests were *made*?

http://cdn.bgr.com/2013/11/app...

The data for the US is almost laughably vague. It could very well be that 1000 requests were made, and 1000 requests were granted.

100% success rate in complying with requests sounds pretty cozy to me...

People want to read something like "The iPhone has a secret backdoor for the NSA!!!". Anything much longer than that will never be read or understood by most people.

It's hopeless. Ask 100 people who have heard of this and 95 of them will tell you that it is proven now that the iPhone has a secret backdoor for the NSA over which all data can just be read by them.

(And I'm not even saying that it has NO such backdoor. Maybe it has. But this isn't it. This just isn't designed for mass surveillance, it needs a cooperating user and individual access to a device the user has connected his iPhone to. Maybe it's a side door for law enforcement and/or forensics additionally to a debugging tool.)

Except for the fact that Apples handing all of your data over to the NSA anyway. Apple has a very cozy relationship with the US federal government.
http://cdn.bgr.com/2013/11/app...

According to that table there were 0 - 1000 cases in which "some" content data was disclosed to law enforcement in the US (and 1 in the UK and 0 in about 30 other countries). You call this "a very cozy relationship"? With 313 million citizens in the US there were less than 1000 requests granted. What's "cozy" about that?

People want to read something like "The iPhone has a secret backdoor for the NSA!!!". Anything much longer than that will never be read or understood by most people.

It's hopeless. Ask 100 people who have heard of this and 95 of them will tell you that it is proven now that the iPhone has a secret backdoor for the NSA over which all data can just be read by them.

(And I'm not even saying that it has NO such backdoor. Maybe it has. But this isn't it. This just isn't designed for mass surveillance, it needs a cooperating user and individual access to a device the user has connected his iPhone to. Maybe it's a side door for law enforcement and/or forensics additionally to a debugging tool.)

Except for the fact that Apples handing all of your data over to the NSA anyway. Apple has a very cozy relationship with the US federal government.
http://cdn.bgr.com/2013/11/app...

But at least Apple held off for longer than some of the others:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-i...

Long story short? The NSA doesn't need this backdoor, it's a lot easier to just go strait to apple.

> FYI - Android does not have this feature (yet).

Pry-Fi will do it, on a rooted phone.

You appear not to have bothered to read about the new battery results
http://bgr.com/2014/06/09/lg-g...

Screen contrast is down, indeed, though it went from the brightest smart phone to merely middle of the pack, which is a shame.
http://www.gsmarena.com/lg_g3-...
I'll admit I never really worry about black levels on a phone as long as they are dark-enough, though, since I never use it for critical cinematic viewing and suspect most of the population is with me on that. The loss of max brightness is, imho, the biggest downgrade, though the minimum brightness is lower, which is nice for night-time viewing.

Can't argue about too many pixels, though as long as it doesn't kill the battery life I'm okay with it. It could be 8k if it didn't slow the phone down or deplete the battery - who cares?

Hard to believe that a faster CPU and faster GPU is a "downgrade", but I guess if "faster" means "slower" to you...

It is bigger, though less so than the increase in screen size would suggest. Size is a personal thing for a phone. At least with the G3 you can carry a spare battery (or two) if you need exceptional endurance and can't stand external batteries.

http://bgr.com/2014/06/16/spri...

I assume Amazon has an app you can install on any phone. Why make phones?

So the people behind the competing standard... claim that the PMA devices won't work with "the vast majority" of devices that are out there, yet according to this article: http://bgr.com/2013/04/17/sams...

It's going to work with Samsung, HTC, Google, Blackberry, and LG devices.

What exactly are these "vast majority" Qi devices, and who is building the things, because it's not these guys...

> Of course, if the whole reason computer 2 isn't connected to the network is security, you'd hope they have better security on their USB drives...

The NSA might have something to say about that.

what was she using external storage for?

Are you trying to assert that there exists no use case for external storage? How about a library of movies or TV shows that you downloaded using the Pirate Bay Browser? You have the Pirate Bay Browser on iPhone, right? Oh, you don't, because it's one the apps available for Android but not iOS. The top of that article has links to the previous 2 parts with another 10 apps they highlight.

which apps weren't available

How about an alternate web browser?

The right answer is take some of the massive profit and add more links to level 3 and other peers rather than claim it's slow because users are abusing it.

http://bgr.com/2014/05/06/comc...

The case you describe would be plausible but relatively intermittent. You could of course say that well maybe it was just too much traffic at the choke point continually.

Except that people have actually confirmed ComCast was deliberately degrading Netflix. Hell, Level 3 squarely pointed the finger at Comcast. Comcast has been just selectively letting it's peer connections languish to 'punish' certain peers. Level 3 specifically since it's part of Netflix's CDN...

http://bgr.com/2014/03/17/ipho...

You all clamored for a tightly-corperate-coupled government to control the internet.

Then it happened, the FCC decided it could do what it wanted.So now instead of back-end interconnects being negotiated between an ISP and a content provider as had been the case, the government by fiat has declared the "winner" - the ISP.

Don't be obtuse. The government should have, but failed to, control the internet. That is why the ISPs are charging you and arm and a leg. One example- the FCC wanted net neutrality, which by all accounts most consumers want. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the ISPs however killed the idea :-

Any semblance of net neutrality in the United States is as good as dead. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Tuesday struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s 2010 order that imposed network neutrality regulations on wireline broadband services. The ruling is a major victory for telecom and cable companies who have fought all net neutrality restrictions vociferously for years.

You are doing the ISPs work for them. Every time one of you should "less gov'mt" and burn flags, they rub their hands in glee. Less government = more freedom in them deciding how to skin you.

Also explain to me how is it that you can get cheaper broadband in countries even heavier regulated than the US .

The story in smartphones is even better for Apple. There they take 62% of the entire industry's profits.

http://bgr.com/2014/03/18/appl...