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Scottish independence: Payday loan interest rates 'to be capped' post-Yes

2013-08-15T01:05:00.001-07:00

Interest rates on payday loans would be capped in an independent Scotland, according to Finance Secretary John Swinney.

He made the pledge as he outlined plans for a reformed system of consumer protection after a Yes vote.

It would focus on tackling issues like payday loans, nuisance phone calls and postal delivery charges.

The UK government argues that the current system offers a consistent approach across all the nations.

Mr Swinney told a gathering of business leaders in Edinburgh that consumers and companies needed a system "they can trust and that works in their best interests".

He added: "The Scottish government currently does not have responsibility for arrangements to empower and protect consumers.

"With independence, we would be able to build a simpler system which meets the needs of our people, and puts families and households, small businesses and local communities at the heart of everything that it does."

The SNP minister said an independent Scotland could have a consumer ombudsman to deal with complaints quickly. He pointed out that there were currently more than 95 ombudsmen schemes, operating across 35 sectors.

Other plans, which appeared in a discussion paper, include;

Pay day loans - the aim is to cap interest rates, minimise loans continually rolling over, and improve market regulation to "stop people getting trapped in a cycle of debt"
Delivery charges - an independent Scotland would match the current postal service and allow greater choice and fairer prices to combat rural areas being disproportionately affected by excessive charges
Nuisance calling - regulators would be given more "effective enforcement tools" and sufficient penalties to deter rogue traders, while working with "responsible companies" to introduce codes of practice to protect customer data.

The people of Scotland vote on their country's future in a referendum on 18 September next year.

They will be asked the yes/no question: "Should Scotland be an independent country?"

In a paper focusing on the financial sector and the question of independence, the UK government touched on the issue of consumer protection.

It said the current set up meant that "no matter" where an individual lived in the UK, they could "expect the same standard of consumer protection".

The paper then listed the various organisations tasked with protecting consumers. They include the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS); the Pension Protection Fund (PPF); the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA); the Financial Ombudsman Services (FOS) and the Money Advice Service (MAS).

Responding to the Scottish government's plan, a UK government spokesman said: "Everyone wants to see consumers in Scotland protected and the UK system currently provides unified, yet country- specific protection where people in Weymouth have the same access to help as those in Wick.

"We are not convinced the Scottish government's plans are practical or a solution to the many complexities of cross-border enforcement.

"Rogue traders do not respect national borders and it is far more effective to take a UK-wide approach to gathering intelligence, threat assessment and enforcement."

The spokesman said the Scottish government had been fully involved in the development of Trading Standards Scotland, which aims to bring together the enforcement capacity across Scotland, complementing the arrangements in England and Wales.

"Another example is that we are already providing a universal postal service that is affordable as we spread the cost across a UK consumer base," he said.

"The Scottish government have still not explained how they will meet the UK commitment under independence with a much smaller consumer base."

Sharknado Causes Spike in Insurance Rates

2013-08-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

In the wake of Sharknado — you know, the film about sharks getting sucked out of the ocean by a tornado, and then raining down on Los Angeles — homeowners have been in a panic over protecting their homes with proper insurance. Okay, not really — but they should be.

This Sunday comic shows that if people had just taken the Syfy Channel's campy hit movie to heart, and planned accordingly, they may have avoided the high cost of Sharknado-related damage.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Arrives in Purple This Fall

2013-08-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

If you thought "orange is the new black," Samsung begs to differ. This fall, the tech giant will release its Galaxy S4 smartphone in "purple mirage" for Sprint customers.

The purple adds a pop of color to the Galaxy S4's current two-tone lineup of "black mist" and "white frost." The smartphone costs $199.99, with a two-year service agreement.

Samsung's Galaxy S4 boasts Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, a 13-megapixel rear camera, a two-megapixel front camera, a 5-inch screen and a 1.9GHz quad-core processor. On the Sprint network, the phone can access LTE speeds.

We wonder whether Yahoo employees might like this fitting color choice. What do you think about the purple Galaxy S4? Let us know in the comments.

Seven Ways to Manage Email So It Doesn't Manage You

2013-08-13T23:49:00.000-07:00

Seven Ways to Manage Email So It Doesn't Manage You

I'm always struck by the number of people who complain about the amount of email they receive and how much they despise their inbox—not because their complaints aren't valid but because my own view couldn't be more different.

By design, my inbox has essentially become the central hub of my workflow—it's the way I routinely communicate and exchange information with our 4,300+ employees operating in 26 cities around the world. That's not to say I've always been a fan of email, or that I haven't had my own Sisyphean inbox experiences. However, over the years I've developed several practical guidelines that have enabled me to manage my inbox effectively and ensure it's not managing me.

If You Want to Receive Less Email, Send Less Email

As ridiculously simple as it sounds for such a pervasive problem, I've found this to be the golden rule of email management: Send less of it. This rule first occurred to me during my experience at a previous company where two of the people I worked most closely with ended up leaving the organization within the span of several weeks. They were both highly effective communicators, worked long hours, and as it turned out, sent a lot of email. While they were at the company, our email cadence seemed absolutely normal. It wasn't until after they left that I realized my inbox traffic had been reduced by roughly 20-30%.

Turns out, it wasn't just their emails that were generating all of that inbox activity—it was my responses to their emails, the responses of the people who were added to those threads, the responses of the people those people subsequently copied, and so on. After recognizing this dynamic, I decided to conduct an experiment where I wouldn't write an email unless absolutely necessary. End result: Materially fewer emails and a far more navigable inbox. I've tried to stick to the same rule ever since.

Mark as Unread

When hovering over any individual email in your Outlook inbox, a simple right mouse click results in a series of subsequent options you can take. One of those, "Mark as Unread," has fundamentally changed the way I work.

Having the ability to mark an email unread enables me to quickly glance through my inbox, respond to things that are most time pressing, delete the things that are irrelevant, and mark unread those items I'd like to return to once I have the time. This alleviates the pressure of feeling I have to do everything right now for fear if that one important email falls "below the fold" of my screen, it will be lost forever under the looming avalanche of prospective incoming messages. It also essentially serves as a to-do list of items to be addressed later.

I try to end each day with as few items marked unread as possible, with the goal of having none. If I'm unable to get to everything that night, I'll start the next morning by addressing the unread emails received the prior day.

Establish a Routine

Over the last several years, I've settled into a very specific daily routine during the work week: Wake between 5am and 5:30am; spend roughly an hour on my inbox; catch up on the day's news; have breakfast and play with the kids; workout; go to the office; carve out roughly two hours for buffers each workday; come home; put the girls to bed; have dinner with my wife; and then decompress, typically while watching tv (sporadically cleaning up my inbox via mobile during commercials and the boring parts of whatever we're watching.)

Turns out, my inbox is very manageable when I stick to this schedule. However, every time I've tried experimenting with even the slightest change to this routine, travel for more than a few days at a time, or have a particularly hectic couple of days back-to-back, it never ceases to amaze me how quickly clearing my inbox ends up feeling like this.

In this case, it's the compounding effect that's particularly troublesome, i.e. the rate with which unread emails from the previous day start to mount and the accompanying pressure that generates. It gets so bad for some that they actually go as far as declaring email bankruptcy. The most compelling way I've found to avoid this state is creating a routine and closely sticking to it. If it worked for Benjamin Franklin, it can work for you.

Be Precise with Your Words

Remember the telephone game you played in elementary school where the teacher got the class in a circle, turned to the student sitting next to them, whispered a line like "Do you want to play kickball at lunchtime?" and then asked each subsequent student to whisper what they heard to the child sitting next to them? By the time it came back around to the teacher, it would inevitably be revealed as something akin to "I want to eat a kickball for lunch." While this was laugh out loud funny in third grade, in business it's anything but.

Words matter. Choose them carefully in email to avoid ambiguity and misinterpretation. The more precise you are upfront, the less likely you'll see subsequent emails generating confusion and asking follow up questions seeking additional clarity—and the more you and your team will be able to focus on the work at hand.

Give Some Thought To: The Recipients

It seems like for many people, the To: and Cc: fields in email have become largely synonymous. They're not. Use them to draw a clear distinction between who the email is being sent to and from whom you expect a response from (the To: field); and who is being copied so they have the appropriate context (Cc:).

One of the fastest ways to have an email thread blow up in terms of downstream volume is to be less than clear about who you expect to respond. Six people in the To: line will oftentimes have the unintended consequence of generating six different email responses (and up to six different new threads) when one person's response is all you needed.

Acknowledge Receipt

Here's an easy one: If the email sender has taken the time to address you in the To: line (and it really was intended for you vs. what should have been a Cc:), take the time to acknowledge you received it. The response doesn't need to be a diatribe. To the contrary, the fewer words the better, e.g. "Thanks," "Got it," "Makes sense," etc. This lets the sender know you received the message, don't need any additional information or context, and thus they can check it off their list.

If you don't respond, they'll have no idea whether or not they've been heard. Not only will this create worry about whether or not you received it, it is likely to generate another email with fundamentally the same content, but this time a number of additional people in the To: line in the hopes they'll respond given you didn't. The more people addressed, the more crowded your inbox is likely to become.

Take the Combustible Stuff Offline

Email can be a valuable productivity tool when used properly. It can also be equally destructive when it's not. One of the most egregious examples of the latter is using email to communicate highly nuanced, sensitive subjects that are bound to generate controversy if not a flat out aggressive response. It never ceases to amaze me what people will convey in an email when they get triggered by something—words they would never choose to use when in the presence of the same audience. One former colleague of mine described this dynamic as "going strong to the keyboard."

If you find yourself in the throes of what is clearly becoming an antagonistic discussion online, do yourself a favor: Stop. Then either pick up the phone or head over to the person's office to have the discussion in person. Face-to-face interaction will reintroduce all of the important sub-text that will be completely lost in email and help prevent unnecessary arguments or douse heated flame wars before they begin.

These are some of the most valuable inbox practices I've learned and incorporated over the years. Anytime I veer too far from these habits, I inevitably find myself running faster and faster just to feel like I'm standing still. However, when implemented regularly, these rules have resulted in email playing an essential role in my daily work routine.

iPad vs. iPad Mini: Which Should You Buy?

2013-08-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

When Apple announced the release of the fourth-generation iPad — often called the iPad 4, or iPad with Retina display — in October 2012, many consumers felt angered by the rapid replacement of the very similar iPad 3 ("the new iPad"). Still, you only needed to decide whether or not to upgrade to the slightly more powerful device — and if you had recently dished out hundreds of dollars for the iPad 3, the decision wasn't very difficult.

But in the same announcement, Apple introduced the iPad mini — an arguably game-changing miniature tablet that made consumers rethink how and why to use their mobile devices. As a result, especially for people looking to buy their first tablets, the decision process became complicated.

We've prepared this guide to help you decide whether the latest iPad or iPad mini is right for you. Like all gadgets, it ultimately comes down to preference — that is, how you plan to use your tablet — but there are plenty of specs to help you choose.

Similarities

First, you should know what you'll get with both the iPad and the iPad mini. As far as capacity goes, you can purchase 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models of each tablet. Of course there are price differences, and you can upgrade to a 128GB model of the iPad, but standard memory is available on either one.

Although the iPad mini is smaller, it doesn't lack anything in camera capability. The iSight camera for both the iPad and iPad mini boasts 5-megapixel photos, autofocus, face detection, backside illumination, a five-elements lens, hybrid IR filter and ƒ/2.4 aperture. FaceTime HD allows for 1.2-megapixel photos, 720p HD video and works over Wi‑Fi and cellular services. Both the iPad and iPad mini record video in 1080p HD, allowing you to tap to focus while recording, and video stabilization.

Both devices are available with mobile carriers AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, and have exactly the same wireless and cellular capabilities (including Bluetooth 4.0 technology). The iPad and iPad mini both allow for up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi‑Fi, watching video or listening to music (nine hours of surfing the web using cellular data).

Each device uses the Lightning cable, and you can charge with a power adapter or connect to your computer. And don't worry — Siri is available to assist you no matter which iPad you purchase, as they each run the same version of iOS.

Lastly, both the iPad and iPad mini run every app in the App Store — however, because of screen size and power, the experience or performance may vary.

Display

The biggest difference between these tablets is screen density. The iPad mini's display is 7.9 inches diagonally, with 1024 x 768 resolution at 163 pixels per inch. The iPad with Retina display packs a punch — 9.7 inches, with 2048 x 1536 resolution at 264 pixels per inch.

For regular use, the two-inch difference and crystal clear resolution don't affect that much, but there are definitely a few things to consider. If you're using your tablet primarily as a media player — watching movies, viewing or editing photos, etc. — the iPad Retina is typically going to be the better option. The reason is simple: You can see more. This is also better for productivity, as you have more room to navigate.

That said, the iPad mini displays media perfectly fine, and may be a better option if you're using it more on the go. It's also more akin to the screens of mobile gaming devices, whereas iPad Retina gameplay may prove an uncomfortable experience (both visually and physically).

Keep in mind that Apple is reportedly planning to release an iPad mini with Retina display in late 2013, though this has not yet been confirmed.

Power and Speed

The iPad Retina, with its dual-core A6X processor and quad-core graphics, is undoubtedly stronger than the iPad mini, which has the standard dual-core A5 processor. In layman's terms, this means the iPad Retina has twice the processing power and four times the graphics power of the iPad mini.

This shouldn't be too surprising — the iPad mini is, after all, "mini." If power and speed are most important to you, the iPad Retina is the way to go.

Still, it's worth noting: The iPad mini possesses all of the iPad's capabilities. Owning an iPad mini means you're sacrificing screen size more than anything else.

Overall Size

The iPad mini is definitely easier to carry around, putting the "mobile" in mobile device. It easily fits into your purse or backpack pocket, and is also easy to use with one hand. At a depth of 0.28 inches, it's thinner than other iPads, and if the smaller screen ever bothers you, you can always connect it to a TV (though that kind of defeats the purpose).

These aspects bring up an interesting point. Some people have compared the iPad mini to a slightly larger iPhone, with all of the same capabilities except making calls. And when you think about it, the screen of Samsung's Galaxy Note smartphone is only approximately 2 inches smaller than the iPad mini's. The difference seems to be the iOS ecosystem — if you're looking for a small iPad, that's literally what you'll get with the iPad mini.

The iPad Retina is classically sized; the main difference is really the display, as mentioned above.

Price

For many consumers, the price differences will be the ultimate deciding factor. The iPad mini starts at $329 for the Wi‑Fi 16GB model, and goes up to $659 for 64GB (Wi-Fi and cellular).

The iPad with Retina display starts at $499 for the Wi‑Fi 16GB model, and goes up to $929 for 128GB (Wi-Fi and cellular).

You'll need to ask yourself: Is saving between $170 and $270 worth sacrificing some power and resolution? In many cases, it may be, but again, it depends how you plan to use your iPad.

In the end, the iPad mini is for those Apple customers who already know and understand the iOS ecosystem (or who are looking for an introduction to it), but always thought the iPad was too large and expensive. The iPad with Retina display is for those consumers looking to upgrade their tablet experience — those who want the best tablet display size and resolution available on the market.

A Third Option

While Apple has discontinued the third-generation iPad, you can still purchase the iPad 2. Some critics argue that the iPad 2 is a slower and less powerful tablet than other available options — and they're correct — but it still helps you complete standard tasks.

It has the same dual-core A5 processor as the iPad mini, but it is only available in a 16GB model. It's slightly thinner and lighter than the iPad with Retina display, and has much lower camera capabilities than the iPad mini and iPad Retina.

The iPad 2's price tag is appealing: $399 for the Wi-Fi model, and $529 for Wi-Fi and 3G. The iPad 2 is essentially for consumers looking to get a standard iPad with the classic size, without breaking the bank.

Which specifications have helped you decide? Share your thoughts with our readers in the comments below.

Larry Ellison Opens Up About Steve Jobs' Last Days

2013-08-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs

Few people knew Steve Jobs better than Oracle founder Larry Ellison. The two were friends for more than two decades and lived next door to each other for a time. Now, Ellison is opening up about the Apple cofounder's final days battling pancreatic cancer.

"We'd always go for walks, and the walks just kept getting shorter," Ellison told Charlie Rose in a CBS This Morning interview that aired Tuesday. "Until near the end we'd kind of walk around the block or maybe — maybe four blocks, something like that. And you just watched him getting weaker."

Ellison says that Jobs' loss of strength was all the more striking given his gung-ho personality. "This was absolutely the strongest, most willful person I have ever met, and after seven years, the cancer even wore him out ... He was just tired of fighting, tired of the pain."

Ellison revealed that Jobs eventually decided to stop his cancer treatment, a move that "shocked" those close to Jobs. A few days later, on Oct. 5, 2011, Jobs passed away.

"He decided — shocked Lorraine [Powell Jobs, his wife], shocked everybody — that the medication was gonna stop," Ellison recalled. "He just pulled off the meds — I think on a Saturday or a Sunday. And by the following Wednesday he was gone."

In a particularly moving moment, Ellison described his eulogy for Jobs. "My eulogy began, you know, I guess we're all told that no one's irreplaceable. I don't believe that. I just don't," he said.

At another point in the interview, Ellison proclaimed that Jobs was this era's equivalent of Pablo Picasso and Thomas Edison, and suggested that Apple is in trouble now that he is no longer around to lead the company.

Do you agree with Ellison and think that Apple is doomed without Jobs? Share with us in the comments below.

Apple: Three Million New iPads Sold In Three Days

2012-11-05T07:30:00.001-08:00

The iPad mini has had to deal with a fair amount of criticism since its launch, and similarly, there have been quite a few outcries regarding Apple’s decision to throw out a new iPad just seven months after releasing its predecessor. The lingering wave of skepticism clearly doesn’t seem to have affected sales adversely though, and Apple has just announced the sale of three million new iPad units, which is double previous weekend record of 1.5 million set by the launch of the iPad 3 in March.

Of course, with two new iPads on offering, perhaps the figures are close to what should have been expected, and if there was ever any doubt consumers would buy the iPad mini, it seems the tablet is as big of a hit as the 9.7-inch iteration – perhaps even more so. Apple proudly reported the figures by means of a press release, but neglected to state just how many iPad minis were sold versus iPads, which would arguably be the more intriguing statistic. Considering many consumers I’ve interacted with since the launch have been generally unaware of the presence of the iPad 4, I’d hazard a guess that the cheaper, smaller slate outsold the A6X-powered flagship, but this is mere speculation.

Apple’s head honcho Tim Cook added that his company was “practically sold out of iPad minis,” and is currently working around the clock in order to “build more quickly to meet the incredible demand.” In addition, he also revealed the Wi-Fi + Cellular versions will begin shipping over the coming weeks, and although the Wi-Fi only models have always tended to outsell their 3G / LTE counterparts, the cellular offering will undoubtedly boost sales even further.

Despite upsetting many iPad 3 owners by dropping the fourth-generation iPad so swiftly, they’ve still been selling in vast quantities. With a Retina display, A6X processor and the all-new Lightning dock connector, it’s easily the strongest tablet on the market despite the growing levels of competition.

The blogosphere has been quick to criticize the iPad mini, but having used one for a prolonged amount of time, I can’t see it being anything other than a hit. Yes, it’s essentially a squished-down iPad 2, but those buying aren’t your fussy, ardent geeks, but general consumers. If you’re looking for something high-end, well, the iPad 4′s for that.

Why Apple wants to spread lies about you

2012-06-24T06:51:00.001-07:00

A new Apple patent could be a powerful defense in the war on privacy

It's becoming harder and harder to maintain any sense of privacy on the internet. Do a search for just about anything online, and somewhere there's a data collector compiling information about you and your searches. Even though the eyes on you at all times are digital, being watched is still unsettling. But such a loss of privacy is an inevitable part of life on the net, right?

Not if computing giant Apple has anything to say about it. According to a report from InformationWeek, Apple recently scored a patent for a technology that, essentially, creates lies about you.

How does the tech work? In short, it works by way of what's being called "profile pollution." As you search and use the internet, Apple would create a number of different online profiles for you. One, of course, would be your real one, filled with data on what you search for, and where you searched. The others would be filled with lies.

The new technology goes as far as to fake actions for the fake versions of you — your Apple-created doppelgänger really could be performing searches for "classical music concert tickets" at the same time you're watching Justin Bieber clips on YouTube. And, at the same time, yet another version of you could be perusing Betty White's twitter account. That way, when Big Brother (or anyone's brother, for that matter) wants to know whether or not you're having a baby or whether you just like J. Bieb's song Baby... well, it'll have a hard time figuring it out. And if you care about your privacy, that's a very good thing.

PicStory For iPad Is A Comprehensive Photo Management App With An Amazing UI

2012-06-24T06:43:00.000-07:00

I would feel quite confident in going out on a limb and guessing that most owners of the iPad use the device in some form to scroll through albums of images and photographs. The large and engaging display, especially the Retina screen on the new iPad, is perfect for reliving the memories that photographs portray with the iPad also offering excellent multitouch and zooming features for viewing photo details.

PicStory

The Photos app on the iPad offers some support for organizing images, but for those who crave additional power over their life through pictures then it is possible that the PicStory iPad app is what you have been searching for. PicStory is an iPad-only app that aims to let users have powerful control over the elegant organization and management of photographs that are stored on the device. One of the great things about the app is that it can be used at varying levels of intensity and doesn’t necessarily require total control of every aspect to be a useful installation.

Designed and developed by SunHee Choi, PicStory brings powerful functionality and the ability to organize photo albums in a timeline fashion, as well as sorting through the options by title. A useful set of import options have also been built into the app and include the ability to add images to the software through the native photo library, Dropbox, iTunes and the Picasa web service. An app with import but no export capabilities would be pretty useless, and thankfully that isn’t the case with PicStory also being able to export albums to the iPad camera roll, Dropbox or Picasa.

Using PicStory in iPad

Album security has also been taken into account with the inclusion of a lock mode that can be applied to selected albums, essential for those albums which may contain photographs of your children or other imagery that you don’t wish third-parties to feast their eyes upon. One of the great things about this app is the use of intelligent user-interface design to make the whole experience a fun and pleasurable one. Photographs represent memories taken throughout our lives and should be afforded the luxury of being managed through a beautifully designed interface, which PicStory provides with its clean lines and elegant visuals.

Although the app contains a number of additional features such as setting up themes, social sharing and album backup capabilities, it is perhaps the slideshow feature that really steals the show. The app contains a number of different image and transition effects that can be applied to the photographs as well as being able to insert a music track directly from the iPad’s music library, effectively turning the iPad into a beautiful, personalized Retina photo frame. PicStory is compatible with all generations of iPad, requires iOS 4.2 or above and is available from the App Store for $4.99.

PicStory Timeline in iPad

Download PicStory for iPad [iTunes Link]

iPhone Turn Off Security

2012-06-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

Regardless of whether you happen to be an experienced iOS device owner who upgrades to the latest release religiously or are relatively new to the Apple device owning world, it should come as no surprise that an iPhone or iPod touch is an extremely powerful device that rivals anything on the market today. Although an out of the box iDevice experience is an extremely pleasurable one, when combined with a jailbreak, it is taken to a new level with new features and enhancements becoming available.

Downloading from Cydia

One of the latest tweaks to be made available to jailbroken users via the Cydia platform goes by the name of Powerguard and I would imagine that it will be particularly useful for quite a large set of users who are currently benefitting from being jailbroken. As is usually the case with Cydia-based packages, the name gives a few small clues to the functionality that is contained within, and in this instance, offering some additional security measures to the action of attempting to power down the device. In a stock installation of iOS, powering down the unit is a very simple process with the power button needing to be depressed for a few seconds before sliding the resulting slider to confirm the action.

When installed, Powerguard changes the whole scope of the powering down process and implements a security check to make sure that it is actually allowed. The check comes in the form of a simple password confirmation box that requires the correct password or code to be entered before the device will shut itself off. The developer of the tweak makes the argument that this is particularly useful for those who are prone to accidentally turning their iPhone or iPod touch off, although I can’t see how that can happen given the native powering down procedure. With that said, there are a few instances when this could prove useful.

Asking Password befor Turn Off

If the user is currently limited to a tethered jailbreak it could always be beneficial to restrict the ability to turn the device off due to the fact that a tethered boot would normally be required upon startup. It could also be worth using this package if, as a user, you are concerned about your expensive gadget getting lost or stolen as removing the ability to turn it off will also prevent the GPS signal from being cut. Whilst not the most professionally implemented, Powerguard does offer some a solution to real-world situations that iOS device owners can find themselves in. No additional home screen icons or installed, with options and admin features being available through the Settings app.

Powerguard is available as a $0.99 download from the BigBoss Repository with no specific iOS device requirements being mentioned.

‘Leave My Apps Alone’ Stops Anyone From Moving Or Deleting Apps From Your iPhone

2012-06-24T06:31:00.000-07:00

I don’t imagine that I am the only person in the world who spends most of his day buried face first into an iPhone, iPad or MacBook. And in that respect, said devices become something I depend on and can’t honestly get my day’s social and professional work done without them. It sounds pretty weird to say out loud, but the three Apple products I use daily have almost become an extension of who I am and I therefore like them set up just right.

From BigBoss Repo

In most other walks other life, the old saying “familiarity breeds contempt” is very apt and usually applies, but when it comes to things like an iPhone or iPod touch, it is usually the opposite that applies with users liking their apps and home screen set up in a very specific fashion. As is usually the case, Cydia has a tweak that applies in this situation with the Leave My Apps Alone package not likely to win any awards for most inventive name of the year, but certainly likely to capture attention of some users thanks to its functionality.

The intended feature of the tweak isn’t exactly mind-blowing and could have probably been thought out a little better to include some additional options, but when installed it basically locks the home screen from being able to delete or move applications when the device is in edit, or wiggle mode as some prefer to call it. Users can obviously still flick between home screen pages to activate and launch applications as well as edit the home screen to add Dashboard X widgets, but the option to delete apps is removed.

How it works..?

It might seem like it could provide a lot of benefit, but for those who like to use things like Gridlock or Iconoclasm to set up complex homes creen layouts with the help of user-interface themes would certainly find something like this useful, even as just a precaution. To make it more user-friendly, I would like to see the developer implement an activation toggle through passcode security to allow the owner to be able to make amendments without having to totally uninstall the tweak through Cydia.

Leave My Apps Alone is available as a free of charge download from the BigBoss repository with no specific iOS requirements being given.

Stereomood For iOS Lets You Discover New Music Based On Your Mood / Activity

2012-06-24T06:13:00.000-07:00

I’m a big fan of music discovery services but, unfortunately, the most popular ones like Pandora, Spotify, last.FM don’t work outside a handful of supported countries where streaming music from big music labels is allowed. Outside these countries, you have services like GrooveShark which, really, is the poor man’s Spotify. There is, however, one not-so-famous service that not only works outside the USA and Europe but also offers excellent music discovery features for free.

The service in question is Stereomood. Stereomood suggests high-quality music based on your mood. Whether its happy or melancholy, studying or lost in thought (which is the same thing, really), they’ve got it all covered!

I’ve been using their desktop-based for many months now. Whenever I get tired of listening to the same songs over and over again, I just visit Stereomood.com, start a mood radio channel based on whatever mood I’m in at that time and voila! I discover a bunch of awesome new tracks.

Now, the only thing missing was the lack of a good mobile app. Earlier this week, Stereomood released one and it is spectacular.

Launching the app for the first time presents the user with the option to login/signup via Facebook or through the traditional email way. Once past that, you can choose from any of the mood-based “radio channels”.

These channels are shown going left and right in seven different rows. Certainly not the best way to display channels, but that isn’t a problem since the app lets you change that from the same menu. Tapping a mood takes you to the music player where you tap the play button to start your mood playlist.

From the music player, you have your standard controls – play previous/next, play/stop, shuffle – along with two extra Stereomood-specific buttons: like and block. Unlike most other music services, you can have a look at upcoming songs in your playlist by simply swiping up from the bottom. Furthermore, you can tap the +More button above the album cover to buy the track, get more information about, share it on Facebook/Twitter/Email so others can check out the rad song you’re listening to.

Tagging is an important part of Stereomood. Every song you listen to has already been tagged by someone and, resultantly, appears in that mood playlist. You can help the Stereomood community by tagging tracks yourself from the music player.

The app is available for free on Android and iOS devices. It is ad-supported but you can remove them by buying the developers a cup of coffee with a $0.99 in-app purchase.

Download Stereomood for Android [Google Play link]
Download Stereomood for iOS [iTunes link]

iTrivia, Apple Quiz

2012-06-24T06:04:00.002-07:00

There’s no doubting the massive increase in Apple since the introduction of the iPhone back in 2007, but even if you’ve been an avid follower since the early days, a relatively new App Store app aims to test even the most knowledgeable Cupertino enthusiast.

Set on a background of ambient music, it really pits your wits with some particularly difficult questions in categories from software such as native Macintosh features, to hardware, to history, and, of course, the people who made it all happen.

iTrivia for iOS

Some of the questions are pretty entertaining, and one which had me chuckling regarded the very first Apple logo. With four options, I was pretty sure "a silhouette of Steve Wozniak" would have been the wrong answer, although my lack of in-depth knowledge was still exposed on 7 out of the 10 questions, I’m ashamed to reveal.

iTrivia - All about Apple

With such a poor score, the app offered a little banter in the form of "do you still use dial-up?" while my ‘Apple Knowledge Quotient’ stood at a miserly 0.6% after my first try.

Given that I’ve actually read the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, I would have hoped to have fared a little better. Sure, the book didn’t have the biting edge we were all hoping for, but there was enough in there to see me through the iTrivia quiz – at least, I thought.

iTrivia - Questions

Having given it a couple more tries, I’m pleased to report that my score has improved, and, perhaps more importantly to you guys, the quiz has good replay value. For 99 cents, it will certainly give you a good go-to for handy-to-know Apple Trivia, and is as fun as it is severely challenging.

To add a little competitive edge, it took me some five tries to finally get a ten out of ten score.. do you think you can beat it? Well download the app via the link below, and be sure to leave your comments on our Google+ or Facebook fan pages!

iTrivia - Categories

Download iTrivia: All about Apple for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch [iTunes link]

New Nintendo 3DS XL

2012-06-24T05:58:00.000-07:00

The Nintendo 3D XL, with 90% bigger screens, will be released later this summer. It will retail in the United States for $199.

Having already gone 3-D, Nintendo now wants to go big, announcing a new version of its handheld gaming console with screens nearly twice as large.

The Nintendo 3DS XL, announced late Thursday, will have a 90% bigger screen and, Nintendo says, a stronger battery for more gaming time. It will also come bundled with a 4-gigabyte SD Card to store downloadable games and applications.

The new console was announced during a Nintendo Direct video presentation. It will be available in Japan and Europe in July and the U.S market on August 19, the same day as the release of "New Super Mario Bros. 2," the latest in the storied gaming franchise, for the 3DS.

Facebook Rolls Out Comment Editing

2012-06-24T05:55:00.000-07:00

Facebook Rolls Out Comment Editing

No more “Arggh! Copy, delete, paste, edit, post.” Facebook is now rolling out the ability to edit comments, but users will be able to see the full edit history of a thread. This is just one more feature that I really liked about Google+, since I could essentially live blog with it and fix my mistakes, but that Facebook has now too.

Facebook tells me comment editing is rolling out now and will become available to everyone in the next few days on the web. There’s no comment editing yet in Facebook’s embeddable comment widget for websites or from mobile yet where that damn auto-correct lurks. Also, you still can’t edit original posts, all of which would be much more helpful than this. But I guess if you have to say or spell something wrong, do it from your desktop on someone else’s news feed post.

Facebook made a step in the right direction a year ago when it let you edit comments within a few seconds of posting them so you could fix immediately recognized typos as seen below.

Don’t Delete Your Stupidity. Fix it. Facebook Rolls Out Comment Editing and Edit History

Now that time limit’s been lifted. So if you come back to a post later and see you spelled Philadelphia wrong, like I did in an article this morning (bollocks!), you can change it. And if you already had these new features, you were some of the lucky testers, and soon your friends will get comment editing too.

With the new Edit History, though, curious parties can investigate. So don’t go back and change your controversial point of view on to something more palatable or you could get called out. As soon as I get these features I’ll add screenshots.

We’re waiting to hear back from Facebook on whether comment editing will be available in its Comments Box social plugin, that many blogs including TechCrunch use to dissuade trolling.

This is all a step up from what’s currently available, which is copying your messed up comment, deleting it, starting a new comment, pasting, fixing, and posting. And when you comment something stupid or have an awful typo, your first inclination is to immediately delete it without copying, and then you have to pick your brain to reconstruct it.

While this update is less than groundbreaking, just like the emoticon menu it added to Chat yesterday, it makes Facebook more user friendly. Even shaving a few seconds off people’s commenting flows adds up at the scale of 900 million people.

Comment Editing on Google+

The real question is whether Facebook will allow original post editing, which Google+ does. While useful, it could also let people retroactively change their opinions and cause subsequent comments to make no sense. Combined with Timeline, you could essentially go back and edit your whole life, which could make people overly self-conscious and nit-picky about what they’d said in the past.

Again, Apple gets all the attention

2012-06-24T05:49:00.000-07:00

15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. A product that HP or Dell could have (should have) done?

So, why does the world obsess about the newest MacBook Pro and not competing laptops from Hewlett-Packard or Dell?

Let's just say that Apple has an innate sense about good design.

And you can bet Microsoft has uttered this sentiment behind closed doors more than a few times -- thus, the Microsoft-designed Surface tablet announcement this week.

But let's focus on the Retina MacBook Pro for now. That's a design that any PC maker could have feasibly done.

Big 15-inch class laptops fall right into the wheel house of the PC guys. Dell did the XPS 15z. HP has the Envy 15. But neither of those are comparable to the 0.7-inch thick, quad-core Retina Pro.

Vizio seems to be thinking like Apple: they came out with an ultrathin 15-inch laptop around the same time that Apple introduced the Retina MBP. And Vizio's lineup is limited, like Apple's.

One of the few to get close is Vizio with its 4-pound 15.6-inch CT15, which offers resolutions up to 1,920 by 1,080.

And maybe that's the point. Vizio is not a traditional PC maker. It's best known for HDTVs. And it seems to be focused on a different kind of aesthetic than Dell or HP.

We'll see if Vizio can stick it out. Dell, to its credit, has had designs like the Adamo and Latitude z600 (see photo below), but never persevered.

Apple does, sticking with innovative designs like the MacBook Air (introduced way back in 2008) until it finds the design formula and market timing that works.

And it gets all the attention. The company certainly has my attention. The standard 15-inch MacBook Pro never appealed to me. Neither did PCs.

But now Apple has reinvented the 15-inch laptop, which builds on the Air but adds a display to kill for. (Yeah, Retina is a marketing thing but it's also very real. I willfully cave to Apple's hype in this case.)

So, are we going to see something comparable from the PC guys? Sony could do a 15-inch Vaio Z or Lenovo a ThinkPad X1 Carbon. But I'm not holding my breath that they'll set the world on fire.

Look, Mom, no optical drive. Dell did that way back in 2009. And could have persevered with the 0.55-inch thick 16-inch Latitude z600, perfecting the design -- but didn't.

Apple’s Retail Army

2012-06-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

Apple’s Retail Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay

Last year, during his best three-month stretch, Jordan Golson sold about $750,000 worth of computers and gadgets at the Apple Store in Salem, N.H. It was a performance that might have called for a bottle of Champagne — if that were a luxury Mr. Golson could have afforded.

“I was earning $11.25 an hour,” he said. “Part of me was thinking, ‘This is great. I’m an Apple fan, the store is doing really well.’ But when you look at the amount of money the company is making and then you look at your paycheck, it’s kind of tough.”

America’s love affair with the smartphone has helped create tens of thousands of jobs at places like Best Buy and Verizon Wireless and will this year pump billions into the economy.

Within this world, the Apple Store is the undisputed king, a retail phenomenon renowned for impeccable design, deft service and spectacular revenues. Last year, the company’s 327 global stores took in more money per square foot than any other United States retailer — wireless or otherwise — and almost double that of Tiffany, which was No. 2 on the list, according to the research firm RetailSails.

Worldwide, its stores sold $16 billion in merchandise.

But most of Apple’s employees enjoyed little of that wealth. While consumers tend to think of Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., as the company’s heart and soul, a majority of its workers in the United States are not engineers or executives with hefty salaries and bonuses but rather hourly wage earners selling iPhones and MacBooks.

About 30,000 of the 43,000 Apple employees in this country work in Apple Stores, as members of the service economy, and many of them earn about $25,000 a year. They work inside the world’s fastest growing industry, for the most valuable company, run by one of the country’s most richly compensated chief executives, Tim Cook. Last year, he received stock grants, which vest over a 10-year period, that at today’s share price would be worth more than $570 million.

And though Apple is unparalleled as a retailer, when it comes to its lowliest workers, the company is a reflection of the technology industry as a whole.

The Internet and advances in computing have created untold millionaires, but most of the jobs created by technology giants are service sector positions — sales employees and customer service representatives, repairmen and delivery drivers — that offer little of Silicon Valley’s riches or glamour.

Much of the debate about American unemployment has focused on why companies have moved factories overseas, but only 8 percent of the American work force is in manufacturing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job growth has for decades been led by service-related work, and any recovery with real legs, labor experts say, will be powered and sustained by this segment of the economy.

And as the service sector has grown, the definition of a career has been reframed for millions of American workers.

“In the service sector, companies provide a little bit of training and hope their employees leave after a few years,” says Arne L. Kalleberg, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina. “Especially now, given the number of college kids willing to work for low wages.”

By the standards of retailing, Apple offers above average pay — well above the minimum wage of $7.25 and better than the Gap, though slightly less than Lululemon, the yoga and athletic apparel chain, where sales staff earn about $12 an hour. The company also offers very good benefits for a retailer, including health care, 401(k) contributions and the chance to buy company stock, as well as Apple products, at a discount.

But Apple is not selling polo shirts or yoga pants. Divide revenue by total number of employees and you find that last year, each Apple store employee — that includes non-sales staff like technicians and people stocking shelves — brought in $473,000.

“These are sales rates for a consulting company,” said Horace Dediu, an analyst who blogged about the calculation on the site Asymco. Electronics and appliance stores typically post $206,000 in revenue per employee, according to the latest figures from the National Retail Federation.

Even Apple, it seems, has recently decided it needs to pay its workers more. Last week, four months after The New York Times first began inquiring about the wages of its store employees, the company started to inform some staff members that they would receive substantial raises. An Apple spokesman confirmed the raises but would not discuss their size, timing or impetus, nor who would earn them.

But Cory Moll, a salesman in the San Francisco flagship store and a vocal labor activist, said that on Tuesday he was given a raise of $2.82 an hour, to $17.31, an increase of 19.5 percent and a big jump compared with the 49-cent raise he was given last year.

“My manager called me into his office and said, ‘Apple wants to show that it cares about its workers, and show that it knows how much value you add to the company, by offering a bigger raise than in previous years,’ ” Mr. Moll recalled.

Though a significant increase, Mr. Moll’s new salary of about $36,000 puts him on the low side of the wage scale at the other large sellers of Apple products, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, both of which offer commissions to sales staff at their stores.

In other areas, Apple has been a leader. Stores in a variety of fields have adopted the company’s retail techniques, like the use of roving credit-card swipers to minimize checkout lines, as well as the petting-zoo layout that encourages customers to test-drive products.

But Apple’s success, it turns out, rests on a set of intangibles; foremost among them is a built-in fan base that ensures a steady supply of eager applicants and an employee culture that tries to turn every job into an exalted mission.

This is why Apple can do something unique in the annals of retailing: pay a modest hourly wage, and no commission, to employees who typically have college degrees and who at the highest performing levels can move as much as $3 million in goods a year.

“When you’re working for Apple you feel like you’re working for this greater good,” says a former salesman who asked for anonymity because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. “That’s why they don’t have a revolution on their hands.”

These true believers skew young, as anyone who has ever set foot in an Apple Store knows. And the relative youth of this work force helps explain why people are likely to judge the company by a different set of standards when it comes to wages, says Paul Osterman, a professor at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management.

“It’s interesting to ask why we find it offensive that Wal-Mart pays a single mother $9 an hour, but we don’t find it offensive that Apple pays a young man $12 an hour,” Mr. Osterman said. “For each company, the logic is the same — there is a line of people eager to take the job. In effect, we’re saying that our value judgments depend on the circumstances of the employee, not just supply and demand of the labor market.”

Twenty-two-year-olds also tend to be more tolerant of the Apple Store’s noise and bustle, yet these days some former employees describe a work environment that was too hectic and stressful, thanks in large part to the runaway popularity of the iPhone and iPad.

Managers often tell new workers that they hope to get six years of service, former employees say. “That was what we heard all the time,” says Shane Garcia, a former Apple Store manager in Chicago. “Six years.” But the average tenure is two and a half years, says a person familiar with the company’s retention numbers, and as foot traffic has increased, turnover rates in many stores have increased, too. Internal surveys at stores have also found surprising dissatisfaction levels, particularly among technicians, or “geniuses” in Apple’s parlance, who work at what is called the Genius Bar. Apple declined requests for interviews for this article. Instead, the company issued a statement:

“Thousands of incredibly talented professionals work behind the Genius Bar and deliver the best customer service in the world. The annual retention rate for Geniuses is almost 90%, which is unheard-of in the retail industry, and shows how passionate they are about their customers and their careers at Apple.”

That 90 percent figure sounds accurate to Mr. Garcia, who quit last July after four years with the company, overwhelmed by the work and unable to mollify employees and customers alike. Plenty of technicians do, in fact, like their jobs, which vary around the country, and which pay in the range of $40,000 a year in the Chicago area. Many technicians, though, wanted to leave but were unable to find equivalent work, according to Mr. Garcia and other former managers, in part because of the weak economy.

The problem for Apple Store employees, they said, wasn’t just the pace. It was the lack of upward mobility. There are only a handful of different jobs at Apple Stores and the most prestigious are invariably sought after by dozens of candidates. And a leap to the company headquarters is highly unusual.

Apple prohibits its staff from talking to the media, but several former employees who spoke for this article said they had fond memories of their jobs, and regarded them as ideal for people in their early 20s who aren’t ready for a full-on dive into the white-collar world.

And “Apple” can be a strong credential to have on a résumé, these people said. Technicians often move on to higher-paying jobs in information technology, they said, and sales staff have a leg up on the competition if they stay in retailing because “people know how grueling the job is,” as one former manager put it.

But other former employees have struggled to find work, or have moved into lateral jobs at other companies. And even those who used Apple as a launching pad described a gradual evolution, from team player to skeptic, as they discovered that there was a gap between what the job appeared to be (kind of hip) and what it was (frenetic and in many cases a dead end).

Kelly Jackson, who was a technician at an Apple Store in Chicago, was thrilled when she was hired two years ago. But she said she was even happier when she quit a year later, having found the work too relentless and the satisfactions too elusive.

“When somebody left, you’d be really excited for them,” says Ms. Jackson, who now works at Groupon. “It was sort of like, ‘Congratulations. You’ve done what everyone here wants to do.’ ”

Recruiting the Devoted

Skeptics outnumbered believers when Steven P. Jobs, then Apple’s chief, pitched the Apple Store concept to his board in 2000. Ultimately, approval was given for just four stores.

Mr. Jobs hired a Target executive named Ron Johnson to help design and oversee the stores. He in turn hired eight people, one of whom was Denyelle Bruno, then an executive at Macy’s West. When she was first approached, she said, she was told next to nothing about the work.

That did not daunt Ms. Bruno, now an executive at Peet’s Coffee.

“I had grown up using Macs, and if it involved Apple and I could be involved,” she said, “it made me feel important.”

Ms. Bruno was one of the first hard-core Apple fans hired for the nascent chain. Many others would follow, and part of her job was to help recruit them. Initially, that involved walking into stores, including those operated by Sprint and AT&T, and scouting out promising employees.

Such solicitations were unnecessary after the first two stores opened, on May 19, 2001, in McLean, Va., and Glendale, Calif. Soon, so many people wanted to work at the stores that Mr. Johnson would compare applicants-to-openings ratios and boast that it was harder to land a job at an Apple Store than to get into Stanford, his alma mater.

Those applicants have for years submitted résumés through the company’s site. The time-intensive part, former managers say, is finding the right people amid the pile, and the candidates of choice are affable and self-directed rather than tech-savvy. (The latter can be taught, is the theory, while the former is innate.) The vetting has not changed much. It often starts with an invitation to a seminar, held in a conference room at a hotel.

The culling begins before the seminar starts.

“They turn away people who are three minutes late,” says Graham Marley, who attended his seminar in a hotel in Dedham, Mass., in 2009. “My dream my whole life was to work for Apple and suddenly, you can,” he said. “You’ve always been an evangelist for Apple and now you can get paid for it.”

One manager said it was common for people offered jobs to burst into tears. But if the newly hired arrive as devotees, Apple’s training course, which can range from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the job and locale, turns them into disciples.

Training commences with what is known as a “warm welcome.” As new employees enter the room, Apple managers and trainers give them a standing ovation. The clapping often bewilders the trainees, at least at first, but when the applause goes on for several lengthy minutes they eventually join in.

“My hands would sting from all the clapping,” says Michael Dow, who trained Apple employees for years in Providence, R.I.

There is more role-playing at Core training, as it’s known, this time with pointers on the elaborate etiquette of interacting with customers. One rule: ask for permission before touching anyone’s iPhone.

“And we told trainees that the first thing they needed to do was acknowledge the problem, though don’t promise you can fix the problem,” said Shane Garcia, the one-time Chicago manager. “If you can, let them know that you have felt some of the emotions they are feeling. But you have to be careful because you don’t want to lie about that.”

The phrase that trainees hear time and again, which echoes once they arrive at the stores, is “enriching people’s lives.” The idea is to instill in employees the notion that they are doing something far grander than just selling or fixing products. If there is a secret to Apple’s sauce, this is it: the company ennobles employees. It understands that a lot of people will forgo money if they have a sense of higher purpose.

That empowerment is important because aspiring sales employees would clearly be better off working at one of the country’s other big sellers of Apple products, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, if they were searching for a hefty paycheck. Both offer sales commissions.

“It’s not at all common but there are sales agents at Verizon who earn six figures,” says Jonathan Jarboe, who managed Verizon Wireless stores in Oklahoma until last summer. Several former Verizon Wireless managers said that annual pay ran from $35,000 up to $100,000 in rare cases, with the sweet spot in the $50,000 to $60,000 range.

At Apple, the decision not to offer commissions was made, Ms. Bruno said, before a store had opened. The idea was that such incentives would work against the company’s primary goals — finding customers the right products, rather than the most expensive ones, and establishing long-term rapport with the brand. Commissions, it was also thought, would foster employee competition, which would undermine camaraderie.

Tellingly, Apple doesn’t use the word “sales” to describe members of its sales team. They’re called “specialists.”

By minimizing the profit motive among employees, Apple does more than just filter out people interested primarily in money. It also reduces the number of middle-aged and older people on the payroll, said former managers. This isn’t about age discrimination, they said, so much as self-selection. Generally, an Apple employee is someone who can afford to live cheaply, is not bothered by the nonstop commotion of an Apple Store and is comfortable with technology.

People who fit that bill tend to be in their early or mid-20s, the former managers said. They typically don’t have children and many don’t have spouses, which means they are relatively inexpensive to cover with health insurance.

There is no shortage of college graduates eager to dedicate themselves to Apple’s vision, on Apple’s terms. That includes people like Asher Perlman, another former technician from a store in Chicago, who joined Apple three years ago, when he was 22.

“I’m happy with my time at Apple and where it landed me,” says Mr. Perlman, who now works in information technology. “I wouldn’t recommend it for my 35-year-old friend with a kid, but it works for someone who is 22 years old and doesn’t want to enter the business world yet.”

When Work Piles Up

The iPhone, which arrived in 2007, brought unprecedented crowds to Apple Stores. The company tried to hang on to its culture, but naturally it changed, and in many ways, say some former employees, for the worse.

Arthur Zarate, who joined Apple in 2004 and later worked as a technician at the store in Mission Viejo, Calif., says his training left him with a sense of ownership and pride. For a while, he loved the job, in large part because it delivered the simple and gratifying sense that he was helping people. There were time constraints on technicians — 20 minutes per customer — but because the store was rarely swamped, he usually had more time than that.

“My customers knew me by name,” he said. “That was a big deal.”

He had already begun to sour on the job when in 2007, he said, his store began an attendance system whereby employees accumulated a point for every day they did not come to work; anyone with four points in a 90-day period was at risk of termination.

“It was a perfectly good idea, but the thing that was terrible is that it didn’t matter why you couldn’t come to work,” Mr. Zarate said. “Even if you had a doctor document some medical condition, if you didn’t come to work, you got a point.”

Mr. Zarate, a former heavy smoker, said he was once out for two and a half weeks with severe bronchitis and was on the verge of dismissal when he e-mailed Ron Johnson, then the retail chief, who intervened on his behalf.

“I just wrote and said, ‘This isn’t fair. They don’t look at why you were out,’ ” he recalls. “And he saved my job.”

To meet the growing demand for the technicians, several former employees said their stores imposed new rules limiting on-the-spot repairs to 15 minutes for a computer-related problem, and 10 minutes for Apple’s assortment of devices. If a solution took longer to find, which it frequently did, a pileup ensued and a scrum of customers would hover. It wasn’t unusual for a genius to help three customers at once.

Because of the constant backlog, technicians often worked nonstop through their shift, instead of taking two allotted 15-minute breaks. In 2009, Matthew Bainer, a lawyer, filed a class action alleging that Apple was breaking California labor laws.

“State law mandates two 10-minute breaks a day,” Mr. Bainer said. “But geniuses had these lengthy queues of customers that made it all but impossible for them to stop even for a few minutes.”

The lawsuit was denied class certification in June of last year. Mr. Bainer pursued the matter in separate lawsuits and achieved what he described as “very favorable settlements” for 10 plaintiffs.

Not long after the class-action lawsuit was filed, a technician named Kevin Timmer who worked at the Woodland Mall store in Grand Rapids, Mich., noticed an added step when he logged onto a computer to punch out of work.

“This window popped up and it said something like, ‘By clicking this box I acknowledge that I received all my breaks,’ ” Mr. Timmer recalled. “The rumor was that was because some guy in California had sued.”

Mr. Timmer said he and other technicians in the store clicked the box even when they didn’t take any breaks. It wasn’t because management insisted they stick around. It was that any down time would slam already overburdened colleagues with even more work.

“We were all in the trenches together,” he said. “Nobody wanted to leave.”

With time limits, several former employees said, came another change at their stores. Technicians had always been able to spend a few hours of their shift in the repair room, providing a little away-from-customers time. In many stores, that ended. Walk-in demand for tech help was so great that when the bar was open, management at these stores decreed, it was to be staffed by any technician in the building. Repairs that could not be done at the bar would wait. As a result, the late shift in the repair room at these stores ended not at 10 p.m., but at midnight.

The pressure didn’t faze everyone. Multitasking, for instance, did not bother Asher Perlman.

“I’m a low stress kind of person to begin with and I didn’t find it unmanageable,” he said. “I know others did.”

As the crowds grew, the company’s “thank you” gestures started to seem a little tin-eared. Jordan Golson, who now blogs at MacRumors, a site that keeps tabs on all things Apple, said that for Christmas 2010, he and others at the store were given a fleece blanket and an insulated coffee thermos.

Mr. Zarate fared no better at one quarterly meeting for employees. Mr. Johnson made a videotaped appearance and referred to a wonderful surprise that managers were about to spring on everyone in the room. Free iPads for everyone was the expectation.“Then the lights went down, and we had a party in the store, with games and dancing,” Mr. Zarate said. “And we all got two tacos from a taco truck. That was our surprise. Two tacos.”

Rising to the Top

Like many who spoke for this article, Shane Garcia, the former Chicago manager, talked about Apple with a bittersweet mix of admiration and sadness. When he joined the company in 2007, he considered it a place, as he said, that “wanted you to be the best you could be in life, not just in sales.”

Three years later, his work life seemed tense and thankless. He had little expectation that upper management would praise or even notice his efforts.

Sales employees, Mr. Garcia and others noted, deal with stresses all their own. Though commissions are not offered, many managers keep close tabs on sales of warranties, known as Apple Care, and One to One, which is personal tutoring for a fee. Employees often had goals for “attachments” as these add-ons are called — 40 percent of certain products should include One to One, and 65 percent should include Apple Care.

For a sales employee who wanted to climb Apple’s in-store ladder — to technician or manager, for instance — those numbers were important. And in terms of keeping employees invested and striving, so were the rungs on that ladder, something that is true across retailing.

“There was always something being dangled in terms of different positions,” says Danielle Draper, a former manager at a store in Hingham, Mass. “‘You’ll need to do this if you want to become a creative,’ that kind of thing. There was never perfection. You could always tell someone they needed to work on something.”

At some point, employees either realize they won’t rise, or rise as high as they can.

“The disillusionment settles in not because of pay,” says Graham Marley, the former part-time salesman, “though pay is part of it. What happens is you realize that they want you to spend years there, but there is no actual career path.”

An exception is the job of manager, and Apple is often diligent about elevating from within its ranks of high achievers. Though not always. After the great influx that started with the iPhone, the company started plucking managers from stores like the Gap and Banana Republic. From employees who were around in the pre-2007 era, you can hear occasional laments about the gradual “Gapification of Apple.”

In recent years, the level of unhappiness at some stores was captured by an employee satisfaction survey known in the company as NetPromoter for Our People. It’s a variation of a questionnaire that Apple has long given to customers, and the key question asks employees to rate, on a scale of one to 10, “How likely are you to recommend working at your Apple Retail Store to an interested friend or family member?” Anyone who offers a nine or 10 is considered a “promoter.” Anyone who offers a seven or below is considered a “detractor.”

Kevin Timmer said the internal survey results last year at the Grand Rapids store were loaded with fives and sixes.

“We discussed it in a monthly meeting and our manager had tears in her eyes,” Mr. Timmer recalled. “She said something about how humbling these results were, that they want to fix any problems, that her door is always open, and so on.”

Similar figures were found in Chicago.

“By then,” Mr. Garcia said, “it wasn’t a surprise to upper management because it was clear that many geniuses wanted to leave. There was a ceiling. It wasn’t a glass ceiling because everyone could see it.”

Mr. Garcia would eventually quit Apple, and walk away from a job that paid a little more than $40,000 a year, when stress-related health issues sidelined him long enough to put his job at risk. He had no doubts that the company would easily find a replacement.

“There was never a shortage of résumés,” he said. “People will always want to work for Apple.”

Gabi For iPhone Brings New Facebook Experience

2012-06-23T08:40:00.000-07:00

We all know that Mark Zuckerberg’s company is a social network steam train that towers above other services of its kind, consuming other businesses and technologies as it continues on its journey of world domination. Perhaps what we didn’t know or expect so soon, is that Apple would board that steam train and integrate Facebook into iOS, but as consumers we are definitely glad they have. The native integration doesn’t remove the need for the official Facebook iOS app, but if you are one of the many users who are baffled by its inability to consistently work then it might be time to look at Facebook in a new light.

Gabi For iPhone Brings New Facebook Experience

The Gabi app for iPhone and iPod touch, recently released into the App Store, is a little piece of kit that looks at Facebook in a different way, moving away from the full social experience and attempts to display the data in a manner that is engaging to the user. It still uses Facebook, it still uses your own personal Facebook account, but it manages to visualize the information in a way that is not only unique but also highly interactive. The idea behind the app and the way the development team have gone about the implementation is extremely clever, resulting in an app that we haven’t really seen before, offering a whole new Facebook experience.

The behind the scenes magic of Gabi, which incidentally all happens inside the device after installation rather than on an external server, is all based around filtering the content and displaying it to the end user. Rather than just throwing out a whole list of dramatic status updates, pictures of people’s evening meals or check-ins at the local swimming pool, Gabi filters the content based on what is relevant to the user and clues connections information that is popular, controversial and most of all; what it believes to be most interesting. The filtered information isn’t restricted to things like status updates, images, text, videos and even things like events and groups, which all add to a very positive on-device experience.

Gabi for iPhone

It may seem bizarre, but Gabi presents an extremely social way of flicking through and enjoying a social network as everything that is generated by the app can be commented on and shared back to your own timeline in order to bring your own friends and connections into the experience. Personally speaking, I am not a great lover of Facebook and pretty much stopped using it because of the increasingly poor performance of the official mobile applications. My life is pretty much ran on the move through an iPhone and iPad, and the simple nature of Gabi along with the unique and engaging way the app works, I could again become a Facebooker.

Screen Shot of Gabi for iPhone

New Features in OS X Mountain Lion

2012-06-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

Premium Protection for the iPhone

2012-06-23T08:23:00.000-07:00

iPhone 5 concept features

2012-06-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

Google slashes price 88%

2012-06-23T08:07:00.000-07:00

Shortly after Apple dumped Google Maps for iOS, Google announces it's time to dramatically cut the price for others using the online service. Google also gives a plug for its map-based ad service.

Earlier this month, Google revealed that it hopes to improve its Google Maps 3D feature by equipping planes with its own hardware and having them take oblique image photos.

Google has announced an 88 percent price cut for those using Google Maps on high-traffic Web sites and services.

The move, which Google Maps API product manager Thor Mitchell announced yesterday, comes a few days before the developer-oriented Google I/O show and two weeks after Apple ditched Google Maps for the upcoming iOS 6.

Google lets others embed Google Maps on their own sites and services through the Google Maps API, or application programming interface. When Google announced new limits to Google Maps usage last October, Mitchell said at the time, "We need to secure its long-term future by ensuring that even when used by the highest volume for-profit sites, the service remains viable."

But other factors entered into the viability equation. Apple is the highest-profile defection, but there have been others, too, as Web sites dumped Google Maps because of high prices and put their weight behind the OpenStreetMap project instead, Google evidently took note.

"We've been listening carefully to feedback, and today we're happy to announce that we're lowering API usage fees and simplifying limits," Mitchell said. "While the Maps API remains free for the vast majority of sites, some developers were worried about the potential costs. In response, we have lowered the online price from US $4 per 1,000 map loads to 50 cents per 1,000 map loads."

First BlackBerry will not have physical keyboard

2012-06-23T07:47:00.000-07:00

First BlackBerry will not have physical keyboard

The first BlackBerry device running Research In Motion Ltd.’s new operating software will not have a physical keyboard, only a touch-screen one.

The BlackBerry 10 software will be offered on devices with physical keyboards in the future, but RIM spokeswomen Rebecca Freiburger declined to say when. RIM is expected to start selling BlackBerry 10 touch-screen devices this year.

Top-selling smartphones these days, including Apple Inc.’s iPhone and several running Google’s Android software, also lack physical keyboards. But RIM’s attempts in the past to offer touch-only phones have largely flopped.

Many corporate users have stuck with the BlackBerry solely because of its physical keyboard, given a perception that it’s harder to type emails on a touch screen. The BlackBerry 10 system has already been delayed about a year, and with additional delays to get a physical keyboard, those people may not be willing to wait any longer, especially as the iPhone makes greater in-roads in corporate settings. Those users may simply get the new iPhone expected this fall.

RIM’s hopes hang on the BlackBerry 10 system, which is meant to offer the multimedia, Internet browsing and apps experience customers now demand. The Canadian company is preparing to launch the new software later this year, just as North Americans are abandoning BlackBerrys for iPhones and Android devices.

Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Financial, called it puzzling that RIM isn’t leading with its strength by releasing a keyboard BlackBerry first.

“The physical keyboard is the most dominant item that separates out Research In Motion from its competitors,” Gillis said. “If you are not playing to your historical strengths you may find it more difficult to get traction.”

Gillis said there is a spot in the market for RIM but the company “just got to get it together.”

But Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said BlackBerry 10 is all about touch and closing the gap with Apple, so people should not be surprised that the initial model will have only a touch screen.

“They are going to build a BlackBerry device with a keyboard, but it’s just going to take longer,” Misek said. “Maybe it will come a month or two after, but frankly it might be already too late.”

RIM once dominated the corporate smartphone market but failed to adapt to the emerging “bring your own device” trend, in which employees use their personal iPhones or Android devices for work instead of relying on BlackBerrys issued by their employers. As the movement caught on, the iPhone made the BlackBerry look ancient.

RIM’s future is far from certain as its flagship devices rapidly lose market share to flashier phones. With more than $2 billion in cash, bankruptcy seems unlikely in the near term. But RIM’s U.S. share of the smartphone market fell sharply from 44 percent in 2009 to 10 percent in 2011 according to market researcher NPD Group.

RIM said Wednesday it has started laying off employees as part of a restructuring plan aimed at saving about $1 billion this year.

AMD launches HD 7970 GHz

2012-06-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

AMD launches HD 7970 GHz

AMD has launched the world's fastest graphics processing unit (GPU), the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, an upgrade to the existing HD 7970. The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition uses AMD's Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture to deliver high performance and good image quality, providing gameplay at the highest resolutions in the most demanding games such as Battlefield 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and DiRT Showdown. The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition comes fully equipped with 3GBs of GDDR5 frame buffer, AMD Eyefinity 2.0 technology, and support for PCI Express 3.0 and multi-GPU configurations with AMD CrossFire technology. The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition will be available as early as next week from add-in board (AIB) partners including ASUS, Gigabyte, HIS, MSI, Sapphire, TUL and XFX starting at USD$499 (Rs.27,500). AMD is going after Nvidia’s GTX 680 which for a while, has been the fastest single-chip graphics card in the market.

What's Wrong With Google CEO Lary Page

2012-06-23T07:32:00.000-07:00

Lary Page, Google's CEO

Google CEO Larry Page has a mysterious ailment that caused him to miss last week's shareholder meeting.

Google says this ailment will also cause Larry to miss (or at least not speak at) Google's big developer conference this week and Google's earnings call in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, Larry Page last posted to his Google+ account on May 25th, nearly a month ago.

Google's explanation of the situation is merely that Larry has "lost his voice."

Larry's own explanation to his Google troops is that there is "nothing seriously wrong."

And we all obviously hope that nothing is seriously wrong.

But coming as it does on the heels of the tragic sickness and death of Steve Jobs, which was preceded by Apple's absurdly vague and sugar-coated statements along the way, everyone can be forgiven for worrying that it's deja vu all over again.

And, as inappropriate and intrusive as it might seem to be, everyone can also be forgiven for wondering what might be wrong with Larry.

Google could just tell us what's wrong with Larry, so we wouldn't have to speculate. But, for some reason, Google is choosing not to do that. So we have no choice but to speculate.

In fact, given Larry's importance to Google and the tech industry and Google shareholders, it would be irresponsible not to speculate. Because if it turns out that something is seriously wrong with Larry--or if what is currently not serious becomes serious--we will all feel like idiots for not having learned our lesson from Steve and Apple.

(Not that having the full details about Steve's situation would have changed things. He still would have died way too young. But at least the time and energy devoted to the perfectly reasonable speculation about Steve's health could have been spent on more important things.)

I think Google should tell us exactly what's wrong with Larry. Given Larry's importance to the company, I think it's the fair and right thing to do.

But given that Google has decided not to do this, here's some of the early speculation...

Larry Page is only 39. He appears to be in robust health. He is "prematurely gray," which some armchair physicians worry is a possible sign of a thyroid problem, possibly thyroid cancer.

"Thyroid cancer," though, would presumably qualify as a "serious" problem. Unless it was very minor thyroid cancer. So there is some concern that it might be that.

Lots of people are wondering whether Larry smokes. I doubt he smokes (he seems to be a health nut), but this would also be helpful information to know.

Amir Efrati and Joann Lublin of the Wall Street Journal talked to a doctor and came back with three other things that might be wrong with Larry. Encouragingly, they're all much less serious than thyroid cancer:

    "acute laryngitis, a viral infection that causes inflammation of the vocal cords and requires resting one's voice for at least week or two,"
    "Muscle tension dysphonia, which occurs when the muscles around the larynx, or voice box, are too tight and causes a person to use excess tension while speaking. Voice therapy is often required for such an ailment."
    "Some people who naturally produce an unusual-sounding or hoarse voice may develop benign lesions that grow on the vocal cord... Surgery is sometimes required to remove the growths."

If the problem is any of those things, we're mystified as to why Google won't tell us that.

Is there something embarrassing or uber-private about having "acute laryngitis"?

Again, we very much hope that there isn't anything seriously wrong with Larry. We hope he gets well soon. In the meantime, unfortunately, we'll just have to speculate.