Saturday, August 24, 2013

Software : Apple admonished by DoJ over reluctance to change ebook ways

Software : Apple admonished by DoJ over reluctance to change ebook ways

Apple admonished by DoJ over reluctance to change ebook ways

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Apple admonished by DoJ over reluctance to change ebook ways

The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) has expressed frustration with Apple for continuing to insist it did nothing wrong, despite being found guilty in the ebook price fixing antitrust suit.

The DoJ is upset that Apple continues to push the judge to impose only minor penalties following a legal ruling that it conspired with major book publishers in order to keep the prices of ebooks artificially high.

The Justice Department wants an independent regulator to oversee Apple's future conduct and deals with publishers, wants rival sellers like Amazon to be able to link to their own stores from iOS apps.

Apple isn't playing ball, with its proposed compromise imposing 'virtually no limitations' on its future actions, according to the DoJ.

'Business as usual'

In the latest court filing, the DoJ wrote: "In response to the Court's instruction that the parties meet and confer in an attempt to arrive at a mutually-acceptable injunction, Apple proposed to Plaintiffs a series of terms that impose virtually no limitations on the company's conduct beyond those already in place through the Publisher Defendants' settlements. In fact, in several respects, Apple's post-trial proposed injunction is less restrictive than the injunctions agreed to by the Publisher Defendants as part of their pre-trial settlements.

"They resist proposed changes intended to strengthen their internal compliance processes, refuse to undertake basic efforts aimed at restoring price competition in the marketplace, and even decline to commit to not repeating their anticompetitive practices in other content markets.

"Quite simply, Apple wants to continue business as usual, regardless of the antitrust laws. Under these circumstances, this Court should have no confidence that Apple on its own effectively can ensure that its illegal conduct will not be repeated. There must be significant oversight by someone not entrenched in Apple's culture of insensitivity to basic tenets of antitrust law."

Apple was left to fight the case alone earlier this year after all five major publishing houses settled out of court.

In a career full of Windows, Vista is Ballmer's biggest regret

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In a career full of Windows, Vista is Ballmer's biggest regret

Steve Ballmer is on his way out the door...slowly.

While we'll have up to 12 months to hear about the big man at Microsoft's decision to leaving and much, much more, we have insight into his life and times at the tech titan today.

Mary Jo Foley snuck in 15 minutes with Steve, and though their conversation swung on a number of pertinent topics, the guy who's been at Microsoft since 1980 let out that his biggest regret is a five-letter word.

"Oh, you know, I've actually had a chance to make a lot of mistakes, and probably because, you know, people all want to focus in on period A, period B, but I would say probably the thing I regret most is the, what shall I call it, the loopedy-loo that we did that was sort of Longhorn to Vista," he said.

"I would say that's probably the thing I regret most. And, you know, there are side effects of that when you tie up a big team to do something that doesn't prove out to be as valuable."

Loud and proud

It took Windows Vista five and a half years to follow Windows XP. It was finally launched it in 2007 after Microsoft rejiggered the codebase halfway through development. The end result was less - way less - than ideal.

As pointed out by The Verge, Ballmer spoke in 2010 about the fallout of taking too long to create Vista.

"We tried too big a task and in the process wound up losing thousands of man hours of innovation," he said at the time.

The distance of time and the legacy of new innovations like Windows 8.1 will probably help Ballmer sleep during his retirement (oh, and his millions), but he does have one feel-good positive from his time at the Soft.

"I'm proud of being, I would say a significant part even, of the birth of intelligent personal computing, the notion that people use computing technologies, whether that's phones, PCs," he told Foley of the thing he's most proud of.

"If I had to sort of couple it, I'm very proud that we were able to make this incredible impact on the planet and at the same time do a good job for our shareholders."

BBM for iOS and Android user manuals bumble about online

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BBM for iOS and Android user manuals bumble about online

It's been a long time coming, but BlackBerry Messaging looks ready to ripen on iOS and Android.

The company formerly known as Research in Motion published the manuals for BBM on iOS and Android online before promptly taking them down, reported Pocketnow, a sign that the material is ther, just that BB isn't ready to send it on its merry way.

Those who caught a glimpse say the manuals featured instructions for sending text messages, voice messages, locations and photos, as well as instructions on how to change statuses and profile pictures, among much else.

The site reported that screen sharing, voice communication, and video will be there eventually as well, though not at first.

All signs point to BBM

Earlier this year word was BBM would arrive on iOS and Android by the end of the summer.

Earlier this month BBM for Android entered internal beta at BlackBerry, and in July a BB exec said it would arrive on Google's mobile OS by the end of September.

This month a press release even claimed that BBM for Android will arrive "soon" - but only on Samsung's Galaxy S4, and only in Africa.

There's been even less word on BBM for iOS, but all signs seem to point that both versions of the BlackBerry Messaging app are well on their way.

Whether anyone still cares is a different question, and one that will only be answered when it finally comes out.
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