Tag Archive for Apple

Most Firms Don’t Know Why They Use the iPad

Most Firms Don't Know Why They Use the iPadDespite the widespread success of the Apple (AAPL) iPad more than half of companies lack a clear iPad tablet strategy according to a recent survey by Dimensional Research. CNET’s Stephen Shankland points out the survey which found that “Most participants, 51 percent, indicated that they did not have a clearly articulated strategy.

iPadThe survey of 448 businesses found that:

  • 22% have already deployed tablets.
  • 22% plan to do so this year
  • 24% plan to next year
  • 20% have no plans to deploy tablets

Dimensional Research polled the firms on whose tablet they intend to deploy and found:

Ann All at ITBusinessEdge.com says the survey is an affirmation that the BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) trend is not hype, 41% of survey respondents said individual employees were using tablets they had purchased themselves.

The research firm also found that 82% of firms will use tablets to complement, and not replace, laptops. This fact is not lost on IT Pros. 42% of IT staff said business stakeholders do not understand the need for more development like new front pages specifically for the iPad.

Many of the companies I’ve spoken with seem to discover multiple use cases they hadn’t imagined for tablets when they begin putting them into users’ hands. And new applications continue to emerge all the time.

What do you think?

What tablet has your firm deployed?

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedInFacebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Too Late for Cisco to Take on Apple?

Too Late for Cisco to Take on Apple?Chronically under-performing Cisco is finally getting into the iPad tablet market. Cisco (CSCO) will be releasing Cius in July. Technology Review reports that Cisco’s Cius, is bulkier than the iPad, and has a smaller screen (7-inches wide, compared to the iPad’s 9.7). But it packs a number of tricks designed to woo business users.

Cisco logoTested.com says the Cius can connect to a Cisco phone network to port calls from a desk number to the tablet in order to make a user’s desk number mobile. This will enable a person to make and receive voice and video calls anywhere. The tablet features HD quality cameras front and back and can be used with a Bluetooth headset for more private calling.

The tablet can also be used as a desktop videoconferencing device when docked on a special desktop phone, and can smoothly switch between a WiFi a cellular network connection. The Cius can be docked to serve as a videoconferencing device. The dock supports a keyboard and mouse, so the Cius really can serve as a little computer, “It can replace my desktop operating system,” says Tom Puorro, senior director for Cisco’s collaboration technologies told Technology Review.

Tested.com says the tablet runs Google‘s (GOOG) Android 2.2 Froyo on an Intel (INTC) Z650 1.6GHz Atom chip and weighs 1.5 pounds despite its small 7” screen. Tested.com speculates that Cisco has heavily modified the open-source Android to support business-centric features like multi-person videoconferencing and virtual desktop software.

Engadget has a video demo of the product here.

The fully skinned Android tablet seems like a relic of 2010 thanks to the arrival of Honeycomb, a version of Android actually built for tablets–which the Cius isn’t running. Tested.com says Cisco plans to upgrade the tablet to Android Ice Cream Sandwich eventually, but for now, it’s slumming around with version 2.2 (Froyo). Cisco probably spent too much time developing its custom skin and software to upgrade to Android version 2.3 (Gingerbread) or version 3.0 (Honeycomb).

Cisu runs on AndroidCisco has also created its own app store, AppHQ, that has only apps deemed stable and secure by Cisco and segregated it from the Android app market. This gives the IT department greater control over what a Cius user can do. IT managers can shut down access to the Android app market to protect a company from malicious apps according to Technology Review. Companies can even create their own app store within AppHQ and limit employees to certain applications, or apps built in-house.

Cisco has demonstrated a Cius virtual desktop that runs in the cloud and makes use of a dedicated chip in the tablet that encrypts all its data says Technology Review

A Wi-Fi-only version of the tablet will be available worldwide from July 31 at an estimated price of $750. Cisco will sell it along with related services and infrastructure, so the cost to businesses will vary, and could be as low as $650. AT&T and Verizon will each offer versions for their 3G and 4G networks this fall.

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I wrote about the Cius here and don’t think it is an Apple Killer. Cisco will give its big partners a deal, but Cius also depends on an existing Cisco telephony infrastructure. I don’t see the Cius fitting in the Cisco product line-up since they jettisoned the Flip and are reportedly shopping Linksys and WebEx. The built-in virtual desktop looks pretty cool, though.

What do you think?

Can the Cisco Cius knock off the Apple iPad?

Does the Cius make sense in the non-consumer Cisco?

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedInFacebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Richard Dreyfuss Reads the iTunes EULA

CNET asks why are end-user license agreements (EULA) and terms of service so long and convoluted. In order to find out, they asked Academy Award winner Richard Dreyfuss to help them understand by doing a dramatic reading of the Apple (AAPL) EULA.

Richard Dreyfuss Reads the iTunes EULA

 

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedInFacebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

40 Years of Malware – Part 2

40 Years of Malware - Part 22011 marks the 40th anniversary of the computer virus. Help Net Security notes that over the last four decades, malware instances have grown from 1,300 in 1990, to 50,000 in 2000, to over 200 million in 2010. Fortinet (FTNT) marks this dubious milestone with an article that counts down some of the malware evolution low-lights.

The Sunnyvale, CA network security firm says that viruses evolved from academic proof of concepts to geek pranks which have evolved into cybercriminal tools. By 2005, monetization of the virus scene was underway and almost all viruses developed for the sole purpose of making money via more or less complex business models. According to FortiGuard Labs, the most significant computer viruses over the last 40 years are:

See Part 1 Here – See Part 2 Here  – See Part 3 Here  – See Part 4 Here

1945 – A Bug is Born –  Grace Murray Hopper, a researcher at Harvard, notes a system failure and finds a moth trapped in relay panels.

1949 – Self-replicating programsJohn von Newman a researcher from Hungary published the theoretical base for computers that store information in their “memory”.

1962 – A group of Bell Telephone Labs researchers invents a game that destroys software programs.

1971 – The Creeper Virus appears on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. It replicates itself and displays a message: “I’m the Creeper: Catch Me if You Can.”

1974 – The Wabbit – was a self-replicating program, that made multiple copies of itself on a computer until it bogs down the system to such an extent that system performance is reduced to zero and the computer eventually crashes. This virus was named wabbit because of the speed at which it was able to replicate.

Apple IIe1981 – Elk Cloner – the first widespread virus on the Apple (AAPL) II platform, spreads by the floppy disk and infects boot sectors, generating messages and impairing performance.

1983 –  The term “computer virus” comes into vogue after Professor Len Adleman at Lehigh University demonstrates the concept at a seminar.

1986 – The Brain is the first global epidemic on the PC platform and shows businesses and consumers are clueless about protection.

1987 – Jerusalem virus – On any Black Friday (Friday the 13th), it would delete any programs that were run, instead of infecting them, so it simply couldn’t be ignored,” Roger Thompson told News.com, Australia. “You couldn’t throw away your hard drive, and reformatting it didn’t remove the virus,” the chief research officer for AVG said.

BSD Daemon1988 – The Morris worm – created by Robert Tappan Morris, infects DEC VAX and Sun machines running BSD UNIX connected to the Internet and becomes the first worm to spread extensively “in the wild”, and one of the first well-known programs exploiting buffer overrun vulnerabilities.

1990 – Chameleon– the first documented polymorphic virus, malware that adapts and changes to avoid detection.

1992 – Michelangelo – was expected to create a digital apocalypse on March 6, with millions of computers having their information wiped according to mass media hysteria surrounding the virus.  Later assessments of the damage showed the aftermath to be minimal.

1995 –  Concept – the first Macro virus attacked Microsoft (MSFT) Word documents.

1996 – Laroux – the first Microsoft (MSFT) Excel virus, appears in the wild.

1999 – The Happy99 worm – invisibly attached itself to emails and would display fireworks to hide the changes being made then wished the user a happy New Year. It modified system files related to Microsoft (MSFT) Outlook Express and Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows 95 and Windows 98.

1999 – The Melissa worm targeted Microsoft (MSFT) Word and Outlook-based systems, and created considerable network traffic.

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Back in the day, I had to deal with both Happy99 and Melissa, as well as the occasional Stoned. Melissa was the easiest to deal with since I was running a GroupWise shop at the time, once the news spread, we just pulled the Cat5 from the GWIA and we saw minimal blowback. Let’s hear it for technological diversity.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedInFacebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Tablet Notes

Tablet NotesiPad sold three million units in the first 80 days after its April 2010 release. Its current sales rate is about 4.5 million units per quarter, according to Bernstein Research. This sales rate is blowing past records. iPad is outselling iPhone and the DVD player, the most quickly adopted non-phone electronic product.

Apple iPad Will Fail in the Enterprise

Dell logothe Apple (AAPL) iPad would ultimately fail in the enterprise. That is what Andy Lark, Dell‘s (DELL) global head of marketing for large enterprises and public organizations told CIO Australia.

… longer term, open, capable and affordable will win, not closed, high price and proprietary [Apple has] done a really nice job, they’ve got a great product, but the challenge they’ve got is that already Android is outpacing them.

Apple is great if you’ve got a lot of money and live on an island. It’s not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex.

Mr. Lark claimed Dell had taken an enterprise approach toward tablet PCs. This approach will ultimately give Dell an edge. Dell has a major stake in Microsoft Windows and the desktop PC market. “We’ve taken a very considered approach to tablets, given that the vast majority of our business isn’t in the consumer space,” he said.

The cost of Apple products was another deterrent to iPad deployments. Dell’s Lark claims that the economics on a fully loaded iPad did not add up. “An iPad with a keyboard, a mouse, and a case [means] you’ll be at $1500 or $1600; that’s double of what you’re paying,” he claimed. “That’s not feasible.

Despite the company’s history with Microsoft, it had embraced both Windows Phone 7 and Android operating systems “…Our strategy is multi-OS,” Lark said. “We will do Windows 7 coupled with Android Honeycomb, and we’re really excited. We think that giving people that choice is very important.

Outlook on the iPhone and iPad

Pst Mail an iPad appHelp has arrived for Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPad owners who need access to their Microsoft (MSFT) Outlook e-mail. AppScout says users can check their email even when they don’t have an Internet connection.Pst Mail from Arrow Bit is an iPad app that provides offline access, potentially saving money on the user’s data plan. With the app, you can carry around a year’s worth of messages with you. Pst Mail can interact with the Mail app on your iPhone or iPad to reply to or forward messages. It can also open pst files created with any version of Microsoft Outlook.

AppScout says to find messages in large pst files, Pst Mail includes an advanced search feature. You can search by sender, recipient, subject text, message body, or even attachment name. You can also limit the search to a particular time frame. The developers offer a free lite version of the app in the iTunes Store, which has all the same features as the full version but is limited to the number of messages a user may open in each folder. The full version costs $9.99 in the iTunes app store.

GoToMyPC: iPad App

GoToMyPC Citrix (CTXS) has launched an Apple (AAPL) iPad version of GoToMyPC, a remote desktop application that lets you log in to your computer and control it on the go. Up until recently, you needed a PC to log in to a remote PC using the service. But the iPad app lets you do it anywhere you can get an internet connection on an iPad.

Mobilputing says GoToMyPC is hardly the first app of its type for the iPad. LogMein, TeamViewer, Parallels, and Splashtop all offer similar apps. But the GoToMyPC app has tight security features including 128-bit AES encryption, user authentication, and dual passwords, oriented for business.

Apple Sued Over Apps Giving Information to Advertisers

Apple is being sued over the collection and sharing of user data with outside companiesApple (AAPL) and Apple app developers have been sued over the collection and sharing of user data with outside companies (which I wrote about here). Two suits were filed in the Northern District of CA against the iPhone and iPad manufacturer. Apple is named in Lalo v. Apple, 10-5878.

Lalo seeks class action and claims that iPhones and iPads are encoded with identifying devices that allow advertising networks to track what applications users download, how frequently they’re used, and for how long. “Some apps are also selling additional information to ad networks, including users’ location, age, gender, income, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and political views,” reports Bloomberg’s BusinesWeek.

According to Wired the second suit, Freeman v. Apple seeks both monetary damages and a court order to stop the profiling by app makers being sued are Pandora and Dictionary.com, Toss It, Text4Plus, The Weather Channel, Talking Tom Cat, and Pimple Popper Lite.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedInFacebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.