Chairmen Gruber, in a conversation on Tweetbot:
In a sense, then, perhaps there is something droid-like about the Android user experience. Not in the artistic, warm, humanist way that the Tapbots aesthetic is bot-like, but in the cool, rational, science-not-art, thinking-as-opposed-to-feeling sense of artificial intelligence. The difference between iOS and Android, design-wise, can be summed in a single word: magic. iOS aims for it. Android doesn’t want it.
Here’s a snippet from Dropbox’s FAQ page on security:
Like most online services, we have a small number of employees who must be able to access user data for the reasons stated in our privacy policy (e.g., when legally required to do so). But that’s the rare exception, not the rule. We have strict policy and technical access controls that prohibit employee access except in these rare circumstances. In addition, we employ a number of physical and electronic security measures to protect user information from unauthorized access.
Dropbox recently announced an update to its security terms of service in which they announced that they would provide the government with your decrypted files if requested to do so.
This is not my problem with Dropbox.
My problem is that for as long as I have tried to figure out, Dropbox made some bold claims about how your files were encrypted and how nobody had access to them.
That is very concerning for me — I keep just about everything in Dropbox these days. I may have to think about storing more sensitive stuff inside encrypted DMGs on Dropbox.
I am a huge fan of Dropbox, and recommend it ( affiliate link) to people fairly often.
That said, here’s the bottom line: any data that isn’t in your direct physical control has the potential to be compromised.
To put it another way, once someone has physical access to your data, you’ve lost control of the security surrounding that data.
Unless you’re using something like FileVault on the Mac, if someone steals your MacBook Pro, they can access your data, without regard to how good your account password is, if they know what they are doing. The same thing is an issue on any OS out there — without data encryption, your files are sitting ducks.
Cloud services are bumping into this all the time. If you have something in the cloud, the reality is that you’ve just put your data in the hands of a corporation. Corporations don’t always act in the best interest of their customers, and don’t always hire outstanding employees. Corporations have problems and run into issues.
While I trust Apple and Amazon more than I trust Google, keeping a close eye on any cloud-based service is a good idea.
But in the world of services like Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr, this sort of thing isn’t given much thought. We trust the companies, and trust the people who see our content not to rip it off.
Apple has access to my calendar, contact and bookmark information, via MobileMe. Dropbox and Amazon have access to my files that I sync with the service. I publish tons of photos on the Yahoo-owned Flickr. Instagram has my photos as well, and countless websites and services have my personal email account. While I don’t use Google for much, the RSS feeds I follow and web searches I conduct are associated with my account.
So, do I trust Dropbox? I do, but I wouldn’t sync a text document with my social security number in it to the company’s S3 server space. Super sensitive files should never be on a server you can’t physically control.
As with most things in life, a little common sense goes a long way when dealing with the cloud and data security. Yes, it sucks that Dropbox employees could see all the cat GIFs I’ve saved in my Dropbox folder, but I understand that they have to operate within the laws of the United States.
Just use your head. Don’t lose it in the clouds.1
See what I did there? Clever, no? ↩︎
Did you know that 67% of Mac users have a college degree, while only 54% of PC people do?
[via Shawn Blanc]
In a sketch supplied to us by a source, the home button is doing double duty as a gesture area; this falls in line with testing we’ve seen for gestures on the iPad, and our sources say that gestures are definitely coming in a future version of iOS. The home button will likely be enlarged, but not scrapped altogether. Furthermore, we’re hearing that the screen on the device will occupy the entire (or near to it) front of the phone, meaning almost no bezel. Our source says the company is doing very “interesting things” with bonded glass technology, and has been exploring designs where the earpiece and sensors are somehow behind the screen itself, making for a device where the display is actually edge-to-edge. Regardless, the sketch we’ve seen suggests the screen will go up to 3.7-inches while keeping the current resolution, and at that size, pixel density goes from 326 to 312 (a drop of 13ppi). That means that Apple can still tout Retina Display technology (the claim is that anything above 300ppi means the pixels aren’t distinguishable at 12 inches). Rumors have been suggesting that the size would bump up to 4 inches, but at that size with the current resolution, pixel density drops to 288, making it harder for Apple to use the RD branding.
The mockups look a little too radical. Frankly, I think the iPhone 4 is far more attractive than this thing.
Go read Nilay Patel’s coverage of the new Apple v. Samsung lawsuit. I’ll wait for you to come back.
Ok. Welcome back. Crazy stuff right? To me, its pretty clear that Samsung intentionally ripped off the look and feel of iOS and Apple’s hardware design when making its phones and Android UI, TouchWiz.
This is about Samsung’s design choices. And while Patel is careful not to draw parallels between this suit and the one Apple had against Microsoft in the mid–1990s.
He says:
Oh, and don’t conflate trade dress with Apple’s doomed copyright-based “look and feel” lawsuit against Microsoft in the 90s — it’s totally different. Trade dress law is well-established, and Apple itself has a history of successfully pursuing trade dress claims in the Northern District of California. In 2000 the company sued both eMachines and a company called Future Power for knocking off the iMac’s trade dress, winning injunctions in both cases and eventually getting extremely restrictive settlements that effectively removed the infringing products from the marketplace.
The Microsoft case is extremely interesting, though.
Apple sued Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard after Windows 2.0 was released. Windows 1.0 contained some GUI components licensed by Apple, but version 2.0 went beyond the legal agreements, and, according to Apple, looked and felt too much like the Mac OS.
The court ruled:
Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]…
Apple lost the case because the 10 GUI elements not covered in the Windows 1.0 licensing deal weren’t originally created by Apple, or were considered the “only way” such an idea could be expressed within a UI. That said, the court clearly established that analytical dissection of user interfaces are critical when dealing with copyright issues.
On that basis, Samsung is clearly in trouble. TouchWiz’s app icons, the Springboard with App Dock (which no other Android skin has) and coloring are all designed to trick customers into thinking they’re getting an iPhone-like product. While Apple can’t — and isn’t — arguing that TouchWiz looks and feels like iOS, it’s case that numerous components of the TouchWiz GUI look a lot like their iOS counterparts seems solid.
Another incredible quarter for the Cupertino company.
I re-wrote Rebecca Black’s song “Friday” as Good “Friday” for Holy Week. I’m not kidding.
Be sure to check out this screen shot John Rust posted of how he uses the GTD application.
Nilay Patel, on Apple’s case against Samsung:
Taken as a group, it feels like a remarkably solid case — Samsung can’t just up and countersue Apple with its own patents and hope to walk away with a handshake and a cross-license because of the various trademark, trade dress, and design patent claims. How the company decides to deal with those issues remains to be seen; there’s no question in my mind that Samsung designed TouchWiz to look and feel as much like iOS as possible, and then marketed it as such.
In that context, Apple’s Android-specific patent claims almost seem like a foundation on which to build the case against TouchWiz, not the indirect swipe at Android itself that I’ve come to expect from these lawsuits.
This is a hilarious list, via Neven Mrgan.
Living with OmniFocus is like having a garden. If you don’t take care of it, weeds take over and ruin it, choking out anything healthy. But if you tend it carefully, it will provide you with beautiful, bountiful results that are delightful.