New submitter jackjeff (955699) writes with an excerpt from developer Aymeric Barthe about data loss suffered under Apple's venerable HFS+ filesystem. HFS+ lost a total of 28 files over the course of 6 years. Most of the corrupted files are completely unreadable. The JPEGs typically decode partially, up to the point of failure. The raw .CR2 files usually turn out to be totally unreadable: either completely black or having a large color overlay on significant portions of the photo. Most of these shots are not so important, but a handful of them are. One of the CR2 files in particular, is a very good picture of my son when he was a baby. I printed and framed that photo, so I am glad that I did not lose the original. (Barthe acknowledges that data loss and corruption certainly aren't limited to HFS+; "bitrot is actually a problem shared by most popular filesystems. Including NTFS and ext4." I wish I'd lost only 28 files over the years.)

jones_supa sends word that Apple has launched an exchange program for European iPhone USB power adapters. The company says its A1300 adapters were bundled with the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4S models, and were also sold on their own from Oct. 2009 to Sept. 2012. The reason for the recall is that the adapters "may overheat and pose a safety risk." No further details are provided (a YouTube video shows a teardown of the device).

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes Synaptics Inc., of touchpad fame, is acquiring Renesas SP Drivers Inc, a division of Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics Corp. Renesas SP is the exclusive supplier of Apple's display driver chips for the iPhone. While Synaptics is a major supplier of touchscreen technology to clients such as Samsung, they have not done business with Apple for some eight years. Characterized as 'thrilled' to be back in Apple's supply chain, Synaptics CEO, Rick Bergman, is quoted as saying, '... I don't believe they do any driver chips internally so that would really be an opportunity for us.'

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "The European Commission is to open a formal investigation into Apple, Starbucks and Fiat in relation to tax arrangements with three EU countries. The firms' arrangements with Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg will be investigated. Announcing the move, tax commissioner Algirdas Semeta said that 'fair tax competition is essential.' Last year, a US Senate investigation accused Ireland of giving special tax treatment to Apple. The European Commission will look at whether the companies' tax affairs breach EU rules on state aid. Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said: 'In the current context of tight public budgets, it is particularly important that large multinationals pay their fair share of taxes.' Countries in Europe cannot allow certain firms to pay less tax than they should, Mr Almunia added."

schwit1 (797399) writes 'It wasn't touted onstage, but a new iOS 8 feature is set to cause havoc for location trackers, and score a major win for privacy.As spotted by Frederic Jacobs, the changes have to do with the MAC address used to identify devices within networks. When iOS 8 devices look for a connection, they randomize the MAC address, effectively disguising any trace of the real device until it decides to connect to a network.'

An anonymous reader writes "The Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) on Thursday announced it has absolved Apple of wrongdoing in a trademark lawsuit surrounding the iPhone's infringement of a local telecommunications company marketing the phonetically identical 'iFone' brand. The logic behind the ruling was based on the difference in the two companies' markets. While iFone sells telecommunications services, Apple sells smartphones (but not actual telecommunications service). Because cellular carriers offer telecommunications services, the IMPI ruled that carriers have to remove the word 'iPhone' from all marketing materials within the next 15 days."

redletterdave (2493036) writes 'Apple has purchased Spotsetter, a social search engine that uses big data to offer personalized recommendations for places to go. Spotsetter was designed to combine recommendations from friends with trusted reviews and other data to create more social maps. It would show you which friends were 'experts' in a given area, and you could tag your friends as experts (like LinkedIn) to boost the influence of their recommendations. You could also discover new places by browsing Spotsetter's maps to see where your friends have been and what they've recommended. Spotsetter's app, which was available on iOS and Android, officially closed down just six days ago.'

An anonymous reader writes "Netflix yesterday furthered its plans to ditch Silverlight for HTML5 on Macs, having already done so last year in IE11 on Windows 8.1. HTML5 video is now supported by Netflix in Safari on OS X Yosemite, meaning you can stream your favorite movies and TV shows without having to install any plugins." Courtesy of encrypted media extensions.

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes "Apple CEO Tim Cook during his keynote said that around 130 million customers have purchased their first Apple device in the last twelve months. He states, 'Many of these customers were switchers from Android,' he said. 'They had bought an Android phone by mistake, and then had sought a better experience and a better life.' He added that almost half of those who have purchased an iPhone in China since December have switched from Android. However, it is worth noting that iPhones were not actually available in China until December, when pre-orders began, so it is unclear how much of the device's popularity there is simply down to the novelty factor, rather than a burning desire to flee from Android."

jmcbain (1233044) writes "At WWDC 2014 today, Apple announced Swift, a new programming language. According to a report by Ars Technica: 'Swift seems to get rid of Objective C's reliance on defined pointers; instead, the compiler infers the variable type, just as many scripting languages do. ... The new language will rely on the automatic reference counting that Apple introduced to replace its garbage-collected version of Objective C. It will also be able to leverage the compiler technologies developed in LLVM for current development, such as autovectorization. ... Apple showed off a couple of cases where implementing the same algorithm in Swift provided a speedup of about 1.3X compared to the same code implemented in Objective C.'" Language basics, and a few worthwhile comments on LtU.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) has started, and OS X 10.10, officially named Yosemite, and iOS 8 have been officially unveiled. Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering, also highlighted iCloud Drive. Although a little late to the party, Apple hopes to compete with the likes of Dropbox and Google Drive."

SlappingOysters (1344355) writes "Grab It is reporting that Apple will stream its 2014 WWDC keynote live at 10am PST on June 2. The site speculates that a recent update to showcase title and previous keynote star Real Racing 3 could confirm a rumoured microconsole announcement. The App Store has seen a dramatic rise in the quality and frequency of AAA spin-off titles over the last year, giving Apple a good platform to make a move into this emerging space."

SimonTheSoundMan writes: "Apple has confirmed it will buy Beats Electronics and Beats Music for $3 billion. Apple will make the purchase using $2.6 billion in cash and $400 million in stock. An important part of the acquisition for Apple is absorbing the Beats subscription streaming service, even though it only has about 110k users. The Beats brand will remain intact, and will continue to sell headphones. "

An anonymous reader writes "According to a report Apple will be unveiling a new smart home system at the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference. The system will allow users to control security systems, appliances and lighting with their iPhones. A "select number" of device makers will be certified to offer products that work with Apple's upcoming system, according to the report, which didn't name any of the manufacturers."

An anonymous reader writes "Google today announced the release of VirusTotal Uploader for OS X, allowing Mac users to upload suspicious files for scanning. You can download it now directly for OS X 10.8 and 10.9 from VirusTotal. For those who don't know, VirusTotal Uploader for Windows is a popular tool for submitting suspicious files to the online scanning service. The process is as simple as right-clicking any file and selecting the relevant option from the context menu."

Bloomberg reports that after Apple's patent victory in court last week over smart-phone rival Samsung, Apple is seeking a sales ban on several specific phones from Samsung; none of them are currently flagship devices. "The nine devices targeted by Cupertino, California-based Apple for a U.S. sales ban include the Admire, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch, Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, Galaxy S3 and Stratosphere." Getting the competition blocked from the marketplace over patent claims is something that Apple's tried before in connection with its beef with Samsung, and the company has had mixed results, depending on jurisdiction. Last week's decision in favor of Apple hints that the jury didn't think the company deserved the entire $2.2 billion it was seeking, awarding (a mere) $120 million, instead.

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes in with news that global market research agency Millward Brown has proclaimed Google as the world's most valuable brand. "US search engine Google has overtaken rival technology titan Apple as the world's top brand in terms of value, global market research agency Millward Brown said Wednesday. Google's brand value shot up 40 percent in a year to $158.84 billion (115 billion euros), Millward Brown said in its 2014 100 Top BrandZ report. 'Google has been extremely innovative this year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a range of partnerships,' said Benoit Tranzer, the head of Millward Brown France. Apple, which dominated the top position for three straight years, saw its brand value fall by 20 percent to $147.88 billion."

MojoKid (1002251) writes "Valve has today pushed out a new update to its Steam client on all three of the major OSes that finally takes In-home Game-Streaming out of beta. Similar to NVIDIA's GameStream, which streams native gameplay from a GeForce-equipped PC to the NVIDIA SHIELD, Valve's solution lets you stream from one PC to another, regardless of which OS it's running. What this means is you could have a SteamOS-based PC in your living-room, which is of course Linux-based, and stream games from your Windows PC in another room which ordinarily would never run under Linux. Likewise, you could stream a game from a Windows PC to an OS X machine, or vice versa."

An anonymous reader writes "Just when people got used to good smartphones costing $200 with a 2-year contract, they also started to realize that those 2-year contracts were bad news. Still, it's often more palatable than fronting $600 for good, new hardware. But that's starting to change. Cell phone internals are getting cheap enough that prices for capable devices have been creeping downward below $200 without a contract. We ran into something similar with the PC industry some years back — previous-gen chips had no trouble running next-gen software (excluding games with bleeding-edge graphics), and so the impetus to keep getting the latest-and-greatest hardware disappeared for a lot of people. That revolution is underway now for smartphones, and it's going to shake things up for everybody, including Apple and Samsung. But the biggest effects will be felt in the developing world: '[F]or a vast number of people in a vast number of countries, the cheap handset will be the first screen, and the only screen. Their primary interface with the world. A way of connecting to the Internet where there are no telephone lines or coaxial cables or even electricity. In nations without subsidized cell phone contracts or access to consumer credit, the $50-and-you-own-it handset is going to be transformative.'"

An anonymous reader writes "We've all heard about iPhone users switching over to Android-powered phones and no longer being able to receive text messages from friends and family still using iPhones. Well, a woman with exactly this issue has filed a lawsuit against Apple, complaining that '[p]eople who replace their Apple devices with non-Apple wireless phones and tablets are "penalized and unable to obtain the full benefits of their wireless-service contracts."' To be specific, '[t]he suit is based on contractual interference and unfair competition laws.' She is seeking class action status and undetermined damages."