bdkennedy said:

Apple is up to something with that Jet Black color.

xmhillx said:

cnocbui said:

And their endurance is more like 3hrs when not paired with a phone.  It's not surprising they are more expensive than the earpods, they are a fitness tracker, media player and bluetooth earbuds all rolled into one.

Nice attempt at FUD.

Oh and FUD specifically describes false and  dubious misinformation.

Obviously you're misusing the phrase and kool-looking, insider acronym. I compared facts and tech reviews. Smart ass.

Fear, uncertainty and doubt (often shortened to FUD) is a disinformation strategy used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear.

sog35 said:

cnocbui said:

gatorguy said:

radarthekat said:

...today's Apple is somehow worth $95b less than the Apple of Sept 2012?  

I'm not seeing how that makes any sense.  

And so I'll remain long.

And so I'll stay out of the market.
I've mentioned before I don't invest in anything that doesn't make sense. The stock market is one of those things. 

Investing in shares that consistently deliver good dividends in terms of yield I can understand, the rest is just a ponzi scheme.

Tell that to Warren Buffet

williamh said:

nolamacguy said:

cnocbui said:

georgecreedle said:

The Gold Apple Watch served it's purpose as a topic starter and by only selling it one year, they have cemented it as eventual collectors piece.

Nothing powered by a short-lifespan Li-ion battery is anything I would regard as a collectors piece.

the nealry-million dollar price of the Apple I disagrees with you.

We'll see but I don't think the gold watches will ever be very valuable.  It's not like it was one of the first watches or something.

kamilton said:

cnocbui said:

Apple heard that Samsung were making one that was only 2mm thicker, had a much bigger battery, twice the range and was half the price so threw in the towel.

On top of that, Sumsang's explodes!  They're targeting that terrorist demographic

uroshnor said:

cnocbui said:

I have been using Australian banks for decades.  I have never had an issue with their integrity or security.  They were doing security when Tim Cook was still in nappies.

Who do Apple trust to store their Billions?  Do they have their own vaults somewhere or do they run their own bank or do they actually trust banks?  It's pretty illogical to say you don't trust banks with security and that you only trust Apple with it when Apple Pay relies entirely on banks and the infrastructure they developed, provide and maintain.

Oh yes, and accusing Australian Banks of greed and mentioning Apple in the same sentence as if they aren't, is hilarious.

Tap & Pay allows you to use your compatible smartphone and the CommBank app to make contactless purchases in store. Simply tap your phone on any contactless terminal the next time you are shopping+.

Tap & Pay is available using your compatible Android phone and the CommBank app. You can link Tap & Pay to your transaction account or credit card so you can make purchases at any contactless terminal using just your phone – even overseas.

Compatibility:
Tap & Pay is available on compatible devices running Android 4.4 (KitKat) or above, with inbuilt NFC enabled.

So where are the security breaches?  It's an NFC chip, a short range radio.  Do iPhone users not trust banks with security and communications to the point they don't access their bank accounts or do other banking tasks over wifi and cellular connections?   There is no logic going on here beyond Apple good, everyone else bad.

ApplePay is EMVCo certified as a card present transaction equivalent to chip & pin, NOT paywave.

The difference with ApplePay , is that the transaction is tokenised, and the POS system itself can be compromised, and the risk you are exposed to at most, is that transaction (and even then only for a narrow time window). 

NFC tap and go systems are not tokenised, and are vulnerable to replay attacks or a compromised reader  (where each attempt is capped at AUS $100 per transaction, with an aggregate up to your daily limit). Such attacks have happened in Australia.

On iOS, even IF your phone was compromised , it does not contain your card details.

the banks want to a) implement their own systems to bypass Apple's fees
b) want to preserve their investment in their existing systems (which are domestically developed and are to the typical poor quality standard you'd expect eg a few years ago when we evaluated the banking Apps from the big 4 for use on company owned devices (we explicitly whitelist App Store Apps) , and they all failed our baseline requirements , some of them at rookie mistake level.

I'm pretty much convinced the banks security concept  is framed around fraud management and loss prevention, rather than placing the end users' privacy & security front and centre.

Hamish Barwick (Computerworld) 25 January, 2016 08:58

National Australia Bank (NAB) has launched a mobile payment service called NAB Pay which will allow customers to use their Android phone to pay for items.

Customers with an Android device and a NAB Visa debit card can start using the service from today.

The bank will be the first in Australia to use the Visa token service said NAB executive general manager for consumer lending, Angus Gilfillan, said

Tokenisation replaces a customer’s credit card number with a digital token that can be used for digital payments, without revealing account information.

“Tokenisation improves protection for customers because physical card details are never used in the payments process, reducing the risk of fraud,” Gilfillan said.

CBA offers contactless payments on all Android mobiles

For CBA, the payments are still being made via MasterCard, but on CBA's mobile banking app, which so far has 3.2 million registered users and has been used to make more than $100 billion in transactions since late 2013.

Both use so-called host card emulation, which puts a virtual credit card number onto the phone, allows the software to communicate with the contactless reader on the phone and stores customer data in the cloud rather than on the phone.

CBA used a different technology for Samsung phones where the authentication details were stored on the phone.

It is also one of the first uses of MasterCard's new "tokenisation" security features which creates a single use 16-digit number based on the customers credit card. Several of these are stored on the device at any one time. Even if the token is hacked, it cannot be used on another device such as on a desktop.

sog35 said:

The EU still refuses to state what law Apple broke.

All they are saying is Apple paid a too low effective tax rate. That is totally ridiculous. Any other company could have used the same provisions Apple used to lower their effective tax rate. 

This ruling is so ridiculous its obvious it will be thrown out. 

Ireland has the right to charge what ever tax rate they wish. They also have the right to decide on the other finer points of tax law. This decision is saying Ireland does not have the right. This decision is saying the EU can swoop in 10 years after the fact and change Ireland's soverign tax laws if they feel it goes against their opinion of matters. In other words the opinion of a few beaucrates in the EU is worth more than the entire citizenship of Ireland. Crazy.

EsquireCats said:

sirlance99 said:

So the NFC part of Android Pay is fine just like Apple Pay but, if you're sophisticated enough to go through the extremely difficult task of building something like this you may be able to get one payment in for fraud that will ultimately be reversed because of instant notification. Gotcha.

That reply is naive and apologist to such a level that it could only have been astroturfed.

This wouldn't be a problem if NFC mobile payment was widely supported in USA & UK - which it is not.

The loop technology is inherently flawed, by transmitting the magnetic field rather than having it read from a stripe card invites interception. Stealing a token is also particularly grave since token transactions are granted a higher transaction authority (such as max transaction limit, rather than a static mag card limit), the token can also be used to immediately withdraw cash from a debit account, and due to tokens being more secure the bank is unlikely to grant a swift reprieve - since it looks like you're the one who did the withdraw.

Also trying to downplay the flaw as requiring hardware that is "extremely difficult" to build is entirely ignorant to the very real and very frequent problem of card skimming. The hardware required for this hack is not dissimilar to existing skimming devices - in fact it's novel because it can now be achieved wirelessly.

Samsung's response is also a problem, you can't sweep a security flaw under the rug and expect organised crime to ignore it.