auxio

lkrupp said:

Correct me if I’m wrong but weren't the TCP/IP and HTTP  protocols originally developed by academics and designed to allow the free and open distribution of information? Only later, when the Internet took off, did people realize security was needed and all the security stuff was bolted onto the foundation. And here we are now with no one being safe on the “web”. 

TCP/IP are just pure data communication layers.  Protocols for how to get data from device A to device B, guaranteed to be delivered as long as there's a data communication route between them.  No security or privacy is part of the specification, nor does it need to be.  If you want to protect that data, encrypt it (which just makes it a different type of data that  TCP/IP can still deliver).

HTTP is just another layer on top of TCP/IP which is designed for distributed, client-server based data communication to support documents (hypertext) which can contain information from a number of different sources (hyperlinked).  Again, privacy is up to you.  Which is where HTTPS came in.  It was created to wrap HTTP communications with data encryption.

But all of this doesn't really have anything to do with the data breach.  What happened here is that their servers were hacked, plain and simple.  Someone found a way to get unauthorized access to the data stored on their servers.  There are a bunch of ways to do this, and it's akin to finding a way into someone's house.  Maybe they forgot to lock one of their windows, maybe they left a key under the mat, etc.  Same goes for server security.  Blaming TCP/IP for the breach is like blaming the telephone system for a home break in.

lkrupp said:

Yet another example of how the denizens of tech blog comment sections live in a different universe. (See above post) Carpool Karaoke has been derided, dismissed, mad fun of, laughed at by the naysayers who live in tech blog caves. And it wins an Emmy!

It's hard to have a sense of fun and play when all you do is sit at a keyboard all day and assign yourself the role of cultural judge, jury, and executioner.

Apple’s products, now specifically TV+, are greeted with the same derision and yet the company continues to succeed. It reminds me of the Steve Jobs interview in which he said Microsoft had no taste... and meant it. 

IIRC, the context beforehand was that he was talking about fontography and how the font rendering technology Apple used at the time really tried to capture the rich history of that field and what mattered to font designers.  Whereas Microsoft just used pictures of characters since they really didn't understand why anyone would need anything more than that.  The technical-minded approach, without a care for the human side of things.  Hence not having any taste (for art).  It's a bit different from the egocentrism and narrow/disconnected interests of the tech blog community.

cornchip said:

I'm not that knowledgeable in OS code engineering, but I understand it at a basic level so I get that it's possible, yet on another level, I don't get why this kind of stuff should be allowed to happen. Seems like anything out of the ordinary should just automatically be shut down. Which I guess the OS architects have made every attempt to ensure, and is what the hackers are constantly attempting to circumvent. So I guess this stuff will just always happen. At least in my lifetime.

The tricky part with iMessage is that they need to allow all sorts of things to be put into messages: text, emoji, images, videos, etc.  Which allows for many different avenues of attack using things which look like legitimate messages, but are really executable code in disguise.

rogifan_new said:

With the X I think Apple was testing how much of a price increase the market would bear (and the higher ASP would allow them to show revenue growth even when sales were flat to down). I think they got their answer. I’d be surprised if there are any price cuts this year and I’ll bet the XS gets removed from the lineup. But I don’t think we’ll see any price increases or storage configurations that push up the price. And I’ll bet we see Apple aggressively pushing trade-ins again.

People only look at the cost of materials and don't really see the cost of engineering (software, hardware, and manufacturing) which goes into complete redesigns like the X.  So it's not just "seeing how much of a price increase the market will bear", it's recouping the huge investment made in designing a brand new phone.  All of the people who whine about lack of brand new phone designs need to understand that new designs cost money.  Over time (up front investments are recouped, manufacturing processes are scaled and optimized), those brand new designs make their way down into the cheaper models and that's where the price cuts come.  We're already seeing that with the XR.

Soli said:

smaffei said:

Who else thinks this a poor business decision on Apple's part?

I would rather see them align with Microsoft (Azure) than Amazon (AWS). I see Microsoft as less of a competitor than Amazon (in many spaces).

And, what are all those Apple owned server farms doing besides using solar panels? With all of that propaganda Apple pushes out, I would have never thought they are paying Amazon $30 million a month,

I don't see it as a bad decision in terms of competition, but I do wonder why Apple needs this at all with all their efforts made to build out massive data centers. I can see have backups for systems that aren't on your hardware design, but this feels more like Apple's own data centers aren't performing well. Can that really be the cause? I don't think that's likely so I think I'm missing some key details.

Building your own data infrastructure, especially to the scale and reliability Apple needs for iCloud, is a huge undertaking.  Amazon has a big lead in this area.  My guess is that the data centers they have now are for their internal company data, which they wouldn't want to have in the hands of competitors.  Eventually they'll have everything built out enough to use for iCloud.