Month: September 2013

The Bad Call

Well, that was quick: soon after the Windows Phone team posted a video meant to be a “light-hearted poke” at Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 5C and 5S, they took it down. The video may no longer live on the Windows Phone team’s YouTube account, but some people managed to grab a copy and post it on their own accounts. For those of you who haven’t seen it, here it is:

The ad had the title A Fly on the Wall in Cupertino? and features two Apple employee stereotypes bouncing between meetings with Jony Ive (where they’re wearing black T-shirts) and a CEO who’s an amalgam of Tim Cook and the late Steve Jobs (where they’re wearing grey T-shirts). The basic gist of the ad — Apple is out of ideas — is a good one to work with, but the execution is terrible; it’s “cringe-worthy” (to use The Next Web’s adjective), but even more important, it comes off as a little desperate.

Click to see the associated article and video.

Remember what’s going on at Microsoft right now:

• They’re in the middle of a much-speculated-about CEO search right now, as the current one is stepping down in the next 12 months. The official word is that it’s a voluntary retirement; the industry scuttlebutt is that he was “managed out” (to use a term that gets bandied about within Microsoft) for missing too many opportunities, especially in mobile.
• They just bought their number one mobile hardware partner, whose market share has dropped tenfold since 2010, for a billion dollars and change less than they paid for Skype.

Even Microsoft employees winced when they saw the video, and some even publicly disavowed any connection between it and them online. The only thing worse I’ve seen coming from the Windows Phone team was from when I was still with the company — remember the “funeral” for iPhone and Android when the not-quite-completely-baked Windows Phone 7 hit RTM?

Some Good Calls

The sad thing is that it is possible to poke fun at the other platforms and not come off as trying too hard, and that Microsoft and its partners have pulled it off a couple of times. The best example I can think of is the “Wedding” ad, featuring a wedding party getting into an out-and-out brawl over iOS vs. Android:

My favourite bits in this ad are the two Android fans doing the NFC bump and making a little sound effect at the same time, and this exchange between the two Nokia Lumia-using waiters:

“D’you think if they knew about the Nokia Lumia, they’d stop fighting all the time?”

“I dunno. I think they kinda like fighting.”

The ad’s so good that even the “making of” video for it has over 100,000 views:

Another good ad, this one from my time at Microsoft, is the “Really?” ad, which promoted Windows Phone’s “glance and go” design as the smartphone that would save you from your smartphone:

And finally, here’s the half-decent “the smartphone beta test is over” ad, which is a pretty good way of handling the fact that the move from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone made Microsoft seem as if it were late to the mobile party:

There you have it: historical proof that Microsoft can do better when it comes to promoting Windows Phone. The question is: will they?

I made the image above back when I was working at Microsoft and in the role of Windows Phone Champ. A number of people have recently asked for this graphic, so I thought I’d give it its own post here on Global Nerdy, with a search engine-friendly title so that it’s easy to find. Download and enjoy!

For those of you who don’t get the reference, it’s to a poster that hung above Fox Mulder’s desk in The X-Files:

Click the image to see it at full size.

With the announcement of the iOS 7 release date — Wednesday, September 18th — come the Golden Master (GM) releases of Xcode 5, the iOS SDK and iOS for developers. As Golden Master releases, they’re going to be the same as the ones being released to the general public via iOS’ built-in update function. As a registered iOS developer, you can get them ahead of the public so you can start writing (or rewriting) your apps for iOS 7. In this article, I’ll show you how to get and install them.

Getting the Packages

Point your browser at the iOS Dev Center. If you’re properly registered in the iOS Developer Program, you should have the options of looking at resources for iOS 6.1 and iOS 7. Naturally, you should select iOS 7 GM seed, after which the page should look like the screen capture below:

You can either click on Downloads or scroll down to get to the packages, namely Xcode 5 GM, iOS GM, and the beta of iTunes 11.1:

If you want to dive right into iOS 7 development, you’ll probably want to install Xcode first. On the other hand, if you want to play with iOS 7 on your iDevices, you want to install iTunes first, and then use it to put iOS 7 on them.

Installing Xcode and the iOS 7 SDK

Xcode’s package is the biggest — about 2.5GB. Once you’ve downloaded it, double-click on it to mount the disk image, after which you’ll see this:

Drag the Xcode icon to the Applications alias to install it.

Install iTunes and iOS 7

iTunes is the smallest of the packages, weighing in at about half a gig. The individual iOS 7 packages for the various devices — iPhones, iPads, and 5-gen iPod Touch — are about 1.5GB in size. Download iTunes and double-click on it to mount its disk image, after which you’ll see this:

Double-click on the Install iTunes icon to start the iTunes installer. Once iTunes is installed, launch it.

Download the appropriate packages for your iDevices. In my case, I downloaded the packages for the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2 wifi-only model, and then double-clicked on both to mount their respective disk images:

With the package images mounted and iTunes running, hook up an iDevice and wait for iTunes to sync with it. Then click the button for your iDevice (near the upper right-hand corner of the iTunes window):

This will take you to the Summary page for the plugged-in device. You’re going to install iOS 7 for the device by restoring your iDevice using the iOS 7 package you downloaded. You can specify a package to restore from by holding down the option or alt key while clicking the Restore button:

This will bring up a “select file” sheet. Choose the .ipsw file from the disk image containing the appropriate iOS 7 package. Once you’ve done that, the installation process should take about 10 minutes, including the setup of your device.

In an earlier article, I wrote that Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer doesn’t lock her phone with a passcode. She’s breaking a cardinal rule of corporate smartphone IT, and she’s not alone. I’ve talked to a number of executives during consulting sessions, asked for shows of hands at speaking gigs, and simply asked people at meetings over drinks if they lock their phones with passcodes, and a lot of them simply don’t. Even those who use passcodes often go with terribly simple, easy-to-guess ones like this one from Spaceballs:

The story has stayed pretty much the same over the past couple of years, according to various surveys:

• Over half the respondents to a 2011 survey by Confident Technologies said that they don’t use passcodes to lock their mobile devices.
• In a 2012 survey conducted by ESET and Harris Interactive, 66% of the smartphone users and 90% of the tablet users who responded did not lock their devices with a passcode.
• 36% of the respondents to a 2013 global study conducted by McAfee and One Poll said they lock their mobile devices with a passcode.

It’s the classic trade-off of security vs. convenience, or as Meyer puts it: “I just can’t do this passcode thing 15 times a day.” It’s annoying, and a lot of people see security measures as just another way that the IT department’s role is to obstruct anyone from getting anything done with technology, as shown in this Dilbert comic from 2007:

A number of people store their passwords in the “Notes” app on their mobile device, but the number source of information leakage is the smartphone’s killer app for execs: email. You can find out a lot about a company through an employee’s email, and the high-ranking the employee, the more valuable the email is. A number of companies — some you’d never expect — hinge all their planning on a handful of spreadsheets that get emailed around between a small group of high-ranking people; I’m aware of at least one Fortune 50 company with a division whose finances hang from a single emailed-about spreadsheet (which often goes “out of sync” because different people often edit it at roughly the same time). Email, accessed through a stolen phone, can prove to be the keys to the kingdom.

Someone from Yahoo’s IT department probably had the unenviable task of trying to suggest to Meyer that she lock her phone with a passcode. Perhaps s/he even cited the relevant line in Yahoo’s IT policy. I’m gld I’m not that person.

It sounds as though Yahoo’s IT department will breathe a little easier once she gets an iPhone 5S, which sports a fingerprint reader in its Home button. Like any other authentication system, it isn’t perfect. The “gummi bear hack” of 2002, in which fingerprint sensors were fooled by fingerprints embedded in gelatin in a reasonably well-known trick that’s been effective at countering previous generations of fingerprint readers. There are conflicting reports on whether or not it would fool Apple’s sensor, which was designed by AuthenTec, one of Apple’s 2012 acquisitions. At this point, flawed or not, I’m sure that Yahoo IT are counting the days until Meyer gets her new phone.

One of the realities of office life is that the “C-suite” and any other employees with a certain rank or “pull” at the company will be exempt from the rules that apply to the rest of us mere mortals. When these exceptions concern IT security, the best you can hope for is to limit the consequences of a security breach and make sure your ass is covered. Here are my suggestions, culled from actual practice at real companies where I’ve either pitched or done some mobile device consulting, if you’re dealing with an exec who refuses to use a passcode to lock their smartphone or tablet:

1. Try to sell the executive on doing the right thing and using a passcode. This is a little easier if there’s at least another person at the same level who does, a little more difficult if everyone’s ignoring the rules. You can attempt to cite things such as the recent ZDNet/Cisco/BT survey, in which they report that one-third of the organizations who responded have already experienced a security breach as the result of the loss or compromise of an unmanaged, unprotected, unsanctioned device.
2. If they refuse to use a passcode, be sure to enable mobile device management (MDM) on their device and get remote wipe capability. You want these whether or not the executive uses a passcode, but when they’re going around with unprotected devices, the “nuclear option” of remote wipe is your only line of defense should the phone get lost or stolen. Since many people’s mobile phones are also their primary cameras, and since many people also use them as photo albums for pictures that they somehow fail to back up, you may want to look into “containerization” or “selective wipe capability”. The last thing you want to be is the object of an executive’s wrath because you wiped out the only photos of his first child’s first steps. An effective way to “sell” remote wipe capability is to just say it’s part of MDM, which will allow you to configure their email/calendar/contacts access, sparing them from having to do that.
3. Try to get them to sign a waiver saying that they were advised of the risks and take full responsibility for the consequences. I’ve seen companies do this not just for execs who refuse to use passcodes to lock their mobile devices, but also for execs who use devices that IT is not ready to support or secure, such as the iPad in its earliest days.

Phonebloks: A Concept for a Modular Smartphone

What if phones could be assembled out of detachable blocks held together by a base, like Lego? That’s the idea behind Phonebloks, Dave Hakkens’ concept and social media campaign for a modular phone that would allow users to customize their phone using the components they want. In order to turn this dream into a reality, Hakkens is rallying people to lend their social media reach by the end of October in order to convince hardware and software vendors to get behind the Phonebloks concept. As of this writing, he’s reached over 147,000 of the 150,000 supporters he’s seeking, and he’s still got over a month left!

i don’t know which hardware vendors will buy into the idea, but I think it’s an opportunity for Ubuntu Touch to shine.

Marissa Meyer has the Tech Industry’s “Must-Steal” Phone

Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer doesn’t lock her phone with a passcode, and to make matters worse, everybody knows it now. At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, she said “I can’t do this passcode thing 15 times a day.” I’ve heard similar from other “C-suite” people, whose rank often gets them exempted from IT rules that the rest of us mere mortals must follow. Unfortunately, these are the people who get the most sensitive email, from simple messages to spreadsheets with sensitive financial information and presentations outlining confidential plans and initiatives, and an unlocked phone is the gateway to all those goodies. As Tom Cochran, CTO of Atlantic Media (which owns the site Quartz) puts it, the leak of information through a smartphone is like a car accident: it may be low probability, but the cost is high enough to merit protection, whether it’s a seatbelt or a passcode.

The iPhone 5S’s thumbprint scanner is Meyer’s favourite new feature, and Yahoo’s IT department will probably breathe a sigh of relief when she gets hers.

iPhone 5C and 5S

Speaking of the iPhone 5S, here’s yesterday’s keynote featuring both it and its cheaper sibling, the iPhone 5C:

If you haven’t got time to watch the whole keynote, here’s The Verge’s “Under 4 Minutes” summary of the keynote:

And with these announcements, came the jokes:

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.