New 5-inch BlackBerry Z30 still carries the same old stench of death

BlackBerry announced its biggest, most powerful phone yet on Wednesday, but despite that impressive-sounding blurb, the BlackBerry Z30 reeks of "too little, too late" and may just be the last handset ever released by the iconic company.

The BlackBerry Z30 rocks a 5-inch, 1,280-by-720 Super AMOLED display, a dual-core, 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, and 2GB of RAM -- all of which bears a striking similarity to its well-received predecessor, the 4.2-inch BlackBerry Z10. But this is no stagnant screen size boost: The BlackBerry Z30 features the new 10.2 update for the BB 10 OS, and it packs in a 2,880mAh battery that BlackBerry claims can last a whopping 25 hours between charges. BlackBerry's press release has the nitty-gritty details about NFC, LTE, etc. if you're interested.

[ Also on InfoWorld: The new BlackBerry Z30 may be the last BlackBerry. | The InfoWorld reviews: BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10. | Mobile security: iOS vs. Android vs. Windows Phone vs. BlackBerry. | For quick, smart takes on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld TechBrief  -- subscribe today. ]

You probably shouldn't be. If you're a CrackBerryHead with big hands, you might appreciate the Z30, but it's hard to see this phoning appealing to, well, pretty much anybody else.

Trials and tribulations
The Z30 may be the beefiest BlackBerry yet, but it's still behind the cutting-edge competition. The internals place the Z30 on par with phones like the (year old, and now discontinued) Nexus 4 and the Moto X -- a phone that was blatantly built to not compete on the specification front.

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Encryption still protects data, even from NSA, experts say

Though the National Security Agency spends billions of dollars to crack encryption technologies, security experts maintain that properly implemented, encryption is still the best way to maintain online privacy.

The Guardian newspaper and other media outlets last week published stories based on internal internal NSA documents that explain how the spy agency bypasses encryption technologies by using backdoors, brute force attacks, lawful intercepts via court orders, and partnerships with tech vendors.

The reports, based on documents leaked to reporters by former NSA-contract employee Edward Snowden, suggest that many encryption algorithms now widely used to protect online communications, banking and medical records, and trade secrets have been cracked by the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ.

Steve Weis, chief technology officer at PrivateCore and holder of a Ph.D in cryptography from MIT, said despite the NSA activities, the mathematics of cryptography remains very hard to crack.

He suggested that it's likely that the NSA managed to break through insecure and outdated implementations of some encryption technologies.

For example, the documents suggest that the NSA built a backdoor into an NIST-approved encryption standard called Dual EC DRBG, which is used to generate random numbers. Weis noted that the Dual EC DRBG standard has been available for six years and has been rarely used since two Microsoft engineers discovered the NSA backdoor, Weis said.

It remains unclear whether NSA experts have the ability to crack more robust encryption technologies, he said. "So far, I've not seen anything to suggest than an algorithm like AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) has been broken," Weis said.

"When properly implemented, encryption provides essentially unbreakable security," said Dave Anderson, a senior director with Voltage Security, a provider of encryption technology.

"It's the sort of security that would take implausibly powerful supercomputers millions of years to crack. But if it's carelessly implemented, and the key management processes are not sound, this security can be reduced to the level where a hacker with a mid-market PC can crack in a few hours at most," he said an email to Computerworld.

Anderson said the NSA may have been able to take advantage of flaws in key management processes that support the encryption, rather than cracking the cryptography itself, he said. It's possible that the NSA can decrypt financial and shopping accounts, but it can happen only if the cryptography was improperly implemented through faulty, incomplete or invalid key management processes, he said.

Dave Jevans, founder and CTO of Marble Security, a maker of mobile security technology, said some of the concerns raised by the NSA documents are based on a misunderstanding of the facts.

Most email, web searches, Internet chats, and phone calls are not automatically encrypted, so the NSA or anyone else can merely scan online traffic to access them, he said.

The main vulnerability to encrypted traffic is key management, Jevans said. Encryption keys are long, randomly generated passwords that can encrypt and decrypt Internet traffic. "Stealing the key is like stealing a password," he said.

The NSA's enormous financial resources and manpower allow it to effectively go after encryption keys and key management systems rather than break the math behind encrypted code, he said. "It's about a billion times more effective," Jevans noted.

Despite the recent revelations, encryption remains the best way to protect online data, Weis contends.

Concerned companies should consider using open source technologies like Open SSL—whose code is always visible to developers—rather than commercial software, which is more vulnerable to NSA backdoors, he said. "The code is there for people to audit and you can see the changes. At least you have some assurance that there is no intentional vulnerability" built into the software, he said.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld.
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Microsoft will still patch Windows XP for a select group

Just because Microsoft doesn't plan on giving Windows XP patches to the public after April 8, 2014, doesn't mean it's going to stop making those patches.

In fact, Microsoft will be creating security updates for Windows XP for months—years, even—after it halts their delivery to the general public.

Those patches will come from a program called "Custom Support," an after-retirement contract designed for very large customers who have not, for whatever reason, moved on from an older OS.

As part of Custom Support—which according to analysts, costs about $200 per PC for the first year and more each succeeding year—participants receive patches for vulnerabilities rated "critical" by Microsoft. Bugs ranked as "important," the next step down in Microsoft's four-level threat scoring system, are not automatically patched. Instead, Custom Support contract holders must pay extra for those. Flaws pegged as "moderate" or "low" are not patched at all.

"Legacy products or out-of-support service packs covered under Custom Support will continue to receive security hotfixes for vulnerabilities labeled as 'Critical' by the MSRC [Microsoft Security Response Center]," Microsoft said in a Custom Support data sheet. "Customers with Custom Support that need security patches defined as 'Important' by MSRC can purchase these for an additional fee.

"These security hotfixes will be issued through a secure process that makes the information available only to customers with Custom Support," the data sheet promised.

Because Microsoft sells Custom Support agreements, it's obligated to come up with patches for critical and important vulnerabilities. And it may be required to do so for years: The company sells Custom Support for up to three years after it retires an operating system.

Custom Support and the XP security updates that result have been one reason why some experts have held out hope that Microsoft will backtrack from retiring XP next April. Their reasoning is straightforward: Microsoft will have patches available—its engineers won't have to do any more work than they already committed to doing—so handing them out to all would be a simple matter.

Or not. Most experts have said that the chance Microsoft will prolong Windows XP's life run between slim and none. And giving away patches to everyone risks a revolt by those big customers who have paid millions for Custom Support.

But Microsoft does have options. Here are our suggestions:

If Windows XP remains a major presence, as it appears likely, with projections as high as 33.5 percent of all personal computers at the end of April 2014, Microsoft could decide to continue patching the aged OS with free fixes for critical vulnerabilities, maybe even those rated important.

Such a move would be unpalatable to Custom Support customers, but Microsoft could renegotiate the fees—unlikely—or remind those companies of the program's other benefits, which include access to support representatives, as well as to prior patches and hotfixes.

Microsoft could selectively patch only the critical bugs that are being exploited by hackers. Presumably, that would be a subset of the complete XP patch collection assembled each month.

Some analysts have picked this option as a possibility. Last December, Michael Cherry of Directions on Microsoft posed just such a situation.

"Suppose ... a security problem with XP suddenly causes massive problems on the Internet, such as a massive [denial-of-service] problem?" asked Cherry at the time. "It is not just harming Windows XP users, it is bringing the entire Internet to its knees. At this time there are still significant numbers of Windows XP in use, and the problem is definitely due to a problem in Windows XP. In this scenario, I believe Microsoft would have to do the right thing and issue a fix ... without regard to where it is in the support lifecycle."

Although Microsoft would much rather book revenue from the sale of a newer OS, it may realize that some will refuse to upgrade, and try to make money rather than give away fixes.

It's unlikely that Microsoft would be able to charge $200 annually for post-retirement patches, as it does with Custom Support customers, but it may be able to get away with $50 a year for individuals and small businesses, perhaps with a maximum machine cap at, say, five PCs per customer.

Traditionally, Microsoft's not charged for support, but it could cast this as a special situation caused by the longevity of XP, which was due to the delay of Vista and secondarily, that OS's subsequent flop. In late 2007, when Microsoft extended XP availability to OEMs by several months, it cited Vista's delayed launch for the unusual move. (It added another extension in 2008 that kept XP alive on new "netbook" PCs, the then-popular class of cheap laptops, until mid-2010.)

And Microsoft has talked up a transformation to a "devices-and-services" company; a pay-for-support plan would mesh nicely with the latter half of that strategy.

For several months late last year and through January 2013, Microsoft sold Windows 8 Pro upgrades for $40: It has not revived the cheaper prices since.

Microsoft might try another discount to nudge XP users off the creaky OS, pitching them either Windows 8.1, the update slated for a mid-October debut, or less likely, the option of moving from XP to Windows 7.

The latter would violate Microsoft's standing policy of shutting down retail sales of the preceding edition a year after the launch of a successor, but it might be worthwhile to backpedal to squeeze some money out of the XP situation without facing the backlash when customers complain that they're being pushed to adopt the radically-changed Windows 8.1.

Some revenue, in other words, would be better than no revenue, even if Microsoft had to eat crow and offer Windows 7 as an option.

Microsoft could get creative and blend one or more promotions. A combination of a pay-for-patches program with a discounted upgrade would, for instance, let Microsoft charge more, say $100, and effective "hide" a higher price for the patches in the total. A blended deal like that could also come with a definitive end to patching, even for a price, with Microsoft pledging to provide security updates for only one year, at which time the user would be expected to apply the Windows 7 or Windows 8 upgrade.

Microsoft may believe that none of the above are called for. One possible rationale for that thought: It's unlikely that any would have a significant impact in China, where an estimated 72 percent of all personal computers run Windows XP, or other emerging markets where cash is tight.

The standard thinking is that the bulk of those Chinese PCs are running a pirated copy of XP, and because of that, as well as lower consumer incomes there and in similar markets, any program that comes with extra fees would be dismissed out of hand.

Giving away patches for a longer period might help stifle exploits of XP PCs in China, for example—and thus indirectly protect the global Windows ecosystem—but even then, Microsoft may see no point in being generous. Most security experts believe few Chinese PC owners download and install patches, even though they can, because of their heavy reliance on pirated operating systems and an accompanying distrust of updates that they assume will sniff out the counterfeit and render it useless.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news.
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Second-gen Nexus 7 still plagued by multitouch issues after software update

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Customizable off-contract Moto X goes on sale, but it's still tied to AT&T

If you're in love with the customization options of the Moto X, but not so much in love with AT&T, you may now purchase a customized version of the smartphone without a contract, straight from Motorola.

Although AT&T began selling the Moto X last week, there was no way to customize the phone's colors, accessories and other features without signing up for a two-year contract. Now, customers can buy the phone directly from Motorola's Moto Maker site, at an off-contract price of $579.

Keep in mind that the off-contract version is still tied to AT&T. Although the phone should work on T-Mobile's network, you'd still have to ask AT&T to unlock the phone first, and AT&T only unlocks Android phones if you have an active account in good standing. You can't just buy the phone and immediately take it to another carrier. (An unlocked "Developer Edition" Moto X is forthcoming.)

Still, given that AT&T has a timed exclusive on Moto Maker customizations, this is your only option for the foreseeable future. Moto Maker allows you to customize the phone's colors, choose matching accessories, and pre-load the software with your Google account, a greeting, and wallpaper.

It's somewhat surprising that the off-contract Moto X costs so much, when the build cost is reportedly just $221, according to an estimate by IHS. That estimate includes $209 for components and $12 for manufacturing, with the U.S.-based assembly costing about $4 to $5 more per phone than devices assembled in Asia.

In May, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside talked about the opportunities for Motorola to build “low-cost, high-quality” smartphones. “We can attack, and we can do things and challenge the business model that exists now in ways that our competitors can’t,” he said at the All Things D conference. And yet, at $200 on-contract and $579 off-contract, the price doesn't look much different from other high-end phones.

For more on the Moto X, check out TechHive's mostly-positive review.

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Acronis True Image 2014 review: Still powerful and feature-rich, now easier to use

You might think Windows has you covered with its own imaging/system backup, but there's still a need for programs such as Acronis True Image. Windows' built-in utility is extremely limited and reacts badly to new hardware. True Image handles bare-metal restore and diverse hardware without hiccup. Owners of recent versions of True Image probably won't find anything particularly compelling about this latest rendition, as only the online service is really new, but the new interface is a breeze to use. It also takes Acronis Backup to the cloud for the first time.

Acronis True Image 2014's new backup pane is simplicity itself.

If there's one thing that stands out about the latest version of True Image 2014, it's how friendly it is. Gone are the poorly rendered dialogs and oddly phrased instructions. The interface is clean, efficient, and simple. You can perform a backup without answering a confusing stream of questions. All the options advanced users want—including password protection, sector-by-sector backup (the program defaults to backing up only occupied sectors),  pre- and post-run commands, splitting (or not) of files, and validation—are still present. They're simply hidden away in a very cleanly organized dialog.

True Image 2014 can perform file and image backups, one-off backups, multiple tracked backups, incremental, differential, scheduling, notifications, and more. There's really no imaging trick from the last fifteen years that the program doesn't have in its bag. In addition, if your laptop lacks a boot-time recovery option, True Image will provide it. The SecureZone and Try and Decide options are still available, and there's a full list of secure erase options. You can even convert Windows backups to Acronis's format, and vice-versa.

Acronis True Image 2014's friendly new interface and vibe are major improvements to the once obtuse GUI.

In keeping with modern times, there's an online backup option in Acronis's own Acronis Cloud. You get one year of 5GB (enough only for data, not system backups) for free with the program, but after a year, or for more storage, it'll cost $10 per year for 5GB, $30 a year for 50GB, $40 for 125GB, and $50 for 125GB. That's highly competitive pricing.

Every imaging or backup program should feature the ability to create disaster recovery boot media—ideally, both CD (for older systems), and USB flash drive. The ponderousness of TI's older boot media forced me to abandon previous versions of the program, as it wasn't good for older, memory-challenged PCs. R-Drive Image is better for those. True Image 2014's rescue disc still requires 512MB of system memory, and the new interface isn't implemented, making it less friendly that the Windows UI. However, Acronis provides the means for adding it to a Windows PE boot disc, though it's not as simple a process as it should be.

Though they aren't available until you ask, True Image's options are advanced and myriad.

If  If If If you're more than a version or two back on True Image, the 2014 version is well worth a look.you're new to backup products, simply know that it really doesn't get any better than Acronis True Image for the average user, though I recommend R-Drive Image for pros.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Juilliard, and now he power-mods his car for kicks.
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SSDs still maturing, new memory tech still 10 years away

Solid-state drive adoption will continue to grow and it will be more than 10 years before it is ultimately replaced by a new memory technology, experts said.

SSDs are getting more attractive as NAND flash gets faster and cheaper, as it provides flexibility in usage as a RAM or hard-drive alternative, said speakers and attendees at the Hot Chips conference in Stanford, California on Sunday.

Emerging memory types under development like phase-change memory (PCM), RRAM (resistive random-access memory) and MRAM (magnetoresistive RAM) may show promise with faster speed and durability, but it will be many years until they are made in volume and are priced competitively to replace NAND flash storage.

SSDs built on flash memory are now considered an alternative to spinning hard-disk drives, which have reached their speed limit. Mobile devices have moved over to flash drives, and a large number of thin and light ultrabooks are switching to SSDs, which are smaller, faster and more power efficient. However, the enterprise market still relies largely on spinning disks, and SSDs are poised to replace hard disks in server infrastructure, experts said. One of the reasons: SSDs are still more expensive than hard drives, though flash price is coming down fast.

"It's going to be a long time until NAND flash runs out of steam," said Jim Handy, an analyst at Objective Analysis, during a presentation.

Handy predicted that NAND flash will likely be replaced by 2023 or beyond. The capacity of SSDs is growing as NAND flash geometries get smaller, so scaling down flash will become difficult, which will increase the need for a new form of non-volatile memory that doesn't rely on transistors.

Many alternative forms of memory are under development. Crossbar has developed RRAM (resistive random-access memory) that the company claims can replace DRAM and flash. Startup Everspin is offering its MRAM (magnetoresistive RAM) products as an alternative to flash memory. Hewlett-Packard is developing memristor, while PCM (phase-change memory) is being pursued by Micron and Samsung.

But SSDs are poised for widespread enterprise adoption as the technology consumes less energy and is more reliable. The smaller size of SSDs can also provide more storage in fewer servers, which could cut licensing costs, Handy said.

"If you were running Oracle or some other database software, you would be paying license fee based on the number of servers," Handy said.

In 2006, famed Microsoft researcher Jim Gray said in a presentation "tape is dead, disk is tape, flash is disk, RAM locality is king." And people were predicting the end of flash 10 years ago when Amber Huffman, senior principal engineer at Intel's storage technologies group, started working on flash memory.

Almost ten years on, flash is still maturing and could last even longer than 10 years, Huffman said. Its adoption will grow in enterprises and client devices, and it will ultimately overtake hard drives, which have peaked on speed, she said.

Like Huffman, observers agreed that flash is faster and more durable, but also more expensive than hard drives. But in enterprises, SSDs are inherently parallel, and better suited for server infrastructures that need better throughput. Multiple SSDs can exchange large loads of data easily much like memory, Huffman said. SSDs can be plugged into PCI-Express 3.0 slots in servers for processing of applications like analytics, which is faster than hard drives on the slower SATA interface.

The US$30 billion enterprise storage market is still built on spinning disks, and there is a tremendous opportunity for SSDs, said Neil Vachharajani , software architect at Pure Storage, in a speech.

Typically, dedicated pools of spinning disks are needed for applications, which could block performance improvements, Vachharajani said.

"Why not take SSDs and put them into storage arrays," Vachharajani said. "You can treat your storage as a single pool."

Beyond being an alternative primary storage, NAND could be plugged into memory slots as a slower form of RAM. Facebook replaced DRAM with flash memory in a server called McDipper, and is also using SSDs for long-term cold storage. Ultrabooks use SSDs as operating system cache, and servers use SSDs for temporary caching in servers before data is moved to hard drives for long-term storage.

Manufacturing enhancements are being made to make SSDs faster and smaller. Samsung this month announced faster V-NAND flash storage chips that are up to 10 times more durable than the current flash storage used in mobile devices. The flash memory employs a 3D chip structure in which storage modules are stacked vertically.

Intel is taking a different approach to scaling down NAND flash by implementing high-k metal gate to reduce leakage, according to Krishna Parat, a fellow at the chip maker's nonvolatile memory group. As flash scales down in size, Intel will move to 3D transistor structuring, much like it does in microprocessors today on the 22-nanometer process.

But there are disadvantages. With every process shrink, the endurance of flash may drop, so steps need to be taken to preserve durability. Options would be to minimize writes by changing algorithms and controllers, and also to use compression, de-duplication and hardware encryption, attendees said.

Smarter controllers are also needed to maintain capacity efficiency and data integrity, said David Flynn, CEO of PrimaryData. Flynn was previously CEO of Fusion-io, which pioneered SSD storage in enterprises.

"Whatever Flash's successor is, it won't be as fast as RAM," Flynn said. "It takes longer to change persistent states than volatile states."

But Flynn is already looking beyond SSD into future memory types.

"The faster it gets the better," Flynn said. "I'm excited about new, higher memories."

But SSDs will ultimately match hard drives on price, and the newer memory and storage forms will have to wait, said Huffman, who is also the chairperson for the NVM-Express organization, which is the protocol for current and future non-volatile memory plugging into the PCI-Express slot.

"Hard drives will become the next tape," Huffman said.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com

Agam Shah is a reporter for the IDG News Service in New York. He covers hardware including PCs, servers, tablets, chips, semiconductors, consumer electronics and peripherals.
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Poison Ivy, used in RSA SecurID attack, still popular

A malicious software tool perhaps most famously used to hack RSA's SecurID infrastructure is still being used in targeted attacks, according to security vendor FireEye.

Poison Ivy is a remote access trojan (RAT) that was released eight years ago but is still favored by some hackers, FireEye wrote in a new report released Wednesday. It has a familiar Windows interface, is easy to use and can log keystrokes, steal files and passwords.

Since Poison Ivy is still so widely used, FireEye said it is harder for security analysts to link its use to a specific hacking group.

For its analysis, the company collected 194 samples of Poison Ivy used in attacks dating to 2008, looking at the passwords used by the attackers to access the RATs and the command-and-control servers used.

Three groups, one of which appears to be based in China, have been using Poison Ivy in targeted attacks going back at least four years. FireEye identified the groups by the passwords they use to access the Poison Ivy RAT they've placed on a target's computer: admin338, th3bug and menuPass.

The group admin388 is believed to have been active as early as January 2008, targeting ISPs, telecoms companies, government organizations and the defense sector, FireEye wrote.

Victims are usually targeted by that group with spear-phishing emails, which contain a malicious Microsoft Word or PDF attachment with the Poison Ivy code. The emails are in English but use a Chinese character set in the email message body.

Poison Ivy's presence may indicate a more discerning interest by an attacker, since it must be controlled manually in real-time.

"RATs are much more personal and may indicate that you are dealing with a dedicated threat actor that is interested in your organization specifically," FireEye wrote.

To help organizations detect Poison Ivy, FireEye released "Calamine," a set of two tools designed to decode its encryption and figure out what it is stealing.

Stolen information is encrypted by Poison Ivy using the Camellia cipher with a 256-bit key before it is sent to a remote server, FireEye wrote. The encryption key is derived from the password the attacker uses to unlock Poison Ivy.

Many of the attackers simply use the default password, "admin." But if the password has changed, one of Calamine's tools, the PyCommand script, can be used to intercept it. A second Calamine tool can then decrypt Poison Ivy's network traffic, which can give an indication of what the attacker has been doing.

"Calamine may not stop determined attackers that use Poison Ivy," FireEye warned. "But it can make their criminal endeavors that much more difficult."

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

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Thunderbolt drive shipments surge, but USB still reigns

Though still a small part of the overall interconnect market, Thunderbolt-equipped hardware shipments surged 300 percent over the past year, according to IDC.

There were roughly 20,600 Thunderbolt units shipped in the second quarter of 2012, representing a little over 0.1 percent of all personal and entry-level storage (PELS) devices shipped. In the second quarter of 2013, Thunderbolt-enabled storage device shipments grew to about 0.6 percent of the market, according to IDC analyst Liz Conner, a 411 percent increase.

IDC predicted in its first quarter report that Thunderbolt, which offers 10Gbps interface speeds, could skyrocket to 5.7 percent of the PELS market by 2017. But the dominant interface will remain USB.

USB in the PELS market grew by 11.5 percent year over year in the second quarter. Ethernet also saw strong shipment growth, posting a 10.2 percent growth rate in the same time frame.

The new SuperSpeed specification will increase power to 100 watts and offer bidirectional data and audio/visual transfer, meaning a laptop or monitor with a USB hub could power many other devices, including an HDTV.

The SuperSpeed USB 3.1 specification was recently published and jumps I/O throughput (on paper) from 4.8Gbps (in USB 3.0) to 10Gbps, bringing it on par with today’s Thunderbolt specification. The next USB spec will also eliminate the need for power cords as the first USB Power Delivery specification is expected to boost from 10 watts to 100 watts the power across Power Delivery-certified USB cables. That spec is currently being tested by equipment developers.

Earlier this year, however, Intel also announced that its Thunderbolt specification would double data transfer speeds, opening up peripheral pipes to greater throughput.

“Thunderbolt is definitely growing, but it’s hit a few speed bumps along the way,” Conner wrote in an email to Computerworld.

Thunderbolt sales have suffered in part because of higher prices compared to USB devices, and “people initially assumed it was an Apple only interface (and it took a while for a PC version of Thunderbolt to be introduced),” Conner said.

Hard disk drive prices were also affected by the 2011 Thailand floods, which shut down manufacturing and resulted in drive shortages. That bumped drive prices higher, pushing consumers toward cheaper options, “which really squeezed out Thunderbolt unless the higher speed was a necessity,” Conner said.

“Thunderbolt is definitely growing, but it’s hit a few speed bumps along the way.”—IDC analyst Liz Conner

Thunderbolt will definitely continue to grow, Conner continued, but more as a replacement for Firewire/1394 and eSATA, not as a replacement to USB.

The speed of Thunderbolt is definitely sought by media professionals and other niche users who really need top-level performance, Connor said. But USB 3.0’s speed continues to be “good enough” for most users. That, plus the fact that USB 3.0 is backwards compatible, makes it significantly cheaper than Thunderbolt.

At the same time, the worldwide market for personal and entry-level storage hardware saw double-digit growth in the second quarter of 2013. The market includes storage products that range from a single disk through twelve-drive bay storage arrays marketed for individuals, small offices/home offices, and small businesses.

The worldwide market grew 10.7 percent year over year with 16.8 million units (worth $1.5 billion) shipped in the second quarter, according to IDC’s PELS tracker.

It was the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth, according to IDC.

“The second quarter of 2013 brought ... a return to normal for the personal and entry-level storage market,” Conner said. “For the last four quarters, the PELS market has seen a distinct focus on recovery after Thailand floods.”

Drive maker Western Digital was hardest hit by the flooding, with up to 75 percent of the company’s production lines temporarily shut down by the floods, IDC said.

By the beginning of 2012, disk drive production began to recover, but prices remained inflated because of shortages. According to ecommerce tracking site Dynamite Data, the top 50 hard drives on sites such as Newegg.com and Tigerdirect.com saw prices jump by 50% to 150%. The price hikes kicked off in October 2011, when inventory levels plummeted 90 percent in less than a week.

Users continue to migrate to higher capacities to meet growing storage needs. In the 3.5-in personal storage market, 2TB drives represented 51.9 percent of shipments in the quarter.

For the 2.5-inch personal storage market, 1TB drives had 51.7 percent of the market, with 4TB devices comprising 28.6 percent of units shipped.

Editor’s note: IDC is owned by the same parent company that owns Computerworld.

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Report: Android tablet app availability still trailing iPad

Android tablets may have come a long way over the last couple of years, but the app selection still can’t compare to Apple’s iPad, according to a new report.

Source: CanalysCanalys listed the top 50 iPad apps and whether they’re available for Android tablets. (Click to enlarge.)

To compare the two platforms, research firm Canalys made a list of the top 50 paid and free iPad apps in the U.S. version of Apple’s iOS App Store, based on aggregated daily rankings in the first half of this year. The firm then looked at how many of those apps are available for Android, along with how many are optimized for larger displays.

Canalys found that 30 percent of these top iPad apps were not available on Android. Another 18 percent were available, but not optimized for tablets. In other words, a little more than half of the most popular iPad apps are available as proper tablet apps for Android devices.

In fairness to Android, six of those unavailable apps—iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers—come directly from Apple. In some cases, Android users can even find alternatives that look great on their tablets: OfficeSuite, QuickOffice, Kingsoft Office, and Google Drive are all capable document editors that obviate the need for Apple’s mobile iWork suite. For photo editing, apps like Aviary and Photoshop Touch fill the void. Unfortunately, Android doesn’t offer anything for music creation on the same level as GarageBand, and there’s a shortage of good movie editing apps for tablets. (I know this because I’ve done my own head-to-head app comparisons.)

Facebook on an Android tablet can look pretty ugly...

It doesn’t take much time with an Android tablet to notice the other cracks in Google’s catalog. Twitter and Facebook both look ugly in Android form, especially on larger tablets where timeline updates stretch unnaturally across the screen. On the iPad, both apps make use of the larger screen with sidebars. ESPN ScoreCenter is another example of a poorly optimized app; unlike the iPad version, the Android app doesn’t let you use it in landscape mode and doesn’t make use of sidebars.

...especially when compared to the better-designed iPad version.

The only consolation is that these stretched out apps don’t look as bad on smaller tablets like the Nexus 7. Given that smaller screens account for the vast majority of Android tablet sales, most users won’t feel the burn as much as users of Google’s Nexus 10 or other large tablets.

But if Android is going to keep up with the iPad, its apps will need to look good on all screen sizes. It helps that the Google Play Store now promotes tablet-optimized apps, with a permanent “Tablet 101” spotlight and a “Designed for Tablets” toggle in every section of the store. Even so, Canalys’ report does a fine job of summing up the current state of iPad vs. Android apps.

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Three old Windows right-click tricks that still rock

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But what about old tricks? As a longtime Windows user, I can tell you that occasionally I get so accustomed to doing things a certain way, I forget that there are faster, easier ways.

With that in mind, I've rounded up three right-click tricks you may have forgotten. Or never learned. Either way, you'll be glad you know them. (Note that these are all for Windows 7/8. They may be available in XP and/or Vista as well--I don't recall--but I no longer have those operating systems on which to double-check.)

1. Right-click the desktop for bigger icons

On today's higher-resolution displays, you may find your desktop icons a little small for your liking. If so, right-click any empty spot on the desktop, mouse over View, and then click either Medium icons or Large icons. Presto! Bigger icons.

On my 13.3-inch laptop, which has a rather high native resolution (1,920 x 1,080), the Medium setting is definitely preferable.

2. Right-click Taskbar icons for recent items and shortcuts

See those icons in your Taskbar? Mine include not only Chrome and Explorer, but also Outlook, Word, and Excel.

When you right-click any of them, Windows gives you a list of time-saving shortcuts: recent documents, most-visited sites, new appointment (in the case of Outlook), and so on. In other words, instead of running an app and then going about your business, this lets you choose your business and launch the app at the same time.

It's a small thing, but it's definitely one of my favorite little Windows tricks.

3. Right-click desktop icons to pin to Start Menu or Taskbar

Speaking of icons, when you right-click any icon that's on your desktop, you'll see two options in the list that appears: Pin to Start and Pin to Taskbar.

These are great for putting your favorite programs iin your preferred launching area. For example, some old-school users still like to start with the Start Menu. Personally, I'm a fan of keeping my most-used apps on the Taskbar. This right-click option makes either one a snap.

I realize these are some pretty novice-oriented tips, but as I noted above, not everyone learns this stuff at the start, and not everyone remembers it when they do.

If you have any right-click favorites of your own to share, please do so in the comments!

Contributing Editor Rick Broida writes about business and consumer technology. Ask for help with your PC hassles at hasslefree@pcworld.com. Sign up to have the Hassle-Free PC newsletter e-mailed to you each week.

For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow.
More by Rick Broida

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Three old Windows right-click tricks that still rock

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But what about old tricks? As a longtime Windows user, I can tell you that occasionally I get so accustomed to doing things a certain way, I forget that there are faster, easier ways.

With that in mind, I've rounded up three right-click tricks you may have forgotten. Or never learned. Either way, you'll be glad you know them. (Note that these are all for Windows 7/8. They may be available in XP and/or Vista as well--I don't recall--but I no longer have those operating systems on which to double-check.)

1. Right-click the desktop for bigger icons

On today's higher-resolution displays, you may find your desktop icons a little small for your liking. If so, right-click any empty spot on the desktop, mouse over View, and then click either Medium icons or Large icons. Presto! Bigger icons.

On my 13.3-inch laptop, which has a rather high native resolution (1,920 x 1,080), the Medium setting is definitely preferable.

2. Right-click Taskbar icons for recent items and shortcuts

See those icons in your Taskbar? Mine include not only Chrome and Explorer, but also Outlook, Word, and Excel.

When you right-click any of them, Windows gives you a list of time-saving shortcuts: recent documents, most-visited sites, new appointment (in the case of Outlook), and so on. In other words, instead of running an app and then going about your business, this lets you choose your business and launch the app at the same time.

It's a small thing, but it's definitely one of my favorite little Windows tricks.

3. Right-click desktop icons to pin to Start Menu or Taskbar

Speaking of icons, when you right-click any icon that's on your desktop, you'll see two options in the list that appears: Pin to Start and Pin to Taskbar.

These are great for putting your favorite programs iin your preferred launching area. For example, some old-school users still like to start with the Start Menu. Personally, I'm a fan of keeping my most-used apps on the Taskbar. This right-click option makes either one a snap.

I realize these are some pretty novice-oriented tips, but as I noted above, not everyone learns this stuff at the start, and not everyone remembers it when they do.

If you have any right-click favorites of your own to share, please do so in the comments!

Contributing Editor Rick Broida writes about business and consumer technology. Ask for help with your PC hassles at hasslefree@pcworld.com. Sign up to have the Hassle-Free PC newsletter e-mailed to you each week.

For more than 20 years, Rick Broida has written about all manner of technology, from Amigas to business servers to PalmPilots. His credits include dozens of books, blogs, and magazines. He sleeps with an iPad under his pillow.
More by Rick Broida

View the original article here

Browser privacy tools still lack bite, security analysts say

Browser vendors continue to implement privacy in a halfhearted way, with Internet Explorer's default use of cookie "do not track" technology being the best of a weak job, a new assessment by NSS Labs has argued.

Currently, the latest versions of all four leading browsers—IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari—implement Do not track - but only Internet Explorer 10 installs it switched on by default, NSS Labs' latest Comparative Analysis found.

The cookie-tracking setting can be enabled in the other three, but only by locating an option in a menu setting. The authors are especially critical of Chrome, which requires users to find and expand a nested Advanced Settings tab to enable the feature.

Even Microsoft treats the do not track as a design afterthought, burying the settings where only the most curious non-expert users might chance upon it.

NSS Labs interprets this lack of enthusiasm for the setting as revealing each vendor's "philosophical views on consumer privacy," while accepting that do not track remains ineffective as a privacy control while advertisers remain free to ignore it as they please.

"Until legislation is passed that will mandate compliance with the user intent of Do not track, the feature will remain a polite request that will be ignored by the advertising industry," write authors Randy Abrams and Jayendra Pathak.

With third-party cookies, Safari and IE are given the thumbs up, with the former blocking all by default, and IE implementing a partial block. Although Firefox and Chrome don't activate this setting by default, Firefox in particular offers granular control over a setting that is vital to automate access to many commonly used sites.

Other privacy features—the ability to control geolocation, private browsing, and tracking protection lists—all fall down to some extent.

Controlling geolocation (the ability for a site to detect a user's country location), all four browsers prompt as required, but in order to disable the setting completely Firefox forces users to access the technically demanding about:config page.

Uniquely, IE9/10 allows Tracking Protection lists from third-party vendors, essentially lists of sites for IE to block third-party cookies automatically unless the setting is overridden by the user.

Overall, then, IE comes out on top for privacy thanks to the relative simplicity of its slider controls and privacy templates, but none of the four are given a ringing endorsement.

It remains unclear to what extent browser privacy and features such as do not track are valued or even understood by users. A YouGov poll from late last year found that consumers valued ease of use more highly than the ability to block cookies, although the same survey admitted that many disliked targeted ads which follow users even when they have left sites.

Do not track has certainly upset some advertisers, with the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) recently lobbying a W3C discussion on how to standardize the way that not track should work.

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Android tablets still rule, while Windows continues to slip

Both Apple- and Windows-branded tablets lost market share in the second quarter, each retreating in the face of increased pressure from Android, a market research analyst said last week.

In preliminary estimates for the quarter ending June 30, U.K.-based Strategy Analytics pegged Apple's share of the global tablet market at 28.3 percent, a dramatic decline from 47.2 percent the year before. When so-called "white box" tablets, which are almost exclusively powered by Android, are excluded, Apple's share fell to 40.4 percent from 48.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013.

Windows' share of the branded tablet market also slipped in the second quarter compared to the first, falling to 6.4 percent from 7.4 percent. With white-box tablets included, however, its year-over-year share jumped nine-fold, from a paltry 0.5 percent in 2012's second quarter to 4.5 percent in 2013.

Windows tablets had only one way to go when compared year-over-year, as Windows 8 and Windows RT, the two tablet-appropriate operating systems from the Redmond, Washington company, were not released until late in the third quarter of 2012.

By any measurement, Android solidified its first place position. Of the entire tablet market, including white-box units—which comprised 37 percent of all shipments—Android's share climbed to 67 percent from 2012's 51.4 percent. Strip out the white box tablets and Android's increase, while on a slower pace, was still impressive: 52.9 percent in the second quarter, up from 43.4 percent in the first three-month stretch of 2013.

Peter King, an analyst with Strategy Analytics, attributed Apple's share decline to a lack of new tablet models, echoing others who have pointed out that the Cupertino, California company has not released a new tablet or even refreshed an existing tablet since late in 2012.

"We may see Apple get back on track later this year if, as everyone expects, they launch new models," said King in an interview Tuesday. "We may start to see a bit of fight back in them."

Windows' problem in tablets has also been well documented.

Strategy AnalyticsApple- and Windows-branded tablets lost share in the second quarter to Android, which has a lock on the fast-growing low-priced part of the market.

"They screwed up in terms of sales and marketing," said King, referring to the 2012-13 launch of the Microsoft-made Surface RT and Surface Pro. "They excluded the vast majority of the world from buying it. People want to see a tablet, feel it, touch it, want their friends to buy it."

Instead, Microsoft sold the Surface RT in 2012, and—starting in early 2013—the more expensive Surface Pro, primarily online with a bit of help from its small-sized U.S. and Canadian retail chain.

Microsoft still overwhelmingly relies on its hardware partners for Windows-powered hardware. They have also been dogged by sluggish sales, and virtually all have either declined to support Windows RT or abandoned the scaled-down OS designed exclusively for tablets.

Nor have Windows tablet prices been competitive. "The $349 is where they should have started," said King, of this month's $150 price cut to the Surface RT line, a move that forced Microsoft to take a $900 million charge against earnings as it accounted for the discount and the overstock that drove it.

Microsoft has taken corrective steps, including the Surface RT price cut and a deal with the U.S. electronic retail chain Best Buy that will balloon the number of outlets selling Surface.

"Microsoft will be back," said King, ticking off the company's strengths, including a large war chest and this fall's free Windows 8.1 upgrade. "But for them, it's 'Okay, back to the drawing board,'" he added, noting that in the meantime Microsoft will have lost 12 months in its fight to claw out a significant share.

Some of the factors involved in the decline of share in Apple- and Windows-marked tablets, however, will not be easily addressed.

Android tablets, especially the cut-rate white box units, have a stranglehold on the low-priced segment. "Outside the U.S. and Europe, sales are driven by the low-cost models, not because they're great, because they're not, but because people [in those markets] don't have as much disposable income," said King.

The cutthroat price war in tablets has prompted analysts to call for Apple to consider discounting the iPad mini, the company's $329 7.9-inch tablet, to $249.

Minus cost cuts and discounts—far from a given by either Apple or Microsoft—there's no chance either company will shove Android aside as the share leader, said King, parroting other analysts who have said Google's operating system will remain dominant for the foreseeable future.

Strategic Analytics based its early tablet estimates on polls of vendors, publicly-released data and supply chain checks. Its numbers represent "sell-in," or tablet shipments, not final sales.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news.
More by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

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