With Taps on the Wrist, Apple Watch Points to the Future

THERE was never any doubt that I would buy an Apple Watch on the day it was released. I’m a White House correspondent for The New York Times, but I’m also that early-adopter guy.

Buying the watch has led to the inevitable questions from friends and family: “What do you think? Should I get one of those?”

My search for an answer reminds me of a similar period nearly a decade ago, in the months after I stood in line for several hours at an Apple Store in Arlington, Va., to be among the first to spend $599 on the original iPhone. The Apple employees cheered as I emerged with the phone.

The next day, I was on a Southwest flight to New Hampshire to cover Fred Thompson, the late actor and senator, who was then running for president. As I sat in my aisle seat, playing with the phone, a crowd formed. First the flight attendants. Then passengers. They all wanted to see the crazy new device in action.

But back then, it was hard to recommend to my fellow reporters on the campaign trail that they ditch their BlackBerrys. The iPhone’s on-screen keyboard made typing a clunky business. The phone couldn’t connect with most workplace email systems. Cell service (limited to AT&T) was slow and flaky at best. Battery life was short. There was no App Store. The iPhone didn’t even have a “cut and paste” feature.

There was just a sense — largely unrealized at the time — that somehow this device was the future, while using my thumb to scroll through a black-and-white list of emails on my BlackBerry was the past. Surfing the web, reading email, listening to music, checking the weather and stocks — all on one device. It was revolutionary.

When colleagues asked, I was honest about the limitations even as I gushed about the technological potential. Most of my friends listened politely, tried to type on the screen with their thumbs, and then stuck with the BlackBerry.

The watch feels as if it is at a similar place.

For the same $599, which gets you a model with a 42-millimeter stainless-steel case, the Apple Watch is a slave to a user’s iPhone, relying on the larger device for processing and communications. It has no GPS or cellular capability. It can run apps, but slowly. And without any keyboard, it requires voice dictation, which is still far from perfect. In most cases, opening an app on the iPhone is still a far better experience.

Like the original iPhone, the watch also feels like a physical compromise. The case is bigger and bulkier than the ideal device you would want to strap to your wrist. And while battery life is amazing for a device this small — routinely almost 24 hours on a single charge — it still requires that I remember to pop the watch onto a charger every night.

And yet, after almost eight months, the Apple Watch feels like the future to me.

More than anything else, the watch has changed the way I communicate via email and text messages. Using Apple’s VIP feature, I direct all of the most important messages to my watch, which alerts me with a subtle tap on my wrist or a soft ding. I ignore most after a quick glance. (Sorry, Mom.) Many get a quick “O.K.” or “Sounds good.” I pull out my phone only for the ones I need to respond to at length.

The same is true for phone calls, which appear on my watch while my phone remains tucked away in my pocket, or still at my desk on the other side of the office. It’s like Caller ID for my wrist.

The watch has also become my first stop for personal scheduling. I use it to check the weather (the current temperature is right there on the watch face) and to see at a glance what my next appointment is. My OpenTable app taps my wrist when a restaurant reservation is coming up. The eBay app lets me know when I’ve won, or lost, an auction — no phone required. Tracking deliveries is effortless.

By far, the most futuristic achievement on the watch is Apple Pay, which works flawlessly. Buy something, double-click the button on the watch and wave it next to the cash register. Ding. It’s like magic — where it is accepted. But because that’s a very limited universe of retail stores and restaurants, I still have to carry around my wallet, full of credit cards.

A few apps have become second nature now. I regularly use the watch’s timer when I cook: “Siri, set a timer for 45 minutes.” My boarding passes are now on my watch, which means I don’t have to fumble for my phone in the airport security line. When I record the White House press secretary during an Air Force One gaggle, I don’t have to hold my iPhone close to his mouth. I just hold up my wrist. (It looks kind of funny, but works well.) Changing the temperature of my Nest thermostats at home is easier on my watch than on my phone.

So what’s the answer? Should you buy an Apple Watch now?

I’m tempted to say “no” for most people. Most of what it does, your phone already does better. And the Apple Watch, even with recent sales, is pricier than competing smartwatches that do similar things. By that logic, you should wait until next year, when Apple’s relentless drive to innovate will have improved the watch’s hardware and software. Or wait until 2019, when the fifth generation of the device has unimagined new features.

But after eight months, I’m convinced that people will eventually view a smartwatch as an essential purchase. And waiting endlessly for the “next great thing” means missing out on all the small ways that the watch already can improve your life. So unless you want to be one of those people who hang on to their BlackBerrys forever, go ahead and get one. You won’t regret it.

AT&T To Cease Offering 2-Year Contracts Starting From January 8 Onwards

AT&T is terminating its two-year plan beginning from January 8. The country’s second-biggest wireless carrier is stopping its standard contract plan in which customers had to pay a fixed price for obtaining a phone as wells as couple of years of wireless service. Substituting the earlier plan is a program known as Next in which users rent their smartphones by paying a monthly fee. After a certain number of monthly payments, users can trade in the smartphone for a new one. Alternatively they can own the phone by making monthly payments in 18-24 months. The old type two-year plan will be restricted to business customers.
Hence AT&T customers cannot purchase an entry-level new smartphone outright. They have to pay a monthly charge now. Also they have to shell out fees for voice as well as data wireless service.
The change has both advantages and disadvantages. Customers need not enter into contracts. They exercise more control on the service as they have the option to get the devices faster if they want. They can switch from AT&T to another company if they are not satisfied by AT&T’s services. The change is not good for users who obtained new phones at a onetime price rather than having a monthly payment program.
AT&T first terminated 2-year contracts with its 3rd party stores last sense. So it is only logical that its official stores implement the same.
An AT&T spokesman said that many of its customers were opting for its Next program. Reasons for such a step were no charges applicable for qualified users, opportunity to upgrade earlier and down payment choices existing, with low monthly installments. Previously in this year, AT&T reported that 30% of its customers had adopted the Next program.
The 2-year contracts will remain applicable for tablets, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, mobile hotspots and devices. They will still be applicable for customer IRU accounts as well as CRU accounts which are classified as business/corporate accounts.
AT&T’s move to get rid of two-year contracts really isn’t unexpected, given that the rest of the wireless industry has done so, shifting on to installment plans, where the total price of the smartphone is split into monthly fees on top of a smartphone plan.
T-Mobile Us Inc (NYSE:PCS) was the first carrier in the wireless industry to ditch contracts over two years ago. Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) and Sprint Corp (NYSE:S) did the same this year, and now AT&T is finally doing it.

AVG Chrome extension created security risk for millions of users

You’d like to believe that a company that develops security software wouldn’t be shipping software that makes its users less safe. That wasn’t the case for AVG’s WebTuneUp extension for Chrome, however.
What, exactly, is Web TuneUp? Well, it doesn’t make websites load faster or improve your browser’s performance, as the name implies. It’s actually a search “enhancement.” I put that in quotes, because it’s up to interpretation whether what Web TuneUp does actually enhances anything.
Install the extension, and it flags questionable search results that happen to pop up. Google, of course, already does some scrubbing of search results and Chrome has built-in protection against malicious sites. Still, with 9 million users AVG’s done a good job of convincing people that they need the extra protection they say Web TuneUp provides… or at least a good job of sneaking it in during the installation of their antivirus software, which is used by more than 200 million people.
When Google reported the existence of a gaping flaw that appeared trivially easy to exploit and exposed users’ browsing history and hindered Chrome’s malware-checking abilities, they hoped AVG would move quickly to patch it up.
To their credit, they put together a fix and pushed it to the Chrome Web Store within four days of Google security engineer Tavis Ormandy’s initial report. They failed to take care of a potential man-in-the-middle vulnerability, though, and had to push a second update the next day after additional prompting from Ormandy.
As of today, the issue has been closed. That’s certainly good news for Chrome users that are running Web TuneUp, though it might not be a bad idea for those folks to just head to their extensions page and remove it entirely.

VW’s Global Vehicle Sales Decline as Diesel-Motor Recalls Loom

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  Deliveries of VW brand vehicles fell 4% on Russia, Brazil
• Group's European market share was the lowest since March

Volkswagen AG’s namesake car brand reported a 4 percent decline in global sales last month amid a scandal over cheating on diesel-emissions tests.
Deliveries at the VW brand, which is at the center of the crisis, fell to 513,500 cars from 534,800 a year ago, the Wolfsburg, Germany-based company said Friday in a statement. The drop at Volkswagen’s largest unit contributed to a 1.5 percent decline in group-wide sales to 885,300 vehicles in September.
Drops were sharpest in Russia and Brazil, where recessions are causing vehicle markets to shrink, while growth in Europe trailed competitors as the company prepared to recall 8.5 million vehicles with rigged diesel engines. Volkswagen’s U.S. market share also narrowed.
VW has been battling to repair its image after admitting to deliberately rigging diesel engines to circumvent emissions regulations. The manufacturer’s recall is one of the biggest ever in Europe. German regulators are forcing the company to fix affected cars, which total as many as 11 million vehicles worldwide.
Volkswagen’s registrations in Europe rose 8.3 percent in September, while the overall market expanded 9.8 percent, the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, or ACEA, said Friday. The owner of the VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat car brands accounted for 23.3 percent of the region’s auto sales last month, down from 23.7 percent a year earlier. It was the company’s weakest showing since March, and the decline may have been slowed by rebates.

Volkswagen's Loosening Grip on Europe's Car Market

“While we are wary of drawing conclusions from data captured only a few weeks after the emissions scandal, we suspect dealers may be resorting to discounts to compensate for any decline in sentiment from consumers,” Kristina Church and Charles Coldicott, analysts at Barclays Plc, said in a report this week. The manufacturer “experienced a noticeable uptick in discounting” in Germany in September.
Volkswagen’s group sales fell 44 percent in Brazil and 26 percent in Russia. In China, the manufacturer’s biggest market, deliveries slipped 0.8 percent in September.

The eternal rumor: Will Microsoft dump Windows Mobile and go for Android?

The eternal rumor: Will Microsoft dump Windows Mobile and go for Android?

There are certain tech rumors that make the rounds so regularly, you could almost write the stories in advance. Every year, someone is going to buy AMD, graphene is just around the corner thanks to one major breakthrough or another, OLED televisions are finally going to hit the mass market at near-LCD prices (I cry inside every time this one turns out to be untrue) and, inevitably, Microsoft is going to give up on Windows Phone10 Mobile and make Android devices.
This time, the rumor comes courtesy of Twitter user and known leaker MSNerd, who writes that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is discussing the option of dropping Windows Mobile altogether and instead licensing Android for use in smartphones and handsets. To be fair, this is not an entirely crazy idea. If the original Windows Mobile had a much higher market share than it deserved, Windows Phone has had the opposite problem — it deserves more users than it actually has, based on the overall quality of the OS.
“Nadella and the SLT debating continuing Windows on phones and small tablets vs bundling Microsoft services on Android as the way forward,” MSNerd said. “Microsoft would push Google Play devices with Microsoft apps in exchange for Google providing first-class Maps, YouTube, Search on Windows.”
With its signature mobile platform mired around 2.6% of the market, it’s not surprising that MS would evaluate its long-term plans for the platform. Satya Nadella made headlines recently for a memo in which he declared Microsoft would have to make hard choices around its product stack and the company announced the sale of some of its mapping platform to Uber not long after. The company’s mobile advertising business, meanwhile, will now be handled by AOL.

There’s been a persistent rumor for years that Microsoft makes more money on Android licensing (estimated at $2 billion per year) than it actually receives from Windows Phone / Windows Mobile sales, and given the device’s anemic market share, that’s not a high bar to clear. At the same time, however, Microsoft has sunk a great deal of effort into pushing Windows 10 Mobile and the idea of its new Universal app interface. Would Redmond invest these resources into the operating system only to kill it months later?
In a word, yes — but we doubt MS would kill its new mobile OS in the short-term.

Evaluating options

We don’t know how Windows 10 Mobile will perform in-market, but we do know that Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 / 8.1 generally failed to move the bar on market share. Microsoft’s commitment to flagship devices and its ability to win Windows Phone designs from companies not named “Nokia” have both been poor. Even so, hardware hasn’t generally been the issue — there have been good high-end Windows Phone devices and the OS has won accolades for performing well on low-end equipment compared to either Android or iOS.
One of the key problems for Windows Phone has been the lack of software. Apps that customers tend to expect by default have often been missing or delayed. In theory, Windows 10 will simplify the entire App Store concept by offering “Universal” apps that can move seamlessly between phones and laptops or desktops, but Microsoft’s curation and Windows Store design have been terrible to-date. While the situation has slowly improved since Windows 8 launched, every time we’ve revisited the state of the Windows Store we’ve been buried in a sea of unofficial “apps” for common services and extremely poor quality software.
If Microsoft wants to win customers to Windows 10, it needs to confront the reasons why existing individuals don’t pay any attention to current handsets. The only way to likely do that is with a combined approach that targets both software availability and through handset discounts that put iPhone 6 or Galaxy S6-equivalent hardware into people’s hands for dramatically less money. Alternatively, the company could continue offering extremely competitive midrange handsets — give people best-in-class hardware for $200 off-contract phones and you’ll pull in some attention, no matter what. Frankly, if Microsoft is serious about winning friends and influencing buyers, it could do far worse than simply paying developers to bring applications over to the Windows ecosystem.
At the same time, however, it makes sense for Microsoft to be evaluating just how much good money it wants to throw after bad in the mobile world. The concept of Windows on a tablet isn’t going to go away, thanks to 2-in-1 laptops and detachable devices. Developing the Universal application ecosystem will still pay dividends for Xbox One cross-development. There’s also the idea of emulation at the OS level or of running some Android code natively from within device wrappers (we discussed both of these options earlier this year).
Simply launching Windows 10 Mobile isn’t going to be enough to fix Microsoft’s mobile OS problems because the problem hasn’t been the OS to start with. And Microsoft has to look at the costs of fixing that problem, against the costs of simply licensing Android and providing its own custom software suite (backed up by some elements of the Google Play services). If Microsoft isn’t willing to take the steps required to fix its software ecosystems, simply offering an application suite and potentially a software “skin” might be the better option.