Microsoft is the company behind Internet Explorer-a browser that was so historically prone to security holes and vulnerabilities that some of its critics dubbed it ‘Spyware Explorer.’ Considering this legacy, what can Microsoft possibly teach Apple about software security. Quite a bit, actually.

You see, Microsoft had to learn the hard way that virus coders and hackers no longer roll out code for prestige and street credibility. For every hacker who produces viruses and spyware to establish a name for himself, there are dozens of others writing viruses for purely commercial purposes. Malware coding is big business nowadays. There is so much money to be made coding malware that sends out spam, which tricks people into giving cybercriminals sensitive financial informaton like online banking login details, online services credentials, and others.

For the longest time, spammers, hackers, and cybercriminals used Internet Explorer and other Microsoft products as conduits for their shady activities. Microsoft had to learn the hard way but it has gotten quite good at it with the years. Here are just some of the things Microsoft can teach Apple about security.

Fast updates and communication are crucial to controlling security breaches

When a vulnerability in the Mac version of Word was used by hackers sometime ago, the difference between Microsoft and Apple response to security vulnerabilities was shown to be almost black and white. While Microsoft would quickly get on the horn about their vulnerability and issue a patch, Apple was very slow to the draw.

The reason for this is, for the longest time, Apple products were immune to viruses. Seriously. The ‘immunity’ was not due to Apple products’ tougher security features  but commercial reality-it just wasn’t worth a hacker’s time to code malware for machines that formed a fraction of the global computing market. Now that Apple products are more widespread and popular, the ‘immunity’ it enjoyed no longer exists, and it has to quickly get its act together.

Proactive security measures

Microsoft’s auto update feature goes a long way in reassuring users the world over regarding security breaches. In fact, after XP, this system has become so silent and so efficient that many users don’t even notice that their computer is actively taking precautions against infection. Apple can use some of this vigilance. Old habits die hard and the false sense of security gained from the years when ‘Macs don’t get viruses’ is very hard to get rid of.

Let’s face it-we no longer look at our mobile phones the same way after the iPhone launched. Sure, there were many previous attempts to mesh phones with the Internet. What makes the iPhone different is that it is the first phone to mesh Internet and phone integration so smoothly.

Wrapped in a sleek design one can only expect from Apple, the iPhone is not just a pretty device. It embodied three key hardware design and communication system elements that can teach the rest of the tech industry a thing or two about technology strategies.

While the iPhone might soon be replaced by phones that are run on Google’s Android operating system, Apple’s lasting legacy will revolve around how it revolutionized telephony and mobile computing with aps, touch technology, and cloud computing.

Apps

Traditional computing involved the following steps: buy software physically, install it on your computer, run it. Simple enough, right? Well, there are a lot of issues with each step. First, in the Age of the Internet, more and more users are not happy with physically picking up software. They’d rather download it.

Apple gave consumers what they want with easy to download light software called apps. As will be explained below, these software packages may look light but they pack quite a bit of functionality. Moreover, Apple released the specifications for app building to its developer base.

As a result, a flood of custom-developed apps hit the market. ‘There is an app for that’ instantly became a meme as more and more consumers got on the app bandwagon. If it weren’t for apps, the iPhone might have easily become a failed project like many previous attempts at Internet phones. Apps are light so they don’t take too much storage space but they pack lots of power.

Apps teach the rest of the tech industry that add-on features must be light, developer-friendly, and yet powerful. In other words, developers should focus on building a platform that can accommodate third-party add-ons The more add-ons, the more useful the platform.

Touch

One of the reasons the Blackberry was so popular was because it was email-friendly. By allowing users to tap out emails on their iPhone screens, Apple stole Blackberry’s thunder, and it’s all downhill from there for Blackberry and its manufacturer, Research in Motion.

Besides tapping out emails, the iPhone’s touch interface allows users to do a wide variety of things on the iPhone. From playing games to playing music to manipulating fields, the only limit to the things you can do with a touchpad is your imagination. The tech industry can learn to focus on wide input versatility from iPhone’s touch capabilities. The more ways users can input into your platform, the more attractive your device will be to consumers.

Cloud computing

While apps may be small, they do a lot of their computing in the cloud. This allows the iPhone to be light and highly portable-it saves on storage space unlike traditional computing. This means users can store many apps on their phones while preserving the apps’ power.

Ever since his death, Steve Jobs has attained an almost saintly stature among his otherwise very tech-savvy and definitely secular fan base. Why the adulation? Well, he did go out in a blaze of glory The past ten years of Jobs life was nothing short of miraculous for Apple’s stock. Back during Gil Amelio’s (remember him?) term, Apple stock was in the basement.

Many tech observers thought that Amelio was doing a bad job even trying to hold together the mediocre achievements of his predecessor, John Sculley. Indeed, during those years, Microsoft was the undisputed sun everyone revolved around. After all, Microsoft just offed Netscape in a corporate MMA brawl that would make anyone wince. Still, Jobs came back after Amelio got dumped by Apple’s board.

The Return Of Steve Jobs and The Innovator Mystique

Interestingly enough, Jobs’ return wasn’t even by outright recruitment, but because he was part of Apple’s acquisition of Jobs’ NeXT computing company. During this second act, Jobs truly performed and launched the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad in an almost unbelievably quick sequence.

The iPod revolutionized the personal mobile music player product segment, the iPhone changed what people can do with mobile phones forever, and the iPad took mobile computing and entertainment to a whole new level. It was this late flurry of innovations that put a lot of lustre on Steve Jobs’ star as an innovator.

However, prior to this time, he was looked at in less glowing terms Indeed, as mentioned many times before when he was still alive, the guy just ‘took credit’ for stuff other people did. So, in the spirit of putting his legacy in context, here’s a quick analysis of Steve Jobs’ innovation before and after his famous booting from Apple.

Xerox, The iPod, and The Magic Of Image Making

Many articles and book segments have been written about the episode when Steve Jobs paid a visit to Xerox’ research facility and laid his eyes on a strange pointing device that let the operator navigate a screen. Called a ‘mouse’, this device was quite alien in the years of DOS where operators merely typed commands and backslashes to navigate from folder to folder and get stuff done.

Interestingly enough, mouse support made a grand entrance into mainstream computing with the release of the Mac computer. Jobs was there to soak it up and proudly claimed to be the father. Consider it a reverse-Maury Povich moment. However, the real dad of the mouse, and the graphical user interface for that matter, Xerox went on to fade into computing obscurity. If anything, this sad episode showed that the genius of Jobs laid not so much in innovation but in convincing the public they need certain innovations and not others.

The same played out with the iPod. There were mp3 players before. There were file sharing solutions before the iPod. However, Jobs meshed these two together into a closed system and got music industry cooperation and Apple proceeded to mint tons of money. Again, salesmanship and clever alliances won the day-not pure innovation.

The same situation can be said about the real role of Steve Wozniak in the early days of Apple before Wozniak sold out his shares. The bottom line is Jobs made the salesmanship of his image as a visionary the linchpin for Apple’s sales success. I don’t know about you but convincing people you’re an innovator using innovative image making is a stroke of genius.

People can innovate but if they can’t sell, the innovation remains a niche product. Jobs’ genius was convincing the world that he had the future in his hands.

Getting accurate and precise directions today is relatively easy with the help of modern gadgets and devices. However, not every modern device today do just that and getting a faulty one might get you in the middle of nowhere fast.

The iPhone 5′s iOS6 maps are said to be that bad wherein Australian police even discourage motorists using it after an incident where some outbackers got lost in the wilderness for days due to using the said to be faulty maps. The odd drawings of the map can be seen in some areas where some directions are obviously misleading.

Hence, if you’re an iPhone 5 user and looking for better alternatives, below are some of the suggested map apps to replace your faulty Apple maps.

Google Maps

One of the most recommended alternative map app is Google Maps. Google Maps are said to be faster than ever, maps are now smoother and it is free to use. It features vector-based maps and voice-enabled navigation. You can also get accurate bike routes, Zagat reviews and so many other features that are not in the Apple map app.

You can simply bookmark maps.google.com  in your mobile Safari browser or get the Google Map app for iPhones and navigate your way using Google Maps. Just an additional side note, it is said the Google Maps was hired to fix Apple’s faulty iOS6 maps. Using Google Maps is definitely the best alternative for that same reason.

Nokia Maps

You can also use Nokia maps at maps.nokia.com. Same with Google map, simply bookmark the url in your mobile Safari browser. Directions for walking, public transportation guides and routing are also available like Google Maps as well as being free.

Bing Maps

Bing 3.03 is a free map app and is more of a general search kind of app compared to others. Hence, the app also provide solid maps and good navigation. It also provides the same basic features like other map apps do. Interestingly, it also provides traffic conditions, Facebook integration and movie showtimes in located theaters nearby.

MapQuest

This is also a free map app and is another popular alternative for the faulty iOS6 maps. It provides good walking directions. Driving directions on the other hand are not that solid and some even noted some vagueness to it. The latest version of the app offer live traffic camera updates and gas prices of nearby gasoline stations.

There are other alternatives available today from free apps to paid apps. Some apps are specific to certain countries such as Garmin USA 2.1 and Magellan RoadMate USA 2.2.1 for US users. Ask your local network provider for alternatives they recommend. Ensure you get accurate and precise directions to avoid wasted effort in getting to places you need to go.

Control. stubbornness. Inflexibility. It would be easy to think that these words apply only to Apple’s arch nemesis Microsoft. But the truth is, these words also describe Apple and its former CEO Steve Jobs. Indeed, these are the key attributes that might cause the death of the iPhone’s market leadership. Sure, the iPhone represented a quantum leap forward for telephony, mobile computing, cloud computing, and design. But that’s five years ago-several light years in tech industry time.

As time goes on,the iPhone looks less like a revolutionary innovation and more of a marketing coup. Let’s face it, much of the technical innovation of iOS have either been matched or exceeded by Google’s Android system. Much of the manufacturing expertise and supply chain mastery pullled off by Apple’s Tim Cook is slowly beginning to appear with Samsung and other Asian Apple competitors.

After the death of Steve Jobs, it is quickly beginning to be apparent that his penchant for control, his bullheadedness, and preference for closed systems may not only harm the iPhone but also foreclose Apple.

Controlled environment

Remember when the Mac allowed clones? I bet you don’t. Don’t worry, it’s back in the 90s and those years are way behind us anyway. However, that episode is worth remembering if only for the reason that it shows Apple can let go of its penchant for controlled OS environments. After all, Apple is not a manufacturing firm per se. It is a design and sales firm which outsources manufacturing to Asia. Why not go whole hog and focus on design and sales and marketing?

In other words, why flood the market  with lower priced and accessible hardware? Apple walks away with design fees, license fees, and store sales, while the manufacturers have to content themselves with thin but still lucrative volume margins. Moreover, this might effectively counter the threat posed by Samsung’s Android-based smartphones.

Stubborn Attitude

Steve Jobs’ famous resistance against Flash highlighted how hardheaded he could be. Even though he has passed on, a lot of his attitudes regarding which technology gets in and which stays out reflects the opposite of IBM’s more accommodating attitude which ensured the IBM PC became a success. Old corporate habits die hard, and this can only weigh Apple down in the Age of Android.

Inflexibile strategy

Selling Apple products through Apple stores enables Apple to pad its profits at quite a healthy margin. That much is true. But how long can it last? After all, as more and more cheap Asian manufacturers get in on the Android tablet and smartphone game, price pressures will exact a big toll on Apple. It can try to go the luxury route but eventually it will run face first into the hard wall of luxury demand economic laws. Luxury items can fetch such premiums because there are only a few of them made every year. Apple can’t grow its item unit sales volume as fast if it wants to go the luxury route.

Many are attracted to Apple products, but not many can afford them. For example, the new MacBook Pro’s with Retina display come in at $2,199 plus tax (and that’s just for the base model). For many, the price of Apple products like their laptops is far too steep. But I’m here to tell you that, when other considerations are taken into place, Apple products aren’t as expensive as they first seem. Here’s why Apple products aren’t as expensive as you think.

Longevity

In the long run, a little analysis reveals that Apple products are actually more cost efficient in the long run. Apple devices are built to last, thus over the lifetime of the device it may actually yield impressive savings over other competing products. If you buy an iMac for $2500 you most certainly aren’t going to buy another desktop computer for many years to come. Usually, Apple products are built with high powered processors and with enough RAM that they are going to work great for a long time. Other non-Apple computers you find at Walmart or Best Buy may be decent at the moment, but will need to be upgraded within a year or two.

Office Programs

Productivity, whether it be in the office, at school, or even at home, is a big factor for most people. Consider Microsoft’s Office suite, the industry standard that most non-Apple people use. There are really only three major programs or abilities most users look for in Office: word processing (Microsoft Word), spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel), and slide show presentations (Microsoft PowerPoint). The cheapest most individuals can get these programs for is around $150, a pretty hefty sized sum. Enter iWork for Mac users. This application suite is just as powerful, just as robust, and just as easy, if not easier, to use than Microsoft’s Office. The suite includes Numbers for spreadsheets, Pages for word processing, and Keynote for presentations. And not only are these programs available for download, at any time, in Apple’s App Store, they are each priced at only $19.99. Talk about savings.

Gaming

Casual gaming is another area where you can uncover huge savings when owning an Apple product. Think about all the console gaming platforms available, like the Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, and how much they cost. Then think about how much the games for them cost. Gaming on an iPhone, iPad or a Mac is completely different, cost-wise. Games on iOS are either free or typically just $0.99 to play and you can keep them forever. You can also download some fun games in the Mac app store for your computer too that are typically priced between $4.99 to $19.99.

Good news for picky phone photographers. Apple, in an attempt to revolutionize the way people take pictures with cameras on its smartphones, filed a patent for an iPhone with a swappable glass, in order to provide the flexibility that only a camera with interchangeable lenses can.

Wondering what this is?

People tend to like Apple because it keeps its eyes open and is conscious of customer sentiment. Those of you who have the iPhone know that the camera isn’t one of its strongest points. Even the latest iPhone 5 has the same 8 megapixel camera found in the previous iPhone 4S model (albeit with software enhancements). Apple is apparently aware of this deficiency and has decided to do something about it.

The title of the Apple patent is called: “Back Panel for a Portable Electronic Device with Different Camera Lens Options”. This patent offers the capacity to add additional lenses and filters to a mobile camera.

The lens is said to be attached to the removable back panel, with the possibility of swapping out multiple lenses on a single panel, like one would with a DSLR. We can’t help wondering if this would be slightly ludicrous and very non-Apple-like. They could just be wanting to own the patent to prevent another company from doing it (without having to ante up to Apple first). Either way, interchangeable camera phone lenses is certainly a new innovation.

Add to that, the fact that each comes with mounts for them – and this can truly be described as amazing.

Here’s how Apple describes the application:

“It would be desirable to provide a structure for a compact device that allows the end user to reconfigure the optical arrangement of the device while retaining the benefits of assembling the device using a pre-assembled digital imaging subsystem.”

Apple says that this proposed new iPhone camera consists of a digital imaging subsystem that contains a lens with an optical axis, a removable back panel providing access to the subsystem.

The back panel with the lens in it is expected to fit in the imaging system and the iPhone case holds it in place. The lens and filter applications contain a macro lens, an IR-cut filter, and a lens baffle – lens combination.

According to Apple, this may also offer the possibility of two lenses built-into a panel at opposite corners. Users will just need to flip the panel around to be able to switch the lens or use a different filter.

We have known Apple not to incline towards anything replaceable, and this patent may change the way smartphone cameras are used or just remain an innovative idea. But don’t be surprised if in future, wedding photographers turn up at weddings with nothing other than an iPhone and replaceable plates.

When Apple released the iPod back on November 10, 2001, little did anybody know that this mp3 player would not only transform Apple, but would revolutionize the entire music industry. The cost of the original iPod was a steep $399 and it had a 5 GB hard drive which was capable of holding 1,000 MP3′s. But Apple did not invent the MP3 player. Many existed before the iPod and didn’t cost nearly as much as the iPod did. So what made the iPod different? Here are the main features of the device that changed the world, the original first generation iPod.

Hard Drive

Apple used a Toshiba 5 GB hard drive in the iPod that was a bit larger than the size of a quarter. The hard drive was just 1.8″ wide and 0.20″ thick. This meant that you can have a device with enough storage space to hold your entire music library and was still small enough to fit in your pocket.

Click Wheel

What really separated the iPod from the other MP3 players was the spinning click wheel design. This unique design made it extremely easy to quickly flip through a list of songs, certainly much easier than pressing a Skip button repeatedly.

Look And Feel

Apple’s iPod just looks great, even today, from the scroll wheel in the front to the stainless steel durable back. The rectangular shape made it easy to grip and easy to slip into your front pocket. The iPod today would be considered a bulky device, coming in at 4 inches tall, 2.4 inches wide and 0.78 inches thick. But when it was presented by Steve Jobs himself he explained it was the size of a deck of cards and weighed less than most cell phones at the time (6.5 ounces).

Battery

The battery life on the original iPod was impressive. You could get up to 10 hours of continuous playback. No other mp3 player at the time could deliver half of that battery life. When the battery got low there was no need to buy a replacement battery like on some other mp3 players back then. You could recharge it on your Mac or in a wall outlet.

Price

The $399 price tag immediately turned off many. There were countless doubters who balked at the price tag. There were after all mp3 players available at the time that cost much less. One such doubter was Technology Business Research analyst Tim Deal. At the time, he said “I question the company’s ability to sell into a tight consumer market right now at the iPod’s current price.”

Apple was certainly not dominating computer sales at the time and saw the music player as a device that did not have a clear leader. Apple wanted to dominate this market. To do so it had to offer a top quality product, they created it, but then needed to price the product at $399 to make a profit. Apple has continued to offer amazing products like the iPhone, iPad and MacBooks at high prices but you don’t hear too many people doubting their products now.

Waltzing through our digital lives, we tend to use our computers for hundreds of tasks on a daily basis. But even using a computer can get tedious, with routine daily tasks taking hours to accomplish.

How you wish there’s a way to automate things on your Mac. However, unless you know of an app that can let you set up a proper workflow to do exactly what you want or you are a master programmer; then automation is easier said than done.

Apple steps in to take control and provides the means to do this. It gives the Mac power to automate by incorporating an application called “Automator”, an application that takes the hard work out of automating workflows, thanks to its drag-and-drop interface.

Automator comes with a list of pre-defined “Actions” that each perform a specific role:

• Popping up a dialog box for a user input
• Creating a new document in an application
• Recording a sequence of mouse and keyboard actions

These “Actions” can be dragged into order, for the workflow to be executed within Automator as a script, which gets triggered when a file is moved to a particular folder or even saved as a standalone application. Of course, since the nature of these Actions is fixed, you may have to put your thinking cap on before putting them together.

But the beauty of the Automator is that it can handle a lot, and anything that is truly out of its league can be handled with the help of an external AppleScript script included in a workflow.

The real advantage of the Automator lies in automating the mundane tasks that Mac users routinely perform throughout each day, including the following tasks:

• Create a family directory and print it with the Contacts in the Address Book
• Find images from your favorite websites and add them to iPhoto.
• Convert any images dropped on to its Finder icon into JPEGs.
• Handle scheduled backups of important information.
• Batch convert .doc to .pdf.

Let’s take a simple example to demonstrate how Automator makes lives easier.

If you’re like me, you have hundreds of business and financial files stashed away on your computer, and you end up searching all folders for one file as you don’t remember the file name you saved it under. Admit it; being organized is not everybody’s cup of tea. Here’s how you can set up Automator to help you:

• Start Automator in your Applications folder
• Choose Application
• Go to the Library pane and Select Files & Folders
• Select “Set Spotlight Comments For Finder Items” in the Actions pane on the right and then drag and drop the action in the workflow area
• In the Action, you will have to give a name so that you find your files easily later, for example: salaries2012
• Enable “Keep the Append To Existing Comments” (By doing this you are making sure you are not replacing the Spotlight comments)
• Save the workflow you created on the desktop

By doing this, you can add Spotlight comments to any of your files or even folders on your Mac. You will now be able to search for files by using the Spotlight comment you’ve used for the file.

There are hundreds of such tasks that can be automated. Automator can be a highly efficient personal assistant that makes life easy for you. You can get more done in a day. Work that takes hours manually, can be performed within minutes. It’s very simple – you just create “automation recipes” that perform both simple and complex jobs for you whenever you need.

Trying out Mixtab for OS X, a free news reader app available on the Mac App Store, has truly been a pleasure. After the first use, I found myself constantly going back to it and ditching all of the alternatives that I previously had installed. It is such a pleasure to use for a number of reasons, mostly due to the highly convenient tabbed browsing, beautiful interface, and more that I will elaborate on below.

Signing up for a Mixtab account took mere seconds, only requiring an email address and password, which was nice considering a lot of apps require a lengthy registration process in which you’re required to submit a lot of unnecessary personal information. Mixtab also comes pre-loaded with some tabs (Cooking, Fashion, Finance world, Movies, Photography, Tech News, and Travel) and content to get you started, and you can easily add your own and edit your tabs to your liking. Mixtab’s settings also allow you to alter the app’s user interface with a choice of eight different predesigned themes, all of which are very nicely designed. Aside from that, there isn’t much else to configure other than your tabs and what content you’d like within them.

If you’re unsure of how you’d like your tabs set up and what kind of content you’d like to read, Mixtab has a “Tab Gallery” containing tabs created by other Mixtab users that you can easily subscribe to for your own reading pleasure. While there aren’t that many, the ones that I’ve looked through seem decent enough, and I even subscribed to a couple myself. Once you’ve set up all of your tabs and content that you’d like Mixtab to gather for you, the whole reading experience itself is incredibly simple and practically flawless. All you have to do is click on the tab of your choice, and a selection of relevant stories come up. Mini tabs above the story allow you to adjust what you see based on key terms related to the tab, and then you can simply click on the story that interests you to read it in its entirety.

Overall, Mixtab is a highly recommended app for any OS X users that need a better, more simplistic news reader on their Mac. For a free app, Mixtab delivers everything you could possibly need in a news reader, with a gorgeous design and incredible ease of use to go along with it. I find it sad that apps like this often go overlooked, and I encourage any and everyone to give it a try.