Facebook turns 10 this year, yet remarkably it seems like only in the past 12 months or so that people have started caring about privacy. As public awareness grows and users realize just how much the social network knows about you, there's a growing desire for people to have more control over how that information is shared. At this year's F8 developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced some updates that should make things a bit better.
Most talked about is the new anonymous log-infeature. Right now, plenty of sites and apps allow you to sign in by clicking on a big, blue button. Behind the scenes, your Facebook details are handed over and an account is created. With the anonymous feature, a second button will be added, an ominous black one, that will allow you to sign in without handing over any information at all. The idea is that you can take the app or service for a test drive, see if you like it, and then (hopefully for the developer) sign up for real later.
James Martin/CNET
Facebook also promised a more granular view into what information is handed over, including discrete controls for managing how much is shared with each site. Nice progress, though it's something of a small step in the grand scheme of things.
Zuckerberg also talked about a change to the company's mantra. What was "Move fast and break things" is now becoming "Move fast with stable infrastructure" -- far less catchy, but better. Up until now, Facebook's developer interfaces changed so quickly and unpredictably that developers trying to work with the network were asking for a lot of trouble. A more stable platform will be far more appealing.
MacBook Air cheaper and faster
Apple
The venerable MacBook Air hasn't seen a major update since 2010, yet it still ranks up there as my favorite laptop for frequent travelers -- such as myself. It got even better this week, with Apple slotting in the latest generation of Haswell processors. They're slightly faster and more efficient, but more importantly the laptops are now notably cheaper: $100 across the board. That means you can now get an 11-inch with 128GB of storage and a 1.4GHz Core i5 processor for $899 -- a steal. But with talks of a Retina-equipped Air finally making a debut at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this year, those looking for something a bit more may want to wait for a month or so.
Microsoft fixes ugly IE bug
Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET
Thought XP wasn't going to get any more updates? So did we, but Good Guy Microsoft just surprised us. A nasty bug uncovered this week was serious enough to have governments around the world recommending people stop using Internet Explorer -- all current versions of it. Microsoft was quick to deliver a fix, and threw in support for XP while it was at it. Good on ya.
Disney reveals 'Star Wars Episode VII' cast
Lucasfilm
I normally end with a fun video, but this week you'll have to make do with a picture -- and one that got the world's social networks worked up in quite a state. It's a photo of many of the major players in the upcoming "Star Wars Episode VII," and there are plenty of familiar faces. As expected, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher all return, as well as original series favorites Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, and Kenny Baker as R2-D2. Max von Sydow, from "The Seventh Seal," joins the cast, along with motion-capture extraordinaire Andy Serkis. Those with time machines will want to set them for December 18, 2015, the date when the film is expected to premiere.
For the first time in Microsoft's history, Bill Gates is no longer the company's largest individual shareholder, and in four years his ownership stake will likely vanish.
A stock sale by the software giant's former chief executive, revealed in a regulatory filing last week, reduced his holdings in the company to 330.1 million shares, putting him second behind fellow former CEO Steve Ballmer, who owns 333 millions shares, according to his most recent proxy statement. Ballmer retired in February with the announcement that Satya Nadella had been appointed the company's latest CEO.
Gates has sold 80 million shares annually each of the past 12 years under a preset trading plan to fund the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At the current rate, Gates will have no direct ownership stake of the company by mid-2018.The switch came when Gates, who founded the company in 1975 and served as its CEO until 2000, sold 4.6 million shares on April 30, according to a notice filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday and first noticed byGeekWire. Each of the two men owns about 4 percent of the company's shares.
CNET has contacted Microsoft for comment and will update this report when we learn more.
Still the world's richest person with a fortune estimated at $76 billion, Gates has pledged to give away the bulk of his fortune to charity. He has already donated more than $28 billion to the Gates Foundation, which is working toward the eradication of polio, malaria, and other dangerous diseases.
The Surface 2 is one of the precious few exceptions of a Windows tablet with 4G. Problem is, it runs Windows RT not the full version of Windows 8.Microsoft
Apple started making cellular-capable tablets in April 2010, but four years later most Windows-Intel tablets are still Wi-Fi only. One would charitably call that being late to the tablet party.
The tablet isn't a novel device anymore. You might even call it a mature market. IDC said Thursday that worldwide tablet shipments (including 2-in-1 hybrid devices) showed only 3.9 percent growth over the same period a year ago.
And 2014 will be a "challenging year ahead for the category" with the "the rise of large-screen phones," IDC added.
So, what's the state of the Windows 8.1 tablet in 2014 ? While there are some decent new designs from the likes of Dell ($249 Venue Pro 8) and Lenovo ($399 ThinkPad 8), there are precious few with 4G/LTE.
A federal appeals court decision in an unrelated case could spell trouble for Apple's current legal battle against rival Samsung.
A US Court of Appeals decision on Friday affirmed a federal judge's ruling in a patent-infringement case between Apple and Google's Motorola Mobility. In 2012, US Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner of the Northern District of Illinois threw out that patent case, saying neither company was able to prove damages.
One particular point of interest in the Apple-Motorola case, which involved several patents on both sides, is Apple's patent for quick links. Apple had accused Motorola of infringing the patent for quick links -- and is now claiming infringement of the same patent in its current suit against Samsung.
Apple's quick links patent, also refereed to as patent '647, covers technology for the automatic detection of data that can be clicked. For example, a user being able to send a telephone number straight to the phone dialer versus having to memorize or copy and paste the number. Apple's patent involves the use of an "analyzer server" to perform the action.
This development adds a twist to the current trial unfolding in San Jose, Calif. Apple is arguing that Samsung infringed on five of its patents for the iPhone, and that Apple is due $2 billion for that infringement. Samsung wants about $7 million from Apple for infringing two of its software patents.
The quick links patent was considered the most valuable one for Apple, according to patents blog Foss Patents. Apple can still seek an injunction for the quick links patent against Motorola, but the scope would be narrow, which means Motorola could easily work around the patent, according to Foss.
Closing arguments were supposed to happen on Monday, but it's unclear how this news may change the course of the trial
Angela Ahrendts, the former CEO of Burberry, joins Apple this week to oversee its retail operations.Leon Neal/Getty Images
Angela Ahrendts might not, at first glance, fit in with Apple's jeans-and-button-down dress code. But the former CEO of British luxury retailer Burberry Group could be just what the consumer electronics maker needs to spruce up its retail operations.
"She shares our values and our focus on innovation," Cook said in an October email to employees announcing Ahrendts' appointment. "She believes in enriching the lives of others, and she is wicked smart."
Ahrendts' arrival comes at a critical time for the Cupertino, Calif., company. Its March quarter saw strong profits aided by surprisingly strong iPhone sales, but its iPad sales and revenue forecast were disappointing. While millions are still eagerly awaiting the next iPhone, the company is facing an assault on its main money maker, with rivals such as Samsung and HTC pressuring it in the premium phone segment and upstarts such as Huawei and Xiaomi scooping up the next billion mobile customers.
And Apple continues to face concerns about whether its best days are behind it, with many still waiting for the next new thing that will wow customers. Its last entry into a new category -- theiPad tablet -- came four years ago. While Apple has updated its existing products with incremental improvements, Apple investors want more -- now. For some, patience is wearing thin.
Enter Ahrendts. She joins after Apple's recent struggles with its retail operations. In addition to his day job as CEO, Cook has led the retail business since he fired retail chief John Browett in October 2012 after just six months on the job. Browett, former chief of British electronics retailer Dixons, admitted he didn't fit in with Apple's culture. He replaced Ron Johnson, the executive credited with much of Apple's retail success, after Johnson left in 2011 to become J.C. Penney's CEO. (Johnson was ousted as Penney's chief in April 2013 for what some deemed a misguided makeover of the budget-minded retailer.)
Meanwhile, sales growth at Apple's stores has slowed. In Apple's fiscal 2013, which ended Sept. 28, retail sales rose only 7 percent to $20.23 billion, a much lower growth rate than the 33 percent increase seen in 2012, 44 percent in 2011, and 47 percent in 2010. Some say the novelty has worn off, with Samsung and Microsoft successfully mimicking part of Apple's retail feel. Apple's online sales experience also differs greatly from in store.
Ahrendts will be the first Apple executive to oversee both Apple's more than 400 physical stores and its online retail efforts. The hope is that she can pull off the same trick she achieved at Burberry. After Ahrendts took over at the London-based clothing and accessories retailer in 2006, Burberry's revenue nearly tripled to about $3.9 billion in the year ended March 31, and today it's widely regarded as one of the most technologically savvy fashion brands in the world.
"[Ahrendts] helped Burberry to become a leader in the use of emerging technologies to connect and engage with the customer base," Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter said in a recent note.
And even though Ahrendts is just about to start in her role at Apple, she's already being mentioned as a possible successor to Cook, who took over as CEO from co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011. Shortly after she was named to the Apple job, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was among those crowning her the next Apple chief and describing her as "the biggest hire @tim_cook has made since Steve left us."
Apple's senior management team before the addition of Angela Ahrendts, the new head of retail.Screenshot by Shara Tibken/CNET
Ahrendts is the only person on Apple's management team who has run a large, global company before. And while she may not have the technical chops of senior Apple leaders like iTunes chief Eddy Cue or design leader Jony Ive, she does have something perhaps even more important -- a proven talent for transforming a company from a brand on the decline to a seemingly unstoppable powerhouse.
"We'll see what happens, but it might be interesting if they start to change the [retail] look," said Brian White, an analyst with Cantor Fitzgerald. "Apple stores are phenomenal today, but just think about all the capital and what they could really do to the stores to jazz them up."
Another plus in her column: Ahrendts has been an Apple observer and admirer for years: "If I look to any company as a model, it's Apple," Ahrendts told The Wall Street Journal in 2010. "They're a brilliant design company working to create a lifestyle."
Unlike most Apple senior execs, Ahrendts hasn't been press-shy over her 30-year career. She has participated in several profiles during her time as Burberry's CEO -- including with The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Charlie Rose. She's written articles for publications such as the Harvard Business Review and given talks at her alma mater,TEDx, and other events.
Apple declined to make Ahrendts available for an interview. Burberry didn't respond to CNET's inquiries.
From modest roots to fashion powerhouse
Ahrendts was born in 1960 in New Palestine, Indiana, a small town with about 2,000 residents. One of six children, she says she "lived vicariously through fashion magazines," dreaming from the time she was young about working in that industry, Ahrendts said during a 2010 commencement address at her alma mater, Ball State University. After graduating in 1981 with a degree in merchandising and marketing, she moved to New York to pursue her dream of working in fashion.
"I was scared, trust me, but knew I was not alone and kept repeating to myself 'I will not live my life saying I wish I would have'," Ahrendts told Ball State graduates
As for her personal life, Ahrendts met her husband, Gregg, in elementary school. They dated long-distance for 17 years before getting married in their 30s. The couple has three teenaged children, and Ahrendts told the WSJ she's a devout Christian who reads the Bible every day.
In New York, Ahrendts worked at bra maker Warnaco before landing her first major fashion job in 1989 at Donna Karan, where she was promoted to president. Ahrendts also worked a short stint at Henri Bendel from 1996 to 1998, where she was tasked with expanding the high-end New York retailer into 50 new markets. Bendel parent company Limited Brands scrapped the idea a couple years after hiring Ahrendts, and she left to become vice president of merchandising and design at Liz Claiborne.
Ahrendts, who eventually took on the role of executive vice president, oversaw nearly two dozen Liz Claiborne brands, including Juicy Couture.
In 2005, Rose Marie Bravo, then-CEO of Burberry, asked Ahrendts to join the company as her successor. Ahrendts has said she initially turned the offer down, refusing to even have coffee to discuss the role with anyone at Burberry. She later agreed to talk with Bravo and to meet with Christopher Bailey, the Burberry creative director who Ahrendts had worked with at Donna Karan. After a long lunch, Ahrendts decided to take the job at Burberry.
"We had lunch that day, [Bailey] and I, for, 3-and-a-half hours and on the back of a napkin, put our dreams on paper," Ahrendts said in a 2010 interview with Charlie Rose. "I said, 'if I do this, what are we going to do ... in the next five years?'"
What Ahrendts did was re-energize both Burberry's sales and its image. One key step was buying out companies in Spain and other countries that had licensed the Burberry name to label their own lower-end products. That practice was hurting Burberry's image as a luxury brand. She also limited the number of products that could use Burberry's iconic pattern in a bid to make it exclusive once again.
Ahrendts credits "Midwestern core values" instilled by her parents for much of her success. She's said publicly that her father taught her compassion and humility, while her mother taught her to have faith and be the best she could be. Ahrendts also said during the Ball State commencement speech that it's important to follow your heart and not get sidetracked by technology.
"Technology has given us access to the world and its sea of content, allowing us to never speak to another person if we don't want to," she said. "Computers and smart devices are among the greatest intellectual gifts ever created for man, but if not balanced with human contact, may offer little to develop ones heart. Don't get me wrong, I am mesmerized by this Digital Tsunami, but Google doesn't have all the answers, and are all those people on Facebook truly your friends?"
Hundreds of people await the iPhone 5S and 5C launch at Apple's Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan.Sarah Tew/CNET
Following one's feelings or intuition has been a common message from Ahrendts in recent years. In a TEDx Hollywood presentation she gave in March of 2013, Ahrendts delved into the power of "human energy."
"Think of energy almost like emotional electricity. It has a powerful way of uniting ordinary people, their connected spirit, to do extraordinary things," she said.
As for her role in helping to fuel the Digital Tsunami, Ahrendts took Burberry digital, allowing customers to buy certain apparel online before the items hit stores. She also started broadcasting Burberry runway shows online, and launched the Art of the Trench selfie site that lets Burberry owners flaunt their trench coats. She also built up the company's social media presence. Burberry currently has 2.85 million Twitter followers and 17 million likes on Facebook.
Former colleagues praise Ahrendts' management style, noting she puts in long hours, is fair to underlings, and isn't afraid of differing opinions. In a February 2014 profile, Fast Company noted that Ahrendts is "adamant that significant news be shared first with staff" so they're not surprised. She also "communicates constantly" with employees by sending them emails to thank them and by traveling to stores around the globe.
Ahrendts has already shown she has the right mentality when dealing with the Apple brand, as she shared in the interview with Fast Company: "I don't want to be sold to when I walk into a store," she said. "The job is to be a brilliant brand ambassador. Don't sell! No! Because that's a turn-off. Build an amazing brand experience, and then it will just naturally happen."
Apple cut prices on the MacBook Air and upgraded the processor.Apple
Apple reduced prices on all four preconfigured MacBook Air models and gave the line a minor processor upgrade.
The 11.6-inch MacBook Air dropped to a starting price of $899 from $999 in the US and from £849 to £749 in the UK, while the entry-level 13.3-inch Air dropped to $999 from $1,099 in the US and from £949 to £849 in the UK.
Those models come standard with a 128GB solid-state drive and 4GB of memory.
The higher-end 11.6- and 1.3.3-inch configurations with a 256GB SSD also saw prices drop $100 in the US and £100 in the UK.
As before, Apple's most portable laptops come with non-Retina 1,366x768 (11.6-inch) and 1,440x900 (13.3-inch) resolution displays powered by Intel's HD 5000 graphics.
On the processor front, the Air now comes with a 1.4GHz Core i5 -- upgraded from a 1.3GHz chip. While that is a relatively minor performance upgrade, Intel may have improved the chip in other ways.
For instance, newer versions of a processor typically include manufacturing improvements, which can result in better power efficiency and cooling.
Most consumers, however, will notice the new starting price of $899 (£749). And it's a pretty good deal when you're getting both a price drop and a processor boost.
Finally, it's worth noting that the MacBook Air hasn't seen a major redesign since the fall of 2010. But that could change later this year. KGI Securities, NPD DisplaySearch, and others have gotten wind of an all-new, MacBook Air that's even thinner and boasts a 12-inch Retina display
What better way to end our month of Spring Cleaning than with the odious task of cleaning and organizing your sprawling iTunes music library. You may have started with the best intentions, but over the years the metadata got away from you. Or perhaps you were a mess to begin with and ditched your beloved collection for the simplicity and ease of a streaming service such as Pandora, Rdio, or Spotify. If you take a little time to wrestle with the data behind your files in iTunes, you may rediscover the greatness of your underused or abandoned music collection. So, let's dust off iTunes and get in there and clean up your library.
Metadata is your friend
Every track in iTunes has data behind it that helps iTunes catalog it, from the obvious track, artist, and album information to year, track number, and genre. The accuracy of a track's metadata depends on how you imported the track to iTunes. To tweak the metadata of a track or, better yet, an entire album, right-click on a track or album and select Get Info. On the Info tab, you'll find various fields to edit.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
I'm a big fan of shuffling songs via genre (jazz shuffle during dinner, reggae shuffle on Sunday morning, a blues shuffle nearly any time of day), so I keep a close watch on how an album is categorized in this regard. For example, some albums I perceive as reggae get categorized as World, so I will change them to Reggae for my reggae-genre-shuffling enjoyment.
Genres in iTunes are selected via a pull-down menu and many are similar to one another. I don't listen to enough alternative and punk music to have a genre for Alternative and another for Alternative & Punk. So, when I import an album and iTunes classifies it as Alternative & Punk, I change it to Alternative. All the better for my Alternative genre shuffle. Same for the Electronic, Electronica, and Electronica/Dance genre choices and the Country and Country & Folk genres.
Find missing album art
I have found that iTunes is pretty good at grabbing album art; it found art for the majority of albums I have imported to iTunes over the years, the vast majority of which were from CDs. For the albums that iTunes failed to find art for, you have two options.
Option 1: Tell iTunes to look again
Right-click on a album that's lacking art and select Get Album Artwork. In my experience, iTunes is successful in finding artwork for more mainstream releases and occasionally surprises me by finding more obscure albums, so it's worth a quick check before preceding to method 2. And it doesn't take iTunes long to search for art -- only a couple of seconds, whether it finds it or not.
Option 2: DIY
If iTunes doesn't come up with anything, then you can add your own art. Find the art using Google or the search engine of your choice. Open the image in your browser and keep the window open next to iTunes. In iTunes, click on the album in need of this art and select Get Info. On the Info tab will be a blank box for Artwork. Just drag the image from your browser to this box. If dragging doesn't work, you can save the image to your desktop and then double-click the blank Artwork box to select a local file.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
Display and delete duplicates
If your music library is sizable, then the odds are good you have a few duplicates in there. iTunes makes it relatively easy to ferret out such redundancy, but Apple has moved it in iTunes 11 from the spot where you might have found it in previous iterations of iTunes. From the menu bar, choose View > Show Duplicate Items.
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
From this list, you can view all duplicates, which will show the same song no matter which album it's on. Or you can click Same Album at the top of the list to view only duplicates from -- you guessed it -- the same album. Before deleting a duplicate, be sure you add Bit Rate as one of the filter options. This way, if two duplicates feature different bit rates, you can remove the the lesser of the two.
Know your compilations
I have a number of reggae compilations, which greatly add to my reggae genre shuffle, but all of those artists with only a song or two to their name in my collection clog up my library and make it difficult to browse by artist. Thankfully, there is a way to clean up your artist list without needing to change the artist metadata for each track on a compilation to something inaccurate or vague.
Right-click on an album and select Get Info. On the Options tab, select Yes for "Part of a compilation."
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
I have found that sometimes iTunes treats each track of a compilation as its own album, which scatters each track throughout the Album view because it's organized by artist name. In such cases, just go to the Songs view, order the list by album, and highlight all of the songs of the album to select all at once to tag them as part of a compilation.
For any song in an album that's marked as a compilation, the artist will not show up in the Artists view in iTunes. And you'll find a Compilations item at the top of the artist list for easy access to any and all of your compilation albums.
Editors' note: It's spring-cleaning time! Week five's theme: there is no theme. It's a bonus week. Check back this week through Wednesday for spring-cleaning tips on a variety of subjects.
