Tag Archives: Apple

Apple Exposure Notification API

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Of course, I do not prefer much to write about COVID-19, but enticement on the technology does not leave me silent either. In the last post, I managed to cover a holistic view of contact tracing apps, especially how to separate the PII data and analytical.

This week Apple announced its new update iOS 13.5 beta 2, usually I do not go for with the beta updates, but this is a particular case and downloaded the beta with the beta profile.

Little fascination is Apple has taken a similar step, as explained in my post. Fully anonymized and random Ids. Apart from that, these are things to note :

  • Any app to use the Exposure Notification APIs, the app publisher should prove their identity to be an authorized government entity; this will be a cumbersome step to pass, as I understand.
  • Though Exposure Notification API is available in the update, the user cannot switch on the feature without an authorized app installed in the device.

Refer to the images below.


I made this short post to highlight two things.

  • Independent entities who are developing the contact tracing apps, should consider this new update and the acceptance criteria. Since the new Exposure Notification API has been released, Apple may not accept the standard Bluetooth tracing apps like the ones we saw in the last post.
  • The Contact tracing app developers, should pass a clearance from the respective governments to get the apps approved in the App Store

If you’re developing such an app, it’s high time to consider to use the Exposure Notification APIs.

Few words from Jobs…..

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This is an extraction of a set of exact words from Jobs, from his biography – by Walter Isaacson. I just made it available here. The note’s somewhat big and I can either offend this or defend this. But I just like the way it was.

……..

At different times in the past, there were companies that exemplified Silicon Valley. It was Hewlett-Packard for a long time. Then, in the semiconductor era, it was Fairchild and Intel. I think that it was Apple for a while, and then that faded. And then today, I think it’s Apple and Google – and a little more so Apple.

I think Apple has stood the test of time. It’s been around for a while, but it’s still at the cutting edge of what’s going on.

It’s easy to throw stones at Microsoft. They’ve clearly fallen from their dominance. They’ve become mostly irrelevant. And yet I appreciate what they did and how hard it was. They were very good at the business side of things. They were never as ambitious product-wise as they should have been.

Bill likes to portray himself as a man of the product, but he’s really not. He’s a businessperson. Winning business was more important than making great products. He ended up the wealthiest guy around, and if that was his goal, then he achieved it. But it’s never been my goal, and I wonder, in the end, it was his goal.

I admire him for the company he built – it’s impressive and I enjoyed working with him. He’s bright and actually has a good sense of humor. But Microsoft never had the humanities and liberal arts in its DNA. Even when they saw Mac, they couldn’t copy it well. They totally didn’t get it.

I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies like IBM and Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on the revenues, not the product engineers or designers. So the salesperson end up running the company.

John Akers at IBM was a smart eloquent, fantastic salesperson, but he didn’t really know anything about product. The same thing happened at Xerox. When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off. It happened in Apple when Sculley came in, which was my fault, and it happened when Ballmer took over at Microsoft. Apple was lucky and it rebounded, but I don’t think anything will change at Microsoft as long as Ballmer running it.

……

Microsoft Vs. Adobe

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Hi, Yesterday I saw a post on the Facebook linking to a mashable.com post saying that MS has plans to acquire Adobe. The post continues on what will happen and all that. The news that the plans of MS on acquiring the Adobe is not official, but it was an interesting post to read.

In the IT filed the acquiring chain of the companies has been there from the very beginning, since it is vital to take the competitive advantage. Some companies operate and put their hands on very new technologies believing that big giants will acquire them one day. If we have a look on the history you cannot even believe the numbers.

So far Microsoft has acquired or merged 128 companies Surprised smile Yep, here’s the list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Microsoft

And Google has acquired or merged 80 companies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Google

Apple has acquired more than 30 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple 

Adobe and the Oracle have also have their share in acquisition, with more than 30 companies each.

The chain grows and grows, last few months Apple was trying to acquire Adobe. Ultimately Apple banned the Adobe Flash in it’s iPad and iPhone. Users suffer lot, they can’t view the contents of the websites like YouTube and Hulu. Sad smile

That was a stupid move I guess. Annoyed

Now there are news spreading out that MS is trying to acquire the Adobe. Really MS is trying very hard to make a reasonable share on the mobile market through their Windows Phone 7. Really the previews and the promised features were amazing in WP7 and even the iPhone users are having a WoW on WP7. But when compared to the iPhone, Andriod and Blackberry WP7 has a very small market share.

And do not talk about MS Kin it was boom, only 750 people in the world are using it; and MS closed it immediately after one week of its release. But MS always want to have its own pie in the mobile market. Now they are in the right track with the WP7 which is powered by Silverlight.

But if MS acquires Adobe how this going to help them on knocking down their rapidly growing rivals Google and the Apple. (Of course they are not too much Rrrrr….. with Google). So how they can knock down the Apple.

They can quite the Adobe products to Mac. (but they are not going to do, since it is a billion dollar business and they do not want to loss that revenue in order to knock their enemy).

There is another issue on Silverlight and the Flash. Ooops this is real heck. I think what MS will do to the Flash is; it will simply ignore it. (it is a very good strategy to knock things down) A recent example is what Oracle did to mySQL after acquiring the Sun. (Really Oracle messed up the Sun)

Silverlight gain the popular and now it is one of the technologies that industry seeks. And we can do plenty of things in Silverlight that we cannot perform in Flash. The secret is the .NET platform. (a platform always beats an application). That’s why MS made the Silverlight as platform geared with the .NET. Now Silverlight is a platform for Web, Xbox, Zune and Windows Mobile. Why even to the desktop.

There are more Flash based websites but Silverlight is started to gain popularity and the market share.

So if MS acquires the Adobe it won’t help MS to get the share in the mobile market. (but they can do) But however they are adding a billions and billions of business to their venture. Think about MS Photoshop, MS SoundForge, MS After Effects …Smile

Smile Surprised smile Annoyed Secret telling smile All the expressions are possible.