Electronista:

Apple has officially filed for an appeal of US District Judge Denise Cote’s recent decision, which denied both Apple’s request to suspend an antitrust external compliance monitor (ECM) while an appeal of the main judgement is considered, and a request to disqualify the current appointee, Judge Cote’s personal friend and former DOJ Inspector General Michael Bromwich.

Who knows nothing about antitrust matters and must employ a helper monkey attorney to explain them to him to the tune of an additional $1,000 an hour.

Seriously, I’ve tried to be even-handed about this whole thing but this has gotten kind of ridiculous.

Kevin MacLeod takes exception to some of the contentions in the MFi controller piece by Jordan Kahn that I linked to:

Keep in mind, MFi controllers have only been out for about 2 months. 175 games are supporting this “niche” product In 2 months. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft would kill for a “failure” like that.

Fair point. It’s pretty early in this development cycle.

Scathing post by Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Apple’s FTC consent decree and $32.5 million settlement on in-app purchases:

Any money that’s not spent — which could, in theory, be millions of dollars — goes to … wait for it … the commission.

So, bottom line, the FTC has hit an Apple trifecta: 1) headlines that paint the government as protectors of parents and children in the digital age, 2) a story in which the FTC gets to play the giant killer, and 3) a novel way to extract millions out of Apple’s coffers — and maybe send some of it directly to the FTC’s.

And, if that’s not enough, the new chairwoman of the FTC who swooped in and demanded the consent decree was a partner at Quinn Emanuel, whose clients included Google and Samsung. In fact, it’s the same firm that leaked information to Samsung on contract agreements between Nokia and Apple.

Weird that the FTC hasn’t taken action against Google when it has exactly the same problem with in-app purchases (via The Loop). Very weird, indeed.

9to5mac’s Jordan Kahn:

The launch for the first few controllers to hit the market was rushed, developers are disappointed and still trying to catch up, and manufacturers are limited in pricing, features, and quality due to Apple’s MFi program requirements.

Hopefully Apple will make some changes because Johnny still wants to have a really good user experience playing a FPS on his iPad. Those aliens aren’t going to kill themselves, you know.

The second episode of Turning This Car Around is seminal.

(Get it?)

Rich Mogull outlines Apple’s security philosophy for BYOD and enterprise-owned devices as it exists in iOS 7:

Apple has a very clear vision of the role of iOS devices in the enterprise. There is BYOD, and there are enterprise-owned devices, with nearly completely different models for each. The owner of the device defines the security and management model.

Apple has always been criticized for not having an approach to the enterprise so this seems like a promising evolution in the security and provisioning of iOS devices.

Writing for Macworld, Lex Friedman asked me and five actual Mac experts how they handle contacts. I was largely unaware that “handling contacts” was a thing. But apparently it is. I’m really more of a dog person. Poodles, specifically. This one, to be exact:

Handsome, right?

Anyway, that’s why I’m only quoted once in the article.

Spencer Chen in a guest post for TechCrunch:

It’s a pretty indefensible practice. The hiring of young, college-aged females to dress as provocatively as possible to help promote…um, Ultra HD TV sets, Android tablets and Internet-enabled toothbrushes. It’s a relic of old enterprises, but that’s just the way they like their world. But what nearly every critic has failed to mention is a real concrete business reason to end the practice.

Well, I do: Booth babes do NOT convert.

How do I know? Well, I actually split-tested this a few years ago and the results were indisputable. If you have invested in a trade show to generate new business, using booth babes is a lead conversion boat anchor.

I’m not surprised by this at all. I’m also not surprised that TechCrunch took the opportunity to use five pictures of booth babes in this piece.

Brian Krebs digs further into the Target credit card intrusion:

The source close to the Target investigation said that at the time this POS malware was installed in Target’s environment sometime prior to Nov. 27, 2013, none of the 40-plus commercial antivirus tools used to scan malware at virustotal.com flagged the POS malware or any related hacking tools that were used in the intrusion as malicious.

I just find that funny because these are the guys who are always telling us what a crime it is that Apple won’t let them sell their antivirus tools for iOS.

(Via Ars Technica)

Peter Cohen for iMore:

Apple as cult is an outmoded concept, a worn-out trope and a really lazy way to understand the company’s appeal. And I’d really like to see that description of Apple stop.

It won’t, of course, because lazy tropes gotta trope, but it still needs to be said.