Japan's Two Main Airlines to Launch Wi-Fi Services on International Flights

Japan's two main airlines will begin providing Wi-Fi on some international flights, with Japan Airlines to begin offering services next month.

JAL will start offering Wi-Fi from July 15 on flights between Tokyo and New York, it said. A one-hour plan will cost US$11.95, while 24 hours of access will cost US$21.95. The Wi-Fi will be offered for free through September for first class and other elite passengers.

The service will be offered on the New York route every other day until Aug. 5, then on every flight. In late August, Wi-Fi will be expanded to flights from Tokyo to Los Angeles and Chicago, and in October flights to Jakarta will also get access.

All Nippon Airways said its Wi-Fi service will go live in the middle of next year, initially on its international routes served by certain Boeing 777 and Boeing 767 aircraft. ANA did not say whether it will launch the services on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which it was the first airline to use.

Despite the early promise of such services, Wi-Fi has yet to become mainstream for airlines and passengers, in part due to the cost. Outfitting a single plane for the service can cost an airline over $100,000, making some companies wary, and passengers have been unwilling to pay when other entertainment is available often for free.
 
JAL said it will use a service provided by T-Mobile. ANA will use service provider OnAir, which uses satellites to provide its connections and lists British Airways, Qantas and Singapore Airlines among its customers.

JAL has rebounded strongly from its 2010 bankruptcy and years of safety mishaps, and is now booking strong profits under the leadership of Kazuo Inamori, the founder of electronics maker Kyocera and of KDDI, Japan's No. 2 mobile operator. News reports in Japan say the airline, which is currently mostly owned by a government-backed fund, is eyeing an IPO later this year.

 

Apple Steals From Windows Update Playbook for Mountain Lion OS X

Apple will boost the frequency of security updates in OS X Mountain Lion and automatically install required patches for users, steps that bring it into line with Microsoft's practices.

In an update Monday to Mountain Lion's Developer Preview 4, Apple supplied what it called "Security Test Update Test 1.0." As the name implied, the update was a test of Mountain Lion's new security infrastructure, which presumably was put into place earlier.

Several Apple-specific blogs, including MacRumors, reported on the update and posted screenshots of the accompanying text that described it to developers and testers.

Although Apple has disclosed many Mountain Lion features, it has not revealed all those slated for the upgrade: Until Monday, there had been few hints of changes to OS X's security update process.

According to the update's description, Mountain Lion checks for security updates daily a frequency increase from the weekly checks that are the default in previous editions of OS X -- and will install those updates automatically for the user, either at the time they're downloaded or at a machine restart.

By comparison, Leopard and later will only download updates and notify users when they're available. It's up to users, however, to install security and feature updates.

Apple also said it beefed up the security of the connections between customers' Macs and its update servers, hinting at the same kind of improvement in encryption that Microsoft made this month after Flame, an advanced super-spy kit, was found to fake Windows Update downloads.

The security changes in Mountain Lion bring OS X to parity with Windows, which has long checked for patch updates daily, and which by default automatically downloads and installs those updates for users.

Security experts will probably applaud: Most have argued that the less users are asked to do, the more likely they are to keep their machines up-to-date.

It's possible that Apple has had these improvements in mind for a considerable time, but they could also be part of the company's response to attacks earlier this year that infected an estimated 600,000 Macs with the Flashback malware.

Apple has made other moves recently that may also have been triggered by the Flashback campaign, including patching Java on the same day that Oracle fixed the flaws for other operating systems; shipping the first security-related update in nearly a year for the unsupported OS X Leopard; and blocking outdated versions of the Flash Player plug-in from running in Safari.

Apple has not set a release date for Mountain Lion, but has promised that the upgrade will go on sale in July for $19.99 at the Mac App Store.

If Apple follows the same release track for Mountain Lion that it used last year for Lion, the most likely release date will be July 25.

Iphone 5

iPhone 5: What's Up With the Dock?

 

When Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) next iPhone hits the market, users may notice something different about the device -- something that so far hasn't changed in Apple's iPod/iPhone line for nearly a decade.

The company will switch from the iPhone's current 30-pin port to a 19-pin port, according to TechCrunch. The basic 30-pin dock connector debuted in the third-generation iPod in 2003 and has since been featured in every model of full-sized iPod and iPhone. The reported new design would make the dock smaller and more similar to universal micro USB cables.

"The current design has been more of a legacy design left over from the iPod," Wayne Lam, senior analyst at IHS iSuppli, told MacNewsWorld. "Apple is starting to think of the iPhone as an iPhone, a separate entity from the iPod."

Apple has not revealed when the next iPhone will launch, although it has begun previewing iOS 6, the latest version of its mobile operating system. The iPhone 4S was released last October.

Apple did not respond to our request for comment on the story.

Evolving Design

The flexibility that comes with a design change could lead to significant advantages for Apple and its customers, said Lam.

"They can try to double the functionality of the cord," he told MacNewsWorld. "They could do something to create a data port, and it could also help to improve the speed."

A smaller, more universal dock could also lead to an improved iPhone, Colin Gibbs, analyst at GigaOM Pro, told MacNewsWorld. As customers demand more computing and entertainment capabilities from their phones, manufacturers struggle to make the devices smaller yet more powerful.

"Manufacturers and developers are constantly trying to pack as much technology as possible inside mobile phones, so that space is very precious real estate," he said. "Less space for a dock means more space for radio chips, processors, etc."

A dock redesign could also help the iPhone meet European standards. Last December, the EU passed new regulations requiring cellphone vendors to make their phones connectable via micro USB. At the time, Apple didn't alter the iPhone design, but it began selling a micro USB adapter to comply with the rule.

Selling the Pros

The switch could also lead to resentment among the Apple faithful. The 30-pin port has been a standard in Apple mobile products since the third generation of the iPod. Since then, third-party accessory manufacturers have created thousands of speaker sets, car chargers, battery packs and other devices designed to use iPods and iPhones in a variety of ways via the established 30-pin port.

In addition to customers upset that their accessories could be rendered obsolete, the companies that produce those gadgets might be apprehensive about a makeover as well, Gibbs said.

"The people who are really concerned right now are manufacturers of Apple accessories, because they have no idea whether their current inventories will be worth anything when the new iPhone is unveiled," he explained.

Despite Apple's tendency to shield its products in a veil of secrecy, the company might clue in those manufacturers before the next iPhone's launch, Lam said.

"Everyone would be sworn to secrecy, but that's a possibility," said Lam. "The port redesign is a little less interesting than the overall design, but it does affect this industry of accessories makers, and Apple might decide to let them know ahead of time."

With manufacturers on board, Apple will also have to win over its loyal user base, who might be quick to critique the decision as the next iPhone hits the market, said Lam. Apple will have taken that into consideration, he noted, and if the rumors are true about a dock size change, it is probably for good reason. Like they did in Europe, the company might also release an adapter that would allow the devices to function with the old ports, said Gibbs.

"There have to be some compelling advantages so that people are able to live with the changes," said Lam. "This is a company that can't afford to alienate their users, and that is definitely something that factors into their design."

Leaked Docs Illuminate Google's Nexus Tablet Aspirations

  Leaked Docs Illuminate Google's Nexus Tablet Aspirations

 

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) will unveil a 7-inch tablet based on the Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) quad-core Tegra 3 processor and running Android 4.1, aka "Jelly Bean," at the Google I/O developers conference this week, according to Gizmodo Australia.

The device will reportedly be dubbed the "Nexus 7" and be built by Asus.

"My instinct is that [the tablet's] going to be in the $200 range and be targeted at helping Google reclaim the low-end market and, essentially, try to take share away from Amazon," Tom Mainelli, a research manager at IDC, told TechNewsWorld. "I think it's driving Google crazy that the most popular Android tablet to date doesn't have Google's brand on it."

The Look of Nexus

The Nexus 7 will have a 1.3 GHz Tegra 3 processor, the report claims. This processor goes with an Nvidia GeForce 12-core graphics processing unit.

The Nexus 7 will have a 7-inch IPS display with 1,280 by 800 pixel resolution and a 178-degree viewing angle. It will have a 1.2 MP front-facing camera and 1 GB of RAM. It will also include near field communication capability. The version to be released in the United States will include Google Wallet.

Battery life will be nine hours. Two versions of the Nexus 7 will be offered, one with 8 GB of storage and the other with 16 GB. Pricing will be US$200 and $245, respectively, according to Gizmodo Australia. The tablets will be released in Australia in July, but it's not known when they'll be available in the U.S.

Asus, which is reportedly making the Nexus 7, did not respond to our request for comment for this story.

No Dragon Ball Here

It's not clear whether the so-called Nexus 7 tablet will use Nvidia's Kai platform, as suggested recently by the TechBuffalo blog.

Kai is a reference platform offered by Nvidia that tablet manufacturers can use to produce low-cost quad-core Android tablets priced below $200.

The Kai platform includes the Tegra 3 quad-core mobile processor together with its associated DirectTouch architecture and PRISM display technology, as well as a memory controller that's compatible with lower-cost DDR3L PC-type memory. The Kai reference design is a 7-inch device with a standard resolution display, but it can be modified to offer different display sizes and resolutions.

"We don't comment on unannounced products or rumors," Nvidia representative Steve MacDonnell told TechNewsWorld when asked whether Kai is being used in the Nexus 7.

Google's Jagged Little Pill

Google has "a lot of people using Android phones but have had a terrible time gaining traction in the tablet market," Tom Mainelli, a research manager at IDC, told TechNewsWorld.

The success of Amazon's (Nasdaq: AMZN) Kindle tablets, which run Android, didn't help Google's cause. Android devices are aimed at helping Google sell ads, and Amazon, whose Kindle tablets sold like hotcakes during the Christmas season, "took Android and put a new user interface on top of it and removed Google's ecosystem from the device," Mainelli said. "So Google not only needs to increase the footprint of Android tablets, but also needs to get enough bodies in there so that its ecosystem will continue to grow and become viable."

Taking on the iPad

Google will "try to put out a full-featured 7-inch tablet at a reasonable price," but it will not prove to be any competition for the iPad, IDC's Mainelli said.

"We're looking at two different areas," Mainelli explained. "One thing Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has done very well with each iteration of the iPad, not only with hardware and software but also marketing, is position it as not just a consumption device but also a production device. That's one of the hangups with 7-inch tablets and also with the Kindle and Barnes & Noble's (NYSE: BKS) Nook."

The other tablets are content consumption devices, Mainelli said. "Some users will be able to be productive on 7-inch tablets, but by and large, 10-inch tablets give you more real estate, so it's easier to be more productive on them."