Articles by John P. Mello Jr

An iPhone with a 4-inch display and some features found in Apple's latest models will launch in March or April, 9to5Mac reported last week The model reportedly will be called the "iPhone 5se" -- for "special edition" -- and will be offered at the same price point as the iPhone 5s....

Worldwide downloads of Android apps in 2015 were double those for iOS, but revenues from iOS apps were nearly twice those of Android, according to anApp Annie report released this week First-time device owners in emerging markets drove the huge increase in Android downloads, researchers found....

Apple this week released a diversity report showing that initiatives to broaden the makeup of its U.S. workforce haven't been as successful as CEO Tim Cook suggested last year The EEO-1 report filed with the federal government covers Apple's 2015 hires in the United States. Its numbers vary widely from the diversity numbers the company revealed in ...

Two white-hat hackers, Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, made headlines last year when they demonstrated how they couldhijack the control systems of a moving motor vehicle over the Internet. The move got the attention of the auto industry, and last weekGeneral Motors put in place a program to encourage more digital dabblers to alert the company when they find bugs in GM vehicles...

LastPass has boosted security for its users after a security researcher alerted the company of a phishing attack he devised to steal users' login and two-factor authentication credentials Sean Cassidy, CTO of Praesidio, demonstrated the phishing attack, which he calls "LostPass," last week at ShmooCon....

Apple is phasing out its iAd sales team and moving toward an automated system, according to news reports this week Then-CEO Steve Jobs launched iAd six years ago to provide an alternative to existing mobile advertising platforms, but it never caught fire....

There's been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about the Sisyphean task of protecting privacy in the Digital Age, but that hasn't stopped innovators from searching for ways to preserve it. One of the latest ideas to emerge in the field is Privacy as a Service As with many emerging technologies, the definition of "PaaS" (which undoubtedly will ...

Apple this week revealed that technical difficulties with its News app have led the company to underestimate usage figures for the more than 100 publications offering content through the software The company discovered an error in the app that's resulted in underestimating the number of readers using the software, Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice pres...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Monday pressed to revive a lawsuit against Cisco Systems for violating human rights in China, in a brief filed with a U.S. Court of Appeals Members of Falun Gong, a religious group persecuted in China, originally filed the lawsuit in 2011, but a federal district court in California dismissed it in 2014. The fed...

All but one of Apple's top team received a pay raise in 2015, according to a proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week While Angela Ahrendts, Apple's senior vice president for retail and online stores, didn't get a raise, she's still pulling down the highest executive compensation at the company at US$25.8 million....

Just days before Christmas, a rare event occurred: the report of a successful intrusion into America's infrastructure by overseas hackers Although the event -- penetration of the control system of a dam 20 miles from New York City -- was more than two years old, it just made it into the public light last month....

Netatmo on Monday announced a smart security camera and floodlight combo at CES 2016 The Presence camera is designed for outdoor use and can identify objects such as people, animals and vehicles....

Will 2016 be a breakaway year for virtual reality technology? Exhibitors at CES 2016 this week seem to think so. More than three dozen of them will be flogging their VR wares at the show, more than double the number from last year....

Thanks to Google, self-driving passenger cars have gained a lot of media attention, but the immediate future of driverless vehicles may lie in home deliveries Starship Technologies in 2016 will launch two pilot projects -- one in the UK and one in the United States -- to test a driverless vehicle designed to make short-distance deliveries....

Insider threats are becoming increasingly worrisome to corporate security executives That is one of the findings in a survey of C-level businesspeopleNuix released last week....

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday defended his company's downsized version of the Internet, called "Free Basics," which is offered in developing nations around the world "In every society, there are certain basic services that are so important for people's wellbeing that we expect everyone to be able to access them freely," he wrote in theTime...

People like to see gifts from their wish lists under the Christmas tree, and security pros are no exception. Here are things some cyberwarriors would like old St. Nick to deliver to them The wish at the top of Ryan Kalember's Christmas list would be a tough one for Santa to fulfill, said the senior vice president for cybersecurity strategy at Proof...

Apple CEO Tim Cook brought the encryption battle between the high-tech industry and the nation's law enforcement authorities to prime time TV Sunday in an interview on the CBS news program 60 Minutes During the interview, Charlie Rose asked Cook about the need for law enforcement agencies to access data that has been encrypted on Apple phones....

Apple on Thursday announced some personnel moves that suggest CEO Tim Cook's future vision for the company He named Jeff Williams (pictured above) chief operating officer, elevated Johny Srouji to Apple's executive team by making him a senior vice president, broadened the powers of Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller to inclu...

Kromtech this week revealed a vulnerability in the data storage system of its MacKeeper software Security researcher Chris Vickery, who alerted the company to the problem with its server, pegged the number of MacKeeper users affected at about 13 million in a post on Reddit....