Apple may have arrived late to the party, but with Watch it's brought a gun to a swordfight

It's arrived: Tim Cook's watch of many colours. Kay Nietfeld/EPA

While all eyes and ears were trained on news of its smartwatch, Apple also used its spring Keynote to introduce changes to Apple TV, revisions to its laptop lineup, and a new service that builds on the health monitoring aspects of smartwatches to perform data collection for medical research.

As one digital TV service after another launches many have been left wondering when HBO, whose television dramas are highly sought and widely watched properties, would play its hand. And here it is: a partnership with Apple that makes the entire HBO back catalogue available through the new HBO Go digital streaming service, available exclusively through Apple TV. So while the Apple TV hardware hasn’t been updated for years, the partnership with HBO (and a price drop to £59) is a nice reminder for those who may have overlooked it.

Apple has extended its reach into car dashboards with CarPlay, into home automation with HomeKit, and into health monitoring with HealthKit. Apple hopes that ResearchKit, a new open-source API and service, will form the foundation for apps that can collect health data from larger numbers of volunteers, increasing sample sizes and frequency of data collection, making the data more useful for researchers. Five apps have been developed so far, to investigate Parkinson’s Disease, asthma, diabetes and cardiovascular disease with research groups in leading hospitals. There is an emphasis on privacy, with the user controlling the degree of information that is being shared.

The Macbook Air finally gets updated to a retina display, a faster, more energy efficient processor, and a trackpad that can supply tactile feedback. It is lighter, thinner, has a re-engineered keyboard and somewhat controversially rolls many ports into just one: the USB-C standard port, which will handle HDMI video, external hard drives and other USB peripherals. Inevitably this is going to mean buying another set of cables.

The new Macbook Air with shiny retina screen. Kay Nietfeld/EPA

Watch my watch

In any other keynote this reveal would have been the main news item. But of course the main event was the watch. Seven months since Tim Cook first revealed the device, it’s been a long wait for more technical details. Opinion is still split on whether it will be a hard sell. With fewer people wearing watches anyway, the market is split between those who want a fitness tracker and those that want a beautiful luxury object. Is there a need for a device which essentially duplicates the functionality of a smartphone? Apple has to convince us that the watch offers more, in clear terms of where glancing at a watch is preferred to pulling out a phone.

Usually reserved to only one or two colours, this time Apple offers 20 different combinations of ways to customise the watch in size, colour, watch and strap material – probably a necessity in order to sell a device that by nature of being frequently visible is more fashion than function.

One watch to rule them (but in many colours). Martyn Landi/PA

The styling of the watch itself is reminiscent of the first iPhone, with three versions in two different sizes, 38mm or 42mm high: the cheapest Apple Sport at £299 with an aluminium body and plastic straps, the middle tier Apple Watch from £479 in stainless steel and wrist bands in leather, steel or plastic, and the gold Apple Watch Edition, which starts at £8,000 – perhaps more expensive even than the Apple Lisa from 1983, which sold at US$15,000 at the time. All the information, but smaller and nearer. Apple

Most of the functionality of the watch requires an iPhone within a few metres – maps, messages, Siri and other apps are relayed from the phone using WiFi or mobile data. Apple suggests that the battery will last 18 hours in a typical day.

Not first to market, but best?

Apple invests heavily in research and development to create new devices and interfaces that differentiate its products, at least, until competitors release their responses. Apple’s watch uses an Ion-X glass or Sapphire crystal screen which is pressure-sensitive to varying degrees. The side-mounted dial, which Apple terms a digital crown, enables scrolling and clicking, and a button below it jumps to frequent contacts. It has a “Taptic” engine which provides vibration feedback for certain apps, for example suggesting directions in Maps. The sensors on watch’s underside detect heartbeat and combine with the accelerometer to measure physical activity, something Apple is pitching as a major selling point.

Developers are already creating software that will extend their iPhone apps to interact with and be accessible from the watch, as Apple has with its Apple Pay contactless payment system. Miniature messages appear on the device in what Apple calls Glances, giving the impression of dealing with such messages quickly without the hassle of pulling out a phone.

From watches to smartwatches, with only a little relief. XKCD, CC BY-NC

Will it sell? In the past 18 months customers have bought 5m smartwatches or fitness bands, with Samsung flooding the market with many smartwatch devices, but with fitness bands accounting for the majority of sales. Current estimates suggest that Apple could sell more than 8m watches, eight times as many as its largest competitor.

While many of its features will appear in competitor’s smartwatches in the subsequent years, for the moment the eponymous watch is best in class. To sound a note of caution: like the first generation iPhone, the second generation device will probably be half as deep and run twice as long. You may be unfazed about the risks of being an early adopter, but if the idea of paying another few hundred pounds for the latest model next year isn’t appealing, it may be sensible to wait.

Apple's iPad Pro looks good, but who needs a phone with a 13" screen?

Monica Davey/EPA

Apple’s annual September keynote as usual brings hardware changes, software updates and the occasional surprise.

Rumours of a larger iPad Pro were proved true: the significantly larger 12.9 inch iPad with upgraded ARM A9X processor and faster graphics and internal components is being sold as a device on which desktop-class applications could run.

This is supported with a stylus and keyboard (sold separately in typical Apple fashion) that essentially converts the iPad Pro into a laptop. The stylus, dubbed Apple Pencil, has provoked comment as Steve Jobs had expressed his distaste for them in the past. The Pencil features hand writing recognition software, and improvements to iOS finally allow multitasking by splitting the screen between two apps.

However, with prices starting at an eye-watering US$799, there will be many who think that this won’t light a fire under tablet sales, which have been flat. For example, Amazon have taken the opposite approach, aiming for the bottom end of the market with a US$50 tablet subsidised by purchases made through Amazon’s services.

There may be iPad sales in education, and in retail where they are often used as point of sale devices, but in business the iPad faces considerable competition. For example, the iPad Pro bears an uncanny similarity to Microsoft’s own convertible tablet/laptop device, the Surface Pro, in cost and size and style. But the big difference is that Surface comes with a full operating system, Windows 10: few will take Apple’s claims that the iPad Pro can run desktop-class applications for professional use while it’s running the stripped-down iOS operating system originally designed for phones, instead of the full OS X as found on Macbooks and iMacs.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet, keyboard and stylus combo. Microsoft

Apple’s iPad Pro - spot the similarity? Beck Diefenbach/Reuters

 

 

 

 

 

A surprise was the appearance of Microsoft staff on stage to demonstrate Microsoft Office apps running on the iPad – something greeted with a stunned silence in the auditorium. Microsoft Office has been updated to support the stylus, and the invitation to appear at such a high-profile Apple event shows the extent to which Microsoft has been pouring money and effort into ensuring its software suites are cross-platform, rather than tied to Microsoft Windows. Another visitor to the stage was Adobe, whose reps showed off new design tools with the stylus – which all suggests an outbreak of corporate peace between the firms.

Pushing Apple TV into the home

The Apple TV finally gets a long-awaited upgrade, a wait during which many competing devices have appeared such as NOW TV, Roku, or Google’s Chromecast. Originally classified as a “media extender”, Steve Jobs called the Apple TV a “hobby” when introduced in 2007, but with this update Apple has refreshed the device, reorienting it to support the app ecosystem that has thrived elsewhere.

The new Apple TV features a new operating system tvOS, making use of the extensive iPhone/iPad developer tools and software already available. Boasting a much higher hardware specification, the Apple TV now runs apps and games, provides a new interface and a touch-enabled remote that can also process audio commands through the Siri digital assistant voice recognition system. With this a user can use their voice to search for content across multiple television networks.

It should be easy to port existing iPad/iPhone applications to the TV, bringing an unparalleled range of services compared to the competition. The surge in streaming services from Amazon and Netflix has sidelined Apple to some extent, so it will be interesting to see whether reorienting the device around apps will increase Apple’s footprint in this space. Sony and Microsoft should be worried that the massive back catalogue of iOS games can now be used in the living room through Apple TV. Prices start from US$149, available from October.

Phone and Watch

An update to the Watch, dubbed WatchOS2, arrives later this month and features updated accessories, colours and straps. The update will give apps direct access to the hardware, allowing developers to write full native applications for that are more independent of the iPhone, to which the Watch has so far played second fiddle.

The iPhone 6S and iPhone 6SPlus are unchanged externally, but Apple claims internal upgrades including a 12 megapixel capable camera, faster A9 processor and a Force Touch capable screen, which responds to varying degrees of pressure. This is still a new tech, for which capable software has yet to be written.

Finally, as signalled in the developer conference earlier in the year, owners of older devices will get access to new features when iOS 9 is launched very soon. An incremental upgrade, nevertheless it offers features many users have been calling for and will provide a significant increase in speed and features for older devices.

It’s unlikely these changes will lead to the extraordinary sales achieved with the larger iPhones last year, so it may provide an opportunity for other manufacturers to play catch-up – improving their hardware and services which Apple has always claimed is what differentiates them from the competition in a crowded market.

Apple's iPad Pro looks good, but who needs a phone with a 13" screen?

Monica Davey/EPA

Apple’s annual September keynote as usual brings hardware changes, software updates and the occasional surprise.

Rumours of a larger iPad Pro were proved true: the significantly larger 12.9 inch iPad with upgraded ARM A9X processor and faster graphics and internal components is being sold as a device on which desktop-class applications could run.

This is supported with a stylus and keyboard (sold separately in typical Apple fashion) that essentially converts the iPad Pro into a laptop. The stylus, dubbed Apple Pencil, has provoked comment as Steve Jobs had expressed his distaste for them in the past. The Pencil features hand writing recognition software, and improvements to iOS finally allow multitasking by splitting the screen between two apps.

However, with prices starting at an eye-watering US$799, there will be many who think that this won’t light a fire under tablet sales, which have been flat. For example, Amazon has taken the opposite approach, aiming for the bottom end of the market with a US$50 tablet subsidised by purchases made through Amazon’s services.

There may be iPad sales in education, and in retail where they are often used as point of sale devices, but in business the iPad faces considerable competition. For example, the iPad Pro bears an uncanny similarity to Microsoft’s own convertible tablet/laptop device, the Surface Pro, in cost and size and style. But the big difference is that Surface comes with a full operating system, Windows 10: few will take Apple’s claims that the iPad Pro can run desktop-class applications for professional use while it’s running the stripped-down iOS operating system originally designed for phones, instead of the full OS X as found on Macbooks and iMacs.

Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet, keyboard and stylus combo. Microsoft

Apple’s iPad Pro - spot the similarity? Beck Diefenbach/Reuters

 

 

 

 

 

A surprise was the appearance of Microsoft staff on stage to demonstrate Microsoft Office apps running on the iPad – something greeted with a stunned silence in the auditorium. Microsoft Office has been updated to support the stylus, and the invitation to appear at such a high-profile Apple event shows the extent to which Microsoft has been pouring money and effort into ensuring its software suites are cross-platform, rather than tied to Microsoft Windows. Another visitor to the stage was Adobe, whose reps showed off new design tools with the stylus – which all suggests an outbreak of corporate peace between the firms.

Pushing Apple TV into the home

The Apple TV finally gets a long-awaited upgrade, a wait during which many competing devices have appeared such as NOW TV, Roku, or Google’s Chromecast. Originally classified as a “media extender”, Steve Jobs called the Apple TV a “hobby” when introduced in 2007, but with this update Apple has refreshed the device, reorienting it to support the app ecosystem that has thrived elsewhere.

The new Apple TV features a new operating system tvOS, making use of the extensive iPhone/iPad developer tools and software already available. Boasting a much higher hardware specification, the Apple TV now runs apps and games, provides a new interface and a touch-enabled remote that can also process audio commands through the Siri digital assistant voice recognition system. With this a user can use their voice to search for content across multiple television networks.

It should be easy to port existing iPad/iPhone applications to the TV, bringing an unparalleled range of services compared to the competition. The surge in streaming services from Amazon and Netflix has sidelined Apple to some extent, so it will be interesting to see whether reorienting the device around apps will increase Apple’s footprint in this space. Sony and Microsoft should be worried that the massive back catalogue of iOS games can now be used in the living room through Apple TV. Prices start from US$149, available from October.

Phone and Watch

An update to the Watch, dubbed WatchOS2, arrives later this month and features updated accessories, colours and straps. The update will give apps direct access to the hardware, allowing developers to write full native applications for that are more independent of the iPhone, to which the Watch has so far played second fiddle.

The iPhone 6S and iPhone 6SPlus are unchanged externally, but Apple claims internal upgrades including a 12 megapixel capable camera, faster A9 processor and a Force Touch capable screen, which responds to varying degrees of pressure. This is still a new tech, for which capable software has yet to be written.

Finally, as signalled in the developer conference earlier in the year, owners of older devices will get access to new features when iOS 9 is launched very soon. An incremental upgrade, nevertheless it offers features many users have been calling for and will provide a significant increase in speed and features for older devices.

It’s unlikely these changes will lead to the extraordinary sales achieved with the larger iPhones last year, so it may provide an opportunity for other manufacturers to play catch-up – improving their hardware and services which Apple has always claimed is what differentiates them from the competition in a crowded market.

Apple can't rely on numbers alone to make streaming a success

Facing the music Jeff Chiu/AP/Press Association Images

Apple has finally launched its own music streaming service at its Worldwide Developers' Conference in San Francisco.

That the iPhone maker should go in this direction should not come as a surprise to anyone. Last year, Apple bought the audio products company Beats by Dr Dre for US$3bn (£2bn) with the statement that music has a “special place” for the company. Apple is – after all – the company that pioneered portable digital music for the mass market and changed the way we listen through iTunes and the iPod.

While the focus of reporting around last year’s purchase was to question the value of the Beats headphone and speaker business, less attention was paid to the small US-based streaming service that came as part of the deal in the form of Beats Music. The question at the time and now is why Apple, a company with more than US$170 billion (£111bn) in cash did not go after the obvious candidate in the streaming music business: Spotify.

The reasoning for this decision becomes clearer when you contrast Apple’s business model with that of Spotify. Apple’s new product will be a subscription-only service, offering no free accounts or commercial advertising (although it will include a free 24-hour online radio service). Beats also has the advantage over Spotify in having a recognisable brand name that is appealing, and a personality associated with that brand.

This combined pair of qualities is something that Apple, of any technology company, will appreciate and exploit. The other potential candidate subscription-only music streaming service with a high-profile celebrity owner, Tidal, just came along too late to come onto Apple’s radar.

Tidal’s subscription-only service, founded by Jay-Z, has arguably struggled with low uptake in an environment where a free service is the baseline expectation. However, a revamped iTunes Radio service that challenges Spotify’s market may also bring new life to the Tidal service, which claims to have 770,000 subscribers.

Other services such as Deezer work with the freemium business model, offering both advertising-supported and subscription accounts in a similar way to Spotify. But there is no intention within Deezer of changing in the short term.

Not quite worth a high-five Monica Davey/EPA

There are currently at least 35 existing music streaming services but only 12 of these are recognised as global services and none of these are subscription-only. This categorisation itself reflects the complexity of rights management and the relationship of intellectual property laws with the traditional music publishing music model.

Apple’s announcement does still leave a few questions unanswered including the extent to which artists will see any benefits from this development. Without revisiting the existing relationships that artists have with music companies and broadcasters the project will lack the financial innovation that is required in the business of streaming music.

The music industry has previously relied on consumers buying the media containing the music. Without the need for any physical media to distribute music, Apple is involving itself in the urgent need to rethink and future-proof the business model for global music distribution.

While it may not initially appear to be the case, the combination of a global audience of 800m iTunes accounts and the many millions of devices that can interact with iTunes all creates a potentially instant user base of up to 100m subscribers that far outstrips all the current subscription services. The launch of Apple’s service could again put it at the forefront of revolutionising the music business worldwide.

While the numbers all appear to signal another imminent success for Apple, this is nonetheless a major business innovation that will require the sustained support of the company. This support will need to be financial and also helps to explain why Apple saved its money by not chasing a Spotify valued at US$8 (£5bn) billion and went for the cheaper option.

Expect very soon to regularly see advertising encouraging us to buy into iTunes Radio. iTunes Radio will also need to reinvent the relationship between music producers and performers in ways that echo the reinvention of television that Netflix has successfully championed.

Signals of Apple’s intention to go beyond a simple head-to-head competition with Spotify have been emerging over the last few months. Apple’s engagement of artists Drake and Pharrell and former BBC radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe are all early signs of an effort to actively change the relationships between producers and consumers of music. For consumers willing to pay the suggested US$10 (£6.50) a month, Apple’s streaming service could help to yet again extend the experience and enjoyment of listening to music.

Hackers have finally breached Apple's security but your iPhone's probably safe (for now)

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Cyber security experts recently discovered that the almost impenetrable Apple App Store had been hacked. While cyber break-ins have become routine news for many companies, Apple has long prided itself on providing technology for its phones and tablets that was incredibly secure.

This was done by controlling how developers – the people who create your apps on your device – not only create their code but also upload it on to the app store. Steve Jobs ensured that Apple would check each app before it entered the marketplace, as well as the developers themselves, and the firm has enforced tight controls on what the devices could access.

This meant that Apple mobile products arguably were (and probably still are) the most secure you could buy. However a new attack dubbed XCodeGhost has done a great job of undermining Apple’s otherwise strong security.

The attack method used was cunning and, in a technical sense, impressive. Rather than attack the devices or the App Store, the hackers compromised the xcode framework, the underlying programming system used by developers to create the apps. This is akin to poisoning a city’s water supply at its source rather than attacking the settlement’s buildings or army directly.

App developers use a suite of software known as xcode to create programs for Apple devices. Within this is a large library of functions that enable each created app to talk to the underlying phone or tablet. Each library function has different roles, from allowing you to share your location to making your phone sound like a light sabre when you wave it around.

The hackers created a malicious program (malware) that used the internet to seek out Mac computers with xcode installed, gambling on the possibility that some of these devices were used to create apps for the Apple App store. It then dropped contaminated code library features into the xcode system. These will appear to do what the app developers programmed them to do but also capture and send personal data from your device back to the hackers.

Malicious intent Shutterstock

Security experts are concerned that this innovative attack leaves Apple open to future attacks. It attacks anyone who has this coding environment installed on their computer system and compromises the code before it enters the secured systems offered by Apple.

Not only is this embarrassing for the company, as their checks clearly missed this compromise. It is also embarrassing for the many developers affected as their own internal security and anti-malware processes have been compromised.

What does this mean for you?

If you are the owner of an iPhone or iPad, there is nothing you can do. Apple has never offered Apple device owners the opportunity to protect their own technology. Apple has owned this, controlled this and until recently has been very successful in protecting its products.

Android-powered devices have historically been relatively vulnerable to an excess of 40,000 types of malware. The equivalent number for Apple devices remains very low. However, this new and interesting attack means that attackers have established an alternative route into your device, through the framework used by app developers. They only need one compromised app from one compromised developer machine to be successful.

Different experts have already found multiple apps, such as Angry Birds 2, that are infected. Many of these apps are being updated in earnest by their creators to patch the security breach and new versions are automatically being installed on your iPhone or iPad. If you are ultra concerned you can delete the app and re-install in a few days time when you know it has been secured.

In order to prevent further breaches, Apple must review its security policies and how it checks all code before it enters their App Store. It also means that the onus is on all developers to improve the way they scan their own systems. Otherwise, Apple will refuse to allow them to participate in this otherwise very successful and secure system.

'Windows 10 on everything' is Microsoft's gambit to profit from its competitors

Windows on anything means revenue from everything, at least that's the idea. gadgets by aslysun/shutterstock.com

Microsoft’s aim to make Windows 10 run on anything is key to its strategy of reasserting its dominance. Seemingly unassailable in the 1990s, Microsoft’s position has in many markets been eaten away by the explosive growth of phones and tablets, devices in which the firm has made little impact.

To run Windows 10 on everything, Microsoft is opening up.

Rather than requiring Office users to run Windows, now Office365 is available for Android and Apple iOS mobile devices. A version of Visual Studio, Microsoft’s key application for programmers writing Windows software, now runs on Mac OS or Linux operating systems.

Likewise, with tools released by Microsoft developers can tweak their Android and iOS apps so that they run on Windows. The aim is to allow developers to create, with ease, the holy grail of a universal app that runs on anything. For a firm that has been unflinching in taking every opportunity to lock users into its platform, just as with Apple and many other tech firms, this is a major change of tack.

From direct to indirect revenue

So why is Microsoft trying to become a general purpose, broadly compatible platform? Windows' share of the operating system market has fallen steadily from 90% to 70% to 40%, depending on which survey you believe. This reflects customers moving to mobile, where the Windows Phone holds a mere 3% market share. In comparison Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure platform Azure, Office 365 and its Xbox games console have all experienced rising fortunes.

We’re way into the post-PC era. Blake Patterson, CC BY

Lumbered with a heritage of Windows PCs in a falling market, Microsoft’s strategy is to move its services – and so its users – inexorably toward the cloud. This divides into two necessary steps.

First, for software developed for Microsoft products to run on all of them – write once, run on everything. As it is there are several different Microsoft platforms (Win32, WinRT, WinCE, Windows Phone) with various incompatibilities. This makes sense, for a uniform user experience and also to maximise revenue potential from reaching as many possible devices.

Second, to implement a universal approach so that code runs on other operating systems other than Windows. This has historically been fraught, with differences in approach to communicating, with hardware and processor architecture making it difficult. In recent years, however, improving virtualisation has made it much easier to run code across platforms.

It will be interesting to see whether competitors such as Google and Apple will follow suit, or further enshrine their products into tightly coupled, closed ecosystems. Platform exclusivity is no longer the way to attract and hold customers; instead the appeal is the applications and services that run on them. For Microsoft, it lies in subscriptions to Office365 and Xbox Gold, in-app and in-game purchases, downloadable video, books and other revenue streams – so it makes sense for Microsoft to ensure these largely cloud-based services are accessible from operating systems other than just their own.

The Windows family tree … it’s complicated. Kristiyan Bogdanov, CC BY-SA

Platform vs services

Is there any longer any value in buying into a single service provider? Consider smartphones from Samsung, Google, Apple and Microsoft: prices may differ, but the functionality is much the same. The element of difference is the value of wearables and internet of things devices (for example, Apple Watch), the devices they connect with (for example, an iPhone), the size of their user communities, and the network effect.

From watches to fitness bands to internet fridges, the benefits lie in how devices are interconnected and work together. This is a truly radical concept that demonstrates digital technology is driving a new economic model, with value associated with “in-the-moment” services when walking about, in the car, or at work. It’s this direction that Microsoft is aiming for with Windows 10, focusing on the next big thing that will drive the digital economy.

The revolution will be multi-platform

I predict that we will see tech firms try to grow ecosystems of sensors and services running on mobile devices, either tied to a specific platform or by driving traffic directly to their cloud infrastructure.

Apple has already moved into the mobile health app market and connected home market. Google is moving in alongside manufacturers such as Intel, ARM and others. An interesting illustration of this effect is the growth of digital payments – with Apple, Facebook and others seeking ways to create revenue from the traffic passing through their ecosystems.

However, the problem is that no single supplier like Google, Apple, Microsoft or internet services such as Facebook or Amazon can hope to cover all the requirements of the internet of things, which is predicted to scale to over 50 billion devices worth US$7 trillion in five years. As we become more enmeshed with our devices, wearables and sensors, demand will rise for services driven by the personal data they create. Through “Windows 10 on everything”, Microsoft hopes to leverage not just the users of its own ecosystem, but those of its competitors too.

Apple and Starbucks could have avoided being hacked if they'd taken this simple step

Hack attack Shutterstock

Apple and Starbucks are two of the world’s most trusted companies, but their reputations were recently tarnished thanks to some recent novice cybersecurity mistakes. Both set up systems that could have allowed hackers to break into customers' accounts by repeatedly trying different passwords, a procedure commonly known as a “brute-force” attack. The mistake both firms made was in not employing the simple tactic of automatically locking accounts after several failed attempts to enter a password.

Last week it was revealed such tactics allowed thieves to steal money from users of Starbucks' mobile app. In 2014, an investigation around the publishing of nude photos of celebrities taken from their iCloud storage accounts, identified that intruders could access Apple’s Find My iPhone app by continually trying different login details.

In order to protect against this type of attack, many sites block login after a given number of incorrect attempts. The system can then go into a permanent lock-out mode (where the user must perform a lock-out procedure, such as calling the hosting company to verify their account), or lock out for a given time (known as the hold-down time).

Brute force from a stolen account Author Provided

The size of mobile keyboards can make it tricky for users to correctly enter their password on the first try, especially as it is increasingly common for companies to require passwords with non-alphabet characters. To counter this, developers now often support many more incorrect logins than was previously normal. But many just go for an infinite number of incorrect ones without the chance of a lock-out.

In the Starbucks case, and in many others, the hackers managed to gain stolen IDs and passwords and then try to brute-force the accounts on the Starbucks mobile app, trying hundreds of logins per second.

One tactic of intruders is to try many accounts rather than concentrate on a single one and try lots of passwords for it, which is more likely to trigger security measures. There is a high likelihood that there will be some user accounts that match from the stolen credentials.

Intruder trying lots of accounts Author Provided

Users will also typically use the same password for multiple accounts, so if the intruder manages to gain the password against one compromised account, they will try the same password against other login systems. Often, the same email address is used as a login for different systems, so that it can be fairly easy for an intruder to try the same ID and password that has been used on another system against a new target.

In the case of both Starbucks and Apple, the companies' authentication systems failed to provide a lock mechanism for repeated attempts to enter usernames and passwords. This should have included:

• A lock-out on a certain number of tries
• A network detection system setup to detect multiple logins
• A task or question that can’t be completed by automated bots (for example: Captcha)

Stopping attacks at source

The problem in cybersecurity is often as simple as a developer’s desire to quickly produce a solution and get it online, but forgetting to think through the processes that an adversary might take. In this case, it was a novice problem. Most system administrators would advise that a three-try system works best and will quickly knock out an automated agent. This lock can then be identified by the user and often reported by to the host company.

However, companies must also do their own penetration testing and not wait for the general public to find the weaknesses. For big firms such as Apple and Starbucks, there is no excuse for this.

Starbucks has made massive advances in getting users to trust mobile payments – and this kind of sloppiness is unlikely to stop this trend. But it is the lack of due process that is the most worrying in such large firms.

These businesses perhaps have a great deal to learn from the finance sector, where companies often employ many network monitors to detect brute-force logins and stop attacks at their source.

We would never trust a bank not to implement an auto-lock-out on incorrect passwords. A simple email reset on three bad attempts seems a balanced approach. Obviously if someone compromises your main email account they can do the reset for you, but it is another hurdle in their path. Also an intruder could trip a whole range of accounts on a network too.

Increasingly, multi-factor authentication is used, often involving location-tracking via a phone’s GPS, to prove a user is who they claim to be. This means the best piece of security you have could actually be the mobile phone that goes everywhere with you (but please make sure to refresh your passwords on a regular basis).

For companies, however, there’s nothing else for it but to employ managed security services with highly trained staff who can pick-off threats as they occur.

New iPad? Tech firms have abandoned radical innovation for mediocrity

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The dust has now settled on the latest product launch from Apple, which for many trumped headlines about refugees, poverty and the battles for the Republican nomination and leadership of the UK Labour Party. We have new iPads, iPhones and more. But how new are they really?

Innovation is often characterised as being either “radical” or “incremental”. When it is radical, it sets new precedents and fundamentally changes the way we do things. From self-administered insulin to solar powered houses to driverless cars, radical innovation releases potential. Incremental innovation on the other hand builds upon what is already there in small steps.

In the world of mobile phones and tablets, incremental has become the new radical, and true radical innovation has been relegated to the sidelines. Incremental innovation has become the norm because of a belief that “slow and steady wins the race”, that people don’t like the risks that come with big dramatic changes. That seems to be Apple’s long-term strategy and, as a dominant player, it is setting the culture for other players in the market.

Using staged marketing in the form of annual or biannual high-profile media launches, tech firms have groomed us as consumers to accept small change as normal. More radical innovation, such as a modular phone that can be continually upgraded, is seen as crazy, quirky or even science fiction.

No radical innovation

The new iPad Pro that is a few inches bigger than the last one is being hailed as a “big leap” when it’s really just tinkering with the old design. Despite the new features, it in no way represents a radical innovation worthy of ecstatic celebration. The whoops of delight at its launch were followed by voices of disappointment online.

It is primarily for commercial reasons that Apple has institutionalised incremental innovation and tried to convince us all it is radical. iPhones and iPads are brilliantly designed things. Incremental innovation requires expertise and excellence in design and improvement. Phones and tablets play a major part in millions of peoples' lives. But continued innovation happens at a slow pace designed to suit the supplier not the user, who is nonetheless pushed to pay significant amounts of money each year for minor changes.

When they said the new iPad was bigger they weren’t kidding. Beck Diefenbach/Reuters

Fear of failure may have also contributed to the disappearance of radical innovation. The struggles of more unusual designs such as that of the Amazon Fire phone may have made innovators more cautious, delaying and lengthening product development and rollout to compensate. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that virtually none of the radical (labelled “crazy” at the time) concept phones of 2010 have never appeared on the market.

We may have also reached a point where phone design is so good that truly impressive change has become much harder to achieve. So we continue to buy similar looking products, putting them to our ears (just as we did with landlines), snapping cameras with slightly better picture clarity, and getting slightly more intelligent answers from Siri. Same game, tiny changes, price hike.

A smartphone revolution

At the same time, major new challenges are emerging for smartphone makers, from evidence that current phone designs may be fuelling unhappiness and reducing productivity to the worrying environmental impact of manufacturing them. Radical innovation is needed so that phones fully serve customer interests in a sustainable way.

But for the time being, more radical products, such as the Yotaphone 2, (which offers a dual screen), or the Runcible (round, beautiful and rather different), will be at best seen as quirky and niche. The existing market leaders will only change their tortoise-speed approach to radical innovation if a major new player genuinely disrupts the market with fast, penetrative changes.

For example, Chinese company Xiaomi is creating a range of products for the home (from TVs to air purifiers) that automatically link with their smartphones in a single, integrated system. This is the kind of radical idea that could shock Apple into becoming more radical and adventurous.

We could eventually see mobile computing move away from hand-held, screen-based devices towards seamless interaction across different devices and platforms such as wearable technology and projected holograms.

For the foreseeable future, however, innovation in the mobile and wearable space is going to be dominated by incremental and fairly mediocre approaches to innovation. Radical thinking will be consigned to concepts for the future and the iPhone 7 will probably look a lot like the iPhone 3. But the launch will be offered as another revolution.

Ad industry may gripe about adblockers, but they broke the contract – not us

madpixblue/shutterstock.com

The latest version of Apple’s operating system for phones and tablets, iOS9, allows the installation of adblocking software that removes advertising, analytics and tracking within Apple’s Safari browser. While Apple’s smartphone market share is only around 14% worldwide, this has prompted another outpouring from the mobile and web advertising industry on the effects of adblockers, and discussion as to whether a “free” web can exist without adverts.

It’s not a straightforward question: advertising executivesand publishers complain that ads fund “free” content and adblockers break this contract. Defenders of adblocking point out that the techniques used to serve ads are underhand and that the ads themselves are intrusive. Who is right?

Why we use adblockers

There are good reasons for using adblockers. People are usually prompted to do so by online advertising techniques that they find intrusive. These include pop-ups, pop-unders, blinking ads, being forced to watch videos before getting to the content, and ads that contravene the Acceptable Ads Manifesto.

Adverts and trackers can be loaded from multiple third-party websites, inserted into the web page by advertising networks rather than by the site’s publishers. While this saves publishers the hassle of finding advertisers and negotiating rates, it means they often have little say over what ads appear, which can lead to ads that are irrelevant, dubious, even offensive. The additional load on the browser from connecting to multiple sites at once also drains battery and bandwidth and slows down the page load – all for something we don’t want and which scours our devices to collect information about us for further use.

The UK’s Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) believe that 15% of British adults use adblockers. The IAB study found that people blocked adverts because they were intrusive (73%), ugly or annoying (55%), slowed down web browsers (54%), were irrelevant (46%), or over privacy concerns (31%). What this suggests is that users don’t reject advertising per se, but intrusive advertising specifically.

Advertising, ethics and the web

The advertising industry argues that adblockers undermine the revenue model for publishers that relies upon behaviourally targeted advertising. They claim adblockers stifle start-ups that are dependent on advertising as a means of generating revenue. The theory goes that without advertising revenue all that’s left is subscription services, something which generally only large corporations are good at building.

While there is some truth to this, the argument assumes that digital start-ups (whether this be an app, a new social media service, or a news website) have access to a large user base from which to generate ad revenue. But of course this isn’t the case when firms are only just getting going. Start-ups rely on investment to grow and be self-sustaining: only then can advertising assist.

It is reasonable to argue that content has to be paid for. We might try to ignore the adverts that subsidise printed newspapers and magazines, but we cannot remove them. However, in respect of mobile devices – which have now become the primary means through which the world gets online – we must also consider the data plan that we pay for as part of our mobile phone contract. The firm behind one mobile adblocker, Shine, estimates that depending on where we live, ads can use up 10-50% of a user’s data allowance.

Annoying mobile ads make for unhappy phones and users. ronbennetts, CC BY-ND

Browsers as consent mechanisms

So the case for mobile is different, in that ads represent a cost to the user. Europeans living in EU member states have the right to refuse to be tracked by third parties. This comes under Article 5(3) of the EU ePrivacy Directive, that in 2012 was altered so people have to be asked upfront whether they consent to cookies.

The aim of this was to shift third-party cookies from being opt-out to being opt-in. The ad industry argued that people’s web browser settings were sufficient to indicate consent to interest-based advertising and tracking – but of course, many people do not know how to alter browser settings. Seen in this way, adblockers are a means of expressing (or rather, denying) consent – something made clear by the need to find and install an adblocking programme or browser extension.

The problem with the implied contract of advertising-for-content is that it is opaque and built upon questionable terms. It’s disingenuous to blame people for using adblockers: we accept adverts in magazines, newspapers and cinemas and on radio, billboards and television. The good ones make us smile. The best we fondly remember. We mostly stick to the deal that we get content free or at reduced cost in exchange for being exposed to ads.

But the growth of adblocking demonstrates that parts of the advertising industry have overstepped the mark with their creepy tracking mechanisms and deliberately confusing or irritating formats. The ad industry broke the contract, not us. How does anyone think that irritating people is the way forward? Which brand, large or small, would want to be associated with annoying their customers?

The growing number of people using desktop and mobile adblockers leaves the online advertising industry two options: fight web users and ad-blocking firms by lobbying for legal change or protection, or the more interesting route of trying to create a model that works for everyone. Rather than fighting the tide, advertising and publishing need to find a way to swim with it.

The rise of wearable health tech could mean the end of the sickie

Is your smartwatch spying on you? wearables by Alexey Boldin/shutterstock.com

Now that the sun is shining and the temperature is rising, it’s officially sickie season: go to work, or get struck down with “flu”, a “24-hour virus”, or that faithful stand-by, the dodgy prawn takeaway.

Figures show that over a third of employees in the UK admit to pulling a sickie at some point or other. But things may be changing soon – wearable tech such as the Apple Watch, Microsoft Band, Fitbit, or Jawbone Up may become mainstream within a few years, bringing health monitoring capabilities that reveal how your body is performing. It’s not inconceivable that in time this same data could be used to prove how well, or unwell, you are – such as when phoning in sick.

Wearable health tech is still in its early days. These devices come with sensors that can record how many steps and how much exercise you’ve taken, how well and long you‘ve slept, stress levels, blood pressure, sun exposure, even what you’ve have eaten. Added together, all this could easily demonstrate that you’re not so sick after all.

Since some wearables are aimed at being fashionable accessories, employers might be minded to tap into the trend. So next time you’re pulling a sickie, you might need the data to back up your story. With GPS-equipped devices there’ll be no opportunity to escape your sickbed to a barbeque or trip to the beach, while ultraviolet sensors will detect the increase in sunshine and motion sensors detect movement not typically associated with bed rest.

Using your data against you

What if employers and health insurance companies move in the direction that the car insurance industry has taken, where every health transgression (a boozy night out, a Christmas feast, or too many lazy days on the sofa) could increase your health premium rates? Such a scenario isn’t so far away, and this should concern us. Apple is clearly making a beeline for the health and fitness industry with Watch and its integrated HealthKit software, now integrated with its iOS mobile operating system, and it is the only firm to do so.

Typically, health insurers use body mass index (a calculation of body fat that takes into account your age, weight and height) to set premiums, and some insurers set rates based on basic data from wearables, such as the number of steps we take link?. Fitbit and Jawbone Up are both already playing a bigger role in how health insurance is calculated, with more employers opting to monitor data generated by such wearable trackers. And here’s the catch: employers are holding their insured staff to account with penalties and rewards as part of an increasing number of so-called “corporate-wellness programmes”.

Is your wearable spying on you? MorePix, CC BY-SA

For example, at BP staff are given Fitbits for free as long as the company has access to their data. The more physically active an employee is (as measured by the device) the more points they’re awarded. Higher points lower the company’s insurance premium. Other companies are adopting similar wellbeing employee health insurance programmes too.

Consent, for now

Wearable tech is still far from perfect, and that means inventive workarounds will be found. A few acquaintances of mine who shall remain nameless have found creative ways of racking up a few more miles, while actually continuing their usual, less-than-active habits. These include holding and shaking the device for a few minutes at a time, or attaching it to their cat or dog, or offering pocket money to other, younger and fitter family members to wear. Obviously insurers and developers are aware of these, so it won’t be long until such loopholes are closed.

For now, we can consent to share our health data from wearables with employers or insurers in exchange or lower premiums or cheaper travel. But how long before the company wearable is a mandatory part of the uniform?

Internet Explorer: reports of its death are greatly exaggerated

The end of IE? Wake up and smell the coffee. yukop, CC BY-SA

There are claims that Microsoft is to retire its web browser Internet Explorer and replace it with an all-new browser called Spartan with the upcoming release of Windows 10.

As of February 2015, Internet Explorer (IE) browser market share slipped to second place with around 17%, while Google’s Chrome browser boasts over 42%. One clear challenge for Microsoft is that it has always been committed to producing its own browser for its own Windows operating system (supporting IE on Apple Macs for a brief period). Apple on the other hand is happy to produce versions of its Safari browser for both Mac OS X and Windows, and Google produces versions of Chrome for every popular desktop and mobile operating system.

Perhaps Microsoft feels it’s time to take some action – in which case what is it trying to accomplish?

A quick history

Internet Explorer (IE) was introduced as an add on for Windows 95 and was a key part of the internet boom of the 1990s. Bundled free in all subsequent versions of Windows, IE soon gained dominance, winning the browser war against its older competitor, Netscape.

With a browser share that grew to be as substantial as Microsoft Windows' dominance of the operating system market, Microsoft was subject to numerous anti-trust litigation cases in the US and Europe. Nevertheless some of the HTML elements introduced in IE, and the fact it was more forgiving of badly coded websites than Netscape, meant that IE had a lasting influence on web design and the way websites were designed. Especially for internal corporate websites, which often used Windows based systems.

I don’t always use IE, but when I do…

In the 2000s, disquiet over Microsoft’s anti-competitive behaviour and IE’s lack of proper standards support led to a flourishing of competitors, boosted by the open sourcing of Netscape, which would become the basis for the popular Firefox browser. In reaction to Microsoft’s approach of pushing its own technologies and ignoring open standards, the appeal of more rigorous web standards compliance demonstrated by other browsers including Opera, Safari and Chrome have since carved away at IE’s dominance. Additionally, IE became one of the worst offenders for security vulnerabilities. Since then, it’s become the browser everyone loves to hate.

Time for a realitIE check

Trident, Internet Explorer’s layout engine which turns HTML and code into readable web pages, is showing its age. Benchmarking sites show that it is the performance laggard of the competing products. It took until 2008 and Internet Explorer 8 before the browser passed the web standards compliance test, Acid2.

With 20 years of history, Microsoft’s hands are to some extent tied by the many organisations that have created web-based programs that rely on IE, or on particular implementations of features in certain versions of IE. Even versions changes can introduce problems; switching to a new browser and layout engine altogether is something else.

Whenever new applications, operating systems or technologies in general are introduced, there is always the demand for backwards compatibility due to the considerable investment in developing services to run on corporate systems, or on products built for others, dependent on IE-specific features. By failing to properly support and adhere to open standards throughout its long history, Microsoft has made a rod for its own back.

As stated in a Microsoft developer blog, the new Spartan browser will be based on the relatively standards-compliant Internet Explorer 11 engine, but purged of all the code required to support this 20-year legacy. The result is, one hopes, a modern layout engine that adheres to modern standards.

Spartan will, when required, load in the older Internet Explorer engine for backwards compatibility. So the question one might ask is, with so many older IE-compatible sites out there, how often will Spartan be using its new engine, and how often will it relapse to Internet Explorer’s Trident to perform its duty for legacy systems? This means two sets of code to maintain and keep secure. And with Trident living on inside Spartan, to what extent can IE truly be considered “dead”?

Microsoft have a long way to go to improve their web browser performance, but this is certainly a step in the right direction – even if, with a 20-year-legacy millstone around their neck, they may find themselves held back from further progress for some time to come.

To upgrade or not upgrade? That is the all-too-frequent question

'If I'm honest I just don't think this is Windows 10-compatible.' (with apols to Ritchie & Thompson) Peter Hamer, CC BY-SA

The question of whether or not to go for the upgrade or stick with the devil you know is an increasingly common contemporary dilemma; the lure of new features against the threat of potentially disabling a device that plays an important role in our lives.

For example, Apple iPhone users who were quick to upgrade their phones to iOS 8 got burned by bugs. In fact many cynics see “point-zero” software versions (eg, 8.0) as nothing short of testing releases, and wait for later minor updates (eg, 8.1) to iron out the problems.

But even this behaviour can’t explain how Microsoft’s venerable Windows XP operating system, introduced in 2001 and officially retired in 2014, has grown its market share against more recent versions.

Desktop operating system market share, Jan-Feb 2015. netmarketshare

The problem for software and hardware developers and technological giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and Google is that despite technology’s constant, rapid advancements many users are happy with what they’ve got. Unintentionally this makes these firms' task much harder.

Microsoft Windows is 32 years old – businesses have used Microsoft products and applications built to run on them for decades, and they expect backward compatibility. Developers want those using their products to stick with them as new versions come out, which means data created with older versions must be accessible by the latest version.

The update rat-race

While for home and business users the trade off is often between features or convenience and cost, for software companies the issue is the cost burden of supporting and updating not just the current but older versions too. This is why most will declare end-of-life on their products past a certain age. Commercial software developers want to sell you new versions, and developers of all kinds would prefer to be able to focus on improvements and new additions, not the needs of a shrinking group of users wedded to increasingly out-of-date software.

When Google announced it had stopped supporting Android versions prior to 4.3, it was making this point. There are already two more recent versions – 4.4 and 5.0 – and the costs of providing continued support and updates for old versions is a drain. On top of that, older versions may not support new technology or standards (for example for faster internet access technology, better sound or video). Backporting these features into older versions can be costly, time-consuming, and often impossible. Better to persuade handset manufacturers and consumers to upgrade.

Microsoft has this problem on an enormous scale, with its products running what is probably billions of computers and devices worldwide. There have been four subsequent versions (Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1) and Windows 10 will arrive soon, but 15 years old or not, Windows XP is still common despite its limitations, and appears in embedded systems such as cash machines and point-of-sale terminals.

For some organisations not upgrading may be a matter of cost, but for others it’s the risk of disruption to daily business operations – particularly if key applications built for one version of Windows won’t play nicely with another. Having the latest version may be “fun”, but when the business is on the line, it’s a case of if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

Well now, that sure sounds expensive. dragonicefire, CC BY-SA

A work-around for the upgrade cycle

If you’re content with what you have then the eternal upgrade cycle can be avoided for many years. But if cost is the issue then there are alternatives – free and low-cost alternatives that provide functionality without the hassle.

The obvious examples are free or open source operating systems such as Linux. Since the arrival of Ubuntu (a version of Linux) in 2004 it has also become more user-friendly rather than merely a tool for experts and server administrators. It’s possible to run Linux on much cheaper, less well-equipped computers than required for Windows or Mac OS X and still enjoy the benefits of the current technological generation.

It’s also possible to run really old software using desktop virtualisation – software that allows you to run one operating system within another, as if it were just another application. Alternatively many emulators imitate older operating systems or computers – DOSBox emulates DOS, the text-based precursor to Windows, and others emulate old Macintosh computers, 8-bit home computers, and all manner of video game consoles or arcade cabinets.

The update cycle can be a constant churn – driven by the bottom line of the companies involved rather than the utility and value offered to the customer. But as sure as night follows day, better hardware and software will come along and we all jump on. The question is, how long will you wait?

Windows 10: Microsoft's universal system for an increasingly mobile world

Windows 10, a bit of the new, a bit of the old. Microsoft

With Windows 10, Microsoft is trying to turn the tide against the proliferation of operating systems across desktops, servers, tablets and smartphones by creating a single operating system that will run on them all.

Currently the world’s billions of Windows users are spread across its older versions, with Windows XP, released in 2001, still boasting the same installed base of users (around 12% market share) as the two-year-old Windows 8.1 (at 13%). The bulk of Windows users (61%), are still using Windows 7, released in 2009. And that’s not to mention the various incompatible Windows versions designed for tablets or smartphones.

Trying to consolidate different versions isn’t a new idea, although it’s much easier said than done. Recent versions of Apple OS X operating system for desktops and laptops have drawn inspiration from iOS designed for iPad and iPhone, while Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has also produced a version for phones.

However, with Windows 10, Microsoft is taking the idea to its logical conclusion, producing not just a single OS for all devices, but a framework for apps that run on all of them, making the move between devices seamless.

One app to rule them

If we believe the Microsoft marketing machine, this will be the start of the era of Windows universal apps. There are many clever things in Windows 10, such as the integration of the digital assistant Cortana, but universal apps are what really excites me. This will allow developers to write code once and deploy it to all the different devices Windows 10 supports. It’s not quite as easy as Microsoft would have us believe though: there would still need to be some code that’s written specifically for each type of device, only some of it would be shared.

This is exciting because Microsoft is hoping to entice developers and bridge the “app gap” on Windows devices. As of May 2015, the Google Play Store has 1.5m apps, the Apple App Store has 1.4m, while the Windows Phone Store a mere 340,000. Applications, and therefore available developers to create them, are key. Getting developers on board is the best way for Microsoft to make headway in the race to get their devices into our pockets.

Mixing the new and the old

I’ve spent some time with the technical and insider previews of Windows 10 for the desktop. The latest builds are speedy and show a lot of promise, so much so that every one of my Windows tablets and desktops are now signed up and awaiting the free upgrade. As predicted, it blends the traditional desktop experience of Windows 7 with the apps-based approach of Windows 8. It feels like a new desktop experience but is also familiar, an evolution rather than a revolution.

We’ve come a long way. Microsoft

Some of the key improvements are less headline grabbing than a talking digital assistant like Cortana or the return of the start menu. A key market as personal PC sales decline is the enterprise, and under the hood changes in security have been a heavy focus for Microsoft to ensure businesses are open to upgrading from Windows 7. But other than the front-end “bells and whistles” there aren’t too many obvious internal changes.

This familiarity should entice those Windows 7 users still holding out, those who found the new Metro UI interface of Windows 8.1 too much of a culture shock. Gone are the two interfaces, now merged into a single mix of traditional start menu with start screen stuck on the side. Gone too is the charms bar (popup menu) that was so heavily reliant on touch.

In another new move Windows 10 is being given away as an upgrade for free. With successive Android, iOS, Linux and OS X updates now offered free I think it was inevitable that Microsoft would eventually go the same route.

Although Windows 10 for desktop is available now, we’ll have to wait until September for the mobile version and to experiment with universal apps. Of course it’ll be a bit longer still to see what impact a unified OS platform has, and whether Windows 10 is the fresh start Microsoft is banking on.

Five years ago the iPad changed clicks to touches – but another tablet revolution is coming

This sort of 3D display you can't buy in the shops. Jason Alexander/Lancaster University , Author provided

Apple’s iPad arrived five years ago. It is a device that changed the way we think about computing, marking a seismic shift from keyboard and mouse to direct manipulation with our fingers. The iPad wasn’t the first tablet computer – it wasn’t even Apple’s first tablet computer – but it was the first to capture the world’s imagination and sell tens of millions of devices.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the hands of children, who these days will walk up to any screen and expect to be able to interact with and shift content with the prod of a finger. This style of interaction has even followed us to our workstations where, despite their questionable use, touchscreens now frequently come as standard or are common options when buying a personal computer.

Touchscreens bring the user’s fingers into direct contact with the virtual objects onscreen, but still fundamentally present data representing a 3D visual environment through the medium of a flat 2D screen. Fully comprehending the interface relies almost entirely on our own visual sense, rather than exploiting our other, well-trained sense of touch.

From the pixel to the physical

Touchscreen tablets free us from the constraints of working at a desk and are more liberating due to their smaller size and weight. But, to make better use of all our highly-tuned senses, the next generation of displays will not be 2D and flat, but will have self-actuated, physically re-configurable surfaces. Flat screens will be able to deform themselves into other shapes. These interfaces will change the shape of their display surface to better represent on-screen content and provide additional means to pass on information by touch rather than vision alone.

Screen interaction gets physical. Jason Alexander/Lancaster University, Author provided

Dynamic physical geometry – tablets with interfaces that morph in three, real dimensions, rather than simply displaying 2D representations of them – will fundamentally change the way we approach computer interaction. Displays with pixels that can physically protrude from the surface will allow developers to enhance familiar applications such as architecture, design, terrain modelling and photography by rendering computer-generated 3D scenes in three dimensions in the real world. This will opens all sorts of opportunities for novel applications in team collaboration, tangible entertainment and ways to make computing more accessible to those with disabilities.

Devices will be able to change their form and function: a mobile phone that mutates into a TV remote control, and then into a videogame controller, re-configuring itself to provide appropriate interfaces. Apps will not only be able to modify a visual display, but also dynamically change the physical properties of the device.

This display revolution is closer than we think: commercial ventures such as Tactus Technology’s Phorm already provide a way to generate fixed-position buttons that protrude from the screen by filling small pockets with liquid on command.

Building a physical screen

In our lab, we’ve begun to explore the implications of users interacting with shape-changing displays. We’ve created a 10×10 interactive bar chart with which to represent common data visualisation tasks such as displaying data, filtering data, organising it into different rows and columns, navigating between large datasets, and making annotations. We’ve found that the physical nature of dynamic bars encouraged users to directly manipulate data points for annotation and comparison-style tasks and that traditional touch-based controls work well for navigation and organisation tasks.

Certainly, constructing these shape-changing displays requires expert electronic and mechanical knowledge. There’s a need to involve people with a wide range of interaction design skills to drive forward early prototype design, so we developed a tool that allows non-technical researchers to experiment with shape-changing displays.

ShapeClip is a tool to transform any computer screen from a flat viewing surface to a 3D one, transforming light from the screen into movement through coordinates in physical space above it. By adding a z-axis to the screen’s x- and y-axes, designers can produce dynamic physical content by adding ShapeClip tools to screens. ShapeClip displays are portable, scaleable and can be re-arranged to suit need. They are also fault-tolerant. Users need no knowledge of electronics or programming and can develop motion designs with presentation software, image editors, or web sites.

The iPad shifted our approach from pressing buttons to pressing with our fingers. Future displays will not be flat glass screens we prod, but physically dynamic surfaces capable of reconfiguring themselves in order to better present information to the user through a rich tactile experience that offers more to our senses.