Maxim Bange

Anonymity, long thought to be one of the reasons people misbehave in online games and online in general, may actually be a powerful tool for correcting bad behavior, according to researchers in Singapore.

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The BBC released its first big promo for the Sochi Olympics, and it is spectacular.

It's narrated by Charles Dance, who plays Tywin Lannister on "Game of Thrones." There's a look of dark imagery and ominous voiceover before it kicks into gear at the 60-second mark.

If this doesn't get you excited for Sochi, nothing will.

Pretty rare that you find a Lannister north of the wall (via Deadspin):

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Good and bad news for fans of Aaron Sorkin's divisive melodrama — The Newsroom isn't over yet, but there'll only be one more season. Sorkin has been working on the script for his upcoming Steve Jobs movie, according to The Hollywood Reporter, temporarily halting progress on the HBO show. A third season has long been on the cards, with star Jeff Daniels tweeting as much last September; HBO confirmed the return via Twitter today, pegging the premiere for fall.

The Newsroom centers around the production of a fictional cable TV news show, frequently depicting its characters covering real-life events such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Fukushima meltdown. The second season's finale was set during election night 2012, meaning that...

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Researchers in the South Africa captured the first video footage of a freshwater fish lunging out of the water and snatching a bird in flight.

The behavior was discovered during a 15-day study on Schroda Dam, a man-made lake in the Mapungubwe National Park.

Freshwater fish, including some bass species, eels, and piranhas, have been shown to occasionally prey on birds that are swimming in water, or sitting on land close to the edge of the water, according to report published in the Journal of Fish Biology. 

For example, the European catfish has learned how to leap onto gravely shores to catch pigeons.

But there are even fewer accounts of fish actually leaping out of the water to catch small birds.

Until now, there was only anecdotal evidence that the African tigerfish, a freshwater fish known scientifically as Hydrocynus vittatus, had the ability to propel itself out of the water and capture flying birds.

During the two-week survey, scientists observed as many as 20 successful attacks on low-flying barn swallows by African tigerfish each day.

The fish either attacked the birds as they were swimming near the surface of the water, or initiated a direct aerial strike from deeper water, according to the study. The second strategy appeared to be more successful.

A diagram of attack strategies is shown below:

The predation behavior "may have been adopted out of necessity due to food limitation," the researchers write.

The act is risky — by preying on barn swallows in the air, the African tigerfish leaves itself open to being preyed on by other birds, including the African fish eagle.

Check out a successful aerial strike by a African tigerfish on a barn swallow in the video below, courtesy of Nature Newsteam.

By the way, here's what the African tigerfish looks like:

SEE ALSO: Rare Photos Capture A Golden Eagle Attacking A Deer

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At first they said they had no intention of adding it, and that it wasn't apart of the experience. But now, after almost a year, it's finally coming... Wait, did you think I was talking about SimCity? I was talking about the addition of a playoff to college football and the end of the BCS.

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Last season of HBO's Game of Thrones ended with a bang, but, as Jaime Lannister says, the war isn't won yet. In the first trailer for the fourth season, the fighting continues and Westeros is plunged further into darkness. We'll be watching when the season starts on April 6th.

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Microsoft. Niet Apple.

A broad coalition of well-known organizations announced today that it will stage an online protest against wide-ranging government surveillance of Internet users on Feb. 11, in memory of activist Aaron Swartz.

According to new data from the New York Police Department (via The Wall Street Journal), the rising theft of devices such as the iPhone and iPad remained one of the driving forces behind the high amount of grand larcenies last year in New York City. In detail, the data showed that Apple products were involved in 8,465 thefts and made up for 18% of all grand larcenies in the city, which rose 13% overall in 2013 from the year prior.

Apple products are so popular among criminals that the NYPD specifically tracks thefts of that brand, officials said. In 2013, Apple products made up more than 18% of all grand larcenies—that is more than 8,000 devices, according to police. In 2002, there were 25 grand larcenies of Apple products, police said.

A spokeswoman for the company said Apple has “led the industry in helping customers protect their lost or stolen devices” since it launched its “Find My iPhone” app in 2009, which allows users to track a stolen phone and erase personal data remotely.

In 2012, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg released data showing that the theft of iPhones and iPads contributed to growth of the overall crime index for the city, as the police department recorded 3,890 more Apple product thefts than for the same period in 2011.

iPhone and iPad thefts continue to be a major issue for law enforcement, despite efforts to implement various theft deterrent programs. However, Apple’s Activation Lock feature, which prevents stolen phones from being reactivated without an iCloud password, has received praise from various groups since its inclusion in iOS 7.

San Francisco district attorney George Gascón and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who have spearheaded anti-theft efforts, called Activation Lock the “world’s first attempt to implement a technological solution to the global smartphone theft epidemic,” while the police department distributed flyers near Apple Retail Stores encouraging users to download iOS 7.

The New York City Council also announced in November that it was considering a pawn shop bill that would require second hand dealers and pawn brokers to maintain easily accessible electronic records of purchased items, however the status of the bill is currently unknown. Notably, a national phone database established last year was found to be largely ineffective against smartphone thefts in the U.S., with law enforcement authorities even pressing smartphone manufacturers to build a kill switch into phones.

The post Increased Theft of Apple Devices ‘Driving Force’ Behind Rise of Larcenies in New York City appeared first on AIVAnet.

Over the past few weeks dozens of DVD screeners have leaked onto the Internet. This happens every year around the holiday season, when movie studios send out their entries for various awards, the Oscars included.

The pirated screeners are a thorn in the side of Hollywood, and over the years the movie studios have implemented strict security procedures to prevent leaks. These efforts have been moderately successful, but the problem remains.

Yesterday a pirated screener copy of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty leaked onto the internet via various BitTorrent sites. While this isn’t something out of the ordinary, the fact that the screener displays a watermark with a Hollywood star’s name on it is quite unique.

The pirated copy in question is linked to Ellen DeGeneres, which is all the more painful, since she is the host for the upcoming 2014 Oscars.

As can be seen below, the leaked screener clearly lists DeGeneres’ name, suggesting that the DVD was sent to her in November. The watermark is displayed right after the opening credits, around the one minute mark.

Property of Fox – Ellen DeGeneres 11/26/13

While it’s technically possible that someone edited the screener to implicate DeGeneres, this seems unlikely. All copies of the screener that are circulating on the Internet include the same watermark, suggesting that they came from the same source.

Property of Fox – Ellen DeGeneres 11/26/13

Thus far, there has been plenty of interest in the pirated screener. Data gathered by TorrentFreak suggests that within 24 hours of its release, an estimated 250,000 copies have been already been downloaded , all with DeGeneres’ name on it.

Neither Ellen DeGeneres nor Fox have commented on the leak thus far, and it also remains unclear what the screener was intended for.

Andy Baio suggests that it could be connected to Ben Stiller’s appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show early December, for which she may have received an advance copy of the film.

This is not the first time that a celebrity has been linked to a leaked DVD screener. In 2011 a pirated copy of the Steven Spielberg movie ‘Super 8′ surfaced online with Howard Stern’s name all over it. This leak made plenty of headlines, but as far as we know Stern nor his colleagues were never investigated.

For Ellen DeGeneres the leak may perhaps serve as inspiration for a piracy joke or two at the Oscars ceremony later this year. That is, if she’s not in jail by then.

Update: Twentieth Century Fox confirmed that the copy was sent to the Ellen DeGeneres show.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.

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On Wednesday, the Pew Research Center released a graphic, based on research from University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, that purported to show how people in Muslim-majority countries think it is appropriate for women to dress in public. Business Insider was one of many publications that picked up the chart — it was, by any standard, a monstrous viral hit.

In case you missed it, here's the chart:

A lot of people saw this chart, and it appears that most people found it interesting. Others, however, seemed very upset by it.

Guardian writer Arwa Mahdawi argues that the study and its success was "yet another demonstration of the west's bizarre fixation on what Muslim women wear and how they cover their hair." Pointing out that the average woman in the United Kingdom spends almost £26,500 ($43,600) a year on their hair, Mahdawi argues that "women's hair in the west functions as it's own sort of veil, one which most of us are unconsciously donning."

Over at the Independent, Bina Shah, who grew up in Pakistan, goes even further. "Muslim women’s fashions have been interpreted and over-analyzed by the Western world as some sort of profound assertion of political identity or religious stance," Shah writes. "Yes, there is an element of that in there, but the bigger truth is that Muslim women wear what they do, including what’s on their heads, because of how it makes them look and feel, just like all women around the world, and it takes on the cultural overtones of the milieu in which they live."

Two more criticisms from Twitter:

#Pew misses fact that many women in #Lebanon show more skin than anyone in New York or LA or Miami. #Ridiculous: http://t.co/9GjNW3Dnc4

— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) January 8, 2014

What is this fascination w what Muslim women wear? Can Pew tell me more about how ppl in 'Western' countries prefer women 2 dress in public?

— Dalia Hatuqa (@DaliaHatuqa) January 9, 2014

What a lot of the criticisms come down to is the idea that the chart is part of a wider problem in Western discourse on places like the Middle East: Orientalism. A term first coined in post-colonialist theorist Edward W. Saïd's 1978 book of the same name, Orientalism refers to a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture." Western critics were unable to check their own bias when talking about outside place, Saïd argued. The idea is certainly persuasive.

I'd wager that most critics of the Pew Research chart might be less concerned with the research itself than the remarkable viral interest in it, and that is a fair point — why is the West so obsessed with burqas, hijabs, and other styles of Islamic dress? I'd guess it is because veils are frequently used as an example of the patriarchal style of Muslim culture, though the reality is often more complicated than that. Sharing this image is an easy but far too simple way to criticize that patriarchy.

Perhaps the best response to the chart came from Lebanese satirist Karl Sharro, who tweeted his own version of the chart, this time edited to include white women dressed as cheerleaders and hamburgers:

An Arab university ran this fascinating poll about what is most appropriate for American women to wear in public. pic.twitter.com/uIta80i1f8

— Karl Sharro (@KarlreMarks) January 9, 2014

"Instead of looking at the complexity of women, we're not even looking at the full way they dress, just the headdress," Sharro told PRI's The World. "It's a particularly harsh way of doing this form of abstraction [...] This was a way for me to visually spoof the image and a way for me to say that stereotypes work both ways."

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Burgemeester Bill de Blasio van New York heeft volgens veel van zijn twitterende stadsgenoten een enorme blunder begaan. Geen politieke misstap, maar een faux pas op culinair gebied. Op een lunchbijeenkomst at de burgemeester zijn pizza...met mes en vork!

De Blasio was op bezoek in Staten Island, een van de vijf New Yorkse stadsdistricten. In een pizzeria sprak hij met ondernemers en buurtbewoners. Die keken verbaasd op toen hun burgemeester zijn pizzapunt met mes en vork begon te eten, in plaats van met zijn handen.

Blasfemie

Foto's van de pizza-etende burgervader verschenen op internet en twitteraars spraken al snel van forkgate (vorkschandaal). Er werd gesproken van blasfemie en de burgemeester werd een elitaire buitenstaander genoemd.

"Hij weet niet beter, hij groeide op in de buurt van Boston", schreef iemand. Uit de mond van een New Yorker is dat zeker geen compliment: zo is de rivaliteit tussen de honkbalploegen New York Yankees en Boston Red Sox bijzonder bitter.

Donald Trump

De Democraat Bill de Blasio is niet de eerste politicus die de typisch New Yorkse pizza-etiquette niet kent. De Republikeinen Sarah Palin en Donald Trump gingen hem voor. Tv-komiek Jon Stewart ging in 2011 helemaal los in zijn populaire The Daily Show toen hij dat hoorde: "Meneer Trump, steek die vork in 't vervolg maar meteen in de ogen van New York!"

De Blasio, die trots is op zijn Italiaans-Amerikaanse afkomst, verdedigde zich door te zeggen dat in Italië iedereen bestek gebruikt bij het eten van een pizza. Hij zei ook dat hij wel begon met mes en vork, maar al snel zijn handen gebruikte.

After announcing its plans to start accepting Bitcoin payments last month, Overstock.com officially took the plunge yesterday, having brokered a deal with Bitcoin payment processor Coinbase to help handle sales. Now, only a day later, CEO Patrick Byrne announced on Twitter that the company made $130,000 in Bitcoin payments.

#Bitcoin's first full day on @overstock.com was a huge success: 840 orders, $130,000 in sales. Almost all new customers. #stunned

— Patrick M. Byrne (@OverstockCEO) January 10, 2014

Byrne's off-the-cuff announcement at the very least shows the interest consumers have in Bitcoin, putting Overstock.com, now the largest retailer to accept the crytpocurrency, in a fairly unique position to profit on it. However,...

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Investment advisor Jonathan van Smit is one of the few foreigners who ever see the dark side of Hong Kong.

The New Zealander walks through poor neighborhoods at night to take pictures of prostitutes, bums and other characters of the street.

Van Smit tells us by email: "I know some Western expats who never eat Chinese food, and who rarely venture outside their expat communities. They're here to make money not to experience a different culture. They live in a largely expat world, their kids go to international schools, their maids do the housework, cooking and shopping. I imagine that the more local parts of Hong Kong are completely alien to many of them. "

The level of inequality can be shocking: "Hong Kong is either heaven or hell depending on who you might ask. It has the world's highest Gini score [a measure of inequality] with Singapore 2nd and the USA 3rd. Over in Kowloon you'll find so-called 'cage people', residents living in cages or ultra small dwellings, barely able to make ends meet and end up begging in the busy streets or living off meager social assistance if they can get it. Food and rent are expensive so losing a job can be a matter of life and death."

Van Smit has given us permission once again to publish a set of his latest stunning photos.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Sterex images of ATV-4 launch

Our week through the lens:
06-10 January 2014

Hugh Howey's name holds a certain degree of clout among fans of the written word — his "Wool" science fiction series caught major success when he published it through Amazon's Kindle Direct platform and is being made into a movie by Ridley Scott.

We've spoken to him in the past about the weirdnesses associated with the present state of publishing, and Howey recently published a blog post that calls attention to the fact that half the authors in Amazon's top ten sci-fi charts are self-published indie writers just like Howey. So few of them are conventionally successfully writers with conventional publishing momentum behind them.

Howey calls this a problem and outlines some ideas for how to improve the publishing industry. Here are a few points from his 13-point post that seem the most noteworthy, but be sure to check out his site for more detail.

"Every format, as soon as it’s available."

The day that a book is released, the customer has the choice to buy it not only in hardback or paperback, but on his or her Kindle, Nook, or other e-reader of choice.

"Hardbacks come with free ebooks."

If this idea became reality, it would change my perception of e-books overnight. E-book DRM has largely soured me on paid e-books that restrict my choices in how I read them. the the bundled sale of an "analog" hardback with a digital file helps tip the scales back towards a more agreeable arrangement.

"No more advertising."

"Our money is going into editors and into acquiring new authors, not into merchandising dollars at bookstores and not into ads that don’t sell books," writes Howey. "Readers are the only reviewers we care about."

"Goodbye, New York City."

The perception of New York City as publishing mainstay needs to change as well, says Howey. "More of our employees will be working from home. Business will be conducted much as it already is: by email. We’ll see our friends at all the major conventions. The money we save will go into higher royalties, which means our authors want to stick with us. When we get up to 50% of net, which is doable, that self-publishing royalty is no longer causing the leak it once was. Once again, we have our pick of every single manuscript out there. The other publishers are feasting on our crumbs."

Check out the rest of Howey's ideas here »

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Microsoft is currently working on an "Update 1" for Windows 8.1, but the company has bigger plans for the future of Windows as part of a "Threshold" wave of updates. Windows watcher Paul Thurrott reports that the company’s Threshold plans will involve a release of Windows 9 around April 2015. Microsoft will allegedly unveil its vision for Windows 9 at the company’s Build 2014 developer conference in April, with a release planned for a year later.

It appears that Microsoft is currently planning to use the Windows 9 branding and vision as a way to move away from some of the criticisms of the Windows 8 operating system. It’s not immediately clear what type of changes will be made to Windows 9, but "Metro 2.0" inside the new OS...

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De JOVD, de onafhankelijke jongerenorganisatie van de VVD, heeft D66-leider Alexander Pechtold uitgeroepen tot Liberaal van het Jaar 2013.

"Pechtold stond het afgelopen jaar vooraan met zijn pleidooi voor lastenverlichtingen en tegen het uitstelgedrag van de polder. Helaas heeft het kabinet met deze liberale handreikingen te weinig gedaan", zegt JOVD-voorzitter Christiaan Kwint.

Ook de pleidooien voor privacy van de D66-leider spreken de liberale jongeren aan.

Individu

Pechtold zegt in een reactie dat het liberalisme niet versmald mag worden tot het versterken van de economie. "We moeten liberale waarden als keuzevrijheid van het individu blijven bevechten op conservatieve krachten die groepsdenken en groepsdwang proberen op te dringen."

Eerdere Liberalen van het Jaar waren onder anderen Hans Teeuwen, Neelie Kroes en Gerrit Zalm.

Your ultra-high-definition television will soon offer even more eye-popping entertainment — of the adults-only variety. According to the Wall Street Journal, pornographic film company Naughty America plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade its shooting to 4K — meaning adult flicks with crisper, clearer, more up-close-and-personal resolution.

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Windows 8 seemed to be on the tech world's mind this weekend, but for all the wrong reasons.

That's because Paul Thurrott, an independent reporter who mostly covers Microsoft, published a report saying Microsoft is working on a new version of Windows that addresses problems people have with Windows 8. That new operating system will likely be called Windows 9 and ship in 2015. (For now, Microsoft has been calling the new operating system "Threshold" internally.)

Here are the two key paragraphs from Thurrott's report:

In some ways, the most interesting thing about Threshold is how it recasts Windows 8 as the next Vista. It's an acknowledgment that what came before didn't work, and didn't resonate with customers. And though Microsoft will always be able to claim that Windows 9 wouldn't have been possible without the important foundational work they had done first with Windows 8—just as was the case with Windows 7 and Windows Vista—there's no way to sugarcoat this. Windows 8 has set back Microsoft, and Windows, by years, and possibly for good.

These things don't happen in isolation—the big and slow Vista arrived inauspiciously just as netbooks were taking off and Windows 8 arrived just as media tablets changed everything—and it's fair to say that the technology world of today barely resembles that of 2006, creating new challenges for Windows. Threshold will target this new world. It could very well be a make or break release.

What Thurrott is saying is that Windows 8 simply isn't up to snuff. Customers aren't interested, otherwise they'd be buying it. Internally, Microsoft must realize there's something fundamentally wrong with the operating system, otherwise there wouldn't be such a drastic effort to make changes. Thurrott also compares Windows 8 to Windows Vista. If you're unfamiliar, Vista was a new version of Windows that launched in 2007 to very poor reviews and lower-than-expected user upgrades. Eventually, Microsoft had to go back to the drawing board with Vista and fix a lot of problems. That's why we got Windows 7, which is generally considered to be a very good PC operating system.

It now seems like with Windows 8, Microsoft is suffering from Vista Syndrome again, which is why we'll likely get a preview of Windows 9 at Microsoft's big developers conference in April. Thurrott says Windows 9 is due to launch in 2015 and will fix many of the gripes people have with Windows 8. For example, it'll have a tweaked user interface that's easier to manage.

Things aren't exactly rosy for Windows 8 at the moment. Devices that run it, like Microsoft's own Surface tablets, have been getting so-so reviews. Thurrott says only 25 million PCs are running Windows 8.1, which launched as a free upgrade to Windows 8 last year. It has a lot of improvements over the first version, so it's a worrying sign that so few people have taken the time to upgrade. Finally, the PC market continues to implode. 2013 saw the biggest decline ever, according to Gartner. And just look at this chart of PC sales growth since 2009:

There's another piece to the puzzle. Chromebooks, those cheap laptops running Google's Chrome operating system, are gaining momentum. While Windows PCs still outsell Chromebooks by a large margin, Google's increasing popularity in desktop computing has forced Microsoft to go very negative on Chromebooks. In fact, Microsoft has an entire website dedicated to bashing Chromebooks. It may seem like a big bully punching down at a niche player, but it's clear that Microsoft sees a shift in computing habits. Why buy a Windows 8 PC when Chromebooks generally cost much less and can already do just about everything you want? 

Windows 8 has an interesting promise. It wants to be the operating system that does everything. Right now, tablets like the iPad are still primarily content consumption devices. They don't make good productivity tools, even if you snap on one of those nice keyboard accessories. With Windows 8, Microsoft believes you can have one machine that does everything, and that's the narrative it's been pushing in commercials and company blog posts. 

But it's clear there's some element missing. Yes, Windows 8 can do all those things, but it's not an elegant solution. Microsoft still hasn't figured out the magic recipe that creates one device for everything in your life. And to be fair, no one has. We're still probably a few years away from that.

As Thurrott mentions, the stakes are high for Windows 9. It could easily be a "make or break" software release for Windows. Get it right, and Windows is back on track. Get it wrong, and watch Windows crumble.

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PARIS (Reuters) - French first lady Valerie Trierweiler has been hospitalized in Paris following revelations about an affair between French President Francois Hollande and an actress, French media said on Sunday.

BFM Television said the Elysee presidential palace had confirmed that Trierweiler had been hospitalized since Friday because of exhaustion.

French daily Le Parisien said earlier on its website that Trierweiler, shaken by the revelations about the affair, had been taken to hospital on Thursday, right after hearing about Hollande's liaison.

The paper said doctors had prescribed rest and that she would be discharged in a few days.

Trierweiler's spokesperson was not immediately available.

On Friday, Hollande threatened to sue celebrity magazine Closer, complaining of breach of privacy after it said he was having an affair with actress Julie Gayet.

Hollande and Trierweiler, a journalist for celebrity magazine Paris Match, are not married but have been in a long-term relationship for several years.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq and Elizabeth Pineau; Editing by Andrew Roche)

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What a difference a year makes for Apple. 

In 2013, Apple's stock was in a tail spin, analysts were slashing EPS targets, and there were daily reports of Apple cutting its iPhone production (or it felt that way).

At the same time, Samsung was the most beloved company in the tech media. It was praised for its innovation and its forthcoming Galaxy S4 was all anyone cared about. It had stolen Apple's thunder.

This year, Samsung is not quite the bright shining star it was. Its Galaxy Gear was a flop, and anticipation for the Galaxy S5 is relatively muted. 

As for Apple, its stock isn't screaming to the moon, but it's not in a downward spiral, either. Analysts are fairly steady on the company, and there is a sense of optimism, albeit low-level optimism, about the year.

It really feels like 2013 was a down year for Apple as it reset itself to launch new product categories in the next five years or so. If ever there was a year for Apple's rivals to leap past the company, it was 2013, and it didn't happen. (Although, these things don't happen over night. If Apple really screwed the pooch in 2013, we'll probably realize it in 2016.)

Another big difference for Apple as we enter 2014 is that it seems much more clear that the company really knows what it's doing with the iPhone business, despite the various cries from the pundit class. 

Ever since Android started making noise people have been warning Apple that the iPhone was in danger. There is, of course, no louder proponent of this notion than our own Henry Blodget. (I don't mean to pick on Blodget, he just happens to be someone that I work with, and is the best at articulating this commonly held view that Apple needs to tweak its iPhone business model.)

For the last three years Blodget, and people like himself, have been pounding the table that Apple was about to get smoked by Google, just like it got smoked by Microsoft. 

Last year looked like the year Blodget and his people were going to be right. In the March quarter, Apple's iPhone sales only grew by 7%, a stunning crash in the company's annual quarterly growth. In August, Android captured 79.3% of the smartphone market, up from 69.1% the year prior. Apple, meanwhile, had just 13.3% of the smartphone market, down from 16.6% the year prior. 

In November, Blodget wrote another post admonishing Apple, and it supporters, saying, "Come on, Apple Fans, it's time to admit the company is blowing it."

I think Blodget's wrong, and it's actually never been clearer that Apple's decision to stay the course with its iPhone business has been the exact right decision. While there were many scary statistics for the iPhone in 2013, they've turned out to be largely superficial. The underlying performance of Apple's business remains strong. 

Let's start with market share, which is the biggest cudgel used to bludgeon Apple.

Each quarter we get an uglier and uglier market share number for Apple's platform. The latest, as we noted, shows Android phones are outselling iPhones by a wide gap. 

Despite the bad market share numbers, iPhone sales in absolute terms are still doing well. The iPhone generated $19.5 billion in revenue for Apple in the September quarter. It sold 33.8 million iPhones, which was ahead of expectations, and up 26% on a year-over-year basis. 

Now lets put that in context:

• Google's total revenue for the quarter was $14.9 billion, a 12% jump year-over-year. (If you just look at Google's ad business revenue was $12.5 billion, up 15% year-over-year.)
• Microsoft's total revenue was $18.5 billion, a 7% jump.
• Amazon's total revenue was $17.09 billion, up 24%.

Apple's iPhone business is bigger, and importantly, growing faster than Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, the three giants Apple is competing against in mobile. 

But, the critic might say, who cares about those companies? Apple's iPhone business is not growing as quickly as the overall smart phone industry. 

And yes, this is true. But there's no reason for Apple to chase every single smartphone customer. It is focused on the profitable high-end of the market. Or, as Apple CEO Tim Cook put it, "There’s always a large junk part of the market. We’re not in the junk business."

Look at the companies like Motorola that are going mid-to-low tier. They're not making money, and not making much of an impact on the market. Even Samsung, which is considered the all things to all people phone maker is focused on the mid-to-high tier. The reason? That's where the money is. 

But, the critic might protest, Apple is giving up precious market share! 

And yes, it is giving up market share. But, so freaking what?

This is a platform war! (Shrieks the critic.) If Apple loses the market share war, then it loses the platform war. And if it loses the platform war, then it loses developer interest. And if it loses developer interest, then it gets sub-par applications. And if that happens, then consumers tune out the platform.

Well, even with Apple only getting 12% of smartphone shipments in the third quarter, it remains a dominant platform when it comes to usage. 

Over the holiday shopping period, IBM reported that Apple's iOS usage smoked Android's usage in the U.S.: "iOS traffic reached 28.2 percent of all online traffic, compared to 11.4 percent for Android. iOS sales reached 18.1 percent of all online sales, compared to 3.5 percent for Android."

Simon Khalaf, CEO of Flurry, a mobile app analytics company confirmed this in December, telling us, "We have seen and published reports that an Android user is worth 1/4 of an iOS user, but that is based on virtual goods sales (mainly games). The IBM data seems to suggest that this is almost the same ratio for sales of physical goods (m-commerce)." He added, "Basically one iOS user buys four times more than an Android user."

Khalaf thinks the reason is that Android phone buyers are mostly treating their phones like dumb phones, not smartphones. They're not taking advantage of the platform. 

If Android users aren't taking advantage of the platform, if they're not engaged, then there's no reason for developers to relegate iOS to a second tier platform in favor of Android. 

Another reason developers aren't leaving iOS any time soon: It's lucrative to make iOS apps. Apple just announced that App Store sales were $10 billion last year, which is up 136% year-over-year. Of that, developers get $7 billion. The non-search portion of the mobile ad market is estimated to be $8 billion for 2013. Let's say that Android developers got 80% of those ad dollars. That still means Apple is the more lucrative platform for an app maker. (And there is no reason to think Android draws more ad dollars since IBM and Adobe both say there is significantly more commerce happening on iOS. Advertisers spend where the dollars are spent.)

When you think about it this way, market share doesn't matter. This is year six of the App Store, and despite all the Android market share gains, developers still love iOS because people pay for, and use, iOS apps. The developers aren't leaving. 

So why should Apple chase market share? If Apple can generate more revenue from the iPhone than its rivals can from their entire businesses, while still growing faster despite only owning 12% of quarterly smartphone sales, then what's the problem?

What about the future? Could Apple collapse in the future? Of course, but this is year seven of the iPhone and it's still growing at a double digit clip. This business model isn't a fluke. And it's not going to dry up suddenly.

Oh, I also forgot to mention that Apple generated $9.9 billion in cash in the last quarter, largely thanks to the iPhone business. Which is nice.

Could Apple lower prices? Of course it could. As a person that buys stuff Apple makes, I would love to see the company lower its prices. It would make my life better. 

But from a business perspective, it's hard to make the case that Apple needs to lower prices. Developers aren't leaving and sales remain strong.

Another argument from people that think Apple should lower prices is that carriers are either going to shut out, or screw-over Apple. Therefore it should preemptively capitulate.

Please. 

Even carriers, who play hardball with Apple, know that the iPhone is a big deal. 

On Friday, Japan's largest carrier NTT Docomo added 279,100 net users. Why? From Bloomberg's report: "The main reason Docomo added more new users than other carriers is because it began offering the iPhone, said Hiroko Shimoyama, a company spokeswoman." Docomo didn't have the iPhone until recently.

This isn't an anomaly. In the U.S., before T-Mobile had the iPhone, it said it lost 700,000 subscribers in one quarter because customers were bolting for carriers that offered the iPhone.

It's not just Japan and the U.S. where the iPhone is a big deal. 

People who think Apple needs to change its iPhone business (and I have been one of those people in the past) look at China and think Apple is totally screwing up. 

It's possible Apple has erred in China, but it just signed a deal with China Mobile, the biggest carrier in the country. China Mobile had long resisted Apple, but eventually it caved. Why? From the New York Times: "[China Mobile] showed signs of warming up to Apple only after it began losing customers to competitors that offered the iPhone."

Despite the high prices, consumers in developed and developing nations want the iPhone. Carriers know it, and Apple knows it. 

As we enter 2014, things look bright for Apple and its iPhone business, despite the doomsayers of 2013.

It has a new deal with China Mobile to sell phones to over a hundred million Chinese consumers.

It is likely to release a new phone with a bigger screen, which has been one of gripes from users. Heck, it might even release two iPhones with bigger screens! (We're skeptical, but you never know...)

And even with just a sliver of the market it's generating mind numbing sums of cash, and its iPhone business is growing faster than its rivals' overall businesses.

It's time to admit Apple knows exactly what it's doing with the iPhone.

(And, one final parting note: None of this is to say that iPhone is beating Android. We're just saying that Apple is doing well doing what it's doing As freelance analyst Benedict Evans said, "I am rapidly losing interest in 'iOS versus Android' as a discussion. Both Google and Apple have won.")

SEE ALSO: What It Was Like When Apple Revealed The Original iPhone Seven Years Ago

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Apple sloopt Flashback, hoewel er nog 22.000 geïnfecteerde machines rondwaren.