$60 million is pennies compared to the $1.6 billion Proview originally sued for in China. Accepting 5% of your original demand clearly shows you had no expectation of actually winning. Now Proview can pay back its debt and close up shop.

Interesting findings by the Electric Power Research Institute:

The annual cost to charge an iPad is just $1.36, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit research and development group funded by electric utilities.

By comparison, a 60-watt compact fluorescent bulb costs $1.61, a desktop PC adds up to $28.21 and a refrigerator runs you $65.72.

Now if Apple can only get it to charge in minutes rather than hours.

John Gruber posted his own analysis on why Microsoft decided to ditch PC making OEMs and go solo creating Surface, their latest attempt at entering a tablet market dominated by Apple. The following snippet nails it :

Microsoft Surface is not fundamentally about Microsoft needing to control the entire integrated product in order to compete with the iPad on design. It’s about Microsoft needing to sell the whole thing to sustain its current profitability.

Apple released a statement indicating that it stopped using Carrier IQ in most of its devices with the release of iOS 5, and that they “will remove it completely in a future software update.” Apple’s statement follows:

“We stopped supporting Carrier IQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.”

[Via AllThingsD]

iPhone hacker chpwn has posted an informative look into how Carrier IQ is incorporated into iOS. Unlike the version Trevor Eckhart discovered in his Android devices, Carrier IQ for both iOS versions 3 and 5—version 4 is still unknown—is disabled by default. If the appropriate setting is enabled on iOS 5, the user can disable it with a single setting change.

When enabled, does Carrier IQ on iOS capture the same level of data that was seen in Trevor Eckhart’s Android demo? No, it appears Apple has limited much of what Carrier IQ will monitor. Below are chpwn’s findings:

• CoreTelephony
  • your phone number
  • your carrier
  • your country
  • active phone calls
    • (However, I only saw it noting that a phone call was active, not what number was dialed or it was received from. But, I am not going to claim it doesn’t do that: it’s certainly possible, but didn’t see it.)
• CoreLocation
  • your location (Only, however, if Location Services are enabled.)
  • (Possibly more I haven’t yet found.)

As Carrier IQ claims in their video, communication with the remote server is all done via SSL. Importantly, it does not appear the daemon has any access or communication with the UI layer, where text entry is done. I am reasonably sure it has no access to typed text, web history, passwords, browsing history, or text messages, and as such is not sending any of this data remotely.

1. Launch “Settings”
2. Select “General”
3. Select “About” (first entry)
4. Select “Diagnostics & Usage” (towards bottom)
5. Select “Don’t Send” if not already selected