Apple keeps Siri's recorded voice commands for up to two years

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Ever since Apple introduced Siri, there have been security concerns revolving around the voiced-based virtual assistant, especially about how long Apple keeps users' voice commands that Siri sends back to its servers. According to Wired, Apple has revealed how long it keeps the voice information in an attempt to ease users' minds about privacy.

According to Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller, the company keeps the voice commands on its servers for two years, albeit without keeping any user information.

“Our customers’ privacy is very important to us,” says Muller.

She explains that when used, Siri ships recordings of the voice commands to Aple's servers for analysis. The recordings are represented in the servers by a randomly generated number, instead of the user's Apple ID or email address.

After six months, Apple "disassociates" the user number from the recording, but the file itself is kept for up to 18 more months. This is so that the company can test and improve on Siri.

“Apple may keep anonymized Siri data for up to two years,” Muller says. “If a user turns Siri off, both identifiers are deleted immediately along with any associated data.”

Siri raises some privacy concerns

Back in November, it was revealed that Apple has been working on getting Siri to use more languages. The tech giant had posted a job listing that stated that it was looking for people fluent in Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Korean, Norwegian and Swedish. Siri is currently available in a host of languages. However, some of the languages mentioned here are not known to Siri yet.

Siri, dubbed as an intelligent personal assistant, works with devices that ship with iOS 5 and later. It uses voice recognition technology to answer questions, make recommendations and perform actions. Apple claims that the software adapts to users' individual preferences over time and personalises results.

It was originally introduced as an app that was available on the iOS App Store. The developer, Siri, was acquired by Apple. The software made its debut as one of the core features of iOS with the iPhone 4S. It was later added to third-generation iPad.

Currently, Siri supports English, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Spansih, Mandarin, Korean and Cantonese. Outside the United States and Canada, the software has very limited functionality. For example, you can use Siri to look for a restaurant in Mumbai.

The software has been ported into older iOS devices through jailbreaking, but uses different backend servers than the ones used by Apple.

Report by : Shunal Doke

Microsoft Posts Record Revenue of $21.5 Billion in December Quarter

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It looks like Microsoft had a decent end to 2012.

Microsoft reported earnings-per-share of $0.76 on revenue of $21.46 billion in the December quarter, beating EPS estimates by a penny but coming in just shy of Wall Street's consensus estimate for revenue of $21.6 billion. Nonetheless, Microsoft's revenue for the quarter set a new high.

The Windows division of the company had a particularly strong quarter, generating $5.88 billion in revenue, a 24% increase from the same period a year before. Even when you factor in deferred revenue from Windows upgrade offers, Windows revenue was still up 11% year-over-year.

"Our big, bold ambition to reimagine Windows as well as launch Surface and Windows Phone 8 has sparked growing enthusiasm with our customers and unprecedented opportunity and creativity with our partners and developers," Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement. "With new Windows devices, including Surface Pro, and the new Office on the horizon, we’ll continue to drive excitement for the Windows ecosystem and deliver our software through devices and services people love and businesses need."

Microsoft did not break out sales figures for its new Windows 8 products, other than to restate that it has sold more than 60 million Windows 8 licenses to date.

Microsoft's stock was up down by about 1% in after hours trading following the earnings report.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

Report by : Seth Fiegerman

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Apple's blockbuster revenue growth is slowing drastically, as iPhone sales plateau and the company finds itself lacking revolutionary new products.

The company's warning, issued Wednesday as part of its financial results for the holiday quarter, sent Apple Inc.'s stock plunging by more than 10 percent, wiping out a year's worth of gains.

Analysts said the warning suggested Apple can no longer sustain its growth without some completely new products. Its last revolutionary creation, the iPad, was launched in 2010. Co-founder Steve Jobs, who was the engine behind the creation of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, died in 2011.

"It has been an overriding concern with Apple that they would not be able to generate revenue growth just rolling out new versions of old products," said Jeff Sica, president and chief investment officer of SICA Wealth Management. "Now they've proven it in their numbers."

On a conference call with analysts, Apple CEO Tim Cook rebutted that idea, but as usual, gave no details.

"We're working on some incredible stuff. The pipeline is chock full," he said.

Before he died in 2011, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson that he had figured out how to create a groundbreaking, easy-to-use TV set. Since then, company watchers have been waiting for the company to bring out something in that vein to re-energize sales. Cook said the company was still working on it.

"I tend to believe that there's a lot we can contribute in the space, and so we continue to pull the string and see where it leads us," he said.

Apple said it expects sales of between $41 billion and $43 billion in the current quarter, which ends in March. That would usually be little cause for concern, even though analysts were expecting $45.6 billion, because Apple usually lowballs its forecasts. But Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said the company is changing its practices and providing a reasonable range rather than a single, easily achievable number.

That means Apple is looking at sales growth of about 7 percent from last year's January to March quarter, a striking number for a company that's posted double-digit increases in every quarter except one since 2008.

Apple's stock fell $55.58 to $458.43 in extended trading, after the release of the results. The shares are down 35 percent from their all-time high, hit Sept. 21, when the iPhone 5 launched.

Fueled by earlier versions of the iPhone, Apple's market capitalization decisively overtook that of Exxon Mobil in early 2012, making it the world's most valuable company. With Wednesday's drop, Apple is worth just 5 percent more than Exxon.

Apple's enviable profit growth also hit a wall in the October to December quarter. It said net income in the fiscal first quarter was $13.1 billion, or $13.81 per share, flat with a year ago. That still beat expectations, as analysts polled by FactSet had forecast earnings of $13.48 per share.

Revenue was $54.5 billion, up 18 percent from a year ago. Analysts were expecting $55 billion. Sales were held back by the fact that the latest quarter had 13 weeks, one less than the corresponding 2011 quarter.

Apple shipped 47.8 million iPhones in the quarter, about 1 million less than analysts were expecting, and 22.9 million iPads, also about 1 million short.

Most surprisingly, Mac sales were also 1 million short, at 4.1 million. That's a 22 percent drop from shipments a year ago. Oppenheimer said this was because Apple couldn't get the new iMac desktops out before December.

Cook said iPhone supplies were short too, and the company could have sold more of both the iPhone 5 and older iPhone 4 if it had been able to make more.

Most technology companies would be ecstatic if they posted 18 percent sales growth and $13 billion in profit for a single quarter, but Apple is held to a high standard, set by the shocking, iPhone-propelled success of the last few years.

"Apple has been growing tremendously and that level of growth can't be sustained by any company," said Sarah Rotman Epps, senior analyst at Forrester Research.

Investors have already been concerned that Apple's strategy of keeping the price of the iPhone high means it's losing out on sales, particularly overseas. Consumers are instead opting to buy cheaper smartphones running Google Inc.'s Android software, which has propelled South Korea's Samsung Electronics to the world's largest maker of smartphones. The average wholesale price of the iPhone is $640, hundreds of dollars more than smartphones with comparable hardware.

There's speculation among company watchers that the company will produce a cheaper iPhone, but that would cut into its profit margin and could tarnish the company's image as a purveyor of premium products.

Apple had warned that the holiday quarter's profits would be lower than Wall Street was initially expecting, because it had so many new products coming out, including the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini. New production lines are more expensive to run and yield more defective products that need to be redone or thrown out rather than sold.

Report by : Associated Press