Apple is reportedly negotiating with some major entertainment companies for television content consumers can lease to watch on Apple TV for 99 US cents a pop. These deals might give Apple TV users access to some of their favorite TV shows and would help drive the sales of Apple TVs, iPod touches, iPads and iPhones. The content will be leased through the iTunes store.
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Apple has apparently filed a patent for technology that might make its mobile devices more secure, though it's also raised pointed questions about how privacy would be impacted if the company opted to implement the technology in its products. The technology could identify an unauthorized user, which would include hackers, jailbreakers and users who change out the device's SIM card.
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Apple's decision to opt out of the UK's green ranking scheme for mobile phones (Apple bars iPhones from green ranking scheme, 25 August) illustrates neatly the challenges facing businesses and government in finding workable, universally agreed methods to reduce the "product shadows" of a huge range of consumer goods. Greenpeace is right that transparency is crucial when you're dealing with busy customers and complex products, but it must be based on agreed and acceptable criteria. This June, Green Alliance published A Pathway to Greener Products in conjunction with Asda, Boots, Unilever, Sainsbury's, GlaxoSmithKline and others. The report calls on the government to take a lead in developing a practical, low-cost and widely adopted way of evaluating product impacts and identifying where action should be taken. Moreover, it's also crucial that "upstream" incentives are built into the system to allow companies to invest extensively in reducing their products' environmental footprints. It is a shame that Apple hasn't yet joined the ranking scheme, but there has been progress to date and we must continue to work with businesses to find workable solutions.

Hannah Hislop

Senior policy adviser, Green Alliance

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Invitation hints at something to do with music - and rumour sites are filling in the gaps

Apple has invited various journalists and analysts to an event next Wednesday at the Yerba Buena centre in San Francisco (where it unveiled the iPad and various other things).

As usual, the invitation is unspecific - that's it above - beyond implying music in some way. This is the time of year when the company now refreshes its iPod line, which is starting to fade from view: sales have begun falling comparing year-on-year, so this Christmas may be its last hurrah. People are expecting an updated iPod Touch, though the plain iPod line isn't expected to get much that's new.

And of course, just as it used to steal the shine from the CES show in January by having its own show and Steve Jobs's keynotes the day before the CES one, it's timed this in a way which, gracious me, takes away from the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin which gets underway (publicly) on 3 September, though there are plenty of presentations in the days before (such as that Samsung tablet).

There's ramped-up expectation that it will also be doing something to revive its AppleTV product, which has distinctly underwhelmed the market (Steve Jobs has referred to it as a "hobby"). Among the hopes for it: HDMI out, that it will run on the same iOS operating system as the iPad and iPhone, and cheap (99-cent) rentals of content. One thing you can bet on: much of the speculation about what a revised AppleTV can do isn't based on reality.

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Scheme rates handsets on factors such as ecological impact of raw materials, manufacturing process and energy efficiency

• Top 10 green iPhone apps
• iPhone app pitches climate change science against scepticism

Apple has refused to allow its iPhones to be included in the UK's first-ever green ranking scheme for mobile phones.

The scheme gives phones a rating of zero to five based on their environmental footprint and major manufacturers including Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung have signed up. The network O2, which is launching the rating system today, said 93% of the devices its customers use will be covered.

Launched in partnership with sustainability advisers Forum for the Future, the green ranking scheme scores handsets on the ecological impact of their raw materials, the manufacturing process, packaging, how long they are likely to last, energy efficiency and how easy they are to reuse or recycle.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on why the company had decided not to join the voluntary labelling scheme, but highlighted its environmental reporting online.

Many other mobile phone manufacturers, including market leader Nokia, publish similar environment reports online and are taking part in the rankings. RIM, the Canadian firm that produces the Blackberry, has pledged to joint the scheme next year.

"Transparency is always an issue for consumer electronics companies, who claim that providing too much information gives away competitive advantage. But consumers also deserve to know the full story. While Apple has recently made important strides in eliminating toxic chemicals from its products and the reporting of their environmental footprint, it still lags behind others in transparency," said Gary Cook, IT sector analyst for Greenpeace International.

The environmental group loudly lobbied the California-based company with its "Green my Apple" campaign, and in 2007 praised Apple CEO Steve Jobs for his decision to phase out the use of brominated flame retardants and PVC in the manufacture of the company's products.

The ratings in the scheme are based on answers by manufacturers to a questionnaire of 63 questions, in a bid to "turn complexity into something simple to understand", said James Taplin, principal sustainability adviser at Forum for the Future. The energy and resources used to produce the phone, for example, are partly measured by the "proxy measure" of the area of integrated circuits in each phone. "The largest impact comes from the energy used in extracting materials [from the Earth] and transporting them, as well as the energy and water used to process components such as silicon wafers," said Taplin.

Using the methodology, O2 rated the Sony Ericsson Elm the most sustainable mobile phone with 4.3 out of five. The phone's pole position was achieved by its high score on one criterion – "functionality" – which sees it negate the need for separate devices such as a camera, MP3 player and satnav, saving the energy that would be required to make them. "You need to look at the indirect impact of the phone, such as fewer devices, not just the phone," added Taplin.

Seven phones tied in second place with a score of 4.0: the Nokia 1800, Nokia 6700, Nokia C7, Samsung GT-S8500, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro and Sony Ericsson Zylo. Apple estimates the production and use of each iPhone 4 produces 45kg CO2e over its lifetime.

The mobile phone industry as a whole is belatedly attempting to green its image, with the big five UK networks and handset makers pledging last year to phase in a universal charger that must also meet energy efficiency standards.

There are signs that consumers want greener phones – 11.5% of people surveyed for O2 said sustainability had a "strong influence" on which model they would buy. Ronan Dunne, O2's UK chief executive, said: "We know that sustainability is important for many of our customers and for the first time [with the eco rating scheme] they will have the whole picture from which to make a full and balanced purchasing decision."

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Users' experience suggests that there is some account cracking going on at the iTunes Store. But why, who and how?

Comments on the earlier article from (indignant) users say that they're sure they haven't been phished for the details of their PayPal accounts - and that someone has somehow been making unauthorised (by them, at least) purchases from the iTunes Store.

In the previous post, I pointed to the greater likelihood that this was the result of a phishing scam; wrongly, I thought that there wasn't a product in the iTunes Store with the given name. Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch, who wrote the original post there this morning, points out though that there is indeed a product called "CastleCraft, Dragon Crystals (10000 Pack)": it doesn't show up in a search on the store because it's an in-game purchase.

Schonfeld also says that one of the people affected had both the emails from PayPal and the confirmation email from Apple of the purchases.

Here's what's odd about this transaction: who needs (or even wants) $4,700 worth of an in-game purchase for CastleCraft? A few possibilities: (1) kids who just like the idea of being able to mess around, who have iPod Touches/iPhones and want to play (2) people getting kickbacks in some way from the purchase [suspicion would immediately fall on the game maker] (3) some very subtle chargeback method that makes money for scammers (4) a botnet test searching for PayPal accounts linked to iTunes which went a bit wrong. You may be able to think of others.

What's interesting is that this has distinct echoes of the case back in July where 400 people saw their iTunes accounts hacked - by Thuat Nguyen, who has since been removed from the App Store for violating of the developer terms after his Vietnamese book apps mysteriously skyrocketed up the iTunes charts while people's credit cards were mysteriously billed. At the time, TheNextWeb pointed out that "the Apple App store is filled with App Farms being used to steal."

However, the developer behind CastleCraft is Freeverse, a New York-based company that one wouldn't think of as being in any way linked to an "app farm".

Now on to the comments - but first, the suggestion by Bert9000 about how one might get access to an iTunes or PayPal account.

People and websites are so lax with personal details, and many do silly things like use the same password for everything.

So here's a scenario:

You have email account This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , which is your main email. You have the password XYZ, which you use for everything. You register at paypal with your email address This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and use your normal password. You then register at some obscure webforum using your normal email and password.

Obscure webforum keeps new member details in plain text on their site. Hacker hits obscure webforum and takes thousands of email addresses and site passwords. Hacker then feeds these emails and passwords into paypal, a good proportion of which will actually work.

That's a very good description of the sort of weakness that crops up all the time in how we use passwords and websites. (If you've been affected by this iTunes hack, does that scenario fit you?)

Dr The0p0lis wrote:

Yesterday afternoon I noticed a few emails from PayPal re iTunes purchases. Looking at one, I saw that it was for $211.00. Upon checking my iTunes account (via my desktop iTunes client) I found that a number of purchases had been made. All of them were legitimate apps, but not ones I had purchased. Another charge came through for approximately $50 in apps, and another one for a similar amount. All of them registered as purchases under my iTunes account. All of them were for legitimate apps. Upon alerting PayPal, deautorizing/suspending my iTunes account, and asking my bank to refuse all PayPal charges until it was straightened out, the purchases stopped. So no, these were not spoofed to look like iTunes purchases. They were iTunes purchases.

Similar for SusanMiniCooper: "This occurred after I had hooked my itunes over to paypal. I got two transactions that I did not make. I have now reset my account and removed all automatic payment options." (That's very wise.)

Can't argue with that; at the time of writing the first blogpost, that level of detail wasn't available.

But the twin puzzles remain: where did the details come from? And what were the fake buyers after? In the case of Dr The0p0lis, who saw different purchases, the latter question seems easily answered: they wanted some apps. (You don't have to authorise your iPhone/iPod Touch against a computer for over-the-air purchases; the apps might get deleted the next time the person synchronised their machine, but as they cost them nothing, they probably wouldn't care.) His suggestion that the people behind this are griefers might be close to the truth.

And the other one: how are they getting at peoples' iTunes accounts? Has a giant security hole opened up in the iTunes Store? This still looks hugely unlikely. The PayPal element in common here is intriguing - though possibly that's now the simplest line of attack, because credit card purchases over a certain value might require the card verification number (which the scammer won't have), whereas the PayPal purchase is automatic.

One other point: Jared Earle has checked and verified that iTunes authentication uses HTTPS (which means that even if you accessed the iTunes Store via a fake Wi-Fi setup using a man-in-the-middle attack, the attacker wouldn't get any of your details - sorry @hellroy, but your account was hacked some other way).

The question thus remains of how the scammers got the login details. There we can only ask you, if you were affected: is your iTunes login and password unique? Ever used it anywhere else?

The solid conclusion: it's a really, really good idea to prevent automatic payments using your iTunes account - and other accounts, come to that - to Paypal or other payment systems.

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Manufacturers have failed to make enough semiconductors and other high-tech components

The technology industry faces a growing shortage of semiconductors and other high-tech components following a failure to invest in new manufacturing facilities during the recession, experts have warned.

Smartphone makers are now finding it harder to lay their hands on chips and display screens, leading to supply delays on some handsets. Analysts have said that this scramble is likely to become increasingly competitive, potentially hitting pushing up costs for consumers.

Malcolm Penn, chief executive at analyst firm Future Horizons, believes some chips will remain in short supply until the end of 2010, and it could take 12 months until supply and demand are back in kilter. "This is a huge crisis," said Penn. "A year ago, the chipmakers decided not to build new factories – in fact they were closing factories."

As well as being extremely expensive, a new semiconductor fabrication plant typically takes a year to build. So companies who waited until the start of this year, when the developed world had emerged from recession, to take the plunge will not reap the benefits until 2011.

According to Penn, chipmakers were reluctant to invest in new capacity because of fears over the world economy. "They believed that demand would go away, and that we'd go into a double-dip recession," he said. In fact, demand for technology has held up surprisingly well, leading to the industry-wide chip shortage that is unlikely to end this year. Ben Verwaayen, Alcatel-Lucent's chief executive, has also warned that the component shortages will not be solved in the next few months.

In Britain, mobile operators report that some handsets are being delayed by several weeks. Apple admitted last month that it cannot make enough iPhones to satisfy all its orders, although chief operating officer Tim Cook said this was "a good problem to have".

One industry insider says that the popular HTC Desire, launched by the Taiwanese handset maker earlier this year, has been hit by supply problems. The problem here, though, appears to be with its screen rather than the chips inside the phone. HTC has recently changed from an organic LED display, which were exclusively made by Samsung, to an Super LCD screen from Sony.

Penn believes that Apple is likely to suffer less than its rivals, as it has the financial muscle to fight for the chips it needs. Other makers of smartphones may find they must pay more or miss out.

"Chipmakers will have to prioritise who to ship to," said Penn. "Apple should be well-treated, but because they are a hard customer who beats their suppliers down on price they may only get 85% of what they ask for, with that extra stock going to another company that will pay a premium price."

The implications of the chip shortage are also being felt beyond the technology industry. In July Nissan was forced to suspend production on several car assembly lines because Hitachi, which supplied certain engine parts, could not source enough processors from STMicroelectronics, the Italian-French electronics and semiconductor manufacturer. STMicroelectronics's chief executive subsequently said that the company was expanding capacity by 20% this year.

Penn believes that the shortages show the harm that can be caused by short-term thinking during the economic downturn. "This is a total failure of corporate leadership. No one had the courage to take a long-term decision."

Linley Gwennap, the president of research firm of The Linley Group, also questions whether the semiconductor industry is expanding enough now. "Even where companies are facing shortages, they're saying 'Nah, I'm not sure I want to invest right now because demand could turn down any minute'," said Gwennap.

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People who have seen thousands of dollars taken from their PayPal accounts apparently via the iTunes Store should look closer to home for evidence of hacking

Update: based on some of the comments here, it's clear that there have been purchases made very recently on the iTunes Store which have used people's login details - though apparently all linked to PayPal accounts. See the follow-on post for more on this - and what the scammers' motives might be. In the meantime, the opening of this article isn't supported by the facts we now know, so we'll strike it out.

Phishers have figured out a new way to transfer themselves loads of money and make it look legit: make it look like the charges are coming from the iTunes Store.

Problem is that they seem to have gotten greedy, which has made their greed surface. There's a scattering of reports that iTunes accounts have been hacked - hello TechCrunch, with "Fraudsters Drain PayPal Accounts Through iTunes", which says (a trifle breathlessly) that:

"Reports are appearing this morning about a major security hole in iTunes accounts linked to PayPal. At least one group of scammers has found a way to charge thousands of dollars to iTunes accounts through PayPal. One targeted customer told us, 'My account was charged over $4,700. I called security at PayPal and was told a large number of iTunes store accounts were compromised.'"

Look more closely, though, and it doesn't quite add up. Yes, people have seen their PayPal accounts drained of funds. Yes, they have received emails which say "Receipt for your payment to iTunes Store".

But that's where you have to look more closely. If you buy stuff on the iTunes Store via PayPal, the email subject line doesn't read like that. As Mark Derrick notes, it will read "Receipt for your payment to iTunes". Small difference, but significant.

Plus: the people who were scammed say that the receipt claims it was for the purchase (at $99.99 a time - clever one by the scammers, aiming to get it underneath the credit card "suspicion" level and also below the automatic level where the merchant has to bear the cost of reversing the payment) of "CastleCraft, Dragon Crystals (10000 Pack), Seller: Freeverse, Inc)".

Except that while the US store (the only one which allows payment via PayPal) does have CastleCraft (iTunes link), which does come from Freeverse, there's no product called "Dragon Crystals" and they don't come in 10,000 packs.

So - a non-existent product and an email subject line that wasn't generated by the iTunes Store. Conclusion: transaction not done via iTunes.

John Paczkowski at AllThingsD offers much the same conclusion:

"not much to their assertion that Apple is at fault here. There's no security hole in iTunes, and if you've been unfortunate enough to have hundreds of dollars in unauthorized purchases charged to your iTunes account, it's likely because you've fallen victim to a bot attack or phishing scam – a variation on the one that's been around for years now. Sources close to Apple tell me iTunes has not been compromised and the company isn't aware of any sudden increase in fraudulent transactions."

.

The conclusion: iTunes hasn't been cracked. PayPal has - or more precisely, some of its users have. This is almost certainly due to phishing where people have given up their passwords by being lured onto fake sites that have asked for their PayPal logins and passwords and got them. The crooks got greedy, which has meant that they got noticed; we can hope that PayPal, which goes to a lot of effort to track down organised scams like this, will put it all right.

Among those who fell victim was Dennis Rockstroh of the San Jose Mercury News; Apple told him that "Among other new security measures iTunes now requires more frequent re-entry of a customer's credit card security code. But if your credit card or iTunes password is stolen and used on iTunes, we recommend that you contact your financial institution and inquire about canceling the card and issuing a charge-back for any unauthorized transactions. We also recommend that you change your iTunes account password immediately." (What's odd about Rockstroh's account is that he says he contacted Apple, which reversed the transactions - however those were made against credit cards, not PayPal account

That goes of course for PayPal - though there's no obvious mechanism by which scammers could use your iTunes account to make payments to themselves to PayPal. (Is there?) Even so, the rule remains: be absolutely sure before you enter critical data such as your username and password onto any site.

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Wired argues that apps have supplanted the web – but whether the model works for news organisations is another matter

Just when you thought the web was the unassailable media platform of the 21st century, it is cut down by that killer app from the 18th, ye olde magazine.

Well Chris Anderson to be precise, who argues in Wired that applications have supplanted the web. Strangely, Anderson makes his case for apps below a chart headlining video as the internet's single biggest growth area for traffic (51% of all US internet traffic, to be precise).

But taking Anderson's argument face on, where does the rise of the app leave the news business, the flatulent Rottweiler in the dog shelter of online content? Can apps give it a caring home at last?

The web is already a winner-takes-all environment with Facebook its portal, and Google its yellow pages. Journalism failed to take its chance in the information revolution. But now with the move to social and mobile, phones and e-readers, is there a second chance?

Serious news organisations have placed their bets. With Apple selling a million iPads in barely a month, paid iPad applications from the likes of the Times and the Financial Times line up on app stores with free offerings from the BBC and Thomson Reuters.

But already there are signs that native newsreaders like Flipboard for the iPad and LeNewz for the iPhone are stealing a march on the standalone offerings of news providers. Numbers may still be modest but design, usability and social integration all place them well ahead of individual apps. Flipboard (my own app of choice) visualises the content of links shared on social networks. In other words, it builds a newspaper out of things you know other people are reading because they are sharing them – every editor's nightmare.

But news executives have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. In June, the New York Times responded to the challenge of one newsreader app, Pulse News, by asking Apple to remove it from the iPad App Store.

Pulse bounced back in days, but then the company behind it, Alphonso Labs, is unencumbered by the legacy costs that go with producing a daily newspaper.

Let's be clear. Applications exist because of the current limitations of mobile devices. Developers will likely out-develop news organisations. And the device distributors will keep the change. Apple takes 30% of any iPhone or iPad paid application sold on its App Store. That figure looks modest next to the 65% of subscription money that publishers hand over to Amazon for distribution on its Kindle e-reader.

The Wall Street Journal gets round Apple's cut by offering its iPad service free to subscribers (who have to pay elsewhere). People magazine has just concluded a similar arrangement and other US magazines are expected to follow.

But such deft tricks fool no one. The value that news organisations used to get from owning their distribution and having advertising monopolies is not about to be recaptured by apps. And any savings from dropping paper products for digital aren't about to be brought back either. Migrating print subscribers to digital might save on postage, but that's where the story currently ends.

Journalism is not about to be rescued by apps, not even Wired with its 70,000 iPad readers. But there is a technological revolution under way that could benefit those who can afford to give away the next generation of e-readers.

After all, a savvy combination of subsidised technology, subscription deals and exclusive sports content launched Britain's satellite TV monopoly.

But right now there is only one electronic device that can genuinely be said to support a news organisation. It has two large screens, its own keyboard layout and it takes a fortnight to learn to use properly. It's called a Bloomberg terminal.

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Some pundits claim the rise of applications and closed environments such as Facebook mean that the web is dead. If so... should we worry?

According to the latest cover story in tech bible Wired, "The web is dead, long live the internet." The headline is attached to a feature by the magazine's editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson, outlining what he calls the abandonment of "the open, unfettered web... for simpler, sleeker services". It has generated a huge reaction online.

Are we heading for a less romantic digital world, in which open-ended surfing of the web is replaced by an ordered world phone "apps", tailored to individual preferences? A world in which 'gated digital communities' – whether comprising virtual gamers or fitness fanatics – organise themselves ever more efficiently but ignore the wider web-based possibility of the unexpected.

The web, of course, is not the same thing as the internet. While the internet refers to the network of the millions of computers that share a common set of communications protocols, the world wide web – to give it its full title – is the service invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 that sits on top of this network, allowing users to use browsers such as Explorer and Firefox to surf the web.

Anderson's thesis is that web browsers are precipitously declining as the dominant way of using the internet. Statistically, his analysis has its dubious points – as John Naughton explores elsewhere in the Observer today, this glosses over the fact that internet usage is increasing at an exponential rate. But Anderson has hit one cultural nail on the head: there's now far, far more to the internet than web pages. And this implies a serious shift not only in what the internet is used for, but also in what digital culture can be said to mean.

The most important issues here are as much social as technological. Asked earlier this year what he felt Google's biggest mistake had been, the company's director of research, Peter Norvig, picked "the social aspects" of the web. "Facebook has been very successful and I may have dismissed that," he said. "I think I missed the fact that there is real importance to having a social network and getting these recommendations from friends. I might have been too focused on getting the facts and figures."

It was an honest response, and also something of an understatement. This year has seen Facebook's active users swell from around 350 million to over half a billion. The website has now overtaken Google as the most-visited page among US internet users. With services such as Twitter also on the rise – and Google's own attempt at revolutionising real-time communications, Google Wave, quietly crashing and burning – a change is taking place in what the internet is used for, with human connections pushing past mere information as technology's greatest driving force.

While Google remains potent, both its business model, which relies on serving targeted advertising next to search results, and its mission – to make information online "accessible and useful" – are threatened by the growing importance of systems such as Facebook to which Google has limited access. Even this, though, isn't even the biggest issue for the old-fashioned web. As Anderson notes, perhaps the most transforming technological force of recent years has been the growth of next-generation mobile devices. Suddenly the world is full of smart handhelds that can go online in a way once possible only with a computer. It's estimated that within five years there will be more mobile internet users than computer-based ones – and these devices are ill-suited to the conventional world of web browsers.

Small screens plus limited time and concentration mean that users are in urgent need of well-crafted, convenient programs: self-contained internet applications known as apps that bypass conventional browsing to offer everything from local restaurant recommendations to instructions on making the perfect cappuccino, from mobile spreadsheets to interactive maps, sophisticated games, dictionaries, recipe books, language guides, birdsong interpreters, exercise routines and even pocket torches. Each is a complete, miniature internet experience; each is good for no purpose other than its intended use.

According to the latest figures from Ofcom, the average Briton's daily media usage stands at seven hours and five minutes, with internet use growing rapidly. Social networking takes up almost half of all internet time on mobile devices – much of it spent while out and about. As a modern digital consumer, you tend to know what you want and want to do it with a minimum of fuss. You're busy, you're interested in what your friends are saying and doing – and you're prepared to pay for elegance and convenience.

The first thing you touch when you wake up is your smartphone; it's also the last thing you touch at night, when you set your alarm for the morning. For everything in-between there's Facebook, Twitter, RSS, streamed radio and television, and your games console. No need to roam the wilds of the open web at all.

This is a caricature, but the future it points towards – a life full of smart devices, which continually augment our daily reality – seems ever more plausible. Perhaps inevitably, the company closest to embodying this future is another global giant from California, Apple, within whose exquisite walled gardens more and more consumers are gathering to play. Buy an iPhone, an iPod touch or an iPad – as over 100 million people now have – and you've entered into a bargain that, to some advocates of the open web, is nothing less than Faustian. Everything you buy for your device must be obtained through Apple, who will take its cut and must approve every item sold in their marketplaces. Your device will be beautiful, intuitive, secure and – as far as the critics are concerned – sterile. And a small number of people will be getting very rich indeed out of all this.

As conventional media companies have found to their cost, the web doesn't favour old-fashioned advertising models. Profits can wither online: there's nowhere to hide from the numbers that have told newspapers, magazines, broadcasters and bloggers alike that their millions of online visitors are worth far less. Enter what Anderson terms "artificial scarcity": the deliberate decision to lock users into a particular framework or resource, relying on the fact that they'll be willing to pay, one way or another, for something sufficiently indispensable.

One digital industry that learned this lesson long ago is the video-game sector, which excels at creating electronic environments hermetically sealed off from the outside world. World of Warcraft's 12 million players are worth well over a billion dollars a year to the company that runs their virtual world, Activision Blizzard, a value that rests on the game's impervious isolation. Only in-game effort by players can generate rewards and status. Its rules are universal and absolute; the company's word is final, and any cheating or exploitation is ruthlessly dealt with. Users would not have it any other way.

In one sense, the web has always been a matter more of surfaces than fundamentals. Google is not synonymous with its own website any more than Facebook or Amazon are with theirs. In each case, their value lies in the vast data engines they operate, for which the web is simply one point of access.

There's a Google app for the iPhone, just as there are apps for Facebook and Amazon. In terms of ethos, though, there's a world of difference between them, and perhaps the most crucial factor is not so much the divide between the web and the internet as the new, potent alignment between personalisation and gated communities.

Personal relationships are by nature not an open business. Our online presences are increasingly substantial, important and valuable to us – and this means there's an increasing demand that they exist within services that offer security and a variety of levels of visibility, rather than an information free-for-all.

The major controversies of Facebook's brief history have all centred on the issue of privacy – the security of users' personal details and the question of who is able to view these – and its ability to prosper relies in large part on providing adequate tools and guarantees around users' identities and relationships. This month, the most recent version of the Facebook app for iPhones introduced a "places" function, offering users the chance to "discover moments when you and your friends are at the same place at the same time". Like it or not, the idea of gating and restrictions is central to the success of such services.

Does all this, as Chris Anderson suggests, constitute a new digital paradigm? For some observers, what we're seeing is the ugly resurgence of a trend we were lucky to escape in the early 1990s: a world of tethered appliances, sterile software and infantilised consumers that, had it persisted, would have prevented innovative companies like Google or Facebook arising in the first place.

As the author and digital activist Cory Doctorow put it this year: "As an adult, I want to be able to choose whose stuff I buy and whom I trust to evaluate that stuff. I don't want my universe of apps constrained to the stuff that the Cupertino politburo decides to allow for its platform. And as a copyright holder and creator, I don't want a single Walmart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create."

For others, though – including the media commentator Michael Wolff, whose piece on the future of the web ran alongside Anderson's in Wired – a necessary balance is being restored between the staggering power of open resources to generate innovation, and the capacity of closed ones to serve particular human demands while generating revenues.

Culturally, the internet does appear to be on the cusp of a new phase, for which the current generation of apps and social networks are simply the vanguard. We are becoming a society of networked individuals, accessible to each other and the net at all times. And so the net is in turn becoming more like our society, complete with its special interests, levels of access, factional divisions, and obligations to pay for certain guarantees and conveniences. As more of who we are and what we do migrates online, we are bringing other worlds with us.

Tom Chatfield is the author of Fun Inc and a senior editor at Prospect magazine

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The Doors guitarist Robby Krieger is annoyed by built-in obsolesence, but is keen to get his hands on a 3D TV

What's your favourite piece of technology, and how has it improved your life?
In my studio I've got Pro Tools on my Mac, and it's made it a lot easier to record. Pro Tools was a big leap in digital recording.

When was the last time you used it, and what for?
I've just been recording my son's band, called Darkroom, and we did about 10 songs – written by my son, Waylan, and some of his bandmates. It came out great.

What additional features would you add if you could?
I wish it was just a little more user friendly, you know? It seems there's a lot of meaningless keystrokes you need to get around. I'm sure they'll sort that out in the next couple of years.

Do you think it will be obsolete in 10 years' time?
I would say three years – usually every three years you need to get something new in the recording world.

What always frustrates you about technology in general?
Built-in obsolesence – no matter what it is, they keep changing it on you and you have to keep upgrading.

Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated?
I've got this Blu-ray [player] and can't work out if it's any better than DVD. Plus it takes a lot longer to load – it really pisses me off. I also hated floppy disks.

If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?
I would say "read the manual" – which is something I don't do very often. But you'll have a much better time if you take the time to read that manual.

Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd?
I think I'm more of a luddite. Instead of a digital guitar box, I stil use the analogue one – and I still use the Fender amplifier. I like old guitars, and I like old cars. I think too much technology ruins everything. I wouldn't mind going back to pre-electricity days.

What's the most expensive piece of technology you've ever owned?
I guess it's the Pro Tools on my Macintosh.

Mac or PC, and why?
Oh, it's Mac, because it's more set up for artists than the PC is, and you don't have to worry about the viruses so much.

Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs, or do you download? What was your last purchase?
I usually download, although I always pay for it. The last thing I bought was the DVD of Alice in Wonderland for the tour bus.

Robot butlers – a good idea or not?
Yeah, I don't see anything wrong with it. I'm sure it's going to happen sooner or later. There's a lot of menial things that could be done by robots that would save us a lot of time.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
One of the new 3D TVs. I haven't seen one yet, but it sounds great.

• When You're Strange: A Film About The Doors is released on DVD and Blu-ray on 30 August

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Executive pleads not guilty in US court to charges that he took bribes from Asian suppliers in return for inside information

An Apple executive pleaded not guilty last night to charges that he took bribes from Asian suppliers in return for inside information.

Paul Devine, a global supply manager at the company, is accused of accepting more than $1m (£639,000) in kickbacks over several years from manufacturers keen to supply accessories for iPhones and iPods. He was arrested last Friday, and appeared in federal court in San Jose in handcuffs yesterday to face 27 charges including money-laundering and wire fraud.

Apple also filed a separate civil lawsuit against Devine last Friday, claiming breach of contract, racketeering and breaching fiduciary duty.

Devine's alleged accomplice, Andrew Ang, used to work for Singapore's Jin Lee Mould Manufacturing.

Apple's success means there is huge competition between suppliers to get their products inside its computers, digital music players and mobile phones.

Prosecutors claim that Devine ran an elaborate scheme where several tech companies paid him for confidential data in the hope of winning contracts from Apple. The indictment accused him of opening bank accounts in his wife's name in order to take in the money, and states that he told his contacts to describe payments as "samples".

One Asian manufacturer has already said that it paid money to Devine, but denied wrongdoing. Cresyn, a South Korean company which makes earphones and headsets, revealed yesterday it hired Devine as a consultant to receive information about consumer trends in the US.

"An Apple manager offered to provide us with business consulting to help us advance into the US market. So we signed a normal consulting contract, which was not illegal," Cresyn said in a statement. It added that it had not received any specific information about future products.

Other companies named in the indictment include Pegatron, which is the manufacturing unit of the netbook PC pioneer Asustek; Singapore's Glocom/Lateral Solutions and Fastening Technologies; and Taiwan's Nishoku Technology.

Devine was remanded in custody and will reappear in court tomorrow, when the judge hearing the case will decide whether to grant bail.

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Apple has had a slow start with its new iAd platform, the WSJ reports.

Only two of the 17 launch partners announced on 1 July started campaigns in that first month and only three more used it in August. Apple's tight grip over the creative process is cited as one of the reasons advertisers are being hesitant.

Photo by Jorge Quinteros on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Giving a delightful insight into Apple's own painstaking production process, creating the platform's mobile ads is taking between eight to 10 weeks – and the building part, which is done by Apple, is taking two weeks longer than it should.

Patrick Moorhead, director of mobile at the agency DraftFCB, said it is "a huge issue having Apple in the creative mix", while Chanel, one of the launch partners,  doesn't have any iAd campaign planned.

Campaigns packages start at a cost of $1m but one brand, Nissan, claim the click-through rate for its interactive ad is five times higher than the conventional online campaign.

While working efficiently with agencies seems Apple's biggest challenge, it has claimed $60m in commitments this year from iAd's advertisers. It is also poised to take advantage of the continued growth in mobile advertising, despite increasing competition from Google's AdMob and Millennial Media, which eMarketer predicts will rise by 43% this year in the US alone – to $593m.

iAd is due to debut in the UK this autumn.

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Making source codes available would safeguard users from infringements on their freedoms and prevent monopolies

An issue that garners far less press coverage than the ongoing net neutrality story is that of free software. The software powering the devices we use is just as vital for the internet as is the management of the "pipes" that carry our data. Most of us, though, don't even think about the software we choose to use (or worse, are coerced to because of total marketplace saturation).

By free software, they do not mean software that is given away at no cost. Lifelong free software activist Richard Stallman uses the French word "libre" to describe his ideal software; it's free as in freedom, not as in free beer. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) defines four criteria for this freedom: the freedom to run the software for any purpose; to study how it works (to have access to its source code); to redistribute copies; and to publish modified and improved versions.

These freedoms are not upheld by the proprietary software the majority of the world uses. Your computer probably runs Microsoft's Windows or Apple's OS, which are subject to an end-user licence agreement that you probably clicked through in a few seconds, stripping you of the above freedoms. The reason most companies restrict those freedoms is because, in their assessment, there is more money to be made if their own freedom and control over devices is maximised.

There are all kinds of examples of actively unfree software. One of the most unwittingly apt examples was the removal from Kindle e-reader devices of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four by Amazon last year. In this instance, customers were deprived of something they had paid for in response to the company's failure to make sure of its legal position.

This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of so-called "digital rights management" (DRM) software (known to the FSF as "digital restrictions management"). DRM has proved so unpopular that Apple removed it from all of the music sold on its iTunes store – but only after six years of user grumbling and DRM-free competition. Frustration with cumbersome DRM restrictions is one of the biggest contributing factors to the explosion of file sharing in recent years.

DRM is, however, far from the biggest threat to our digital freedom. Software developers routinely leave "back doors" in their products. A good example is RIM's recent agreement with the Saudi government to make the encrypted communications of BlackBerry users accessible for surveillance. This echoes a 1993 case when the US government tried to push its "Clipper" encryption chip into all mobile phones – with the government holding copies of the keys "just in case" they were needed for surveillance. Vocal resistance from digital civil liberties organisations and the development of free/libre alternative encryption schemes fortunately made this nonviable.

It's not just about phones, either: Microsoft, in co-operation with hardware manufacturers like Intel, has included a "trusted computing" system ("treacherous computing" to Stallman) in Windows 7, which gives them the power to interfere with users' systems remotely. As elsewhere, this is being sold to consumers as a feature, rather than a further infringement of their freedom.

Opening up the source code of software like Windows, RIM's BlackBerry OS, or Apple's OS would enable the online community of programmers (real "hackers") to examine it and expose unfree elements. This would not compromise a product's profitability – most people wouldn't have the knowledge or inclination to spend hours compiling source code into a usable program.

Making source codes available would not only be a safeguard for users, but hasten the end of software patents. The FSF opposes the idea that software should be patentable. There are too many arguments in favour to be mentioned here, but the most important one is that patents stifle innovation and competition – the reverse of the patent system's stated aim. The best example of this is Apple's ongoing lawsuit against competing smartphone manufacturer HTC based on its patents – including "unlocking a device by performing gestures on an unlock image" – something so obvious and fundamental that success in the suit would effectively give Apple a monopoly.

What needs to be done to get more people to adopt free software? People need to start evangelising, in the same way that they did for recent success stories like Spotify, Foursquare or even Facebook. People need to know that free software is compatible with the standards they use for writing documents, online communication and creating multimedia content. Free software needs to aim at maximum user-friendliness. Most importantly, big businesses need to realise there is an appetite for software that users know they can trust.

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A survey shows that Apple's tablet device is popular among readers and gamers

A study of British iPad owners shows the new tablet device is more than holding its own with people consuming news and playing games.

Good news all round for Rupert Murdoch's planned digital-only "iPaper" as a study by Cooper Murphy Webb of 1,034 UK iPad owners found that more prefer reading newspapers, magazines and books on their new device to any other format.

Of those questioned, 31% said they prefer reading newspaper and magazine content on their iPad, 26% prefer using their laptop or computer, and 24% are sticking steadfastly to print.

But how many are paying for iPad apps and how long do they spend using them, we wonder ...

The margin widens for those reading books – 41% preferring the iPad's iBooks, printed hardbacks/paperbacks account for 36% of preferred reading, while alternative e-readers bring up the rear with 7%. (Though I'd imagine a sizable proportion of respondents haven't tried another e-reader).

Gaming is also proving popular (I wasted many a moment on Scrabble and Real Racing HD this weekend):

As a word of warning: the earliest of early adopters would have had their iPad little more than two months when questioned for this research, so the honeymoon period was still in full swing.

This perhaps accounts for 62% never or rarely taking their new best friend out of the house.

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HBO v BBC

The difference between the BBC and HBO is that the BBC has to appeal to everyone who pays the licence fee, so they have to do mass appeal drama like EastEnders and Holby to bring in the viewers and justify a mandatory tax (Skybo's got the US shows, but the BBC is our HBO, 9 August).

HBO identified a more specific demographic and makes programmes to keep them happy, ie keep them subscribing. I'm not saying that's easy, but I'm sure it helps their commissioners to constantly try to appeal to the same high-end market, unlike the BBC where they have to make sitcoms on BBC1 at 8.30pm and then sitcoms on BBC4 at 10.30pm, each appealing to different groups of society.

StuartK online

• Surely one of the reasons many of these dramas have value is because they have had mass exposure via terrestrial television – Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, etc. What will happen to future dramas that only air on Sky? Will there be a clamour to watch them? Will people want to pay?

limasheepdog online

Apple v Google

This is an extremely simple analysis of a very complex industry (Apple v Google: the new frontier, 9 August). Apple and Google's ad platforms are nothing alike. iAd is really a niche service for big brand advertisers which offers some great rich media capabilities. For example, what if I own a small business and I want to self-serve ads on a mobile phone? What service should I use? Apple does not offer anything for this case. However, if I choose Google, I can use AdWords and have a live campaign running in minutes. I can tap into the entire Google Mobile Network which not only includes mobile apps (on iPhone and Android) but also includes web apps. Once again, if I approach Apple, I can submit a request for more information and hope I get some. But I won't, because Apple is only working with big brands.

Let's be clear: Apple is taking a very small bite out of a massive industry.

djreed online

The people v Phill Jupitus

"The naysayers about the BBC view it like a taxi – they put their money in and they think it should only take them to where they want to go," says Phill Jupitus (Playlists killed the radio star, 9 August). Can you put this at the start of the comments stream for any story about the BBC? It perfectly encapsulates all those "I like this, but I hate that and I don't think I should have to pay for it" comments.

LexyBoy online

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