Apple Warns Customers to Beware of Counterfeit Power Adapters and Batteries

Nearly two months after filing a lawsuit against a firm selling counterfeit Apple power adapters and Lightning cables on Amazon, Apple has updated its website to advise customers to beware of counterfeit parts.

Apple warns some counterfeit and third-party power adapters and batteries could pose safety risks, and recommends customers visit an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider for genuine parts.

Beware of counterfeit parts

Some counterfeit and third party power adapters and batteries may not be designed properly and could result in safety issues.

To ensure you receive a genuine Apple battery during a battery replacement, we recommend visiting an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider. If you need a replacement adapter to charge your Apple device, we recommend getting an Apple power adapter.

As revealed in its lawsuit against counterfeiter Mobile Star LLC, Apple found almost 90% of so-called “genuine” Apple products and accessories it purchased from Amazon in a nine-month period were actually counterfeit. U.S. certification company UL later found 99% of fake Apple chargers sold online fail basic safety tests.

Following the lawsuit, an Amazon spokesperson informed MacRumors it has “zero tolerance for the sale of counterfeits” on its website. “We work closely with manufacturers and brands, and pursue wrongdoers aggressively.”

Amazon reportedly plans to crack down on counterfeit products sold through its website next year by creating a registry to prevent fake goods from being listed for sale. Apple could sign up for the registry, for example, and merchants would then have to obtain official brand permission before they can sell products and accessories.

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Amazon Discounts its Echo Smart Speaker Range Yet Again

As part of its Black Friday Deals Week, Amazon lowered the price of its Echo family of smart speakers, before returning them to their regular prices. Now Amazon has discounted the devices again for a limited time in the U.S. as part of a “Holiday Deals” promotion.

The full-size Echo speaker is $40 cheaper at $139.99, while the smaller Echo dot is available for $39.99 instead of its regular price of $49.99. Amazon Tap, the company’s portable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi enabled speaker, has also seen its price reduced from $129.99 to $89.99. The Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and Amazon Tap all have voice-activated assistant Alexa built in.

MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon and may sometimes get paid if you click one of the above links.

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Amazon’s ‘Grand Tour’ is the most pirated show ever

Amazon’s Grand Tour, a reboot of the BBC’s hit show Top Gear, has been an unmitigated success with fans with its first episode alone garnering “millions” of views. It’s also be a hit with pirates who, instead of paying the annual $100 fee for Amazon Prime, have downloaded the first three episodes at unprecedented rates.

According to data from industry analyst Muso, and published by the Daily Mail on Sunday, pirates illicitly downloaded the first episode 9.7 million times, the second episode 6.4 million times and the third 4.6 million times. A lion’s share of the downloads (13.7 percent of the total) originated in Britain. Muso figures that Amazon lost £3.2 million on the first episode alone. “It is the most illegally downloaded program ever,” Chris Elkins, Muso chief commercial officer, told The Guardian. “It is off the scale in terms of volume. It has overtaken every big show, including Game Of Thrones, for the totals across different platforms.”

Interestingly, while Amazon has seen its subscriber base grow by more than 19 million this year — to a total of 63 million worldwide — only 2 million of those people live in the UK. That means nearly five times as many people stole the content (the first episode at least) rather than pay for it. And given that Amazon paid $160 million for the show as a means of boosting its British subscriber base, those numbers are worrisome. Still, it is vastly outperforming the garbage replacement starring Matt LeBlanc and Chris Evans that BBC has been trying to peddle. Top Gear 2.0 saw its ratings nosedive and Evans quit as host just hours after the first season finale.

Via: Guardian

Source: Daily Mail

ICYMI: Amazon wants to revolutionize grocery shopping

Today on In Case You Missed It: Amazon created a smart store in Seattle which is currently open to just employees but next year will open to all. It lets people saunter in, grab whatever they need, then leave without formally checking out. The trick is in using the Amazon Go app and all the sensors within the store, which track which items are placed in a basket and charges shoppers accordingly.

Meanwhile, Georgia Tech created a ‘TuneTable,’ an interactive table with moving coaster-sized tiles people use to both program and then play music. If you’re interested, the Guinness Book of World Records video for candles is here, and the behind-the-scenes video from Rogue One is here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

Technology is coming for your retail jobs

Amazon recently unveiled a new type of grocery store: one that doesn’t require cashiers at all. Called Amazon Go, the brick-and-mortar location uses sensors and gates to automatically identify what you bought, calculate your total and charge you for your purchases when you leave. It gets rids of pesky long lines in front of cashiers or self-checkout kiosks but also more or less eradicates the need for checkout counters altogether.

While that’s exciting for loathers of long lines (like me), it also sounds like it could cause a decline in employment, just as automation wiped out millions of manufacturing jobs over the past couple of decades. The reason for the drastic decrease there has been fiercely debated; many argue that trade agreements like NAFTA have resulted in jobs lost to other countries, but data suggests that increased productivity is really to blame.

Increased productivity has traditionally been linked to improvements in technology, which enables more output without adding more workers. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that the number of jobs in manufacturing saw a sharp decline in 2000 (and then again in 2010 after the credit crunch), not 1994, when NAFTA went into effect. In fact, between the years 1994 and 1998, the number of employees hired in manufacturing actually increased, if only slightly.

According to a 2010 report by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which cites BLS data, declines in manufacturing jobs coincide with significant growth in productivity and output.

So it appears trade agreements are not to blame: Increased productivity is the more likely culprit. And advances in technology are going to continue to impact employment. In fact, a World Economic Forum report from Jan. 2016 predicts that we will lose 5 million jobs by 2020, thanks to technology and automation.

It’s unclear what this, and Amazon’s new shopping tech, could mean for jobs in the retail sector. While it’s easy to assume that this automated-checkout system could replace human cashiers, many believe that existing staff could be repurposed for other positions in stores.

Tom Coughlin, IEEE senior member and president of Coughlin Associates, believes that stores could get their employees to focus more on servicing customers by helping them locate items and even assist them in bringing their heavy shopping out to their cars, instead of spending time trying to collect money from them.

Indeed, a report from the BLS also states that in an effort to combat online shopping, brick-and-mortar stores may emphasize customer service to improve sales. “Traditional retail stores should hire more sales workers to provide this service,” says the bureau’s retail industry forecast for 2014 to 2024, which projects a 7 percent increase in jobs.

Human workers are also more versatile, and they are able to perform a broad range of job duties that include helping customers find items, operating a cash register and re-stocking shelves. “Because retail sales workers have this versatile range of functions, their usage should also increase,” states the report. It’s important to note, though, that most stores today already employ stockers and customer service attendants, so it’s not clear if companies will increase hires in those areas enough to compensate.

Of course, a lot of this is speculation sparked by Amazon’s introduction of its new retail format, which is only in one outlet in Seattle right now. It’s unclear whether it will gain popularity and become more widespread.

Even if this cashier-free system takes off, though, there are ways to maintain the number of jobs in retail. The rise of online shopping did not appear to severely impact the number of jobs in the industry between the years 2004 and 2013, although employment did suffer between 2007 and 2010 because of the overall economic downturn.

“A technology driven increase in productivity should not cost any net jobs,” says Josh Bivens, director of research and policy at the Economic Policy Institute. “The faster productivity growth we’ve ever seen came between 1945 and 1970 and 1995 and 2001 — and job growth in these periods was the fastest, not slowest, on record,” he says.

Bivens believes that managing the macroeconomy to ensure enough growth in demand to soak up the extra productive capacity is key to maintaining the number of jobs. Of course, that’s easier said than done, and it requires the injection of more money into the economy. That means more than just increasing GDP; it means growing a base of consumers through increasing wages and creating new jobs. And those jobs can’t be focused entirely in high-skilled fields.

Regardless of the feasibility though, Bivens reiterates that technological advancements are not to be shunned. “The policy bungling is what’s to be feared, not the productivity growth,” he says. In other words, while it is possible that developments in tech, such as Amazon Go, and the resulting bump in productivity could kill jobs, it’s up to economists and politicians to make sure that they don’t.