Editor’s note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about tech news and digital culture. He writes regular columns about social media and tech for CNN.com.

(CNN) — Apple released Mountain Lion to developers last week, a new operating system that will make your desktop computer work more like your phone than ever before.

The trend is clear: The desktop operating system will merge with the mobile OS in the coming years. The question is: Why?

Let’s start with the trend itself. First off, Apple is integrating cloud services much more deeply in Mountain Lion than any previous operating system. That means your music, photos, calendars, contacts, emails and more can now stay in sync across your phone, tablet and Mac.

Apple has also unified your messages across your devices: The Message app (formerly iMessages) will replace iChat on the Mac.

Pete Cashmore is the founder and CEO of Mashable.com.

That’s not all: Mountain Lion also gets a notification center that works just like the notifications you receive on your phone. Games Center is coming to the Mac as well, allowing you to play games against your friends who own iPhones and iPads.

Apps like Reminders, Notes and Contacts are also all getting desktop versions — and of course these sync with your mobile devices so your data is always up to date.

Most notable of all: Apple is now pushing software updates through the Mac App Store, hinting that the App Store may become the only way to get software on your Mac in the future.

So what are the advantages of your desktop computer merging with your phone’s functionality? And are there any downsides?

Simplicity

The main reason Apple wants to make Macs work like the iPhone and iPad is simple. Or rather, simplicity.

Despite decades of innovation and the invention of the graphical user interface, computers remain too confusing and complex for the majority of people.

While more powerful software with complex functionality will continue to exist for highly technical users, most consumers want a device that’s easy to use and intuitive.

The rise of the iPad and iPhone prove that there’s huge demand for such simplicity, and that desktops too will need to become more streamlined.

The downside of simplicity? Simple systems are often less “open” and provide less freedom to try new things: Tasks are either easy to complete (because the developers thought of that use case) or not possible at all.

Security

Mobile operating systems could potentially be more secure than their desktop counterparts. In particular, if Apple makes the App Store the only way to download apps to your Mac, it would become more difficult for users to install malware (since Apple manually approves every app in the store).

What’s more, mobile features like tracking the location of your devices or wiping them remotely will make consumer desktops more secure.

There are downsides to app stores, however.

Not only would devices become less open — the makers of operating systems become gatekeepers — but you could argue that Apple and its rivals simply want to force the use of app stores so that they make more money for themselves.

Syncing

Perhaps the most obvious benefit of making desktops work more like phones is unity between all your devices.

With a similar (or single) operating system on all your gadgets, syncing apps, contacts and calendars between them all becomes effortless.

There’s a downside for users, however: Competing operating systems tend not to work well together, and using one operating system across all devices means uses are “locked in” more than ever before.

So there you have it: Your desktop computer is becoming more and more like your phone — and in fact the line between the two will one day disappear.

If you think it’s just Apple’s devices that are headed toward a simpler operating system, however, you’d be mistaken — Apple is merely in the news because Mountain Lion became available to developers last week.

In fact, Microsoft’s Windows 8 takes its cues from Windows Phone, meaning that the two major desktop operating systems will mimic your mobile devices very soon.

CNN.com – Technology

Editor’s note: Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz are the sarcastic brains behind humor blog and book “Stuff Hipsters Hate.” Got a question about etiquette in the digital world? Contact them at netiquette@cnn.com.

(CNN) — During one’s bustling life there are a collection of moments — fragments out of time — that afford one a sense of slow-down reflection. A kind of reprieve from the mania that is living.

The 15 seconds it takes for the light to turn green. The 30 seconds waiting in line for one’s morning coffee. The minute-and-a-half of unsupervised freedom you get before your boss climbs out from under his/her desk, wipes the tears from his/her scarlet face and resumes steering the good ship Your Job.

And how do many of us pass those few free seconds when time slows down, the breeze buffets our staid faces and we’re reminded that we are all pinpricks on some great, spinning orb lost in infinite space? Contemplating one’s very storied existence? Or fiddling with Instagram in an effort to look busy?

Likely, it’s the latter.

Which brings us to this week’s challenge: Make like our forefathers (or, you know, us, five years ago) when they were faced with a spare moment and take a look at the whole damn world around you, instead of where your ex just checked in on Foursquare (the strip club down by the river?! WTF?!).

Lest you waiver in your attempts to stay vigilant, remember, we’ll be taking this challenge right along with you — and we’re some twitchy people.

Now, without further adieu, here are five instances in which we task you with holstering your cell and, like the big brave boy/girl that you are, staring into the rheumy eyes of the world around you and saying: “My birds are mad as hell, and I’m not going to play them anymore.”

1) In the elevator.

We know, we know, the elevator is probably one of the top five most awkward places in the world — what with the cattle-like proximity to strangers and co-workers alike creating a moist, coffee- and morning breath-scented jungle stew of humanity each morning.

“If I don’t check my e-mail” you may cry, “What in the hell am I even to look at? The numbers slowly illuminating until we reach my floor? That little TV screen displaying daily grooming tips and vocabulary words? But, but, but… I already KNOW what a ‘widget’ is!”

How about, might we suggest, saying “Hello” to your fellow metal box occupants? Especially people you actually know — it’s awkward and borderline weird-as-balls to pretend not to see someone 6 inches away from you.

Besides, don’t people in romantic comedies (and Aerosmith songs) always meet in elevators? Do you really want to trade in a madcap romantic adventure culminating in a frantic race to the airport for a quick fiddle with Facebook mobile? We didn’t think so.

2) In transit lines.

Speaking of airports… (See what we did there?) Waiting in line for any kind of transit — airport security, the subway, the bus, (insert other ring of hell here) — can be a maddening state of affairs.

“I just want to get SOMEWHERE!” you might rant, gnashing your teeth, “I am very important and very busy and I just want to get on this people-moving device so that I can sit around and finally get SOMEWHERE!”

Such mania will often impel one to take out one’s phone and swipe madly through a variety of screens with much eye-rolling and sighing — in an effort to display just how busy and harried one is — even if, in reality, one is merely scrolling through one’s Spotify playlist of Disney music.

In such cases, cease and desist with the heart attack-inducing displays on impatience and, I dunno, meditate or something?

Seriously, you’ll get there eventually, and, in the meantime, you’ll probably start slowing everyone else down when you inevitably get so distracted looking for the Glee kids’ cover of fun.’s “We Are Young” that you listlessly come to a complete halt in the middle of the subway stairs.

3) When your friends are doing something you don’t want to be doing.

Not into going to museums? Fair enough. Not really digging on this band? That’s fine. Just trying to get through “Beauty and the Beast” in 3D? WTF is wrong with you?

We get it. Sometimes friends rope you into activities that might not be your bag, and, in an effort to be a good pal, you go along for the ride anyway, whiling away the time with Words With Friends until you can finally leave MoMA/Terminal 5/the movie theatre and drink.

But here’s the thing, dude, your friends (the real ones, not the one that just played “Areola” for 73 points) are on to you. Mostly because, you know, everyone can see your phone glowing like an eye-busting beacon through this darkened theatre. So put it away and get some freaking culture.

4) Waiting for people at bars.

Your cellphone won’t really dissuade the creepiest of creepers (“Hey lady, who you texting? Me? Oh, right, you don’t have my number. Want it?”) so give up the charade. Send your friend or date a quick “I’m here!” text and then quit illuminating your “going-out face” with the blue, blue light of your iPhone 4S.

“But what shall I do in meantime?” you may whine. “It’s much too dark in this little dive to continue slogging my way through IQ84!” Well, why not chat with the bartender?

Folks of that profession are likely of the artistic-leaning variety, and require sad, sad tales to continue crafting the songs/books/short films that are their true passions. So let fly — you can’t really afford a therapist anyway.

5) Anywhere where you are not fully clothed.

We’ve said it before, but it appears that we have to say it again, judging from a recent study showing that 75% of respondents have used their phone in the bathroom. Just… c’mon you guys…

CNN.com – Technology

Editor’s note: Chester Wisniewski is a senior security adviser at Sophos Inc., Canada. He researches computer security and privacy issues and is a regular contributor to the blog Naked Security.

(CNN) — A few days ago, controversy erupted when news broke that Google and other online advertising companies bypassed privacy protections in order to track users of Apple’s Safari web browser and iOS mobile devices.

This is not the first time, nor likely the last time, that Google finds itself in hot water for questionable behavior. At a time when many companies (notably Facebook) try to come up with ingenious ways to hoard personal data about consumers for lucrative ends — undermining users’ privacy along the way — Google’s actions reflect what is becoming the norm in this hypercompetitive space.

Many compare tailored Internet advertising to the old small-town butcher, grocer and tailor. As relationships with these merchants developed over time, they learned about your preferences and were able to provide you with a higher level of service.

But this is a broken analogy, for several reasons.

I grew up in a small town, and guess what — you have no privacy in a small town. It wasn’t until I moved to a large city that I developed an appreciation for not being judged, spied upon and tracked by my community. When I moved to the city, I had a clean slate and something akin to true anonymity.

Similarly, the companies tracking your every move on the Web don’t stop tracking when you visit a new website, or even when you change Internet providers, computers or browsers.

In the nondigital world, this would be like having the butcher, grocer and tailor follow you to your workplace, your home and your family vacation destination. They bring along their children and some of their friends — not saying who, just people they know.

This might result in the perfect cut of meat for your mood, a recommendation for spring vegetables that just came in, and some really awesome workout clothes for your new Pilates classes — but I don’t think any of us would really find this an acceptable tradeoff.

Google tracks unknowing Apple users

Google gets new privacy policy

Google stopped using the offending technique after it was reported, although Microsoft is now reporting that Google is using a similar technique to bypass protections in Internet Explorer 9. Google said it had circumvented the protections against third-party cookies in Safari to allow Google+ users to click “+1″ (instantly share) when they like an advertisement. That this technique allowed advertising tracking cookies to be placed as a result was just an accident.

Google further defends itself by saying the trackers were not collecting personal information. They were simply checking whether you were logged in to Google and what your preferences were with regard to its advertising.

The problem is that, as a result of this circumvention, Google’s ad networks were also able to start tracking users — an unintentional side effect, according to Google.

Therein lies the problem. Google and other advertising networks chose to circumvent built-in privacy technologies that were designed to prevent the very thing they were trying to do. Google’s own engineers recognized this as a security flaw in the browser code last summer and submitted a fix to the Webkit project.

It is hard to understand how this mistake could have happened, considering the intense scrutiny Google’s privacy policy has received in recent weeks. Clearly the testing of this code was either cursory or nonexistent.

I choose to use Gmail, but that doesn’t mean I expect Google to undo other privacy choices I’ve made in order to make social sharing more convenient. Google is heading in a direction that sounds a lot like Facebook’s frictionless sharing, which automatically shares your activities on the Web through social apps — and that’s scary.

The bottom line is that defining privacy using technical specifications will always lead to clever circumventions. Isn’t it time to take a page from the laws meant to restrict our digital freedoms and use that broad language to instead write laws that defend our privacy?

In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act restricts our ability to break digital locks like copy protection and encryption. It is illegal to bypass a “technological measure that effectively controls access to a work.”

Basically, this means if the author of a protected work intended to protect it, you must have a darn good reason to break that protection.

Shouldn’t this be the way privacy works? If I take an action that indicates my intention to avoid being tracked, shouldn’t you be required to honor it, even if you suppose it will diminish my “experience” with your products?

Jonathan Mayer, the researcher who described how these cookies exploited the Safari bug, concluded his disclosure by calling privacy protections a “cat and mouse game” or “arms race” with advertising companies.

Average Americans shouldn’t have to stay one step ahead of advertisers by understanding the complexities of how cookies work and the intimate details of how they are used.

Perhaps we should take a piece of advice from Howard Beale from the movie “Network”:

“I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell — ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!”

Privacy isn’t dead, it’s just being pulled out from under our feet.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Chester Wisniewski.

CNN.com – Technology

CNN.com – Technology

(WIRED) — Apple’s latest OS X update, Mountain Lion, adds a slate of new features, nearly all derived from iOS 5. There’s one big omission, however: Siri, Apple’s voice-controlled virtual assistant, does not make the migration from mobile to desktop.

Now, technically, Siri isn’t a part of iOS 5. It’s marketed as the most game-changing feature of the iPhone 4S (which runs iOS 5), and Apple has remained mum on whether Siri will ever be ported to other devices — this to the pique of independent developers who’ve hacked the feature to run on everything from the iPod touch to thermostats.

Clearly, Siri is Apple’s most celebrated user feature. And, clearly, there’s interest to see it appear on other Apple devices. Indeed, companies throughout the consumer tech industry are exploring novel new user interface models, including voice-control and gesture-control.

But porting Siri to Mountain Lion desktops would pose several challenges. Apple was smart to leave it out of the latest desktop update, and here’s why.

Microphone logistics

Siri: Apple’s new voice recognition

Microphone positioning on MacBooks and iMacs would present technical challenges for any Siri desktop port.

The iPhone is designed to be held up to your face, and has a built-in mic that includes advanced noise reduction technology to ensure your voice is heard loud and clear, while street noise and the nearby guy shouting into his phone aren’t picked up.

In part, this is accomplished by using two microphones: one near your mouth to pick up your voice, and another near the headphone jack to identify and cancel out background noise.

Yes, your MacBook Pro has an omnidirectional microphone built-in. It’s very convenient for using FaceTime in conjunction with the notebook’s camera, or for the speech recognition function built into Macs for OS control.

The omnidirectional mic, however, doesn’t offer the same voice-processing sensitivity of the iPhone 4?s dual-mic arrangement. All told, Siri voice analysis would be far more challenging on a Mac computer, particularly when other voices or noises are in the room.

Granted, using an external mic, or even the mic on your throwaway iDevice earbuds, could provide a solution. But even though Siri is still considered a beta product, Apple wouldn’t resort to such an inelegant hack just to put Siri on Macs.

“Apple has been reluctant to put in features that require something like that,” Forrester analyst Frank Gillett told Wired. “It’s too fussy for what they like to do. Current speech-recognition products work pretty well if you wear a special high-quality microphone. What’s very clear is they need the mic on your face, right by your lips.”

Location detection

Siri is all about location-awareness. She wants to give you directions, provide local weather reports, and locate the closest sources of exotic cuisine. But desktop computers don’t include native GPS.

“I think the main challenge [in bringing Siri to Mountain Lion] would be the lack of an accurate location being available,” said William Tunstall-Pedoe, CEO of True Knowledge, which has developed a Siri clone called Evi. What’s more, as Tunstall-Pedoe points out, desktop computers are relatively stationary devices, so a Mac version of Siri may not even need location-awareness, as a large portion of Siri’s talents would never be engaged.

All of which begs the question, If a good portion of Siri’s functionality isn’t even germane to the desktop experience, why even deliver a port?

While MacBooks don’t currently include GPS services, various web services (like Google Maps) can figure out your location by using either IP geolocation, or by triangulating your position based on WiFi networks around you. These strategies, however, deliver location accuracy limited to about 150 feet, whereas GPS can peg you within 10 feet of your precise position on the Earth. Future MacBooks could easily include GPS chip built-in for more exact positioning, but for now, laptop and desktop geolocation capabilities aren’t accurate — or even that necessary.

Hands-free voice control isn’t needed

People tend to use Siri because their hands are tied, like when driving. Thus, “Siri, where’s the nearest gas station?” With Siri, you can find the answer quickly, and relatively safely, while keeping your eyes on the road. But these basic use cases just don’t transfer to the desktop.

“I think it is fair to say that the advantages that a voice-powered assistant give are stronger on a small mobile device,” Tunstall-Pedoe said. “PCs typically have a much larger screen and a keyboard and mouse.” Or, in Apple’s case, a trackpad or Magic Trackpad instead of a mouse, depending if you’re on a laptop or desktop.

Either way, hand-driven data entry is a familiar — and generally effective — method for using today’s computers. What’s more, as Tunstall-Pedoe points out, “PCs are also often used in environments where the use of voice would be awkward,” such as inside an open floor plan office.

Granted, if you’re disabled or injured, you could certainly make use of a hands-free feature. But in these cases, you would probably want a tool more robust than Siri. Which brings us to our next point:

Limited use cases

With Siri, you can do things like schedule reminders, look up restaurant and business information on Yelp, get information from Wolfram|Alpha, and ask general search engine-style queries. That’s not a large number of functions, and they’re not specifically suited to the desktop environment.

Indeed, why would you have Siri look up something when you can more quickly run your own Google search?

“On the iPhone, people want to do short things, like quick dictation and sending a quick text message,” Gillette says. The use cases would be different on a Mac, and not necessarily centered around short phrases. Siri’s capabilities would need to expand in order to handle these different functions.

Always-on data

Lastly, Siri needs a constant data connection in order to interface with Apple’s servers. Until MacBooks include a built-in 3G, or more likely, 4G data connection, WiFi alone won’t cut it for consistent, high-quality network availability, Gillett says.

Gillett also believes Siri ties into unique hardware features that make chatter between one’s device and Apple’s data center more streamlined. “There seems to be special silicon within a special chip that has capabilities for voice recognition that a Mac wouldn’t have,” he said.

Gillett notes that Siri is sometimes able to analyze a query and provide a response extremely quickly, while other times, it takes 10 to 15 seconds of processing. “I think the chip does some pre-analysis, shrinks stuff it has to send, Apple’s data center gets a crunched answer, and Siri displays it on screen,” Gillett said.

“Apple may be working on Siri-enabling features [for Macs] in the future, but there will be some hardware enhancements to go with it,” Gillett said. “And they’ll think long and hard about the use case before they implement a voice feature in the Mac.”

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Copyright 2011 Wired.com.

CNN.com – Technology

Editor’s note: Scott Nova is executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent, nonprofit labor rights-monitoring organization that investigates working conditions in factories around the world.

(CNN) — Apple’s CEO Tim Cook says the company “cares about every worker” in its factories and that “no one in (the) industry is doing more to improve working conditions than Apple.”

Of course, when it comes to issues of corporate responsibility, talk is cheap. What matters is not what Apple says, but what it does.

And what Apple does in its vast global supply chain has been well-documented, which is why the company is in public relations overdrive, frantic to protect its once pristine corporate image.

Consider the fate that befell workers at a factory in Chengdu, China, that makes products for Apple. In May, independent investigators issued a report documenting grave dangers to workers at the facility. They warned the factory was failing to control the profusion of dust produced by the manufacture of aluminum cases for the Ipad 2. When a factory is suffused with aluminum dust, there is a high risk of explosion. Apple ignored the report and refused to meet with the authors, the investigators said. It did nothing to address the danger.

Two weeks later, the factory exploded, killing four workers and injuring 18. In the wake of the explosion, Apple said its suppliers took measures to control aluminum dust. But despite this, in December 2011, another explosion, at an Apple supplier factory in Shanghai, injured 61 workers.

Grievous labor rights problems at Apple’s supplier factories have been known for years, including the spate of worker suicides in 2010 at the giant plant in Shenzhen, China, known as “Ipod City.” At this factory — owned, like the Chengdu plant, by Apple’s biggest supplier, Foxconn — more than a dozen workers took their own lives by throwing themselves from the roof of the factory’s overcrowded dormitories, in apparent protest of the brutal treatment facing workers at the facility. (Foxconn reportedly responded by putting up nets outside the dorms and making workers sign pledges not to kill themselves.)

In recent weeks, public awareness of these issues has increased exponentially, thanks to a huge jump in media interest, raising Apple’s public relations problems from a low simmer to a rolling boil.

When a company comes under this kind of pressure, sometimes genuine change in policy can occur. The more typical response is a mere change in rhetoric. This is the route Apple is choosing.

Apple’s major move has been to announce that it has joined an organization called the Fair Labor Association, which will “audit” Apple’s factories. According to Apple, the Fair Labor Association is an independent watchdog that will work tenaciously to hold Apple and its suppliers accountable.

Unfortunately, while there are some fine people at the association, the organization is not the independent watchdog Apple claims it to be. Indeed, most of its money — millions of dollars per year — comes from the very companies whose labor practices it is supposed to scrutinize. Although Apple has not disclosed its financial relationship with the Fair Labor Association, it is likely now the organization’s largest funder. Moreover, on the association’s board of directors sit executives of major corporations such as Nike, Adidas and agribusiness giant Syngenta. The job of these executives is to represent the interests of other member companies, such as Apple. Under the Fair Labor Association’s rules, the company representatives on the board exercise veto power over major decisions.

Independence, as most people understand the term, means an organization is not funded and governed by the companies it is charged with investigating. Despite the financial relationship, Apple argues that the Fair Labor Association will act independently and that the association’s review of Apple’s factories will probably be “the most detailed factory audit in the history of mass manufacturing.”

Early indications are not encouraging. Just one day after launching what was supposed to be a long and uncompromising investigation of Foxconn’s Ipad plant in Shenzhen, the association was already issuing public praise of Foxconn and Apple.

On Wednesday, CNNMoney/Fortune ran an article with the headline, “Apple iPad plant is ‘way, way above average,’ says inspector.” Fair Labor Association President Auret van Heerden said this about Foxconn to Reuters: “The facilities are first-class. … I was very surprised when I walked in the door how tranquil it is. …” The CNNMoney/Fortune article notes that “whether intended or not, van Heerden’s remarks served to support (Apple CEO) Cook’s contention that no one has done more than Apple to address the working conditions at factories.”

Van Heerden reached these conclusions after a guided tour of the factory provided by Foxconn’s owner, Terry Gou. The views of Gou, one of the wealthiest men in Asia, are well-known to Foxconn workers because, as punishment for displeasing their managers, workers are sometimes forced to spend hours writing out copies of his personal sayings. Clearly, Apple’s partnership with the Fair Labor Association is not, in and of itself, going to usher in radical change.

So what steps would Apple take if it were genuinely committed to improving its labor practices? For starters, it would open its factories for inspection and worker trainings to genuinely independent groups such as Hong Kong-based SACOM, the organization whose report on the Chengdu factory could have saved the lives of the workers killed there in May, had Apple paid it heed.

And if Apple genuinely “cared about every worker,” it would pay every worker a living wage — enough for workers to achieve a minimally decent standard of living, support their families and even save a bit toward a better future. Today, barely 1% of the retail price of an Ipad goes to the workers who make it; 33% goes to Apple’s profits. Apple’s profits are so high, and its global labor costs so low, that it could triple the wages of its 700,000 manufacturing workers and help them achieve a living wage (just a few dollars an hour in China), and still make $ 40 billion a year. A wage increase of 16% to 25% at Foxconn, announced today as Apple’s public relations blitz reaches a crescendo, doesn’t come close.

Next time you are at the Apple Store, consider bellying up to the Genius Bar and asking why the most profitable company in the history of technology can’t pay its workers a living wage and why, if Apple is really ready to open itself to independent scrutiny, it doesn’t allow inspections by organizations in which it is not a dues-paying member.

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