“Apple will acquire an online data storage firm such as Box or Dropbox, while video streamer Netflix will offer movie downloads in the U.S., predicts research firm CCS Insight in its 2016 outlook,” Reinhardt Krause reports for Investor’s Business Daily.
“Both Apple and Box have partnered with IBM to target the enterprise market — large companies, government agencies and educational institutions. An acquisition would enable Apple to extend iCloud technology into the enterprise market, says CCS Insight,” Krause reports. “Apple will also replace Alphabet’s Google search engine with Microsoft’s Bing in its Safari mobile Web browser by the end of 2017, says U.K.-based CCS Insight.”
Krause reports, “CCS Insight also predicted: An Audi [Volkswagen], BMW and Daimler consortium will buy BlackBerry’s QNX auto-entertainment platform by 2017.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iCal’ed.
DuckDuckGo should be the default search engine.
Duck Duck Go uses search results from google as well as other search engines. They aggregate search. They stopped using their own technology a long time ago because of the expense and inferiority of their own tech Apple could simply go the DDG route for privacy.
Anything but Bing.
I would love it if they bought Dropbox!
NO!!! I love Dropbox and pay for a 2 TB account. I would dread Apple buying them as, to date, Apple has a terrible record in ‘cloud’ services. In my opinion, Apples current iCloud offering is a disaster (in contrast, iDisk was fairly usable). I say this as a longtime (1985 on) Mac user and evangelist. Dropbox works great across the 5 computers I regularly use while there always seems to be some hiccup with one or more of the iCloud services.
Though I would agree with you, it would be a nice asset to add the Dropbox team to iCloud, to improve things. But you never know.
Bring back the iDisk!
Would be cheaper than buying Dropbox.
Apple did try to buy Dropbox under Jobs but the offer was refused.
Yes, at a lunch meeting with the founders of Dropbox Jobs offered to buy them out for $800+ million, and they turned him down.
Absolutely agree with Alexander – Duck Duck Go is the way to go. I never thought I would be able to get away from Google for search, but Duck Duck Go has met all of my needs. Even their image search is good. Every once in a while I compare the two, and I have found no reason to go back to Google. I realized everyone’s mileage may vary, but I am very happy with my choice.
As far as a DropBox or Box acquisition is concerned, I think iCloud Drive has solved a lot of the lost functionality of iDisk. Again, this has been the case for me. Other people’s mileage my vary.
Does anyone know if the iCloud development tools are still a mess? I know that was a cause for concern at one time.
I mostly use Duck Duck Go, but sometimes when I only have a snippet of information or a name I want to look up that is probably misspelled, I go to Google. For all of their privacy faults they are still the supreme emperors of search for good reason.
When I first saw Dropbox, my first thought was someone is making the PC file system more Mac like with drag and drop and ease of use. What’s the big deal???
Ooooh! A RESEARCH FIRM! Well, there you have it then.
Bing ?
God no, please don’t
Box: Strictly a Windows server cloud backup service.
IOW, if you want to use Box, you’re going to be stuck using stupid Windows naming limitations, which is a big PITA. So Apple buying Box? I don’t think so.
Apple buying Dropbox? That would be Apple admitting they’re too stupid to duplicate the same software services. Apple already has the server space. Not that I’d mind Apple integrating Dropbox into their meagre iCloud service.
Oh and neither Box nor Dropbox offer Trust-No-One cloud services, meaning that any clown or NSA zealot can access any user data they like over at the server end. That is NOT in Apple’s best interest. Someone along the lines of SpiderOak would be MUCH better suited.
Apple dumping Google for gawd-awful, ‘we’re so good we have to use Google to supplement our results’ MS Bing? Could happen. Then every single Apple user would force their systems back to using Google. Google is an arrogant, ripoff, clunkiness expert company. But they continue to have the best search engine ever made.
Hmm. What if Apple joined the DuckDuckGo project and used THAT as their default search engine? THAT I’d like. DuckDuckGo ain’t no Google. But that’s YET. DDG only gets better with time.
Overall, this article comes off as a pile of stuff excreted out of a round table brainstorming session. Filler.