The tech world had a rather amusing reaction to BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins calling the iPhone's user interface dated on Monday, especially considering how long the smartphone maker formerly known as Research in Motion had let its own mobile OS languish. But there was plenty of other interesting news to start off the week, so let's fly through a recap of five more stories right now...
MacRumors is reporting that Apple has quietly changed how it handles standard warranty claims in Australia to conform with the country's Consumer Law, which states warranties must be offered for "a reasonable period from date of delivery until the failure becomes apparent." Instead of the standard 12-month manufacturer warranty Apple offers in the rest of the world, Aussies will now get double that amount of time, to 24 months. Curiously, the Australian law requires that purchasers must contact the seller of the product for a warranty claim rather than the actual manufacturer, making it a particularly thorny problem for Apple.
AT&T announced a trio of additional Mobile Share tiers on Monday which promise to help business and other heavy data users "raise the productivity bar." The new offerings start at $300 per month for 30GB and top out at $500 per month for 50GB, all with a $30 charge per smartphone and $15 per GB for overages. Businesses can add 15 devices for 30GB plans, 20 devices for the $400 per month 40GB plan and 25 devices for the whopper 50GB plan, while consumers are limited to 10 devices per plan regardless. Don't need quite so much data for your business? Effective March 22, small businesses can make do with as little as 4GB for $30 per month, a plan that was strictly for regular consumers since launch.
The folks over at TransferBigFiles tweeted out the good news Monday that they have a swanky new website, and to celebrate they've updated their free account file size limit by 200 times -- from 100MB per file to the whole 20GB of storage, should you be so inclined to do so. Keep in mind those monstrous uploads will expire after five days and users are limited to only 20 downloads per file from a single user, but if you need less restrictive terms, the company offers 100GB of storage for $5 per month (single user) or 1TB for $50 per month for teams of up to 10 users. Either way, this is a win-win for those who need to upload big files occasionally.
Should Apple be concerned that iPhone users will abandon them in the wake of Samsung announcing the Galaxy S IV? According to Gazelle, not so much. AppleInsider reported Monday that trade-in guru Gazelle has seen an increase of 168 percent in the number of Samsung Galaxy S III trade-ins compared to the previous model, a sign that current Android users are the ones racing to ditch their creaky old handset in favor of the latest model. But that's nothing compared to last fall's iPhone 5 debut, when trade-in models of earlier Apple smartphones grew 800 percent from those eager to grab the latest and greatest.
Remember the dude who found a security flaw in AT&T's iPad user database that gave him access to data from 114,000 iPad 3G users back in 2010? According to TechCrunch, Andrew Auernheimer (aka "Weev" to his fellow hackers) was sentenced on Monday to 41 months in prison and three years probation for "a single charge of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization" as well as "fraud in connection with personal information." Perhaps more painful, Weev will be forced to pay restitution to AT&T to the tune of $73,000, without so much as a "gee, thanks" from Ma Bell for discovering the security flaw in the first place.
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