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Seven days ago, CEO of the most valuable, publicly-traded technology company on the planet unveiled a potentially category-changing online streaming service. In 15 more, you will be able to subscribe -- three months for free. Pundits wave the Spotify flag and spit out diatribes of disgust, much as they did when Apple launched iPhone eight years ago or iPad in 2010. Wrong again is their destiny. Will they ever learn?

Many of the doomsayers forget, or maybe just ignore, the fruit-logo company's success disrupting category after category. They also start out from a misguided premise: That Apple is a latecomer who cannot catch up with competitors like Spotify. How ridiculous. iTunes debuted in January 2001, iPod nine months later, and iTunes Music Store in April 2003. By longevity and reach, which includes exclusives (like The Beatles) and large catalog, Apple is the status quo. On June 30, the giant awakes, and the smidgens shake as it walks.

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A couple of days ago, ASUS formally revealed that it has considered snapping up fellow Taiwanese maker HTC. An acquisition would make sense for both players, and the timing is right seeing as HTC's shares have been falling like rocks in the past couple of months, losing more than half their value in such a short period of time.

However, HTC, while not in a position of strength at the moment, claims that "it will not [even] consider" a sale to ASUS, likely because it does not want to admit it is in deep trouble and has no idea how to get out of this situation.

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Cloud management specialist BetterCloud has released the results of its latest survey into the pace of cloud adoption in businesses.

The survey of 1,500 IT professionals from 53 countries also looks at the differences in cloud office systems and their customers, the current and expected usage rates for cloud applications, and the effects of cloud office systems on productivity, collaboration, cost savings and more.

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I have some advice for the European Union Competition Commission: Lay off. You don't need to reign in the Google monopoly. Apple will correct the market around search and mobile. That's one of two related takeaways from Monday's WWDC 2015 keynote. iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan up Apple's push into search and proactively-delivered information in big ways. That is if delivery is as good as the company promises.

The other takeaway harkens back to what I told you last week about Tim Cook's piracy rant against unnamed Facebook and Google alongside the friggin U.S. government -- plural if thinking beyond the Feds: It's BS marketing. Apple prepares a major competitive assault against Big G, hitting where damage can be severe: Perception and profits. I cannot overstate Google's vulnerability, which ironically is where the search and information giant exploited Microsoft during this Century.

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If you cannot expand the storage capacity on a high-end smartphone, 16 GB of available space just isn't enough. Install all your favorite apps and games, maybe try a couple of new ones, add some music, use the device for a while, and you end up with an alarmingly-low available capacity. As someone who is using a 16 GB iPhone 6 Plus daily, I have to work around this restriction.

And I shouldn't have to, which is why I find Phil Schiller's arguments on why the company he represents as SVP still makes 16 GB iPhones to be disingenuous. Phil, at least be honest: it is all about the money.

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The first quarter of this year saw a 165 percent increase in new ransomware driven largely by the new, hard-to-detect CTB-Locker ransomware family, a new ransomware family called Teslacrypt, and the emergence of new versions of CryptoWall, TorrentLocker and BandarChor.

This is the main finding of the latest McAfee Labs Threats Report released today by Intel Security. Among other highlights are a 317 percent increase in Adobe Flash malware samples and the emergence of new efforts to exploit hard drive and SSD firmware.

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When it comes to the web, you expect U.S. Government sites to be very secure. Hell, with all of the money we taxpayers pay, the websites should be the most secure in the world. Unfortunately, this is not the case. You see, not only are many .gov websites not secure, they do not even universally use HTTPS. In other words, there are shopping sites more secure than those of the most powerful nation in the world.

Today, however, this changes. Barack Obama's White House has completed a new standard that all U.S. government websites will be forced to follow. While it is embarrassing that this is only happening in 2015, it is better late than never.

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On June 3rd, music streaming service Tidal updated its Android app, which in my extensive testing over the weekend resolves a catastrophic bug that skips songs. The previous version jumped tracks before they finished playing on my Nexus 6 or 9. Last week, the lossless listening provider acknowledged the problem. The fix is in, and I am satisfied.

Tidal delivers HiFi streaming—1411kbps Free Lossless Audio Codec—at the premium price of $19.99 per month. For a music streamer charging more, about double other paid service competitors, the glitch was inexcusable. I first reported the erratic behavior nearly a month ago.

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A paper produced by a team at the University of Pennsylvania confirms something many people have probably thought true for some time: the notion that internet users are unhappy with the way their privacy is undermined by advertisers and online companies, yet feel there is nothing they can do about it.

While marketing companies like to present an image of customers who are happy to hand over personal information in return for certain benefits, the truth is rather different. Rather than dedicating time and energy to trying to stop personal data from being exploited, people are instead taking it on the chin and accepting it as part and parcel of modern, online life. It's just the way things are.

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For a while now we've witnessed the brutality of Islamic State, but less in the news is the cyber terrorism carried out by it. However that's a big part of the arsenal for this group and media outlets have been a primary target in the war. Recently the site and social media of a French TV station was taken down and defaced with messages from the group.

Following the attack on TV5Monde, media groups within France held an emergency meeting. This came after all of the network went black for more than three hours in April.

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As well as showing off a load of new Windows 10 compatible hardware during its keynote at Computex 2015, Microsoft also revealed some interesting numbers relating to the new OS, and the PC market in general.

While PC shipments and sales have definitely fallen a lot over the past few years, it’s far from game over for Windows powered devices, and things have started looking up.

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A total of 23,095 DDoS attacks were carried out on web resources located in 76 countries in the first quarter of 2015, up 15 percent from the 66 countries affected in the final quarter of last year.

This is one of the findings of a new study by cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab into the botnet-assisted DDoS attack landscape. But although the geography is expanding the overall number of botnet-assisted attacks is down by 11 percent and the number of unique victims down by eight percent.

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At its developer conference I/O 2015, Google today unveiled Android M, the latest iteration to its mobile operating system. The update brings with it a handful of interesting features and other improvements. The full-fledged version of Android M will roll-out sometime later this year, but for those who want a sneak peek a developer preview version of Android M for select Nexus devices is out now. Here’s how you can install it on your smartphone or tablet.

Android M comes with a number of interesting features including Chrome custom view, built-in fingerprint scanning feature, and permission manager. The company says that with the new update it is going back to the basics -- offering bug fixes and performance improvements to the users. For instance, Android M-powered devices will have twice as much battery life compared to Lollipop-powered devices, the company claims.

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Mobile apps do matter, otherwise my tech-savvy sister wouldn't be giving up one of the best smartphones on the market: Nokia Lumia Icon (which is the 930 internationally). She bought the handset from me last summer and from Day 1 praised the utility and usability of the user interface, attractive but sturdy design, and amazing hardware capabilities, which include the quality of images produced by the camera.

Nanette rang Thursday afternoon, explaining that she had reached the inflection point of frustration finding apps she wanted or absolutely needed. She wanted my advice about a replacement. Should she return to iPhone (Nan used the 4 before Icon) or get an Android? Her user story illuminates what can happen when someone entrenched in the Microsoft ecosystem raises his or her head above ground and sniffs the Android and Apple air.

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Windows 10 will run on a range of compatible devices, including PCs, hybrids, tablets, phones, Xbox One, HoloLens, and IoT hardware. Microsoft might be striving for ubiquity, but it knows when it comes to mobile, that the vast majority of people will continue to use Android or iOS phones and tablets.

Announced today, Microsoft’s Phone Companion for Windows 10 App, will let those users access content from whatever device they choose, and also give them access to Cortana, Microsoft’s virtual assistant.

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