Month: January 2013

I Don’t Know What’s Going on With the Cheap iPhone Rumours Any More ⇥ appleinsider.com

An update to the cheap iPhone rumours. Jessica Lessin of the Wall Street Journal initially published a report stating that Apple was working on a cheaper iPhone. Reuters published a story refuting those rumours, which used the Shanghai Evening News as a source:

Apple Inc. will not resort to a cheaper iPhone to expand its market share, marketing chief Phil Schiller told a Chinese newspaper in an interview when asked about speculation the company is developing a less expensive version of its popular smartphone.

Schiller pointed out that though Apple commanded just 20 percent of the smartphone market, it had 75 percent of the profit, according to an interview he gave the Shanghai Evening News.

So, that’s that, then? Not quite:

Reuters issued an update Friday morning informing readers that it had withdrawn the story, which featured the headline “Apple exec dismisses cheaper iPhone as a market share grab — report.” It was based on a report from the Shanghai Evening News, but that original story was later updated with “substantial changes to its content,” which prompted the significant retraction.

The retraction from Reuters is short, and doesn’t make any sense. As AppleInsider points out, there have been no changes to the original Evening News story. I don’t know what’s going on here.

Nokia Decrypts HTTPS Data ⇥ gigaom.com

David Meyer of GigaOm:

Nokia has confirmed reports that its Xpress Browser decrypts data that flows through HTTPS connections — that includes the connections set up for banking sessions, encrypted email and more. However, it insists that there’s no need for users to panic because it would never access customers’ encrypted data.

I was so worried that you were gathering the most private information from your customers, but I’m relieved to know that you’re not actually reading it, Nokia. Way to clear that up. That could’ve been a PR disaster.

How About an Amazon AutoRip for Books? ⇥ splatf.com

Dan Frommer:

It’s been a few years since I’ve bought a physical CD, and ripping music is already super-easy thanks to iTunes and iTunes Match. Books, however, are much harder to “rip”. (There is actual ripping involved.)

I still frequently buy physical books from Amazon, and often re-buy them in Kindle or iBooks format to read on my phone and iPad. This always feels like a backwards, bullshit requirement.

An AutoRip for books would be totally great, but is an unlikely prospect in the near future for the reasons Frommer outlines. Until book piracy skyrockets or publishers stop praying for the halcyon days of dead tree-only books, there’s not going to be a digital copy version of your past purchased novels.

Apple’s Next Battleground Isn’t TV; It’s Web Services ⇥ allthingsd.com

A great piece from John Paczkowski:

So, as the 2013 Apple rumor mill ramps up, and the prognosticators wonder whether the company’s product pipeline includes a television, a watch, or both, consider this: While Apple could likely use another disruptive innovation on which to build its continued success, what it really needs — crucially — is to do Web services well.

Via John Gruber, who comments:

You know how mobile developers rave about how on iOS it’s easier to create great apps — better looking graphics, better performance, smoother animation? You hear the opposite when it comes to things like iCloud Core Data syncing.

Well said by both. I trust Apple to sync my bookmarks, calendars, and contacts, and it hasn’t failed me yet. But I’ve experienced so many problems with third-party data syncing via iCloud that I wouldn’t trust it to back up either of my iOS devices. It’s perplexing how Apple can smoothly stream trailers and full-length HD videos from their data centres, and engineer incredible desktop software, but they can’t seem to combine the two traits to build a great web services experience.

Amazon Launches AutoRip ⇥ thenextweb.com

Matt Brian writes for The Next Web:

Looking to bridge the divide between the CD and the digital download, Amazon has launched a new service named “AutoRip” which will provide you with free MP3 versions of the CDs that you have bought from the company.

Like iTunes in the cloud, for physical CDs. Neat.

The service isn’t just for new music either. Amazon says that if you have bought an AutoRip-eligible CD from as far back as 1998, it will automatically add it to your Cloud Player account (which has 5GB free) without you having to lift a finger.

Oh, that’s just showing off. That’s fantastic.

Amazon only appears to have worked out music deals with labels in the US, so it currently only offers the service to “customers with billing addresses in the fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia who have a U.S. bank-issued credit card.”

Well never fuckin’ mind then.

This Is Not a Repeat From 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 ⇥ 9to5mac.com

Two smart points from Élyse Betters of 9to5Mac regarding the rumours of a cheaper iPhone to be launched this year. Her first point:

The report, which cited “people briefed on the matter,” asserted that Apple has explored such a device for years, and even the Wall Street Journal has made very similar claims over the years, but the plan has apparently now advanced.

While the Journal has a good track record with regards to rumours, they’ve been running this cheaper iPhone bit on a perennial basis, and it still hasn’t materialized.

The second thing in Betters’ story that caught my eye is her inclusion of this tweet from iLounge editor Jeremy Horwitz:

What we heard (still early) re: new budget iPhone model – not a “larger” 5″ screen, but rather unified 4″ screens for 5S/5/new budget model.

I wrote something similar:

I’d wager that this is an iPhone 5 with a polycarbonate (read: plastic) body and an A5 processor, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it take the place of the iPhone 4S when the iPhone 5′s successor is announced.

Consider that if this product were not announced, Apple’s iPhone lineup would be 4S, 5, and 5S (presumably). The 4S would be the only model with a 3.5″ display, and the only one with a 30-pin connector.

Fire Is Hot ⇥ theverge.com

Vlad Savov of The Verge:

There’s something about 2013’s Consumer Electronics Show that’s different from every other iteration this decade. You might not realize it immediately, for it’s marked by the absence rather than the arrival of a new technology, but it’s there and we’re all sensing it on a deep, subconscious level. And it feels good.

3D is gone.

No shit. Count one more for the CES scrap heap.

The Year of Samsung ⇥ qz.com

MG Siegler on Saturday reflects on “the fifth horseman“:

We all know the “four horsemen” of tech: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. These are the companies that pretty much everyone agrees will shape the foreseeable future of the tech sector. In some circles, that list makes waves for who is not included: Microsoft. But any rational thinker (meaning those outside of Redmond or anyone who hasn’t made a career as a .Net developer) knows that Microsoft simply no longer belongs on that list.

But that doesn’t mean the list is perfect. In fact, I do think there’s an omission that’s becoming a glaring one: Samsung.

Samsung is huge. They seem to have products in every category of industry with a microchip. At the moment, they’re best known for their smartphone lineup. They’re really the only company making a profit in the Android world (see also today’s announcement from HTC).

Christopher Mims of Quartz projects that all of this means that 2013 will be the year of Samsung:

The company’s diverse portfolio buffers it against the success or failure of any one product, but it also means that Samsung competes in increasingly commoditized products with manufacturers throughout mainland China and Taiwan.

They might out-compete it eventually. But for now Samsung can boast of being the largest vertically integrated technology company on the planet.

A Low-Cost iPhone? ⇥ theverge.com

According to Jessica Lessin of the Wall Street Journal, Apple is working on an inexpensive version of the iPhone:1

The cheaper phone could resemble the standard iPhone, with a different, less-expensive body, one of the people said. One possibility Apple has considered is lowering the cost of the device by using a different shell made of polycarbonate plastic. Many other parts could remain the same or be recycled from older iPhone models.

Sam Byford of The Verge chimes in:

According to the Digitimes report the device may have a larger screen than the current iPhone 5, and the Journal says it could come as early as late 2013.

If this doesn’t sound like the Apple product strategy you know, that’s because it probably isn’t as described. I’d wager that this is an iPhone 5 with a polycarbonate (read: plastic) body and an A5 processor, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it take the place of the iPhone 4S when the iPhone 5’s successor is announced. It also might not have the iPhone 5’s thinner display — opting for a taller version of the iPhone 4S panel and assembly — but Digitimes is high and drunk if they think it’s going to be a larger screen in a cheaper product. It doesn’t make sense as a product strategy.

The older iPhone models have always been the “low-cost” version of the iPhone. Expect this to be along similar lines.

  1. Google has the article cached for non-subscribers. ↥︎

Content and Curation ⇥ incisive.nu

I have long supported the notion that what is done by Kottke, Gruber, and so many other bloggers can be considered curation, and have intended to write an article about it. However, I discovered that it had already been done, to much the same detail as I would have, in a wonderful 2010 “epic poem” by Erin Kissane (via Poynter).

If you’re interested in reading more, I highly recommend Brian O’Doherty’s “Inside the White Cube”, Paul O’Neill’s “The Co-Dependent Curator”1, and Sarah Cook’s “New Media in the White Cube and Beyond”.

  1. You can find this in the November 2005 issue of Art Monthly, or on EBSCO Host. ↥︎

The Big-Ass Table ⇥ youtube.com

Regarding the Lenovo IdeaCentre Horiwhogivesafuck: remember this parody from five years ago?

Of course Lenovo’s press release didn’t have any information about how much this behemoth weighs, so I dug around. CNet says that it’s 17.8 pounds. My Thunderbolt Display is, according to Apple, 23.5 pounds. They both use a 27-inch panel but, while my display has a glass front and aluminum back, the Lenovo doesn’t. On the other hand, it also has a full computer inside, plus a battery. That’s a huge weight reduction (but it’s still not light enough), so you’d expect the battery to be very, very tiny. And, indeed, it gets a measly two hours of portable use before you need to find a socket.

“Easily Fits Into Your Life” ⇥ pxlnv.com

Screengrab from Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Horizon product tour. I have a 27″ display on my desk. Truth be told, it’s an Apple display, which means it’s made of aluminum and glass, and is therefore quite heavy. In fact, it’s too heavy, and it doesn’t have a computer in it, nor a battery. This Lenovo thing is a tank. Who the fuck are they selling it to?

The Consumer Electronics Show Is a Massive Waste of Time ⇥ slate.com

Farhad Manjoo of Slate:

The fact that CES is an enormous waste of time isn’t news to tech journalists. In private, gadget reporters will tell you that covering the show is a tremendous hassle and rarely yields any interesting news. But because CES demos make for great headlines and visuals—hey look, Steve Ballmer unveiled a tablet PC even before Apple did!—and because of the sheer volume of new stuff to post about, CES is a boon for gadget blog traffic and a honeypot for advertisers. To be sure, I’m very grateful that my reporting colleagues are all out covering the show; in the unlikely event that something of consequence is announced at CES, I’ll happily scour Engadget, Gizmodo, and other sites from the comfort of my home.

CES is full of products that either:

  1. You won’t ever be able to buy, or
  2. You won’t ever want to buy, because you have taste.

Lots of plasticky garbage and lots of vapourware make this a wasted week.

The Huawei Ascend Mate ⇥ theverge.com

By my math, the screen of this beast is three inches wide, and over five inches tall. If you hate your thumbs, and think Samsung’s Galaxy Note doesn’t look nearly as stupid as it could when taking a phone call, this is the thing for you.

Going Solo ⇥ bloomberg.com

Jungah Lee for Bloomberg:

“We plan to release new, competitive Tizen devices within this year and will keep expanding the lineup depending on market conditions,” Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung said in an e-mailed statement today. The company didn’t elaborate on model specifications, prices or timeframe for their debut.

The new handsets will come as Samsung looks to reduce its reliance on Google Inc.’s Android operating system after the Internet search company acquired handset maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for $12.5 billion in May. Executives from Intel, Samsung, NTT DoCoMo Inc. and Vodafone Group Plc formed the Tizen Association last year to support the open-source software.

As Apple seeks to reduce their dependence on other companies with their own processors and cartography, Samsung is doing the same. The ecosystem silos of today are already making it difficult for users to change platforms; what will this move do for the future? What if the version of Android on Motorola phones becomes proprietary to Google?

Henry Blodget/Consumer Reports/Business Insider Trifecta ⇥ youtube.com

Note: Due to the linkbait nature of this article, the main link will go to a quite excellent Foghorn Leghorn clip. If you wish to subject yourself to Henry Blodget’s insurmountable stupidity, here’s the link.

The Macalope already kicked the crap out of Blodget and Business Insider once today, but that was for a different article. My turn to take on this trio of idiocy. The headline:

Consumer Reports Says iPhone 5 Is the Worst of the Top Smartphones

At least someone reads Consumer Reports, so I don’t have to.

The iPhone has been such a mind-boggling success that it drives more than half of Apple’s overall profit. And for most of the past five years, Apple has had a lock on the “best smartphone in the market.”

In recent years, however, competitors have caught up with the iPhone. Some reviewers think Samsung’s new phone is superior to Apple’s latest phone. And many people expect Samsung to leap ahead when the new Galaxy S4 comes out this spring.

These “some reviewers” and “many people” aren’t cited nor linked, of course.

Another respected product reviewer, Consumer Reports, agrees with those who think Apple has lost its edge.

Consumer Reports is “respected” in the product review space for electronics the way Charlie Sheen is “respected” in hotel rooms: when they show up, things tend to end in a complete disaster visible mostly through a veil of tears.

Consumer Reports actually rates the iPhone 5 the worst of the top smartphones.

The worst, dear reader. Not just the worst, but the worst. With italics and everything. Shit, dawg.

CR doesn’t spell out the reasoning for its numerical ratings (yet) …

Spoiler alert: random number generators.

… but the results are still startling.

What if the iPhone 5 was beaten by a BlackBerry, or the Motorola ROKR? That would be startling, for sure.

As you can see, on AT&T and Sprint, the iPhone 5 is rated behind two phones:

The LG Optimus G (Android) [The what?]

The Samsung Galaxy S III (Android)

I should clarify that Blodget added the “The what?”, not me.

On AT&T, the LG got 79 points from Consumer Reports, and the Samsung got 78. The iPhone 5’s “startling” result? 77.

On Sprint, the LG got 77 points, the Samsung 76, and the iPhone 5 received 75.

For both carriers, Consumer Reports ranks the iPhone in the top three of the phones on each network, by a margin of two points. Two entire points. “Startling”.

On Verizon, the iPhone doesn’t rank in the top three, but who gives a fuck? It’s Consumer Reports. Blodget couldn’t be bothered to ask them what criteria they used — probably because that would require the use of both hands on the keyboard — but Bryan Johnston of Wireless and Mobile News did:

Some things that Consumer Reports hold important are call quality, ability to play Flash, ability to create Microsoft Word and Excel documents, ability to use voice/data at the same time, ease of use, separate call buttons and removable batteries.

(Insert some joke about how Apple should’ve included a discontinued product on their phone.) In the esteemed words of Cake, “shut the fuck up”.

Voyeuristic Tendencies

Cognitive dissonance is an interesting mental phenomenon. It is the ability for the human brain to hold and resolve two seemingly-conflicting opinions simultaneously. Intriguingly, one must approach the field of surveillance art in much the same way. Mass-surveillance is a controversial strategy of law enforcement, with proponents noting its ability to solve crimes, and detractors concerned by the rescinding of personal privacy liberties. Artists working in the field of surveillance art must resolve these two conflicting arguments in their works, which often critique the mass use of CCTV cameras by using surveillance itself. The privacy issues that surveillance artists raise are real, and are worthy of the public’s attention. In order for otherwise-disinterested people to become attentive of these concerns, artists often must violate their own hesitations towards the technique using the recontextualizing of the surveillance image to their advantage, without patronizing viewers who may not be familiar with the approach.

The act of surveillance began with the literal eyes of the law, but it was with the invention of the camera that radically transformed it. The camera itself, in both still photos and moving pictures, changed the role not only of surveillance, but of the image, as Van Alphen explains:

For it is primarily since the invention of photography and film that the image has developed a specific, epistemological function. Until that moment, paintings and drawings had more typically functioned as instructive models, as idealizing models, or as objects of wonder. Photographic and filmic images, in contrast, quickly came to function as epistemological tools to get to know reality. (49)

The ability to capture reality in the moment was a feature sought after by law enforcement, due to the perception of its infallibility (hence the saying of a photo being worth a thousand words). Photographic and video evidence is among the highest-regarded evidence in a Western court of law, due to its reliability and perceived lack of falsifiability.1 With the technological advances of smaller, lighter, cheaper, and higher-quality cameras, surveillance has become ubiquitous to the point of being referred to as “mass surveillance”. The United Kingdom is widely-regarded to be the most surveilled developed nation, with between 2 million (Gerrard 12) and 4.2 million (Wood 19) CCTV cameras in use. British lawmakers described the general intent of the program:

National security, public safety, the prevention and detection of crime, and the control of borders are among the most powerful forces behind the use of a wide range of surveillance techniques and the collection and analysis of large quantities of personal data. (House of Lords 16)

In addition to general public safety, these are the common reasons given to the use of mass surveillance. These oft-cited reasons are absolutely sound. Surveillance cameras have been used to solve cases that would have otherwise gone cold (Lee, “Caught”), even if they do not necessarily deter crime in the first place (Lee, “Study”). But despite their financial blessing of the system for the stated reasons, the same lawmakers are not unaware of the privacy implications and concerns of it:

… the shift towards mass surveillance technology has the potential to affect large sections of the public, and to render privacy, and the personal autonomy that flows from it, vulnerable. (House of Lords 26)

The House report recommends that potential privacy implications are assessed prior to any new surveillance systems are installed. However, this warning has not had a noticeable impact on the state of surveillance in the UK. A recent story from the BBC indicates that over 100,000 high definition cameras will be installed in the country by the end of 2012.

Though the United States has not adapted the CCTV camera as aggressively as the United Kingdom, privacy concerns have been raised by the American Civil Liberties Union, citing a lack of correlation between violent crime statistics and camera presence (Kravets). However, this hasn’t stopped American law enforcement agencies from using both hardware and software in their own attempt at mass surveillance:

For more than two years, the police in San Leandro, Calif., photographed Mike Katz-Lacabe’s Toyota Tercel almost weekly. They have shots of it cruising along Estudillo Avenue near the library, parked at his friend’s house and near a coffee shop he likes. In one case, they snapped a photo of him and his two daughters getting out of a car in his driveway. […]

Mr. Katz-Lacabe isn’t charged with, or suspected of, any crime. Local police are tracking his vehicle automatically, using cameras mounted on a patrol car that record every nearby vehicle — license plate, time and location. (Angwin, Valentino-DeVries)

Automatic face and character detection has been made possible in the past several years due to higher-resolution cameras coupled with more sophisticated algorithms.

It’s important to clarify that there is no evidence of any sort of conspiracy or Orwellian leanings by governments. Such a claim is ridiculous and unfounded. As noted above, these technologies have a demonstrably positive effect when solving crimes. They are a largely-impartial, high-quality witness. But, again, they do not have a deterring effect (or, at least, there is no correlation between camera presence and crimes committed). And, due to their nature of constantly recording an image, the presence of surveillance cameras draws serious concerns over the privacy of a space.

What is mentioned above all should fall under the definition of “surveillance”. Intriguingly, however, the definition of the word isn’t what one might expect, given its current context:

surveillance (səˈveɪl(ə)ns). n. close observation, especially of a suspected spy or criminal.

The act of surveillance has acquired new meaning since this definition was published in the Oxford English Dictionary. What was once a word used exclusively for law enforcement in a targeted, deliberate manner has now become a catch-all term for the act of observing and recording people in public or semi-private spaces. Technological advances in small closed-circuit cameras have allowed an average person access to recording equipment that was once reserved for professionals.

Surveillance art is a relatively recent genre of art, largely brought on by the ever-encroaching presence of cameras as they became more compact, capable of recording film, and use colour films. The possibilities of these unique characteristics were seen by artists, and since the latter group became more invested in self-reflexivity with the rise of modernity, it comes as no surprise that they would be interested in exploring qualities of surveillance in creative ways.

In 1996, Amy Alexander created the Multi-Cultural Recycler, a piece of net art that can also be viewed as surveillance art. Using two (sometimes three) randomly-selected webcams, the Recycler combines and alters them with a short Perl script so as to distort near-real-time reality. Alexander’s exploitation of the instant, worldwide broadcast quality of webcams highlights the lack of privacy experienced by those on the viewed side of the camera, as she explains:

The user establishes him/herself as part of web culture, but also subjects him/herself to constant surveilance. Thus, issues of voyeurism and spectatorship, previously reserved for media such as cinema and television which involve substantial gatekeeping, now are applicable to those members of the general public who voluntarily become the objects of the websurfer’s gaze.

While the frequent mentioning of privacy concerns surrounding the constant gaze of a camera is beginning to become repetitive, the difference in this case is that those issues are presented as an integral part of an artwork. These concerns are the driving force behind surveillance art as a genre; they are, indeed, what artists practicing in the genre intend to highlight with their work. Yet, in a cruel twist of cognitive dissonance, these artists must exploit the privacy issues they are vehemently against. It isn’t contradictory, however — the recontextualizing of controversial issues does not imply endorsement, and is frequently used as a demonstration thereof. There is an inherent incommensurability to the consideration of controversial issues within and without an artwork due to those issues’ context in the work itself.

Surveillance cameras can also be used for more creative pursuits. Google’s Street View option in their maps services, for example, uses nine cameras mounted in a globe on the roof of a car to capture panoramic images as the vehicle drives around a city. Software stitches the images together, allowing users to see storefronts and unfamiliar neighbourhoods before they arrive. Based on the most interesting images he finds, artist John Rafman created 9 Eyes, a weblog with interesting, invasive, and beautiful Street View imagery. Some of the images — such as the covered cadaver laying in the middle of a South American road (Rafman 2) — can be read as a commentary on the ability for the Street View cameras to see more in a given instant than any human could, thereby gathering more information.

Images weren’t the only information Google’s cars were collecting during their perusals of neighbourhoods and avenues. In 2011, the Federal Communications Commission found that the cars also collected private banking data, usernames and passwords, email addresses, and other information due to a WiFi snooping bug (Pfanner). A 2012 followup investigation by British and French authorities found that Google had not deleted the data as ordered in the original settlement (Pfanner). The data has apparently since been deleted, but it’s interesting to note the conflation of the personal liberty concerns raised by Rafman, working with the very medium found to have privacy issues of its own.

Other artists have focused their entire practices on privacy in the digital world. For an entire year beginning June 30 2009, Kyle McDonald automatically tweeted every 140 characters he typed on his keyboard using a custom keylogger in an attempt to explore the boundaries between private and public, and the intentional versus the implied. It wasn’t McDonald’s first foray into art that reflected his concerns about his privacy, but due to the breadth of information still available today (at the keytweeter Twitter handle), it stands out as an important artwork for the artist.

In 2011, McDonald took a time-lapse video using his webcam, and realized that his own expression while using his computer was static. He wondered if others viewed their computers the same way or, indeed, if their computers viewed their users in a similarly static manner. In order to get a wide variety of users for People Staring at Computers, McDonald installed a simple application on the demo computers in various New York-area Apple Stores. The software would snap a photo when it detected a face, and upload it to a private server for McDonald to catalogue.

However, since the interior of a retailer is private property, McDonald required permission from both Apple and the customers to capture images within the stores, and received a visit from the Secret Service. While the charges were dropped, McDonald was unable to continue capturing faces for the production his artwork. The images he was able to recover have since been exhibited worldwide. (McDonald “Art, Apple”). Despite the intent of the work as an exhibit of how computers see our faces, it could arguably be described as a work of surveillance art. The computers’ fixed viewpoint is similar to that of a CCTV camera, and the faces it constantly captured are as much under surveillance as they are under the security cameras in the store.

The privacy concerns raised by artists working in surveillance art are very serious. In the presence of thousands of cameras, we lose a basic liberty of privacy; this is even in spite of a space being public, as the images are not ephemeral, but recorded permanently. Due to the proliferation of CCTV cameras deployed across developed nations and, increasingly, in developing nations, our right to personal privacy is being corroded. News articles citing statistics are intriguing, but artists creating captivating works of surveillance art are able to bring to the forefront a more frightening reality. Ironically, in order to make the public aware of those privacy issues, the artists tend to violate their own privacy principles. The dissonance of these conflicting approaches is often resolved in ways even more deeply concerning than the artist intended, or could have hoped for.

  1. A topic which, due to the focus of this essay, will not be discussed, but is worth keeping in mind. ↥︎

Regarding the Android SDK’s License Agreement ⇥ zdnet.com

Torsten Grote argued earlier today that the license agreement introduced with the Android 4.2 SDK has made it proprietary, but Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of ZDNet disagrees:

This clause applies to the SDK binary, not the SDK source code files, and it has been around for years. The SDK source code, like almost all of Android, is covered by the Apache Software License 2 (ASLv2).

That’s interesting because this is refuted, as far as I can tell, by the first section of the license (emphasis mine):

1.1 The Android Software Development Kit (referred to in this License Agreement as the “SDK” and specifically including the Android system files, packaged APIs, and Google APIs add-ons) is licensed to you subject to the terms of this License Agreement. This License Agreement forms a legally binding contract between you and Google in relation to your use of the SDK.

“Android system files” is vague, but could definitely include the clauses in question, specifically 3.3 and 3.4.