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Today’s topics include Apple’s carefully orchestrated shopping smartwatch experiences, opting out of Verizon’s mobile ad tracking program, Microsoft’s announcement of Visual Studio 2015 and the debut of Firefox 37.
With sales expectations and customer interest high for the upcoming Apple Watch, the tech giant is putting relatively rigid marketing and sales procedures in place to enable as many customers as possible to get inside its stores, check out the watches and decide what to buy.
Customers will have to schedule appointments to view the devices and will not be able to just wander in to look at them. In addition, Apple plans on having an assortment of some 18 combinations of watches and watchbands on display in each store, but customers won’t have the opportunity to try combinations of watches and bands that are not already on display.
Verizon has expanded the ability of customers to opt out of its “supercookie” mobile ad tracking program, by adding a process that will block identifier codes that were previously automatically added to when they use their smartphones to search the Internet.
The controversy arose about two years ago when critics complained that Verizon inserted special identifier codes into customers’ mobile data transmissions as part of the company’s Relevant Mobile Advertising program.
The intent of the ad program, according to Verizon, was not to intrude on privacy, but to customize ads to users based on what they searched for online using their mobile devices.
Microsoft has introduced new pricing and offerings for Visual Studio 2015, which will ship this summer. Mitra Azizirad, general manager of Developer Platform Marketing and Sales at Microsoft, said the company is combining Visual Studio Premium and Visual Studio Ultimate into a single offering called Visual Studio Enterprise with MSDN.
Mozilla released its Firefox 37 browser, on April 1, providing users with security patches for 13 different security advisories as well as adding new security and user-experience features.
Among the major new security features is a technology known as opportunistic encryption, which is designed to encrypt potentially sensitive data that would otherwise have been sent unencrypted and in the clear.