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Wednesday, September 14, 2011, 06:53 pm
Intel's McAfee to add remote wipe, tracking features to MacBook Air-like "ultrabooks"
After acquiring security firm McAfee last year, Intel has announced plans to embed iCloud-like remote lock, wipe and location tracking features in silicon for PC "ultrabook" competitors of Apple's MacBook Air .Intel, in its ultrabook-branded efforts to push other PC makers to copy the success of Apple's MacBook Air, announced a "collaborative effort" with McAfee to deliver antitheft technologies for devices based on its chips. Intel paid $7.68 billion to acquire McAfee a year ago in a deal that closed in February.
The "partnership" between Intel and its wholly owned subsidiary "will deliver essential capabilities including device lock, data wipe and location tracking" for lightweight mobile computers, according to a press release Intel issued today.
The company has previously set aside $300 million in its Intel Ultrabook Fund to "help drive innovation in this new category of devices" defined by Apple's MacBook Air.
Find My Mac
Apple first introduced remote wipe, lock and location tracking features for its iOS devices as part of MobileMe, but it will soon release these features for Mac OS X Lion as part of iCloud.
Last month AppleInsider reported that Find My Mac features were already live for developers in iCloud, allowing users to remotely activate an alarm, send a message, lock the screen or wipe the contents of a registered Lion Mac.
Systems can also be tracked on a map (shown below) just like today's iOS devices under MobileMe's Find my iPhone feature.
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Previous Comments View All
$7+ billion for McAfee? What an incredible waste of money.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta 
$7+ billion for McAfee? What an incredible waste of money.
$7+ billion for McAfee? What an incredible waste of money.
Really? Why? You do realize there is much, much more to McAfee than the retail AV products, right? Those are just a drop in the proverbial bucket.
Pass.
Whoppity-Doo
Quote:
Originally Posted by StLBluesFan
Really? Why? You do realize there is much, much more to McAfee than the retail AV products, right? Those are just a drop in the proverbial bucket.
Really? Why? You do realize there is much, much more to McAfee than the retail AV products, right? Those are just a drop in the proverbial bucket.
Of course.
But Intel paid 3.5 times revenues for the company - when a large portion of their products are not significantly better than the free, open source products on the market place.
I'd like to see Find My Device + Remote Wipe on ALL Apple Laptops, Desktops, not just iOS Devices!!! Better yet, Snap The Photo of the Thief and Mail it to the owner!!!
In Theory, that should make all such devices unattractive to thieves. Of course, if the thief doesn't know about this Remote Wipe, they'll think that they can get away with it... Maybe they will by re-selling it, but then, whoever buys that stolen property will have to prove that they didn't know that it was stolen, and so on...
Quote:
Originally Posted by macologist
I'd like to see Find My Device + Remote Wipe on ALL Apple Laptops, Desktops, not just iOS Devices!!! Better yet, Snap The Photo of the Thief and Mail it to the owner!!!
In Theory, that should make all such devices unattractive to thieves. Of course, if the thief doesn't know about this Remote Wipe, they'll think that they can get away with it... Maybe they will by re-selling it, but then, whoever buys that stolen property will have to prove that they didn't know that it was stolen, and so on...
I'd like to see Find My Device + Remote Wipe on ALL Apple Laptops, Desktops, not just iOS Devices!!! Better yet, Snap The Photo of the Thief and Mail it to the owner!!!
In Theory, that should make all such devices unattractive to thieves. Of course, if the thief doesn't know about this Remote Wipe, they'll think that they can get away with it... Maybe they will by re-selling it, but then, whoever buys that stolen property will have to prove that they didn't know that it was stolen, and so on...
I hope that whatever they do works better than what we have on the iPhone. I know of several people who had their phones stolen and sold on kijiji, etc and nothing can be done to recover them. The thief wipes the phone clean and removes the SIM card and then it's just as good as knew. Every phone is supposed to have a unique id number but phone companies insist there is nothing they can do to prevent people from using stolen phones.
Quote:
Originally Posted by toysandme
I hope that whatever they do works better than what we have on the iPhone. I know of several people who had their phones stolen and sold on kijiji, etc and nothing can be done to recover them. The thief wipes the phone clean and removes the SIM card and then it's just as good as knew. Every phone is supposed to have a unique id number but phone companies insist there is nothing they can do to prevent people from using stolen phones.
I hope that whatever they do works better than what we have on the iPhone. I know of several people who had their phones stolen and sold on kijiji, etc and nothing can be done to recover them. The thief wipes the phone clean and removes the SIM card and then it's just as good as knew. Every phone is supposed to have a unique id number but phone companies insist there is nothing they can do to prevent people from using stolen phones.
I agree with your point on Unique ID... We'll see... It's all work in progress....
Thanks for your Comment!
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I would think this would eventually help apple also. This would make it that even if I wiped out a MacBook pro and reinstalled everything it would still phone home since its now hardware embedded instead of software.