bugs - page 2

How to fix OS X Yosemite’s annoying, overflowing save sheet bug

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Another annoying Yosemite bug. Screenshot: Cult of Mac
Another annoying Yosemite bug. Screenshot: Cult of Mac

Since installing OS X Yosemite, I’ve had a problem: Every time I try to save anything in Chrome, the Save Sheet interface is so long it runs off the screen, making it impossible for me to click “OK” or “Cancel.” I assumed it was something I had done, but nope, it’s a particularly annoying Yosemite bug. Here’s how to fix it.

Apple: ‘Vast majority of OS X users’ need not worry about Shellshock exploit

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Security researchers recently uncovered a bug in Bash, a core shell tool used in Linux and Unix computers for the last couple of decades. OS X is built on Unix, so concern arose about the Mac’s vulnerability to hackers exploiting Bash to remotely run code without the user’s consent.

Dubbed “Shellshock,” the exploit has been compared to the Heartbleed hack from earlier this year. Apple has quelled everyone’s fears by saying that the “vast majority of OS X users” are not vulnerable to Shellshock.

Facebook fixes long-standing iOS bug, eliminating 50 percent of app crashes

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It’s hard to know what to make of an app update that promises to “cut crash rates in half.” If you’re a glass-half-full kind of guy, you’re happy with the increased stability. If you’re a glass-half-empty guy, though, you wonder why the hell they can’t get around to fixing the other 50 percent of unexpected software crashes.

I’m sort of a glass-half-empty kind of guy, at least when it comes to Facebook. So when they announce that their latest update to the Facebook for iPhone and iPad app has “solved a long-term mobile debugging problem and reduced the crash rate for people using the Facebook for iOS app by more than 50%,” I wonder why the hell a multibillion dollar corporation can’t fix the other half.

RoboRoach Lets Kids Turn Real Cockroaches Into iPhone-Controlled Cyborgs

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Robots are pretty cool, but have you ever wanted to create your own iPhone controlled cyborg? Backyard Brains is banking that a lot of kids are interested in cyborg technology and neuroscience (ethical dilemmas be damned), so after three years of R&D they’ve come up with the RoboRoach – a small electronic surgery kit that lets you turn a real-life cockroach, into an iPhone-controlled cyborg for a few minutes.

The kit comes with a backpack that contains a battery and receiver you superglue to the cockroach after sanding down a patch of shell.  You have to jab a groundwire into the cockroaches thorax, and then after that you carefully trim the antenna so you can stick some small electrodes onto both of them and receive signals from your iPhone. Don’t worry, the iPhone app and the cockroaches come free with the $99 kit, so you don’t have to go hunting for some behind your supermarket’s dumpster.

Apple To Release Fix For iOS 6.1 Security Issues Next Week [Rumor]

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iPhone Self Improvement

Yesterday it was discovered that a bug in iOS 6.1 allows users to bypass the iPhone lockscreen without entering in the proper PIN. We’ve seen bugs like this in the past, and Apple has always been quick to shut them down.

Apple has already told us that they will fix the iOS 6.1 lockscreen bug in a future update, and according to a new rumor, that update will hit devices sometime next week.

iOS 6.1 Upgraders Reporting Battery And Connectivity Issues, But Apple’s Rushing Out A Fix

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Even under iOS 6.1 the iPhone struggles to stay awake.

iOS 6.1 has already been out for a few weeks, but we’re now seeing reports that it’s causing problems for a lot of upgraders.

Multiple users have taken to Apple’s iPhone support forums to report that their battery life has dropped significantly since the iOS 6.1 upgrade. Others have claimed that iOS 6.1 has given them a slew of problems when trying to connect to 3G networks, and Apple has yet to respond.

Bug Prevents iOS ‘Do Not Disturb’ From Switching Off On New Year’s Day

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If you had to get up early on January 1st, I hope you used the built-in Clock app to set your iOS alarm; otherwise you may have spent an unintentional extra few hours in bed. Why? Because the Do Not Disturb feature of iOS 6 switched on as usual on the last day of 2012, and then stayed on.

Many users of Do Not Disturb report that the feature didn’t switch itself off yesterday morning.

Former MobileMe Users Find Free 20GB iCloud Storage Extended Until 2050

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When Apple was doing its damnedest to kick people out of MobileMe in June this year and get them to use iCloud instead, one of the incentives they gave the soon-to-be disposessed was a free offer that former MobileMe members would get 20GB of iCloud storage gratis, instead of the 5GB Apple gives the rest of us suckers. But it was only for a limited time, until September 30, 2012.

Looks like Apple may have extended their offer, though. Some iCloud usersare now noticing that they’ve got 25GB of iCloud storage to play around with until September 30, 2050, when their free 20GB should have been snatched away from them yesterday. Even more interesting is that some non-MobileMe users are seeing the same deal, and have found themselves getting a free 20GB bump in storage.

Mountain Lion ‘Save As’ Command Also Overwrites Original File

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Save As... Or is it?
Save As... Or is it?

 

 

Remember that neat little hack to bring the Save As command back to Mountain Lion? It turns out that it’s not quite as handy as we first thought. Sure, you can now “Save As” instead of being forced to “Duplicate” the file and then save it, but Mountain Lion will not only save your changes in the new document, but write them to the original at the same time.

Apple Releases Trackpad Update For New Retina MacBook Pros

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Apple’s been releasing a surprising number of updates for their next-gen Retina MacBook Pros… all the odder given the fact that pretty much no one has one. We can only assume there are some software kinks that still need working out, which is why — following last night’s software update — Cupertino has just released a new update for the trackpad to “address an issue where the trackpad may not respond consistently to user input.”

If you have a Retina MacBook Pro — which you almost definitely don’t — go grab it.

Source: Apple

Only 50% Of iPhone 4S Owners Say iOS 5.1 Has Improved Their Battery Life

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Even under iOS 5.1 the iPhone 4S struggles to stay awake.

On Monday, we asked iPhone 4S readers how Apple’s latest iOS 5.1 software has impacted their battery life. The new handset is notoriously poor at staying alive for a whole day, but those pesky bugs affecting its battery life were, according to Apple, quashed in the recent software update.

Nearly 6,000 readers voted in our poll, and here are the results.

Weird iOS 5 Bug Lets Prying Eyes View Saved Photos On A Locked iPhone

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A Canadian technical consultant by the name of Ade Barkah has uncovered a particularly weird bug in iOS 5 that lets anyone see a locked iPhone’s Camera Roll from the device’s lock screen. The only catch is that viewable photos must have a time stamp that’s newer than the iPhone’s internal clock.

If an iPhone’s clock were to ever roll back or get manually set to a time in the past, any photo taken after that date can be easily seen by means of the Camera app shortcut on the iOS lock screen.

Apple Fixes App Store Bug And Allows iOS 3.1.3 Users To Download New Apps Again

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Following a report published yesterday that detailed the problems users were having when attempting to download apps from the App Store under iOS 3.1.3, Apple has quietly issued another App Store update today to rectify the issue. Those who are still running this firmware on their iPhone or iPod touch should now be able to download new apps directly to their devices again.

Oh Goody. Google’s Gmail App For iOS Is Back, This Time Mostly Functional

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We’ve been burned on Google’s official Gmail app for iOS before, but after having been pulled mere hours after its initial release for being completely broken, it is now back with fixed push support.

Don’t expect any other new features though: there’s no multi-account functionality or anything else, just a simple app wrapper around the HTML5 interface. Google swears more features are coming, but at this point, we’re taking any of Google’s promises with a grain of salt.

Having Problems With WiFi in Lion? Here’s How You Can Fix Them

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Airport in OS X Lion

Hopefully by now you’re running Apple’s shiny new cat, OS X Lion, on your Mac. You may be noticing all the improvements and changes that Apple made in Lion, and we recommend reading our comprehensive review of Lion for all the info you need to know about the latest edition of OS X.

For most users, upgrading to Lion is a smooth and pain-free process. For others, there seems to be several problems, specifically with intermittent Wi-Fi dropouts.

9 Things Apple Needs to Fix in iOS 5 Before Gold Master [Feature][Updated]

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This post has been updated with a note from the author at the end.

Apple released the first beta of iOS 5 after WWDC two weeks ago, and I’ve been using it on my iPhone 4 and iPad 2 ever since.

Is iOS 5 Beta 1 stable enough to use full-time? A lot of people have asked us this, and after trying for a few weeks, I can respond pretty authoritatively: not by half. Here’s our list of at least nine things that Apple needs to fix before iOS 5 beta is usable full time.

iOS 4.1 Security Hole Allows Anyone With Physical Access To Your iPhone Access Your Phone Data

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Watch out! A major new security hole in the iPhone software has just been discovered… a bug that allows anyone who picks up your phone to easily unlock it and access all of your phone data under iOS 4.1.

In case you want to try it yourself, here’s how you gain access to a locked iPhone through the security hole. When your iPhone 4 is locked with a passcode, tap the emergency call button, then enter three hash keys. Now tap the call button then immediately hit the lock button.

Do the above correctly and you’ll be rewarded by being dumped into the iPhone’s Phone app. From there, you can access the user’s favorites, contacts, dial pad,. recent calls, voice mails and even send SMS and email messages through the Address book.

It’s a pretty huge bug, and it seems to work on all iPhones running iOS 4.1. This is the sort of thing Apple will patch pretty quickly, but in the meantime, show extra dilligence and care in not leaving your locked iPhone lying around.

Apple Will Fix Recurring Alarm Daylight Savings Time Bug Before iOS 4.2

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Two and a half weeks ago, as New Zealand rolled back their clocks for Daylight Savings Time, Kiwis started noting an odd iOS bug: any recurring alarms they had set on their iPhones were going off an hour early. Curious, but then it gets curiouser: last week, when Australian had to adjust for Daylight Savings Time, it happened again.

We love the story: its like a mini-Y2K for iOS 4.1, hitting iPhone users around the world as their country enters Daylight Savings Time… and with Europe set to enter DST on October 30th, and America on November 6th, the bug is about to hit a lot more people.

So what does Apple intend to do about this? Apple Australia says they’re on it and have developed a fix that will be included as part of an upcoming software update. Since iOS 4.2 has a late November ship date, that means we’re likely to get an iterative iOS 4.1.1 update sometime before the 30th, when all of Europe starts hurling their iPhones dramatically against the wall when their alarms rob them of an hour of sleep.

iOS alarms broken for New Zealand users after Daylight Savings

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About a month ahead of America and Europe, New Zealand clocks fall an hour back when they switch to Daylight Savings Time on the last Sunday of September. Apparently, though, New Zealand iPads and iPhones are proving a tad overzealous when it comes to falling back this year: numerous iOS users are reporting that since yesterday’s switch, their alarms are going off an hour early. Given that Kiwis were already having to wake up an hour earlier than they were used to, that’s quite a rude awakening.

iTunes 10 Kills Off Old Automator Workflows

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Apple’s Automator is a fantastic way to manage your iTunes tracks… but with Apple’s iTunes 10 update, many iTunes-specific Automator workflows have simply stopped working.

According to upset users in Apple’s discussion forums, the vast majority of iTunes Automator actions go missing when you install iTunes 10. Try to run a previously created iTunes workflow and you will ironically be prompted to install iTunes 4.6 or higher. Ugh.

The good news here is that none of the functionality has disappeared from AppleScript, so it should be able to replicate the functionality if you change gears. Still, the sudden absence of iTunes functionality in Automator is mysterious: did Apple purposely drop the functionality, or is this a bug? If the former, what was Apple’s rationale?