AirDrop - page 2

My friend Tyler is a world traveler. Tyler has a favorite game he likes to play on his iPhone. When he’s in a busy area like an airport, he likes to AirDrop a picture of his naked ass next to a waterfall to unspecting iPhone users.

The photo is fairly harmless and usually draws some laughs. But the next time Tyler flies through New York City, his favorite game could earn him some jailtime thanks to a newly proposed law that would make it illegal to send sexually explicit images to anyone that doesn’t want to received them (which is pretty much everyone).

Apple introduced its super useful AirDrop file transfer feature way back in 2011. However, a patent licensing company called Uniloc — sometimes referred to as a “patent troll” by critics — claims that Apple is infringing on its intellectual property.

Uniloc says that Apple’s AirDrop tech infringes on a patent first filed in 2000, a decade before Apple debuted AirDrop. And it wants some sweet Apple cash for its troubles!

iOS 12 adds the ability to share passwords via AirDrop, which is super-duper useful. Maybe you want to send your Netflix password to your spouse so you can watch a movie on his iPad, or maybe you need to share the password you just created for the local grocery delivery service.

In short, any situation in which you previously used a service like 1Password or Dashlane to show your password in large type so somebody else could copy it, you can now use AirDrop instead. Here’s how.

A teenage girl grounded an Hawaiian Airlines flight for 90 minutes by accidentally sending fake crime scene photos to other passengers over AirDrop.

Flight 23 was already taxiing the runway on Friday morning when passengers started reporting their concerns to the crew. The 15-year-old distributor was trying to send photos from her high school medical-biology class to her mother.

AirDrop, Apple’s incredibly convenient file-sharing feature, has been ripped off by Microsoft. The latest build of Windows 10 introduces the ability to quickly send files between computers using “Near Share.”

One of Android’s best file transfer apps has finally made the leap to iOS. AirDroid makes it incredibly easy to wirelessly transfer all kinds of file formats between your devices. And unlike AirDrop, it’s not exclusively for Apple devices.

Picture the scene: You’re on a plane, and your iPhone is your entertainment hub. You may be listening to podcasts, or music, or audiobooks. You may be playing a game, or reading Instapaper, or just checking and editing your vacation photos. Whatever you’re trying to do, it will be interrupted every time you unlock your iPhone, because your stupid boarding pass is right there on the lock screen. Even hours into a transatlantic fight, the boarding pass you already used hangs around, blocking things like the now-playing feature, and lock-screen controls for any music or audio apps.

Thankfully, it’s easy to get rid of — if you know where to look.

AirDrop, Apple’s built-in sharing feature, lets you beam pretty much anything between any Apple devices. You can use it to share photos, videos, URLS, documents, snippets of text — in short, anything that can be shared using the standard “sharing arrow” icon is fair game for AirDrop.

AirDrop really should be your first choice for sharing, because it doesn’t use the internet to send the files. It connects you and the recipient directly to each other using Wi-Fi, and makes the transfer that way. This makes AirDrop secure and lightning-fast. It also mean it works as well on the top of a mountain as it does in a busy office.

Hackers have just given iPhone and iPad users a big reason to upgrade to iOS 9 due out later today: it fixes a serious AirDrop security vulnerability.

Mark Dowd, an Australian security researcher with Azimuth Security, revealed this morning that iOS 8.4.1 contains a critic security flaw in AirDrop that could allow an attacker to install malware on any device within range. Worst of all, even if a victim tried to reject the incoming AirDrop file, the bug lets attackers tweak the iOS settings so the exploit will still work.

Check out the lethal bug in action:

A London woman has reported being the victim of “cyber-flashing” after receiving two photos of a man’s genitals on her iPhone via AirDrop.

AirDrop on iOS makes it easier to share images and other files with the people around you than ever before, but it’s also a great way to troll innocent bystanders with space sloths. But there’s a way to protect yourself.

When you need to move files quickly between two Apple devices, AirDrop is an incredibly useful tool. It started out as a Mac-to-Mac thing, and then iPhone-to-iPhone, but with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, AirDrop becomes even more powerful: Now you can share files from Mac to iPhone (or iPad) and vice versa.

Here’s how.

When you travel with a Mac laptop, whether a Macbook Pro or Air, you may be leaving it open to malicious users to get into your machine.

One of the things you can do to keep them out of your precious files is to turn off File Sharing completely. Then, if you still want to share files with other Mac users, you can use AirDrop, which is more of a temporary opening of the security gates than File Sharing is.

Note that you can indeed improve security while using File Sharing on and setting up your Firewall with specific ports, but that’s the subject of a different tip.

Let’s say you’re at a conference, and you meet someone you’d like to share your contact information with. You could both download one of many apps in the App Store for this express purpose, you can hand them a business card, or you can just use the simplest solution: send them an email or text message with your contact info.

It’s super easy to do, and takes way less time than downloading an app. It’s also more efficient than a business card, since you know no one actually keeps those, right?

Readdle has today rolled out a major new version of PDF Expert, on of its most popular productivity apps for iOS. The new release introduces an all-new design for iOS 7, as well as a much-improved file manager and PDF viewer, support for AirDrop and background downloads, and lots more.

In OS X Mountain Lion, Apple made sharing files between two Macs easier than ever before with AirDrop… but that only works if you’re on the same network. What if you want something as easy to use as AirDrop, but with people outside the range of your Time Capsule?

Enter Infinit, a slick new Mac file-sharing app that makes it effortless to send files to anyone, even if their computer is turned off.

RunKeeper, one of the most popular fitness trackers for iPhone, now boasts a number of cool new features that take advantage of the M7 motion coprocessor built into the iPhone 5s — thanks to a new update that hit the App Store today. The app also supports AirDrop, allowing you to share your workouts with nearby friends.

Skitch, Evernote’s nifty image editing tool, has this week been given a new design and new features for iOS 7. In addition to a completely redesigned interface, the app now offers announcements for tips and information, new toolbars, and more.

Vimeo announced Wednesday that its video sharing app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad has now been updated for iOS 7. The new update lets you upload video directly from your iOS device camera, as well as offline instant playback of saved videos.

The app has been re-vamped to better match and work with iOS 7, as well, including a new video thumbnail feature, which shows live previews of video content in the smaller navigation thumbnails.

Better yet, you can now share any Vimeo videos on your device with other iOS 7 devices using AirDrop.

The wait is finally over. iOS 7 is now available to download, three months after it got its first unveiling at WWDC. You can download and install it either via iTunes on your Mac and PC, or by using the over-the-air Software Update feature baked into iOS 6.

Some of the more flashy features of iOS 7 like iTunes Radio, Multitasking, and Control Center have received a lot of the attention with iOS 7, but Apple has packed a couple of really neat features into AirDrop, Safari, and the redesigned App Store, that promise to completely change the way you use your iPhone.

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With every new version of iOS, Apple generally leaves some legacy devices behind, but with iOS 7, Apple’s only leaving the iPhone 3GS totally abandoned. That’s not to say that every iOS device is equal in the eyes of iOS 7, though: if you’ve got an older device, you’re going to find some of iOS’s features missing.

Our good friend Camillo Miller over at The Apple Lounge put us together this fantastic chart to show how compatible iOS’s varying devices are with iOS 7. And it looks pretty good! B

Basically, the only things you miss out on if you don’t have a device made in the last year is AirDrop, and if you have any iPad, you don’t get Panorama, which is the same as it was. Apple’s doing a pretty good job keeping iOS 7’s features compatible with every past device, don’t you think?

Source: The Apple Lounge

Before we get into today’s iOS 7 Beta tip, remember that any of the iOS 7 beta features and tips we share with you could change before the latest mobile operating system from Apple hits the streets this coming fall.

Also, be sure that you’re not using a beta iOS 7 on an iPhone you need to get work done on–-Apple has provided it without guarantee for developers to start working with, not for you to use on any mission critical tasks.

One of the most exciting features in the upcoming iOS 7, and it’s in the beta as well, is AirDrop, Apple’s configuration-free file sharing protocol that has been on OS X for a while. It’s making its way to iOS 7, and here’s how to use it in the beta, as well as how to set the privacy settings for the protocol.

It’s our own fault. We all asked Apple to dramatically change the look and feel of the iOS operating system, which, until yesterday, remained largely unchanged since the introduction of the original iPhone back in 2007. And we all complained when it didn’t do that with iOS 6 this time last year.

But I can’t help but feel the Cupertino company is now punishing us for all those requests, and all that complaining we did before about its skeuomorphic designs.

When it comes to design, iOS 7 is vastly different to its predecessors. It still functions in much the same way — though there are some new features you’ll need to get used to — but it looks completely different. As soon as you power it up for the first time the minimalistic feel is staring back at you, but it isn’t until you’ve completed the setup process and arrived at your home screen that you want to vomit in your own lap.

So far this week, we’ve spent time hacking our Macs via the Terminal, the best darn behind-the-scenes app you can find in Mac OS X. We’ve talked about tweaking the Finder, the user interface, security and privacy, and the Dashboard.

Today, let’s look at a few of the newer features of the OS X world, and how to make them work on older, unsupported Macs using some Terminal magic.