If yoo fink Cheezburger haz a flavr, yoo gonna wuv dis iFone app which make da lolcatz go woop-wwop-ffloop in yor pocketz. It down-woads da lolcatz wivvout da web stuffs which crashy yr Safarie. Srsly.
(Alternatively, if you are an intelligent human being who hates lolcats and thinks this post would have been better suited to the Cult of Lolcats blog (coming soon), the Cult apologizes for wasting your time and suggests you move on to the next post. Thank you.)
Third party iPhone app developers may be able to update and execute arbitrary code from their applications at will, circumventing Apple’s App Store approval process, according to a report at TechCrunch.
The exploit stems from a trick documented by developer/blogger Partick Collison, who figured out a workaround to allow for the display of dynamic default.png images that load when an app is opened on the phone.
Jason Kincaid, who writes for TechCrunch, believes this security flaw makes it possible that “using the same technique with arbitrary code would likely allow a developer to update and execute whatever code they’d like at will.”
Kincaid notes that this is only an issue insofar as Apple purports to retain control of everything that appears on the AppStore. Developers enjoy the capability of running malicious code in just about every Windows or Mac desktop application you can buy without a screening process similar to the one Apple maintains before allowing iPhone and iPod touch applications to be distributed through the AppStore.
It’s also worth noting that no developer or application has been found to have used this particular exploit to run malicious code to date, and that Apple could act to close the loophole before anyone’s phone is put at risk.
UPDATE: This post has been edited for statistical clarity.
iPhones fail at roughly half the rate of Blackberry smartphones after one year of operation, according to a study by Square Trade research. Square Trade, a company that sells add-on warranties covering electronic devices beyond their manufacturer warranty periods, looked at the failure rates of 15,000 phones covered under its plans. According to their data, the malfunction rate for iPhones after one year is 5.6 percent, compared to 11.2 percent for the Blackberry and 16.2 percent for the Treo.
The study projects the failure rate for the iPhone after two years will be between 9.2 and 11.3 percent, compared to actual two-year failure rates of 14.3 percent for BlackBerries and 21.0 percent for Treos.
Of course, the sample size producing these numbers is a tiny fraction of the millions of smartphones on the market and may or may not be a truly accurate picture of the actual failure rates of the three kinds of phone.
Interestingly, the study found neither battery life nor call quality problems to be major issues for the iPhones that did fail. As was true with all three models in the study, the predominance of failure-related issues had to do with the touchscreen interface.
One area where iPhone does appear to lag its two main competitors is in failure due to accident: 12 percent of iPhone failures happen because the owner drops it, spills liquid on it, or otherwise stops treating it like the sensitive mobile computing device it is.
Via MobileCrunch
The drumbeat continues as Barclays Capital Friday became the latest analyst firm to trim its projection of iPhones sales for the first quarter of fiscal 2009. Citing the weak economy, analyst Ben Reitzes believes 5 million handsets will be sold during the quarter, down from the previously expected 6.2 million.
In a note to investors, Reitzes cited a “continued weakness in the economy” and an inventory already flush with 2 million iPhones.
Barclays also cut its target price for Apple shares to $121 from $125, however retained the Cupertino, Calif. company stock as overweight.
Apple will report $9.6 billion in revenue for the December quarter and $35.7 billion for fiscal 2009, down from $36.1 billion, the note predicted Friday. Apple reported $7.8 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 31.
Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple is finding a warmer reception in Europe than at home, two new surveys indicate. The iPhone, which sold 6.9 million units during the third quarter, now owns 17.5 percent of 
the smart phone market, beating RIM for second place among European mobile phone users.
Analysts at Canalys reported Thursday Apple experienced 523 percent growth during the quarter, outpacing RIM, which registered an 83 percent increase to 15.2 percent market share compared to 2007.
Apple’s rise trimmed Nokia’s market leadership, the Finish handset giant slipping to 38 percent of European cell phone sales, down from 51 percent a year ago.
Today, Stanford professor Dr. Ge Wang and his company, Smule, introduced Ocarina, the first and only app that transforms the iPhone into an expressive musical wind instrument.
The app synthesizes sound in real-time, just like a regular instrument, based on actual gestures including wind input, tilt, and finger placement over the four holes overlaid on the multi-touch pad. Unlike other iPhone audio apps, the sound is not pre-compiled but is generated by the notes, gestures and nuance of the individual performer. As a result, it allows an iPhone user to explore and master the musical sounds of an entirely iPhone-native version of an ancient flute-like instrument.
Smule’s audio engine (CHiP) and the Smule Sonic Network make it possible to hear live performances around the world. With the globe view, you can hear performances, and see the origin of that performance.
Dr. Wang, in addition to being CTO of Smule, is director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, and the author of the Chuck audio programming language.
Formation of the first iPhone Philharmonic cannot be far behind. Perhaps one day, iPhone music will be its own category at the Grammys.
I don’t know about you, but I get funny looks from folk when I show off my iPhone, then have to sheepishly confess that it doesn’t do MMS messages.
“Phhhfft,” people say, pulling out their 2-year-old Nokias that they got for free. “Even this crappy old thing can do MMS.”
Apple’s workaround is to send iPhone owners a plain text message with a link to a webapp, where they can view their MMS. In the UK, the O2 webapp is horrible. No-one at O2 has bothered to make it iPhone-friendly. The whole setup is clunky, to put it mildly.
Ross McKillop thinks so too, and that’s why he decided to build a better webapp, one that is designed for iPhone. The result is the newly renamed iPhoneMMS, which lets you view incoming and send outgoing MMS messages, via a complex arrangement of protocols and emails.
It’s still clunky compared to proper MMS support, but it’s a good deal better than the shoddy mess supplied by O2. Until they and Apple get their collective act together to make a decent built-in MMS application, it’s the best option.
The business market, long desired by Apple, picked the iPhone to top a J.D. Power and Associates survey for smartphone customer satisfaction. Ease of operation and the Mac OSX operating system were named the two biggest reasons, according to the survey released Thursday.
The iPhone garnered 778 points out of a 1,000 total possible score. RIM’s BlackBerry scored 703 and Samsung received 701 points. Palm’s Treo took its place in the cellar, getting 644 votes.
Software problems accounted for a quarter of the complaints by corporate users regarding smartphones. Of that group, 44 percent said they were forced to reboot their phone at least once a week during the year.
Is the meteoric rise in demand for Apple’s iPhone cooling off? BMO Capital is the latest to issue a projection of slower production of the handset for the first fiscal quarter of 2009.
BMO’s Keith Bachman Thursday reduced his estimate for first quarter iPhone sales to 5.6 million from 6.6 million. At the heart of the prediction is 2 million of the 6.9 million units sold in September went 
into inventory.The analyst said due to that “channel fill” it will be difficult for the December quarter to compare to the 6.9 million handsets sold in the quarter ended September 30.
The analyst said the December quarter will bring 5.6 million iPhones sold, down from 6.6 million previously projected. Still the number is expected to be a 15 percent increase in end-user sales over the 4.9 million sold in September.
So this has popped up in the feeds this afternoon, and after my initial excited clicking all I can say is “Oh.”
Because it really isn’t a proper keyboard, it’s a tiny clip on thing that does little more than recreate the built-in software keyboard in plastic. The typing’s slow, and all thumbs anyhow.
I know I’ve been banging on about iPhones and keyboards recently, but this? This is not what I was banging on about.
Wait, what? Barack who?
(Via CrunchGear)
This iPhone robot (moves forwards, backwards, turns) from Japan was made using an Arduino CPU board with a TA7291P motor. It runs on four AA batteries.
The Demonstration video is worth a watch just for the techno background music…
Via iPhone World
Apple may have cut by 40 percent fourth quarter production of its flagship iPhone handset, a 
Friedman, Billings, Ramsey analyst said Monday.
The drop in production would be far deeper than the 10 percent cut previously anticipated.
“Our new checks indicate that iPhone production could fall more than 40 percent sequentially in the 4Q,” FBR’s Craig Berger wrote in a note to clients.
The drop in production shouldn’t be interpreted as a dip in iPhone demand. In October, Apple reported shipping 6.9 million iPhones during the third quarter.
However, the lowered production may signal “no market segment will be spared in this global downturn,” wrote Berger.
Virginia Commonwealth University design student Kyle Buckner had an assignment “to create a pedestal to hold [a] ‘precious object’.”
We hope he received an A+ for the hand-carved wooden stand he created for his iPhone. Complete with Home Screen icon “leafs” that connect to a rod that spins inside the stand’s main arm, Buckner’s piece is made completely of wood, save for bits of plexiglass which connect each icon leaf to its “branch” on the stand.
Via MacLife
If you want to know how much money you’re spending on espressos, latte and the like (and gauge how much you’re buzzing), this is the iPhone, iPod Touch app for you.
CoffeeNut costs a buck. Which is still less than a cup of coffee, these days.
Via Geek Sugar
After Style.com, which is reporting over one million ads served via iPhone in a month, companies are launching iPhone fashion apps faster than a pop singer can add extensions.
A few that caught our eye:
E! Entertainment channel. Yes, this means the Fashion Police have made it to your iPhone. More for ogling those red-carpet horrors than reading, though, since scrolling is required for catty comments.
Perez Hilton. Love him or hate him, now you can get the snark and gratuitous photos on your commute.
Ralph Lauren, who began his career as Ralph Lipschitz, tie designer is now putting his latest runway creations, plus backstage clips and a look book on the must-have accessory of the iPhone.
It seems unlike Apple, which has scoffed at inexpensive Macs and been viewed as catering to higher-income consumers. However a new study suggests the iPhone is fast becoming a favorite of low-income buyers.
From June through August, iPhone sales grew 48 percent in households earning between $25,000 and $50,000 compared to 21 percent growth overall, according to comScore.
The researchers found low-income consumers see the iPhone as a way to consolidate costs of a phone, broadband connection and music device.
iPhone stands don’t get much simpler, or cheaper, than a standard binder clip. We like.
Via To Darrin Hudson
Apple’s iPhone was among one of the few bright spots in a gloomy third quarter for cell phone manufacturers.
Apple now has 2 percent of the global cell phone market during a time when cell phone makers scrambled to adapt to slowing consumer sales. In September, the Cupertino, Calif. company reported selling 6.9 million iPhones during the third quarter, a 516 percent jump over the previous year.
“Apple has become firmly established as a top ten vendor,” Strategy Analytics announced.
Analysts Thursday said global cell phone shipments either shrank or rose a tepid 5 percent to 8.5 percent.
You’ll remember the $1000 iPhone app, I Am Rich, that made it to the AppStore in August just because it could. Well, for a savings of $100 you can get an app that actually does something useful, like monitor your multiple IP based surveillance cameras.
For only $900 Lextech Labs’ iRa serves the mobility needs of the high-end security industry, enabling users to view multiple video feeds and directly control pan-tilt-zoom cameras from their iPhone or iPod Touch.
iRa is not something you just download and off you go, however. Interested parties are strongly encouraged to locate a surveillance equipment integrator before purchasing the app. End users who download iRa from the iPhone App Store must have a working knowledge of network and digital camera system installation and configuration, with support for the app and for configuring hardware available exclusively through local integrators.
Once installed and properly configured, users can enjoy easy viewing of many video feeds in full screen video view or thumbnail view; pan, tilt and zoom control camera motion; use the touchscreen’s familiar finger drag and pinch controls; and get automatic discovery of properly configured network cameras.
Happy spying!
Google introduced Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch today with a free version of the fascinating desktop program that literally puts the whole world in your hands. I’ve spent a good portion of the morning playing around with it and am pleased to report the satellite imagery and 3D terrain effects are quite amazing.
Earth makes impressive use of touch screen technology and Apple’s accelerometer, letting you spin the globe with a swipe of your finger and literally tilt your view to the curvature of the earth to see the terrain of whatever place you’re visiting. The application has a ton of information and labeling built in, with links to over 8 million Panoramio photographs and Wikipedia articles you can read within Earth or jump to in Safari.
Google’s handy two minute video linked above explains the app pretty well, and there’s additional information at the Google Earth and Maps Team blog.
I’ve also posted below a gallery of screenshots from my journey this morning. Based on my initial experience, I’d say Google Earth is likely to become a popular time wasting app in a hurry.
The grown-up version of Juicy Couture’s jelly iPhone cases, this black or dusky pink leather case with a clear plastic cover brings the bling with a gold chain and charms.
$75 At Nordstrom
No frills for this Sportsuit convertible iPhone and iTouch case, but the three-in-oner goes from an armband case to a clip-on case or a slim-profile sleeve.
A belt clip lets you take the iPod or iPhone with you in the car, on a bike and to the gym; we do not know if the handiness of the case makes you work out harder resulting in these biceps.
In black or blue, $34.99. From Marware.
WorldView puts global webcams in your pocket, in a really lovely little free app.
What’s lovely about it isn’t the webcam shots themselves – frankly, once you’ve seen one blurry shot of the Eiffel Tower in the rain, you’ve seen ’em all – but it’s the little extras alongside the images.
The T-Mobile G1 has only been out for a couple of days, but new problems with the first generation of Google’s entry into the phone business continue to materialize just about every hour on the hour. Still the most shocking is the lack of corporate e-mail and calendaring support, with Google assuming that a third-party developer will just magically figure out how to do Exchange ActiveSync and Lotus integration.
Today, the big news is that Google plans to send out a software update at some point with a touchscreen keyboard so that it becomes possible to enter text while using the phone in vertical portrait orientation. Yes, in case you missed it earlier, it’s impossible to even type in a URL while browsing the web in the preferred one-handed iPhone style orientation. Granted, the G1 has a physical QWERTY and a pretty decent one at that, but it’s incredible that any company could ship a phone this intricate without realizing this could be a deal-breaker in actual human use. It’s like they didn’t even test their ideas out before sending them to final production.
I bring all of this up, because it’s another piece of evidence that even though an open-source model works incredibly well when working on technical feasibility and optimization, it’s pretty poor at making a consumer-facing complex system work well together. It’s the same reason that Linux has incredibly low-level networking and multithreading code, and it’s still impossible to expect a decent graphical user interface.
Apple’s focus on freakishly detailed design and engineering can have its own failings, of course (most specifically in leaving out any features that Steve Jobs can’t understand the value of), but it also tends to lead to solutions that were considered as full experiences instead of a collection of features. It all works together well, instead of working well in spite of contradictory features. The holistic approach Apple takes to product design is the reason we love it. Android’s haphazard approach of fixing things as they become crises. Google will mostly catch up eventually, but I have to pity T-Mobile for being forced to fight back with such an unfinished product. The G1 is so far behind that it’s hard to imagine anyone who isn’t a hobbyist being pleased with the first kludgy Android phone.
Android Roadmap via HTC Source via Gizmodo
Developers Phil Ryu and Andrew Kaz are about to release an iPhone eBook reader with a very cool interface. Flip the iPhone’s screen to turn the page, and the page turns as though it’s a real book! It’s very slick.
Ryu’s $2.99 “Classics” app will feature 10 to 12 books including Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
“We’ll be adding books with free updates,” says Ryu, 20, who lives in Boston.
Ryu is probably best known for his work at MacHeist, and Kaz, 18, was just 14 when he worked on delicious library. Kaz is based in New Jersey.
The pair are planning to submit the app to the app store in a few days.
Meanwhile, they have a preview available, and more details about the app here.