News - page 1479

In light of yesterday’s shocking news that the NSA has deliberately inserted weaknesses into computer security products, the developer of popular password and security app for Mac and iOS, 1Password, has written a fairly telling blog post on their vulnerability to this type of NSA intervention.

Here’s what AgileBits says:

Has 1Password been deliberately weakened?

No.

Have we, AgileBits, ever been asked/compelled/pressured/contacted by any entity asking us to weaken 1Password?

No.

That’s the easy part; anyone could say that. Let’s look a bit deeper.

The prospect of Apple redesigning the iPhone’s home button has been floating around the rumor mill for years, but until now it never had much weight. But as the launch of the iPhone 5S draws near, it appears that the iconic home button could finally see its first redesign.

Since the 5S is expected to feature a fingerprint sensor, expect the look of the home button to change. Here’s why:

If you were planning on being one of the first in line to buy the upcoming iPhone 5S or 5C, you’ve been beat. Two guys from Apple reseller Sell Your Mac showed up at the iconic Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City this morning only to find that two other guys were already camped out.

Apple won’t even be announcing its new iPhones until Tuesday, but that hasn’t stopped lines from forming. A lot of companies do this kind of thing for brand promotion and media attention, but waiting in a line for two weeks to get a new iPhone takes commitment either way.

Regardless of their motives, props to the Sell Your Mac guys for getting in line so early. And to the dudes that were already there, your obsession with Apple is unquestioned.

Source: @SYM_Jon

After years of negotiations, Apple is ready to bring the iPhone to the largest carrier on earth, China Mobile. Rumors have said that the two have reached an agreement for this fall, and now The Wall Street Journal is reiterating those claims, adding that Foxconn has been enlisted to start making iPhone 5Cs for the carrier.

The e-book price-fixing saga between the U.S. government and Apple has finally come to an end. After a long and messy trial, presiding judge Denise Cote has given the final ruling against Apple. The injunction isn’t as punitive as expected, but there are still several stipulations that will change the way Apple does business regarding the iBookstore.

My 13-inch MacBook Air is a fantastic portable computer – fast, light, crazy battery life and with a “bigger” screen than my old 13-inch aluminum MacBook[1]. But as a desktop computer it sucks: only two USB ports, no Ethernet, and a tiny amount of storage.

Which is exactly why the Landing Zone exists. It’s a dock that stays on your desk, hooked up to all your peripherals, and which grabs onto your MacBook like a facehugger grabs onto, uh, a face.

I’ve been using one for a while now, and it’s almost entirely excellent.

Apple has been hard at work on OS X Mavericks, even though it’s pushing to meet its deadline for iOS 7, and while many Apple fans were hoping the next Mac operating system might launch shortly after next week’s iPhone keynote, a new report claims Apple won’t ship OS X Mavericks until October.

There are a bunch of video games out on iOS for kids, from educational games to adventure games and more. Sure, you can get reviews of these games by adults, sometimes even from parents of kids who use them.

We thought it’d be fun, though, to ask the kids themselves.

Welcome to Kid APProved, a series of videos in which we ask our own children what they think of video games on the App Store that they’re playing.

This week, it’s Disney’s first Infinity tie-in game, Disney Infinity: Action!.

Having gone without a refresh since 2009, the iPod classic is one of the oldest products still on sale in the Apple Store. Will Apple finally update it this fall to add flash storage and a Lightning connector? Probably not. In fact, some expect the Cupertino company to finally kill it off.

We have heard a lot of rumors and leaks over the last year that Apple would install a fingerprint sensor underneath the home button of the iPhone 5S this year, but what does the leaked hardware actually say?

Earlier this week, a number of images were posted showing the part for a new iPhone 5S home button and associated flex cable… and it was radically different than previous home button configurations.

But does it confirm the iPhone 5S has a fingerprint sensor? iFixIt CEO Kyle Wiens sure thinks so.

One of the problems that Apple has launching new iPhones in late September is that even though every iPhone release sells more than the release before it, they don’t actually bump Apple’s quarterly numbers as much as they could.

Why? Let’s take this year as an example. All signs point to the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C launching on September 20th, but Apple’s financial quarter ends on September 30th. That gives Apple just ten days to sell as many iPhones as possible to bump up their quarterly results. It’s the October – December quarter where Apple sees the most iPhone sales.

So how many iPhones can Apple sell in just ten days? According to Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves, a lot. He thinks Apple can sell up to 13 million iPhones before the quarter closes.

Earlier this week, we posted evidence that even after Apple unveils its new mid-range iPhone 5C device, it could keep the 16GB iPhone 5 around for customers who want a classier, more solid phone at a discounted price. Here’s some more confirmation.

Late last night, a verified account for China Telecom popped up on Weibo and posted an advertisement for the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C… and it seems to imply that iPhone 5C is a much different design than we think.

Monokrom is a pretty neat B&W conversion app for the iPhone. I uses colored filters to do the converting, so you can get some dramatic effects, just like if you were to use colored filters on your lens whilst shooting B&W film. Unlike most iPhone B&W apps, though, the range of available filters is unlimited – it uses the colors of the image itself.

From the department of “One Thing Well” comes KeyCam, an iPhone app which takes photos with a timer. Or a clap, which I guess makes that “Two Things Well,” but still.

There’s something beautifully absurd about the Hasselnuts Kickstarter project, which mounts your iPhone on the back of a Hasselblad 500-series film camera and uses it as an 8MP sensor for a camera that – in analog form – was considered hi-resolution enough to take photos on the moon.

Then again, if you do have an old Hassy lying around, then why not drop $250 just to get it working again?

Remember Federico Viticci’s review of the amazing new iPad “text editor” Editorial? Of course you do – it’s the one you pushed to your read-later service and never read later, because it was just too damn long for a single post on a website. Hell, the thing even had a table of contents. A blog post with a table of contents.

Now, though, you can enjoy Viticci’s opus in a form much better suited to a long text with multiple sections: a book. And being an Apple nerd, Viticci made it into an iBook.

The news from Sony this week was dominated by its stunning new iDevice-compatible QX lenses (and the blogger leaks that revealed the lenses before Sony wanted the lenses revealed).

But there’s also news from Sony’s audio corner; it’s evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but still exciting: Three new models have been added to the company’s midrange MDR-10 line of headphones, including one with what looks like class-busting noise-canceling abilities and another equipped with Bluetooth and NFC.

Apple just sent out an email to developers, notifying them that three new downloads are now available: OS X Server Preview 7 for OS X Mavericks, OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.5, and Windows Migration Assistant.

One of the downsides of being the world’s most successful company is that you’re the target of a ton of parody ads. Or is that the upside?

YouTube parody video creator, Matthias, has come up with a great one this time. Here’s the latest from the video creators: “Introducing the iPhone 5S.”

The latest from The Wall Street Journal is that Apple is working on bigger screens for the iPhone, with experiments ranging from 4.8 to 6 inches. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard such claims; the Journal itself said Apple was testing larger iPhones and iPads in July.

It sounds like Apple is still in the experimentation stage “with screens ranging from 4.8 inches to as high as six inches.” But the Journal says “people familiar with the company’s internal deliberations and plans indicate it [Apple] appears more willing to move ahead than in years past.”

Google’s mobile apps share a common and easily distinguishable design language, for the most part. The iOS app for Google Drive has been in desperate need of a redesign, and a revamped version has been released today in the App Store.

Google Drive now includes the card-like interface seen in other apps, which Google calls “thumbnail view.” You can quickly toggle between viewing thumbnails of files and the traditional list view. There are a number of other additions, including simpler file sharing and the ability to edit in landscape mode.

2K Drive, the highly anticipated racing game from the creators of titles like Project Gotham Racing, has launched as an iOS-exlusive title in the App Store. We’ve been covering the story of 2K Drive for awhile, and Cult of Mac Games Editor Rob LeFebvre got to play it over the weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo.

Yeah, that Call of Duty.

Activision today announced the exclusive to iOS launch of Call of Duty: Strike Team.

This is the first time Activision has released a mobile title in the incredibly popular and well-selling military first-person shooter franchise that breaks all kinds of records on consoles, Mac, and PC.

You’ll be able to play with a squad of four in the new iOS game, customizing the loadouts and skills of each team member, then switch between first-person action to a top-down, third-person viewpoint, giving you a more strategic take on the battles. Here’s a great video that explains more.

This morning a report from China Labor Watch accused a factory in Apple’s supply chain for a number of worker abuse violations. Instead of Foxconn or Pegatron, the factory in question was Jabil, a smaller Apple supplier in the Wuxi province. The undercover investigation found that Jabil was enforcing mandatory overtime beyond the legal limit, poor training, and hiring discrimination.

Since the whole Foxconn scandal blew up last year, Apple has been much more public about its commitment to workers’ rights. In response to this most recent allegation against Jabil, Apple has said it is investigating the accusations.