We recently told you about Apple’s acquisition of geo mapping company C3 Technologies. By utilizing state of the art satellite technology, C3 Technologies specialized in enhanced 3D maps that put Google’s map images to shame.
C3 Technologies was apparently working on more than just beautiful 3D mapping. The company was also focusing on making interior mapping a reality.
When it comes to Mac hacking, there are few security experts more dangerous than Charlie Miller, who can hack a Mac in mere seconds. Luckily, Miller only uses his hacking powers for the forces of good, so his hacks often lead to more secure systems for you and me.
Let’s hope that’s the case for the latest vulnerability Miller identified for the iOS platform. He has discovered a huge bug in iOS that allows malicious devs to write innocuous looking apps that slip by the App Store review process, only to phone home to a remote computer and repurpose all of iOS’s normal functions for malicious ends.
Smule’s been racking up the hits with apps like Ocarina and I Am T-Pain. Their latest is called MadPad, and like the others, it’s well-polished, cooler than an arctic popsicle and impossible to put down. And today, it’s free.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgFKdyh68jo
Famed jailbreak developer Ryan Petrich has released a video of Siri running on the iPhone 3GS. Petrich is most known in the jailbreak community for his Activator extension that brings customized gestures for specific apps and tweaks in iOS.
In the above video, Petrich is demonstrating Siri on an iPhone 3GS. He has also mentioned that he is working on Activator integration with Siri.
Hysterical. In a recent response to HTC’s ITC complaint against Apple, Cupertino didn’t just deny all of HTC’s charges… it even went as far as to correct the Taiwanese device maker’s punctuation, snarkily writing:
Apple denies that its correct name is Apple, Inc. The correct name of Respondent is Apple Inc.
Priceless.
One of the few contemporaries in tech that Steve Jobs openly admired was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. In Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, the Apple founder said that he admired Zuckerberg “for not selling out, for wanting to make a company.” In other words, Jobs saw a lot of himself in Zuckerberg: a young kid out to change the world.
Well, it turns out the respect was mutual. In an interview with Charlie Rose that will air later today, Zuckerberg says that Jobs’s help was formative in building Facebook.
Wall Street seemed ready to have an epileptic seizure last month when Apple merely reported an incredible, record-breaking quarter instead of whatever financial fever dream they imagined, so this ought to give them a little spring in their step: the iPhone 4S is now the best-selling smartphone at all three of the top US carriers. Duh.
Despite the fact that Samsung’s being sued by Apple in pretty much every country in the world short of Xanadu and Zembla, the IP rip-offs just keep on coming from the plucky Korean electronics giant!
This time, as ObamaPacman notes, Samsung isn’t just content on ripping off the design of the iPod touch for their new Samsung Galaxy 4.0 Android MP3 player… they’ve ripped off the iPod touch’s official product image, right down to the way the white earbuds coil around the player!
Comically shameless. What bozos.
Google’s former CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt told U.S. Senators Apple’s voice-recognition system is an “interesting development,” suggesting the iPhone 4S feature posed a “competitive threat” to its search business. Schmidt’s written comments come as a new survey finds Siri drastically reduces the number of Google searches, many times to none.
Despite the fact that Siri’s guts are in a billion dollar data facility in North Carolina somewhere, the iPhone 4S can actually be used to voice control an old Mac 512K.
Despite a preliminary injunction granted Motorola Mobility on Friday, Apple continues to sell products in Germany. The tech giant has a two-week window until it must argue why a court’s default judgement should be reversed, averting the possible stop of retail and online sales in the nation.
Hackers have been hard at work attempting to port Apple’s new Siri assistant to older devices, but according to one report, their efforts may be wasted, because Apple is doing the same thing. The Cupertino company has reportedly issued a “special build” of iOS 5 to its staff, which introduces Siri to the iPhone 4 for testing.
If you felt like your Internet connection briefly died early Monday morning, you were not alone. About 9 am Eastern (6 am PT) many cable Internet customers along the East Coast and stretching down to Texas lost online connections. The glitch hit “most of our service areas,” Time Warner Cable told Twitter users.
Adobe is just one of the big-name developers that was quick to embrace the Mac App Store when it launched earlier this year, and today it has increased its presence with the launch of two “special edition” applications called Photoshop Elements 10 Editor and Premiere Elements 10 Editor.
What happens when heartfelt tributes to the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs get turned into commercial schmaltz? You get an Asian eyeglass distributor using the death of Steve Jobs to promote its products. At a Hong Kong trade show, a distributor announced Jobs left “his overwhelming ideas and his favorite glasses.”
Mac OS X developers have been given a few extra months to accept the Mac App Store app sandboxing requirements… or to forget about selling their apps through Apple’s store altogether.
Originally, the deadline was November 1st, but Apple has since uncharacteristically extended the deadline to March 1, 2012. After that, all apps sold in the Mac App Store must use Mac OS X Lion’s new sandboxing framework. That framework is another thing Lion had adopted from iOS and is meant to increase security on the Mac.
With the deadline extended, developers now have about four months to decide on whether they will support sandboxing in their apps. The problem? If they do, some apps will become just shadows of their former selves.
When Apple seeded its first iOS 5 beta to registered developers back in June, it was discovered the company’s next-generation mobile platform eliminated untethered jailbreaking and meant that hackers must connect their device to their computer every time they wanted to boot it up if they hoped to maintain their jailbreak.
Since then, however, reports surrounding an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5 have surfaced. The latest glimmer of hope comes from the Chronic Dev Team member Pod2g, who claims to have discovered a bug in the latest iOS 5 software that could lead to an untethered jailbreak.
Back in 1978, an upstart company called Apple Computer moved into its new headquarters at 10260 Bandley Drive in Cupertino, California — a building soon to be known as “Bandley 1.” One of Apple’s first employees, Chris Espinosa, sketched out a floor plan of the Bandley 1 offices and labs in the new building at the time.
A copy of this historic Apple document recently showed up on Espinosa’s website.
iPad users have been looking forward to a Retina display since the company introduced its iPhone 4 — its first iOS device to feature the high-resolution display — and recent reports have claimed the feature will finally surface with Apple’s third-generation tablet.
Strengthening those claims is a new report which suggests Apple is working with component suppliers to design a new backlight that is capable of maintaining the iPad’s existing level of brightness with the higher resolution panels.
Steve Jobs will be making an appearance on the sliver screen, and we’re not talking about the biopic that Sony is backing.
Missing footage from the 1995 PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds features an interview with Steve Jobs during a pivotal time in Silicon Valley’s history. The interview was apparently lost for many years, and it has now resurfaced to be shown in Landmark theaters around the nation beginning November 16th.
Loren Brichter is the man behind Twitter’s official app for the iPhone and iPad. Many will recognize Brichter as the creator of the beloved Tweetie app prior to his work at Twitter itself.
Yesterday, Brichter announced via a tweet (aptly sent from the Twitter for iPhone app) that he has left his position at Twitter to “figure out what’s next.”
A few years ago, everything was peaceful in the Valley of Silicon. The relationship between Apple and Google was cozy and friendly. The two rising and dominant superpowers pursued compatible, non-overlapping businesses, for the most part, and helped each other fight mutual competitors like Microsoft, Amazon and others. Google’s founders worshiped Steve Jobs. Eric Schmidt was on the Apple board.
But then Google recklessly chose to attack Apple head-on with Android.
The future of Apple’s most profitable businesses will run iOS, including iPods, iPhones, iPads and probably laptop and desktop systems of the future — not to mention TV. Google’s decision to compete head-on with Apple for multi-touch platforms ended the alliance.
Steve Jobs took it personally, and told biographer Walter Isaacson that he was “willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
But what did he mean by that?
The holiday season came a little early this year for Apple’s top executive team. According to CNET, Apple has given 7 of its execs stock bonuses that could mean huge payouts in the years to come.
Many Senior Vice Presidents at Apple have been given 150,000 shares, while the newly-added SVP Eddy Cue has been given 100,000 shares. For the majority of the exec team, this 150,000 shares bonus will equal a $60+ million payout in 2016.
Apple added a subtle solution for developers in iOS 5.0.1 that addresses the issue of purged app data. In iOS 5.0, apps were suddenly restricted from caching large amounts of data in-app for offline access. Apps were effectively “cleaned” of temporary data when iOS 5 determined that the app was taking up too much space.
Previously, iOS would allow an app to store needed information, such as saved web articles for a news app, in a temporary cache that wouldn’t slow down iTunes backups, restores, and syncs. When Apple introduced iCloud, the company became more aggressive about not allowing apps to temporarily store too much information in-app.
In the recently released iOS 5.0.1 beta 1 and beta 2, Apple has provided developers with a new way to “specify files that should remain on device, even in low storage situations.”
Over the years we’ve seen lots of crazy things happen in the Apple Store, but we have yet to see an astronaut.
Until now.
The above photo, spotted by OS X Daily, was taken at the 14th St Apple Store in New York City. Apparently this moon man is part of an upcoming promotion for the Mini Cooper car. Very weird.