Games maker Blizzard has always had sympathy for Mac gamers: not only do native Mac ports exist for most of Blizzard’s titles, but they have exclusively shipped hybrid Mac/PC installation DVDs of their titles since World of Warcraft.
Their latest blockbuster title, Starcraft II, follows suit with the Mac love… but the game’s content also includes another fond pat on the head for fans in this in-game ad for the iPistol, a space marine spoof of Apple’s famous “dancing silhouette” iPod ad campaign.
Not that anyone’s seen those ads in a while, mind, but cut Blizzard some slack: given Starcraft II’s ten year development cycle, we should count our blessings that they aren’t parodying “Think Different.”
While JailbreakMe is one of the simplest jailbreaking solutions yet, it goes about its dirty work by exploiting a dangerous flaw in the way Mobile Safari handles PDFs and embedded fonts. The same exploit that is making it convenient today for thousands of iOS device owners to jailbreak their machines could be used tomorrow to totally compromise them and install malevolent code upon their devices.
Needless to say, Apple’s going to be closing this security hole, stat, and now Reuters is reporting that Apple is “investigating” the issue, although there’s no timetable for a fix yet.
The Dev Team must have been conflicted about this jailbreak. On one hand, they were able to allow any device running iOS 3.2 or higher to jailbreak just by visiting a simple website, but in doing so, they were revealing a very dangerous exploit that is now in the wild, just waiting to be adopted and easily deployed against unsuspecting web users. Furthermore, the nature of this exploit makes a quick response by Apple inevitable: this jailbreak solution may go down as the most quickly neutralized on record.
It’s also got to be a nightmare for Apple. Counterintuitively, the only way right now to “close” the security hole inherent in all iOS devices is to jailbreak your phone, then install the PDF Loading Warner from Cydia. Jailbroken phones might actually be more secure right now than unjailbroken ones. Apple needs to fix that, as quickly as possible.
If you’re an Aperture user frustrated with your Mac’s inability to read your new camera’s RAW shots, Apple has just sent their latest Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update slaloming down the Software Update chute, emblazoned with the version number 3.3.
Most of these cameras are micro four-thirds or similarly mirrorless cameras. The update adds native OS X RAW support to the following models:
• Canon PowerShot SX1 IS
• Olympus E-PL1
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-G2
• Panasonic Lumix DMC-G10
• Samsung NX10
• Sony Alpha DSLR-A390
• Sony Alpha NEX-3
• Sony Alpha NEX-5
The update extends RAW compatibility to Aperture 3 and iPhoto ’09 users, and weighs in at just 5.6 MB.
In order to save battery life, Apple very intelligently limited the kinds of API calls multitasking apps could make in the background under iOS 4 to audio, VOIP and location. It’s a clever compromise, but it leaves a lot of common multi-tasking applications in the lurch: for example, your newsreader can’t update your list of RSS feeds when the app isn’t in focus.
The makers of Pastebot, a clipboard manager for iOS devices, were frustrated by the limitations of iOS’ multitasking capabilities, so they figured out a clever solution to keep Pastebot running in the background: they programmed it to play a silent audio file so that Pastebot was always kept in memory and didn’t need to be relaunched between every copy.
Needless to say, Apple wasn’t entirely thrilled with this solution, and rejected the app… but it was only because Pastebot played a silent audio track without user approval in the background, and that music’s only purpose was to keep the app in memory. The fix was simple: offer users the ability to choose which track Pastebot loops in the background. If a user wants to specify a blank track, so be it.
Apple was happy with this solution. It makes me wonder whether the same approach could be used with other apps like Reeder, or 1Password Pro, or Instapaper, that might benefit from running in the background.
For all those who took the liberty of running the ridiculously simple JailbreakMe 2.0 installer over the weekend (before having second-thoughts based on the security hole it exposes), the accompanying package to unlock your iPhone to run on any GSM carrier worldwide has dropped.
Ultrasn0w 1.0-1 is the first baseband unlock for iOS 4 phones, and works with iPhone 4s, 3GSs, and 3Gs. It might also work with 3.x devices, but it’s unclear from the documentation. Gentlemen, head for T-Mobile (at EDGE speeds)!
Put on your deerstalker and take a gander at the patina of filth stained into my 27-inch iMac keyboard and I can’t say I’d blame you for ascribing any number of stomach-churning hygienic deficiencies to my person. Perhaps you might imagine me to be some blind, albino grub of tapioca-like consistency typing his posts from the plastic kiddy pool filled with chocolate sauce from which he bastes (you wouldn’t be far off), or as a man who habitually deep wipes with Apple products.
In actuality, I’m not nearly that filthy, but I’m also a smoker. Worse, I’m a pipe smoker, and so my aluminum keyboard’s crevices tend to fill with latakia detritus, and the ASDF keys occasionally stained with tiny spatterings of tar.
Well, okay. I guess I am pretty filthy, when it’s all put down like that. Worse: in my aluminum keyboard, I have an analogue to the yellowing and browning of my lungs. As I hammer out posts over the course of the day, chain-smoking all the while, my keyboard functions as a sort of X-RAY in QWERTY of the carcinogenic staining of the life-sustaining meat bladders inside me.
I was glad to see TUAW’s pro-tip on easily keeping your white, non-glossy Apple product squeaky clean, then: the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, a sponge made of melamine foam that apparently works a champ, and is certainly better for my Mac’s finish than my last cleaning solution: nail polish removal wipes, which was just a stupid idea in retrospect.
Anyone else got any tips on getting their keyboards white again? I’ve tried the good old pencil eraser in the past, but I’ve found cleaning the indian rubber dust afterwards pretty irritating. Let us know your tips in the comments.
Reading through some old CoM posts tonight (for linking and reference in a piece coming out tomorrow), I came across a piece of news we covered years ago that didn’t pay off until this spring.
Way back in 2007, the year the iPhone launched, an AT&T executive told a Kentucky newspaper that Apple disguised its prototypes as something else to avoid arousing suspicion:
So secretive was the project that he didn’t even show the phone to his wife. And when AT&T’s team of testers hit the streets to try the phone in ballparks, subways and skyscrapers, Burns said they used a contraption to cloak the device so nobody would know what the testers were holding.
Burns declined to offer a description of the cloaking device, calling it “something that looked like something else.”
Well, we all learned this spring what that “something that looked like something else” was for the fourth-generation — an iPhone 3G in a protective case, as Jason Chen of Gizmodo showed the world. Strange that this earlier report didn’t come up more often in the massive coverage of the legal rigamarole over the iPhone 4’s “loss”.
This still leaves the greater mystery of how the original iPhone was hidden — putting a case on it alone wouldn’t mask the fact that it was something radically new. Has anyone figured it out? And was it a Zune? I really still hope it was a Zune.
At times, it seems, store employees fill many Apple retail outlets at a near one to one ratio with customers. Which raises a question about just what those employees are doing on the clock, for this summer’s favorite prank is quickly becoming jailbreaking Apple devices right under those employees’ noses — or behind their backs, as the case may be.
Perhaps it’s nothing more than bored kids on summer break with nothing better to do, but since our report Monday of a self-proclaimed “bored” anonymous prankster jailbreaking all the display phones at an unnamed Apple store, at least three more incidents of similar mischief have been reported.
Earlier today, Apple released another update to the iOS 4 beta and the corresponding SDK to developers, bringing the current version of both to 4.1 beta 3. The update follows the release of the previous beta by less than a week.
There are a plethora of problems being reported about the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 and I hope that this update will address them. I’d particularly like to see fixes for the following:
I have not yet heard about any new features in this beta, but these details will likely surface soon. We’ve seen reports that the proximity sensor issue may have been resolved by Beta 2, however in my opinion that is still an open issue due to conflicting reports about it. Additionally, I suspect that these beta releases resolve the PDF security flaw in Mobile Safari since the hack doesn’t support iOS 4.1. Finally, the rapid release of beta 3 almost immediately after beta 2 indicates that Apple maybe getting closer to a public release of iOS 4.1.
If you find out anything new about this update feel free to tell us all about it in the comments.
Talking of mobile phone companies in trouble, here’s a first look at Nokia’s upcoming mobile platform, MeeGo.
Still under development in partnership with Intel, MeeGo is a Linux-based mobile OS for a wide range of mobile devices, from pocket computers and smartphones to internet TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems.
In the video above, you can see the user adding social networking contacts to the address book; buying an app; and playing a tune. Unfortunately, there’s no commentary, but it’s easy enough to follow along.
It looks pleasant enough, but nothing stunning. You can get all of this and more in well-made iOS apps.
Check out this fascinating chart from The Economist regarding IT industry revenues, profits, employees and so on. The two monsters of the space are HP and IBM, which both have double the revenues of Apple, and more than 10x the number of employees.
The story, The end of Wintel, compares the giants of the IT industry in terms of how vertically integrated they are.
The shift to mobile computing and data centres (also known as “cloud computing”) has speeded up the “verticalisation” of the IT industry. Imagine that the industry is a stack of pancakes, each representing a “layer” of technology: chips, hardware, operating systems, applications. Microsoft, Intel and other IT giants have long focused on one or two layers of the stack. But now firms are becoming more vertically integrated. For these new forms of computing to work well, the different layers must be closely intertwined.
Apple, whose products have always been more integrated, is building a huge data centre and also offering web-based services.
As I argued in Inside Steve’s Brain, Apple is ascendant these days because of its vertical integration. It’s into the whole stack, from chips to online advertising. And despite what the chart says, will also likely be into cloud computing.
Apple’s iPhone 4 is a smash hit and the latest Android handsets are getting rave reviews. Apple and Google are snapping at RIM’s heels, still the smartphone market leader. To counter the attacks, RIM has just released a new OS, Blackberry 6, and a new handset, the Blackberry Torch.
But early reviews of aren’t looking so good. The Torch touchscreen slider has a ridiculously low-res screen (360 × 480) and the software is described as “uninspired, old, clunky sometimes, and cluttered.” Ouch.
Boy Genius Report: “This is a stop gap device for current BlackBerry users… and that’s an issue. iPhone 4 or recent Android owners won’t be lusting after the 9800, and that’s never a good thing.”
Analyst Michael Gartenberg: “In [a] world where every vendor is working to up their game, raise the bar and drive new innovation in hardware and software, it felt RIM barely stepped up.”
Engadget: “… the OS overwhelms the hardware a little when it’s really cranking — for example, the phone basically locked up while it loaded Engadget in the new Webkit browser.”
Programmer Will Strafach has released an app to protect against the security hole in Mobile Safari that runs code embedded in PDF files. The security vulnerability came to light after hackers used it to jailbreak Apple’s latest iPhones and iPads.
PDF Loading Warner is now available for jailbroken iOS devices via Cydia, the unofficial app store. You will need a jailbroken iPhone or iPad to install it. Users who haven’t jailbroken their devices will have to wait for Apple to release a fix.
PDF Loading Warner displays a warning if Mobile Safari tries to load a PDF file. As previously reported, Mobile Safari allows code embedded in PDFs to run in the browser, bypassing all of the device’s security systems. This is a huge security hole that is present in all iOS devices, jailbroken or not. The hole is currently being used to jailbreak Apple’s devices, but could easily be exploited by hackers to install malicious software that steals identities, passwords and sensitive login details.
Note that PDF Loading Warner is a quick hack to provide a thin layer of protection until Apple releases a secure patch for the exploit.
PDF Loading Warner can be downloaded from Cydia for free.
While it’s not too hard to imagine a luxury accessory company coming up with an iPod dock similar to this NeverNeverLand fever dream of one of Yanko Design’s Lost Boy designers, no effort has been made on Yanko’s part to explain just how that iPod Touch would hover in mid-air. Pixy dust, perhaps.
All that Yanko will venture to say is that “it streams music, connects to your iPod and computer and daisy chains with other units should you want to expand the system.” It also defies gravity, which is a first in consumer electronics: I hope the designer’s got a patent to back that up.
Take a quick visit to JailbreakMe, let Comex benevolently exploit a huge security hole in iOS’ native PDF rendering, then install the $4 My3G program through Cydia and you can have FaceTime running flawlessly on your iPhone 4 even without a WiFi connection. But how much is that FaceTime call going to drain from your monthly data allowance?
9to5Mac has done the tests, and it’s actually not as bad as you might fear: in fact, the average FaceTime call only uses about three megabytes of data per minute.
They conducted their test using “lots of movement” so that the FaceTime compression algorithm was kept on its toes, and a five minute FaceTime call ended up slurping up 14.7MB of data. That’s pretty modest usage against a 2GB cap. Clearly, the prohibition against 3G FaceTime isn’t in consideration of iPhone 4 users’ wallets, then… but AT&T’s own congested 3G network.
Apple is facing yet another anti-competition complaint today after the Attorney General for the State of Connecticut launched an investigation into the state of the ebook market.
Asked to defend itself along with Amazon over the deals the two biggest ebook sellers in the country have been striking with publishers to guarantee favorable pricing and exclusive titles, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says that the way Apple has been running its new iBooks business prevents other marketplaces from offering lower prices on the same titles, taking a sledgehammer and hobbling block to the already-atrophied legs of its competitors.
Blumenthal says that Amazon and Apple have reached agreements with the largest book publishers, guaranteeing that they will receive the best prices for e-books over other competitors. As indication of anti-competitiveness, Blumenthal has pointed to a list of New York Times best sellers that are identically priced at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Borders’ e-book stores, which he argues is a strong implication of price-fixing.
For right now, Blumenthal is just collecting data, and has invited Apple and Amazon to meet with his office to address his concerns. You can read the full PDF of his letter to Apple here.
Make me put a plump thumb on my favorite iOS app and the Remote.app icon will soon be coated with a greasy, opalescent print of my epidermal ridges. For those of us with a constabulary of Airport Expresses, the freely downloadable app singlehandedly turns our networked homes into the equivalent of a far more expensive Sonos setup.
Unfortunately, Remote.app hasn’t been updated in months… which prompted Gizmodo to raise a plaintive cry as recently as last week. What’s the hold up? It hasn’t even been updated to natively support the iPad, let alone the iPhone 4.
As it turns out, Remote.app is the product of a single engineer who has since been moved to other projects, according to Posterous CEO Sachin Agarwal.
Ever since Apple bought the web-streaming music service Lala, our teeth have been aching in anticipation of our iTunes libraries vaporized from our hard disks and existing in the Wonkavision like ionosphere of the cloud.
According to CNET, though, we may very well have a while to wait before Apple truly capitalizes upon its Lala purchase… and when it does come, it might be a far more modest proposal at first than even Cupertino would like.
In talks with the four major labels, Apple is apparently downplaying expectations, saying that if they launch their cloud-streaming iTunes functionality in the next few months, it will be “modest in scope” when it comes to streaming music.
The iPhone 4 jailbreak is one of the easiest ever. You just visit the jailbreakme.com webpage in Mobile Safari, swipe the “Slide to Jailbreak” slider, and it installs the unofficial App Store Cydia on your device.
But it comes at a price. The jailbreak exploits a wide-open security hole that could easily be exploited by malicious hackers. Malicious sites that install malware could exploit the largely unkown, unpatched security hole.
Note: The security hole in Mobile Safari is not caused by jailbreaking the device. It is already there on all iOS devices, jailbroken or not.
Apple is sure to investigate the exploit and quickly issue an update. But in the meantime, here’s a quick patch you can install yourself:
Guy Kawasaki’s seminal book The Macintosh Way is a classic for technology marketers (“evangelists”) and Apple geeks alike. It is fondly remembered from the Golden 68k Macintosh Era, and is used to this day as reference material for startup businesses and college courses.
The book went out of print several years ago, and Guy has been working since to get the rights back. He has finally succeeded, and is making the digitized eBook available free to everyone for the asking.
The Macintosh Way has seen Apple and the Mac through many changes over its twenty year lifetime; to celebrate the re-release, Guy has also released this video detailing the book’s transformation from printed page to computer screen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnjyrcozHyA
To get your free eBook, follow Guy on Twitter and sign up at freemacway.com You can also read the book in the OfficeDrop iPad app.
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Added bonus for this old Mac geek (and full disclosure): my own Vintage Mac Museum was used to film the opening of the video. For a few enjoyable hours this spring the production team and I relived the Macintosh Way! For more on filming the spot, see Vintage Macs Live Again. Anyone up for Snood?
The iPad may be magical, but do you want your taxes to pay for city councilors to have them?
That’s what citizens in Leicester, England wonder after the local council there drew up plans to provide all 54 city councilors with Apple’s tablet device.
Equipping all of the local politicos with iPads by May 2011 will cost around £40,000 or about $63,000 for the 64 gigabyte models, sparking critics who note that the council is spending for shiny gadgets when it has to cut some 1,000 jobs due to budget issues.
Say goodbye to that wedge of magnetized plastic in your wallet. If AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have their way, the future of credit is your smartphone… and they are going to war against the likes of Visa and Mastercard to accomplish it.
According to Bloomberg, the three carriers are working with Discover and Barclays, testing a system in four US cities that would enable special smartphones embedded with NFC (near field communication) chips to make credit card payments with just a wave of the hand.
Making a credit card payment from your iPhone isn’t exactly a new idea: Visa already lets you do this with special payWave cases, and Digg founder Kevin Rose is backing Square, which is a similar idea.
The point here, though, is that it’s the carriers who are making the most concerted push yet to consolidate and bring ubiquity to smartphone payment systems, by cutting out the biggest credit giants entirely.
Although the number of iPhone owners currently dwarfs the iPad, a new study reveals Apple’s tablet has a promising future. The tablet device is both more involving for users, as well as potentially more lucrative for developers.
Like the iPhone, games are the largest category of applications downloaded by iPad users, according to a study released Monday by mobile advertising exchange network Mobclix. Games comprise 20 percent of all applications, the study says. But iPad owners spend triple the time with the games as iPhone users, according to the numbers.
If you don’t mind taking a blowtorch to your pretty unibody iMac and trephining it a bit, you can easily add an eSATA port for the connection of external hard drives to your beautiful 27-inch. That surgery’s not for the meek, though: luckily, OWC will be happy to do it $169 in under 48 hours… and for a gasp-worthy $1649 more, they’ll even cram in a 480GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD. Yowza!
Could Intel be inside your next iPhone? That’s a possibility as the chipmaking giant is reportedly on the verge of acquiring Infineon, Apple’s sole baseband supplier for the iPhone.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Intel is “close to a deal” to buy Infineon for $2 billion. The possible acquisition is a reminder of the rocky road the two Silicon Valley companies have recently had. Apple decided to go with Intel rival ARM for its smartphones, then acquired chipmakers PA Semi and Intrinisity to build the A4 processor based on the ARM and now used in the iPad and iPhone 4.
