Cult of Mac

Delta Airlines announced today that it plans to equip its pilots with Microsoft’s new Surface 2 tablet running Windows 8.1 RT. The company is moving to Microsoft tablets despite the fact that it was the first airline to roll-out iPads to pilots to replace heavy flight bags.

Delta gave 22 pilots iPads back in 2011, but thanks to a deal with Nokia – which is now owned by Microsoft – the company will be a going with an all-Windows approach. The company already gave its 19,000 flight attendants with a company-issued Nokia Lumia 820 Windows handset back in August of this year.

Two days after getting my brand new iPhone 5s, the fingerprint scanner stopped working. I couldn’t believe it. The iPhone wouldn’t recognize my thumb print, no matter how I caressed its button. I tried training the system to recognize my other thumb and my two index fingers. That didn’t work either. The new iPhone’s marquee feature was already a write-off. “Just works,” my ass.

The iPhone’s hottest new feature is as reliable as my cat.

Then the news broke that the Chaos Computer Club in Germany announced that it had “hacked” the sensor with a photo of a fingerprint. At first glance, this story looked really bad. Some German anarchist coders had used a slight of hand to crack a “foolproof” biometrics system with a simple picture? Before the phone flew into our eager hands, everyone imagined that more elaborate methods would be needed to fool Touch ID, like hacking someone’s finger off. But a simple picture? It was the biggest story of the weekend: “Apple’s Touch ID hacked in less than 48 hours.”

But turns out the “hack” — which is more correctly called a “spoof” — was anything but simple. It was a multi-step process that required considerable skill, specialist equipment and almost 30 hours of hard work.

Firstly, a clear, un-smeared fingerprint has to be found. This looks easy on CSI, but is tricky in real life. The fingerprint has to be “lifted” using standard crime scene techniques: cyanoacrylate fumes, fingerprint powder and fingerprint tape. Not stuff you’re likely to have on hand, in other words.

The lifted print is photographed at very high resolution (~2,400 dpi) and cleaned up in software. It’s printed on transparent sheet at 1,200 dpi using a laser printer with the toner settings turned way up, to ensure the maximum amount of toner is deposited. This creates a mold. Liquid latex or wood glue is poured into the mold and carefully peeled off when it has cured. The hacker breathes onto the mold to make it warm and moist and then presses it against the sensor. This method is well-known in the biometrics world and has a long history of fooling many other fingerprint sensors on the market.

So should you be worried? Not at all. On one hand, Touch ID will *not* protect your iPhone against a determined hacker. If a crook has the time and resources to target you, steal your phone, lift your fingerprints and create phonies, the fingerprint sensor will not prevent them from gaining entry.

But the average opportunist who finds your iPhone on the bus? Rest assured, your phone is safe.

As for my non-functioning sensor, I just retrained the system. The problem was my dry, scaly hands. If all journalists have thick skins, mine is really something else. (When my hands get really bad, a steroid cream thins it down and curbs cracking and bleeding.) I’d been using the cream and my hands looked like Heidi Klum’s when I first got the phone. But over the weekend my hands dried out like SpongeBob in Sandy’s dome. By Sunday, the sensor wouldn’t recognize any of my fingers or thumbs. I tried licking them and moisturizing my thumb, to no avail. So I deleted the five finger/thumbprints I’d trained the system on and started again. No problem! Touch ID now works flawlessly.

I just have to keep the moisturizer handy if I want to unlock my digital life.

Several months ago I decided that I needed to change the way I work. Like most bloggers, I spend the majority of the day at my desk. I’m 6’2″ and over the years I’ve developed not-so-great posture by hunching over my computer screen. The back and neck pain eventually got so bad that I realized I needed to change up my workspace.

I’d heard a lot about standing desks, so I decided to look into getting one. After researching, I zeroed in on the NewHeights electric desk. I’ve been using it for the past several months, and now I can never go back.

The iPhone 5s was hard to find this weekend but Apple certainly had no problem with the supply of the iPhone 5c. Early estimates showed the iPhone 5s outselling the 5c by a considerable margin on launch weekend and it’s still outselling its cheaper sibling nearly 3 to 1 a week later according to the newest data from Localytics.

While the new colors, flatness, and gradients of iOS 7 have received most of the attention from consumers, businesses are excited about the potential of the new iBeacons feature, and how it will change the way consumers interact with businesses.

The MLB put the technology on full display yesterday at Citi Field – the place where the Mets play- for a full demonstration of a prototype iBeacon technology. Working closely with Apple since February, the MLB’s developers have re-engineering a beta version of At The Ballpark at that can push coupons, ticket information, promotional offers, stadium information and much more based on where an individual is located at the ballpark.

Readdle has updated its popular Printer Pro app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch to introduce a new user interface that better fits iOS 7, as well as a number of new features. The app now promises “desktop class printing options,” such as the ability to print multiple pages on a single sheet of paper.

Apple released iOS 7.0.2 on Thursday, and in its release notes, the company said it had fixed “bugs that could allow someone to bypass the lock screen passcode.” Unfortunately, it seems it didn’t fix all of them, because the update added another lock screen vulnerability of its own, which you can see in the video below.

Strata, a puzzle game by developer Graveck, has been out for a few months now, but I only recently stumbled across it. Like FlowDoku, which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, it’s a deceptively clever title that uses a couple quick rules to create complex tasks for players to solve.

The rules of Strata are simple: You receive a square grid between 2×2 and 6×6 boxes in size, and you have to place colored ribbons across every row and column. Some boxes have colored squares in them, and the top ribbon on that square must be the same color. That sounds way more complicated than it is, but it makes sense once you’re looking at it.

And you should look at it because it’s really, really pretty.

Virgin Mobile USA has today announced that it will be offering Apple’s new iPhones beginning Tuesday, October 1. Both the iPhone 5s and the colorful iPhone 5c will be available on its prepaid “Beyond Talk” plans, which start at just $35 per month.

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.

The OS X Finder is an amazing thing, letting you create folder within folder, duplicate files, find your documents, and generally get stuff done. More and more, the Finder features are being integrated across all apps and documents on your Mac.

Case in point is the ability to find the directory path of a document from the document’s title bar, as well as being able to (since Mountain Lion, anyway) rename your documents in the title bar as well. All of this is thanks to the proxy icon, which Apple defines as: “An icon in the title bar of a document window that users can manipulate as if they were manipulating the corresponding file-system object.”

Here’s how to use them on your Mac.

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 5s on September 10th, they invited Epic Games to come on stage to show off Infinity Blade III under the notion that only the iPhone 5s’s 64-bit processor could render the game as it was meant to be seen.

What was so bizarre about that was when the game shipped on September 18th alongside iOS 7, it didn’t make use of the 64-bit A7 processor at all. It was a week later when the game was first updated to support the iPhone 5s. Now it’s gotten another support to further take advantage of the A7 processor.

What’s better than HD? Super HD! And it’s coming to Netflix on your Apple TV and iOS device.

So let’s say for a second that Apple doesn’t ship a Retina iPad mini this year… but still decides to release a low-res iPad mini 2. How would they update it without a Retina Display?

Touch ID, son. 64-bit support. And, of course, by spraying it gold.

Will it go Retina or won’t it?

That’s the big question everyone has been asking about the upcoming iPad mini 2. We’ve heard conflicting reports, such as that it will only be available in 2014 instead of October of this year, when the iPad 5 is expected to show up. Other sources — like KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo — say that it will be out before Christmas.

A new report might dash the hopes of anyone expecting a Retina iPad mini this year, though. Instead, they say it’s coming next year.

Google+ already lets you upload RAW photos to the service, but now the rendered JPGs from those RAW files are going to look a lot better. Working with the boffins at NIK software (which Google bought when it acquired Snapseed), the G+ RAW conversions have been tweaked to give some dramatically better results.

If you write in Markdown on your Mac, then you should buy Brett Terpstra’s Marked 2. It could be described as a tool for previewing Markdown files, but that would be like calling an iPhone a… well, a phone.

According to Derek “beefcake with a brain” Morgan from Criminal Minds, “sitting is the new smoking,” and too much of it will kill you. But who wants any boring old standing desk? Yes, you could put a couple of milk crates onto your regular desk and prop your MacBook on top, but why do that when you can spend $3,900 on the Stir Kinetic Desk, a standing desk with a touch screen?

If you have a router (no, not that kind of router), a chunk of plywood and some mad craft skillz, then you could make your own Undulating Contours charging station. If you are missing any one of those, then, it’d be better to spend the $24 on the real thing, hand-hewn in Louisiana.

Speaking of snapping photos and saving them in Evernote, Notograph is a beautiful new iPhone that will do just that, as well as syncing with Dropbox and iCloud.

The Evernote iOS app has gotten another big update, barely a week after it was revamped for iOS 7 and made useful again. The news today is the new Post-It camera, which now lets you scan the yellow sticky squares right into your Evernotes.

While we knew almost everything there was to know about the iPhone 5s prior to its official unveiling last week, I don’t think anybody expected Apple to announce a fancy new case to go with it.

The Cupertino company has released an iPad case or cover for every model it has ever made, but this is the first time it has provided first-party iPhone protection since the iPhone 4 Bumper back in 2010. But I’m glad it’s back in the case business.

The new iPhone 5s case — which fits the iPhone 5, too, by the way — is made from soft, premium leather and designed to “look and feel luxurious,” Apple says. It is precision crafted for a tight fit that maintain’s your iPhone’s sleek, slim design, and its microfiber lining promises to protect its aluminum shell from scuffs and scratches.

The case is available in six pretty colors, and it’s priced at $39.95. That’s pretty expensive for a case of this kind, but is it worth it?

Apple VP of Gold Raffi Jaharian is back in another Conan video. This time, he’s here to tell you how to get your grimy hands on a gold iPhone 5s (because gold is BEST).

We wish it was easy as meeting one of his cousins in the back of an Apple Store, but unfortunately, the real chances of getting a gold iPhone anytime soon are slim to none.

The Los Angeles Unified School District is in the process of rolling out iPads to all of its students in 47 K-12 schools. It’s a huge educational partnership for Apple, and the goal is to have students use the iPads to help learn the curriculum.

Apparently LAUSD didn’t anticipate that students would be able to easily hack around the security measures on the iPads and use them to surf the web and download apps. Hundreds of students at Theodore Roosevelt High School have already broken the restrictions, and the district is considering halting the iPad rollout until it figure out what to do.

Apple was hit with a Y330 million (about $3.3 million) bill  by the Tokyo District Court on Thursday after the company was found guilty of patent infringement. Japanese inventor Norihiko Saito was awarded by Presiding Judge Teruhisa Takano after the court ruled that Mr. Saito’s patent, which had been filed in 1998, covered technology for the Click Wheel controller Apple added to the iPod back in 2004.