News - Apple

Setting the iPhone to emergency call mode allows someone to see incoming text messages even if the passcode lock is turned on.

(Credit: Karl Kraft)

A 12-year-old who uses his iPhone mostly for texting with his girlfriend has discovered what looks like a new vulnerability with the device.

The unnamed boy, son of blogger Karl Kraft, turns on the passcode lock and disables SMS Preview in order to prevent his parents from seeing any messages, Kraft wrote on his blog.

Those settings block the display of incoming text messages and show an alert saying "New Text Message" if an SMS comes through while the phone is locked. However, if the phone is set to emergency call mode the incoming text messages are previewed.

"Thus all I need to do to intercept the messages from his girlfriend is to place the phone in emergency mode and wait 30 seconds for the next sickly sweet message," Kraft writes.

Apple representatives did not return e-mails seeking comment.

A different security hole related to password-protected iPhones was discovered in August, and last month a researcher disclosed that the iPhone captures all the activities of a user in order to enable the cool fading applications effect.

Getting at the iPhone 3G's battery is not as easy as a proposed directive from the E.U. might require.

(Credit: TechRepublic)

The European Union is considering a requirement that all cell phone batteries be easily replaceable, which might cause a problem for Apple's iPhone.

AppleInsider spotted that particular directive in an article in New Electronics, a U.K. trade publication, on the latest set of computer-industry regulations under consideration in Europe. The EU is thinking about enacting a new directive on batteries similar to its RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) directives from a few years back that forced the computer industry to eliminate harmful chemicals and/or materials from its manufacturing processes.

The "New Batteries Directive" would require manufacturers to make sure their batteries can be easily replaced, either by sliding off the cover or removing a couple of screws. The iPhone and iPod, of course, don't fit that mold; Apple requires owners to send their iPhones and iPods into the company to replace the battery, which is buried under the main circuit board.

It's not clear that the directive--which is very vaguely worded at present--would force drastic changes in the design of the iPhone. As AppleInsider notes, the idea behind the directive is to prevent batteries from ending up in landfills, and if Apple is able to show the E.U. that its battery replacement program prevents that result, that might meet the requirements of the directive.

Still, the proposed wording does require that cell phone batteries be designed in such a way as to be "readily removed," according to New Electronics. As these teardown photos from our friends at Tech Republic show, that's not the case with the iPhone.

Maybe iPhone users won't have to covet one of those shiny new features in Google's Android operating system after all: Google Maps Street View.

The driver's-eye view is a prominent part of the first Android phone, T-Mobile's G1, which goes on sale October 22. But according to Mac Rumors on Monday, Apple has snuck Street View into the iPhone 2.2 firmware beta release.

Other new features described in the report include the ability to disable the typing autocorrect feature and the inclusion of 461 small icons called Japanese emoji characters.

The iPhone 2.2 firmware beta release is not expected until later this month.

Has Apple really sold its 10 millionth iPhone? That's what several bloggers are saying. But a closer look suggests that it might be a bit too early to pop open the champagne.

(Credit: Apple)

A joint project of AFB and Investor Village's AAPL Sanity has been collecting data about iPhone inventory. Using a Google spreadsheet, the group has been unofficially tracking iPhone production estimates using International Mobile Equipment Identity, or IMEI, numbers that are used to uniquely identify every GSM, UMTS, or iDEN mobile phone.

According to the spreadsheet, AFB is reporting that 9,190,680 iPhone units have been created, which my colleague Jason D. O'Grady at ZDNet estimates could mean that about 7.6 million iPhone 3G have already been sold and more than 10 million iPhones in total.

But O'Grady and others point out that these numbers may be misleading.

The groups gathering the data explicitly point out that these are production estimates, not sales estimates. This means the figures also include Apple Retail Store inventory, store displays, and replacement units, which do not count as sales.

This might explain why Apple has been mum on the whole thing. But this is not to say that the iPhone hasn't been selling well. In fact, market research firm NPD Group said Monday that 30 percent of smartphone buyers this summer left their existing carrier to get an iPhone 3G.

Apple's iPhone 3G apparently created a summertime switch itch: 30 percent of all the smartphone's buyers bailed on their existing carriers in order to purchase the device, according to an NPD Group report released Monday.

AT&T has been the iPhone 3G's exclusive carrier in the U.S. since the smartphone was released in June.

According to the report, which covers June through August, 47 percent of those switching to AT&T to get the iPhone 3G came from Verizon Wireless, 24 percent from T-Mobile, and 19 percent from Sprint.

"While the original iPhone also helped win customers for AT&T, the faster network speeds of the iPhone 3G (have) proven more appealing to customers that already had access to a 3G network," Ross Rubin, NPD director of industry analysis, said in a statement.

By contrast, about 23 percent of consumers overall switched carriers from June through August.

During that same time frame, the smartphones with the highest unit sales were Apple's iPhone 3G, followed by Research In Motion's BlackBerry Curve, RIM's BlackBerry Pearl, and the Palm Centro, according to NPD.

Prior to launching its 3G version, Apple's iPhone accounted for 11 percent of the smartphone market in 2008. But since the 3G's launch, that figure has risen to 17 percent of the market since the start of the year.

"The launch of the lower-priced iPhone 3G was a boon to overall consumer smartphone sales," Rubin said.

The Obama iPhone call tally as of 4:33 p.m. Oct. 3.

(Credit: CNET News)

It looks like either somebody drinks a lot of coffee and talks really fast, or somebody diddled with the results of the phone recruitment feature in the Barack Obama campaign's iPhone application.

When I tried the application before 8 a.m. PDT Thursday, only 12 calls had been made, and the top-ranked caller had made 6 of them. But 30 hours later, the top caller had made 9,648 calls, according to the application.

That works out to more than five calls per minute, which means somebody would have been spending less than 12 seconds per call on average. And it accounted for nearly half of the 22,597 calls made by 4:33 p.m. Friday.

But by 5:41 p.m., the top caller had made a more reasonable 48 calls and the total calls dropped to 13,076, the software reported, so it looks like the application engineers figured out what happened and updated the statistics.

The Democratic presidential candidate's campaign released the iPhone application on Thursday. Its most notable feature lists who on a person's contact list lives in key battleground states at the top and keeps track of who's been called to keep track of recruiting efforts.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs did not suffer a heart attack Friday morning, as was briefly reported by CNN.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News)

Apple has denied a rumor posted on CNN's iReport page that Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack Friday morning.

The unsubstantiated rumor, posted on the "citizen journalism" section of CNN called iReport, caused a sharp drop in Apple's stock price around 7 a.m. PDT before company representatives were able to deny the charge. Blogs such as Silicon Alley Insider initially published the rumor as written on CNN with the 21st century fig leaf--a question mark at the end of the headline--but updated its story after hearing from Apple representatives. CNN has since removed the post in question.

It's not hard to imagine this was a brazen attempt to move Apple's stock price to someone's benefit, and an investigation will probably follow. The episode is eerily similar to one last year in which Engadget was sent a fake e-mail claiming to be from an Apple employee that the release of the iPhone and Mac OS X Leopard had been delayed. And it also smacks of the "hedge fund sources" quoted by the media earlier this year questioning Jobs' health based on his appearance.

Updated: Courtesy of our friends at ZDNet, here's a screen grab of the actual post that appeared on CNN's iReport site.

(Credit: ZDNet)

In June, Apple's Scott Forstall promises background notification services would arrive in September.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET News)

Apple has missed a self-imposed deadline for bringing background-processing capabilities--of sorts--to the iPhone.

When Apple revealed that iPhone applications would not be allowed to run in the background during its March iPhone SDK event, developers, as they are wont to do, grumbled about the slight. So in June 2008 at the Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple promised to give developers a workaround that involved using Apple's own servers to notify iPhone users running one application when fresh data was available for another application not in use.

However, as Macworld notes, Apple had promised to deliver that capability by September. It's now October. With one major iPhone update out of the way in the form of 2.1, and with 2.2 expected to focus more on cosmetic changes, it doesn't seem that Apple is planning to introduce this service any time soon.

Dan Moren at Macworld makes the point that Apple perhaps decided that given all the problems associated with the 2.0 software update, fixing those bugs with the 2.1 release took precedence over rolling out the notification service. That certainly makes sense, and given Apple's overtures to iPhone developers this week, perhaps the rollout is around the corner.

But this is an important capability that Apple needs to get up and running as soon as possible. Granted, iPhone development doesn't seem to be hamstrung by the lack of background processing to date, but given the choice, I'm sure developers could employ that technology to great effect.

The Mac Pro might smell funny, but Apple says there's no evidence that smell is harmful.

(Credit: Apple)

Claims that Apple's Mac Pros emit benzene are being denied by the company.

A French newspaper called Libération.fr published the results of a study by a researcher at France's INERIS claiming that odors stemming from certain Mac Pros are the result of benzene emissions. Complaints have surfaced in the past about some sort of weird odor coming from Mac Pros, but it was thought the odor was related to small strips of plastic or material around the heatsink on the processor, depending on where you looked.

The study claims that the benzene fumes won't kill you immediately or anything, but could cause health problems such as leukemia over time. Apple, however, told Macworld it has found no evidence of benzene emissions from the Mac Pro, although it continues to look into the issue.

The end result of Apple's decision to drop an NDA for released iPhone software? Better software.

(Credit: Apple)

Software development is complicated enough, even when you can ask for help.

Apple's decision to let its nondisclosure agreement on released iPhone software expire had an effect just hours after it was formally announced: developers such as Craig Hockenberry started sharing ideas for iPhone code.

A heavily moderated mailing list for Cocoa developers (Apple's user interface technology) rejoiced at the prospect that they could discuss tips for iPhone development the way they discuss Mac development.

Before Wednesday morning, they simply couldn't do such a thing in public, for fear of getting booted out of the iPhone Developer Program. Of course, in this era of ubiquitous communications, it's pretty hard to keep people under wraps, if they have something they want to say, but Apple's decision to apply the iPhone SDK's NDA to released software forced developers to go underground simply to share tips and tricks they discovered when working on a freely available application.

That was a ridiculous state of affairs, and it did nothing to further the mutual goal of Apple and iPhone developers: the continual improvement of software on the iPhone in order to boost sales. It would sort of be like if CNET forbade me from explaining to readers and colleagues how I developed my thoughts during the writing process for an article that had already been published.

Apple's justification for applying the NDA to released software (it still applies to unreleased software under development) was that competitors might be able to glean insights into the iPhone from the technical details shared among developers.

The iPhone is without a doubt a hot topic among other mobile-software development companies, such as Microsoft, Symbian, Research In Motion, and Google. However, if those companies really wanted to figure out how the iPhone works, it's not much of a stretch to assume that they have ways of making that happen.

Instead of throwing off the competition, the NDA merely angered developers who wanted nothing more than to help make Apple's latest baby even better: they just needed a little help from their friends.

This move is a win-win-win, a rare time in which that cliche actually rings true. Apple will benefit from a vibrant developer community's excitement over developing for the iPhone. The developers will be able to make their applications better and more reliable, which will make them more popular and profitable. And iPhone users are the direct beneficiaries of developer innovation.

It's also a sign that Apple--whose relationship with developers has been somewhat more strained than that other major operating-system company--is listening to the outside world.

Apple's hallmark is control: this is a company that requires an escort for reporters who want to walk 100 yards down a cavernous hallway in the Moscone Center from the media room to the bathroom in plain sight of dozens of people. That control sometimes serves Apple well, in that it can dictate a specific user experience free from outside distractions that might cause problems.

But when you make the decision to take the training wheels off the iPhone, you have to let go a little. I'm in the camp that believes that Apple always intended to open up the iPhone to outside development--despite telling developers in June 2007 that Web apps are the coolest thing since widgets--but Apple clearly has had control issues, when it comes to how its technology is tinkered with by outside forces.

Apple is never going to be Google, or even Microsoft, when it comes to placating developers. But developers are drawn to the iPhone because of the product itself, rather than the promise of freedom to tinker or a tight integration with IT. All Apple has to do to keep them happy is to give up the tiniest bit of control.

That's what Apple did Wednesday. Now all the company needs to do is set clear guidelines for what constitutes a kosher iPhone application and what is too similar to Apple's own plans to be released.

Communication has not been Apple's strong suit this past summer. But with just four paragraphs, developers are now looking at the company in a new light. Imagine what a full-time iPhone developer evangelist could accomplish.