Tag: iPhone (Page 9 of 19)

      Alert! The iPhone can be hacked via SMS

      July 30, 2009 /

      iPhone SMS hackIf you are an iPhone user, or even if you know an iPhone user, you should be aware of a security hole where your iPhone can be hacked via SMS. This is serious stuff and you should share this knowledge with everyone you know. This hole could enable the hackers to take total control over your phone. Here are the details according to wired.com’s Gadget Lab:

      Security researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner will publicize the exploit Thursday at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference, according to Forbes. The researchers said the hack involves sending a series of mostly invisible SMS bursts that effectively hijack an iPhone. From thereon, a hacker could control all the functions on the iPhone, such as e-mailing, dialing contacts — and, most alarmingly, sending more text messages to hijack even more iPhones.

      How can you know if you’re being SMS attacked? According to Miller, one giveaway is if you receive a text message containing a single square character. If that happens, he suggests you immediately turn off your iPhone.

      “This is serious,” Miller told Forbes. “The only thing you can do to prevent it is turn off your phone. Someone could pretty quickly take over every iPhone in the world with this.”

      So until you hear otherwise from Apple, do as it says and turn off your phone immediately if you get a strange square text message. I would suggest taking your phone into the Apple store before turning it back on. Hopefully Apple will release a new iPhone OS patch soon to take care of this issue.

      Apple, iPhone

      iShot Machine Gets an Update

      July 18, 2009 /

      ishot_updateAbout a month ago I wrote a review on Oasys Mobile’s iPhone application, iShot Machine. At the time the app was ridden with more than a few bugs, but boasted a decent shot library that excelled in recipe quality. Oasys just released an update for the app that includes a few fixes and a much-needed update to their randomizer.

      As far as I can tell, they’ve fixed all the bugs I was able to find in my test run. There’s no more crash to springboard and the shot expansion works as it’s supposed to. The randomizer also seems to be truly random at this point. I haven’t been able to duplicate a string of random shots yet.

      The update does mention “improved search functionality,” though on testing it, it doesn’t seem the search function is working at all. Searching by name, again for ‘Lemon Drop,’ now yields zero results. The same is true for ‘drop’ and ‘wild,’ both of which are used in a wide variety of shots.

      My guess is the search thing is just a missing bit of code somewhere, either left out or left in by mistake during debugging. As for the rest of the update, it’s a major improvement on an already decent app. Watch for a search update soon.

      Apps, iPhone

      App Store Hits 1.5 Billion Downloads

      July 14, 2009 /

      Apple's runaway app store.It’s really becoming a year among years for Apple. The super-trendy company was once a sleeping puppy in a den of wolves, quietly wooing customers to the questionable promise of a more stable lifestyle. Since then they’ve released the Kleenex of the MP3 player market and turned tens of millions to the iPhone. Just three months ago their app store hit 1 billion downloads and just this month the store had its first birthday.

      Today marks another milestone for your favorite fruity company. According to an Apple press release, the app store has reached 1.5 billion downloads to date. We already know Apple’s iPhone as host to the fastest growing development community in the world, sending coders on a rite of passage with dreams of hitting it rich. Those quasicultish seekers have made more than 65,000 apps available in 77 countries around the world.

      Our congrats to Apple. May your useful apps continue to improve and your frivolous apps continue to make us scratch our heads as we look at the download counts.

      You can read the full press release here.

      Apple, Apps, Computers, Gaming, Mobile

      iPhone Gamers Love New Games, Want Them Less Than $2

      July 12, 2009 /

      iPhone app store spread.The folks at PocketGamer.biz recently took a look at the iPhone gaming situation to come away with some cold, hard data about what people are buying and why. I’ll spare you the full report (really I just don’t want to leech all the credit here) and focus instead on some of the more interesting details.

      For standards, PG took a snapshot of the top 100 applications and then broke down the results by price, price by rank, games by publisher, and source (new IP, console port, music, movie, etc.).

      Pricing was actually different than you might think. While most of the top 100 came in the $.99 category (36 titles), second place went to the $4.99 bracket with 20 titles. But that’s just number of games for each price bracket. Obviously since they are top 100 these are games that are getting downloaded a lot, but how much do the games get played after downloading?

      If you look at price by rank, the top 10 games average just $1.89/download. At 11-20, the price drops to $1.19. Of course there are a load of factors that could contribute to the rankings. Are people really playing these cheap games more or are they just deleting them more often and so being prompted to rate more of these games?

      Perhaps the most useful statistic, at least to industry developers, is the rate of new downloads and the desire for new IP. Of the top 100 games, 40 were released in June or July (this likely includes a few updates). Another 22 were April or May releases. As for IP, 52 of the top 100 are fresh content, designed just for the iPhone.

      If you’re downloading games, where does your allegiance lie? Are you a bargain shopper, only buying apps that are cheap or on sale? Or do you look for the best IPs from hot developers, regardless of price?

      Apps, Gaming, iPhone

      AT&T Denies MMS Delay, Tethering Estimates

      July 11, 2009 /

      iPhone with some MMS.Around the release of iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS, rumors started to fly concerning MMS and tethering, both of which would get 3.0 support. The word was AT&T was unnecessarily delaying MMS, maybe as far as September, and that tethering would run AT&T customers as much as $55/month.

      According to AT&T, none of this is true. They recently sent an email to Wired.com to set the record straight. A spokesman for the company has confirmed charges for tethering (booooo!) though he wasn’t willing to mention specific numbers or a live date for the service. As they’ve stated before, the email maintains MMS for “later this summer.”

      By the by, the first day of autumn isn’t until September 22, giving plenty of room for “later this summer” and “September” to mean the same thing. As for tethering, we’re probably looking at a $15 upcharge, which is consistent with other tethering/data plans. Seems egregious on top of an unlimited data plan, but I don’t have much use for tethering. My apologies to those of you that do.

      iPhone, Mobile

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