Linked List: October 25, 2010

Monday, 25 October 2010

iOS 4.1 Security Flaw Allows You to Bypass Lock Screen to Access Phone App ★

Start an “emergency call” to a bogus number like “###”, then quickly hit the lock button atop the iPhone — boom, you’ve got full access to the Phone app, including call history and voicemail.

Oddly, or at least coincidentally, it seems to be fixed in iOS 4.2 beta 3 — I can’t reproduce this on my iPhone with 4.2b3 installed, but can on another iPhone with 4.1. Also odd is how similar the exploit is to this one from two years ago — which was also discovered by a MacRumors forum poster. You’d think Apple would have given iOS’s emergency-call-while-locked code a more thorough audit — the thing only has two non-volume hardware buttons, and both of them have now been found to allow the lock screen to be bypassed.

Sprint Announces Samsung Galaxy Tab: $399, With a Two-Year Contract ★

Sprint:

It will cost $399.99 (taxes not included) with a new line or eligible upgrade and two-year service agreement on a 3G Tablet Mobile Broadband plan. Sprint customers will have two rate plans to choose from for their Samsung Galaxy Tab: a 2GB data plan with unlimited messaging for $29.99 per month or a 5GB data plan with unlimited messaging for $59.99 per month (plus taxes and surcharges).

Don’t everyone get in line at once now.

Ray Ozzie Says Goodbye the Long Way ★

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s outgoing Chief Software Architect, has posted a lengthy (3,500-ish-word) memo on the state of the company and industry. I found it nearly impenetrable — as though it’s written in a language I don’t speak. For example, I think this is how he admits that Apple and Google have kicked Microsoft’s ass in mobile:

Certain of our competitors’ products and their rapid advancement and refinement of new usage scenarios have been quite noteworthy. Our early and clear vision notwithstanding, their execution has surpassed our own in mobile experiences, in the seamless fusion of hardware and software and services, and in social networking and myriad new forms of internet-centric social interaction.

This sort of opaque communication is at the heart of what’s wrong with Microsoft.

YouTube5 Safari Extension ★

My new favorite Safari extension:

This extension removes the need to use flash on YouTube by converting all videos to their HTML5 video tag equivalents. It also has the added benefits of decreased CPU usage compared to Flash, and the removal of in-video ads.

I’ve followed Steven Frank’s lead, and completely disabled Flash Player on my computer. I don’t miss it at all — largely thanks to YouTube5.

Liz Castro Upgraded to iPhoto 11 and Lost Her Entire Photo Library ★

She’s OK, because she had a full backup and was able to revert to iPhoto 09.

Everyone who reads Daring Fireball performs full and regular backups, right? Get a big external hard drive or three and use Time Machine or SuperDuper (or both). Drives fail, software has bugs. If you don’t have good backups you will eventually lose something precious.

Why iOS Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to the Open Web ★

Robert Scoble interviewed Starbucks CIO Stephen Gillett:

By the way, Gillett also said that iDevices from Apple are used more in its stores than any others. How important is that? Well, Gillett wanted to use Flash on the social network, but there wasn’t any way he could because of Steve Jobs’ refusal to support Flash. Even today Apple is refusing to include Flash in its laptops and desktops.

So, Starbucks built its system using HTML 5.

Nielsen Cops to iPad Stat Cock-Up ★

Rik Myslewski for The Register:

The customarily competent media-survey firm, The Nielsen Company, has backtracked on its startling claim that one-third of all iPad users have never download an app. The company now says that the number of download virgins is fewer than one in ten. [...]

Face, meet egg. Not only does Nielsen come out looking foolish in this cock-up, but so do the BBC, MSNBC, InformationWeek, Wired, and many other media outlets — including The Reg — that reported the original figures.

You’d have to be an idiot to have believed that a third of all iPad owners never downloaded a single app.

Chris Adamson on Java and Mac OS X ★

Another astute take on Java and Mac OS X:

Buried in all the denunciations of “control freak Steve Jobs” and his nefarious skullduggery is a wake-up call that Oracle and Java community need to hear: one of your biggest commercial licensees, the second biggest US corporation by market cap, doesn’t think licensing Java will help them sell computers anymore. Why does nobody take this screamingly obvious hint? [...]

Lachlan O’Dea on Java and the Mac ★

Astute analysis from Lachlan O’Dea:

The reason isn’t that complicated: Apple no longer needs Java. If you make a list of what Steve Jobs sees as the critical objectives for Apple, it becomes immediately obvious that maintaining a Mac port of Java is not helping to advance any of them. Of course, neither does maintaining, say, Apple’s port of Python. But Python takes very little effort to port and maintain. The Java port requires a team of engineers permanently dedicated to it. Also, the huge success of iOS has given Apple the confidence that their approach to working with third-party developers is working out great for everyone. The prospect of Java developers and applications abandoning the Mac is no longer remotely scary for them. Apple have decided they’d rather pay the costs of dropping Java than keep maintaining it.

Adobe Air 2.5, and Its Role on the BlackBerry PlayBook ★

Sean Hollister for Engadget, on today’s new Adobe Air 2.5:

Air will also come standard in RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, but it’s not just for fun, productivity and games there — Adobe told us that the PlayBook’s entire UI is built on Air.

Is that right? The native UI for the PlayBook is Adobe Air? If so, that’s a real score for Adobe, but it strikes me as catastrophic for RIM.

Update: I guess it is right. RIM’s new Tablet OS developer page:

The initial release of the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK allows developers to create Adobe AIR applications. Leveraging Adobe design and development tools, the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK for Adobe AIR allows you to create rich, powerful applications like never before.

Eric Schmidt Says People Unhappy With Google Street View ‘Can Just Move’ ★

John Paczkowski:

Appearing on CNN’s “Parker Spitzer” program last week, he said that people who don’t like Google’s Street View cars taking pictures of their homes and businesses “can just move” afterward to protect their privacy. Ironically, he said this on the very day that Google admitted those cars captured more than just fragments of personal payload data.

‘They Didn’t Build a Knockoff: They Built Something New’ ★

Andy Ihnatko reviews Windows Phone 7:

Overall, though, this interface is an exciting victory. There’s been an obvious attempt to reduce visual clutter and find clever solutions. After seeing a permanent hardware status bar on the top of every phone I’ve owned over the past decade, it’s almost upsetting to find that it’s gone from Windows Phone 7. But if you really do want to check your battery or signal level, just give the top of the screen a little swipe and the familiar bar will drop down. Nice.

‘Season of the Witch’ — Second Windows Phone 7 Ad From Microsoft ★

Saw this during the Phillies-Giants game over the weekend. Great spot.

Panic State of the Union ★

Cabel Sasser:

I’d like to try being more transparent. So here’s what going on, right now.

Regarding iOS 4.2’s Change of the iPad’s Orientation Lock to a Mute Switch ★

According to a purported email from Steve Jobs, there will be no preference setting to turn this switch back to an orientation lock. What’s weird about this change is that I don’t think anyone is happy about it. It seems like Apple is standardizing for the sake of standardizing, not for improved usability. The iPhone and iPod Touch are, for many people, audio devices. But the iPad is a reading/viewing device for most of us.

And, the iPad with iOS 3.x effectively has a hardware mute button: just press and hold on the volume down key, and it quickly jumps to mute.

Matt Drance on Java on Mac OS X ★

Matt Drance:

Java, like Flash, is a ball and chain for a company that loathes external dependency. And you just can’t argue that client-side Java is important to the internet experience like you can with Flash.

Firesheep ★

Fascinating, frightening free Firefox extension from Eric Butler — lets you hijack (“sidejack”, to be technical) accounts on popular services like Facebook and Twitter by capturing unencrypted session cookies sent over the local network.