Linked List: May 14, 2013

Tuesday, 14 May 2013

Turns an iPad into a point of sale register. Given how many small businesses I already see using Square, I think this is going to sell well.

Update: Square says, “Square Stand works with iPad 2 and 3 (30-pin connector) and costs $299. iPad not included.” Only working with 30-pin connector iPads seems pretty short-sighted, no? Those things are probably going the way of the Dodo bird. And why does it cost $299 if it’s just a stand, a power adapter, and an integrated Square reader? (They send you the dongle readers for free when you sign up.)

As of Today, Every Major Mobile Competitor Also Makes Apps for iOS ★

Rene Ritchie, on BlackBerry’s announcement that they’re bringing BBM to iOS:

Apple, by contrast, makes precisely nothing for Android, Windows Phone, or BlackBerry. Not even iTunes.

There’s a reason Apple made iTunes for Windows a decade ago and iTunes for nothing but iOS today.

Larry Page on His Vocal Cord Problems ★

Larry Page:

About 14 years ago, I got a bad cold, and my voice became hoarse. At the time I didn’t think much about it. But my voice never fully recovered. So I went to a doctor and was diagnosed with left vocal cord paralysis. This is a nerve problem that causes your left vocal cord to not move properly. Despite extensive examination, the doctors never identified a cause — though there was speculation of virus-based damage from my cold. It is quite common in cases like these that a definitive cause is not found. […]

Fast forward to last summer, when the same pattern repeated itself — a cold followed by a hoarse voice. Once again things didn’t fully improve, so I went in for a check-up and was told that my second vocal cord now had limited movement as well. Again, after a thorough examination, the doctors weren’t able to identify a cause.

‘A Look at Mail in Cyberdog’ ★

This week’s episode of my podcast, The Talk Show, with special guest Dan Frommer. Topics including Windows 8’s “have it all” design leading to it failing both as a tablet and PC OS; the loyalty (or perhaps lack thereof) of new Apple customers; Netflix’s commanding and growing lead as a provider of streaming video; and some utterly un-researched speculation about overseas roaming leading to poor iPhone battery life.

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Aluminum-Framed Lumia 925 ★

Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News Service:

Nokia’s new Lumia 925 phone has an aluminium frame that functions as an antenna, and is lighter and thinner than the Lumia 920, but otherwise offers similar performance to its predecessor.

A metal frame that functions as an antenna. This, from the company that bragged during Antennagate that they were the “pioneer in internal antennas”.

Declan McCullagh: ‘Apple Deluged by Police Demands to Decrypt iPhones’ ★

Declan McCullagh, reporting for CNet:

The ATF’s Maynard said in an affidavit for the Kentucky case that Apple “has the capabilities to bypass the security software” and “download the contents of the phone to an external memory device.” Chang, the Apple legal specialist, told him that “once the Apple analyst bypasses the passcode, the data will be downloaded onto a USB external drive” and delivered to the ATF.

It’s not clear whether that means Apple has created a backdoor for police — which has been the topic of speculation in the past — whether the company has custom hardware that’s faster at decryption, or whether it simply is more skilled at using the same procedures available to the government. Apple declined to discuss its law enforcement policies when contacted this week by CNET.

I saw this report the other day and it confused me. My understanding is that the entire contents of an iPhone with a passcode (or pass phrase) are encrypted. If Apple can somehow decrypt the contents, then there’s a backdoor, and the possibility exists that someone else will discover the backdoor. (Let alone the problem of Apple being able to do it.)

Charlie Miller, who knows way more about this stuff than I do (and probably as much as anyone outside Apple), is also confused. His theory:

Apple probably uses a signed ramdisk and then brute forces from there.

In which case it’s not really a backdoor, it’s that Apple can more efficiently run through all possible passcodes than law enforcement agencies can. But I take it this means Apple can circumvent the setting that deletes the encryption keys after 10 failed passcode attempts, because they’re not doing the passcode attempts on the device itself.

Update: Quinn Mahoney tweets:

No, a signed ramdisk means the brute force is done on-device. The 10 attempt limit is enforced by iOS, ramdisk bypasses that.