OK, folks, it's time to step back, take a deep breath, and relax.
(Credit: Apple, Inc.)There has been a lot of talk today about Apple supposedly admitting it has heat issues with the new iPhone 3GS. The simple fact is that is not true.
What Apple did do is update a previously published tech note advising customers of the safe operating temperatures of the iPhone. Now, why would Apple do this? Because it does it every time it releases a device like the iPhone 3GS. It's standard procedure for the company to continually update tech notes for all its products.
If you're not familiar with them, tech notes are a way for companies to offer advice, best practices, workarounds, and other tidbits of information for their customers. They are not a way to advise customers of disastrous heat issues that they may have with a device.
For whatever reason, some people picked up the tech note today and wrote that Apple had admitted to an overheating issue. Here's what the tech note actually says.
Apple recommends that you don't:
- Leave the device in a car on a hot day.
- Leave it in direct sunlight for extended amounts of time.
- Use certain applications in hot conditions or direct sunlight for long periods of time, such as GPS tracking in a car on a sunny day or listening to music while in direct sunlight.
I hardly see that as an admission that there are heat issues. Best practices for operating the iPhone, sure.
I've been through several incidents over my 15 years of covering Apple where warnings were issued about products. Whether it was a notebook battery or a power cord, we usually learned of the problem from Apple, and they were always quick to respond and to offer replacements.
It is true that Apple has been quiet about this so far. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because they have not been able to replicate the heat issues some users are reporting.
You will know when Apple acknowledges a serious problem like this. It won't come in the form of a tech note. It will come directly from a company representative.
Apple expects to have a fix later this month for a vulnerability in the iPhone that could allow an attacker to gain control of the device remotely via SMS, a security researcher said on Thursday.
An attacker could exploit a weakness in the way iPhones handle SMS (short message service) messages to do things like use GPS to track the phone's location, turn on the microphone for eavesdropping, or take control of the device and add it to a botnet, Charlie Miller, co-author of The Mac Hacker's Handbook and principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, said in a presentation at the SyScan conference in Singapore. The presentation was covered by IDG News Service.
Miller said that under an agreement with Apple, he was barred from providing too much detail on the vulnerability. He plans to give a more detailed presentation on the hole at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas at the end of the month.
Despite the SMS hole, which "could be a critical vulnerability," the iPhone is more secure than OS X on computers, Miller said. That is because the iPhone doesn't support Adobe Flash and Java, only runs software digitally signed by Apple, includes hardware protection for data stored in memory, and runs applications in a sandbox, he said.
Apple representatives did not immediately respond to an e-mail request for comment.
(Credit: Apple, Inc.)Apple has updated a support document that details MobileMe enhancements for an iPhone running iPhone OS 3.0. The updates include the following features.
Mail
On an iPhone or iPod Touch, a user can search all messages including those stored on the MobileMe "cloud" (server). You can search in the From, To, and Subject fields.
Gallery
- iPhone 3GS users can publish videos to a Gallery album.
- If no Gallery albums exist, an album is automatically created when publishing a photo or video from the iPhone.
Push Contacts and Push Calendar
- There's an option to merge existing contacts and calendars on first sync from iPhone/iPod Touch.
- Deleting a MobileMe account or turning off contact and calendar sync on iPhone/iPod Touch allows users to keep a copy of the data on the device.
- iPhone contacts that sync with MobileMe maintain ringtone associations.
Details regarding Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe are included; we've covered both topics previously.
Apple has a complete list of MobileMe service updates since August 2008 .
Last week, Apple revised a support document about iPhone temperature to include the iPhone 3GS. The June 25 document cautions iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS users to operate their handsets within acceptable temperatures. It makes the following recommendations:
Recommended operating temperatures
Operate iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a place where the temperature is between zero and 35 degrees Celsius (32 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit). Low or high-temperature conditions might temporarily shorten battery life or cause the device to temporarily stop working properly.
Recommended storage temperatures
Store iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a place where the temperature is between -20 and 45 degrees Celsius (-4 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit). Don't leave the device in your car, because temperatures in parked cars can exceed this range.
Symptoms of overheating
- iPhone will no longer charge
- iPhone display will dim
- Weaker cell signal
- iPhone temperature warning screen appears (see below)
Apple's recently released iPhone 3GS pulled out a victory in Consumer Reports' latest smartphone showdown.
(Credit: Apple)In handing the iPhone the top spot in this year's smartphone list, Consumer Reports on Wednesday praised the iPhone 3GS for its "superior display, reinforced by top-notch multimedia, navigation, Web browsing, and battery life." However, the iPhone didn't win in all of the categories.
Consumer Reports gave high marks to the Palm Pre and BlackBerry for their messaging functionality. The organization also praised the Pre as a "superior multitasker" for its "deck-of-cards handling of multiple applications."
In light of the changing features and needs of the smartphone category, Consumer Reports changed some of the criteria for this year's showdown. The changes helped some older phones--like the iPhone 3G--move up in the rankings, while other phones--like the Samsung Blackjack II and BlackBerry Pearl Flip--dropped due to the changes.
Changes include putting more emphasis on things like the display, navigation, multimedia, and messaging, while putting less of an emphasis on features such as talk time and voice quality.
It's unclear how the iPhone 3GS would have rated, had MMS messaging been available from AT&T at the time of the tests. AT&T said functionality would be available sometime this summer.
The full report is available to Consumer Reports subscribers.
You've probably heard of Mobile Air Mouse, the clever app that turns your iPhone into, well, an air mouse. (It's currently on sale for $1.99, by the way.)
JumiMouse is a bit different: It turns your iPhone (or iPod Touch) into an oversize touch pad, complete with left and right mouse buttons, tap-and-drag support, and so on.
The free JumiMouse app turns your iPhone into a roomy touch pad controller.
Why would you want such a thing? For starters, JumiMouse could take the place of a laptop touch pad that's worn and no longer working properly.
It could also solve the common problem of accidentally grazing the laptop touch pad with your thumb, causing the cursor to jump and your document to get messed up. Just deactivate the touch pad and use JumiMouse instead.
Finally, JumiMouse is an ideal replacement for netbook touch pads, which are notoriously tiny. The iPhone screen is ginormous in comparison.
JumiMouse communicates with your PC via local or ad-hoc Wi-Fi. To use the app, you must first install the free Jumi Controller utility. It's currently compatible with Windows XP and Vista (32-bit). I tried it with Windows 7: no go.
(Mac users should check out SnatchTest, a similar utility that duplicates the Mac touch pad. It's free.)
On a Vista system, JumiMouse was a snap to set up. My iPhone immediately detected the server, and a tap later I was controlling the cursor from my screen. Everything worked perfectly, and I detected no lag between my finger movements and the cursor.
At first I was disappointed by the lack of options for things like pointer speed and size. But it turns out that Windows recognizes JumiMouse as hardware, so all you do is hop into the Control Panel and tweak the standard Mouse settings to your liking.
This is a fabulous little app for anyone looking to control a PC--for any reason--with an iPhone or iPod Touch. Amazingly, JumiMouse is free.
(Credit: Wikipedia)Apple rejected a fully licensed emulator of the venerable Commodore 64 (C64) based on the SDK rules that specifically prohibit interpreted or executable code. Manomio's application, also called C64 (c64iphone.com), allowed users to play classic C64 games, run applications and use Commodore BASIC.
"The rejection letter simply stated a violation of section 3.2.2 of the iPhone Developer's Agreement," said Manomio. According to developers we know, section 3.2.2 reads as follows. "An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s)."
The rejection is odd considering that there are some apps in the iTunes App Store that emulate programmable calculators. Also, one app called Frotz (iTunes link) is a Z-machine interpreter.
The rejection makes even less sense when you consider that two games, Gold Axe (iTunes link) and Sonic (iTunes link), are apps that emulate old game console ROMs, which is exactly what the emulator is doing for old C64 games.
(Credit: Manomio)Manomio has to do the following before Apple will accept the C64 emulator .
- Remove access to BASIC--instead of booting up, the emulator just shows a blank screen and is not interactive until you run a game. Prior to this, you could actually interact with the BASIC interpreter.
- Remove the RESET button from the virtual keyboard
- Renamed the "C64 Shop" to "More Games"
Yet, Manomio disputes the last point. "It was never officially confirmed from Apple this[C64 Shop] was an issue, but many comments thought this was our own store for selling games," the developer told us. "It now clearly shows that it will link to additional C64 titles in the App Store."
It appears as if Apple is concerned that Manomio was trying to circumvent iTunes App Store sales, something that Apple usually doesn't take to kindly to. Granted, we think that it was a poor choice for Manomio to use the word Shop in the app, particularly if you consider all the other crazy reasons for app rejections. We'll never know for sure, but that word alone may sum up the reason for Apple's rejection. Indeed, we think that it's a good theory considering the aforementioned apps that already support interpreted or executable code.
Hopefully, Apple will accept the C64 app with the above changes so we can enjoy some of our favorite C64 games again. We'd also like to see the return of Commodore BASIC at some point so we can try out some of our favorite POKE and PEEK commands.
A YouTube video demonstrating the C64 emulator is shown below:
Personally, I'd like to see some if my old BASIC and machine language C64 programs will run under the emulator on my iPhone. The C64 was the first computer that I ever wrote about (for Compute! magazine) and I developed C64 games and applications. The computer even turned a hobby into a career spanning decades which is partially chronicled in my Switcher's Manifesto.
Commodore International released the Commodore 64 (WikiPedia) in 1982. Originally priced at $595, sales eventually totaled 30 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. The 8-bit home computer featured advanced video and audio hardware as well as a whopping 64K of RAM and a zippy (for its time) 1.02 Mhz CPU.
Are you are former Commodore 64 user who is interested in reliving the past by coding in Commodore BASIC, spending long hours typing a program in from your favorite magazine or running a favorite retro game? Let us know in the comments.
Follow David Martin on Twitter.
Thanks to a few iPhone Atlas readers, we've learned of some of the new features in the beta release of iPhone OS 3.1. Though the changes are fairly substantial, we don't know if they'll be included in the software's final release. Here's what we've heard so far.
- After editing a video on the iPhone 3GS, you have the option of saving your edited clip as a new file or replacing your original video.
- Though no AT&T support is evident, MMS is now enabled on the phone as a default setting.
- The phone vibrates as you arrange Home screen icons.
- Mobile Safari now supports "Fraud Protection."
- App launches, start-up and shutdown appear to be faster.
- Voice Control now works over Bluetooth, which allows you to initiate calls and control the iPod player via a wireless connection. Yet, it doesn't appear that Voice Control is better at understanding spoken commands.
- There are improvements not only to OpenGL and Quartz but also for developers in APIs for third-party access and editing videos.
- You'll find a new AT&T SMTP entry in the Mail settings; this could this be used to support MMS.
- There's a new error message regarding video clip size restrictions when trying to share a video. The maximum size is unknown at the time of this writing.
- The battery gauge appears to better represent current battery life.
- The modem firmware version is 05.08.01 and the AT&T carrier profile version is 4.2
From what we know, the Gold Master (final release) of 3.1 may arrive on July 17, which is almost one month after the iPhone 3GS's debut. Please share any other enhancements or bug fixes that you find in the comments.
(Credit: Apple, Inc.)Apple released on Tuesday new beta versions of the iPhone OS 3.1 firmware and the iPhone SDK 3.1 for developers. The OS 3.1 is available for all versions of the iPod Touch and the iPhone, while the SDK 3.1 is available in versions that are compatible with Leopard and Snow Leopard.
Without seeing the update, we don't know of the changes it brings, but we're hoping that it contains bug fixes for problems we've covered here and here.
If you've seen and used this new update, please tell us about your experiences with it in the comments.
(Credit: Apple)Updated on July 2, 2009, at 9:02 a.m. PT with more from Skype regarding push notification for the iPhone/iPod Touch app.
Skype is certainly on a roll this week. Just yesterday it converted the latest beta of its Windows Mobile phone software into a full-fledged release. On Tuesday, the VoIP company did it again for Skype 4.1 for Windows. In addition, Apple green-lighted Skype 1.1 for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which you can download now.
Skype 4.1 for Windows
Skype 4.1 beta brought back features like accessibility, birthday reminders, and the capability to send a contact record to another contact. These had been left out when Skype first updated its interface to the 4.0 style, the company citing a wish to get core features out the door before piling on the extras. It's these extras that users nevertheless clamored for. This minor point update also contains a major new feature that was first introduced in Skype 4.1 beta: screen sharing.
The red border indicates your recording field.
(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)Screen sharing initiates a video call, using the technology to broadcast a recording of your screen--either a portion or the full screen--to one other viewer. Screen sharing has some limitations: you can't simultaneously see a video of your buddy and their desktop, and since only one viewer at a time can peep at your screen, you can't use it as a free replacement for collaborative Web conferencing. It doesn't help that the picture quality is still choppy and fuzzy, in both partial-screen and full-screen view modes.
Make no mistake, though: it's a great feature that we're happy to see added, but we'll be even happier to watch it improve.
In addition to screen sharing, Skype 4.1 lets you feed a contact search from outside address books, including those in Gmail, AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Microsoft Outlook, and a host of other players. If you have it installed, the Web toolbar will highlight phone numbers within contact lists so you can call them through Skype.
Skype for iPhone
Skype 1.1 for iPhone and iPod Touch reintroduces the capability to listen to Skype voice mail and to send and receive SMS messages. These features had been available on the desktop version, but were not activated when Skype first came out for iPhone.
There are a few visual tweaks, also, which gloss up the look and feel of a few screens, most notably the dial pad. To top off the changes, this iPhone update pours on multilingual support, making it available in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, and Traditional Chinese.
Skype for iPhone still has far to go if it's to get all of the extra features that round out the Skype experience--games and conference calling are but two. Push notification is another that Skype users are now asking for. Skype told CNET that they wanted to first integrate SMS and voice mail, the two most-requested features. As for push notification, Skype isn't making any commitments at this point, but a representative from the company vaguely stated, "Where we're able to use functionality provided by the iPhone OS to support a rich Skype experience on the iPhone platform, we will endeavor to do so." Still, it's a fair guess that a future version could notify you when someone is calling.
In the future, we're looking forward to what Skype might do with video calls now that the iPhone 3GS has its shiny new video recorder.
