iPhone v2.1 also addresses security
With yesterday’s iPhone 2.1 software update Apple has plugged several security holes.
• Application Sandbox
• CoreGraphics
• mDNSResponder
• Networking
• Passcode Lock
• WebKit
iPhone still works after being ran over by Semi
I was filling my car up with gas in the sharp cold gusting winds we’ve had here in Kansas lately. I had on a light jacket and as I was getting out of the car to go around and begin pumping, I figured I’d put on my heavy winter coat. I took my phone out of my lightweight jacket and set it on the trunk of my car and switched to my heavier coat. I went inside to prepay for gas, forgetting all about my phone. When I came back out, I pumped my gas, walked around the front of my car, got back in and drove off.
I was traveling down the interstate when this happened. The gas station I stopped at was a little rest area in the middle of the turnpike. So as I left, I merged back onto the highway, accelerated hard, turned up the stereo, and got moving. About 5 minutes later, I reached for my phone, but couldn’t feel it. Then it hit me. I’d forgotten to grab it off the back of my car when I was filling up at the gas station. A feeling of panic and anger washed over me instantly and I started screaming and yelling in my empty car. Because I was driving on a toll-road, there was no way to turn around and just go back. I had to drive another 15 miles to the next exit, pay my toll, get back on the highway, and race the 20 miles back to the rest stop.
I pulled back up to the pump I filled up at but there was no sign of my phone. I remembered a lady filling up next to me in a silver BMW - but she was long gone. My first move was to go inside and ask if she or anyone else had turned it in. No such luck. I scoured the parking lot and on-ramp I used to get back on the highway - no sign of the phone anywhere. After about 30 minutes of searching, I finally gave up. It was 11pm and it was 19 degrees outside. I was exhausted, cold, angry, frustrated, and just decided I’d have to start using the Treo 750 I had as a backup.
As I slowly merged back onto the highway, I kept my eyes open for the remote possibility that the phone had stayed on my car for a longer distance than what I’d searched on foot. Still, no luck. I got up to speed, giving up for good, and about that time (1/4 mile from the gas station) I saw a glimmering light from the lane next to me. As I sped past the object, I knew it was my phone - still alive and working! I slammed on the brakes and pulled over, waiting for the passing cars and trucks to go by so I could run across 2 lanes of 75mph traffic to retrieve my poor phone. As the last pair of headlights approached, the semi got over to the far outside lane because he saw me standing on the side of the road. I knew this was trouble. As I watched helplessly from the shoulder, the semi plowed my phone at full speed, throwing it to the ditch on the other side of the highway. At this point, I figured I’d retrieve it just for the purpose of seeing the crushed iPhone in disarray, mangled and crunched lifeless in the grass.
Much to my surprise, as I approached, I heard the familiar sound of my ringtone — the iPhone was alive and ringing! As I picked it up and cradled it gently in my hands, I saw the screen displaying my caller ID — the screen still worked! I slid my finger gently over the answer slide and paused as I held the tattered and torn device to my ear — my heart must have skipped a beat when I heard my mom’s voice at the other end of the phone — the phone still worked!
I ran back to my car and sat on the side of the road for about 15 minutes inspecting it, testing it, and looking it over — how in the hell had it survived being trounced by an 18-wheeler at 70mph?!?
One day later as I’m writing this, I don’t have an answer to that question. It makes and receives calls, sends and receives text messages, browses the internet, plays music from the iPod feature, connects to my wi-fi network, syncs with my computer, and charges the battery. The camera even takes perfect pictures still!
I’ve spoken with Apple’s customer relations department - they’re interested in using it in an iPhone commercial; I mean come on, this is the ultimate crash and durability test out there! I’ve banged this phone up many times since I bought it the day they were released last June. I’ve dropped it down a flight of concrete stairs, slid it across a parking lot, dropped it on cement, and even partially submerged it in water and this little phone just keeps truckin!
There are a few bad spots on the display now, but the screen is still responsive to touch in those bad areas! The glass covering the screen doesn’t have a mark on it - I have no idea how. The phone would have first had to topple off the back of my car and based on where I found it, I’d have been going well over 60mph when it fell off — that alone would kill most phones. But then being ran over by a semi — I don’t know what to say! I know that approximately 1 hour went by between the time I knew I lost it and the time I recovered it — who knows what else happened to it during that time. When the semi ran over it, the phone was sitting dead in the middle of one of the lanes — it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine it getting hit more than the one time I witnessed!
Quicken coming to the iPhone
Intuit Inc is looking to boost Quicken personal finance software sales by offering it as a service for $3 a month that can run on Apple Inc’s iPhone.
It hopes the product, which launches on January 8, will vastly expand Quicken’s 14 million users and boost the market penetration of a brand that already generates about 1.7 million new copies of software a year, Intuit senior vice president Rick Jensen told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Intuit has designed the product to appeal to younger consumers, people who may have used online banking for most of their adult lives, but do not use software to track those transactions.
“Our first mission is to make sure we are solving the needs of people who are not currently using a personal finance solution,” he said.
Sales of the Quicken brand have basically been flat since peaking in 2001, but it has recently taken some business away from its only key rival, Microsoft Corp, according to market researcher NPD.
iPhonePlanet.net
I hope they hold off for Apple’s SDK. I would much rather have a native app that requires not internet connection, that will sync with the Mac or PC.
GarageBand Update Supports iPhone Ringtones
Apple quietly updated the iLife ‘08 program GarageBand to support creating ringtones for the iPhone on the Mac. The update 4.1.1 is available through Software Update, and works quite well. Look for ringtones to start popping up all over the place soon. TUAW has already posted a link to the CTU 24 ringtone here. Sorry no protected files, GarageBand will reject them. So get creative.
iLounge has created a Ten Step Guide here.
iPhone SDK for third party apps in February [OFFICIAL]
Open letter from Steve Jobs posted on Apple’s site under Hot News.
Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.
It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.
Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.
We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.
Steve
P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]
Google GPhone Won’t Kill Apple iPhone
Google is putting the final touches on a mobile-phone project, but unlike Apple’s iPhone the so-called GPhone is all about software for mobile carriers and mobile advertisers.
Google’s goal is to extend its dominance in online advertising to the emerging mobile advertising market, which is small today but expected to grow dramatically in the years ahead, according to a news report in the International Herald Tribune.
The report says Google is expected to unveil details later this year, and handsets with the software could appear in 2008. But about 30 prototype phones are reported to be ‘in the wild’ as Network World Microsoft Subnet blogger Alex Lewis discovered firsthand last week.
Apple’s iPhone revolutionized user expectations about how mobile handsets should look, feel and behave. (You can find our extensive iPhone coverage by starting on our search page). The iPhone’s success has sent manufacturers scrambling to not merely match but surpass its features.
But Google’s GPhone is an open source phone operating system. There has been a growing interest and sophistication in Linux-based software and development tools for mobile devices.
The Herald Tribune article, citing both unnamed “industry source familiar with the project” and industry executives, outlines two possible directions for Google’s ambition. One is to develop and deploy a vastly cheaper alternative to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system. The second is to loosen the grip that carriers have on the software, devices and services that can run on their closed cellular nets.
New site theme for your iPhone or iTouch
For those of you who have the iPhone or iTouch we have added a new easy to navigate theme. Check it out.
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Apple releases iPhone update 1.1.1
New Features include:
- iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store
- Louder speakerphone and receiver volume
- Home Button double-click shortcut to phone favorites or music controls
- Space bar double-tap shortcut to intelligently insert period and space
- Mail attachments are viewable in portrait and landscape
- Stocks and cities in Stocks and Weather can be re-ordered
- Apple Bluetooth Headset battery status in the Status Bar
- Support for TV Out
- Preference to turn off EDGE/GPRS when roaming internationally
- New Passcode lock time intervals
- Adjustable alert volume
REWIND: Microsoft CEO Claims iPhone Will Be Bust!
from 4.29.07
Q: People get passionate when Apple comes out with something new — the iPhone; of course, the iPod. Is that something that you’d want them to feel about Microsoft?
A: It’s sort of a funny question. Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? (Laughter.) I want to have products that appeal to everybody.
Now we’ll get a chance to go through this again in phones and music players. There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.
In the case of music, Apple got out early. They were the first to really recognize that you couldn’t just think about the device and all the pieces separately. Bravo. Credit that to Steve (Jobs) and Apple. They did a nice job.
But it’s not like we’re at the end of the line of innovation that’s going to come in the way people listen to music, watch videos, etc. I’ll bet our ads will be less edgy. But my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we’ll get him to own a Zune.
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