Tag: Apple

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Apple taking steps to block knock off Lightning Connector cables and chargers

Lightning USB cable appleI’m a little torn on this story.

On the one hand, I think it’s great that Apple will start taking steps to block the use of knock off cheap Lightning connector cables and chargers. There’s a chip built into each cable, communicating with the iPhone or iPad to verify authenticity. This chip can be cracked and cloned, but there are still varying reports of people getting shocked or even killed by knock offs.

Apple has started a trade in program, where customers can bring in knock off chargers and get an official Apple charger for $10. This is a very conscious move on Apple’s part getting ahead of a market which could be damaging their brand, and acknowledging a potential consumer health risk.

However, there’s a part of me which can’t help but point out that Apple’s use of non-standard connectors and cabling is what’s causing this cottage industry of building and selling knock off chargers. Buying the official Lightning connector cable by itself from Apple will set you back $30. Buying an Amazon branded Lightning cable will still run you $14. Total cost to get an official Apple cable and charger is around $50.

Buying a decent MicroUSB cable capable of charging and syncing any Android, Blackberry, or Windows Phone? About $5, or at least usually less than a dollar a foot.

In part it was this kind of situation that the EU was hoping to avoid back in 2010 when they started working towards a universal device connector. Not just to halt the price gouging of every company coming up with proprietary connections, and the e-waste associated with one-off accessories, but also the health and safety issues associated with people trying to find deals. MicroUSB was eventually agreed upon, but Apple decided to continue with a proprietary dock connector. To appease the EU, Apple released a $20 Lightning connector to MicroUSB adapter, which will allow your iPhone to charge off of those aforementioned $5 cables. While within the letter of the law, it certainly violates the spirit of developing a standard.

If you’re using a cheap “alternative” brand charger for your iDevices, I would highly recommend checking out Apples trade in offer. Saving a few bucks is hardly worth a fried iPhone.

(via PhoneArena)

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Touch ID fingerprint security already circumvented using low tech methods

apple touch id fingerprint readerThat was fast.

So, iPhone 5S was officially released two days ago, and Touch ID has already been bypassed. It must have taken an army of L337 haxxors running server farms to crack the protection right? Well, unfortunately for us  fans of biometric security, it would seem that the same low tech methods for bypassing still work, even on Apple’s improved fingerprint sensor.

So, as long as you can gain access to someone’s fingerprint, you know those pesky traces of ourselves we leave after touching just about any surface we come in contact with, even potentially ON the fingerprint reader itself, you can spoof someone’s print well enough to fool Touch ID.

From the Chaos Computer Club (the team responsible for the hack):

“In reality, Apple’s sensor has just a higher resolution compared to the sensors so far. So we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake… “

Earlier implementations of optical fingerprint readers could even sometimes be fooled by silly putty, so I had very high hopes that Apple’s implementation would solve this problem. The dream of not having to enter complex alpha-numeric passwords on an unforgiving touchscreen isn’t quite realized yet.

Now the process for spoofing your print still requires a little work, making sure you can take a high resolution picture of the print, printing it out, and transferring it to a glue or latex membrane. You have to judge for yourself if the information on your phone is valuable enough for someone to go through this process to try and obtain it. Also, to be fair to Apple, it does require more work to crack than Google’s “Face Unlock” from the front facing cameras on Android handsets.

Unfortunately this will likely strike a blow to corporate and government use, as while it’s still one of the best implementations of biometric security we’ve seen on a mobile device, it’s still entirely defeat-able.

A video demonstrating the exploit can be seen below.

(via CCC)

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iPhone 5S Launch Day Adventure – SomeGadgetGuy at the AT&T store in West Hollywood, California

somegadgetguy juan carlos bagnell iphone 5s launch day att store west hollywood californiaAnd no fights broke out…

I might just start doing this for all launch day activities. The folks at AT&T were kind enough to open a store early for me to check out the iPhone launch. I got hands on with the iPhone 5S, and got to see a store in action on one of their busiest days of the year.

I did the whole day on about three-ish hours of sleep, so I might’ve gotten a little goofy… Yes I’m holding a Lumia 1020… This photo of me MIGHT have been taken with an HTC one…

Yay iPhone!

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The Post Where We Say Goodbye to Blackberry?

blackberry stock slideI’ve been staving off writing this for some time now. Even among all the reports of potential buyouts, I kept hoping the company would start to turn itself around, find some momentum. It looks like that wont be happening.

Blackberry is warning investors ahead of their official call on September 27th that revenue will be more than a billion dollars below expectations. Yup. Expectations were hovering around $3 Billion, and BB will be reporting $1.6 Billion. Ouch.

Of course these are analyst predictions, and analysts are notoriously bad at predicting the future, but this will obviously hurt BB’s image (under-producing) more than it’ll hit any market watching “guru”.

Reactions to the news has caused a stock slide of almost 20 percent. Another blow to the company, and now CEO Thorsten Heins is announcing the first measure to be taken will be a round of layoffs to the tune of 4,500 axed jobs. They’ll also be streamlining future handset launches. Instead of the six phones they were planning on introducing over the next year, they’ll be dropping down to four, two high-end and two entry-level.

blackberry os 10 handsets z10 q10 smartphonesIt’s this combination of expectations and time which is going to put a hurt on upstarts and smaller companies moving forward. Yes, BB once ruled the smartphone landscape, but they didn’t properly focus on the consumer experience. Sure they have great mind-share and brand recognition, but they are also creating a new product line from scratch. New OS. New devices. Customers are wary of “new” right now.

Apple found success in smartphones based on years of consumer trust built on iPods. Android needed about three major revisions before it started gaining traction outside low cost, entry-level gear. HP bailed on Palm before it had a shot when it wasn’t immediately successful out of the gate (they’re currently floundering with half-way attempts at Android, with rumors pointing to a possible Windows Phone in the works). Microsoft is just now starting to be taken seriously in mobile, now that we’re looking at a third generation of Windows Phone hardware about to hit the market.

BB is on that “new” list. The bummer is, BB OS10 is pretty great. It’s a refreshing spin on a mobile UI. Gestures are clean. It looks good. It’s a nice experience. This means almost nothing right now. Customers don’t want “new”, they want an established ecosystem. They want to trust that their devices will get updates and that they’ll see new devices in the future. They want apps, and they want to see cases they’ll never buy at Mall kiosks. Those things only come with time and sales. Those early sales are going to be harder and harder to come by as every player that fails in this market will only reinforce why consumers should only buy something established. Why they shouldn’t take a risk.

Years. Blackberry needs years.

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Pick Your Poison: OS Fragmentation or Feature Fragmentation?

One of the most impressive aspects of owning an Apple phone or tablet is how good Apple is at rolling out OS updates. With very few meltdowns, MILLIONS of devices are updated on launch day, and the entire ecosystem moves forward very quickly. Early estimates point to almost 30% of iOS users are now on iOS7. By controlling the hardware and software environment, Apple has created a process Google will probably never be able to approximate.

TheAppleLounge iOS-7-Comparison-ChartWhile even older devices will get these OS updates, iDevices like the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 wont be getting all of the new features of the OS. This makes sense as it’s older, under-powered hardware, and Apple is ruthless about protecting the user experience. However, as what we get excited about during an OS update are new features, claiming the iPhone 4 “also gets iOS7” is a very small touch disingenuous. It does get iOS7, just not ALL of it.

The Apple Lounge built this great graphic detailing which devices would be getting new features, and which would be left out. On the whole Apple has done a terrific job of moving things like Control Center and Multi-tasking forward, but some lost features might be a touch frustrating.Things like panorama photos and in-camera filters might be kind of a bummer for folks who prized the iPhone’s camera. Also, for as frustrating as it can be to transfer files on and off iDevices, the lack of AirDrop on older hardware might be frustrating for some.

This also brings up weird splits in product lines. The iPad Mini is largely the same internal hardware as the iPad 2, but the iPad 2 will not be receiving Air Drop support while the iPad Mini will. Ditto the “iPad with Retina Display”. If you have the iPad 3, no Air Drop for you, but the iPad 4 is good to go. Definitely a bummer as we would imagine the hardware in the iPad 3 is probably more robust than in the iPad Mini.

Contrast that with the scattered OS update path on Android, and Apple still has the cleaner process, but Google is taking steps to improve the Android ecosystem. They wont be able to corral all of the various manufacturers, they’ve been trying to do that for a while now, but they can go around them to a degree. Over the last several months we’ve been watching Google slice pieces off of Android and putting those pieces up as stand alone apps. While it might seem like a small thing, it shouldn’t require a full new OS update to install a small improvement to something like the keyboard, and now Android users can install the stock Nexus keyboard as a separate app.

google settings app screenshot somegadgetguyTaking that idea a step further, the new Google Settings app shows up in your app drawer now and gives you a lot of control over gaming, Google+, and remote device management (like tracking your phone if it gets stolen). Google Play Services is also updated through the Google Play app store. Rather than waiting out full OS updates, all of the peripheral services and controls, things that developers interact with for instance, can all be updated independently of the OS.

While most services like G+, Play Music, and Maps have always been this way, and people are somewhat used to them being one part hardware and one part cloud, I hope this idea extends soon to other features on our phones like the camera. Taking a cue from the Nexus Keyboard app, it would be a nice way to unify the camera experience on Android handsets, that there would be one simple Android camera experience if people want something simple and familiar. Ditto the photo Gallery, as it can be jarring moving to a new phone and having a completely different experience for organizing and sharing photos and videos.

This solution isn’t perfect either, as some improvements will still require that full OS iteration, and things like hardware controls have to be buttoned down (hello Bluetooth funkiness), but as Google implements more individual component updates, fewer and fewer Android users will be left out in the cold as app developers and services move forward.

I’ve come to the opinion that there really isn’t a “best” phone, tablet, or ecosystem anymore. For a couple years now, the question you have to ask yourself is: What compromises are you willing to live with? As even low end phones now can be surprisingly capable, I think service and support will become even more meaningful to the end user.

So pick your poison. What kinds of updates work better for you?

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TLD gives us a sneak peek of the iPad 5 casing!

This is actually a pretty decent scoop. TLD has gotten their hands on an iPad 5 shell, and they spend some time comparing it to the current iPad 4. The design will be very similar to the iPad Mini, thinner and slimmer with more rectangular edges. I still want to see a “pick it up off of a flat surface” test, as the Mini can be incredibly difficult to pick up off a tablet without sliding it around, potentially scratching it.

iPad 5 looks like it will feature much smaller bezels, but this means it’ll be an even tighter fit for all of the guts inside. Hopefully battery life doesn’t take a hit, and fingers crossed it doesn’t run any hotter than the current iPads do.

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Apple extends older app support for legacy iOS users

itunes app store legacyFragmentation is a fact of life. As new gear arrives, older gear will stop receiving support. As developers move on to newer operating systems users can become frustrated when some devices get updates and others don’t.

Apple weathers this storm better than most of their competition, but even they aren’t completely immune. They are taking a savvy step towards improving the experience for people using older iOS devices. The iTunes store now allows you to install older versions of apps. That way, if developers are supporting newer version of iOS than what’s on your phone or tablet, you’ll be able to backtrack to versions which do support your iDevice.

This kind of legacy support really improves the experience for people who hold on to their tech for as long as possible. If you’ve got an older phone, tablet, or iPod Touch give it a whirl.

(pic via Reddit)

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SomeGadgetGuy CONTEST! Toast iPhone 5 cases to giveaway!

vlcsnap-2013-09-13-01h22m19s150Contest time!

You all have been so great in supporting my new tech blogging adventures, I HAD to give a little something back! To celebrate the announcement of the iPhone 5S and 5C, I thought it would be appropriate to show iPhone 5 users a little love. I’m giving away to funky-fresh iPhone 5 cases from Toast in Portland. All natural wood and leather, and Toast makes all of their cases using renewable energy! Hit the video for details on how to enter, and thank you for supporting SomeGadgetGuy!

Check out my interview with Matias, and for more info on Toast product, please check out: http://www.toastmade.com/Home.html

Giveaway details:
Contest starts September 13, 2013 at 1:30am Pacific time, and submission deadline is Sunday September 15, 2013 at 11:59pm Pacific time. Valid entries must answer the question asked in the video. Open to residents of the United States. Must be 18 or older. Comment all you’d like, but only your very first comment will count as an entry.

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