• Android, BlackBerry and Nokia Log Everything You Do

    // Gradly // Android, Apple, BlackBerry, blog, iPhone, lawsuit, Mobile, News, Nokia, Steve Jobs No Responses

    Android logo

    Security researchers have discovered that iPhone running iOS 4 were storing a cache of data on which GPS locations that handset had visited in an unencrypted file, it was dubbed LocationGate and later the whole debacle was just a bug but Apple has to testify in front of the Senate about the matter

    Following the incident, one user sent an email to Apple asking for answers. If he didn’t get them soon, he said, he’d switch to Droid; they don’t track him. An email from Steve Jobs, which dropped something of a bombshell: he said Apple doesn’t track anyone’s location, but that Android tracked everyone.

    Now time has proven Steve Jobs right. Android phones do track you. In fact, software that comes pre-installed on millions of Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones log everything you do with your device, and sends them off secretly to its own servers. Trevor Eckhart, the developer who discovered the software, released a video of his findings, watch it below.

    Carrier IQ will log and save each key dialed. When receiving a text message, Carrier IQ will process and log the text message, before the user even sees it. Web searches are stored by the service as well, logged in plain text. No encryption. That’s incredible. One privately held company that almost no one has ever heard of has the complete logs of every email, phone call, web search and text message ever sent or received by millions of Android, Blackberry and Nokia users.

    In a phone interview to Wired.com, a marketing manager for Carrier IQ defended what the product does:

    We’re not looking at texts. We’re counting things. How many texts did you send and how many failed. That’s the level of metrics that are being gathered.


    [via CultOfMac]

  • iOS 5.1 Beta 1 for iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch Available for Download

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Download, iPad, iPhone No Responses

    Apple has released iOS 5.1 first beta for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. This is a beta version intended for for developers only. Apple has also released Xcode 4.3 which you can download from iOS Dev Center.

    iOS 5.1 Beta 1 for iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch Available for Download

    Introduction

    iOS SDK 5.1 provides support for developing iOS applications and includes the complete set of Xcode tools, compilers, and frameworks for creating applications for iOS and Mac OS X. These tools include the Xcode IDE and the Instruments analysis tool among many others.

    With this software you can develop applications that run on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 5.1. You can also test your applications using the included iOS Simulator, which supports iOS 5.1. There are two Xcode iOS SDK 5.1 images, one for installing on a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.6.7 (Snow Leopard) or later, the other for installing on a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).

    This version of iOS is intended only for installation on devices registered with Apple’s developer program. Attempting to install this version of iOS in an unauthorized manner could put your device in an unusable state.

    For more information and additional support resources, visit:

    http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/

    Bug Reporting

    Please report any bugs not mentioned in the “Introduction” section using the Apple Bug Reporter on the Apple Developer website (http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/). Additionally, you may discuss these issues and iOS SDK 5 in the Apple Developer Forums: http://devforums.apple.com. You can also access more information about iCloud for Developers at: http://developer.apple.com/icloud

    Notes and Known Issues

    The following issues relate to using the 5.1 SDK to develop code.

    Accounts
    When creating an iCloud account, you can use any Apple ID as long as it is a full email address and not a MobileMe account. If you have a MobileMe account, you can move that account to iCloud. You can find more information at: http://me.com/move

    APIs
    The NSNetService class and CFNetService APIs do not include P2P interfaces by default. To browse, register, or resolve services over P2P interfaces, an application needs to use the Bonjour DNSService*() APIs noted below.
    Setting the interfaceIndex parameter to kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexAny in the following API’s will not include P2P interfaces by default. To include P2P interfaces, you must now set the kDNSServiceFlagsIncludeP2P flag when using kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexAny or set the interfaceIndex to kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexP2P. The affected APIs are:
    DNSServiceBrowse
    DNSServiceRegister
    DNSServiceResolve
    DNSServiceRegisterRecord
    DNSServiceQueryRecord
    GameKit
    App Icons and Profile Photos are not loading in apps using Game Center.

    iCloud Storage
    Provisioning profiles must be enabled for iCloud in the iOS Provisioning Portal. You can enable a provisioning profile for iCloud by navigating to the App ID section of the iOS Provisioning Portal and configuring your App ID for iCloud. After enabling the App ID for iCloud, regenerate your provisioning profiles to enable them for iCloud.
    The setSortDescriptors: method of NSMetadataQuery is not supported.
    In iOS 5, files that are protected via Data Protection cannot be used with iCloud Storage APIs.
    File names are case-insensitive in Mac OS X but case-sensitive in iOS. This can lead to problems when sharing files between the two using iCloud. You should take steps on iOS to avoid creating files whose names differ only by case.
    Movie Player
    Starting in iOS 5.0, in order to facilitate finer-grained playback control, a movie player is not automatically prepared to play upon creation. Call the prepareToPlay method to prepare the movie player. For more information, see MPMoviePlayerController Class Reference

    Music Player
    Using shake-to-shuffle causes Music app to freeze and playback to stop.

    Newsstand
    FIXED: Deleting an issue that was marked as the currently reading issue could cause a crash.

    Security
    In iOS 5, the signing of certificates with MD5 signatures is not supported. Please ensure that certificates use signature algorithms based on SHA1 or SHA2.

    Xcode/Developer Tools
    A bug in the documentation organizer causes an exception when you type in any field in the content area. To prevent the need to log in to the developer website from Xcode, download documentation sets locally using Xcode’s documentation preference pane and enable the ‘Check for and install updates automatically’ checkbox as a workaround.
    “uninstall-devtools” script mistakenly removes files and packages even if Xcode is still running. Be sure to quit any running copy of Xcode before starting the “uninstall-devtools” script.
    The Network Link Conditioner daemon cannot be launched after installing the Networking Link Conditioner without a reboot. You can manually workaround the issue with a restart or by the following command: sudo launchctl load /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.networklinkconditioner.plist.]
    In the iOS 5 development tools, it is possible to extract APIs used by an application and have them checked for use of private APIs. This option is offered when you validate your application for app submission.

  • Install Siri Dictation on iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 4G

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Cydia, Download, Hack, How To, iPhone, Jailbreak No Responses

    Siri Dictation

    Since the debut of Siri virtual assistance alongside the iPhone 4S, hackers have been trying hardly to port the feature to older iDevices. There are no hardware limitations but the only concern still that the service needs to connect to Apple servers to get it working.

    Siri’s dictation feature has now been made publicly available in Cydia for the iPhone 4, 3GS, Touch 4G and it actually works. Developer Eric Day has released a jailbreak tweak called Siri0us.

    “Siri dictation for your iOS 5 devices. No iPhone 4S keys/files required.”

    The tweak actually works but sadly with some Ads around.

    Add the source http://apt.if0rce.com on Cydia to get the tweak

  • Microsoft’s Tellme vs Apple’s Siri Video Comparison

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Humor, iPhone, Microsoft, News, Rants & Raves, Tech. 1 Response

    Microsoft's Tellme vs Apple's Siri

    Microsoft’s chief strategy and research officer Craig Mundie talked to Forbes about the company’s kinect and when asked about Siri, he said that Siri was nothing special, and Microsoft’s own voice capabilities have been around for over a year. Siri is all about good marketing nothing else:

    People are infatuated with Apple announcing it. It’s good marketing, but at least as the technological capability you could argue that Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows Phones for more than a year, since Windows Phone 7 was introduced.

    This is what Microsoft execs usually say when challenged with a tech by their competitors:

    you can pick ‘em up and say ‘text Eric’ and say what you wanna say and it transcribes it. You can query anything through Bing by just saying the words. I mean, all that’s already there. Fully functional, been there for a year.

    This is not the first time, we all know when Steve Ballmer slammed the original iPhone back in 2007 and touted it as being overpriced and not appealing to business for the lack of a keyboard.

    Jason from techau ran a test and put a video comparison between Microsoftt’s Tellme and Apple’s Siri. Watch the video below. The results speak for themselves: