iPhone Security Flaw…Apple acknowledges, says fix on the way

A security flaw in Apple’s iPhone can allow an unauthorized person to gain access to a user’s private information even if the phone is locked. Even the iPhones running the latest 2.0.2 software updates are vulnerable to this exploit.

This time, very unlike Apple of recent times, Apple has acknowledged the problem and is reported to be working on a fix for the same. An exact time of release of the fix is yet to be announced. Till the fix arrives, a workaround for a user would be to access the music on his/her phone using the “Home” button rather than through the “Favorites” menu.

Touch screen Apple Mac on its way?

Apple has been granted a U.S. patent for technology that could very well be used for developing a touch screen based Apple computer or tablet.

Tablet PCs, though existent, have failed to take off in the past partly because the supporting software was not advanced enough. Apple might just overcome those hurdles and maybe we would get a tablet that would define the future course for tablets. Even though Microsoft’s Surface computer provides a very good touch-technology, its intended use is for very specific and tailored applications and not for a general purpose operating system running a variety of applications.

AppleInsider carried a few photos that show what Apple is working on for the tablet.

The following photo shows how windows can be managed using a touch screen:

The following photo shows how the scrolling function can be performed:

The virutal keyboard that would respond to multiple keypresses:

A virtual scroll wheel:

Hopefully we would not have to wait long before Apple reveals this device.

Google’s app store aka Android Market

Google’s mobile operating system Android has generated a lot of interest among developers. This was also helped to a large extent by Google’s Android challenge that resulted in a lot of applications being developed for the Android platform. It’s no secret that the HTC Dream or the T-Mobile G1 is going to be the first Android powered phone to reach the market. In a previous post, I had mentioned that whether or not the Android phone really poses a challenge to the iPhone would be determined by how Google is going to offer consumers applications for the phone. Well, looks like Google was listening and the answer comes in the form of the Android Market place.

The Android Market would be available in its beta version on the first handsets to hit the market. Through the software consumers can download new applications for their Android powered phones. The software will be in the YouTube style where developers can publish content easily. Google says that support for unpaid applications will be provided initially and later on a policy for supporting paid applications will be worked out.

Whether the Android Market will be as successful as Apple’s App Store will really be decided by how much developer interest is generated by Google. The least we can expect is that the more popular applications on the App Store would be replicated for the Android Market.

Apple’s double standards: Big brother Apple bans comic book

Apple has done it yet again. This time it has banned a comic book from its App Store. The reason this time is the violent nature of the comic book.

The comic Murderdrome, was created by Infuriouscomics specially for the iPhone. Apple has turned down their application to put the book in the App Store because it finds it offensive in its ‘reasonable opinion’. What the …. ?

What about the movies available on the App Store that belong to the horror or slasher category? In fact why should the App Store have movies of this genre at all? Horror/slasher movies always seem to offend someone. For instance the movie Apocalypto is full of blood and gore but its still on the App Store? So why these double standards Apple?

Looks like Apple has constituted a censor board of sorts that is responsible for the release of movies on App Store. And this censor board is doing a very lousy job. There are a whole bunch of R-rated movies available for download. So why ban this comic book?

I am not a big fan of violent movies or comics but I am against this kind of policing. After all I should have the independence of watching anything that I like that can be acquired through legal means. Apple does not seem to subscribe to this view. Its policy of inspecting applications for malicious code is still understandable, but movie sensorship????????????????? Naaah. Utterly distasteful.

What’s next? Banning Frank Zappa’s marvelous songs because of indecent language that Apple finds offensive in its ‘reasonable opinion’?

Psystar plans antitrust suit against Apple, can have immense impact

Psystar, the company that was recently in the news for selling PCs running Apple’s Mac OS X, is planning to go after Apple with an antitrust lawsuit. Apple filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Psystar over the latter’s computers being sold with the Leopard operating system in July. Apple’s EULA for the OS disallows running it on non-Apple hardware.

Psytar and its attorneys from Carr & Ferrell maintain that Apple’s EULA qualifies for an antitrust suit. They claim that their Mac-clones cost about one-quarter to half of Apple branded systems and also charges that Apple marks up the hardware cost by as much as 80%.

This case is of mighty significance to the entire computing community. Most people are of the opinion that there is really no case against Apple and that Psystar will not even stand a chance in a court of law. But what if Psystar actually wins? The ramifications are manifold. For one, other vendors like HP and Dell would be able to offer systems running Apple’s Mac OS on hardware that is definitely going to be less expensive than Apple’s. The difference in price between an Apple branded system and a similarly configured PC is quite substantial. This difference in cost can be justified to a great extent through the bundling of Apple’s Mac OS software and other tools that are much more superior to what Microsoft offers on PCs.

Psystar’s win will allow consumers to experience the elegance and performance of Apple’s OS at a more affordable price. Hardware vendors like HP,Dell will offer more choices for the consumers on the OS front. For Apple, though it will see drops in sales of its computers, its bound to register a huge if not exponential demand for its operating system. This demand can very well offset the loss it can suffer in dwindling hardware sales. Apple’s hardware will still see reasonable demand due to its superior design aesthetics and novel features. Also Apple can potentially reach a dominant position in the field of desktop computing thus dealing a deadly blow to Microsoft. The biggest impact will be on Microsoft. The company has already lost a large market share to Apple due to its disasterous Windows Vista OS. If Mac OS becomes available on PCs, Microsoft may have to rethink its entire business strategy since it would have lost its hegemony in the desktop market. Maybe they are going to come up with much much better products that can challenge the Mac OS.

Though Apple devotees will definitely root for a win for Apple, a win for Psystar has the potential of ushering in a refreshingly new era in desktop computing. Its going to be interesting.

Apple iPhone advertisement banned in the UK over ridiculous complaint

One of Apple’s iPhone advertisements has been banned in the UK following complaints that it misleads customers. The contention is on the statement that says “all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone”.

The Advertising Standards Authority received complaints from two local reviewers who contended Apple’s claim in the commercial that the iPhone had all the parts of the internet in it. The complaint said that since the iPhone does not support Flash or Java it cannot claim to be offering a complete internet functionality.

Apple responded saying it was not claiming complete internet functionality but rather internet site availability. ASA however decided to ban the ad since it was misleading and did not explain the limitations.

What were they thinking? Scrutinizing each and every word in an advertisement and holding the advertiser responsible looks like an attempt at squelching the creative freedom of advertisements. Ads are marketing tools. They are supposed to generate interest. If someone wants to buy an item after seeing an ad its really up to that person to verify that the item fulfills all her/his needs. How can someone believe each and every word in an advertisement? This brings to mind a commercial for a motorcycle that had the punch line “Feel like God”. So do we ban that advertisement since nobody can determine how God feels? Ridiculous.

T-Mobile G1: The Android phone or the Google phone … the looks are not going to kill

Android Guys published an image of the Google/Android phone that T-Mobile is supposed to release. Code named the G1, here’s how it looks:

Judge for yourself. I think its positively ugly. If they are intending to take on the iPhone with this thing, they got to be joking. The keyboard hidden under the display like some of the present phones, is really something of an acquired taste. And way too many buttons.

The site had an article that spells out the specs for the Android phone. Take a look(verbatim from the article):

• 528Mhz Qualcomm 7201 processor
• Data kit for USB connectivity in the box
• 64MB Internal RAM
• 128MB Internal ROM
• 1GB MicroSD card
• 5 Row QWERTY keypad
• Trackball
• Dedicated camera button
• 3.1MP camera (no flash) 2048 x 1536
• Video playback files – H.264, streaming, 3GPP, MPEG4, and Codec 3GP
• Dedicated YouTube Player
• Audio playback files – MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV, MIDI, REAL AUDIO, OGG
• Wallpaper supports JPG, BMP, PNG, and GIF
• Speakerphone (mono, natch)
• Ringtones (MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA)
• HTTP, WAP Push, xHTML
• Bluetooth (class 1)
• Picture Caller ID
• SMS and MMS support (Take that Apple!)
• POP, IMAP, and SMTP, AOL, and GMAIL email
• AIM, MSN, YAHOO, and GTALK messaging
• Quad Band (850, 900, 1800, 1900)
• 3G
• 802.11b & 802.11g
• UMTS (1,4), HSDPA, SUPL
• 1150mAh battery
• Screen size is 3.17? with HVGA (480 x 320)
• Handset 117 x 55 x 16mm
• 5.6 oz weight
• Sync capable with Google Calendar
• Downloadable content via Android Marketplace
• Google Streetview with built-in compass

Spec wise things look ok, but when it comes to looks, I guess people expected a lot more.

Book Review: Pro Java EE Spring Patterns: Best Practices and Design Strategies Implementing Java EE Patterns with the Spring Framework (Pro)

At the very outset, I would like to mention that Pro Java EE Spring Patterns book is meant for people who are well versed with J2EE/JEE and the Spring framework. If you are looking to learn Spring, there are other books that might be more suitable.

The idea of this book is to illustrate the major JEE design patterns and how you can use Spring to implement those.

The author, Dhrubojyoti Kayal, has a distinctive style of writing that is easy to understand and follow. There are code snippets galore in the book and configuration details. These two facets make the book a very valuable asset for any serious JEE Architect who is looking to make the most out of the Spring framework. Towards the end, there is a chapter that demonstrates how to ease development of Spring based projects using Maven and the pretty nice Blazon ezJEE IDE. The IDE, based on Eclipse, has the necessary plug-ins already configured thus making life easier for the developers.

Overall, this is a very good book that talks about the core JEE design patterns and the Spring implementation of it.

What do you gain from this book?

• A unique insight into how Spring can be used to implement Core JEE patterns
• A recap of the JEE patterns
• Using the power of Maven to make development less tedious

I highly recommend this book to JEE Architects and designers.

Great job done!!!

The new faster and better Mozilla Firefox 3.1

The next version of Mozilla’s Firefox web browser is 3.1 and its going to have quite a few enhancements in it. Some of the features that are planned are:

• Multi-threading support in JavaScript programs
• Built-in ability to play Ogg Vorbis music files
• Built-in ability to play Ogg Theora video files
• Improved document object model
• Significant performance enhancement in the JavaScript execution engine through the incorporation of TraceMonkey

The last one is going to have a major impact and can very well pave the way for the resurrection of JavaScript based web applications, a breed of applications that has been steadily losing market share to technologies like Adobe Flash/Flex and Microsoft Silverlight.

JavaScript has been around for a long time now and is used to enhance user experience of a web application. However it has been plagued with browser incompatibility and performance overheads. Mozilla plans to minimize the performance impact by using TraceMonkey. According the Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s interim vice president of engineering, with TraceMonkey the JavaScript performance nearly doubles compared to Firefox 3.0 that uses SpiderMonkey as the JavaScript engine. Also, with TraceMonkey, Mozilla brings 3D graphics and image editing capabilities to the JavaScript arsenal.

The following graphic shows the performance enhancement:

The figures seem to be to good to be true.

TraceMonkey is an amalgamation of SpiderMonkey and a technique called tracing developed at the University of California at Irvine by Andreas Gal and others. TraceMonkey is a just-in-time compiler that creates the binary file on the fly. The novelty about TraceMonkey is that it concentrates on translating selected part of the JavaScript code that are more performance intensive. This it does through tracing and recording program execution.

TraceMonkey is already built into the developer versions of Mozilla Firefox 3.1 but disabled by default.

Well the browser wars are back again and this time its going to be a lot tougher. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had initially steamrolled Netscape’s Navigator through an enhanced user experience and developer experience. They offered DOM elements and JavaScript calls that let developers do cool stuff with their HTML and JavaScript code. Netscape could never measure up and died. Of course Microsoft’s dominance on the desktop helped the cause.

If Mozilla’s TraceMonkey offers this kind of a serious performance boost, it won’t be surprising to find developers writing applications that targeted Firefox specifically, just like those innumerous sites that would function properly only on Internet Explorer.

If Mozilla delivers on its promise, then the day is not far when we would be seeing applications that have a disclaimer saying “Please use Mozilla Firefox 3.1 for proper function”. And oh, by the way, Adobe and Microsoft, please take note.

Google’s ‘me too’ location API

Close on the heels of Yahoo’s Fire Eagle comes Google’s location based API. Google has launched two services:

• An Ajax client location property service that provides websites with a user’s location based on their IP address
• The Geolocation API for Google Gears enables browsers

Of course Google has taken care of privacy concerns by allowing users the option of not permitting transmission of their geographical location information.

So what’s so different from Yahoo’s Fire Eagle? Apparently nothing. Google has established itself through ‘me too’ applications and services and the new services are no different. The only thing that goes in favor of Google is that their ‘me too’ products have been super successful because they did things differently and better. Lets hope this holds true for these new services too.

Expect Microsoft to launch something very similar in a few days time now.