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  Hardware: Squeezing a Wikipedia Snapshot Onto an 8GB iPhone on Friday July 03, @10:41AM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @10:41AM
from the but-you'll-miss-the-latest-edit-wars dept.
handheld
blackbearnh writes with this excerpt from O'Reilly Radar "Think about Wikipedia, what some consider the most complete general survey of human knowledge we have at the moment. Now imagine squeezing it down to fit comfortably on an 8GB iPhone. Sound daunting? Well, that's just what Patrick Collison's Encyclopedia iPhone application does. App Store purchasers of Collison's open source application can browse and search the full text of Wikipedia when stuck in a plane, or trapped in the middle of nowhere (or, as defined by AT&T coverage...)"
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Comments: 136
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  IT: iPhone Vulnerability Yields Root Access Via SMS on Friday July 03, @09:01AM

Posted by timothy on Friday July 03, @09:01AM
from the tweet-hack dept.
security
snydeq writes "Pwn2Own winner Charlie Miller has revealed an SMS vulnerability that could provide hackers with root access to the iPhone. Malicious code sent by SMS to run on the phone could include commands to monitor location using GPS, turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a DDoS attack or botnet, Miller said. Miller did not provide detailed description of the SMS vulnerability, citing an agreement with Apple, which is working to fix the vulnerability in advance of Black Hat, where Miller plans to discuss the attack in greater detail. 'SMS is a great vector to attack the iPhone,' Miller said, as SMS can send binary code that the iPhone processes without user interaction. Sequences can be sent to the phone as multiple messages that are automatically reassembled, thereby surpassing individual SMS message limits of 140 bytes."
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Comments: 171
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  IT: Some Overheating 3GS iPhones Glow Pink on Wednesday July 01, @04:51AM

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday July 01, @04:51AM
from the twenty-first-century-hearth dept.
bug
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that dozens of users of the recently released iPhone 3GS have reported overheating issues, with some iPhone owners unable to pick up the device because the handset gets so hot to the touch, while others say the casing turns pink with the heat. 'I am definitely experiencing issues with the iPhone running warm and quick battery life lost,' writes Tom Goldstein on one discussion board. 'The phone seems to warm up almost immediately if I am doing anything that pulls data over the network.' Some users have said the device has been too hot to put to their ear while making a phone call, and others say the overheating seems to occur when owners are using the iPhone's mapping software, which uses the handset's built-in GPS technology. Melissa J. Perenson writes at PC World: 'I became aware the handset had become very hot. Very, very hot — not just on the back, but the entire length of the front face, too.' Some gadget experts believe faulty batteries could be the cause of overheating and poor battery life. 'My guess is there's going to be a whole lot of batteries affected because these [iPhones] are from very large production runs,' said Aaron Vronko, who fixes iPods and iPhones. 'If you have a problem in the design of a series of batteries, it's probably going to be spread to tens of thousands [of device], if not hundreds of thousands, and maybe more.'"
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Comments: 339
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  Your Rights Online: Controversy Over San Francisco Public Transportation Data on Sunday June 28, @09:20AM

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday June 28, @09:20AM
from the information-wants-to-be-expensive-sometimes dept.
cellphones
paimin writes "A struggle is breaking out in San Francisco over whether the developer of a publicly-funded installation of real-time tracking for the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency has a right to control the use of data from the system. The situation is not totally clear, but this sure seems like an attempt to use patent threats to hijack public data. The city paid for the system, and the developer claims he lost money on the deal, so now he's shutting down applications like Routesy and Munitime that use data from the system unless they license the 'copyrighted' data from him."
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Comments: 109
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  Apple: Hospital Confirms Steve Jobs's Liver Transplant on Tuesday June 23, @11:26PM

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 23, @11:26PM
from the so-just-say-so-already dept.
business
CNet is reporting that the hospital where Apple's CEO reportedly got a liver transplant two months ago has now confirmed the truth of these reports. "Steve Jobs underwent his liver transplant about two months ago at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, the hospital confirmed Tuesday. Jobs, who returned to work Apple's campus in Cupertino, Calif., on Monday after a six-month medical leave, 'is now recovering well and has an excellent prognosis,' according to a statement by Dr. James D. Eason, the program director of the Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute. ... While Eason said the confirmation was being provided with Jobs's approval, he cited patient confidentially in saying that he could not reveal any further information on the specifics of Jobs's surgery."
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  Apple: Apple's Obsession With Secrecy Grows Stronger on Tuesday June 23, @05:42PM

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 23, @05:42PM
from the tell-no-one dept.
business
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times has a story on the culture of secrecy at Apple (registration possibly required). Secrecy is not just the prevailing communications strategy; it is baked into the corporate culture that had its origin in the release of the first Macintosh. 'It really started around trying to keep the surprise aspect to product launches, which can have a lot of power,' says marketing veteran Regis McKenna who advised Apple in its early days. Today few companies are more secretive than Apple, or as punitive to those who dare violate the company's rules on keeping tight control over information. Employees have been fired for leaking news tidbits to outsiders, and the company has been known to spread disinformation about product plans to its own workers and sue bloggers who cover the company. Apple's decision to severely limit communication with the news media, shareholders, and the public is at odds with the approach taken by many other companies, and many experts agree that the secrecy that adds surprise and excitement to Apple product announcements is not serving the company well in corporate governance. Some say that recent reports that Steve Jobs may have had a liver transplant, still not confirmed by the company, now makes one of Apple's assertions from January — that Jobs was suffering only from a hormonal imbalance — seem like a deliberate untruth."
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Comments: 305
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  Technology: The Commodore 64 vs. the iPhone 3G S on Tuesday June 23, @11:19AM

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 23, @11:19AM
from the next-week-chocolate-torte-vs.-charles-manson dept.
humor
Harry writes "The unfortunate news about Apple rejecting a Commodore 64 emulator from the iPhone App Store inspired me to compare the C64 to the new iPhone 3G S, in more detail than any rational person is likely to compare them, ever again. If nothing else, it's a snapshot of just how far technology has come since the C64's release in August of 1982."
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  Apple: Apple Issues Firmware Upgrade For MacBook Pro on Tuesday June 23, @10:01AM

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 23, @10:01AM
from the there-there-here-you-go dept.
macbook
Lucas123 writes "After declining comment on an apparent downgrade to the serial ATA hard drive interface in its new MacBook Pros, from 3Gbps to 1.5Gbps, Apple today issued a firmware upgrade to fix a problem reported by 'a small number of customers' using drives based on the latest SATA specification. Apple warned that it has not shipped drives operating at the higher-speed specification, saying, 'While this update allows drives to use transfer rates greater than 1.5Gbit/sec, Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac notebooks and their use is unsupported.'"
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  Apple: Tracking Thieves With 'Find my iPhone' on Monday June 22, @11:11AM

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday June 22, @11:11AM
from the because-you-can dept.
macbook
An anonymous reader wrote in to say "A friend of mine who just got an iPhone 3GS and has Mobile Me just used the "Find my iPhone" feature to track down his lost and subsequently stolen iPhone. This story involves three nerds wandering sketchy streets with a MacBook, and ends with a confrontation at a bus stop."
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  Games: Licensed C64 Emulator Rejected From App Store on Sunday June 21, @12:54PM

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday June 21, @12:54PM
from the insufficient-quantities-of-hip dept.
cellphones
Miasik.Net writes "A fully licensed Commodore 64 iPhone emulator has been rejected from the App Store. The excuse Apple used is a clause in the SDK agreement which doesn't allow for applications that run executable code. It seems Sega is exempt from that clause, because some of its games on the iPhone are emulators running original ROM code."
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Comments: 277
 
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions. - Robert Bly