News tagged ‘test’

We're back on reporting about the apps and gadgets presented on the MWSF 2010. Now we'll talk about iV Plus - the solution to turn your iPhone into remote; FloTV - the service to watch TV in the USA; Square Up service to pay for everything you need only with your credit card and iPhone; and Wissair's USB DisplayDock Set will get the screen from your laptop to the HDTV-set wirelessly.

U-Socket turned to be out a very interesting solution, but FastMac was found to offer something more. The thing on the pictures below is called The iV Plus. It helps to manage a set of your home devices and consists of IR Remote, Battery Pack, Flash LED and case that wraps around the iPhone. FastMac will also provide free Universal Remote software to work with this creation. The iV Plus will be shipped expectedly in the second quarter of 2010 for $130.

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Box.net finally presented its services to iPhone users, Other World Computing created the fastest SSD on the market, HyperMac offers a new line of batteries for Apple devices, and Blue Mikey Microphone is a new recording sound solution for iPhone.

Box.net presented an iPhone app that connects to their services and allows quick accessing to all your stored files. Now you can also connect to the Box.net service with QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite (US 9.99$). We can only imagine how comfortable it will be to use on iPad.

Other World Computing presented a few of their new products – USB 3.0 drive, new portable RAID array and (attention!) the fastest SSD on the market! It’s called OWC Mercury Extreme Enterprise SSD and loads Adobe CS4 applications in seconds, which looks really amazing compared to slow 5400 rpm hard disks.

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From now on sausages are not the only substitutes for human fingers; Electrorack presented an interesting rack enclosure for Xserves; Shake allows you to listen music without earphones; U-Socket solves a problem of USB-rechargable devices.

As you remember few days ago we wrote about sausages as the best substitutes of human fingers for iPhones. Well now it is not. Two companies at once presented their capacitive capable gloves that allow you to use iPhone even when it's cold. iTouch Gloves offered high end leather gloves (start with  $99.95, on the left side) and Telefingers offered thinner, less stylish and cheaper solution (for only $15, on the right side).

That really looks like oversized Mac Pro, but indeed this is a rack enclosure for Xserves and RAID configuration presented by Electrorack. The latter also offers a variety of other server racking solutions.

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The annual Pwn2Own hacking contest is coming up next month. During the event competitors will be given the chance to win cash prizes.

The competition will start on March 24 at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. This year, hackers will take on an iPhone 3GS, a Blackberry Bold 9700, an unspecified Nokia smartphone running the Symbian S60 platform and a Motorola, most likely a Droid, powered by Google 's Android. A successful hack must result in code execution with little to no user-interaction. Any exploited phone wins its attacker $10,000 in cash.

Several users report that Apple started allowing iPod touch owners to upgrade to iPhone OS 3 for no charge.

The information initially comes from PocketGamer's Tracy Erickson:

Syncing a second generation iPod touch today with an older version of the software prompted me to accept the free upgrade. How exciting.

Just as when asked to download and install the latest firmware on an iPhone, iTunes simply asks for confirmation - no signing in to pay for the software.

Sounds like free a good price for iPod touch 3.1.3 upgrade.

PS: Jailbreakers: think before updating - you might lose the ability to jailbreak your device if you upgrade the firmware.

Update: Several users confirmed the free update. However a number of users report that they are still asked to pay for the update.

MacWorld Expo 2010 started on the Feb, 11. We'll show you how that day and the MWSF generally started.

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It looks like Apple has started banning iPhone hackers from the iTunes App Store.

A few day ago Sherif Hashim, the iPhone developer and hacker, tweeted that he had found an exploit in the latest iPhone OS 3.1.3, which could enable the unlock on 05.12.01 baseband for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G. Yesterday he has been banned by Apple for the so called "security reasons". It seems that Apple is quite angry! Here is what Sherif gets when he tries to access App Store from his iPhone:

Sherif Hashim’s Tweets:

"Your Apple ID was banned for security reasons", that's what i get when i try to go to the app store, they must be really angry ))))

and guess what my apple ID was, "sherif_hashim@yahoo.com", what a fool was me not to notice )), can't help laughing, they are babies ))

Another iPhone hacker named iH8sn0w, the developer of Sn0wbreeze (PwnageTool alternative for Windows), tweeted saying he was also banned by Apple right after he released an exploit known as XEMN:

@sherif_hashim lol, they did that to my ih8sn0wyday[@t]googmail.com too. (right after I posted XEMN)…

For now Apple isn’t banning Jailbreakers - they’re banning people who actively work to find exploits in the iPhone software to create Jailbreaks for the rest of us.

GeoHot recently posted a small message on twitter. He actually responds to many users who continue to ask him about the ability to run firmware 3.1.3 jailbreak using Blackra1n.

GeoHot has always been a bit reluctant to release new versions for various minor firmware updates. His advice is in fact once again to keep firmware 3.1.2, because the latest one does not have anything interesting.

GeoHot will be certainly back on the scene with the next release of firmware 3.2 in March / April or firmware 4.0 that is expected in July.

Apple is about to reach another great result: the 10 billion songs sold through iTunes. They set up a new page with a counter similar to the one for the first billion downloads in AppStore. Apple also created a contest with a prize of a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

According to the official contest rules, participants may make up to 25 entries per day either by purchasing/downloading songs from the iTunes Store or by filling out an entry form on Apple's web site.

The prize will be awarded for the entry (either through a song download or through the non-purchase online entry) sent immediately following the download of the 9,999,999,999th song. The potential winner will be determined by the order of the entries received. In the event that more than one entrant would be a winner based on the simultaneous timing of entries, one entrant will be randomly selected from those entrants as the winner. Each entrant's chances of winning are dependent upon the number of eligible entries received.

Apple has periodically offered similar contests in the past, such as its One Billion Song contest in 2006 and a One Billion App contest last year.

Sherif Hashim has discovered an exploit which may allow unlock of the latest iPhone OS 3.1.3 baseband 05.12.01. Such unlock utilities for previous baseband versions were called blacksn0w, ultrasn0w и and yellowsn0w. MuscleNerd, the member of DevTeam, has already confirmed it is working. So the timing of the unlcok release is totally up to them right now.

Here is an official update from DevTeam:

"We’ve started to look at his crash but it’s a long road between any given crash and a fully working unlock, and we couldn’t put an ETA on it even if we wanted to. It’s not even guaranteed that an working unlock will come from this particular crash — it’s just too early to tell."

If you are an existing member of Apple's iPhone Developer Program, you can login on their site and download the new SDK, which includes an iPad simulator for testing apps that are under development.

There are also available new iPad Human Interface Guidelines and iPad Programming Guide that introduces new iPad features and how-to about their implementing in applications. New user interface guideline outlines ""how to effectively use the new views and controls available to you to deliver unforgettable applications to your customers".

Apple also launches a new Universal Application binary format for iPhone OS apps. It will allow developers to create an app that can take full advantage of the features of the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. So the iPad and iPhone code will be wrapped into one app package making distribution and management much easier.

A new job offer on the official Apple website gives one more evidence that in future the iPad and iPod Touch will have a camera and will be able to record video. In particular, Apple is looking for an engineer for the team "Media Systems" who will test the possibility to take pictures, playback and record audio and video:

The Media Systems team is looking for a software quality engineer with a strong technical background to test still, video and audio capture and playback frameworks. Build on your QA experience and knowledge of digital camera technology (still and video) to develop and maintain testing frameworks for both capture and playback pipelines. You will work together with the development team to ensure quality. Your focus will mainly be on performance testing and developing performance measurement test tools. You will be responsible for the development and maintenance of methodical testing strategies and accompanying test documentation. Day to day activities will include developing and conducting functional/system/regression testing.ad-hoc testing; creating and tracking high quality bug reports; and reporting on project progress.

Opera Software company just announced that it plans to show Opera Mini browser for iPhone during the Mobile World Congress 2010 (MWC).

"We are thrilled to offer journalists and partners an exclusive preview of Opera Mini for iPhone during the year’s biggest mobile event,” said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software. “This is a unique opportunity to introduce the fast, feature-rich Opera Mini experience for the iPhone, and to showcase our latest beta releases of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini on other platforms and devices. Opera’s mission is to bring the Web to the world, and by making Opera Mini available on yet another platform, we are one step closer."

But remember that Apple would never allow alternative browsers that are not based on WebKit. So what's the point of all this? A Cydia Store release? The real intent might be to draw attention to Opera's Mobile and Mini browsers running on other platforms where the software is actually released like Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Android.

iPhone 3G is on left and 4G is on the right

iPhone repair site iResQ.com has posted photos of the parts for the iPhone 4G that will be released later this year.

As we can see, the most notable feature is a front panel, which is approximately 1/4” taller than the iPhone 3GS.

You can also notice the reflective surface on the new front panel that is located just above the earpiece slot. iResQ suggests it is a likely location for a proximity sensor, though that wouldn’t explain the need for the mirrored surface to be visible on the front of the device.

The LCD appears to be factory glued to the digitizer. This looks more like the iPhone 2G than the 3G or 3GS, as the latest versions have a digitizer that can be separated from the LCD. This means for us that the 4G screen repair prices will be much higher since both parts will have to be replaced at once.

iPhone hacker Geohot, who created popular utilities blackra1n (jailbreak) and blacksn0w (unlock), posted a message on twitter about the new firmware 3.1.3 released by Apple:

Hopefully some vulnerability in the new firmware will be found.