iOS Devices

[UPDATE: Apple has confirmed what Siri told us earlier today. The company has now issued a press release in which it says that WWDC will be held from June 13th through June 17th in San Francisco. The same lottery process applies to getting tickets this year as in previous years. Developers can apply for tickets via the WWDC website now through Friday, April 22 at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

In a change from traditional years, the Monday keynote will be held at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, not Moscone West. All other conference sessions will take place at Moscone, though. The annual Bash will also be held at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.]

In an unusual chain of events, it appears Apple is announcing the WWDC dates through Siri. Although the Apple website has not been updated with any new info, Siri is proudly proclaiming that WWDC 2016 will indeed be held in San Francisco from June 13th to June 17th. Although Siri didn’t explicitly say, it is almost certain that WWDC will once again be held at Moscone West, simply because it’s the best choice of venue for an event like this in San Francisco. This is an unusual announcement nonetheless, it being the first time Apple has used Siri as the primary announcement vehicle for one of its events. WWDC is expected to feature the unveiling of iOS 10, OS X 10.12 and more …

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CBS correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, left, with hacker Karsten Nohl

Update: Rep. Ted Lieu has now written to the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requesting a formal investigation into the vulnerability. In his letter, the Congressman says that the flaw threatens ‘personal privacy, economic competitiveness and U.S. national security.’ The full text of his letter can be found at the bottom of the piece.

Apple may take iOS security so seriously that it’s willing to do battle with the FBI over it, but German hackers have demonstrated that all phones – even iPhones – are susceptible to a mobile network vulnerability that requires nothing more than knowing your phone number. Armed with just that, hackers can listen to your calls, read your texts and track your position.

60 Minutes invited the hackers to prove their claims by giving a brand new iPhone to Congressman Ted Lieu – who agreed to participate in the test – and telling the hackers nothing more than the phone number. The hackers later replayed recordings they’d made of calls made on that iPhone …

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Rumors of Apple’s entrance into the video streaming arena have been swirling for a couple of years now, with Apple wanting to launch a skinny bundle streaming internet cable TV service, however news on the progress of this project has died down in 2016. It is unclear if it is still on the cards, various outlets reports talked had stalled with the television networks. However, Amazon and Netflix continue to battle it out.

Today, just as Netflix customers are forcibly moved to more expensive monthly plans, Amazon has announced it will offer its streaming video service as a standalone monthly subscription for the first time. Priced at $8.99/per month, the plan is a dollar cheaper than Netflix’s most popular offering. Until today, the only way to get Amazon Prime Video through a $99/year Amazon Prime subscription, bundling video, 2-day shipping and other perks into one membership.

Sadly, there was no word on the status of an Amazon Apple TV app …

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In a new report by KGI’s Ming-Chi Kuo, the reliable Apple analyst claims that the iPhone will be seeing a major redesign in 2017, dropping the iconic aluminum casing for an all-glass enclosure with AMOLED screen. This follows on from another of Kuo’s reports in late March, where he first suggested Apple will return to an iPhone design akin to the iPhone 4. It does not seem like the iPhone 7 for 2016 will be seeing such a major overhaul, breaking Apple’s tick-tock pattern of a significant chassis redesign every other generation.

Kuo believes that Apple will be moving to an all-glass enclosure, dropping aluminum completely as it will no longer appear modern or fresh in 2017. Apple’s smartphone competitors are also adopting aluminum designs in droves, making it more likely Apple will want to differentiate with entirely new materials.

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Renaming multiple files can be a tedious process when doing so manually, but the Finder in OS X can make it easier to rename a batch of files at once on your Mac. Instead of relying on a third party app, use this handy tip to quickly rename a batch of files without breaking a sweat.
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In this week’s top stories, attention turned from the iPhone SE and iPad Pro 9.7 to what’s coming next from Apple, as stories surrounding the iPhone 7 and the future of Apple’s MacBook lineup rounded out the most shared articles of the week. But not far behind was Zac’s review of the iPhone SE followed by analysis of the new iPad Pro’s 9.7-inch display showing record mobile display performance and possible hints at what’s to come from iPhone 7 this fall.

As always, we have the easy links to those stories and the rest of this week’s most shared news and videos below:

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To help raise money for the relocation of the prestigious London Design Museum, Apple has submitted a very special lot to be sold at auction. Jony Ive has designed a one-of-a-kind iPad Pro and set of accessories, labelled ‘Edition 1 of 1’. The lot includes a 12.9 inch iPad Pro with a custom yellow-gold anodised finish, a blue leather Smart Cover and an Apple Pencil case cover — an accessory that Apple doesn’t sell at all today. It’s a small carry case for the Pencil, made with orange Italian calf leather. To denote the exclusivity of the products, an ‘Edition 1 of 1’ label has been engraved into the iPad Pro and underside of the Smart Cover.

Given its special edition nature, the auction is expected to sell for a tidy premium over Apple’s normal iPad Pro pricing …

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As CNBC notes, Apple’s stock is seeing a noticeable afternoon dive following a supply chain report that iPhone production will remain reduced from April through June. Nikkei Asian Review issued the report earlier today:

Slow sales of the flagship iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, which debuted last autumn, have forced Apple to adjust inventories. It lowered production for the January-March quarter by about 30% from the year-earlier period. With sales still sluggish, the U.S. company has told parts suppliers in Japan and elsewhere that it will maintain the reduced output level in the current quarter.

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Although it seems inevitable that the MacBook lineup will see some significant changes this year, as a major upgrade has been due for a while, the rumor mill is yet to close in one particular design or release date. Earlier in the year, Digitimes was reporting new MacBooks (intended to supplant the MacBook Air) are due sometime before July, resembling 13 inch and 15 inch versions of the 12 inch Retina MacBook.

A new report from Digitimes today says otherwise, suggesting the new MacBooks will not be available until the second half of this year, although an announcement at WWDC still seems possible if Apple met the earlier side of that release range.

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According to a new report from the Korean Herald, Samsung and Apple have reached a deal in which Samsung will supply around 100 million OLED display units to Apple beginning in 2017. The report comes as several other sources have stated that Apple plans to make the switch to OLED panels beginning next year.

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Apple has announced that users can no longer setup iTunes Allowances for kids from today, ahead of a complete shutdown of the iTunes Allowances program on May 25th, 2016. iTunes Allowances let parents set up monthly credit for their kids to spend on App Store and iTunes Store purchases.

In the support note announcing the closure, Apple recommends families instead use Family Sharing to manage purchase and spending habits across family members. This does not impact the availability of iTunes Gifts — Apple customers will still be able to buy iTunes gift cards to give to friends and family as normal.

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A proposed law that would force Apple and other tech companies to decrypt devices for law enforcement agencies has reached the stage of a draft bill – but one Senator has vowed to filibuster it. A filibuster is when a parliamentarian makes a lengthy, uninterrupted speech which results in running out of time to debate the bill, causing it to fail.

The Senate Intelligence Committee first proposed to introduce the bill in February, and the FBI lent its support by briefing two sponsoring senators. However, many lawmakers oppose the bill, and it has been reported that the White House will not publicly support it.

The Verge now reports that one senator has pledged to filibuster the bill if it gets as far as a Senate debate …

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The FBI has so far been ambivalent about whether or not it will reveal to Apple the method used to access the San Bernardino iPhone, but a Reuters report suggests that the agency may not even know – or have the legal right to disclose it if it does.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that it was freelance hackers, and not Cellebrite, who sold the FBI the tool used to access the phone. But the group may not have revealed the vulnerability on which it was based, and the government process that decides which vulnerabilities to share with companies does not apply in this case …

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In our regular Feature Request series, 9to5Mac authors offer their opinion on how to improve popular hardware or software products. Since we started the feature back in November of last year, the majority of installments in the series have focused on Apple’s own software and hardware, including a number of ways the company can improve its current iOS and Mac OS X software as well as possibilities for upcoming iOS 10 and Mac OS X 10.12 releases.

And some of the other Feature Requests we’ve published included features for the new Apple TV, the upcoming next-generation Apple Watch 2, Apple Music, iCloud, and more. Below we’ve compiled a hub for the series giving you an easy way to stay up to date and hopefully some hints at what to expect at WWDC this year and other upcoming Apple product launches…

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Update: Sources close to Apple tell us that, contrary to the original claim, this issue – like the original one – was resolved in iOS 9.3. We also understand that Apple was able to successfully restore the test devices sent to it by the researchers.

While iOS 9.3 fixed a bug that bricked iOS devices when the date was set to January 1, 1970, security researchers have found a variation on the theme that can remotely brick devices as soon as they connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot. The exploit uses a combination of two weaknesses discovered in iOS, reports KrebsonSecurity.

The first is that iOS devices automatically reconnect to known Wi-Fi hotspots, but rely on the SSID to identity them. iPhones and iPads will auto-connect to a malicious Wi-Fi hotspot that spoofs the name of a known one.

Second, iOS devices are programmed to constantly check that their time and date settings are correct by connecting to Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers. All the researchers had to do was create their own Wi-Fi hotspot labelled ‘attwifi’ (as used by Starbucks) and their own NTP server pretending to be time.apple.com to deliver the January 1, 1970 date …

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Unnamed sources cited by the Washington Post contradict the widely-held belief that it was Israel-based mobile forensics company Cellebrite which helped the FBI hack into the locked San Bernardino iPhone. The report say that the agency was instead approached by a group of freelance hackers who revealed an iPhone passcode vulnerability to the FBI in return for a one-time fee.

The FBI cracked a San Bernardino terrorist’s phone with the help of professional hackers who discovered and brought to the bureau at least one previously unknown software flaw, according to people familiar with the matter […]

The researchers, who typically keep a low profile, specialize in hunting for vulnerabilities in software and then in some cases selling them to the U.S. government. They were paid a one-time flat fee for the solution … 

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