Update: Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch it has been “testing it with a small percentage of users” since it launched last month, but the social network has “no further details to announce at this time.”
The image above is a screenshot just posted by TechCrunch.A reader who claims to be seeing the Facebook App Center already live in the iOS app sent it. As noted in the report, Facebook has an “app-themed” event in San Francisco tonight where we could see more of the App Center. The company announced the new HTML5-based App Center last month and said the iOS and Android Facebook apps would have access to the app marketplace in the coming weeks.
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook hinted this past week during his interview at D10 that we could expect closer ties with Facebook and to “stay tuned” when asked about Twitter-like integration in iOS. Now, according to a report fromTechCrunch, the much-anticipated integration of Facebook will happen in “the latest version of iOS.” There are not many details provided by the report, but it did note Apple is still trying to decide “exactly how sharing will work” and that things could change before iOS 6 is unveiled: Read more
President Obama is wrapping up his State of the Union Address right now. During the event, President Obama made many references to technology as a way to help with economic times. More specifically, President Obama had a pleasant mention for Apple’s late cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs with his widow Laurene Powell Jobs in attendance.
”That means women should earn equal pay for equal work. It means we should support everyone who’s willing to work; and every risk-tasker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs.”
You may remember when Jobs had dinner with President Obama and other successful technology entrepreneurs in February of last year. The discussion revolved around getting people to collaborate and invest in American innovation to promote private sector job growth.
It appears the U.S. Justice Department has some solid evidence against companies including Apple, Google, Adobe, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and Intel. TechCrunch obtained a document from the DOJ that is now posted to Scribd. Among the pieces of evidence, include:
The DOJ settled with the six companies, but a class action lawsuit is pending. The complaint regards entering into non-poach and no bidding war agreements. The above mentioned companies allegedly lowered employee compensation artificially while hindering mobility.
The plaintiffs seek damages for any salaried employee who worked for one of the defendants during a 4-year period in the late 2000s. That means a lot of Silicon Valley tech workers could receive a payout if the defendants lose or settle the case. The civil case will be heard by Judge Koh in San Jose starting January 26th, 2011
The defendants, including Apple, asked the case to be dismissed, stating that the DOJ found “no overarching conspiracy” and that these bilateral agreements were separate. Read more
Apple announced a brand new iPhone, some new iPods, and more yesterday. We had a pretty good bead on what was going to happen overall a week before the event. Read our predictions post for a refresher.
But now that the event is over, here’s our rumors post mortem.
What came true:
October 4th Event: The first sighting of ‘October 4th’ occurred when a tipster showed us AT&T’s internal systems’ change for iPhone tiers in June. The date of the change: October 4th. We postulated:AT&T raises iPhone device tier on October 4th, perhaps signaling launch date?
At that point we were far from certain. AllThingsD deserves credit for getting not only the date right but the venue – Apple’s own auditorium.
The name ‘iPhone 4S’: We pegged iPhone 4S as the name as early as April when we broke the news that Apple has seeded a next-generation iPhone to high-level gaming outfits. We also confirmed the name last week with an iTunes finding. If that wasn’t enough, twodifferent website ‘leaks’ happened as Apple took down the website ahead of the event. Contrary to many people’s hopes and dreams, we knew going into the event today that it would only be the iPhone 4S.
The iPhone 4 design: Our April report about a new iPhone being seeded to gaming developers pointed to this new iPhone retaining the iPhone 4 design. A report from BGR detailing a next-generation T-Mobile iPhone in testing also pegged this iPhone 4 design. Additionally, TiPb, Reuters and Bloomberg all later called for the iPhone 4S featuring a design identical to the iPhone 4. We also demonstrated the first evidence for this with iTunes findings.
A5 Processor: We, like everyone else, knew there would be an A5 processor.
The 64GB iPhone 4S: After a few years without a 64GB iPhone, we were finally able to confirm that Apple would unleash a 64GB varient of the iPhone 4S a few weeks ago. We guessed the prices based on foreign translated currencies, but were off.
Cards: We, like everyone else, passed over Cards app.
Find my Friends:MacRumors found Find my Friends code back in January. Since then, we spotted and detailed the Latitude-ish program. The Next Web took a pretty vague guess yesterday morning that a ‘GPS related product’ would be revealed which is sort of correct.
Siri Assistant: We called the headline feature for the keynote as the Siri Assistant a few times over the last few weeks. Our details about the user interface, exact feature set, and usage examples were spot on. We also reported in July that the feature would soon be launching with a crowd-sourced / beta standing for constant improvement.
Nuance Dictation: After reporting on incoming Nuance Dictation for the new iPhone on several occasions, we presented the first leaked screenshots of the new and handy software feature. Chronic Wire posted the first proof that Nuance is behind the technology.
World phone: We reported in February that Apple has begun placing world phone (CDMA + GSM) chips in their new iPhones. We also discovered references in iTunes which pointed to the 4S being a dual-mode device, and we heard this from sources as well along the road. TechCrunch heard this as well by way of application developer logs.
White iPod touch and new iPod nano:We posted the first photos of white iPod touch parts all the way back in July. MacRumors was able to confirm that a white iPod touch is coming in October and we discovered the three new white models in Apple’s inventory system.
The 8MP camera with better optics: We broke the news that the new iPhone will feature a brand new sensor from Sony, per their CEO’s public comments, and recently confirmed with sources that this new lens would clock in at 8 megapixels. TiPb first reported that the new iPhone will feature an improved optics system, and so did The Next Web. Bloombergalso pinpointed an eight megapixel sensor. We also reported that Apple was working on advanced face detection for iOS 5.
The cheaper iPhone:We confirmed that Apple was set to release an 8GB version of the iPhone 4 (N90A) today following Reutersreport about such a device being in production. Gizmodo managed to get a few spy shots of said device from Foxconn’s Brazil-based manufacturing plant.
The $199 iPod touch:We reported that Apple was set to drop the price of the iPod touch to $199 – for the 8GB model – to better compete in a new market with the Kindle Fire.
Sprint support:We reported all the way back in June (and hardly anyone believed us) that a Sprint version of the iPhone 4 for Sprint was in advanced testing stages. This turned out to be correct as the 8GB iPhone 4 is launching soon on Sprint. In addition, we were also told back then that Sprint’s first iPhone would not be 4G, and it is not. The WSJ and Bloomberg both followed up months later claiming that Sprint and Apple signed a deal.
Security firm SuperEVR posts a video of their exploit which always makes it more real/scary.
I found that Skype also improperly defines the URI scheme used by the built-in webkit browser for Skype. Usually you will see the scheme set to something like, “about:blank” or “skype-randomtoken”, but in this case it is actually set to “file://”. This gives an attacker access to the users file system, and an attacker can access any file that the application itself would be able to access.
File system access is partially mitigated by the iOS Application sandbox that Apple has implemented, preventing an attacker from accessing certain sensitive files. However, every iOS application has access to the users AddressBook, and Skype is no exception.
Skype says it is aware of the security issue, and had issued the following statement:
“We are working hard to fix this reported issue in our next planned release which we hope to roll out imminently. In the meantime we always recommend people exercise caution in only accepting friend requests from people they know and practice common sense internet security as always.”
The non-patronizing first sentence would have been sufficient, Skype.
Skype is on a #Winning streak since it got bought by Microsoft earlier this year.
