9to5 Staff

The iPhone really does have an App “for everything” – and that claim has been officially sanctioned by the UK Advertising Standards Association – the body which ensures claims made in advertising are the truth.

There were 10 complaints that the Apple TV advert which claimes “there’s an app for just about anything – only on the iPhone,” was misleading because it isn’t the only smartphone to offer a marketplace from which a range of applications could be downloaded. But these ten complaints were not upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

Naturally, the majority of these applications also work on the iPod touch , which is expected to gain its own built-in camera in the coming weeks.

The ASA said there were far more applications available for the iPhone than the G1 phone, which also offers applications, and the user-experience of the iPhone and its app store was “distinct”.

“We concluded the claim ’Only on the iPhone’ was justified and not misleading,” the ASA said.

During the enquiry, Apple told the ASA that its App Store, “provided users with a unique experience unmatched by any other application market place”.

So there it is – it’s official – there really is an App for “everything” on the iPhone…unless you want Google Latitude, Google Voice, MMS+tethering in the US…

Apple execs often say they’re as proud of the products they don’t release as they are of those they do – and if you’d like to take a look at some of those unreleased prototypes, then good news for you in form of a new book from influential designer Harmut Esslinger of Frog Design.

The book offers images of numerous previously unseen Apple prototypes, (bigger image after the jump). That’s no surprise when you consider Frog Design was responsible for many early Apple designs, including that of the Apple IIc, and that Esslinger himself defined the ‘Snow White style used by Apple in the ‘80’s.
 

“We worked closely with Steve Jobs and Apple’s developers to innovate computer usability and appearance, resulting in iconic products with no historic precedent," writes Esslinger.

Of course, we know that it wasn’t a Frog but a Tangerine (Jonathan Ive’s old firm) which ended up leading Apple’s design innovation in the 21st Century – we do hope Apple one day loosens its kimono to show us a few of the things it managed to prototype and then not release in the last ten years, but we still think this title will make interesting reading to any earnest Apple-spotter.

The book: A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business, includes pictures along with background stories of various well known design classics, and unseen products.

That Apple has been firing on all cylinders for the last decade’s pretty clear from its success in all sectors, so it’s no surprise the company’s senior executives are in great demand – now Apple’s most senior European executive, Pascal Cagni is one of two candidates seen as likely to seize the top job at major UK broadcaster, ITV.

Cagni is up against HMV chief executive, Simon Fox, for the role, a replacement for current executive, Michael Grade. ITV is thought to be hopeful to make an announcement on the matter on August 6, though the process may drag through until September.

Pascal joined Apple in April 2000. He put in place a talented management team which transformed Europe into Apple’s fastest growing region.
 

He joined Apple from NEC Computer International where he served as European Vice President and General Manager of Packard Bell.

Under his tenure Packard Bell grew at three times the industry rate gaining the number one position in the European home computer market while revenue grew to more than $1 billion. He also sits on the board of the Aspen Institute and Egg.

In a recent (October 08) interview he touched on Apple’s future strategy, saying: “With the iPhone we are entering a Convergence Age. If you look back in time, Apple has delivered truly amazing products, from the Macintosh to the iMac, the iPod, and today the iPhone. The success of each of these products has reinforced the others. We are enjoying a virtuous circle of innovation and intend to continue to surprise and delight our customers in the future!”

Apple doesn’t want people jailbreaking.  Not even a little bit it.  If you don’t mind reading through 45 pages of legalese, you’ll see why.  It really boils down to these 13 reasons:

1. Crashes & instability
2. Malfunctioning & safety
3. Invasion of privacy
4. Exposing children to age-inappropriate content
5. Viruses & malware 
6. Inability to update software
7. Cellular network impact 
8. Piracy of developers’ applications 
9. Instability of developers’ applications 
10. Increased support burden 
11. Developer relationships
12. The Apple/iPhone brand 
13. Limitation on ability to innovate

All of these seem like legitimate reasons for keeping out jailbreakers until you consider that iPhones are computers.  If Apple wins this arguement, why wouldn’t computer makers be able to dictate what is put on a 3G enabled notebook?  Could you modify the EFI/BIOS on a laptop?  What’s the difference?

Wired took a particularly hard look at the cell tower’s danger:

The EFF has asked the regulators for the DMCA exemption, (.pdf) which would allow consumers to run any app on the phone, including those not authorized by Apple.

Fred von Lohmann, the EFF attorney who made the request, said Apple’s latest claims are preposterous. During a May public hearing on the issue in Palo Alto, California, he told regulators there were as many as a million unauthorized, jailbroken phones.

In an interview Tuesday, he said he suspected those phones have not been used to destroy mobile phone towers. “As far as I know, nothing like that has ever happened,” he said.

He added that, if Apple’s argument was correct, the open-source Android phone from Google on T-Mobile networks would also be a menace to society. ”This kind of theoretical threat,” von Lohmann said, “is more FUD than truth.”

Apple also claimed that jailbreaking would pave the way for hackers to alter the Exclusive Chip Identification number that identified the phone to the cell tower, which could enable calls to be made anonymously. Apple said “this would be desirable to drug dealers.”

Kinda like prohibition isn’t it?  Take away something the people want and those people will be forced to circumvent authority to get it back.  In the case of GV Mobile and the larger Google Voice, Apple AT&T banned them from the App store so their developer is packing up and going to unlawful grounds.  GV Mobile hit Cydia a few hours after it was officially banned from the App Store.  The developer, Sean Kovacs, is also working on a Web App that will also work on the Pre.

Thanks commenter (picture via iPhoneBlog)

DF spoke with someone (at Apple most likely) who mentioned that Apple killed Google Voice on the direct orders of AT&T.  Fantastic.  Killing innovation and competition has now become the first order of business for these characters.  Here’s a little advice: If you were ever thinking of downloading a VoIP app, do it right now, before other apps start disappearing from of the App Store without explanation.  As DF mentions, AT&T has a special double standard for iPhone users.  Sling Player works over 3G on Blackberry and Windows Mobile.  Google Voice works on Blackberry on AT&T.

Apple users: This is what "carrier exclusivity" buys you.

Skype (iTunes Link)

Fring (iTunes Link)

TruPhone

IM+ with Skype

Classy move all the way around. What I like is that Google is sitting back, letting these joker telcos get away with this, knowing in the long run it only helps them.  VoIP technology is so superior that these feeble attempts to block them will only hurt the telcos more.

Remember that "Premium App Store" Rumor we had from two different sources in May?  It never hasn’t yet materialized but we were thinking that a higher resolution iPod Touch tablet-y thing would need its own games and wares.  While we’re pretty sure it will run iPod and iPhone games at reduced resolutuion, you’ll want some native games on there too.  That’s where the premium apps will come in…perhaps.  Just a thought. (image from wired.com)

A new report observes Apple has put together contingency plans which could theoretically enable it to offer an ads-funded music service of some kind through iTunes.

The report doesn’t claim the company plans to engage in such a move – after all, as an a la carte download service Apple recently shifted its eight billionth track, and appears well on the way to selling as many as four billion tracks this year.

Distorted Loop cites information from UK music industry analyst’s, Music Ally. They’ve taken a look at a recent UK Copyright Tribunal case to uncover a series of hitherto unknown witness statements from Apple iTunes VP Eddie Cue, made in the course of the case.

His statements were sufficient Tribunal Judge Fysh QC, presiding, was driven to state in his judgement, “iTunes may well carry advertising in future”.


The Tribunal began in June 2005, when online services including Napster, AOL, iTunes and the mobile carriers joined forces with UK music industry association the BPI in an attempt to force change in UK licensing rules for use of music online and through mobile services. The primary disagreement concerned the royalty rates payable for various purposes.

A new rate was agreed, but Apple fought hard for exceptions to the rules made designed to facilitate launch of ads-funded music (note, this does not mean the company will do this, just that it could do, and has looked at the possibility).

Apple was able to present the Tribunal with a complete model of how it would like an ad-supported music service’s revenue structure to work. And its evidence was part of what compelled the Tribunal to make certain exceptions which could render this possible in future.
 

We know there isn’t a lot of love up North for Rogers but they’ve got a bit of a surprise in store for their customers, including those with Apple’s iPhone.  The mobile network announced today that they were beginning deployment of the next generation 21Mbs(!!) HDSPA+ Network.  To those of us down South, that might be a little off-putting because we’ve been told that our "next generation 7.2Mbs Network" was coming at some point in the future by AT&T. 

Oh yeah, Rogers has had the 7.2Mbs network deployed since last year and iPhone 3GS users in Canada have enjoyed its use since release.

Rogers Wireless today announced it has begun the Canada-wide deployment of a 21 Megabits per second (Mbps) high-speed HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access Plus) wireless network, following the successful expansion and doubling of speed of its high-speed network to 7.2 Mbps last year. Starting in August, Rogers will progressively increase wireless network download speeds up to 21 Mbps in the Greater Toronto Area, and expand quickly over the coming months to other cities across the country.

Interesting strategy.  Pick your biggest and most cosmopolitan city to roll out your next generation network.  Why not cities like Baltimore and Portland (no offense, lovely city)?  Yes, WiMAX, you are your own worst enemy.

While the current generation iPhone won’t be able to pick up that kind of speed, most Rogers iPhone customers have signed life long pacts in blood (3 year) subsidies so they’ll still be stuck to Rogers when we are using flying cars to get to work.  The immediate benefactor of these higher speeds will be computer users who use 3G data cards.

Down South, the best hope you’ll have to see those kind of speeds is if Verizon rolls out the US’s first LTE 4G network sometime soon or if some bigwig at Sprint decides to bring WiMax to your town.

"With the exponential growth of smartphones, application stores, mobile Internet sticks and embedded laptops and netbooks, Canadians are embracing wireless data and services like never before," said Rob Bruce, President, Rogers Wireless. "The super-charged data speeds achieved with Rogers’ 21 Mbps upgrade will enable us to support more customers with the most innovative mobile services well into the future, while our customers will experience mobile broadband at speeds like what they experience at home and at work."

As well they should support their high end smartphone customers.  Rogers released very good earnings news today against the hard hit wireless industry.

Wireless Delivers Strong Subscriber Growth, Historically Low Postpaid Churn, 38% Wireless Data Revenue Growth, and 49% Network Revenue Margins…blahblah

Churn rate low huh? Maybe that has something to do with that 3-year iPhone subsidy.

The clamor greeting the potential September debut of the as yet completely unannounced Apple tablet device has already gathered to a crescendo, and now a Taiwanese newspaper’s grabbing its share of attention by naming some of the component suppliers for the product.

Taiwan’s Apple Daily declares that Wintek will provide the tablet’s touch-sensitive display (didya Google "EE-1044-IN-W5C" yet?); Dynapack International Technology Corp. is providing the batteries; the whole device is to be manufactured by Foxconn. (Could the reason for all the recent cafuffle be that it was a prototype of this still non-existent device which went missing?  iPhone 2010 Prototypes aren’t due until Xmas).

The Financial Times this week confirmed Apple intends releasing this device, which is like a giant iPod touch. Equipped with a touch-sensitive screen, the new iBook is thought to be intended for use as a gaming machine, fully-functioning computer, eBook reader and media manager. Some speculate it will also offer all the features of an Apple TV, saying the latter product may even be retired.

“The talks come as Apple is separately racing to offer a portable, full-featured, tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season, in what the entertainment industry hopes will be a new revolution,” wrote the FT.

With Verizon much discussed as a potential network carrier for the device, it’s interesting how the carrier recently inked a WiFI deal for its customers – is it preparing to match AT&T’s offering?

Meanwhile major book publisher Barnes & Noble appears to be slowly ramping up its digital push, following this year’s acquisition of a company which facilitates sale of electronic books via a range of devices, including the iPhone.

Apple has refused to sell the Google’s much-anticipated Google Voice app through its App Store, while also removing existing apps which use the service, reports claim.

Google had sent Google Voice to Apple for approval for sale through the App Store, but it was rejected. Independent GV Mobile app developer, Sean Kovacs, also saw his app removed from the App Store, with Apple saying his software duplicates features the iPhone ships with.

Google built similar apps for BlackBerry and Android, while independent developers also ported the service to the iPhone, with apps including GV Mobile and VoiceCentral made available for a few months. These apps have now been withdrawn from the store.

A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch: “We work hard to bring Google applications to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.”

Speculation now suggests AT&T may have been behind the move to ban Google Voice. It’s thought the carrier may have felt threatened by the app, which among other features lets users send free SMS messages and make cheap calls using Google’s own number.

Adding insult to injury, independently-developed GV Mobile was apparently, “personally approved last April by Phil Schiller”, Apple’s top marketing guy.

Supply of flash memory as used in iPhones, some iPods and some Macs seems under legal threat under a new lawsuit bought by the US subsidiary of UK-based patent licensing company BTG International.

The company has filed suit in the patent holder friendly US District Court of Texas accusing Apple, Dell, and Sony of infringing five of its patents related to flash memory technology by using chips from Samsung Electronics.

The patents relate to electronically alterable non-volatile memory cell chips used in consumer electronics products. The company is seeking treble damages and a permanent injunction preventing imports of devices using these chips, including a ban on the import of iPhones and the BlackBerry Storm.

Also targeted are computers by Asustek Computer, Dell and Lenovo Group, and flash-memory cards by PNY Technologies and Transcend Information.

Allegedly infringing products include the iPod, iPhone, MacBook Air, Dell D630 Laptop, ThinkPad Laptop, Cyber-Shot digital cameras and various flash memory sticks and cards.

BTG doesn’t make products itself, simply making its money through licensing of technology patents it owns. It filed a first patent-infringement complaint against Samsung in federal court in Marshall, Texas, in December.

Apple has seemingly reached (or is at least closing in on) a key three-year deal with China Unicom which will see the iPhone launch in China.

China Unicom has secured the rights to distribute the iPhone in the populous country, following months of negotiation between Apple and incumbent mobile telcos in the area, as reported earlier this morning by the state-run official Shanghai Securities News.

Following these revelations, however, the carrier later this morning told Reuters that no formal deal had yet been reached. "Discussions are still ongoing, we have not reached any formal agreement," said Sophia Tso, a spokeswoman for China Unicom.

"We have made progress but there are still some problems to be resolved," a Unicom spokesman separately told The Age.

Despite lack of a formal agreement at this time, the substance of the deal as disclosed earlier this morning is thought to be sound. As previously reported, the three year deal sees the telecoms firm guaranteeing annual iPhone sales of between one and two million units, though local reports suggest Apple has ultimately been unsuccessful in its attempt to persuade China Unicom to offer a revenue sharing deal.
 

Instead, the carrier has agreed to purchase iPhones at a cost of 3,000 yuan each (approximately $439). The deal also sees the carrier guarantee Apple annual revenue of 5 billion yuan (approximately $732 million) each year.

iPhones sold in China are expected to lack WiFI support in order to stay in line with local regulations. These models of iPhone are already in production, reports claim.

China’s dominant mobile carrier, China Mobile, was also in talks with Apple to sell the iPhone in China, but Shanghai Securities News said those talks broke down.

In March, China Unicom accidentally published a dedicated iPhone page on its website. The network had originally been expected to launch the iPhone in China in May.

Interestingly, China Mobile in February 2008 apparently reported it was aware of 400,000 iPhones already in use on its network, these models were purchased in Europe and the US, unlocked and returned to China.

I was reviewing a (really solid) 500GB Seagate drive today and it occured to me that 500GB had been the max you could plop in a laptop for  about a year.  Hard drive storage usually moves faster than that…3.5-inch drives have doubled in capacity over the past year to 2Tb and have had time to come down to a reasonable $230.

Well, wouldn’t you know it?  Today, Western Digitial announced that the new Scorpio Blue laptop drives now come in two more gigantic flavors; 1TB and 750GB.  There is a huge caveat here, however.  These drives are 12.5 mm thick.  That’s 3mm too big for all current model MacBook/Pros according to TUAW.  However, the late model 17-inch MacBook Pro can take the thick WD 1TB drive.  There is some question as to if the Unibody MacBooks with the battery door can take the new drives.

Still want 1TB in your MacBook?  Never fear.  Just get yourself an Optibay, make your Superdrive an external USB reader, and plop down for two cheap 500GB laptop drives.  Or you could wait a few months until Seagate releases their 9.5mm 1TB Momentus drives which run at 7200RPM.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=thepartim-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&asins=B002P3KO60

Press release follows:

WD today announced two new mobile hard drives that reach new capacity extremes. The highlight is a one terabyte model — the industry’s highest-capacity 2.5-inch drive available. Industry-leading 333 GB-per-platter technology enables the new WD Scorpio(R) Blue(TM) SATA 2.5-inch hard drives to offer mobile storage device and notebook users an enormous 1 TB capacity. A 750 GB WD Scorpio Blue model also will be available.

The WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB and 1 TB hard drives have a 12.5 mm form factor(1) and are ideally suited for use in portable storage solutions, such as the newly released My Passport(TM) Essential(TM) SE Portable USB Drives. Other applications include select notebooks and small form factor desktop PCs, where quiet and cool operation are important. Both WD Scorpio Blue drives deliver high-performance with a 3 gigabits per second (Gb/s) transfer rate.

“The convergence of the growing mobile computing and digital media trends produces demand for desktop-like capacities in portable devices,” said Jim Morris, senior vice president and general manager of client systems at WD. “Our new WD Scorpio Blue drives enable people to take even more of their digital collections with them wherever they go and, realizing the value of their data, back up their notebooks on their My Passport drives.”

WD Scorpio Blue hard drives offer high-performance, low power consumption and cool operation in portable applications. They are designed with WD features to be reliable and shock resistant while also delivering industry-leading capacity and performance.

WD Scorpio Blue Features

WhisperDrive(TM) – WD’s exclusive WhisperDrive technology combines state-of-the-art seeking algorithms to produce one of the quietest 2.5-inch drives available.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=thepartim-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&m=amazon&f=ifr&md=10FE9736YVPPT7A0FBG2&asins=B002L264J6

ShockGuard(TM) – Leading-edge ShockGuard technology combines firmware and hardware advancements to meet the highest combined shock tolerance specifications required for mobile and notebook applications.

SecurePark(TM) – Parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface, resulting in improved long-term reliability due to less head wear and improved shock tolerance.

Price and Availability

WD Scorpio Blue 750 GB drives (model WD7500KEVT) are available now through select distributors and resellers; the 1 TB capacity (model WD10TEVT) is available now configured into My Passport Essential SE USB drives. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) for the WD Scorpio Blue 1 TB drive is $249.99 USD and for the 750 GB version it is $189.99 USD. WD Scorpio Blue hard drives are covered by a three-year limited warranty. More information about WD Scorpio Blue mobile hard drives may be found on the company’s Web site at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=685.

We’ve got modem firmware 05.11.04, Carrier=AT&T 4.5 like before but you can Copy/Paste small videos (thanks Justin) and now you can see how much tethering you’ve done (below) – even if you can’t currently enable tethering on iPhone 3.1 just yet (hacked or not)

Here’s one that might take a bit of crowd-sourced sleuthing from the community to solve:

Atheros, a maker of tiny, low cost Wifi modules for Netbooks and MIDs (amongst other things) has product called the AR9281 (PDF Link).

The product lives in a variety of higher-end netbooks like the EeePC 1000HE.  "Higher-end" because the Atheros card supports 802.11N.  These machines are often used to make Hackintoshes (guilty!) because they are the fastest inexpensive netbook you can buy.  However, to get the Wifi working properly, you’ve needed to swap out the Atheros Wifi PCIe card and replace it with a $10 card from Dell or others because there are no Apple-Atheros drivers.

Apple doesn’t make any hardware with Atheros equipment (yet).

Recently, news has popped up that Snow Leopard includes the KEXTs for this card (unverified atm).

Interestingly, the PDF from above now lists Apple as one of the platforms it supports

This is where it get’s interesting….

A netbook user, citing Atheros’ claim of Macintosh compatibility, wrote in to the company to see why he couldn’t download the drivers from the site.  The response he got was:

Re: AR9281 driver support
From: Atheros Information <info@atheros.com>
To: d00c4@***.com
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:00 am
Sorry for the confusion. We are under legal agreement with Apple not to provide the requested drivers to anyone. For issues regarding driver support or customer service related to your wireless card, please contact Apple. We suggest you refer to the Apple’s website, as they typically offer online technical support pages where software drivers, updates, and other related information can be obtained.

On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:10:50 -0500
<d00c4@***.com> wrote:
> Thank you for fast response, but I couldn’t find drivers >for OS X (and drivers for 9281 at all) on that page.
> D.K.
> > —–Original Message—–
>From: Atheros Information <info@atheros.com>
> To: d00c4@***.com
> Sent: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 1:50 am
> Subject: Re: AR9281 driver support
> > Please refer to our website’s Chip Driver Downloads.
> > http://partner.atheros.com/Drivers.aspx
> > Thank you for purchasing an Atheros-enabled product.
> ATHEROS Communications, Inc.
> > > > > On Mon, 9 Feb 2009 17:21:48 -0500
> <d00c4@***.com> wrote:
>> Recently I bought AR9281 wireless card for my Mac. But,
>>I can’t find
>> any driver for your AR9281 chip (altough there’s
>>document that says there’s a driver support for Macs:
>>http://www.atheros.com/pt/bulletins/AR9281Bulletin.pdf).
>>Can you help me somehow, or I’ll need to replace wifi
>>card (again)?
>> Thanks.
>>
> > >

The question has to be asked: Why is Apple forbidding these drivers to get out?

The boring answer would be that it is trying to protect its software from Hackintosh makers.  However, it isn’t illegal to build drivers for the Mac Platform and as a company that doesn’t (currently) do business with Apple, Atheros wouldn’t necessarily have legal agreements.  What if you wanted to use this chip to replace a faulty Wifi card in an old MacBook?  Does Apple really not want you to have these drivers for that purpose?  Blocking software drivers from being released would be a new step that we’re not sure Apple has taken before.

Then other scenarios come up.  Is Apple releasing some sort of device with this hardware in the near future…a device that will run Snow Leopard (hence the purported included kexts)?

Or even more insane scenarios: Is Apple going nuclear by releasing Snow Leopard to run on Non-Apple hardware one month ahead of Windows 7?

Who wants to debunk our outlandish assumptions?

Management practices at Apple’s manufacturing partner, Foxconn, remain in the spotlight as yet more news reports emerge explaining the tragic death of 25-year old engineer, Sun Danyong.

The latest batch of reports claim the hapless engineer’s family have now received compensation of c.$44,000 for the death of their son, while his girlfriend was given an Apple MacBook.

Sun was responsible for shipping prototypes from Foxconn’s development labs to Apple, and his problems really began when he discovered one of the 16 prototypes he was handling had disappeared.

He reported this, but later complained to friends he had been beaten and humiliated by Foxconn security, even warning his girlfriend to leave town and not make contact with him, according to a text message she later posted online.

Then, on the morning of July 16, Sun appears to have jumped from the 12th floor of an apartment building to his death, which Foxconn called suicide.

Apple said of the loss of the young engineer, “We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death. We require that our suppliers treat all workers with dignity and respect.”

Sun’s fall has led to a wave of criticism of Foxconn’s treatment of its labour force, which was first examined in a report in the Daily Mail several years ago.

Labor rights groups say the worker’s death should compel Apple to improve conditions at its supplier factories in China and prevent worker abuse.

New York-based pressure group, China Labor Watch, blamed the death on, “Foxconn’s inhumane and militant management system, which lacks fundamental respect for human rights.”

Foxconn counters that it offers extensive accomodation and facilities for its staff and has been engaged in honestly seeking answers as to what happened to the missing proto-iPhone. Foxconn manager, James Lee also observed products had gone missing while in Sun’s possession in the past.

Meanwhile the security officer accused of mistreating Sun (who has since been reported to the Chinese police for investigation) once again denied any beatings, saying only he had “become a little angry” and grabbed Sun’s shoulder.

However, the hand of Foxconn’s control is illustrated by a report in the New York Times, which says one its journalists was speaking to Sun’s family when a security guard and two men in Foxconn T-shirts approached the journalist’s translator to threaten to beat them up if they kept asking questions. Foxconn says this guard was not on their staff, but could have been a police operative.
 

Informationweek reports on how Jonathan Zdziarski breaks Apple’s security measures pretty swiftly, in a series of Youtube videos.  While hackers will need physical access to the iPhone (thereby making them crooks), he does cut through the security that protects deleted voice mail, e-mail, and other data.  Note that he is a security researcher and has skills that the garden variety pickpocket probably hasn’t yet learned from iPhone Hacking for Dummies.

(He apparently used the iPhone in portrait mode to make the videos.)

When the Pre was launched a few months ago, we joked that Palm had stolen some of Apple’s packaging people as well as some engineering talent.  Not to fear, though.  Apple, not content to patent everything about the iPhone, and even the way it can be charged and changed as it sits on shelves, has also patented the unique and revolutionaly packaging.

 AT&T, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to block 4Chan, the mischievous hacker group that seems to be able to take down sites at will.  Problem is that they could decide to take out

Wow. The Financial Times (in an article from tomorrow) is saying that Apple will have a tablet out for Christmas.  They are anticipating a September launch (which would coincide with the iPod launches).  Their version of the tablet (10 inches, media focused, App Store) seems to indicate that it will me more iPod than Mac, though they say “full featured, tablet-sized computer”.  

The talks come as Apple is separately racing to offer a portable, full-featured, tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season, in what the entertainment industry hopes will be a new revolution. The device could be launched alongside the new content deals, including those aimed at stimulating sales of CD-length music, according to people briefed on the project…

Apple is working with EMI, SonyMusic, Warner Music and Universal Music Group, on a project the company has codenamed