iOS Devices

According to ON.CC, Foxconn is moving some-to-all of its production facilites to Taiwan, Vietnam, and India.  The move comes on the back of suicides, and subsequent pay raises for workers at the facilities.  

According to the Register, “the announcement came at a shareholders meeting of the Hon Hai Group, Foxconn’s parent company. Chairman Terry Gou said that production would be withdrawn from mainland China and shifted to Taiwan, Vietnam, and India. There are currently 800,000 Foxconn workers on the mainland, and if all Foxconn manufacturing there eventually ceases, they would all be out of work.”

The report has yet to be independently verified, via Gizmodo.

Developers, Developers, Developers: It’s time to submit your iOS 4 apps so they will be live when OS 4 is launched. 

And just like that, the Feds are involved.

The FBI says it is investigating a data breach at AT&T that exposed the e-mail addresses of more than 114,000 owners of the Apple iPad, including government officials. The agency said Thursday it is looking into “the potential cyber threat” from the breach.

It isn’t certain what “cyber threat” a bunch of email addresses could pose, but with high ranking government officials, including the White house staff and military involved, the FBI is probably on a “better safe than sorry” gameplan.  

“The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation,” said Katherine Schweit, an FBI spokeswoman. Ms. Schweit said the FBI opened the investigation Thursday but it will not comment on what it is looking at. “It’s very early in the investigation,” she said.

A small group of computer experts that calls itself Goatse Security said it discovered the flaw, saying it was able to find the email addresses on AT&T’s website by guessing numbers that identify iPads connected to AT&T’s mobile network. The group said it uncovered 114,000 email addresses, including those of prominent officials in companies, politics and the military. A member of the group says it hasn’t heard from law enforcement and that it didn’t do anything illegal, so doesn’t see why it would.

Is there anyone out there that hasn’t yet took a swing at AT&T’s 3G network?

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via SAI

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Adobe

Big news in the US, where T-Mobile is now being named as a potential additional carrier for the iPhone 4. Meanwhile, struggling to meet demand, carriers seem to be moving away from offering unlimited data deals for the iPhone. UK carrier O2 today revealed its all new deals, dumping

There are plenty of uncomfortable moments in this one.  AllThingsD posts the full interview:

http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf

Flash disabled here.

Just how dirty will the war between Apple and Google get? Will Google respond to the iOS iAds lock-out by locking Apple’s people out of YouTube?

read more

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Old Apple friend, Nokia, couldn’t help but notice that Scott Forstall said that the new iPhone 4 is all about ‘Connecting People’. According to some Finnish sites, that didn’t go over well at Nokia  HQ.  Nokia is considering adding a trademark dispute to its list of beefs with Apple.  Translated from the site:

Apple’s slogan theft has been notified at Nokia’s headquarters. Aamulehti reported yesterday Apple’s new iPhone 4 advertisement video, in which Apple’s Manager Scott Forstall borrows carelessly Nokia’s famous slogan. The unscrupulous quotation has been met with astonishment at Nokia. Company’s Communications Director Tapani Kaskinen commented to Ilta Sanomat that “Connecting People” slogan is a protected trademark in many countries, including the United States. – ‘It has been used by Nokia since the 1990’s and is one of the world’s most known slogans.’ Kaskinen says. Apple and Nokia have sued and countersued each other in patent disputes. So far it is unclear whether Nokia will take the use of their marketing trademarks to court.

Hulu is dancing toward the iPad (and the Xbox 360) with plans to introduce a subscription-based service within the next couple of months.

Other than suggesting Hulu

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Just in case you thought there were some traditions in life untouched by an Apple product here

Steve Jobs promised that the iPhone 4’s Glass would be much stronger than the iPhones before it, but is it strong enough to take a fall onto a hard surface?

On just the third drop, the fine folks at iFixYouri landed up with a completely shattered display. The iPhone 4’s back uses glass as well, so when you drop this thing your chances of breaking aren’t just lined up with the front screen. The site goes on to mention the iPhone 4 shatters so easily because the glass is not recessed like some previous iPhone models. More images below:

Some side notes of reference:

-iFixYouri is no iFixit so their claims should be taken that way. Before determining how easily the screen shatters, you should wait until some professional tests are done in the coming weeks leading up to launch. 

-Additionally those are just spare iPhone 4 parts, and are definitely not fitted how Apple intended them to be. There are probably tons of mechanisms and chemicals that hold that thing together so shattering like that doesn’t happen. 

Update: Hey guys, what’s with all the threats in the comments? We can’t post some slightly negative Apple news without a mutiny?

Here’s the hint.  What do you think they mean?

Big things are happening RIGHT NOW at Valve. Things involving cultivated tree-fruit. BIG things. Things that rhyme with “grapple.” Things that rhyme with “Speem Gortress zmavailable on the Babac.” Not today. But tomorrow. BIG THINGS. Stay tuned…

Perhaps not the best timing with the AT&T security breach (Including Rahm Emanuel’s name), but today, the Washington Post details the use of the iPad at the White House, which seems to be spreading like wildfire.

The device is the hot, new White House toy, a gizmo that is popping up around Washington but seems to be particularly in vogue at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Emanuel just got his, as did senior adviser David Axelrod and deputy press secretary Bill Burton. Both communications director Dan Pfeiffer and press wrangler Ben Finkenbinder have one on order. Economic adviser Larry Summers takes his to staff meetings.

The Washington Post does a run down on who uses what apps. 

Though not as popular in Congress, “one veteran Republican consultant Russ Schreifer — an early iPhone adopter — says his iPad is the “fully souped-up, 64-gig, 3G version. Why not? Right.”

Schreifer has the Epicurious app for cooking and the interactive Elmo book for his 2-year-old daughter. He has two books: “The War Lovers,” by Evan Thomas, and “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” by Seth Grahame-Smith. There are also a few episodes of the just-finished “24” television series, transferred from his iPhone to take advantage of the iPad’s bigger screen.

But Schreifer says the device is not all for play. He says he’s already approved rough cuts of campaign commercials and raw footage for ads on the iPad.

“Love it,” he said. “Love it.”

Matt Buchanon had a little conversation with AT&T security chief Ed Amororo on the hack.  It turns out that AT&T wanted to make logging into your 3G data plan dashboard a little easier on the iPad so they populated the email address based on the ICC-ID.  

Hackers effectively used a brute force technique to get the system to spit out email addresses.  As of now, the email populating system is turned off (above image).

Ol’ Ed might have some explaining to do.  While email addresses aren’t the biggest loss for their customers, AT&T should have known that they would be vulnerable with such a system.

AT&T!  What’s not to love?!  According to Gawker, hackers were able to access a script on the AT&T website that would give up an iPad user email address if the iPad ICC-ID’s were known.  The hackers, part of a group called Goatse Security (OMG), used known ICC-ID numbers to create a program to automatically pull 114,000 email addresses including high ranking military, business and government leaders.

AT&T has known about the breach for at least two days, yet hasn’t notified any customers, according to Gawker.

Within the military, we saw several devices registered to the domain of DARPA, the advanced research division of the Department of Defense, along with the major service branches. To wit: One affected individual was William Eldredge, who “commands the largest operational B-1 [strategic bomber] group in the U.S. Air Force.” In the media and entertainment industries, affected accounts belonged to top executives at the New York Times Company, Dow Jones, Cond

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We

After picking up his Ars Design Award for Tweetie on Mac (which we love) Loren Brichter answered the question that lots of us wanted to know: Yes, Tweetie is going to be updated on the Mac AND it will be made into a superfabulous iPad app with features that Loren can’t even put into words.

“The goal is to exceed the Twitter iPhone app in the iPad,” he said. “I swear the reunification is coming between iPhone, Mac, and iPad.”

He also agrees with Dan Lyons that the Mac is waning and says that he looks forward to the day when he can develop on his iPad.  He doesn’t think the Mac is going anywhere soon, however.  If he did, he wouldn’t continue to develop Mac software.

“If you break the idea that we have to use software keyboards the traditional way, there’s so much potential for insanely fast programming,” Brichter said. “Think about keyboard buttons becoming whole variable names. You could become so efficient while programming!”

Oh, and a Mac App Store?

“I think that would be really sexy,” Brichter told us. “But does it fix the fundamental problem that the Mac is too complicated for some users? I don’t know.”

Yesterday, it was revealed that Apple’s terms of service in its new developer agreement would preclude Google’s Admob and other Ad networks (like Microsoft) from doing business in the iPhone’s App Store.

Today, Admob’s CEO Omar Hamoui (who had been in negotiations just months ago to be purchased by Apple) says: 

Apple proposed new developer terms on Monday that, if enforced as written, would prohibit app developers from using AdMob and Google

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Probably the funniest bit of audience participation of the evening or of recent memory.

Here’s a suggestion for clearing the room of Wifi signals: Broadcast the keynote live (and at the same time show off your Quicktime Broadcaster software.) What’s the point of not going live when the whole room is documenting it anyway.