An Apple patent application, filed earlier this year but posted online last Thursday could put an end to jailbreaking iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads, reports claim.
Jailbreaking, which allows Apple users to run third-party unsigned code on their devices by unlocking the operating system, was recently found not to violate copyright laws defined by the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
While an Apple patent would primarily protect users from thieves, with a range of security measures possibly planned, the company seems keen to stamp out jailbreaking, despite the practice now legal under “fair use” in the US.
According to tech news site CNET, Apple’s patent “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device,” includes a remote “kill switch” that could quickly restore an iPhone, iPod or iPad to its factory settings.
Along with the potential to restore factory settings, Apple also intends to send warnings to owners via email or text message when such activity as “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking, or removal of a SIM card.” is detected, CNET adds.
The decision to change the wording was taken to “provide a fair experience for all users of the Orange network and not only provide more transparency on the data allowances customers receive, but… also help [Orange] to provide a sustainable experience for the majority,” an Orange spokesperson told ZDNet UK on Wednesday.
“It’s worth noting that [approximately] 1 percent of our mobile customers use [approximately] 20 percent of our network capacity. Therefore, this move will help us address that imbalance to ensure a fair resource for everyone, with data bundles on offer for those who wish to download more,” added the spokesperson.
In June, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that it was investigating operators’ use of the word ‘unlimited’ when advertising fixed and mobile data plans. Orange’s new tariffs — which are being offered alongside the previous deals — no longer include the term, which Orange had actually used alongside a so-called fair use cap of 750MB per month.
Orange is offering the iPhone 4 on a range of tariffs between £30 and £75 per month, on 18-month and two-year commitments. At £35 a month, customers can choose between having 500MB of data and 600 minutes of talktime, or 750MB and 400 minutes. The maximum data allowance involved in the costlier tariffs is 1GB.
Competitor networks 3, Vodafone and Tesco all offer the iPhone 4 with a flat-rate 1GB data allowance, while O2 and T-Mobile both range between 500MB and 1GB, depending on the price and length of the contract. T-Mobile offers 3GB a month with Android phones.
Orange is also offering the iPhone 4 on pay-as-you-go (PAYG) with an upfront cost of £480, plus a £10 top-up. A monthly £10 top-up will net PAYG customers 250MB data allowance and 300 free texts.
The project, led by researcher George MacKerron of LSE’s Department of Geography and Envirnoment, is designed to help the team understand the impact of a person’s surrounding environment. The team believes that features such as pollution, noise, weather conditions and green space all play a part a person’s overall happiness.
The app beeps users at random times of the day to find out how ‘happy’, ‘relaxed’ and how ‘awake’ they are feeling – as well as their activity, companionship and location.
The application even tracks a users’ location via GPS in addition to monitoring noise levels using the iPhone’s in-built microphone. The data is sent back to a central data store securely and anonymously.
MacKerron said: ‘Tracking happiness through time alone is an idea with history: in the 19th century economists imagined a “hedonimeter”, a perfect happiness gauge, and psychologists have more recently run small-scale “experience sampling” studies to see how mood varies with activity, time of day, and so on.
‘We hope to find better answers to questions about the impacts of natural beauty, environmental problems – maybe even aspects of climate – on individual and national wellbeing.’
Users will be able to observe real-time national happiness levels on the website, http://www.mappiness.org.uk/, alongside maps and timelines drawn out from the response data.
Mappiness is free to download from Apple’s online App Store.
Source: Metro
It had to happen: a developer has figured out a way to see Flash videos and games on the iPhone and iPad, well – sort of.
Boston developer Lida Tang, 32, has worked his way into the Apple App Store with Cloud Browse, a program that lets you go to websites that feature flash video and games, includinge CBS.com, comedycentral.com and Nickelodeon.com, despite Apple’s aversion to Flash. Tang came up with a workaround that obviously even Apple could approve of.
You can watch Flash, but it isn’t actually on your iPhone. It’s on another computer.
Here’s how it works: you download the free Cloud Browse App and install it. Then you direct the App to the website of your choice. Here’s where the interesting part comes in: the site is called up on another computer, which streams it back to your iPhone.
The App works for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, but is optimized for the small screen of the iPhone and iPod. In our tests, the quality was decent on the iPhone, but pretty grainy and hard to watch on the much larger iPad. (An iPad optimized App is in the works.)
The app is free, has been out for a few weeks, and so far has picked up 150,000 downloads, says Tang. He plans on bringing out a paid App at $9.99 monthly.
Download hereThere’s a big difference between free and paid. Free users only get to stay connected for about 10-15 minutes, and the video frame rate is slow. Tang says paid users will get unlimited access, and faster video.
Tang says he began working on the App a year ago, motivated by “wanting to escape the confine of the mobile device. There’s a lot more power in the cloud.”
The app had already been approved by Apple by the time Apple CEO Steve Jobs penned his “Thoughts on Flash,” essay on the Apple website, which ended any realistic hope of seeing Flash on the iPhone or iPad. Jobs says Flash is a battery drainer and resource hog.
The Cloud Browse App works just about anywhere on the Web — except for video site Hulu, which is co-owned by Fox, NBC and ABC. “Hulu is very aggressive about blocking access,” says Tang.
Confirmation that Steve Jobs will host Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2010 keynote raises hopes.
Apple has confirmed that Steve Jobs himself will be hosting the keynote talk at this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2010 – raising chances that the gathering will be used to unveil the upcoming iPhone 4.
Though there’s no direct evidence to confirm this, if nothing else we know that a new iPhone is both in development and nearing release.
Early builds of the gadget have in recent weeks been spotted (or ‘acquired’)by both Gizmodo and Vietnamese site Taoviet.
Kicking off on June 7th, WWDC is designed to provide advanced advice for skilled developers across five key technology tracks.
The 5000 attendees will be able to attend sessions in the following tracks: Application Frameworks; Internet & Web; Graphics & Media; Developer Tools; and Core OS.
Source: MVCUK
The decision to change the wording was taken to “provide a fair experience for all users of the Orange network and not only provide more transparency on the data allowances customers receive, but… also help [Orange] to provide a sustainable experience for the majority,” an Orange spokesperson told ZDNet UK on Wednesday.
The project, led by researcher George MacKerron of LSE’s Department of Geography and Envirnoment, is designed to help the team understand the impact of a person’s surrounding environment. The team believes that features such as pollution, noise, weather conditions and green space all play a part a person’s overall happiness.
