iOS

A bug was disclosed in Apple’s software that could be exploited by criminals to gain control over iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices.

On Wednesday the website www.jailbreakme.com released code that Apple customers can use to modify the iOS operating system through jaibreaking. Many Apple customers jailbreak their devices so that they could download and run applications that are not approved by Apple or use iPhone phones on networks of carriers that are not approved by Apple.

This week Apple Inc released an update to fix a problem in its iOS software that allowed its mobile devices to collect and store users’ location data. Last week Steve Jobs promised to adjust the company's mobile software to store less location data.

The update is available through iTunes stores. Besides, it automatically pops up when an iPhone or iPad is synced, said it "contains changes to the iOS crowd-sourced location database cache."

Apple said on Wednesday that the white iPhone is coming today, Thursday.

“The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it’s beautiful,” gushed Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing chief in the way only marketing chiefs can.

“We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right," he added.

The once seemingly utterly vaporous white iPhone 4 will be available in 28 countries including the UK, the US and most of Europe, Australasia and Asia itself.
 

Another report from Nielsen revealed that Android has surpassed Apple iOS in terms of desirability. It means that now more smartphone users are seeking to have Android than iPhone.

Thus, the report shows that 31% of mobile users polled within the period from January to March 2011 wanted Android device which is 26% up from the same period a year ago. On the other hand, 30% of respondents said they wanted Apple, which is 33% down from the previous year.

iPhones and iPads track users locations and store these details in an unencrypted file on the devices as well on the users’ PCs, according to a finding by researchers. Collection of such data started with Apple iOS4. It is stored as a SQLite file on iPhones and iPads with 3G feature, says Pete Warden, the founder of Data Science Toolkit and a former Apple employee, and Alasdair Allan, a senior research fellow at the University of Exeter.

Android based smartphones perform better than the iPhones when it comes to loading web pages. Blaze.io, a mobile website optimization company, conducted the study that involved over 40,000 downloads of web pages belonging to the Fortune 1000 companies.

The study revealed that the iPhone loaded web pages 52% longer than Android and on average Android took 2.1 seconds to render non–mobile-optimized web pages, while the iPhone took 3.2 seconds. Android phones outdid the iPhone on site-loading time by 84% of the time.

According to the new finding of an agency that helps manage paid search advertising most Apple iOS devices including iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches fail to count paid-search conversions (i.e., clicks) because cookie-tracking is turned off.

It is known that all Apple mobile devices use the Safari as the default browser and so do Apple laptops and desktop PCs. It is also known that Safari blocks third-party cookies by default from considerations of privacy. But it is very bad for advertisers.

A new analysis by a supporter of open source software revealed that 7 out of 10 Android and iOS applications marked as containing open source "failed to comply with basic open source license requirements.”

OpenLogic, which makes open source software support, scanning and governance tools, reported that it had analyzed 635 mobile applications for Android, iPhone and iPad, out of which 66 contained open source software under the Apache, GPL or LGPL licenses. The vendor found that 71% of the 66 apps violated key obligations required by the open source licenses.

This week Google announced the introduction of Google Instant Previews for Mobile (for Android (2.2+) and iOS (4.0+) devices across 38 languages. Earlier in November the company unveiled its Instant Preview feature for desktops to let users see a preview thumbnail of a search result before they click through to view it.

German researchers have found the way to hack into the locked iPhone and steal passwords in just six minutes without even cracking the phone’s passcode.

Researchers explained in a video footage that the attack targets Apple’s management system, a keychain. If an iPhone or iPad is stolen passwords for networks and corporate information systems can be easily misappropriated by crooks.

Last week Microsoft said that in the most recent quarter the company had shipped over 2 million copies of its upgraded operating system Windows Phone 7. A senior product manager Greg Sullivan in a story by Bloomberg cited results of Microsoft's internal surveys of customer satisfaction and brand awareness. "Customer satisfaction for the product is at 93% and brand awareness has jumped 22 points to 66% since it was released," the story reported.

According to the stats provided by a prominent iOS app developer users of iOS based devices are much faster to update their operating system unlike users of Android gadgets. Inasmuch as Apple does not release official data of how many people run the various versions of its mobile OS David Lieb, chief executive of Bump, the app that allows you to swap data with other users by bumping two devices together, says that its download and usage base (estimated at around 15 million downloads) makes it for a representative sample of iOS users.

Apple is apparently planning to add voice search functionality to its iOS platform. This idea is suggested by ad placed by Apple on its website that seeks for an iOS Speech SW Application Engineer.

"You will work with our team on a wide variety of speech-related development activities. We need a team player - you will be working closely with engineers on the Application Frameworks team as well as other teams at Apple - and we need someone who is comfortable working in a fast paced environment with rapidly changing priorities," the listing reads.

According to Russian tech blogger Eldar Murtazin the two companies Nokia and Microsoft are in talks over an alliance to make Nokia-branded phones on Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Murtazin reported that Nokia secretly met with Microsoft over the past month for discussing expanded cooperation. The blogger speculates that this is not a cooperation based on better Microsoft Office products for Nokia phones, but about creating a whole line of Nokia-branded smartphones running the Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system.

While the actual model of the next iPhone iteration is only under development at the Cupertino offices a Chinese manufacturer has already released the prototype of the iPhone 5. A Chinese language website M8cool says that this is exactly how the next Apple’s phone will look like.

The device is likely running some OS other than iOS, maybe Android with the customized interface. According to the images and video footage Chinese developers believe the next iPhone 5 will return to its old fashion and will appear as the iPhone 3GS design.