IPhone news and information

Archive for November, 2011

Macworld UK

JP Morgan ups holiday quarter iPhone estimates to 28 million Apple Insider JP Morgan bumped up its projections for shipments of Apple's iPhone in the December quarter to 28 million units, revising its revenue estimates for the company accordingly to $38.69 billion. Analyst Mark Moskowitz issued a note to clients ... Analyst: Q1 iPhone Sales to Hit 28 MillionThe Mac Observer Analyst trims iPad sales projections, raises iPhone estimatesBGR iPhone sales forecast for December quarter raised by JP MorganMacworld UK Barron's (blog) -Financial News Network Online -StreetInsider.com (subscription) all 26 news articles »

Sure, your smartphone might shoot HD, you might even have a dolly, but most of us know that 30 seconds of accidental filming inside a pocket and a blurry clip from the office party are about the best we can hope for. Not director Hooman Khalili. He made a feature length film using his trusty Nokia N8 and a custom lens, and now plans to show it in movie theaters. The film, called Olive, tells the story of a mute little girl, and the impact she has on the lives of those who meet her. Partly financed by the former Facebook CPO Chris Kelly, this Kickstarter story has the making of a movie itself. Should it raise the required $300k in funding, Khalili hopes it might even get a sniff by the Academy. That's assuming, of course, they've had a recent change of policy. For a sneak peak and a look at the making of, check the video after the break.

Continue reading Olive: the first feature film 'intentionally' shot on a smartphone (video)

Olive: the first feature film 'intentionally' shot on a smartphone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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W*USA 9

Iphone's Siri Under Fire W*USA 9 WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA) -- NARAL Pro-Choice America, a group out of Washington DC is claiming the popular feature on the new iPhone 4S is giving mis-leading and incomplete information when it asked about abortion. The feature is a high-tech virtual ... Is Apple's Siri anti-abortion?Christian Science Monitor Siri, Are You Anti-Abortion?PC Magazine A man uses "Siri" on the new iPhone 4S. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images)ABC News Toronto Sun -Slate Magazine all 253 news articles »

USA Today (blog)

iPhone Ends 2011 As Web's Top Search Item Forbes The iPhone was the leading gadget punched into the Yahoo! search engine in 2011, Yahoo! said on Wednesday. Not only was it the top consumer item searched for, it was the time item overall, beating out the tragic Japanese earthquake and even Kim ... iPhone was top-searched topic on Yahoo this yearUSA Today (blog) Consumer contentCNET Yahoo!'s 10th Annual Year in Review Spotlights 2011's Passing Obsessions and ...MarketWatch (press release) all 19 news articles »

USA Today (blog)

iPhone was top-searched topic on Yahoo this year USA Today (blog) The iPhone led all search queries, besting a reality TV star's abbreviated marriage and the notorious defendant in a made-for-tabloid-TV trial. Yahoo announced the findings as part of its 10th annual Year in Review (yearinreview.yahoo.com), ... iPhone Ends 2011 As Web's Top Search ItemForbes iPhone more interesting than Lohan, KardashiansMyBroadband Consumer contentCNET MarketWatch (press release) all 39 news articles »

Activision's been relatively quiet on iOS, especially when compared to other big game publishers like EA. But the company has always had a hit with its original Call of Duty Zombies app, and now it's looking to replicate that success with a new version, based on the Zombies Mode in last year's Call of Duty: Black Ops. The new game is set to arrive on the App Store December 1, and just like the old version, it will bring Call of Duty's zombies mode to life in full 3D.

The game will be US$6.99 (the same price, it might be noted, as the also-releasing Infinity Blade 2), and will come with just one map (more on the way), as well as a whole other game in the form of Dead Ops Arcade, a dual stick shooter that was found as an easter egg in Call of Duty: Black Ops. The game also offers up multiplayer support and even voice chat for up to four players.

This app will undoubtedly be a hit this holiday season -- obviously the App Store is a very different place since the last CoD: Zombies app came around, but the name recognition alone will likely sell plenty of copies. We'll check the game out when it arrives.

Activision releasing Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies December 1 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Interwebs have been abuzz over the last 24 hours about Carrier IQ on Android smart phones, allegedly logging user activity including keystrokes. TUAW can confirm that Carrier IQ appears to be included on iOS 5, but that its purpose is most likely benign.

iOS virtuoso chpwn discovered Carrier IQ support in firmware as recent as iOS 3.x on Apple's devices. TUAW confirmed Carrier IQ references in iOS 5 after reading this post on the MacRumors forum and evaluating the /usr/bin/awd_ic3 file found in the installed OS.

The firmware contains references to Carrier IQ such as this URL included in the binary. We have included a full set of matching strings at the end of this post.

http://collector.sky.carrieriq.com:7001/collector/c?cm_sl=5

In TUAW's look through the binary calls, we found references to collecting carrier telemetry such as local cell tower, signal strength, and your phone number. We found no references to key logging. We did find remote diagnostic calls like CTServerConnectionEnableRemoteDiagnostics.

What's more, the service may need to be specifically enabled. A property list in the "mobile" user library looks like it has to be overridden to allow diagnostic logging.

iPhone # plutil com.apple.iqagent.plist
{
DiagnosticsAllowed = 0;
}

Further, the binary seems to be somewhat poorly maintained. The primary reference to the /var/wireless/Library/Logs/IQAgent/ folder has now been replaced by /var/wireless/Library/Logs/awd in actual use.

Apple's inclusion of Carrier IQ does not, in our first estimation, appear to be a root kit or threaten privacy. We reserve the right to re-evaluate our judgement on that in the future, but for now we don't see much that bothers us. Given what it records, this sounds like the "help maintain network performance" claim made by Jason Gertzen of Sprint when he was asked about Carrier IQ on Android. But even this is cautiously implemented on iOS.

If you want to stay on top of this story, follow chpwn's blog as he continues to investigate.

Continue reading Carrier IQ references found in iOS 5, probably benign

Carrier IQ references found in iOS 5, probably benign originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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W*USA 9

Is Apple's Siri anti-abortion? Christian Science Monitor Siri, the voice-activated assistant on the new iPhone 4S, is apparently filtering out certain results, including the location of nearby abortion clinics. By Matthew Shaer / November 30, 2011 Siri, the voice-activated assistant on the new iPhone, ... Iphone's Siri Under FireW*USA 9 Siri, Are You Anti-Abortion?PC Magazine A man uses "Siri" on the new iPhone 4S. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images)ABC News Slate Magazine -Toronto Sun all 256 news articles »

Digitaltrends.com

30 percent of iPhone 4S owners paid the iPhone 4 early termination fee Digitaltrends.com While many Americans are making continual efforts to make wise financial decisions during uncertain economic times, a sizable percentage of iPhone 4S owners aren't on the same page. According to a survey conducted by Consumer Intelligence Research ... Study: Nearly One-Third of iPhone 4S Buyers Paid ETFs to Do SoPC Magazine IPhone Owners Pay Early Termination Fees to Get 4SMobiledia Survey shows that many new iPhone buyers broke their contract for Apple's devicePhoneDog (blog) AppAdvice -Cult of Mac -All Things Digital all 9 news articles »

Think Progress, Slate, and a whole lot of other outlets are piling it on thick and claiming that Siri's search parameters have a "pro-life" bias because the service has difficulty locating abortion clinics or birth control services in many areas. "Siri's unhelpful and sometimes misleading answers to pressing health questions stand in stark contrast to her prompt and accurate responses to inquiries about nearby escort services," says Think Progress, while Slate goes even farther off the deep end and says, "many around the Web [are] wondering if Siri is pro-life and whether Apple is attempting to impose its morals upon the rest of us."

This is a textbook example of sensationalistic media making something from absolutely nothing. If Siri's search parameters function the same way as other services (and I'm almost certain they do), it's likely that in addition to the business name itself, a business will have a cluster of tagged metadata associated with it. Siri's association with Yelp in the U.S. makes this sort of tagging extremely easy for restaurants and other retail services -- searching for something as simple as "hamburgers" or "Target" will return dozens of results in major cities.

For other services -- birth control and abortion clinics being two examples -- Siri apparently relies on a much less extensive database than Yelp, with far less comprehensive tagging. All that Think Progress and Slate's "research" shows is that Apple isn't relying upon Google's database for such searches, either; a Google Maps search for "abortion clinic in Washington, D.C." turns up 10 results in the Maps app, while Siri returns only two (apparently invalid) results.

If you're the type to leap to your keyboard and pound out a linkbaiting headline before warming up your logic circuits first, then sure, this might look like Apple once again being the "evil Big Brother" that the media's been trying to paint it as for years, this time passive-aggressively shoving a pro-life stance on people searching for women's health services.

If you instead insert a couple minutes of logical thought between your fingers and the keyboard, it looks more like Apple's tagging services for Siri are incomplete when it has to source its searches from sources other than Yelp -- which is exactly what you'd expect from a BETA service that's been in widespread public use for less than two months as of this writing.

At any rate, the central premise of this handwringing claim that Siri is "pro-life" is easy enough to debunk. Searches for "abortion clinic" or "birth control clinic" return few if any results in most areas, but I found results for "abortion clinic" in Denver, Milwaukee, New York City, and several other cities across the US.

A Siri search for "Planned Parenthood" almost always returns results no matter where you search in the States -- because that search is powered by Yelp rather than whatever comparatively limited database Siri is using for more specific searches like "abortion clinic" or "birth control." If Siri is really supposed to be "pro-life" and "imposing morals" on its users, then searches for the politically charged Planned Parenthood clinics would also turn up no results, wouldn't they?

Why searches for "abortion clinic" or "birth control" aren't also Yelp-powered is easy enough to discern; searching for "abortion clinic" in Washington, D.C. on yelp.com returns an array of ridiculous results such as "New York New York Salon" (the top result), McDonald's (not kidding), Ebenezers Coffeehouse, and Georgetown University Law Center. That's the downside of a crowdsourced search service.

"Why not just source results from Google Maps?" you might ask. That's easy enough to answer: it's probably because Siri is designed to lessen Apple's dependence on its biggest competitor for search services. Does that do users any sort of disservice, especially to the extent that Think Progress and Slate claim? Not particularly, since either the Google-powered Maps app or a Google search within Safari are at most one or two taps away.

Going by the hilariously flawed logic in Think Progress and Slate's reporting, I could just as easily say that Apple has a jingoistic pro-American bias because Siri's business and navigational searches only work in the U.S. "OH NOES, Siri can't find places in New Zealand, that must mean Apple hates Kiwis! Quickly Robin, to the Boycottmobile!"

About an hour or so after I finished writing the above diatribe against the massive overreaction to this non-event, Apple confirmed to the New York Times that Siri's responses to queries for abortion clinics were a glitch. "These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone," an Apple spokesperson confirmed to the Times. "It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks."

Critical thinking, ladies and gentlemen. It's not difficult.

Note: Due to the inevitable storm in a teacup that results anytime anyone mentions the A-word, comments on this post will be heavily moderated. We will not approve comments from either side of the endless debate.

Debunked: Ridiculous claims of 'pro-life' bias in Siri originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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