Author: Blancer

There’s been a fuss in the blogosphere in the last 24 hours about an Apple location tracking scandal after the O’Reilly Radar alleged that Apple is intentionally gathering your iOS location data.

However, it was not until 7:45 a.m. the morning after the scandal broke that O’Reilly clarified that there is no evidence to suggest this data is leaving your custody. Due to this glaring omission in the original story, many people around the web have misunderstood the gravity of the situation and are calling this iPhone location tracking discovery a privacy scandal.

Here’s why the location tracking scandal is likely overblown:

1. As noted above, it should be emphasized that your personal location file is being stored on your computer, and your computer alone. Apple is not collecting your personalized location data and storing it on their servers.
2. While Apple does collect some location data from iPhone users, this data is collected anonymously and in a way that “does not personally identify you,” according to Apple’s privacy policy.
3. Although your iPhone location data is stored on your computer by default, apps can only access this location data if you opt in to location tracking.

   Recall that location-based apps prompt you with a notification that asks you if you would like to harness your location — to which you may reply “OK” or “Don’t Allow.”

4. You can turn Location Services off entirely in Settings >> General >> Location Services.
5. Location data is not perfectly precise. After tracking my location history with the free iPhone Tracker app, it appears the iPhone may be merely tracking the nearby cell towers that are used to pinpoint your location.

My iPhone Location Data

Here is an overview of my locations in the last year, as stored on my computer. You can download the iPhone Tracker app to see a map of your own location history.

Yes, it can be shocking to see this map and you might naturally elicit a knee-jerk reaction for fear that Apple is building a Big Brother-esque database of individual iPhone users’ locations. However, there is simply no evidence that Apple is storing these personalized maps on their own servers, despite that it is building a database with some broader location data.

Wired notes that the reason Apple collects anonymized location data was explained in a letter last year by Apple’s general counsel Bruce Sewell: “Apple must be able to determine quickly and precisely where a device is located. To do this, Apple maintains a secure database containing information regarding known locations of cell towers and Wi-Fi access points.”

Nevertheless, it would not hurt for Apple to respond to these privacy concerns once again and better clarify its privacy position. What is just as worrisome as Apple storing your location data is a malicious person having access to your location file on your computer in the event that your computer is stolen.

Are you concerned about the Apple location tracking scandal? Feel free to share your opinion in the comments.

The Truth About the Apple Location Tracking Scandal is a post from Apple iPhone Review.

Before Game Center, OpenFeint and similar third-party platforms carried the weight of the iOS platform when it came to social networking in gaming. Even after Game Center debuted with its leaderboards and achievements, OpenFeint still saw plenty of use, including 1.4 million additional users over the Christmas holidays. With more than 5000 OpenFeint games reaching an audience of 75 million users, it’s unsurprising that Japanese social network GREE has just purchased OpenFeint for US$104 million.

GREE is already a well-established network in Japan, but rather than shutting OpenFeint down and incorporating it into its own brand, the Japanese network is going to pump operating capital into OpenFeint to grow the platform. According to OpenFeint CEO James Citron, “the entire OpenFeint team is staying on,” and GREE’s investment in the platform will lead to “faster SDK updates, awesome new products, and network improvements,” plus greater global distribution of OpenFeint’s services.

Social networking services like OpenFeint and Game Center are an important part of the draw of gaming on iOS, so it’s encouraging to see big investments being made in this area. Congratulations and good luck to the OpenFeint team.

GREE buys OpenFeint for $104 million originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I like iWeb. Apple’s website creation tool is easy to use, creates great looking sites, and has been installed on just about every new Mac since 2006. In fact, I’ve written about iWeb for Take Control Books, and I often recommend iWeb to Mac users who are seeking a powerful website tool but don’t want to face a tough learning curve.

However, I have a nagging feeling that we may have seen the last of iWeb. The app wasn’t updated as part of the iLife ’11 release, and Apple remains mum on the future of iWeb.

I’ll be the first to say that I hope I’m wrong, but there are three factors that probably point to the demise of iWeb.

1) Facebook: When iWeb first appeared as part of iLife ’06, Facebook as we know it had yet to become a phenomenon (the service as we know it officially opened on September 26, 2006). Part of the initial attraction of iWeb was the ability for Mac users to easily create web pages for sharing photos, videos, and personal experiences. You’d launch the application on your Mac, pull photos from your iPhoto library, type up a little story, and update your site, which was usually hosted on MobileMe. Apple later added Facebook integration to iWeb, so anything you published on your iWeb site also could update your Facebook page.

Continue reading Three reasons iWeb may be doomed

Three reasons iWeb may be doomed originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Canadian Broadcasting Company is reporting that the Ottawa Hospital, which already has about 500 Apple tablets being used by health-care providers, has recently ordered another 1,800 iPads to replace paper medical charts.

Doctors at the facility currently use iPads to examine X-rays, write prescriptions and take notes during patient visits. The devices carry patient medical histories, triage information, allergy data and allow doctors to order treatment while they’re still with the patient.

The hospital hopes to offset the cost of the additional iPads through replacements of old equipment, increased productivity and a reduction in errors. Ottawa Hospital CIO Dale Potter, who proposed the iPad plan to the hospital, noted that for handwritten doctor orders, “15 or 20 percent of those are missing information, or are illegible, and require human intervention.” It is expected that the devices, which will arrive by July, will reduce the amount of rework required on orders that have been entered incorrectly by hand.

Ottawa Hospital is working with Select Start Studios, a Canadian development firm that created the Ottawa Hospital EMR (electronic medical record) Client app. The app is designed with patient information security in mind, and no data is stored locally on the iPad in case the device is stolen or lost.

[via Macgasm]

1,800 iPads on the way to Ottawa Hospital originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pingdom has pointed out some interesting stats culled from browser data. It appears that there are now more iPads surfing the web than Linux-based machines.

The chart above features stats from Statcounter and are based on visitor statistics averaged from over 3 million websites. As you can see the top operating systems in the US for the first 19 days of April are Windows with 82 percent of the market, Mac OS X with 14.9 percent of the market, then iOS with 1.18 percent of the market, followed by Linux with 0.71 percent of the market.

What’s interesting about these stats is that the iOS market share only includes iPads according to Statcounter. iPhones, iPod touches, and other smartphones were left out. It was only just last year that all iOS-based devices claimed 1.13 percent of all browsing platforms compared to just 0.85% for Linux. Now just one iOS device has achieved the same thing.

iPads surfing the web outnumber Linux machines originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A patent discovered by Patently Apple suggests Apple may use a magnetic compass and supersonic tone technology to share data between your iPhone and other electronic devices. In this new peer-to-per communication system, a magnetic compass is used to monitor the magnetic signature of a compatible electronic device. Once these devices are close together, they could automatically recognize one another and share information seamlessly without user intervention.

In another scenario, a device with a speaker could output an encoded supersonic tone that changes the local magnetic field. This change in the magnetic field can be detected by the receiving device. The supersonic tone is not audible to human ears, but may drive your dog bonkers. Once the tone is detected by the compass on the portable device, the two devices will open a connection and share contact information, images, media and other files. Similar to a MAC address for a WiFi-enabled device, these signatures may be unique to each device. Once detected, the signatures could be stored and recognized for later use.

Apple submits patent application for magnetic and sound-based peer-to-peer technology originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has issued a minor update to its iBooks app for iPhone and iPad. Besides a host of stability and performance improvements, the 1.2.2 update addresses issues playing video included with enhanced books from the iBookstore, resolves a problem where some books open with a different font than expected and makes iBooks more responsive when navigating books with many items in their table of contents. Now about those other things …

Apple issues minor update to iBooks originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier today 9to5Mac reported on a prototype Mac Pro that might be in the offing, and now the blog also has word that iPhone 4s outfitted with Apple’s A5 chips have been seeded with developers at certain “high-level gaming outfits.”

As noted in the post, these prototypes are not necessarily indicative of what we’ll see in September, which is when the next-generation iPhone is expected to appear. Instead, these are devices that are designed to let the developers prepare their game titles for the iPhone 5. The source of the information called the device an iPhone 4S, although that name might be nothing more than internal nomenclature.

Other hardware improvements would be expected in any future iPhone, including a rumored 8-megapixel camera and the capability to be used as a true GSM/CDMA “world phone.” The A5 is currently used in the iPad 2, and is a dual-core high-performance system on a chip. The graphics capabilities of the A5 are outstanding, with a graphics processing unit touted as nine times as powerful as the one in the original iPad.

Apparently, Apple’s reasoning for seeding the developers with the high-powered hardware is that the company wishes to make speedy game performance a selling point for the next-generation device. What better way to do that than to take a few best-selling, graphics-intensive games and supercharge them prior to the launch of the iPhone 5?

[via MacStories]

Rumor: iPhone “4S” prototypes with A5 chips being tested by game developers originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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News.me, the latest iPad news reader, wants to outdo apps like Flipboard and Zite by being “smarter” about the content it delivers. The app is free, and you can use it for a week, but after that it is US$0.99 a week or $34.99 a year.

To use the app you need a Twitter account. When you log in, you’ll get a list of people you follow, and you’ll be able to see what they are reading. You also will get a list of famous twitterers like Arianna Huffington and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times. You can add or subtract from the list at any time.

Rather than a regular news app, like Pulse News, News.me depends almost completely on Twitter for sources. There is also a Big News button that gets you more traditional news, and in my tests today I was mostly seeing news from Reuters. People without an iPad can get a daily digest emailed to them. The layout of stories is well done and easy to read. All the on-screen buttons make sense, and there is a minimum of clutter.

It will take time to see if this app makes sense as a way to get news. I’ve been very happy with Zite, which is free, and allows you to mix Twitter based content with more traditional material. A big test for News.me will be when people use up their free week. Will they sign up, or let it lapse for the free apps that compete?

There are some big guns behind News.me, including the New York Times; the paper helped design the app in its Media Lab. Success will greatly depend on just how smart the app is at delivering relevant news to your iPad. I’d suggest our readers take the free trial and let us know what you think, and more important, if you plan to sign on for a subscription.

News.me for iPad launches today as a paid social magazine originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A report out of Reuters claims Apple is set to launch its online music storage service. The service would allow users to store their iTunes content in the cloud and access it from an internet-connected device. Apple has yet to secure the licenses for the new service and is in the process of negotiating with the music labels before the service’s big launch. No word on whether changes to MobileMe are included with this upcoming launch.

Apple will reportedly beat Google to the punch and launch its music storage and streaming service ahead of the search giant. Hints of Google’s foray into music streaming have appeared in the latest builds of Android, but the rollout of this service is reportedly delayed.

Amazon has beaten both Apple and Google with its Cloud Drive and Cloud Player service which lets Amazon users store their music library and other files in the cloud. Amazon’s Cloud player can play back these stored music files using a desktop web browser or an Android device. You can use a relatively easy workaround to access Cloud Player on your iOS device as we described here.

Apple’s cloud music service ready for launch originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If a rumor posted on 9 to 5 Mac has any validity, the Mac Pro may be the next member of the Apple family to receive an updated design.

The top-of-the-line Mac Pro has been somewhat neglected in the design department, as the current design debuted with the Power Mac G5 in June of 2003. Since then, the Mac Pro has received processor, RAM, and storage updates, but the exterior design is basically the same. 9 to 5 Mac is reporting that a Mac Pro prototype is now in testing that features a narrower (just about 5 inches wide) and shorter (about 19 inches) design that could fit into a standard server rack.

This makes sense in that a rack-mountable Mac Pro could easily replace the gaping hole in the product line left by the discontinued Xserve. If the rumored design could be placed vertically for “under desk” use or horizontally rack-mounted as a server, the power of the Mac Pro could be harnessed for high-end professional work as well as for organization-wide applications.

The rumor says that the new Mac Pro features stacked drives with two drives per sled for a higher storage density than is currently available. The sleds can be configured either with SSDs or conventional hard drives. It’s expected that the Mac Pro would be a 3U (5.25 inch) thick device in the rack-mounted configuration.

We think 9 to 5 Mac has another good point — a new Mac Pro with Thunderbolt, Blu-ray, and a new design would be a perfect complement to the new version of Final Cut Pro that’s arriving in June.

Next-generation Mac Pro rumored to feature rack mount, stackable drives originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has come in last place among a list of tech companies in the latest Greenpeace tech report How Dirty is Your Data? [PDF]. While Apple has made some pretty big strides over the last few years in trying to eliminate environmentally unfriendly chemicals from their products, Apple placed last in this list due to its heavy reliance on coal power at its data centers.

The report compares energy consumption and sources made by Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Akamai, Amazon and Yahoo. In it Greenpeace points out that Apple’s new North Carolina data center, which is set to open this year and will be supposedly be primarily used for cloud-based computing services, will triple Apple’s energy usage and use the same amount of energy as 80,000 US homes. Of that energy, 62% will be provided by coal (one of the dirtiest energy sources) while 32% of it will be provided by nuclear power.

This isn’t the first time Greenpeace has expressed concern over Apple’s energy footprint regarding cloud computing. In March of last year, Greenpeace also expressed concern about the North Carolina data center that runs on “dirty coal power.“

Apple has the “least green” data centers originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It must be stylus month on Kickstarter, with first the Cosmonaut and now the Flow appearing on the funding website. Like the Nomad Brush, the Flow by Joystickers is modeled after a paintbrush. The Flow has capacitive bristles rather than the traditional foam tip to more closely match the tactile experience of painting with real paint.

One of the things that’s always frustrated me when painting on the iPad is that the friction from both my finger and any of the styluses I’ve tried isn’t quite right. It can work very well for sketching but when I open up Artrage and start using a paint tool there always seems to be a bit of a tactile disconnect from what I’m doing. A paintbrush that works with the touch screen seems like the best possible solution short of pulling out real paint and using your iPad as a canvas — which we definitely do not recommend.

Continue reading Kickstart the Flow: a capacitive touch screen paintbrush

Kickstart the Flow: a capacitive touch screen paintbrush originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pretty impressive. The young upstart iPhone (just about 4 years old) has just dethroned Nokia in revenue. That’s the word from Strategy Analytics today, as the research firm looked at mobile phone revenues in January through March.

Nokia has been a consistent revenue leader around the world by generally selling less expensive feature phones. Nokia recently joined forces with Microsoft and is adopting Windows Phone 7 software for its smartphones.

Apple iPhone revenue rose to $11.9 billion in the last quarter, while Nokia slipped to $9.4 billion. Apple, AT&T and Verizon have also reported robust iPhone sales to Wall Street. Other analysts claimed Apple surpassed Nokia in the Winter 2010 quarter, but Nokia dismissed that report at the time.

[via Reuters]

iPhone said to be tops in worldwide revenue originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The newest winner in the “there’s an app for that” sweepstakes has to go to the DASH app and its supporting system. It’s putting the iPod touch at the heart of a system that allows surgeons to make it easier to do hip and knee replacement surgery. This medical system, developed by Smith & Nephew along with Brainlab, has allowed doctors at the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai to effectively perform three knee replacement surgeries.

The system comes in a rolling box with a precision camera and everything needed to take exact measurements and landmark registrations critical to such an operation. The iPod touch is slipped into a case and the software does the measuring and computing. Without this assistance, highly trained surgeons would have to “eyeball” measurements that the DASH does for them. This is said to reduce the learning curve and, at least in India, lessens the certification process for surgeons performing replacement procedures. Operating times are also reduced. This system is currently awaiting FDA approval in the US.

You can download the free DASH iOS app, which provides movies covering specific functions and operations of the DASH system, or watch the remarkable video on the next page that demonstrates the entire process.

[via onlygizmos.com]

Continue reading Mumbai surgeons perform knee surgery replacements using an iPod touch

Mumbai surgeons perform knee surgery replacements using an iPod touch originally appeared on TUAW on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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