Month: October 2013

How Loom Fixed the iOS 7 Forced Logout Bug ⇥ blog.loom.com

Mang-Git Ng of Loom:

When the Loom app is launched in background mode and the phone is not authenticated past the login screen, the keychain file for Loom was returning an empty string for both the login email and password. Thus the Loom app thought that the user had never previously authenticated and presents a login screen for the user upon return to the app, despite the user having previously authenticated and that all application-specific information was intact.

To solve our problem we set the access level of our keychain wrapper to “kSecAttrAccessibleAlways” for the key “kSecAttrAccessible”.

Interesting choice. Apple recommends against using kSecAttrAccessibleAlways because it’s inherently insecure.

But this attribute was (ostensibly) not updated with iOS 7. Apple’s recommendation, kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlockThisDeviceOnly, was updated with iOS 7. I’ve asked Loom if they considered using this attribute instead; if they were using it prior to the app’s update, there might be a bug in this attribute.

Why Malcolm Gladwell Matters, and Why That’s Unfortunate ⇥ blog.chabris.com

Christopher Chabris:

I had thought Gladwell was inadvertently misunderstanding the science he was writing about, and making sincere mistakes in the service of coming up with ever more “Gladwellian” insights to serve his audience. But according to his own account, he knows exactly what he is doing, and not only that, he thinks it is the right thing to do. Is there no sense of ethics that requires more fidelity to truth, especially when your audience is so vast—and, by your own admission, so benighted—as to need oversimplification and to be unmoved by little things like consistency and coherence? I think a higher ethic of communication should apply here, not a lower standard.

More on the Red Bull Traction Control Mystery ⇥ blog.axisofoversteer.com

Just a few additional notes regarding Red Bull’s apparent use of totally-not-traction-control traction control:

What you are hearing are cylinders being shut off, something Mr Whiting gave a pass to Renault last year as long as it’s no more than 4 at a time (Renault pleaded reliability). Red Bull’s software has been checked and re-checked by the FIA because other teams have raised the issue so, if they are “blowing”, they are doing it by “cheating” legally, so to speak.

If you’re only here for the Apple stuff, I urge you to read into this; it’s truly fascinating engineering. This rule-bending is going to go down in history with the Brabham BT46B “fan car”, Tyrell’s ballast car, and the “water cooled” brakes of 1982.

HP’s New Chromebook ⇥ theverge.com

Dan Seifert of the Verge:

At an event in New York City this morning, Google announced the new HP Chromebook 11. The Chromebook 11 is a low-cost Chrome OS laptop, with an 11-inch, 1366 x 768 pixel IPS display and Chromebook Pixel inspired design. The new laptop, which Google is selling for $279, is available to order from Google Play, Best Buy, Amazon, and direct from HP today.

I sort of get the idea behind the Chromebook: we are all pretty much living in our browsers these days, so a cheap, tossabout kind of notebook which only runs a browser, and therefore can have a tiny amount of internal storage and a low-power processor kind of makes sense.

But for most people, “pretty much” living in a browser means a small portion of that time is spent with desktop-class applications which can’t be replicated on the web. There is no web equivalent of iPhoto, for example, which is extremely popular and regularly-used. You can’t keep a photo or music library on the machine because of its limited storage.

For some people, though, this makes sense: if you had a desktop computer at home, you could chuck this in your bag to take notes in class on Google Docs. It’s a cheap, stripped-down computer which, oddly enough, has a feature I really want in my MacBook Air: an IPS display. It’s built for people who use a full complement of cloud-based services, and are okay with the limitation of being able to use nothing but.

Though, if the Chromebook is supposed to be a line of cheap computers, what was the point of the $1,300 Chromebook Pixel?

Nest Protect ⇥ nest.com

Nest already has a thermostat, so a smoke alarm seems like a next logical step; hence, Nest Protect. It’s a beautifully-designed product which manages to simplify something we all should have, but most of us find irritating. That isn’t surprising: smoke alarms are almost always sounding a false alarm, but we need them to let us know when there’s a legitimate emergency.

The ability to wave a hand underneath to clear the alarm is very smart, as is the early warning system which doesn’t start blaring an alarm immediately. It’s a typical Nest product: it uses the best technology available today to improve a long-forgotten product of yesterday, and it does so with style.

More than anything, though, I love that Nest has managed to make thermostats and smoke detectors kind of cool or, at least, interesting. They haven’t really changed much in the past twenty or thirty years. But the team at Nest is full of some of the best product designers in the world who seem able to update the electronics in the background.

Built Right In ⇥ minimalmac.com

Patrick Rhone recorded an entire audiobook without any additional software (including GarageBand):

Then, it dawned on me that I could use Quicktime. I opened up Quicktime Player and chose “New Audio Recording” from the File menu. I opened the PDF in [P]review, hit record, and started reading. Then, I hit stop when I was done, listened to the recording to make sure I was happy with it, and then saved it as an audio-only file. It couldn’t have been easier.

QuickTime is ridiculously powerful, especially when paired with the now-discontinued Perian. If you have QuickTime 7 Pro (which, by the way, Apple should bundle with OS X), it’s even better: you can isolate audio tracks, video tracks, various other content, and export with myriad of encoding options. It’s not really “built right in” in the sense that Rhone uses it, though. I’m amazed at how much he did solely with QuickTime X.

Rhone mentions Preview in passing here (it’s not the focus of what he was doing), but it’s one of the pieces of software that specifically establishes why I remain with OS X. The range of tools that it offers is astonishing.

Square Opening New Offices in New York and Waterloo ⇥ techcrunch.com

Jordan Crook and Sarah Perez of TechCrunch:

The growth has led Square to seek out new office space outside the Bay Area, in locations that are both strategic for Square’s growth as well as areas where engineering talent can be found. In New York, the company has signed a lease for an office in the SoHo area, and plans to triple its engineering presence there within one year. The Canadian office – Square’s first permanent office in the country – will open in 2014.

Square’s push into Canada has, so far, been uneventful. They launched the Register app here in January and began sending out card readers around that time (I have one). However, they were also supposed to launch the Wallet app this year as well, and it looks increasingly like they won’t.

The lack of enthusiasm for Square is apparent when you look at Market — the directory of businesses using Square for payments. It can find no nearby businesses for a downtown Calgary postal code; my own postal code returns about half a dozen results, none of which are actually near me (and I live in a fairly dense area with a lot of small businesses). Typical postal codes for dense areas of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal are similarly sparse on the Square Market.

It’s rather unsurprising for Canadians, though. We already have cashless billing in the form of our Interac system, which Square doesn’t support. That’s a non-starter in this country. Square is smart in the US, but there’s little impetus for local businesses to start using a point-of-sale system that doesn’t support one of the most common payment formats, and doesn’t appear to be in a rush to launch their Wallet app here.

This Year’s iMac Update Is a Lot Bigger Than I Thought ⇥ anandtech.com

Anand Lal Shimpi of Anandtech, on the display:

The 21.5-inch iMac is spot on, out of the box, without any calibration required. Brian’s response:

WOW
is that out of the box?

Thanks to Haswell, this year’s iMacs achieve an extraordinary balance between performance and quietness — Lal Shimpi recorded a 1,400 RPM fan speed while running benchmarks (for reference, I begin hearing the fans in my 2012 MacBook Air when they get up to around 4,000 RPM). Not only that, this year’s Intel graphics are insane, and they drive a display which is almost perfectly accurate out of the box. Looks like it’s a huge upgrade over last year’s model, in a lot of little ways.

Samsung’s Galaxy Gear Advertising ⇥ thenextweb.com

I’ve seen much being made of the similarity between Samsung’s Galaxy Gear advertising and Apple’s first iPhone ad. Both are supercuts of various film characters interacting with the historical precedent of the product. Normally, I’d agree. In this case, however, Apple’s ad is based on Christian Marclay’s film “Telephones”:

The film focused to comment on the relationship between sound and image by way of video; intrigued by the phone-movie mashup, Apple approached Marclay to use his work. Marclay, of course, refused Apple’s advances, but Apple took advantage anyway. Since asking the source had short-circuited, Apple instead took to using extremely similar footage, making the iPhone commercial nothing short of a complete color copy of Telephones.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Samsung’s “inspiration” for their ads was Apple: that’s par for the course for them. But it’s important to understand the full context of these series of ads and films before hopping on Twitter to cry “ripoff”.

iPhone 6B, for Big

Of all of the perennial requests for features in a new iPhone, a larger screen has long been at the top of the list. After five years of 3.5 inch displays, the iPhone 5 (finally) gained a taller, 4 inch screen, but it’s still significantly smaller than its competition from Motorola and Samsung. This being an “S” year, the iPhone wasn’t getting a new form factor; if the iPhone is, indeed, getting a larger display, it will happen in 2014.

So how big would that display be? Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has been testing phones with displays of between 4.8 and 6 inches diagonally. That’s a huge leap from the existing display size. I have no doubt that Apple is testing these internally, but I doubt a 6-inch iPhone is coming any time soon (or at all). It doesn’t make any sense right now, for reasons which will become clear in the next paragraph.

Earlier this year, Marco Arment speculated that a bigger iPhone would carry a 4.94-inch display. This is more realistic, because his justification was a reversal of the iPad Mini math: as the iPad Mini gained the pixel density of a non-retina iPhone, for a display of 7.9 inches, the iPhone would gain a 264 ppi retina iPad display, at 640 × 1136 pixels. It’s the production line, stupid. Sounds logical, right?

I’ve thought so, too, ever since Arment published that piece. However, I’ve recently been thinking about it more critically, and I now think that this is the less likely scenario. I believe that a future iPhone — possibly the 2014 flagship model — will carry a 4.5″ display at 326 pixels per inch, creating a display of 720 × 1280 pixels.

Before you fire up a new tweet to tell me about how fragmented this would make the iPhone ecosystem, read on: I think you might like my reasoning.

Increasing the physical size of the iPhone’s display without increasing its pixel count would basically just make a bigger iPhone with no real benefit. It would be a lower-density display, but it would also only support the same interfaces that designers are creating today; they would just be bigger. While it’s true that tap targets for buttons could shrink in pixel size while remaining the same physical size, that would only buy designers a few pixels in both directions, and developers would still have to take into account the size differences. Interfaces would remain similar, if not identical. So what’s the point in going to a physically larger screen, then?

On the other hand, an iPhone with a 720p display would provide significant benefits for designers to build new, interesting interfaces, which would directly impact users. A display which has 80 additional pixels horizontally and 144 vertically would open up a new world for iPhone interfaces, while the phone itself wouldn’t increase as much in physical size. Try printing this PDF for an actual-size comparison. I tried to keep everything in proportion for the two larger models, but it was eyeballed around the (measured) size of each display. The iPhone 5, however, should be entirely accurate, as its measurements are based on Apple’s schematic for accessory makers.

Are there complications? Yeah: 720 × 1280 is a perfect 9:16 ratio, while the 640 × 1136 display in the iPhone 5 is one pixel too wide (or 1.7 pixels too tall, but I like dealing with whole pixels). However will developers make apps work with displays of three different sizes? How will existing apps adjust before they’re updated?

For developers, the tech to compensate has existed since iOS 6. It’s called Auto Layout, and it works by drawing individual interface elements relative to those which surround them, according to various criteria. While it’s been in place for over a year, Apple has stepped up their recommendation of its usage in the iOS 7 documentation, because of iOS 7’s Dynamic Type feature. I believe that their rationale runs deeper, though.

Remember, too, that Apple now offers retina displays on each of their three major product lines: iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Designers have produced high-resolution artwork for all three platforms, and developers have rebuilt parts of their apps to accomodate. This year, they’ve brought a new UI paradigm to the table with iOS 7, and introduced 64-bit support on iPhones. Developers have readily adopted both. If there’s any single company that can convince developers and designers to rebuild existing applications for a new development target, Apple is it.

What about apps which haven’t been updated for a new display size? Well, I’m a bit stuck on this one. My guess is that they’d be scaled up to 720 × 1278, with one pixel of letterboxing on the top and bottom. This would be an embiggened and scaled version of the proportions of the iPhone 5 display.

What about that pesky supply chain issue? Simply, I don’t think it’s any more complicated to cut an iPhone 5 display to 4.5 inches than it is to cut a retina iPad display to 4.94 inches. The production line effects of either decision will likely be similar.

This is obviously just speculation. I have no idea if any of this is even remotely likely, and I have a grand total of no sources at Apple. But I doubt there’s a point in simply increasing the size of the iPhone’s display without increasing what can be shown in that space. I think the iPhone 5’s display change was a transitional one, used to get developers accustomed to Auto Layout and to consider what can be done with additional space. I think the next iPhone will be an even bigger leap.

I don’t think they’ll call it the 6B, though. That’s just stupid.

Terrible Reporting About iPhone Security ⇥ imore.com

Rene Ritchie of iMore hits the nail on the head:

Since most people aren’t high level threats, and since the iPhone is a consumer electronics device, Apple start off towards the convenience end of the spectrum.

In general, you are not very important. You are unlikely to be targeted in a CSI-esque plot to steal your fingerprint and unlock your phone so some nefarious guy can sext your best friend. Don’t panic.

Intellectual Ventures Is Running Out of Money ⇥ reuters.com

Dan Levine, Reuters:

Intellectual Ventures, a multi-billion-dollar firm that virtually invented a new market for patents and inventions,…

And legal extortion.

…has curtailed its patent buying in the past few months, according to sources familiar with its patent market activity, as it seeks to raise new funds. […]

It is not clear how close IV is to completing its new fund, or which type of investors might participate. Microsoft Corp, an early IV backer, has not invested in IV’s new fund “at this time,” spokeswoman Jennifer Crider said.

Google Inc, an early investor that in recent years has found itself opposed to IV in the patent policy debate, also said it will not participate.

Hopefully, more companies will be like Google and Microsoft, and deny funding to Intellectual Ventures. Dishonest extortionist behaviour shouldn’t be tolerated.

Behind the Scenes of the First iPhone Announcement ⇥ nytimes.com

Fred Vogelstein of the New York Times has a fascinating — albeit flawed — look behind the scenes of the first iPhone launch today, on the eve of the second anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death:

Grignon had been part of the iPhone rehearsal team at Apple and later at the presentation site in San Francisco’s Moscone Center. He had rarely seen Jobs make it all the way through his 90-minute show without a glitch. Jobs had been practicing for five days, yet even on the last day of rehearsals the iPhone was still randomly dropping calls, losing its Internet connection, freezing or simply shutting down.

Real Security Flaws vs. New Security Flaws ⇥ srlabs.de

A German research group has found a series of flaws in the way an iPhone handles an iCloud-triggered wipe. Be sure to watch the short video as to the chain of events, because it’s quite ingenious.

However, it bears pointing out that none of these flaws are new to the iPhone 5S. Though it’s under the title “Spoofing Fingerprints”, and they use a 5S to demonstrate the issues, this same series of events can occur if a passcode is known on any other device. If someone has physical access to a device and they have a lot of time, the likelihood of its data remaining completely secure is low.

The recommendations provided by the research group, however, are sound. An iOS device flagged for wiping should not be able to receive email.

Customer Data at Adobe Has Been Compromised ⇥ blogs.adobe.com

Adobe’s Brad Arkin:

Given the profile and widespread use of many of our products, Adobe has attracted increasing attention from cyber attackers. Very recently, Adobe’s security team discovered sophisticated attacks on our network, involving the illegal access of customer information as well as source code for numerous Adobe products. We believe these attacks may be related.

The names, passwords, and credit card information of up to 2.9 million accounts have been compromised, in addition to the source code of some of Adobe’s products.

Update: Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security discovered the breach. The stolen source code is from ColdFusion and Acrobat. Maybe the hackers just want to give Acrobat a less sadomasochistic experience.

“Instagram as a Growing Business” Is an Odd Euphemism for Adding Ads ⇥ blog.instagram.com

Instagram:

We have big ideas for the future, and part of making them happen is building Instagram into a sustainable business. In the next couple months, you may begin seeing an occasional ad in your Instagram feed if you’re in the United States. Seeing photos and videos from brands you don’t follow will be new, so we’ll start slow. We’ll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community. 

You knew this was coming sooner or later.