Tag: Apple

Why you shouldn’t rely on Apple-generated passwords .

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silver-apple-logo-apple-pictureAnew flaw has been discovered in apple product.If  you’re using your iPhone as your personal Wi-Fi hotspot in a public place, you may want to skip Apple’s offer of creating a makeshift password for you.

Sources report  that “researchers at the University of Erlangen in Germany have found a flaw in the automatically generated pre-shared keys that’s been used in Apple’s iOShotspots that could make them easy target to a hacker in under a minute.”
apple-logoThe big issue, the researchers say, is that iOS generates passwords are  too predictably for a computation of low random sequence of numbers. As a result, it leaves users vulnerable to hackers who have a list of words that iOS most often gives for temporary passwords.

Essentially, you’re much better off relying on your own complex password when tethering devices to your iPhone than the  Apple’s makeshift password system.

Being said that its best of effort to include a long length password string that consists of numeric and non-numeric characters.

i Phone 5 updates .

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Everything you need to know about iPhone 5.

Apple unveiled iPhone 5 – their hotly anticipated 6th generation iPhone at a special event on Wednesday, September 12.

iPhone 5 is 18% thinner and 20% lighter than iPhone 4S and comes packed with new features and improvements such as a taller 4-inch display, faster A6 chip, support for faster 4G LTE networks, improved battery life, FaceTime HD camera and more.

Check out our in-depth look at iPhone 5′s:

  • Features And Specs
  • Improved Camera
  • All-New Lightning Connector
Photos:
Here’s a compilation of some of the best photos of Apple’s new iPhone we’ve seen so far, which should give you a glimpse of what it will look like in every possible angle.
Hands-on Video And First Impressions:
Check out this post for the hands-on video and first impressions of iPhone 5.
iPhones Compared
If you’re an iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS user, check out this post to find out what’s new in iPhone 5.
Benchmarks:
The first iPhone 5 benchmarks have already hit Geekbench. Based on the benchmark results it seems to be screaming fast. Take a look at how it stacks up against Android-based smartphones like Galaxy S III that are powered by quad-core processors.
The Competition:
iPhone 5 vs. Samsung Galaxy S III vs. Motorola Droid RAZR HD vs. Nokia Lumia 920: Specs Shootout.
Reviews:
Take a look at the first reviews of iPhone 5 by some of the well known tech writers and critics.

Release Date:

iPhone 5 went on sale in US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the UK on Friday, September 21.

iPhone 5 will be available in 22 more countries on September 28, including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Pricing:

iPhone 5 will available for $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model, $399 for the 64GB model for a two-year contract.

Upgrade Eligibility:

If you’re in the U.S, check out this post to find out how to check your iPhone 5 upgrade eligibility. If you’re on AT&T’s family plan, you can save money by buying the iPhone 5 using any phone number that is eligible for an upgrade. Find out how to use an upgrade eligible number to activate your new iPhone 5 on a different mobile number.

Selling your old iPhone:

If you want to buy an iPhone 5, then check out this post to find out when is the best time to sell your iPhone and the best places to trade-in your old iPhone. Don’t forget to follow these simple steps to erase data from your iPhone to get it ready for resale.

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Apple’s Lightning USB

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Debuting alongside the iPhone 5 — just ahead of the fifth-generation iPod touch and seventh-generation iPod nano — Apple’s new Lightning to USB Cable ($19) replaces the classic 30-pin Dock Connector with a considerably smaller design.

While a recent analysis of Apple’s Lightning USB cable shows that the pins on the plug aren’t arranged symmetrically, suggesting that the Lightning port can dynamically reassign signals to each pin on the fly. “Dynamic assignment of the pins is the only way for the USB data to be routed” over the cable, according to boutique cable maker Double Helix Cables.

While the standard USB power is routed symmetrically, so that it always aligns with the same pin on the Lightning connector, the data pins are not.

“Take top pin 2 for example,” Double Helix’s Peter Bradstock told AppleInsider. “It is contiguous, electrically, with bottom pin 2. So, as the plug is inserted into the iPhone, if you have the cable in one way, pin 2 would go into the left side of the jack, flip it the other way and the same pair of pins is going to match up with the other side of the jack (as the electrical contacts in the iPhone’s jacks are along the bottom).”

Apart from that, the Lightning connector is very similar in size to a Micro-USB plug, and quite a bit smaller than the older Mini-USB connector

As Apple noted during the iPhone 5 introduction, the Lightning port was designed as a purely digital interface that could adapt to various output needs now and in the future. So the dynamic pin assignment design makes sense—it’s the only way Lightning could work with USB 2.0, HDMI, VGA, or even possibly USB 3.0—though it does seem somewhat overkill for the needs of USB 2.0. Perhaps the varied pin routing discovered by Double Helix lets the iPhone 5 recognize the type of cable plugged in.

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The user interface for windows 8

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Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

The interface formerly known as Metro (TIFKAM) makes the information applications present their UI, and developers need to realise that and stop polluting software with the kind of buttons and icons elements they’ve grown up with.

That’s the opinion voiced by Shane Morris of Automatic Studio, now a user interface consultant but once a Microsoft user interface evangelist, at Microsoft Australia’s TechEd conference today.
Morris’ talk was titled “How to be authentically digital”, a term used by Microsoft to describe its new ethic of letting pixels be pixels instead of imbuing UI elements with shading so they resemble real-world objects. Morris gleefully the term as “designer wank”. He also described the initial TIFKAM screen as the “Asian supermarket screen, because everything is yelling at you and you don’t know where to look.”

Which is not to say Morris dislikes TIFKAM, as he explained it uses proven design techniques and philosophies drawn from “Wayfinding” (signage in airports, train stations and other public places), typography (The Swiss School) and moving type (The opening titles to Hitchcock’s North by Northwest are apparently seminal so we’ve popped them in below).

Those influences mean TIFKAM doesn’t use the interactive vocabulary of the desktop GUI. Instead, Morris says, “We focus on content and the information people need to consume.”

Developers must therefore strive to “present the information well enough it can form the user interface.” Which is not to say that users are to be left without things to click on, but Microsoft has hidden them in TIFKAM’s Apps Bar and Charm bar, decoupling UI elements from apps.

“A consistent UI and place for people to look for search, share and settings means users don’t have to need to learn a new UI for each app,” Morris explained, adding that it’s not sensible to assume that users have discovered the Charm or Apps bars. Most users do so quickly, he said. Others take up to five minutes to do so.

Morris said Developers need to understand these new elements, and also assess whether they are right for their apps. Business apps, he said may not work in this context, with more familiar icon-driven UI elements still available for apps that just won’t fit into TIFKAM’s design paradigm.

That split, he said, is not new, arguing that Microsoft has been making content-centric interfaces since the days of Expedia CD-ROMs and has continue to do so with products like Media Centre and Zune.

Mainstream developers will therefore need to come to terms with content-centric interfaces and the elements they offer, one of which is animation. Moving images, he said, even offer the chance to tap into users’ primal instincts as we are attuned to interpreting fast-moving objects in peripheral vision as worthy of attention (if only to avoid being eaten by an approaching predator). Using animation to show users something is worthy of their attention is a new interface tactic he feels will be useful.

The bad news, Morris added, is that using animation “doesn’t come naturally to me”. He’s not sure it will come naturally to any developer, given that most are used to working in rather different ways.

But developers don’t need to get too hung up on their animation skills, he added, as good design for Windows 8 apps, or any other, starts with decisions about what an application is intended to achieve, rather than just how it will look and behave.

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