TechCrunch reports that Apple has begun rejecting iOS apps for the use of a unique device identifier known as the UDID. The site notes that several developers have reported rejections for the use of the UDID in the past week, and Apple is said to be ramping up the enforcement of this policy over the next few weeks.
As the name suggests, the UDID is a unique identifier for every iOS device. It's tied specifically to the hardware and can't be changed by the user. Apple had previously warned developers with the introduction of iOS 5 that the use of the UDID was deprecated and would be phased out. The sudden rejections, however, have caught some developers off guard:
“Everyone’s scrambling to get something into place,” said Victor Rubba, chief executive of Fluik, a Canadian developer that makes games like Office Jerk and Plumber Crack. “We’re trying to be proactive and we’ve already moved to an alternative scheme.” Rubba said he isn’t sending any updates until he sees how the situation shakes out in the next few days.
The reason for the phasing out of UDIDs from developer use is due to increased pressure on Apple due to the privacy implications. Apple and several App developers have been sued over the use of the UDID to track users across different apps. While the UDID doesn't specifically identify a user, the sharing of UDIDs across ad networks and apps can help piece together a valuable picture of activity and interests of the user of a specific device. Apple seems to be requiring apps to generate their own unique identifiers for each installation to avoid this ability to share such information across apps.
Macgasm notes an interesting tweet by former Apple TV engineer Michael Margolis who claims that the new Apple TV interface designs were "tossed out 5 years ago because [Steve Jobs] didn't like them."
Alongside the 3rd Generation iPad, Apple also introduced a new version of the Apple TV that supports 1080P video. With it came an updated interface for the set-top box, (shown above) with icon-based category buttons and large billboard-style artwork for content. The interface was also rolled out to previous 2nd Generation Apple TV owners in a software update.
Margolis goes on to say that "now there is nobody to say 'no' to bad design", referring to Steve Jobs' passing. Some MacRumors readers have complained about the new design, and others felt it was a paving the way for Apple TV apps in the future.
Five years ago (2007), when the design was reportedly "tossed out", Apple's product landscape was quite different. Both the Apple TV and iPhone were first introduced in January of that year, and the App Store would not be launched for another year in mid-2008.
Update: Margolis clarifies what he meant to TheNextWeb:
The new UI shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. There is a clear effort at Apple to make everything match the look and feel of their popular iOS products – starting with Lion and increasing momentum with Mountain Lion.
To be clear – he didn’t like the original grid. This was before the iPhone was popular and before the iPad even existed.
Given that the iPad is far more successful than the AppleTV, migrating the AppleTV to look more like the iPad was probably a very smart move – even if some of the users of the old UI don’t prefer the new one.
Update 2: TechCrunch posts a longer response from Margolis who seems to be downplaying his previous tweet:
Steve rejecting a design five years ago isn’t a huge deal. Steve was well known for rejecting ideas, tweaking them, and turning them into something even better. And that’s a very good thing. One of my favorite parts of working at Apple was knowing that SJ said “no” to most everything initially, even if he later came to like it, advocate for it, and eventually proudly present it on stage. This helped the company stay focused and drove people to constantly improve, iterate, and turn the proverbial knob to 11 on everything.
iOS developer David Smith has been posting iOS version stats for his Universal app Audiobooks [Direct Link]. Smith gets about 100,000 weekly downloads to both his paid and free versions and believes it is a statistically meaningful data set.
With the launch of iOS 5.1 on March 7th, 2012, Smith has been tracking the adoption rate which he suspected would be faster than in the past due to the availability of over the air (OTA) iOS updates. Indeed, after only 5 days after its initial release, Smith found that 50% of his OTA-eligible customers were already at iOS 5.1. Now, after 15 days, he's found that 77% of OTA-eligible iOS customers have upgraded to the latest version.
When he backs out to include all versions of iOS, including versions such as iOS 3 and iOS 4 which don't offer OTA updates, he finds total adoption at 61% in 15 days.
This seems to represent a significant boost in adoption for OTA-eligible upgraders.
While we don't have directly comparable numbers, it took iOS 4.0 one month to hit 50% usage by web traffic. Unfortunately, the numbers aren't entirely interchangeable, as there they are from different data sets (app usage vs web usage), but gives you an idea of the scale. If anything, factors should have contributed to a faster uptake for iOS 4 than would have been expected as it was a major new feature release (vs 5.1) at the time and was included in the successful iPhone 4 launch.
As Smith points out, this is the same level of adoption Android currently sees for Gingerbread (v2.3) which was launched much earlier (mid/late 2011). Meanwhile, the latest version of Android (Ice Cream Sandwidth/v4.0) is only at ~1.6% adoption after about 5 months.
Apple introduced "over-the-air" iOS updates as of iOS 5.0 -- allowing users to upgrade without connecting their device to a computer. They've since deployed two different upgrades (5.01 and 5.1) to users.
A tipster sends us this tale of a trip to the Fifth Avenue Apple Store last night.
Went to the Fifth Ave store near midnight today, and saw that Apple was setting up a separate line just to handle the volume of iPad returns from Chinese resellers. The manager kept the separate line to ensure that regular customer's experience wasn't affected. Some people were returning up to 30.
A number of organizations have written about the reseller phenomenon, including the New York Times:
They show up in the early-morning hours: Chinese men and women, waiting silently and somewhat nervously outside of Apple stores in New York. On some days the lines they form can be a block long.
These are not typical Apple fans. Instead they are participants in a complex and curious trade driven by China’s demand for Apple’s fashionable gadgets — products that are made in China in the first place and exported, only to make the long trip back.
The resellers try to buy as many iPads as they can to resell them at a high margin, bit it seems that Apple has had success in fulfilling demand this time -- even selling more than enough iPads to the resellers. Apple Stores have a 14-day return policy, and it applies to all iPad purchasers.
In his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson shared a story of Jobs' meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama. Along with sharing his displeasure at the difficulty in building a factory in the United States, he also disassembled America's education system.
It was absurd, he added that American classrooms were still based on teachers standing at a board and using textbooks. All books, learning materials, and assessments should be digital and interactive, tailored to each student and providing feedback in real time.
Jobs wanted to hire great textbook writers to create digital versions, and make them a feature of the iPad. He wanted to make textbooks free and bundled with the iPad, and believed such a system would give states the opportunity to save money.
A panel of four Dutch educators and politicians is proposing to fulfill Steve Jobs' vision and create a school where students are taught with iPads. The proposal will be presented on Monday [Google Translate] in Amsterdam. The plan, called Education for a New Era, is designed to help students learn "21st century skills" and push the limits of what can be done in a classroom.
It is just a proposal for the time being, but the promoters wish to test existing educational apps and encourage more to be developed. The so-called "Steve Jobs schools" would open their doors in August 2013.
Earlier this year, Apple rolled out a digital textbook initiative. The company partnered with McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt -- the three companies together control 90% of the textbook market in the U.S. -- and is focusing on high school textbooks initially. Apple presumably wants to expand the project to include all grade levels, and eventually fulfill Jobs' vision of a digital classroom.
iMore weighs in with information it has heard about the new iPhone that is due later this year.
According to their sources, the new iPhone will be 4G LTE compatible, as expected. It will also be arriving in the fall, though the exact date will be determined close to the time. Finally, their source also claims that contrary to 4-inch rumors, the new iPhone will retain the same 3.5-inch screen, or very close to it.
So to sum up, iPhone 5,1 is on track for:
- Similar if not same sized screen (currently 3.5-inch but not set in stone) - 4G LTE radio - New “micro dock” connector - Fall/October 2012 release
iMore had previously reported that they believe the new iPhone will carry a miniaturized dock connector to help reduce the overall size of the iPhone, itself.
iMore has recently been the source of some accurate information. Most recently, they pinpointed the announcement date for the iPad 3 and LTE support.
ArsTechnica reports on the discovery of Retina-sized artwork in OS X Mountain Lion's.
A source with access to the latest Mountain Lion preview alerted Ars that double-sized graphics have popped up in some unexpected places, once again suggesting that Apple may be close to releasing MacBooks with high pixel-density screens.
We'd previously spotted these same Retina-sized graphics in the Lion beta of Apple's new Messages application.
As well, we've found in our testing that Apple's HiDPI mode in Lion is already fully functional and will use the Retina assets appropriately. These screens show the Lion Messages app running in HiDPI mode.
HiDPI mode on OS X 10.7. Left: Retina enabled, Right: Non-Retina
The left image shows that Lion with HiDPI mode enabled uses the full resolution Retina artwork from the Messages app to improve the pixel sharpness of the images. When the Retina assets are selectively removed from the app (right), you can see it fall back to the normal non-Retina images bundled.
Users will be able to test this themselves to full effect when Air Display is updated to support Mac HiDPI mode on the new iPad. Apple's Messages Beta for Lion is one of the few Mac applications that are already Retina-enabled to a large degree. Some elements, such as font rendering will automatically scale upwards as it does on the iPad.
With news of the dividend and record iPad sales, Apple's stock has been at all time highs in the past week.
Update: Bloomberg pinpoints the issue to a single trade for 100 shares executed by Bats Global Markets Inc.
A single trade for 100 shares executed on a Bats venue briefly sent Apple, the world’s most valuable company, down to $542.80, triggering a circuit breaker that paused the shares. The order was executed at 10:57 a.m. New York time. Two more transactions, which sent the stock back above $598, were made before the halt. The stock stayed around that level once trading resumed.
Reuters profiles Samsung Electronics and their design process in the setting of Apple's ongoing legal battle accusing Samsung of "slavishly copying" Apple's products.
Samsung Mobile's vice president for design Lee Minhyouk takes Apple's charges personally and denies the allegations:
"I've made thousands of sketches and hundreds of prototype products (for the Galaxy). Does that mean I was putting on a mock show for so long, pretending to be designing?"
"As a designer, there's an issue of dignity. (The Galaxy) is original from the beginning, and I'm the one who made it. It's a totally different product with a different design language and different technology infused."
Lee admits that he may not be at the level of Apple's VP for design Jonathan Ive, but believes Samsung "will produce such iconic products one day."
Samsung has proven to be the largest Android smartphone manufacturer and one of Apple's biggest competitors. Samsung is also one of Apple's biggest suppliers and the manufacturer of Apple's 3rd Generation iPad's Retina Display. Apple and Samsung are in an ongoing legal battle over design and patent claims.
AllThingsD reports on findings of a survey by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners which investigated where iPhone owners purchased their device.
The found that the breakdown of retail vs online sales was 76 percent retail vs 24 percent online. Of that 76% from retail stores, the breakdown showed that Best Buy was almost as big as Apple's own retail stores as a point of sale:
Carrier stores are clearly the dominant point of sale for most consumers, but Best Buy's presence has also proven to be a significant location for iPhone sales.
“Apple Stores and the Apple Web site are tremendously productive, but they are limited by their relatively small retail footprint,” CIRP’s Josh Lowitz told AllThingsD. “There are four times as many Best Buy stores, and probably 20 times as many AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint stores, so aggressive distribution through all these channels is critical to Apple’s U.S. strategy.”
The company has since announced that the new version will also be available for iPad and be available in the summer of 2012.
IGN has already had some hands on time with an early build.
The iPad port will include all the improvements and additions found in the PC version, including full integration of the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion pack. The title is also running on the refined Baldur's Gate II Infinity Engine, allowing gamers to experience the original adventure with the sequel's refined graphics options and other engine tweaks.
IGN reports that the new version of thegame will feature new content, more quests and a new party member. The early build of the iPad version runs smoothly though the interface has not yet been revamped to be more touch friendly. Those changes are still in the works, though pinch and zoom has already been implemented. The iPad version is expected to launch this summer.
Apple has updated their iTunes Movie Trailers App with support for the new iPad's Retina Display. The trailers app mirrors the content on Apple's own Movie Trailers site and offers a good showcase of the iPad's new screen.
Here's a screen capture from Pixar's upcoming movie Brave does show a lot of detail, though it's hard to say exactly which resolution Apple is streaming.
Screenshot from Brave trailer. Click for full size.
The app works on both Wi-Fi and LTE, though if you use LTE, you may find yourself using all of your LTE bandwidth allotment rather quickly. [Direct Link]
Last year, Apple was fined $1.2 million in Italy over how the company advertises its warranty to customers. Italy's antitrust regulators ruled that Apple has not been providing adequate disclosures about the two free years of product warranty assistance required under Italian law, while also pushing customers to purchase AppleCare extended warranties without disclosing that many of the benefits overlap the standard warranty.
As pointed out by @setteBIT, Apple has lost its appeal [Google Translate] in the case. There will be a followup hearing on May 9th. In the meantime, Apple will have to pay €900,000 fine previously assessed by the Italian antitrust authority.
Apple added disclosures to its Italian online store to address the court's concerns, after the initial ruling. It's unclear if those will be returning as part of the appeals court's decision.
This comes on the heels of a series of letters sent earlier this week to European Union regulators from consumers groups in 11 countries asking for action against Apple regarding its warranty practices.
As a reminder for our international readers, the new iPad will be on sale in 25 more countries starting tomorrow, Friday March 23. In fact, it's currently on sale in New Zealand, where it's already tomorrow.
Starting March 23 the new iPad will be available in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macau, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
The 3rd Generation iPad launched in 10 countries including the U.S. last Friday and is now expanding further internationally. The iPad is available for online order with 1-2 week delivery delays.
Wired profiles Linus Torvalds the creator of the popular open source operating system Linux. The article reveals that Apple's Steve Jobs tried to recruit Torvalds to Apple with a job offer.
Torvalds has never met Bill Gates, but around 2000, when he was still working at Transmeta, he met Steve Jobs. Jobs invited him to Apple’s Cupertino campus and tried to hire him. “Unix for the biggest user base: that was the pitch,” says Torvalds. The condition: He’d have to drop Linux development. “He wanted me to work at Apple doing non-Linux things,” he said. That was a non-starter for Torvalds. Besides, he hated Mac OS’s Mach kernel.
In 2000, Apple had had not yet shipped the first version of OS X 10.0 to the public. Apple had adapted the NeXTSTep operating system after acquiring NeXT in 1997. It wasn't until March, 2001 that the first version of OS X was launched.
Steve Jobs' job offer was at a time when Apple was heavily investing in Mac OS X which would later serve as the foundation for their iPhones and iPads.
A security firm has discovered a security issue in the iOS 5.1 version of MobileSafari, the most recent version of the operating system that runs on millions of Apple mobile devices. The behavior was discovered and detailed by David Vieira-Kurz of MajorSecurity.net.
The weakness is caused due to an error within the handling of URLs when using javascript's window.open() method. This can be exploited to potentially trick users into supplying sensitive information to a malicious web site, because information displayed in the address bar can be constructed in a certain way, which may lead users to believe that they're visiting another web site than the displayed web site.
To test it out, visit this demo page on an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad running iOS 5.1. Click the 'Demo' button and MobileSafari will open a new window displaying "www.apple.com" in the address bar, though it's actually loading a page from MajorSecurity.net.
The security firm does note that Apple was informed of the vulnerability three weeks ago, and it is only being made public today. Apple acknowledged the bug and should be pushing a fix soon.
Representatives Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) and G.K. Butterfield (D-NC) have sent letters to thirty-four app developers with a number of questions about their information collection and use practices. This follows on a letter from the Congressmen sent to Apple requesting information on the company's data collection policies it imposes on App Store developers.
The letters were sent to a wide variety of developers, and were selected by the Representatives on the basis of "their inclusion in the “Social Networking” subcategory within the “iPhone Essentials” area of Apple’s App Store." They include Turntable.FM, Twitter, Tweetbot, Path, Instagram, Facebook, and Apple itself.
Last month, a developer of applications ("apps") for Apple's mobile devices discovered that the social networking app Path was accessing and collecting the contents of his iPhone address book without having asked for his consent. Following the reports about Path, developers and members of the press ran their own small-scale tests of the code for other popular apps for Apple's mobile devices to determine which were accessing address book information. Around this time, three other apps released new versions to include a prompt asking for users' consent before accessing the address book. In addition, concerns were subsequently raised about the manner in which apps can access photographs on Apple's mobile devices.
We are writing to you because we want to better understand the information collection and use policies and practices of apps for Apple's mobile devices with a social element. We request that you respond to the following questions:
(1) Through the end of February 2012, how many times was your iOS app downloaded from Apple's App Store?
(2) Did you have a privacy policy in place for your iOS app at the end of February 2012? If so, please tell us when your iOS app was first made available in Apple's App Store and when you first had a privacy policy in place. In addition, please describe how that policy is made available to your app users and please provide a copy of the most recent policy.
(3) Has your iOS app at any time transmitted information from or about a user's address book? If so, which fields? Also, please describe all measures taken to protect or secure that information during transmission and the periods of time during which those measures were in effect.
(4) Have you at any time stored information from or about a user's address book? If so, which field? Also, please describe all measures taken to protect or secure that information during storage and the periods of time during which those measures were in effect.
(5) At any time, has your iOS app transmitted or have you stored any other information from or about a user's device - including, but not limited to, the user's phone number, email account information, calendar, photo gallery, WiFi connection log, the Unique Device Identifier (UDID), a Media Access Control (MAC) address, or any other identifier unique to a specific device?
(6) To the extent you store any address book information or any of the information in question 5, please describe all purposes for which you store or use that information, the length of time for which you keep it, and your policies regarding sharing of that information.
(7) To the extent you transmit or store any address book information or any of the information in question 5, please describe all notices delivered to uscrs on the mobile device screen about your collection and use practices both prior to and after February 8, 2012.
(8) The iOS Developer Program License Agreement detailing the obligations and responsibilities of app developers reportedly states that a developer and its applications "may not collect user or device data without prior user consent, and then only to provide a service or function that is directly relevant to the use of the Application, or to serve advertising.";
(a) Please describe all data available from Apple mobile devices that you understand to be user data requiring prior consent from the user to be collected.
(b) Please describe all data available from Apple mobile devices that you understand to be device data requiring prior consent from the user to be collected.
(c) Please describe all services or functions for which user or device data is directly relevant to the use of your application.
(9) Please list all industry self-regulatory organizations to which you belong.
The developers are given until April 12, 2012 to respond.
It appears that some iPad Smart Covers aren't working properly with the new iPad, including older Apple Smart Covers. The new iPad has a slight change in how its magnets work. Apple has reversed the polarity of one set of magnets related to the sleep/wake sensor that turns the iPad off when the Smart Cover is closed. As a result, older Smart Covers, that weren't designed with this change in mind, fail to turn the new iPad off when they're closed.
Mark Booth has more details as to why Apple choose to make the change:
I've learned why Apple decided to use a polarity sensitive switch in the new iPad 3. Some iPad 2 customers were having issues with their iPads entering sleep mode when they flipped Apple's Smart Cover around flat behind their iPad 2. Since the iPad 2's sleep/wake sensor wasn't polarity specific, it could sometimes be triggered from the magnet being positioned at the rear of the iPad. By changing to a sensor that requires the correct polarity, the problem is eliminated.
Booth also notes that Apple is replacing older Apple Smart Covers at Apple Stores for customers who ask. New iPad owners having difficulties with third-party smart cover-compatible cases should contact their case-makers for possible resolutions.
Biggest design overhaul since iOS 7 with Liquid Glass, plus new Apple Intelligence features and improvements to Messages, Phone, Safari, Shortcuts, and more. Developer beta available now ahead of public beta in July.
Biggest design overhaul since iOS 7 with Liquid Glass, plus new Apple Intelligence features and improvements to Messages, Phone, Safari, Shortcuts, and more. Developer beta available now ahead of public beta in July.
TechCrunch reports that Apple has begun rejecting iOS apps for the use of a unique device identifier known as the UDID. The site notes that several developers have reported rejections for the use of the UDID in the past week, and Apple is said to be ramping up the enforcement of this policy over the next few weeks.
Last year, Apple was 
