MacRumors

Over the weekend, a new Web-based jailbreak became available for iOS devices, offering users a simple method to open their devices to installation of unauthorized third-party applications.

At the time, we noted potential security implications of the method, which involves a security hole in how the mobile Safari browser included on all iOS devices handles embedded fonts. Exploiting the hole allows a remote site to gain control over a user's device. In the case of the new JailbreakMe site, the exploit is offering a convenient delivery method for a service, but others could use the same method for malicious purposes.

Reuters reports that it has received an official response from Apple on the issue, which notes only that it is investigating the security hole.

Company spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said the company was aware of the report.

"We're investigating," she said.

There is no word yet on a timetable for a fix. While many users are no doubt appreciative of the simple jailbreak method, Apple will certainly want to close the security hole as quickly as possible to both prevent malicious exploitation of it and to thwart the simple jailbreak process, a system modification frowned upon by the company.

Just one week after the last developer build was seeded to developers, Apple has pushed out iOS 4.1 Beta 3 for testing. Apple has also released an updated software development kit (SDK) to provide developers with tools for building for the new beta version.

The release is a bit of a surprise, as Apple has typically stuck to a biweekly release cycle for its iOS developer builds. Consequently, it is possible that Apple is beginning to wind down work on iOS 4.1 to prepare it for public release. Alternatively, there could simply be some new changes that Apple wanted to get into developers' without waiting an additional week.

No details on the changes included in the latest beta have yet been revealed. Among the most highly anticipated iOS changes is one addressing a bug with the iPhone 4's proximity sensor, an issue that Apple CEO Steve Jobs promised would be fixed in a future software updates. There have been conflicting reports, however, as to whether earlier beta versions of iOS 4.1 address the problem.

With much fanfare, Research in Motion (RIM) today announced the launch of its BlackBerry Torch 9800 smartphone, running the company's new BlackBerry 6 operating system. The launches are a key milestone in RIM's effort to reverse sagging interest in the pioneering smartphone platform in the face of continued strong growth in iOS and the surging Android platform.

The BlackBerry Torch 9800 offers a full 3.2" touchscreen, although it offers only 360x480 resolution, considerably lower than the iPhone 4 and other smartphones hitting the market at present. The Torch retains the traditional BlackBerry physical keyboard, however, tucking it away in a slim slider design. It also offers an optical trackpad for navigation, 5-megapixel camera, and 4 GB of onboard storage with an additional 4 GB media card and support for cards up to 32 GB included. The Torch will launch exclusively on AT&T, Apple's exclusive partner for the iPhone, on August 12th and will be priced at $199 with a two-year contract.

Perhaps more significant than the Torch hardware is RIM's new "BlackBerry 6" operating system, offering a refreshed user interface that should still feel familiar to current BlackBerry users. One of the major additions in BlackBerry 6 is a new browser based on WebKit, the same engine behind the iPhone and Android browsers. The new BlackBerry browser offers tabs, auto-wrapping text zoom, and pinch-to-zoom features. It also drives the platform's email application.

BlackBerry 6 also offers a new "Social Messages" application that aims to integrate instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook and other social tools across services. Finally, the new operating system brings enhancements to multimedia performance with enhanced music and podcast services.

The new BlackBerry 6 operating system launches on the Torch 9800 handset, but will soon be available for the existing Bold 9700, Bold 9650, and Pearl 3G (9100/9105) handsets, as well as on future BlackBerry devices.

In an interesting blog post, Posterous co-founder and former Apple engineer Sachin Agarwal describes how Apple runs its engineering divisions "like a huge startup", with engineers frequently being moved from project to project based on whatever is the highest priority at the moment. As an example of the effect of Apple's lean staffing policies, Agarwal points to the company's stagnated Remote application for the iPhone, which has yet to see such enhancements as iPad compatibility or iPhone 4 retina display support.

Yes, the Remote app is due for an update. But here's why it hasn't been updated: the person who wrote it is busy working on other things. Yes, the person, not the team. (He's a good friend of mine)

Apple doesn't build large teams to work on every product they make. Instead, they hire very few, but very intelligent people who can work on different projects and move around as needed.

While the engineer responsible for Remote is not identified in Agarwal's post, it is believed to be Alan Cannistraro, who has been one of the primary lecturers in Stanford University's iPhone Application Development course [iTunes Store] that has seen significant success through Apple's iTunes U program. Cannistraro has introduced himself as the developer of Remote as part of that course.

Startups also thrive by keeping things lean. Great startups have small teams that can build quickly and pivot when needed. When working at a startup, you don't own just one part of the application: you have to be able to work on whatever needs your attention that day.

Apple's staffing strategy even goes as far as moving engineers between platforms, as had been suggested in reports earlier this year claiming that Apple had diverted resources from Mac OS X 10.7 development in order to push forward on iOS 4. While the lack of dedicated projects for engineering staff provides for efficiency and flexibility, as well as offering employees opportunities to develop breadth of expertise and fresh intellectual experiences, it can result in certain low-priority projects such as the Remote app becoming stranded as their developers are redirected to other areas.

CNET reports that Apple may be scaling back its initial plans for cloud-based iTunes offerings as it continues to struggle to reach agreements with record labels to allow users to stream their iTunes content from Apple's servers to a variety of Internet-connected devices. Apple has been thought to be placing a priority on developing the service since its acquisition of streaming music firm Lala Media last December.

But eight months after the acquisition, Apple is telling executives at the four top labels that if Apple offers any cloud-music features within the next few months, they will likely be "modest in scope" and not include the kind of functionality that Apple outlined in meetings with the labels, such as storing users' music on its servers, sources told CNET. They added that Apple still hasn't negotiated the kind of licensing deals it would need to distribute music from the cloud.

The report notes that while it is not clear exactly why Apple has been unable to make substantial progress on the cloud streaming initiative beyond ongoing struggles to bring music labels onboard, there does appear to be some uneasiness within the Lala Media team. One of Lala's founders who moved to Apple with the acquisition has reportedly left the company, while the Lala team has been said to be working on an undisclosed video feature rather than the music-related technology it was noted for prior to the acquisition.

Of course, a focus on video for the Lala team could mean that the company is concentrating its efforts more on cloud-based streaming of TV and movie content, an aspect of the initiative that had been hinted at earlier this year. The move would also align with Apple's rumored Apple TV revamp, which will reportedly see limited on-board storage in favor of a cloud-based streaming model.

Apple may also be waiting for its massive North Carolina data center to come online at the end of the year, as it seems likely to require the center's capabilities in order to deploy its cloud-based initiative.

Fortune reports on a new research report from Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore, which shows that if the iPad were to be categorized as a portable computer along with netbooks and notebooks, Apple would have held the third highest share of global portable computer sales for the second quarter of this year behind HP and Lenovo.

Apple's jump was driven by strong growth in its existing portables segment combined with a tremendous launch quarter for the iPad.

"When including the iPad as part of the NB [notebook] market," he writes, "Apple leapt over Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and Dell in terms of global unit share."

Viewed this way, Apple goes from being No. 7 in the worldwide portable computer market to No. 3, after only Hewlett Packard (HPQ) and Acer. And it's not stopping there, says Whitmore.

According to Whitmore's data from retail stores, the shift continued into July, with the iPad continuing to cannibalize netbook and low-cost notebook PCs. He believes that investors will increasingly include tablets in their calculations of portable markets as consumers turn to the devices for many of the tasks for which they previously relied upon notebooks and netbooks, thus validating his view of Apple's performance during the quarter.

Nielsen today released data on smartphone usage in the U.S., revealing that Google's Android platform has outpaced the iPhone among new smartphone customers for the first half of 2010. The news comes as a marked reversal from the second half of 2009, when the iPhone topped Android 34% to 6% market share among new smartphone customers.

While the iPhone has been the headline grabber over the last few years in the smartphone market, Google's Android OS has shown the most significant expansion in market share among current subscribers. Android's rise is even more noticeable among new smartphone subscribers in the last six months where Android has nosed past Apple's iOS in the last quarter to grab a 27% share of those recent smartphone subscribers.

Taking into account total U.S. user base, however, Apple still leads Android, 28% to 13%. Both trail Research in Motion, which holds a 35% overall market share and 33% share of those customers new to smartphones in the first half of the year.

Earlier this year, NPD released somewhat similar data for the first quarter of 2010, claiming that Android handsets had outsold the iPhone in the U.S. Apple CEO Steve Jobs took exception to that and similar claims from others, pointing to Nielsen data at WWDC in early June showing Apple still holding a firm advantage over Android. The data shown by Jobs, however, was Nielsen's overall market share calculation for existing users, while NPD had been referring specifically referring to new sales of new smartphones. With today's release, Jobs' favored source Nielsen now agrees that Android has surpassed the iPhone in new purchases, at least among those who have not owned a smartphone before.

It is also important to note that the first half of 2010 primarily represented the back side of the iPhone's product cycle, with the iPhone 4 only making its appearance in the last few days of the period. The diversified Android platform, in contrast, saw several high-profile device launches in early 2010.

Today's survey from Nielsen also reveals that Research in Motion's lead may not hold up for long, however, as more than half of current BlackBerry owners surveyed are planning to defect from the platform with their next smartphone purchase, with 29% planning to move to the iPhone while 21% plan to pick up an Android-based handset. In contrast, 89% of iPhone owners plan to stick with the iPhone, while 71% of Android owners plan to stay on that platform.

The Attorney General for the State of Connecticut has launched an investigation into the eBook market, targeting Apple and Amazon for deals they are striking with publishers to ensure favorable pricing. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal argues that the deals prevent other marketplaces from offering even lower prices, hampering competition.

Both Amazon and Apple have reached agreements with the largest e-book publishers that ensure both will receive the best prices for e-books over any competitors -- contract provisions known as "most favored nation" (MFN) clauses.

In letters to Amazon.Com and Apple, Blumenthal is calling on the companies to meet with his office to address these concerns. Publishers that have reached such agreements with Amazon and Apple include Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Penguin.

Blumenthal points to a survey of a number of New York Times best sellers yielding identical pricing at Amazon, Apple, Borders and Barnes & Noble, suggesting that the uniform pricing is evidence of anticompetitive behavior fostered by Apple's and Amazon's pricing agreements with publishers.

The full text of Blumenthal's letter to Apple (PDF) is available on the Attorney General's site.

There is renewed concern today over iOS security after a website-based jailbreaking tool was released for iOS 4 for iPhone and iPod touch and iOS 3.2 for iPad.

While the jailbreak appears to be a relatively benevolent attack against a security hole in iOS, concern remains that there is a yet-unpatched and largely unidentified security vulnerability in iOS that hackers could use in a similar way to remotely plant malware on an unsuspecting victim's device.

Multiple reports suggest that the jailbreak method attacks a flaw in the iOS PDF viewer in order to gain access to the device, however the principal developer of the project "comex" writes via his Twitter account that he is wondering "how long until someone figures out the actual bug I'm exploiting."

A similar jailbreak method was devised for iPhone OS 1.1.1, where developers even fixed the targeted bug after the jailbreak was complete.

Update: More technical details have emerged regarding the security hole that is being exploited in order for the jailbreak to be performed. The remote website presents a PDF that has a specifically crafted font embedded, and it is the processing of the embedded font that has the security issue. Interestingly, Apple had fixed a very similar issue in MacOS with Security Update 2010-003.

Hot on the heels of this weekend's release of the JailbreakMe Web-based jailbreak tool for iOS devices, users with jailbroken iPhone 4s can now think about installing My3G from Intelliborn, which was just updated to enable FaceTime video calling over 3G connections.

My3G essentially tricks a user's phone into thinking it is on Wi-Fi instead of 3G, allowing users to access a number of features and types of content typically restricted to Wi-Fi connections. My3G is typically available to jailbroken iPhones via Rock Your iPhone for $3.99, but the site is currently down due to the high traffic load.

9 to 5 Mac has posted a video briefly showing off FaceTime over 3G in action.

JailbreakMe, a new web-based jailbreak has been released, offering users of Apple's iOS devices, including iPhone 4 and iPad, a simple tool to open up their devices for installation of non-Apple-approved applications, customizations, and file access. Users need only visit the JailbreakMe.com site with their iOS devices and activate the "Slide to Jailbreak" switch to open up their devices.

Jailbreaking remains officially unapproved by Apple and the company warns that any device issues caused by the jailbreaking process could violate the warranty. The company also argues in a support document that jailbreaking can cause "instability, disruption of services, and compromised security." Consequently, users should proceed at their own risk, despite that fact that the jailbreaking process is easily reversible by restoring through iTunes.

Just last week, the U.S. Library of Congress issued a specific exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to allow smartphone users to jailbreak their devices without running afoul of the legislation.

Microsoft today announced launch details for Office for Mac 2011, revealing that the latest version of the company's flagship productivity suite will be released in over 100 countries in late October.

The suite will come in two editions to purchase at retail -- Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 and Office for Mac Home and Business 2011. For better alignment across platforms, the Office 2011 pricing and edition options map closer with Office for the Windows operating system. In addition, starting today, if customers purchase Office 2008 for Mac, they will be able to upgrade to Office 2011 when it is available at no additional cost through the Microsoft Office for Mac Technology Guarantee Program.

Editions and pricing include:

- Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011: Includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Messenger and is priced at $119 for a single install or $149 for a Family Pack allowing up to three installs in a single household.

- Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business 2011: Includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and Messenger and is priced at $199 for a single install or $279 for a Multi-Pack that allows a user to install Office on two of their Macs.

- Microsoft Office for Mac Academic 2011: Includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and Messenger and is available for higher education students, staff, and faculty, with a single install priced at $99. This academic version may only be purchased from authorized academic stores or direct from Microsoft.

Microsoft has also released details on its Technology Guarantee program that allows customers to purchase Office for Mac 2008 today and receive a corresponding edition of Office for Mac 2011 for free when it is released.

Apple has revamped the antenna performance page on its website, removing references to and videos of the performance of competitors' smartphones in comparison to the iPhone 4. Apple launched the page after its iPhone 4 press conference to demonstrate how a number of other handsets, including ones from Research in Motion, HTC, and Samsung, as well as the iPhone 3GS, see signal attenuation when gripped tightly in the hand.

Apple's continued interest in drawing its competitors into the antenna performance discussion was furthered by several updates to the site to add the Nokia N97 mini and the Motorola Droid X. Just a week after the most recent update, however, all of the comparisons have been removed, leaving only general claims that the attenuation issue affects most models of smartphones.

The opposite of amplification, attenuation happens whenever a signal is obstructed. All antennas - including television, radio, GPS and mobile antennas - can experience attenuation. And with most antennas, the density and composition of the human hand can cause attenuation to a greater degree than some other materials. On a mobile phone, signal loss typically occurs when your hand attenuates the most sensitive part of the antenna. Which, on iPhone 4, is the black strip of the lower left corner of the antenna band.

The reason for the removal is unknown, with speculation running from Apple receiving complaints from other handset makers to the company simply wishing to reduce the amount of attention drawn to the issue now that its free case program is underway and Apple bumpers are making their way into the hands of consumers. Interestingly, the videos remain available on the company's YouTube site and on many, but not all, international versions of its antenna performance page.

CNBC reports that News Corp, the Rupert Murdoch-led media conglomerate behind such outlets as The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and The New York Post, is considering launching a new news unit dedicated to content for tablet devices such as the iPad.

Sources close to the company tell me that the company is considering creating a new purely digital news play that would be designed for the app world and would be available through subscription on devices like the iPad.

This new digital news venture would incorporate text, photo and video, tailored for the iTunes app format .... neither a newspaper nor a news website -- it would not be based on any of News Corp's existing papers.

According to the report, News Corp could announce the new initiative within a month should it decided to officially move forward with it.

While News Corp has already established a precedent for subscription-based iPad content through its Web-administered offerings for The Wall Street Journal, other content providers seeking to deploy subscription-based content, such as Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated magazine, have been butting heads with Apple, possibly over either revenue sharing or subscriber information sharing.

Fortune is another one of Time Inc.'s brands that has not been able to reach a deal with Apple for subscription pricing, as the magazine's iPad application rolled out today using a model similar to that employed by other content providers. The free download comes with a demo issue, but future issues will have to be purchased individually through the application at $4.99 per issue.

Apple has officially announced the grand opening of its new retail store in the Covent Garden district of London, with the store set to open to the public on Saturday, August 7th at 10:00 AM. The store appears to be Apple's largest by total square footage, and will inhabit a restored historic building in the district's popular shopping area.

The London Evening Standard reports that the store will encompass a total of four floors, although a considerable portion of the space is reported to be set aside for meeting rooms and offices for Apple corporate staff.

Plans for the store obtained by the Evening Standard show it will cover four floors, although only two are likely to be accesible to the public. It features a glass roof over a courtyard originally built so horses could make deliveries easily to the building, which dates from 1877. Customers will enter through an eight-bay arcade marked by 20-foot stone arches and lit with restored gas lamps.

The firm has been painstakingly restoring the building for months, even removing a set of brick arches piece-by-piece, photographing and numbering them before rebuilding them onto a floor lowered by just four inches.

Located only about a mile from Apple's existing Regent Street flagship store that has been named the most profitable retail store in London on a per-square-foot basis, the new Covent Garden location is expected to ease some of the heavy traffic and long waits experienced by customers at the Regent Street store.