Jordan Golson

After hearing from Apple, Google, and others last month, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) today introduced The Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011, a new bill that would require companies to take better care of user location information on mobile devices: The Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011 is a narrowly-tailored bill that would close current loopholes in federal law to require any company...

Apple has been touting full-screen apps as a major feature in OS X Lion. By all accounts, it works very well to remove distractions and help users focus on the task at hand. For multiple-monitor users, however, full-screen apps don't live up to the hype. When full-screen mode is turned on, Lion dims supplementary monitors (putting up the "linen" background) leaving extra screens as little...

Apple's latest edition of the iMac is finally shipping with the build-to-order 3.4GHz Intel Core i7 and 256GB Solid State Drive option installed. As with any new Apple product, benchmarks and speedtests are beginning to trickle out, and the conclusion from Macworld is that this is the fastest Mac they've ever tested. Last month, Macworld benchmarked the highest standard configuration 27" iMac...

More evidence has emerged to suggest that a future version of the iPad will sport a "Retina" display with a resolution of 2048x1536, or double the horizontal and vertical pixels of the current iPad. Back in January, a number of images were discovered within iPad apps showing icons twice the size needed for the 1024x768 screen on the iPad. This suggested a similar pixel-doubling strategy to...

Domino's Pizza's new iOS app lets users order and pay for piping hot pies right from their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The app allows Domino's customers to order from (almost) any of the 5,000 Domino's in the U.S., allowing extensive pizza customization, and even allows users to input their credit or debit card information right in the app. Finally, while you anxiously await your custom...

Apple's patent licensing deal with Nokia may have some additional consequences beyond the immediate effects of the settlement. By agreeing to a long-term licensing agreement with Nokia, Apple gets a lengthly, defensive legal fight out of the way. This allows Apple to focus all its legal energies on major battles with Samsung, HTC and Motorola. Speaking with the NYTimes, Apple indicates that...

Could Apple shove a high-resolution 3D display in the iPad? Maybe! And that's just what Netbook News claims to discovered at the Display Taiwan tradeshow. They've got pictures and video of what is claimed to be an iPad 1 with a different, 3D, "very high resolution display". We're pretty skeptical, but wanted to give you a chance to decide for...

Deutsche Bank analyst Kai Korschelt today estimated that Nokia will be receiving on the order of a 420 million euro ($608 million) lump-sum payment from Apple as part of a patent litigation settlement between the two companies. The estimate, based on previous patent-related settlements in the industry, assumes a 1 percent royalty rate on all iPhones sold through the first quarter -- 110...

Recent versions of iPhoto and Aperture have ditched the open folder system for a more secure "Library" format and, in Lion, Photo Booth takes the plunge as well. The main reason for the switch from an open folder system to a closed, self-contained library is to keep more inexperienced users from breaking iPhoto by trying to "clean up" their computers. The old iPhoto library was a mass of...

Not all the updates in Lion are huge, world-altering features, but for those switching from Windows to Mac, this one might make life a little easier. Apple appears to be dropping "Airport" from its preferred vocabulary, instead adopting the more widespread "Wi-Fi". Left: Snow Leopard, Right: Lion Apple Stores have been running low on AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express, and Time Capsule...

A few of the hundreds of "new" features in iOS 5 were "appropriated" from other developers. One, the ability to trip the iPhone camera shutter by pressing the Volume Up button instead of pressing a soft-button on-screen, came from a hidden feature that iOS developer tap tap tap included in a version of Camera+, an iPhone camera replacement app. As an added bonus, if you press the Volume Up...

Fifty percent of iPhone owners who have iPhones swapped at the Genius Bar have never plugged them into a computer to backup or sync. That's according to a "little birdie" that former Macworld Associate Editor David Chartier (now at AgileBits) knows. It also suggests iCloud will save a lot of headaches and lost data. This is a big reason, according to this birdie, for why Apple Store Geniuses ...

As rumored earlier today, Apple is recalling some Verizon/CDMA models of the iPad 2 because of a manufacturing glitch that caused some of the devices to carry a duplicate identification number, causing issues with 3G service. Apple told the Wall Street Journal that the number of iPads affected was "extremely small". We have gotten several reports of iPads being suddenly "returned to shipper" ...

During the Q&A session following Steve Jobs' pitch for a stunning new Apple campus to the Cupertino City Council, Councilwoman Kris Wang asked Jobs if the city of Cupertino would get "free Wi-Fi or something like that" in exchange for green-lighting the building project. Jobs felt that free municipal Wi-Fi was something the city was better equipped to provide and that Apple paid plenty in...

Buried in the hundreds of new features in iOS 5 is support for AVRCP 1.3 (or maybe even 1.4!), a Bluetooth standard that gives iPhones the ability to send artist, album and track name information to Bluetooth audio devices such as those in the stereos of some newer cars. iOS has been stuck at AVRCP 1.0 for nearly a year, and though the iPhone allowed control of the some music playback...

Music licensing agreements will keep iTunes In The Cloud and iTunes Match out of the hands of UK iTunes users until "at least" the first quarter of next year according to a spokesman for the Performing Right Society, a UK-based organization that represents composers, songwriters and music publishers in that country. Quoted in The Telegraph, that spokesman said negotiations with Apple were in a ...

Apple has quietly changed its guidelines on the pricing of In-App Subscriptions on the App Store. There are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the "same price or less than it is offered outside the app". There are no longer any guidelines about price at all. Apple also removed the requirement that external subscriptions must be also offered as an in-app purchase. UPDATE 12:15...

Apple's Mac App Store-only strategy for the release of OS X Lion has brought consternation to some, particularly those in rural areas without reliable high-speed Internet and folks in enterprise and educational IT departments. However, for a large group of Mac users -- those outside the US and Canada -- the Mac App Store is a boon for the wallet. Apple made significant price cuts to Lion...

Quite a few of the 200 new features in iOS 5 are focused on accessibility, to "make it easier for people with mobility, hearing, vision, and cognitive disabilities to get the most from their iOS devices." Apple has long been a front-runner with making their devices easy-to-use for their more challenged users. Buried in the Accessibility settings of iOS 5 is a custom vibration creator....

While it seems most iOS 5 features will work just fine on the iPhone 3GS, the proof is in the pudding. Here's a video from AppleRumors.it (translated), an aptly named Italian Apple blog. They do a side-by-side comparison between the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4 and it gives a good sense of the speed differences between the two. It seems 3GS owners (including myself) have nothing to fear...