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Apple Responds To Location Log Scrutiny With Extensive Q&A Response

Apple has today responded to the intense media scrutiny over the iPhone and 3G iPad location log that researchers claimed logged extensive data, by posting a lengthy Q&A response. Jump the break for the full Q&A.

In its response Apple categorically states that “Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone” and differentiates that the location log exists as a database to of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location so that when requested, current location data can be given quickly without waiting on the GPS which can take “up to several minutes” to calculate. By leveraging on Wi-Fi hotspots the iPhone can triangulate its location “within seconds”, these calculations are done with a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell tower data that is “generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.”

A portion of the crowd-sourced data (relevant to your location) is downloaded to the iPhone, and is left unencrypted - this is what the researchers discovered. “The location data that researchers are seeing on the iPhone is not the past or present location of the iPhone, but rather the locations of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers surrounding the iPhone’s location, which can be more than one hundred miles away from the iPhone”.

However Apple notes there are several issues that they plan to address in a coming software update in the coming weeks. These include ceasing the practice of syncing that location cache to a computer, reduce the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data stored on the iPhone and delete the cache when Location services is turned off. The cache will also be encrypted on the iPhone in the software update.

Apple also addresses related privacy concerns, noting that “Apple will continue to be one of the leaders in strengthening personal information security and privacy.”. In particular it states that it does build a crowd-sourced traffic database but this is anonymised, as is everything else sent to Apple and as such can not be used to identify individual users. Furthermore third parties gain access to crash logs (which are anonymised) and the iAds system can use location to target specific ads, but this information is not sent to advertisers.

Jump the break for the full Q&A.

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Apple Confirms: White iPhone Tomorrow

With a press release that just went out, Apple confirmed that the white iPhone is launching tomorrow. After much speculation and several units already sold in Belgium and Italy, Apple finally announced that the white iPhone will be available on Thursday, April 28, in 28 countries. In the United States, it will be available both on AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Price is the same of the black iPhone 4: $199 for the 16 GB model and $299 for the 32 GB, with a two-year contract.

The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it’s beautiful,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right.

The white iPhone will be available tomorrow in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UK and the US.
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Radium Revisited: Review & Giveaway

If you listen to the B&B Podcast, Ben Brooks & Shawn Blanc arrived at a topic that would make for a good ice breaker over a cup of Caribou Coffee. If MacBooks weren’t yet on the table, the question of, “What are your five quintessential Mac Apps,” would quickly lead to a scurry of charging cables and open lids. If you asked me, I’d have a difficult time choosing three of the four (if the fifth includes OS X), but I’d have no problem in preceding that answer with Radium for the Mac.

You might ask me of what value Radium delivers that it can potentially keep FastScripts, TextMate, TextExpander, or some other key productivity app off of my MacBook. And the answer isn’t that these other apps aren’t as good, but rather that Radium sort of defines everything I grew up with in music. There are a lot of trends when it comes to curated online playlists, but nothing can top a good radio station playing all of my favorite singles. Package all the music I grew up into a delightful app that fills the room with great tunes, and Radium defines my sort of superhero theme songs. It’s the one app that will always start with my Mac and goes to sleep with it.

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White iPhones Already Being Sold In Belgium, Italy [Update: Unboxing]

The white iPhone 4 is expected to officially launch tomorrow, but that hasn’t stopped several international retailers from selling the units they received ahead of Apple’s announcement. The device, going on sale after a 10-month delay since the original June 2010 unveiling, has been delayed multiple times in the past due to alleged production issues with the white paint, which – according to many – caused problems with the camera lens, as well as light leaking from the front panel. The final version of the white iPhone, as reported last week, introduces a redesigned proximity sensor that has a different shape and doesn’t sport the grille of small holes seen in Steve Jobs’ on-stage demo last year.

While we’re still waiting for Apple’s official press release about the white iPhone, iSpazio [Google Translation] reports a unit has been already sold in one H3G store in Italy. On the other hand, MacRumors says a reader managed to obtain a white iPhone at a Mobistar retail shop in Antwerp, Belgium – where, apparently, all the available white iPhone units were on sale to customers a day ahead of the rumored launch.

You can check out more photos below. If you’ve got a white iPhone 4, send us pics. We’d love to hear about antenna and proximity sensor performances. Read more

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Evernote 2.1 for Mac Brings Faster Search and Audio Notes

Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin said Apple users are the most valuable to the service, and you might remember the release of the Mac App Store version months ago more than doubled Evernote’s new userbase. For these reasons, it appears that Evernote is now seriously committed to delivering full-featured updates for the OS X and iOS clients – Evernote 2.1 for Mac, available today, brings several new functionalities and improvements to the popular “memory tool” including faster search, audio notes for free and premium users, as well as social sharing options for Twitter, Facebook, and email.

It’s no secret that Evernote for Mac used to become really slow with hundreds of rich notes in the database, constantly backed up to the app’s cloud for web, desktop and mobile access. The improved search functionality in version 2.1 makes sure looking through all your notes is a fast and reliable process – if you consider that several users keep thousands of notes into Evernote, you can understand how important it is for the company to implement a stable search algorithm that returns accurate results in seconds. For academics, students, and journalists who keep track of everything through Evernote, improved search is quite possibly the single biggest reason to update to 2.1. This update, however, doesn’t stop at search: the Evernote team also implemented a new sharing feature to send notes off to Twitter and Facebook, but you can share a note via email or copy the URL to the system’s clipboard, too. Our writer Graham Spencer – a huge Evernote fan – says he’s not sure how much the sharing aspect of Evernote will improve his workflow, but I’m pretty sure the option will be loved my millions of users anyway.

Last, Evernote 2.1 brings audio notes: whilst free users can record audio up to 25 MB per note, premium Evernote subscribers can create audio recordings up to 50 MB, which is roughly 4 hours of recoding time. The audio recording UI is nice, and all you have to do to activate it is hit the microphone button in the toolbar. You can create new audio notes or add new audio to existing files in your Evernote account.

Evernote 2.1 is propagating now through Software Update, or you can download it direct from the company’s website. The Mac App Store version (still reporting 2.0.5 as the latest update) will receive the 2.1 facelift “soon.”

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iPhone 6 To Use Next-Gen Thinner Displays from Sharp?

Japanese newspaper Nikkan is today reporting that Apple may have made a display component deal with Sharp for the display of the sixth-generation iPhone. It is based on reports that Sharp has begun preparation for the start of manufacturing in Spring next year at its Kameyama plant in Japan for an iPhone display using next-generation technologies.

Sharp will reportedly be producing “low temperature poly-silicon technology” displays, a next generation technology that will allow displays to be thinner and lighter whilst consuming less power than a current LCD display. The key component of these new displays is the polycrystalline silicon, which enables display drivers to be mounted directly onto the glass and thus have a thinner display. Other advantages of the technology include displaying a more vivid image and enhanced durability because of a reduced number of connecting pins.

Previous rumors had circulated that Apple had sided with Toshiba for future display manufacturing – but a Sharp representative disputed this at the time. In a similar vein, Tim Cook commented in January at the Q1 earnings call that Apple had entered a $3.9 billion component supply deal. He didn’t specify what component it was for, but it was speculated that it was for high-resolution displays and that the deal was between Toshiba, Sharp and a third manufacturer. Sharp was also at the center of another display rumor back in January in which they were supposedly preparing to manufacture glasses-free 3D displays for the iPod Touch.

[Nikkan [Google Translate] via AppleInsider]

 

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Cloud2go Is The First CloudApp iPhone Client With Streaming API [Giveaway]

If you use CloudApp as much as I do, you know that being able to upload files or links from an iPhone adds a whole new layer of sharing possibilities to an amazing service that was born with the Mac in mind, but it’s rapidly extending to other platforms and services with support for Windows machines, and direct integration into apps like Tweetbot. CloudApp makes sharing files (like screenshots, text documents, PSDs, and even audio files) and shortening links a real pleasure: not only the app is well integrated into the Mac’s ecosystem with great keyboard shortcuts and “raindrops” plugins, the developers also built a full-featured web application that allows you to set up your own custom domain, delete files, or check on stats.

How about the iPhone? Over the past year or so, I’ve been using Cloud2go by Matthias Plappert to quickly upload files from my iPhone and share them thanks to the app’s custom URL recognition. The fact that Cloud2go also packs full access to your CloudApp account and is neatly organized in sections based on your file types helped along the way as well. But the latest update to Cloud2go, released a few minutes ago in the App Store, makes things so much better: the new version introduces a Twitter-like swipe bar to delete / rename / make private / share files and links, as well as the possibility to watch files and stats update in real-time through CloudApp’s streaming API. This means that if you’re uploading a file from your Mac and you watch Cloud2go on your iPhone, you’ll see the file automatically pop up in the list as soon as the desktop upload is finished. Same applies to view counts: as people click on your links, you’ll see the counter go up in real time.

Cloud2go 1.1 also brings improved error handling, a faster sync algorithm and better navigation between uploaded items. Go download the app here, as it’s the best CloudApp client you can have on your iPhone right now. Read more

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Next Generation iPhone 4 Revealed to Have 3.7-inch Screen?

M.I.C. Gadget reports that they’ve gotten hands on with an iPhone they’re pretty sure isn’t an iPhone 4, but possibly an updated model that includes a 3.7” display, and the same proximity sensor as the white iPhone 4. The new display is nearly edge-to-edge, bumping up the screen size but not nearly large enough to be a 4” display as previously rumored. M.I.C. Gadget also speculates that it may have an A5 processor (a prototype model) that game developers are using to build games. Strings in iOS 4.3 revealed that the iPhone was slated to receive the updated processor, and recently a white iPhone was rumored being tested on T-Mobile’s network packing an A5 processor. A bigger screen has been seen floating around on leaked design documents in the past.

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Lion May Sell on Combination of Reinstall Drives and Optical Media

With the MacBook Air refresh, Apple introduced the concept of installing the OS via a packaged thumb drive, leading us to speculate that Apple would make the transition from DVD to a new digital format with the distribution of Lion. John Brownlee from Cult of Mac reporting on AppleBitch notes that Apple may hold on to optical media a little bit longer, possibly offering consumers the choice of both disc and digital formats when they purchase a new copy of Lion to update their Macs. It’s possible Apple will continue to sell optical discs in stores (while bundling all new Macs with a copy of Lion on a thumb drive) as they transition away from optical media, and Brownlee notes that the speculation comes as a result of the disc version of Lion having shown up in Amazon of Germany’s listings.

You could ship Lion exclusively on thumb drives, but the biggest problem I see is in ditching the disc completely is cost. While thumb drives are inexpensive to produce, I’m making the assumption that the costs for producing optical media are cheaper, and as long as the current MacBook and Mac line of Apple computers still have an optical reader, there’s no reason not to utilize it. However, MacBook Air owners wanting to upgrade will either have to purchase the SuperDrive or install Lion from another Mac remotely if Apple doesn’t provide the option of selling the thumb drives on their own. Who knows? Maybe they’ll sell both as a part of this crazy transitional phase.

[AppleBitch via Cult of Mac]
Image via: http://www.maciverse.com/

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