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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MobileRSS for iPad Comes with New UI, Feed Management, Article Downloads

Deeply criticized by the iOS community in the past months for being too similar to Silvio Rizzi’s Reeder, MobileRSS by NibiruTech recently went under a major update and facelift. When I was told a few weeks ago to give a try to the app again, I was a little skeptical: how could there be an improvement when the previous version was so clearly inspired (to an extent, one could have called it a “rip-off”) by another app? Fortunately, my skepticism – while reasonable – couldn’t do anything about the fact that the new MobileRSS HD for iPad is a well-crafted application. Sure, it still hints at Reeder and Twitter for iPad in some interface schemes and navigation methods, but who doesn’t nowadays, honestly? The new standards created by popular apps like Twitter (panels, sliding actions, pull to refresh), Reeder (more vertical panels, popups) and Apple itself (landscape sidebars, popovers) can now be seen in hundreds of different applications from the most variegate categories. And if we refer to some of these features as “standards”, there’s nothing much to rip-off at this point.

MobileRSS Pro perhaps won’t replace Reeder and Mr. Reader on my homescreen, as the developers still have some issues to iron out (specifically with the unread items list not removing a selected read article after a refresh) and some interface changes to refine around the edges. From what I’ve seen so far, though, the app provides a very solid alternatives to the feed readers mentioned above: MobileRSS HD has got support for multiple Google Reader accounts, it lets you add and remove subscriptions thanks to full feed management (like Mr. Reader), and it’s got plenty of sharing options to forward interesting articles to Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper, Read It Later, Delicious, and email. The app allows you to choose fonts from a popup menu, as well as change font size for optimal reading. On top of that, you also have classic Google Reader options like mark as read / unread, like, share, and note. Most of these functionalities have been implemented through popup menus that, with the new default dark theme, look really good on the iPad’s screen. The app is stable, fast and reliable – pretty snappy on the iPad 2, too.

Two features that particularly impressed me in this new version of MobileRSS are swiping actions and the possibility to download full articles for feeds that only come with excerpts. In the settings, you can select websites that have truncated feeds, and tell the app to always download the full content upon opening a new unread item. MobileRSS will then display an indicator showing that the full article is being fetched, and after a few seconds you’ll be able to read the entire article without jumping to a web view. On the other hand, navigating between feeds in MobileRSS looks a lot like Twitter for iPad: the main list displays unread items, and tapping on one of them will open a second panel on the right with the RSS view. The unread list will overlay the left sidebar, and with a right swipe you can go back to the main view. A toggle on the left allows you to switch between “all items” and “unread items.”

Overall, I think NibiruTech is doing a good job in differentiating MobileRSS from other RSS apps for the iPad, yet implementing concepts and UI elements that have become standards on the platform thanks to third-party software adoption. MobileRSS HD is available at $4.99 in the App Store, and you should give it a try. Read more

iPad 2 Launching In Japan Tomorrow?

Reports today coming from the Japanese Nikkei say that the iPad 2 will eventually launch in Japan tomorrow on April 28. It had originally been a part of the first group of international countries set to receive the iPad 2 on March 25 but the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami forced Apple to delay the launch.

Apple hasn’t confirmed the launch for tomorrow but the Nikkei reports that it will hit the stores in “stealth”, with little publicity compared to other iPad 2 launches. A MacRumors reader also found a poster at a Softbank store that lists the white iPhone 4 as also launching tomorrow, April 28 as the launch date.

[Via MacRumors]

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Zite Receives Update, CEO Discusses What’s Next

Zite, one of those ‘personal iPad magazines’ like Flipboard or the newer News.me, received an update yesterday that adds an in-app browser, better clipboard support and some much appreciated performance improvements.

TUAW spoke to the new Zite CEO, Mark Johnson, who used to work at Microsoft. He said that they were pleased with the success of the app, with positive reviews and over 100,000 downloads since launching. Customization, he says, is an oft-cited request by users and he said they are working towards adding more options and flexibility to the news sections. Interestingly, the Zite team is also working on a web version, improving the offline reading abilities and reducing the incidence of duplicate articles in the news stream.

In its initial launch, Zite received some cease and desists from various publishers around the web because of Zite’s ad removal. They have since accommodated the publishers concerns by adding a direct link and Johnson has said that this has quelled publisher’s concerns. You can download Zite from the iPad App Store for free.

[Via TUAW]

Pioneer AppRadio To Bring Apps And Deep iOS Integration To The Car

A new Pioneer car audio system is set to feature its own app system that also ties in with iOS devices and put it all on a very stylish iPad-eque front panel. The official FCC filing and a leak to CrunchGear reveals the Pioneer AppRadio, with a 6.1” display and an iOS-style home button in the center, will be loaded with specialised apps from Pandora Radio and iHeartRadio to GPS mapping software and traditional AM/FM radio.

In what is surely a sign of the times, Pioneer will not be including any optical drive in the device, opting instead for USB, RCA and S-Video inputs. CrunchGear contends in its report that the audio system will likely talk to iPhones and iPods through the USB interface for music as well as contacts and even some apps. The device also doesn’t have any internet access on its own and will likely rely on smartphones such as an iPhone to provide mobile connectivity for some of the internet apps such as Pandora.

To avoid problems surrounding distracted driving, the Pioneer AppRadio will also come with a steering wheel-mounted remote control as an option. Based on the FCC filing and the rumor, the AppRadio is believed to be “about ready” but no specific release date or pricing is yet known.

[Via Electronista]

Omni Group Releases OmniPlan 2.0 Public Beta

Back at Macworld 2011, the Omni Group detailed their software plans for 2011 on iPhones, iPads and Macs: the company announced they were working on a major revamp of OmniFocus for Mac inspired by the success of the iPad counterpart, a brand new version of OmniOutliner for the iPad, and a complete upgrade of project planning tool OmniPlan built around sync functionalities and OmniFocus integration. Sync is clearly playing a huge role in the Omni Group’s efforts to centralize the experience across mobile devices and computers: last year, the Omni Group launched Omni Sync Server, a free syncing solution for Mac and iOS users that allows iPad, iPhone and Mac apps to stay in sync over the air. With the release of the first Omni Plan 2.0 public beta today, the Omni Group is bringing Omni Sync Server support to OmniPlan, alongside other collaboration features like tracking of changes and publishing.

During the OmniPlan 2.0 development, Omni Group discovered that “people wanted to bring this workflow and user experience to their teams”, so they decided to completely focus on collaboration as the big improvement for this version. With OmniPlan 2.0, a manager will be able to share a project with his team using MobileMe, WedDAV and Omni Sync Server; tasks can be published automatically upon saving a plan, and changes can be fetched via Bonjour. A manager can also keep track of his own changes or others’ through a system called “visual change tracking” – alternatively, users are also able to manually accept or reject changes on task-by-task basis. One of the most anticipated features of OmniPlan 2.0, however, is the direct OmniFocus integration announced at Macworld: while it appears that the functionality hasn’t been implemented yet in this first beta, Omni Group’s CEO Ken Case told Ars Technica in January that Omni Plan 2.0 would allow a project manager to see a person’s task coming from OmniFocus being marked as complete within OmniPlan. This will be possible thanks to the Omni Sync Server, which deploys the same underlying engine across OmniFocus, OmniPlan and, we hope, OmniOutliner.

Lots of other features found their way in OmniPlan 2.0 beta 1: filtering, filters for publishing actions, better printing support with margin customization options and advanced scheduling options are all available in this new version. You can check out a complete changelog of OP 2.0 beta 1 here.

The Omni Group also confirms OmniPlan 2.0 will be available on the Mac App Store at $199.99 once it’s released, and users who purchased OmniPlan 1.0 either from the Mac App Store or the company’s website after January 6, 2011, will receive a free upgrade. We can’t wait to see what the new OmniPlan will look like with deeper OmniFocus integration; in the meantime, you can go download the public beta here.

TenFourFox: Firefox 4.0 For 10.4 PowerPC Macs

If you’re still rocking a PowerPC Mac with a G3, G4 or G5 processor running OS X Tiger and you’re willing to try the new Firefox 4.0, you’re out of luck. With the latest major update to their Windows / Mac / Linux browser, Mozilla dropped support for Mac OS X 10.4 and PowerPC architecture, and while it’s pretty obvious that, going forward, older machines and operating systems will be left behind by software vendors, it’s always nice to find alternatives and hacks that enable users who are “stuck” on these systems to enjoy the recent advancements in technology, although with some compromises. TenFourFox, a new project from the creators of the Classila browser for classic Mac OS, is a fork of Mozilla’s Firefox 4.0 that runs on older Macs powered by Tiger and PowerPC CPUs.

But if there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years of using Macs, it’s that they outlast anything else out there. Why shouldn’t an iBook be able to look at embarrassing pictures on Facebook, or Twitter about our lunch break? These are our computers, dang it. We paid good money for them. They still work. There’s no technical reason they can’t do everything that a MacBook can. So if you want something done, you do it yourself, and we did. The result is TenFourFox.

The browser, available for download here, is a very niche product, but we’re sure it’ll manage to build a loyal following over the next months: it uses almost the same code of the official Firefox 4.0, but it’s been entirely rebuilt to add specific improvements for OS X 10.4 as it “restores the glue necessary to get most of Firefox 4’s advanced features working on our older computers” with separate builds for G3, G4 and G5 processors. TenFourFox includes most of the features of Firefox 4.0 you know and love: extended HTML5 and CSS3 support, faster Javascript rendering, WebM video, Firefox 4 add-on compatibility. According to the developers, the custom code deployed in TenFourFox granted faster Javascript performances than both Safari 5 and Firefox 3.6 through SunSpider and Dromaeo benchmarks. Apparently the code has been sent back to Mozilla so anyone could enjoy the improvements made by the team, and the devs also claims TenFourFox is by far the fastest web browser available on PowerPC Macs running Tiger. As for the requirements:

TenFourFox requires a G3 Power Macintosh, Mac OS X v10.4.11 or Mac OS X v10.5.8, 100MB of free disk space and 256MB of RAM. Video playback will be poor on systems slower than 1.25GHz; we recommend a G5. Intel Macintoshes are not supported (and will be mercilessly mocked).

You can find more information about TenFourFox here, and download the various builds on the project’s official Google Code page.

10.6.7 OpenType Bugs Fixed With Snow Leopard Font Update

Alongside iPhoto 9.1.2, Apple also released a font update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which is aimed at fixing the OpenType text bugs we reported a few weeks ago. The update “addresses issues displaying and printing certain OpenType fonts”, but as Apple’s KB document notes, it also resolves issues with printing from Preview, as well as problems with PDF documents not opening in 3rd party PDF-viewing apps. Font errors with PostScript printers have been fixed, too.

If you’re an OS X 10.6.7 user and have been experiencing OpenType font rendering issues on your machine, the update is highly recommended. You can download it from Software Update or Apple’s website.