Mobile Phone News

Filed under: Handsets, Software, Apple, OS X

It appears we can all breathe a big sigh of relief when it comes to our iPhone apps. According to John Gruber (Daring Fireball), that suspicious looking URL discovered in the firmware 2.x which appeared to be set to deactivate applications may be something slightly more innocuous. According to Gruber — via “an informed source at Apple” — the “clbl” in the aforementioned URL stands for “Core Location Blacklist” and is actually used to stipulate that specific pieces of software don’t have access to… you guessed it… Core Location. Gruber argues that this makes sense, as the API is covered by fairly strict rules in Apple’s SDK. So it seems like (at a glance) this was much ado about nothing — thanks to a little misinterpretation by Jonathan Zdziarski — though we are considering getting hot under the collar that Apple reserves the right to deny Core Location access. How dare they?

[Thanks, Paul]

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Filed under: Handsets, Software, Apple, OS X

According to iPhone Atlas and iPhone hacker-extraordinaire Jonathan Zdziarski, Apple has readied a blacklisting system which allows the company to remotely disable applications on your device. Apparently, the new 2.x firmware contains a URL which points to a page containing a list of “unauthorized” apps — a move which suggests that the device makes occasional contact with Apple’s servers to see if anything is amiss on your phone. In Jonathan’s words:

“This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.

I discovered this Makea forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation.”

at this time honestly, we don’t expect the folks in Cupertino to suddenly start turning off apps that you’ve paid for and downloaded, but if Apple is indeed monitoring iPhones or touches (even passively) for applications it doesn’t want or like, it signals a problem deeper than a company clearly wanting to sign-off on software for the device. Even on platforms like Symbian — which calls for apps to be signed and traceable — the suggestion that a process of the OS would actively monitor, report on, and possibly deactivate your device’s software is unreasonable, and clearly presents an issue that the company will have to deal with sooner or later. Oh, and Apple — we’re not plan to buy the “for your security” angle, so don’t even bother.

[Via Mac unverified information]

Read - iPhone can phone home and kill apps?
Read - Apple’s URL with “unathorized applications” string

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Filed under: Handsets, Apple, OS X

Steve might have finally made with the iPhone 3G yesterday, but as we’ve mentioned before, would-be upgraders have a slightly bigger dilemma than just shaking down the couch cushions for an extra $199: getting their user Dat. securely erased from their old iPhones. clearly hitting “restore” still leaves your Dat. in an accessible state, and while we’ve covered ways to do a three-pass wipe with iTunes playlists, Jonathan Zdziarski has posted up a set of instructions for getting at your flash from the command line and wiping it directly. Sure, you’ll have to jailbreak your phone and it’ll take at least an hour or so — but hey, you’ve got a month to kill anyway, right?

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