If you survived Valentine's Day yesterday, the good news is many of us will be enjoying a three-day weekend to take advantage of the President's Day sales on Monday. So before we all part company for 72 hours, let's take a quick walk through the five best stories that went down on Thursday, including one truly bizarre tale involving HP and a rock and roll legend...
On Thursday, word spread like wildfire that an iOS 6.1 vulnerability could be used to bypass the passcode lock screen of an iPhone 5 with just a few relatively simple steps. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Apple will soon plug this security hole, and sure enough, AllThingsD is now reporting that Cupertino is not only aware of the issue but also on the case. “Apple takes user security very seriously,” company spokeswoman Trudy Muller told AllThingsD. “We are aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update.” No word on how soon that will arrive, however.
If you're all keyed up to take in the new Die Hard movie this weekend, you'll want to lock and load 99 cents into the App Store to purchase Fox Digital Entertainment's new mobile game of the same name. Assuming the role of John McClane's son Jack, players will head to Russia, where they'll take on ruthless mobsters, elite commandos and shadowy politicians. Sounds like a typical day for a McClane family member, right? The universal app is already racking up some pretty good reviews on the App Store, so get ready to go all yippee ki-yay on those bad guys before you head to the theatre.
Yeah, you knew this was coming: iFixit managed to get its hands on one of those swanky new, Intel-powered Surface with Windows 8 Pro tablets that Microsoft started selling last week, and you can pretty much imagine what came next. While there aren't a ton of surprises in store with the chunkier sibling to the Surface with Windows RT, the Pro edition ultimately received a one out of 10 on iFixit's Repairability Score, making it one of the least self-repairable tablets out there. Just attempting to remove the solid-state storage unit risks completely borking the whole Surface, and the unit has a whopping 90 screws inside, which even iFixit calls "a tad crazy."
Twitter's Vine video sharing app is bound to have some competition, and according to TechCrunch, Vimeo may be preparing to step up their own game in that direction. The company announced Thursday that it has acquired Echograph, an iOS app from Clear-Media that is used to create animated GIFs for sharing around the internet. Echograph creator Nick Alt will become Vimeo's new VP of Mobile, while his colleagues all come along for the ride as well. Best of all, Echograph will continue to live on, but now as a free app instead of a paid offering.
There's not much in the way of fresh webOS-related news since HP put a stake in its heart, but then along comes this loosely related tidbit. According to Ars Technica, HP is being sued by rock and roll icon Chubby Checker (whose real name is the less cool Ernest Evans) over a since-discontinued webOS app bearing the same name. The app, which reportedly sold less than 100 copies at 99 cents each during its brief existence, apparently used a man's shoe size to estimate the size of his sexual organ. A personal injury attorney in Florida apparently feels the app will cause "serious damage" to Checker's good name, not to mention tarnishing the image "he has worked to maintain over the last 50 years." HP is estimated to have made a mere 30 cents for each download on the Chubby Checker app, which was yanked from the App Catalog back in September.
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