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Safety in Jail: Apple Responds to Worm Threats

J Keirn-Swanson — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:46:21 -0600

In their statement regarding the recent threat, a worm that potentially can steal financial data, Apple parentally tsk-tsks users sporting jailbroken phones that modding in this way "not only violate[s] the warranty [but] will also cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably."

It has the benefit of being true, though. Opening up your phone through jailbreaking, while giving you greater app flexibility among other things, can leave your iPhone exposed to hackers. If you're going that route, be sure to change your root password from the default "alpine."

Image Source: Instructables.com

As might seem natural, the first hack merely Rickrolled the user's wallpaper, but the threats have grown worse. A few weeks back, jailbroken iPhones were at the center of a 5 Euros scam where a hacker compromised the same security hole and changed the wallpaper to a message directing users to his site. There, with a PayPal link, he offered instructions to close the hole for five Euros.

This demonstrated a low level of of malice, but the scam paved the way for others. According to Sophos, the latest threat is a worm that attacks jailbroken iPhones in the Netherlands, Australia and other countries. The worm changes the handset's root password, scans through your SMS database looking for other phones to infect, and will redirect users of a Netherland bank site to a fake site to collect their login info. The only way to get rid of the worm is to restore your iPhone's firmware.

As smartphones become an ever more prevalent part of our lives, it's clear that such threats are going to be with us for some time to come and are only going to get worse. If you're going to strike out on the road away from the protections offered by Cupertino, remember to be vigilant.

YUBZ Talk Mobile

Ray Aguilera — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:50:00 -0600

Retro telephonic style, with some practical advantages.

When the YUBZ Talk Mobile handset arrived at the Mac|Life offices, half the staff said words to the effect of “Why would anyone ever use that!?” and the other half fell into the “That is so rad!” camp. If you harbor a certain aesthetic sensibility (and an abiding belief that Bluetooth headsets make everyone look like robots--but not in a cool way) then the Talk Mobile is for you. It’s a handset for your cell phone that’s modeled after an old landline telephone receiver. It comes in nine colors, and, to our delight, even sports the iconic coiled cable.

Great for calls and whacking would-be muggers on the head.

As a handset--and seeing as it doesn’t clip to your ear, we can’t really call it a headset--it works pretty well. There’s a button to answer or end calls and a simple volume slider. With your phone’s earpiece volume and the handset volume both cranked up, the Talk Mobile gets loud enough to annoy anyone standing nearby, and the speaker is clear enough to use at maximum volume without distorting (useful in noisy environments or for people who have trouble hearing cell phone conversations).

Thanks to its retro design, you can cock your head just so and rest the Talk Mobile against your shoulder, secretary-style. Ergonomists will gasp in horror, but mastering this move allows you to go hands-free for as long as your neck muscles hold out. And thankfully, YUBZ has made the Talk Mobile considerably lighter than the phone handsets your grandparents used to use. At 8 ounces and 8.3 inches long, it’s not exactly ultraportable, but it’s small enough to easily stow in a bag. YUBZ also sells an optional belt holster ($10.95) for users with exceptionally high self-esteem. While we enjoyed the bemused stares we got when using the Talk Mobile out on the street, it’s probably most useful for people who do most of their phone calling from a desk or other stationary spot. The Talk Mobile has a 2.5mm jack, but includes one free adapter (the iPhone requires a 3.5mm adapter) and additional adapters for other phones are available for purchase. There’s also a USB model that connects directly to a computer for voice chat applications.

27-inch and 21.5-inch iMacs (Late 2009)

Ray Aguilera — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:21:00 -0600

We Might Need to Start Calling Them "Big iMacs"

Apple's latest all-in-ones are bigger, brighter, and simply the best yet.

Glancing at a spec sheet, Apple’s latest iMacs might seem like run-of-the mill product refreshes. Sure, there’s the requisite processor bumps and storage updates, but an iMac’s an iMac, right? Ah, not so much. When you see these machines in person, their differences are much more apparent, striking even. The new line-up includes four new machines--two small ones and two bigguns--and we had the chance to review one of each size for this article.

The most obvious improvements are the larger displays. The early 2009 iMacs were available with 20- or 24-inch screens, but Apple’s newest models rock 21.5 and 27 inches of display majesty. These changes are important in a couple different ways. First, the new models have native 16:9 aspect ratios: 1920x1080 for the 21.5-inch model and 2560x1440 for the 27-inch iMac. Home-theater geeks will notice right away that this new aspect ratio looks demonstrably different from the 16:10 proportions of the previous generation of iMac screens. Essentially, the new displays are a bit “squatter” than previous models, but fall in line with current HD standards. It’s tough to say if that has anything to do with the possibility of Blu-ray drives eventually making their way into the Apple stable, but it’s good news for anyone who watches HD content on his or her Mac.

The 27-inch model is gunning for a spot on your living room wall.

The new larger screens also feature LED backlighting. Not only do they instantly achieve full brightness--no more waiting for your iMac to warm up before diving into serious photo editing--but they also offer a more uniform brightness across the entire display. Designers and other content creators will delight at the change, but even in our stock-and-trade Web browsers and word processors, we were dazzled by the difference. We especially appreciated the newfound control over screen brightness; the same 17-step brightness control is there, but the range is quite a bit wider. The lowest setting is darker, and the highest is considerably brighter than that of previous iMacs--so much so that benchmarking the new models at max brightness prompted us to don sunglasses indoors (seriously). The new displays are also crisper and have a whiter tone than their predecessors. In a side-by-side comparison, Robin, our art director, said the old iMac display looked “nicotine-stained.” The new displays are also edge-to-edge, so there’s no distracting aluminum bezel around the screen. It’s a small detail, but an elegant one.

Underneath the aluminum enclosures--which go all the way around; no more black plastic backsides--the new iMacs have improved system components. Borrowing a page from the MacBook playbook, the new iMacs feature an SD card slot alongside the optical drive on the left side of the chassis. RAM has been bumped from 2GB to 4GB across all four of the new models, and maximum memory capacity has increased from 8GB to 16GB, giving these machines a heavy dose of future-proofing. There are two 21.5-inch iMacs, and the starter-edition model that we reviewed ships with a 500GB hard drive, up from 320GB in the early 2009 model. The other 21.5-incher as well as the two 27-inchers (including the new quad-core 2.66GHz i5 model that was unavailable at press time) all come standard with 1TB of storage. There is, however, a 2TB build-to-order option in Apple’s online store for an additional $250.

Even the entry-level iMac packs a punch.

The two models we tested had similar hardware specs, with the larger iMac featuring more robust graphics courtesy of an ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics card with 256MB of memory. The base model we reviewed was saddled with an Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU, which taps into system RAM for its frame buffer. As such, most of our benchmarks were quite close to one another. The smaller iMac handled our InDesign-to-PDF export test in 4.2 seconds, while the larger model shaved that down to 3.6 seconds. And there was only a statistically insignificant tenth of a second difference in our Photoshop tests. In our Call of Duty 4 benchmark on the other hand, the ATI Radeon-equipped model pumped out an impressive 62.8 frames per second. By contrast, the more modest Nvidia chip averaged 36.1 FPS in the 21.5-inch model.

The 27-inch iMacs are an interesting sweet spot in Apple’s current product line. The model we reviewed comes in at $100 less than Apple’s current price for the 30-inch Cinema HD Display, which of course doesn’t include an actual computer. And one of the most unique--and under-promoted--features of the 27-inch iMacs is support for video input. So, now, not only can your iMac push an external monitor, you can use your iMac as an external monitor itself. The obvious example would be alongside a late model MacBook equipped with DisplayPort, but in fairly short order we expect a full complement of display adapters for the iMac to allow input from more than just your laptop. The fact that the 27-inch models are also compatible with VESA-compliant wall mounts commonly used for flat-screen TVs--along with the 16:9 aspect ratio--makes the new iMacs seem like Apple’s first concerted effort to break the Mac out of your office and into the living room.

Unibody MacBook

Susie Ochs — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:22:00 -0600

There's only one MacBook in town, but Apple's lowest-cost notebook doesn't feel entry level.

The only MacBook left standing isn’t some neglected also-ran. With this redesign, Apple gave its most modest notebook nearly all the power and the style of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. For $999 ($200 less than the base 13-inch Pro), the white MacBook has nearly the same specs, minus the FireWire port, SD card slot, IR sensor, and backlit keyboard--and the MacBook has a bigger hard drive: 250GB to the base Pro’s 160GB.

The most glaring difference between this MacBook and the 13-inch MacBook Pro is the MacBook’s plastic body, which now comes only in white. Still, Apple took a page from the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines and built this MacBook as a unibody, with a single piece of durable polycarbonate, curved corners, and a huge glass multitouch trackpad. The bottom is covered with a gray nonslip pad--no battery compartment, because the battery is built in.

The body is constructed from a single piece of white polycarbonate plastic. No more black MacBooks--at least for now.

Yep, no user-replaceable batteries in any of Apple’s laptops anymore. The new lithium-polymer battery can last between 3.5 and 7 hours on a charge--we got a full day’s worth of usage with Energy Saver on, and a hardy 4 hours, 5 minutes during our DVD-rundown test. Apple says the battery will last 1,000 charge cycles before its capacity dips to 80 percent of the original, which could take up to 5 years. Replacement is $129, the same price as a spare battery back when you could replace it yourself. You can still access the hard drive and RAM slots to upgrade those.

The LED backlit screen (1280x800) looks gorgeous, goes to full brightness right away, and isn’t covered by glass like the MacBook Pros’ screens. We like it--there’s far less glare, even though the screen is still glossy. The MacBook has a Mini DisplayPort connection, but Apple doesn’t include the adapters for hooking it to DVI or VGA monitors ($29 each). Front Row fans will be disappointed that the MacBook doesn’t have an IR sensor, so you can’t use it with the Apple Remote. The FireWire port is gone too. You get two USB ports and that’s it. The MacBook lacks the 13-inch Pro’s SD card slot, but that barely matters because you can just use a USB card reader.

As far as system hardware, the MacBook has identical components to the 2.26GHz 13-inch MacBook Pro but a bigger hard drive. Relative to that Pro, it performed 23 percent better in our Photoshop CS4 Actions test, 29 percent better when importing a 2GB DV clip into iMovie, and squeaked out 4 more frames per second when playing Call of Duty 4. Our other tests had closer results, but the MacBook’s larger hard drive still helped it outperform the 2.26GHz 13-inch Pro across our benchmark suite.

Apple Set to Meet Economic Projections

J Keirn-Swanson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:45:46 -0600

Recession? What recession? In October, Apple posted its best quarterly sales figure ever with 3 million Macs out the door and 7.4 million iPhones.

With December's quarterly projections aimed squarely at 2.85 million Macs, Apple's gearing up for the holidays.

While October's iPod sales were down 16% over last year's figures and September's figures saw Mac desktop sales fall by 16% compared to 2008, Gene Munster, analyst for Piper Jaffray, is expecting an end of year spike in both categories. The month of December accounts for most Mac products sold in that quarter, and 27" quad-core iMacs are backordered several weeks.

On the cusp of Black Friday, with new Macs out on the market, it's possible that the lower September figures were customers holding out on purchasing a Mac until the latest releases hit the stores. If Apple meets these estimates, Mac sales will have grown 14% over last year.

Now just imagine what'd be happening if the tablet were dropped into the holiday mix.

In Your Face Viewbase

Jan Hughes — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:24:00 -0600

Despite what they say about idle hands (hint: it has something to do with an evil workshop), there are times when you simply want your hands free. Say, when your in-flight meal arrives as you’re watching a movie on your iPhone or iPod touch. Or when you’re reading on your touch and need your hands free to grip the handlebars of the elliptical machine. Or when you simply want to give your weary hands and arms a break. This is where the In Your Face Viewbase comes in. The simple gooseneck design supports your device, while the hinged clamp secures to the lip of your desk, tray, headboard, visor, door handle, etc.

The Viewbase provides a little rest for your weary hands.

As stands go, the Viewbase is a solid, well-made gadget. The padded vise that holds your iPhone or touch in place has a firm grip and is adjustable, even fitting around the protective case we opted to leave on. It also swivels, enabling you to have a horizontal or vertical screen. The 8-inch flexible neck bends handily to accommodate any viewing angle and is surprisingly sturdy. The clamp, which can grip surfaces up to two inches thick, maintains a secure hold--even while bumping along with us on a 40-minute ride on an elliptical. And we can happily report that despite the bouncy nature of such a ride, the Viewbase kept the touch still enough to be able to read while we rode the machine.

Shure SRH240 & SRH440

Ray Aguilera — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:27:23 -0600

Shure’s been building pro audio equipment for forever. Chances are, if you’ve seen a band perform in the last 75 years, you’ve seen some Shure gear at work. While the company is well known for its microphones, it has recently begun expanding into the headphone market. Shure has brought its considerable audio know-how to bear on the SRH240 (not shown) and the SRH440 (pictured) headphones, both of which offer studio-level sound at prices that make them attractive for home use as well.

Both the 240s and 440s are over-the-ear headphones, meaning that the ear cups surround your entire ear. This offers increased noise isolation, both for the listener who wants to mute outside noise and for everyone around you who isn’t interested in your Ace of Base dance remixes. The headphones feature stereo miniplugs, which will work with your iPod, as well as screw-on adapters for full-size headphone jacks like those on home stereos.

Shure's new headphones deliver for a wide range of listeners.

The sound quality on both models is excellent. The lower-priced 240s have a slightly narrower frequency range (20Hz to 20kHz) than the 440’s (10Hz to 22kHz), but both feature a fairly flat audio profile--meaning you hear the music as it was recorded, with natural reproduction across the audio spectrum. Bass response is good, and highs are crisp without being fatiguing. Both headphones are comfortable for extended wear.

The 440s feature a fuller sound, largely due to increased padding around the earcup and better outside noise isolation overall. Unlike the 240s, they also fold up for travel and can be stashed in the included drawstring bag. The 440s are also 5.7 ounces heavier than the 9-ounce 240s, making the latter better for use on the go. The earcups on the 440 have a wider swivel range, making them more comfortable, and we appreciate the heavier replaceable coiled cable, which ultimately makes the 440s more durable in the long run.

Scosche TapSTICK

Ray Aguilera — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:30:05 -0600

One of the big reasons we didn’t have a gadget-crush on the third-gen iPod shuffle (3 out of 5 stars, Jun/09) is its reliance on Apple’s earbuds to control the device. Without any buttons on the shuffle’s chassis, the inline remote on the included ’buds is the only way to navigate tracks, play, pause, or make volume adjustments. But now Scosche’s tapSTICK aims to improve your shuffle experience by adding back the third-gen shuffle’s missing buttons.

Rather than make a headphone adapter, Scosche built a hard plastic case that integrates rubberized control buttons. While we’re not sure the aluminum shuffle really needed any more protection, integrating the controls into a case makes a lot of sense and eliminates the overly long headphone cables that you end up with using an add-on inline remote dongle. At two-tenths of an ounce, the tapSTICK doesn’t fundamentally alter the shuffle’s ultraportable profile much, making it about 1/8 inch wider and adding about 5/8 of an inch to the shuffle’s length.

The tapSTICK brings buttons back to your iPod shuffle.

After docking your shuffle into the tapSTICK, the three buttons on the case replicate the functions of Apple’s inline remote. Tapping the center button plays or pauses and kicks in navigation and VoiceOver the same way it does with the standard Apple controls. The real win, though, is that now you can plug in your favorite headphones to tapSTICK’s headphone jack and still have full control over your shuffle. The tapSTICK also sports Volume Up and Down buttons, and the back of the case is open to allow use of the shuffle’s metal clip. The buttons themselves are decently sized, and the raised markings make them easy to find while the shuffle is stashed in a pocket. Unfortunately, raising or lowering the volume more than one increment requires you to tap the appropriate button repeatedly--holding the button down registers as only a single click.

The tapSTICK obscures both the status LED and the Off/Shuffle switch on the iPod. The shuffle’s single LED also serves as the battery gauge, so you can’t see how much juice you have left without removing the shuffle from the tapSTICK. You’ll need to do the same in order to switch the shuffle on or off or change the play mode. And due to the way that Apple built the shuffle, to use the same pin on the headphone jack for charging and remote control signals, you’ll have to remove the shuffle from the tapSTICK in order to charge the battery. Extremely fashion-conscious users should note that the tapSTICK comes in black or white, neither of which match the shuffle’s available hues.