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Apple iPhone Software 3.0 ‘impressive’

by Admin on March 19, 2009

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Apple took the wraps off the next version of its iPhone software this week, adding more than 100 features for consumers, as well as new ways for developers to create and enhance applications. And the industry analysts contacted by Macworld found the content of Tuesday’s iPhone 3.0 software presentation exciting.

“It’s a pretty impressive release,” said Van Baker, research vice president at technology research firm Gartner. “It further extends [Apple's] lead in terms of the kind of things the platform can do.”

The event, held on the company’s campus in Cupertino, Calif., focused on features for both developers and consumers. Of particular note was a long-promised feature that has yet to see the light of day—push notification.

Push notification lets applications that aren’t open receive notifications when something has changed. For instance, an instant messaging (IM) client could alert you when someone sends you new message, without having the application open.

“Apple just gave developers another good set of reasons to get on the platform,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis for media and technology research firm Interpret. “Apple is making sure that the only platform you are going to get this type of functionality on is the iPhone.”

Another area of great interest to developers was in-app purchases—the ability to sell products from within an app itself. Apple gave the examples of being able sell additional levels for a game or to sell e-books books, all without making customers take a special trip to the App Store.

“With in-app purchases, Apple has opened up a whole slew of business models,” said Gartenberg. “There’s a war going on for the hearts and minds of developers, and now Apple has made it easier for developers to make and sell apps.”

Gartner’s Baker believes that these new capabilities for developers may bring something else come to the App Store as well—higher prices. With more sophisticated programs, Baker thinks that $15, $20, and $25 apps will become much more common when iPhone Software 3.0 is released.

For users, one of the biggest additons was the ability to copy and paste text, a feature previously missing from the iPhone. But the new software also brings support MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), Spotlight searching, and more. Yet some people think these features should have been there from the start.

“Apple filled a lot of holes with things like copy and paste, but that’s them playing catch-up,” said Baker. And Ross Rubin, director of analysis at market-research firm NPD Group, agreed. “They certainly grabbed a lot of the low hanging fruit that was available in the operating system upgrade,” he said.

However, it would be hard to make the argument that the changes to the iPhone’s operating system are anything but good news for Apple and its customers.

“The extensibility of the device through software is going to be the story in 2009,” said Gartenberg.


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Apple to preview new iPhone software next week

by Admin on March 13, 2009

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Apple will hold an event next Tuesday to preview new software for the iPhone, the company said.

Apple said in an email invitation on Thursday that it will provide a “sneak peek” at the iPhone 3.0 software, along with information about the new software kit that third-party vendors use to create applications for the device.

The company will host the event at its corporate campus in Cupertino, California, on March 17.

Apple released its 3G iPhone last summer and the device proved to be an immediate hit with consumers. Apple sold 6.9 million devices in the September quarter and 4.3 million in the December quarter.

The iPhone is one of Apple’s main engines for growth. Over the course of 2008, the company sold over 13.7 million iPhones, ahead of its 10 million target.

Key to the iPhone’s success has been the applications offered through the company’s App store, which launched last July. The store features a wide array of programs, some for free and some for a fee.

In January, Apple said more than 500 million applications had been downloaded and that more than 15,000 apps were available.


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Google software bug shared private online documents

by Admin on March 10, 2009

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Google has confirmed that a software bug exposed documents thought to be privately stored in the Internet giant’s online Docs application service.

The problem was fixed by the weekend and is believed to have affected only .05 percent of the digital documents at a Google Docs service that provides text-handling programs as services on the Internet.

“We’ve identified and fixed a bug where a very small percentage of users shared some of their documents inadvertently,” Google Docs Product Manager Jennifer Mazzon wrote in a message at the firm’s website on Saturday.

“We’re sorry for the trouble this has caused. We understand our users’ concerns (in fact, we were affected by this bug ourselves) and we’re treating this very seriously.”

The problem occurred in cases where people had chosen to collaborate on multiple documents and adjusted settings to allow access to others, according to Google.

Collaborators were unintentionally given permission to access documents aside from the ones intended.

“As part of the fix, we used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as having been affected,” Mazzon said.

“We then emailed the document owners to point them to their affected documents in case they need to re-share them.”

The slip comes as Google and other Internet firms entice people to rely on applications offered online as services “in the cloud” instead of buying software then installing and maintaining it on their own machines.

While the trend toward cloud services is growing, some still worry about the privacy of data kept online and whether it is shrewd to rely on the Internet for access to information and applications.


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Malware found in Lenovo software package

by Admin on November 20, 2008

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Hii,

I just got the news. Computer maker Lenovo is shipping a malware-infected software package to Windows XP users, according to warning from anti-virus researchers at Microsoft.

The malicious file was identified by Microsoft as Win32/Meredrop, a Trojan dropper that is used to install and execute multiple malicious executables on an infected computer. Other anti-virus vendors are detecting the threat as a ‘hooligan’ virus or a porn dialer. It was found the Lenovo Trust Key software for Windows XP, a digitally signed driver package available to Windows XP SP2 users.

The infected software is used to install the Lenovo Security Logon and the Lenovo Private folder applications for use with the Lenovo Trust Key (also known as Lenovo Insider Key).


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