Tag: iPhone/iOS

 

Hands-On

By Amber Neely
Saturday, January 25, 2020, 12:48 pm PT (03:48 pm ET)

Everybody’s favorite six-second video platform is back and it’s got a new name: Byte. Let’s take a look and see if the resurrected Vine is any better than its predecessor.

Vine came onto the scene in January 2013 as a child-company of popular social media platform Twitter. Almost immediately, Vine changed the way people created, shared, and enjoyed videos.

Unfortunately, Twitter axed Vine in early 2017, just shy of its fourth birthday. The internet wept.

Seven years after its original inception and a little over three years after Twitter killed Vine, Vine rises from the ashes as Byte.

No longer associated with Twitter, Byte relaunched with the help of one of Vine’s founders, Dom Hofmann. Byte aims to bring back six-second looping videos to social media.

The Experience

If you used Vine in the past, you won’t have any trouble adjusting to Byte. You can use the Byte app to watch videos —which we assume will be called “bytes” —or to make your own.

Exploring content is done in a few different ways. The home feed collates a collection of content from your favorite creators. The search page allows you to perform keyword searches, view suggested bytes, or search by category. The categories include topics such as music, animation, comedy, sports, and more.

Making bytes is easy as well. You can upload videos and images from your camera roll, or you can use the Byte camera to capture clips. It’s got a convenient onion skinning feature to allow you to line up the previous shot. After it looks perfect, you can upload your video to Byte, where it will be publicly available. You can check out all your bytes on your Byte profile.

The overall content is… fine. Adequate. Creators are still constrained to the six-second time limit, which means the formula can be hit-or-miss depending on the creators. Thankfully, there’s already quite a bit of content to watch on Byte, and there are some very talented people making great content. If you liked Vine, we’d imagine that you’d also like Byte.

Will Byte be successful?

The question remains: will Byte be successful in a post-Vine world? Anything is possible, and a quick trip to Twitter shows that people are excited to see six-second videos return to their phones.

Byte has also announced that they’ll be offering creators compensation via their partnership program, which should help to keep users on the platform.

Vine fell apart because creators fled when larger marketing companies abandoned Vine for less-restrictive platforms like Instagram Video and Snapchat. Offering to work directly with creators could be a big step in the right direction for Byte.

 

By Amber Neely
Sunday, December 22, 2019, 01:07 pm PT (04:07 pm ET)

Popular social messaging app ToTok has been found to spy on its users —and it likely was developed by the government of the United Arab Emirates to keep tabs on its citizens.

Similar to WhatsApp and Skype, Emirati user-to-user messaging app, ToTok, is designed to connect people. However, American officials have found that the app has a far more sinister purpose.

Officials have found that the government of the United Arab Emirates have been using ToTok to track users. This includes, but is not limited to data mining text conversations, collection of physical locations through location services, and recording of any sound and audio used by the device.

The appeal of ToTok was that it functioned well in countries, like the United Arab Emirates, that have restricted other more popular messaging services. This is, in part, why ToTok had gained popularity in the Middle East, as many citizens are not able to use popular messaging apps like WhatsApp.

Originally available for both Android and Apple devices, ToTok had gained popularity in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa, and more recently in North America. Chinese telecom giant Huawei even promoted the app in advertisements.

Both Apple and Google have removed the app from their app stores. Users who previously downloaded ToTok will still be able to use the app until they manually remove it from their phones.

Its user base is primarily based in the UAE. But, during its few months of availability, it became one of the most downloaded social apps in the United States prior to its removal from the App Store and Google Play.

According to the New York Times, it is unclear when intelligence officials first determined that ToTok was being used to track users and mine data. One person familiar with the situation had said that American officials have warned some allies internally about the dangers of ToTok

 

By Amber Neely
Sunday, September 29, 2019, 07:30 am PT (10:30 am ET)

Those looking to try out “Minecraft Earth” shouldn’t have to wait much longer, as the highly anticipated augmented reality game is set to roll out its early access program in October.

Minecraft Earth is an augmented reality game that brings Minecraft into the real world. Players will be able to build structures that “overlap” with the real world when viewed on a phone screen. Other games, such as Pokemon Go, have similar AR features.

According to the Minecraft Earth website, the game will play host to a plethora of fun features. As expected, players will be able to create structures using materials they find and place them into the real world. These structures will be able to be built at a smaller scale and then later deployed at full size.

Minecraft Earth will also feature a collection aspect, giving players the chance to collect and breed new creatures that they can then use to populate their builds.

And just like the original Minecraft, Minecraft Earth is a collaborative game. Players will be able to team up and build structures together, as well as team up for mini-adventures. Based on the video posted to Twitter, it seems as though there may be a battle system similar to the one in Pokemon Go.

The website also hints that there will be resource collection and challenges as well. While there’s little information provided on this aspect of the game, it’s a safe bet to assume that it will likely function similarly to Pokemon Go, where individual locations are designated as resource gathering points.

Minecraft Earth will be available on devices that can run iOS 10 and up, plus Android 7 and newer. Players who are interested in trying out Minecraft Earth should head to the game’s site and sign up for a chance to play before others, as well as a free, limited edition skin.

 

By Amber Neely
Monday, September 09, 2019, 06:59 am PT (09:59 am ET)

GameClub will launch it’s all-you-can-play subscription service to the App Store this fall, giving players a chance to revisit classic mobile games without the hassle of annoying advertising or IAP.

GameClub will work as a subscription service, not dissimilar to Apple Music or Netflix. For a small monthly fee, which is currently unknown, players will be able to play over 50 different titles at launch.

The titles, which include classics such as Super Crate Box, Legendary Wars, Minigore, Space Miner, and Mage Gauntlet, are fully updated and optimized for modern iOS and Android devices. More games will be added to the library on a weekly basis. Additionally, GameClub will release new and original games to the service as well.

All games brought to the service will be fully downloadable and available to play offline. This is an increasingly rare sight to see, as many mobile games require constant access to either data or wifi. Users without unlimited data often unable to play games away from home—which is a large draw of mobile gaming. GameClub’s new model circumvents this problem entirely, and that’s part of their bigger plan.

The service takes aim at solving the problem of the free-to-play app ecosystem. Gameclub posits that many people have left the mobile gaming market because free-to-play apps have driven them away.

“Smartphones sparked an explosion of creativity in games, however much of that innovation has been snuffed out by titles that are free to download but often rely on manipulative practices and annoying monetization schemes,” said Dan Sherman, CEO and co-founder of GameClub. “Too many talented game creators have been driven away from mobile and GameClub believes players deserve better.”

The content will be curated by former Touch Arcade Editor-In-Chi Eli Hodapp, with input from the community. In aggregate, the games in the GameClub library have been downloaded over one hundred million players over the last ten years. GameClub will act as a form of preservation, giving the titles a chance to live on and be enjoyed by both old and new fans alike.

Anyone interested in the service can sign up for the GameClub Early Access program at GameClub’s website. Doing so will give them a chance to receive pre-launch betas through TestFlight, as well as additional news about GameClub’s global launch.

Pricing is not yet available.

 

Feature

By Lester Victor Marks
Friday, August 30, 2019, 05:43 am PT (08:43 am ET)

This week on the AppleInsider Podcast, Victor and William talk about the By Innovation Only September event, Fraser Speirs joins to talk about Chromebooks for schools, and Apple saves the Amazon.

AppleInsider editor Victor Marks and writer William Gallagher discuss:

• By Innovation Only – the invites to the September 10th event have gone out. Are you getting a new iPhone?
• Fraser Speirs, head teacher of Cedars School of Excellence talks about the 1:1 iPad program they ran for ten years, and why they’re switching to Chromebook
• Apple releases iOS 13.1 beta before releasing 13.0 publicly. This is weird. We’re through the looking glass, people.
• Glasgow schools are rolling out a huge 52,000 iPads program
• Apple is working on improving Siri’s privacy protections and opt-out options.
• Apple is putting up cash to help save the Amazon rainforests from fire destruction.

We like reader email —send us your comments and concerns!.

The show is available on iTunes and your favorite podcast apps by searching for “AppleInsider.” Click here to listen, subscribe, and don’t forget to rate our show.

Listen to the embedded SoundCloud feed below:

Follow our hosts on Twitter: @WGallagher and @vmarks.

Feedback and comments are always appreciated. Please contact the AppleInsider podcast at [email protected] and follow us on Twitter @appleinsider, plus Facebook and Instagram.

Those interested in sponsoring the show can reach out to us at [email protected].

 

By AppleInsider Staff
Monday, June 03, 2019, 08:01 pm PT (11:01 pm ET)

Apple is looking to combat pesky spam callers in iOS 13 with a new Siri-powered feature that weeds out and silences calls from unknown numbers, sending them directly to voicemail.

Word of the optional setting is secreted away deep within Apple’s iOS 13 feature preview webpage, published after the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday.

Aptly named “Silence unknown callers,” the feature protects users from spammers, an increasing nuisance to cellphone owners in the U.S. and beyond. A bane for many, spam callers are utilizing increasingly complex methods like number spoofing and automated services to bypass third-party screening tools and trick users into answering.

Apple’s solution does not eliminate the annoying calls, but it does offer users some respite.

When enabled, Silence unknown callers “uses Siri intelligence to allow calls to ring your phone from numbers in Contacts, Mail, and Messages,” Apple says. Calls from numbers not recognized by Siri are automatically routed to voicemail.

While the brief description fails to detail the feature’s mechanics, it is believed that calls from strangers will not prompt an audio alert or trigger a haptic event, allowing users to review voicemails — and voicemail transcripts — at their leisure. The calls are also unlikely to result in an onscreen notification beyond receipt of a voicemail, if one is recorded.

The feature might not be workable for some iPhone owners as it effectively puts a blanket ban on calls from strangers. For users afflicted by serial spam calls, however, the concession might be worth the peace and quiet.

Hackers are taking advantage of “dev-fused” iPhones, meant only for internal usage within Apple, to discover how systems and sensitive components in the smartphone function, with the publicly-unavailable variant now a highly prized tool for security researchers searching for vulnerabilities in the hardware and in iOS.

Researchers hunting down potential exploits and issues with the highly-popular iPhone have, over the last few years, discovered a shortcut to finding out how to look closely at the inner workings of the device, while avoiding all of Apple’s security processes and systems for preventing the public from accessing elements they cannot see. The method is to effectively acquire an internal version of the iPhone that simply does not have the same level of protections as a consumer-released model.

The version, dubbed “dev-fused” and sometimes called a “prototype,” is an iPhone that has not completed the production process or has been reverted to a development state, reports Motherboard. Meant only for use by Apple’s engineers, the units have most of their security functions disabled, more so than typical jailbroken versions, giving those in possession of it an opportunity to look at how the software functions unhindered by its security.

The dev-fused units occasionally surface on the gray market, smuggled out of Apple-related facilities illegally, and can end up selling for thousands of dollars to interested parties. Once acquired, the units can be “rooted” and used to find a hack that could be used on consumer iPhones, and has the potential to be used by governments and law enforcement agencies.

It is claimed by multiple report sources that Cellebrite, a security firm that allegedly aided law enforcement officials as part of the investigation into the San Bernardino shooting, has acquired some dev-fused devices as part of its product development. Hackers who may have been among the first to show off information gleaned via a dev-fused device are also said to be working for Azimuth, another security firm known for producing hacking tools for the US, Canadian, and UK governments.

The first main sign that such hardware was becoming available through unofficial channels was via a Black Hat talk in August 2016, where researchers Mathew Solnik, David Wang, and Tarjei Mandt described how the iPhone’s Secure Enclave Processor handled data encryption. While the method of discovery was not advised at the time or since, the report’s sources believe their discoveries were possible only via the use of a dev-fused unit.

In the case of SEP, as its operating system is encrypted, it cannot be reverse engineered from a normal model, leaving the use of a unit that has yet to be encrypted as the only real way of knowing what is being performed.

A former Apple security team member advised they had queried Wang after the conference about the discovery. The hacker responded “Solnik got a dev-phone and dumped the firmware through standard Apple tools.” Another iOS security researcher seemingly corroborated the claim Solnik was in possession of one of the devices.

None of the three people from the talk have commented about the affair.

Apple is said to be aware of the dev-fused unit trading, report sources within the company reveal, with Apple stepping up its efforts to prevent the units from leaving Foxconn and other facilities and into the hands of unauthorized users. Notably, Solnik was hired by Apple to work on its “red team” in 2017 following his talk, but left the company within weeks, for unknown reasons that are apparently “incredibly restricted” even from Apple employees.

 

By Mikey Campbell
Friday, October 12, 2018, 07:10 pm PT (10:10 pm ET)

Amateur iOS hacker Jose Rodriguez on Friday unearthed another obscure, yet effective, lock screen bypass that leans on an unpatched bug in VoiceOver to gain unauthorized access to photos on a target device.

Detailed in a brief video posted to Rodriguez’s YouTube channel, the exploit requires a would-be hacker have both their personal device and a target iPhone handy at the time of attack.

As Rodriguez explained to AppleInsider, the target iPhone first receives a phone call from an outside number, which triggers a standard iOS call dialogue. If the attacker does not know the target iPhone’s number, they can acquire caller ID information by invoking Siri and asking the assistant to call their personal phone digit-by-digit.

In his proof-of-concept video, Rodriguez taps on the “Message” option on the iOS call screen and selects “Custom” to display the Messages user interface. After entering a few random letters in the text box, he once again invokes Siri to activate VoiceOver.

Returning to Messages, Rodriguez taps on the camera icon and, while invoking Siri with iPhone’s side button, double taps the screen to trigger what appears to be a system-level conflict. While this particular step must be performed with a certain level of precision, an attacker can repeat the process multiple times until the desired effect is achieved.

A black screen is displayed when the bug condition is met. As Rodriguez demonstrates, however, VoiceOver’s text selection tool is able to access “hidden” UI options through typical navigation gestures. Swiping left on the blank screen takes Rodriguez to “Photo Library” which, when selected by double tapping, returns him to the Messages app.

The app drawer below the text input box is blank, but leaves the app card collapse button active. Tapping on said element — a small handlebar — and swiping right grants VoiceOver unseen access to a target device’s photos, details of which are read aloud by the system.

Swiping through the photo library, which is seemingly obscured by the Messages UI, and double tapping on a given photo inserts the image into the Messages text box. Multiple photos can be inserted, viewed and sent to an attacker’s device in this manner.

AppleInsider independently confirmed Rodriguez’s findings using current model iPhones, including iPhone X and XS devices, running the latest iOS 12.0.1.

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Word of the bypass arrives two weeks after Rodriguez discovered a pair of similar VoiceOver vulnerabilities that grant unauthorized access to user contacts and photos. Unlike the previously uncovered methods, today’s technique is far less involved and allows would-be attackers to offload photos onto another device with relative ease.

Concerned users can minimize exposure to the apparent bugs by disabling Siri lock screen access in Settings > Face ID & Passcode or Settings > Touch ID & Passcode under the “Allow access when locked” heading.