Rock and roll, Apple!
Sep/090
It’s D-Day! Well, not exactly, but Apple’s gotten creative this year by making the event coincide with the 090909 mark of the century. And boy, Steve Jobs is back! He’s the keynote speaker of the event. I’m sure some of you might have missed what has happened in the past hour, so why not make a summary?
Photo courtesy of gdgt
- iPhone and iPod touch OS 3.1. (duh)
- Genius function in iTunes now applied to App Store: It suggests what apps you might like based on your current inventory.
- Ringtones will be sold at $1.29.
- Free for iPhone users. Only iPod touch users who have OS 3.0 will get to download OS 3.1 for free.
- iTunes
- iTunes 9 released.
- Genius mixes (something like your iTunes DJ, but Genius technology incorporated)
- Home sharing. Songs, movies and shows can be copied to 5 different authorized computers.
- Redesigned iTunes Store.
- iTunes LP for music, Extras for movies.
- Sharing to Facebook & Twitter now possible.
- Apps can be managed through iTunes.
- iPods
- iPod touch pricings: $199 for 8GB, $299 for 32GB, $399 for 64GB
- 32GB and 64GB versions will have OpenGL.
- iPod classic will be bumped up to 160GB for the same old price: $249.
- iPod shuffle will not be kicked! In fact, there’s now the “nanochromatic” version of the shuffle for 2GB at $59, and a stainless steel version (4GB) at $99.
- iPod nano will have 2.2″ display, camera, mic and speaker built-in. FM player built-in as well. Voice recorder app and pedometer is also in that small little thing. Amazing.
- iPod nano will be draining your wallet of $149 for 8GB, or $179 for 16GB.
That’s all the announcements. I’m sure many of you guys out there have been expecting much more things from Apple, including a camera for the iPod touch. But cheer up, at least there were other improvements! And oh, jailbreakers: 3.1 is not jailbreakable yet. ;)
What to expect from the Apple Rock n’ Roll event?
Sep/090
It’s been very long since Gadget Cracker has updated anything at all. We’re very sorry for this. In any case, if you haven’t heard about it in other sites, the Apple Rock n’ Roll event is coming up! You can count on Engadget updating frequently here. There are plenty of rumors flying around this time, with none confirmed yet. Here’s a few that we’ve gathered over the course of the last few weeks. Again, nothing is actually confirmed, so please do not shoot us if we’re incorrect!
- This event will solely revolve around a music theme, i.e. there will not be any updates on Mac or the Apple TV, as speculated earlier.
- The iPod touch and iPod nano will be getting built-in cameras. So far, photos seem to show only that of the iPod touch, and the camera is located just beside the WiFi patch on the top-left corner of the back of the device. (this is further supported by some of Belkin’s casings for the iPod touch leaked out early)
- The iPod touch will have a 64GB model.
- The iPod classic range will be discontinued, effectively killing off Apple’s HDD-based music players.
- The App Store will be getting an upgrade in view of the 65000+ applications the App Store has.
- The new iPod range will not be available so soon, in view of some defects. (aww.)
Whatever it is, the event will start at 9am PDT, so check the Engadget link above! The event will start at GMT 1700hrs. Remember to count in the DST hour if you’re affected by the areas. (UPDATE2: You could always refer here, though.) Let’s hope this will be interesting…
EDIT: I almost forgot about this, but the iPhone OS 3.1 will be coming out soon, and it doesn’t seem that far-fetched to say that it might coincide with the event. Needless to say, the iPhone Dev Team has posted here that jailbreakers who have jailbroken their iPhones should NOT update to 3.1, or you will risk losing your unlock forever. Heads up!
UDID causes security compromise? Tapulous products’ users in danger!
Jul/097
Revenge, indeed.
Thanks to the guys at iPod touch Fans and their post here!
People out there who have a Tapulous account, beware. If you don’t know what a Tapulous account is, basically it’s the profile generated from the UDID (unique device identifier) of your iPhone/iPod touch. Tapulous’ authorization system is COMPLETELY dependent on your UDID, as practically speaking, you’re the only one with the number. It’s called UNIQUE for a reason, right?
Apparently that can be abused, with the UDID Changer app from Cydia. What’s detrimental is that your Facebook and Twitter information is stored on Tapulous’ servers as well. Of course it’s encoded, but when a malicious user changes their UDID to yours, Facebook and Twitter account data is immediately stored into their iPod touches/iPhones.
So what does this mean? It means that people can now access your Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as anything else they store in their servers. Applications produced by Tapulous are: Tap Tap Revenge (and all its variants), Twinkle, Fortune, Collage and FriendBook.
Your next question that comes into mind must be: “But how the *insert profanity here* can they get my UDID?” There are PLENTY of ways noted by iPod touch Fans, including, but not limited to:
- The malicious user may just ask you, and you may give it to them.
- The malicious user may give you screenshots for a fantastic application they are making and offer you a beta. Of course, they need your UDID for you to beta test.
- The malicious user may be someone you know that actually has access to your device.
- Installer applications, such as Installer and Cydia send requests to the server with the UDID in the request. The maicious user may set up a repo to collect UDIDs.
- Etc. There are so many ways, it’s ridiculous.
Tapulous is aware of the exploit and are working on a fix to it, but meanwhile, unless you want someone posting the unthinkable on whatever accounts compromised, delete your Tapulous account. Change your Facebook and Twitter password as well, if you’re the “better safe than sorry” type of person.
HOW-TO: iPhone TouchOSC + Pure Data + Ableton Live
Jun/0978
After I posted a YouTube video and this blog demoing TouchOSC controlling Ableton Live I received a lot of messeges from people having trouble figuring out how to get it working. All of the resources to do this are available at http://hexler.net/touchosc, but this is how I got it working on my PC, step by step.
TouchOSC (pic borrowed from http://hexler.net/touchosc)