While it is just over 24 hours since Apple released its iOS 7, a security flaw in its lockscreen has already been uncovered. A device can be locked by requiring a passcode to be entered every time to proceed further from the lock screen. The hack was found by a Spanish security enthusiast, Jose Rodriguez. It was reported first by Forbes.
How does the hack work?
The lockscreen with a passcode can be bypassed by pulling up the control center (which strangely by default can be accessed even when the device screen is locked) and using the alarm app.
Then keep the top power button for the device pressed down which shows up an option to shut off the device. Press cancel and press the home button twice. The second tap has to be slightly longer than the first one.
ADVERTISEMENT
This allows users access to all the apps which were running in the background before the device was in idle mode, which basically means someone could potentially access your photos or your email app.
Check out a video by Rodriguez.
The iOS 7 bug has been recreated on iPhone 4S apparently. Our very own Vivek Jain could recreate this vulnerability on his own iPhone 5. I too managed to recreate this bug on my own iPad Mini.
ADVERTISEMENT
What does Apple say?
According to Forbes, Apple accepted the bug existed and was quoted as saying:
Apple takes security very seriously and we’re aware of this issue. We’ll deliver a fix in a future software update..
So basically make sure be careful with your devices until a fix is introduced by Apple. In the meanwhile, it is not a bad idea to look stop the ‘Control Center’ from showing up while the screen is locked. Look up Settings >> Control Center on your phone or tablet and you will be able to stop the Control Center from showing up with a lockscreen.
Do you own a iPhone or iPad and have you been able to recreate this bug? Do drop in your comments.
Apple rolled out its new OS version for mobile platforms, iOS 7 last night. The update will make iOS 7, one of the most popular mobile OS in the world in a single night. iOS 7 is also what will be pre-installed on all iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s devices that are sold.This is where Apple with it’s well organised and linear ecosystem delivers brilliantly. I do not have an iPhone but do have an iPad Mini, which I updated with iOS 7 over the night. I was not entirely convinced about the new design from the images and videos I had seen before but I must say, Apple did a decent job with it.
So who will really love iOS 7?
The software update is radical. The design change is radical yet it seems familiar. Ideally when such a radical redesign takes place, people can dislike it for too many changes. I do not think anyone familiar who is already a iPhone or iPad user will dislike iOS 7.
Would I throw my Android away?
ADVERTISEMENT
No. iOS 7 might be a radical design change but it hardly changes anything else. I does not open up the OS for 3rd party apps like Android does and that simply means a Android fan will not be convinced by iOS 7.
What has changed with iOS 7?
Some dynamic wallpapers are pleasing to the eye.
There are many UI changes, most of them pleasing to the eye. The design itself is flatter and Apple finally gets rid of the overly done three dimensional icons and layout. The wallpapers are in two versions “Still” and “Dynamic”. Some of the dynamic wallpapers (another word for parallax) are quite terrible but darker or very light colours work well.
Some dynamic wallpapers are an eye sore
I noticed that the battery on my iPad Mini was draining marginally faster while using a dynamic wallpaper but I have not been on iOS 7 long enough to be absolutely sure.
There are changes with SIRI. This is where I am very disappointed with Apple. SIRI might be finally out of Beta but it is miles behind something like Google Now. The updated SIRI on iOS 7 works better than it was on iOS 6. It also allows you to change the gender for the voice for SIRI. But these upgrades are really unnecessary.
SIRI is redesigned but still works more like a glorified toy
SIRI is advertised as a great search tool but it hardly works all that well. I cannot use SIRI to send an email from my Gmail app (though I can fire up the app with SIRI) and it is hardly useful for local searches in India. SIRI ends up being a glorified toy and simply is not compelling enough. The big improvement to SIRI in iOS7 is that it could understand my accent a lot better.
Almost all of apps by Apple on iOS 7 get a revamp and for the better. iBooks is an exception.
The apps from Apple all get a nice upgrade. I liked the Calendar app’s design and it seems simply very easy to use than it was before. It still will be useless for many if they use Google Calendars but it integrates with Facebook events pretty well.
The photos and camera apps are also very good upgrades. The camera is easy to manage and photo editing options now include filters. I am not sure how useful they will be on a iPad Mini but phone users will like the new filters. All the apps get a new design and some improved features except iBooks. But Apple does not need to mess around with iBooks UI as it works absolutely to near perfection as it is.
Talking about apps, iOS 7 improves the way we can move from one app to another or remove some of the apps running in the background. Simply press the home button twice and slide through sideways from app to app. Slide an app upwards and it is closed. Sliding through from one app to another is something I really find useful on my Nexus phone. So this basically makes the whole UI a lot more fluid.
Sliding through one app to another
Earlier it was not easy to quickly put your iPhone or iPad in “Airplane” mode or reduce the screen brightness unless you went to settings. Now users can slide upwards from the edge of the screen to open quick settings like putting device on “Airplane” mode or adjusting brightness and volume in a single motion.
Some basic settings can be used by swipe the screen upwards from the edge of the screen
Final conclusions!
If you are a iPhone or iPad users for a long time, you are going to love this upgrade. Basically the changes on iOS 7 fix a lot of things that needed fixing. People who are on the the Apple ecosystem will love it. People who are not necessarily on the Apple ecosystem entirely might find this upgrade, old wine in a new bottle.
Have you upgraded to the new iOS 7 version? Do drop in your opinions in your comments.
If you’re a developer and use a Unix-like OS, you must be spending a good amount of time inside the shell. Here’s a nice, little tip on how to play Music with in the command line interface, in OS X.
OS X ships with a CLI utility called afplay. There’s not much documentation available, even the man page doesn’t show its options. But it’s there and more importantly, it works.
To use it, pass a Music file’s path in the command, like this:
ADVERTISEMENT
afplay ~/Music/song.mp3
I guess it works for all Music files, regardless of the type (I tried it with .m4a and it worked fine). To stop the play, you can of course hit Ctrl + C and the shell will terminate it.
You can also play Music in background by appending an ampersand to the command, like this:
afplay ~/Music/song.mp3 &
This will allow you to use the shell while the Music is playing in background. To stop it, you can do killall afplay.
You can also use Quicklook’s CLI to play Music files. The utility is named qlmanage. It basically throws a Quicklook pop up of any file you pass as an argument. So it works fine for Music files too.
Rome2rio is a multi-modal travel search guide that aims at making travelling easy. rome2mio has a map based UI. You should enter the origin and destination places and it will be give you the travel combination of cars, buses, trains, ferries or planes that you should take.
The app also mentions you the amount of money that you should spend to reach your destination. The service splits the travel mode. It also mentions the amount of money that you should spend for each mode of transportation and then mentions the total amount. The airfares are taken from Katak.
Similarly, Indian train details are provided by Indian Railways. It gives you an option to enter the travel dates and it pulls the exact airfares from Katak. It features 670 airlines worldwide, and features trains in Europe, China and India. It also allows you to book your tickets straight away when you choose your dates and your preferred airlines.
Hotel bookings are also available.
It also gives you multiple choices of transportation/origin/destination and you can choose the one you prefer. For example, when I searched for a travel guide from Madurai, India to Tokyo, Japan, it gave me an option to land either at Tokyo Narita or at Tokyo Haneda.
The price tags are mentioned in USD by default. You can choose to change that to your preferred currency any time.
How rome2rio stakes against Google Maps?
rome2rio is basically Google Maps with additional features. But the main advantage of rome2rio over Google Maps is that, the former gives you multi-modal travel options while Google Maps limits to one mode of travel. Also Google Maps doesn’t show fares and doesn’t allow bookings.
While searching for answers online, you probably have been directed to a Yahoo Answers page from time to time. Yahoo Answers was a question and answer service that allowed users to ask questions on any topic and other users to write in their answers. The website was very popular and still has a lot of questions asked and answered on it. Only problem with it was that Yahoo itself was ignoring it for years.
Yahoo’s CEO being a ex-Googler would know how regularly Yahoo answers get featured on Google’s search results. So it is not a surprise to see Yahoo Answers not being neglected anymore.
Today, Yahoo Answers got a much needed fresh coat of paint and some very useful features. The new design makes it easy to understand how Yahoo Answers work. It has a home dashboard which show users activity, questions marked in a watchlist or even recent questions asked.
Here is a screenshot of the new design:
Now compare that to the old design which is still active outside the US.
The search feature on Yahoo Answers is a lot better than before. It prompts questions much like Google search does. Also now there are no closed questions but all questions asked remain available for reference. The notifications on questions has also been updated with more easy access on every question and answer. The new design also supports mobile platform a lot better than previous version.
The biggest change is support for multimedia. Now answers can include images and videos. You can view an introduction to all the new features in the video below.
Yahoo Answer’s competion
While Yahoo was asleep at the wheel with its Q&A community, there have been a notable competitor. One that is seeing a lot of questions answered is Quora and it marched ahead thanks to its social media integration and also allowing people to post answers with images and videos from other web sources. Google is also looking to roll-out a new video help service called Google Helpouts.
What are your views on the new design for Yahoo Answers? Do drop in your comments.
MyAppSharer is an Android app that helps you to easily share your Android apps with your friends. You can choose to share the apps’ market (Google Play) links or directly send the app package (APK file).
It is a free app and supports every Android device running Android 1.6 and above. The app is easy to use and makes Android apps sharing a lot easy. Also the best thing is that, your friend doesn’t need to have MyAppSharer installed on his device.
The user interface requires no description. It is an user friendly app and one can start playing with the app within seconds of installation.
On launching the app, all the Android apps installed on your Android device populate. You can choose the list of apps that you want to share. You can also select/deselect all the apps.
You can share by two ways :
ADVERTISEMENT
As a market link : You can share the market link of the app and your friend will have to download the app package himself/herself. You can share the market link by various means : text messaging, QR codes, bluetooth, bluetooth (zip) add to Dropbox, Facebook and a lot more.
Share the APK file : The second option is sharing the entire app package. Like the first option you can share the entire APK by bluetooth, bluetooth (zip) or by internet via mail, Dropbox, Skype and many more.
Important things to note
ADVERTISEMENT
To share the QR code for a particular app, you should have Barcode Scanner installed on your Android.
To add the market link or APK fle to Dropbox, you should have the Dropbox app installed on your Android.
It has been reported by many users that they are not able to receive the apps’ APK/market link by bluetooth on their Nexus device. MyAppSharer developer recommends you to share by bluetooth (zip) if you are sharing the file to a Nexus user.
Doesn’t this app look brilliant? Do give it a go and share your thoughts on it with us.
Most of the smartphone apps these days ask for special permissions like accessing your contacts, sending texts on their own, using your Gallery photos and more. To be on the safe side, we must be aware of the things that these apps ask and should take steps to be safe. If any app is found to be leaking out your contact numbers to third parties or sending your private data to others, that app should be removed immediately.
To take of care of your privacy, here comes Clueful. If you are an Apple fanboy or a previous iOS user, you might recognize this app. It is an app brought by Bitdefender. Available earlier to the iOS users, Clueful is new to Android. The app is easy to use and gives you a detailed analysis on the list of apps installed in your Android.
How Clueful Works
On opening Clueful, the app scans all the apps installed on your Android and compares with it’s Cloud database from Bitdefender. Note that the app requires Internet connectivity to work.
Once done, it classifies them as low, moderate and high risk apps.
It also gives you a Privacy Score. The larger the score, the safer you are.
Features of Clueful
Once the apps have been classified, you can get a depth analysis of the apps’ privacy by clicking on that particular app.
It also lets you to uninstall apps right within the app.
You can filter apps and then check which particular apps use your location, which particular apps are viruses and more.
It works as an anti-virus, anti-theft, web control and SMS control tool.
It scans each app that you download from Google Play immediately and lists it as a low, moderate or high risk app.
It is a must have app for every Android user who give privacy the first priority. Privacy matters.
Twitter has always been secretive about its earnings and revenues. For many years, Twitter was not even attempting to make money but was gaining new users and also its place in the mainstream online culture. Today much of the news around the world is broken first on Twitter.
Twitter has taken the next step in its journey by filing for a ‘secret’ IPO. The public offering will make it a listed company and allow the public at large to buy shares into Twitter.
This is what Twitter’s official account tweeted:
We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.
What does that signify for Twitter
Twitter might be secretive about it’s revenues but they are probably still below the billion dollar mark. That is why under US law they can file for a secret IPO (read more about that here). It also means that Twitter is making a lot of money from its sponsored ads feature and is confident of future revenues. It also means Twitter will NOT be bought by a larger company, at the least for many years now.
What should Twitter’s users expect?
Expect a lot more ads than there were before on Twitter. Currently sponsored posts on Twitter are few but effective but with not shareholders to answer to, they might get aggressive with those sponsored tweets.
If you are a Twitter user like me who does not have a verified sign, expect second class treatment. Twitter is going to introduce the best and the newest features to its verified celebrities. We can already see signs of it in with a new @mention filter Twitter introduced exclusively for verified users only.
Love your 3rd party app for Twitter? Do not expect that it will be around for too long. Twitter has already harmed the 3rd party ecosystem around its platform with new API rules that set strict limits. I think by next year Twitter will work very hard to kill of any 3rd party app that works on a mobile platform.
Finally, expect Twitter to re-design stuff. Expect more filters and more coherence to sometimes a mindless stream of tweets that can overwhelm users. Twitter will now have a lot of money to hire and buy the best.
What do you think about Twitter’s future as a publicly listed company? Do drop in your comments.
If you never knew, uninstalling some Android apps doesn’t take away all the data. There are some junk files left which can be erased completely with Clean Master. It is an all-in-one app that cleans the app cache, unused files, residual files (junk files left by uninstalled apps) and search history. Also, it lets you to easily uninstall/take backups of apps that you want.
The app also acts as a task killer. But there is a reason why task killers fail! You can read about that on Not much of a killer post, published on The Hindu.
On launching Clean Master, you’ll be shown top graphs which indicate the used and unused spaces on your external SD card and the phone’s internal storage.
The app also shows the amount of space recovered after each clean.
Junk Files allows you to clean all the cached files and residual files. Privacy allows you to clean the search history. Tasks allows you to kill tasks. App Manager allows you to uninstall apps or take backups.
Also, Clean Master allows you to schedule clean jobs.
What’s your thought on this 50 million+ downloaded app? Do let us know if you know more apps like this.
Apple had it’s iPhone event last night and for the first time did something very different. Apple introduced two smartphones, one called the iPhone 5c and the other being the more expensive iPhone 5s. Apple has always introduced just one phone every year unlike its competitors who sold multiple models for different types of users.
iPhone 5c: A colourful iPhone 5
The iPhone 5c will feature with more or less the same specifications as the iPhone 5 from last year (except iPhone 5c is plastic), except it will feature iOS 7 and also show up in many different colours.The phone features a A6 processor and a 4-inch screen with Retina Display. I think this phone will probably end up exciting current iPhone owners but might not impress the high end Android owners as much. I mentioned Android phone users because this phone was supposed to be the cheaper iPhone with an eye towards capturing a big share of emerging markets like India and China.
The phone though might have been dubbed as the cheaper iPhone for emerging markets like China and India. The phone is being priced competitively in the US for $99 for the 16GB model and $199 for the 32 GB model. But those prices are with a 2-year phone contract and the phone without a contract is $549. That at today’s exchange rate will be over Rs. 35,000 in India! That is not a cheap phone by any means. If Apple was hoping to capture the emerging market with iPhone 5C, it might have got it wrong.
iPhone 5s – the real iPhone upgrade
With iPhone 5s, Apple has sort of escaped the iterated improvements on their phones. The phone will ship in 3 different colours, featuring a 4 inch diagonal screen with retina display. The camera will support taking photos in burst mode and also supports slow motion capture.
It will pack two processors. The A7 chip and M7 motion co-processor. The A7 chip supports 64-bit architecture and that makes iPhone 5s an extremely powerful device. The M7 motion co-processor basically will track data from gyroscope, accelerometer and the magnetometer on the phone. This data capturing should allow developers to introduce some really useful contextual apps in the future.
If 64-Bit architecture was not enough, iPhone 5s has made the home button in a fingerprint sensor. This sensor can be used to unlock your phone. People tend to not use pass codes because it involves typing 4 digit numbers everytime we open the phone. I suppose fingerprint sensors will make life a lot more easy. It will also disincentive theft of iPhones.
ADVERTISEMENT
So what is Apple really upto?
ADVERTISEMENT
Some tech blogs have mentioned that Apple is now following the likes of Samsung by releasing two different phones. I do not think that is the case, otherwise the iPhone 5c would have been cheaper. Apple on the other hand is taking a leaf out of its laptop business.
The MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air are two variants of the mac laptop. The MBP is the premium one and is probably one the most costly laptops around just like iPhone 5s will be the most costly smartphone around. The competitive pricing of MacBook Air is being replicated with the slightly cheaper but still packed with good software and hardware iPhone 5c.
The real coup for Apple would be for the iPhone 5s selling in its millions (it probably will) in developed countries but wring away or arrest the total domination of Android in emerging markets with iPhone 5c. The real possible danger Apple faces is if iPhone 5c eats into market-share of iPhone 5s.
