Dragon’s Technology    Dragon’s Technology Forum

Apple has removed an iPhone app considered anti-gay following a wave of protests sent through the online petition site Change.org.

Initially approved and available in the App Store in October, the Manhattan Declaration app was submitted by members of the Manhattan Declaration, a movement launched last year by a number of Christian leaders espousing their condemnation of both gay marriage and abortion rights.

In an interview with De Telegraaf reporter Alfred Monterie, Wozniak said that Android will become the dominant smartphone platform. He didn’t write off the iPhone completely, however, saying it “has very few weaknesses” and that, “when it comes to quality, iPhone is leading.” While he admitted the quality of Android phones hasn’t been consistent, he championed the platform, saying “Android phones have more features” and that eventually the quality of the experience will match iOS.

Wozniak had one or two more interesting revelations – notably that Apple had tried to create a super smartphone as far back as 2004. The company had partnered with a well-known Japanese phone manufacturer (that he didn’t name) to make the phone, he said, but it wasn’t quite good enough for Apple.

“Apple was satisfied with the quality but wanted something that could surprise the world,” Wozniak revealed. “If Apple comes with a new product it must have a real breakthrough.”

Finally, Wozniak took a parting shot at Nokia, saying its phones are “the mark of a previous generation.” He suggested the company should launch a fresh brand that appeals to a young audience.

Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs demonstrated iOS 4.2 at the company’s iPod event early in September, showing off new features such as AirPlay wireless streaming of audio, video and photos to the new Apple TV or other AirPlay-compliant devices, an expansion of the company’s existing, audio-only AirTunes feature.

Jobs also introduced the company’s entirely new AirPrint wireless printing architecture, designed to enable users to create hard copies of web pages, emails and photos managed through a new Print Center app.

New features given and taken away

The new update will also finally bring multitasking features and iOS Folders to the iPad, along with a variety of other features currently only available on the iPhone and iPod touch, such as support for multiple email aliases, a unified inbox, and messages organized by threads in Mail, and the ability to open attachments in third party apps.

New multitasking features will also incorporate the software orientation lock and music playback controls available on the iPhone running iOS 4, which are accessed via swiping to the left from the list of currently running apps. The iPad also presents a brightness control in this section

The iPad will also lose its hardware toggle assigned to locking the screen orientation; the button will instead work to mute audio, just like the iPhone. This move has generated some controversy because Apple not only refuses to offer customers a choice of how their hardware buttons work, but has also duplicated mute functionality, as the audio down button already works as to rapidly mute audio playback.

New features for gamers and enterprise users

iOS 4.2 will also bring Game Center to the iPad, allowing players to invite friends or find new opponents online to play against, as well as track their own achievements and high scores.

Apple has also outlined enhanced enterprise support features in iOS 4.2, including new device management capabilities, the ability to lock down email account settings, and stronger security enhancements.

New language and accessibility

The update also brings support for more than 30 new languages in keyboards and dictionaries, including Arabic, Greek and Hebrew.

It also strengthens accessibility features including support for navigating VoiceOver using a wireless keyboard and a wide range of refreshable braille output displays in more than 25 languages. On the iPad, larger text options up to 56 point fonts can also be specified for use in Contacts, Mail, Messages and Notes.

Previously reported iOS 4.2 features

A general overview of major iOS 4.2 features was profiled in a First Look report following Apple’s initial demonstration.

AppleInsider also noted in a report filed in September that iOS 4.2 also incorporates support for Google’s revised YouTube voting, a direct link to launching a FaceTime video call from within the SMS messages interface, and new CoreMIDI music APIs for music-related apps.

Happy Halloween all please make it a safe one

According to the October 29 filings in the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin — first reported by the blog PatentlyApple — Apple is accusing Motorola of infringing on six patents, three of them focused on touchscreens. The products that it claims include the infringing technology are Motorola’s Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Cliq, Cliq XT, BackFlip, Devour A555, Devour i1, and Charm.

Earlier this month, Motorola Mobility filed suit against Apple asking the US District Court in Delaware for a declaratory judgment that Apple had no rights to sue it for infringing 12 patents that it said Apple has asserted in targeting Android-phone maker HTC. None of those 12 patents are being invoked by Apple in its suit filed Friday. Motorola also filed two patent infringement lawsuits against Apple charging violations in the iPad, iTouch and iPhone products.

Apple is seeking a jury trial and compensatory damages.

The report from author Sarah Ellison states that the publication has “confirmed” that a Verizon iPhone will be released in early 2011. It noted that the most talked-about phone in America — the Verizon iPhone — is one that doesn’t even exist.

The report, which profiles Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg’s efforts to build the “nation’s most reliable” wireless network, notes that Verizon’s network will be “assaulted” in early 2011 with millions of new customers using the bandwidth-heavy iPhone. It was an influx of data consuming iPhone users that caused major problems and a public relations debacle for AT&T.

The report detailed how Verizon passed on the iPhone in 2005 because the wireless carrier felt Apple and its chief executive, Steve Jobs, wanted too much control over the sale of the device, and too large a cut of the monthly service fees. It also stated that Apple was wary of building a CDMA iPhone because the wireless technology is not as popular across the globe as it is in the U.S.

“Seidenberg tried to reassure Jobs that Verizon was quickly building a faster 4G (fourth-generation) network, one that would work globally,” Ellison wrote of a meeting between the two in 2007. “He also tried to convince Jobs that Verizon had a superior 3G network to AT&T’s. Jobs listened politely, as Seidenberg tells it, and agreed to stay in touch.”

The two companies allegedly began talking again in December 2007, as AT&T struggled with dropped calls and network issues for iPhone users. The result: a new version of the iPhone 4, compatible with Verizon’s 3G CDMA network, set to launch next year.

Verizon’s iPhone is expected to offer special features, like live TV for customers of the company’s FiOS cable service. It also, according to Fortune, likely will not work outside of the U.S.

Fortune joins a list of reputable news sources that have also confirmed that the iPhone will launch on Verizon’s network in early 2011. Earlier this month, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg all independently reported that Apple would release a CDMA version of its iPhone on the Verizon network next year.

The anticipated partnership has also been foreshadowed this week with the sale of Apple’s iPad at Verizon stores. Customers can buy a Wi-Fi iPad bundled with a MiFi Intelligent Mobile Hotspot at the same price as an iPad with integrated 3G connectivity.

As widely reported a couple weeks ago, Verizon Wireless announced plans to start selling the Apple iPad Oct. 28 through a MiFi bundle that lets you connect up to five devices at once.

The bundle includes a Wi-Fi-only iPad and a cigarette box-sized MiFi 2200 3G Hotspot, which comes with multiple ports. Data plans start at $20 a month for 1GB, and do not require contracts.

To circumvent the incompatibility between T-Mobile’s CDMA network and the iPad’s 3G capacity, Verizon had to forgo the more popular iPad Wi-Fi+3G tablets sold by AT&T. Instead it pairs a less expensive iPad Wi-Fi with a MiFi hotspot.

Verizon is selling the iPad Wi-Fi 16GB + MiFi for $629.99, iPad Wi-Fi 32GB + MiFi for $729.99, and iPad Wi-Fi 64GB + MiFi for $829.99, or just $0.99 more than an iPad with built-in 3G costs.

Also today, AT&T began selling the iPad at its stores. Like with the iPhone, AT&T sells the iPad Wi-fi + 3G. It offers comparable data plans of 250MB for $15 a month, and 2GB for $25 a month

Antivirus firms first reported the malware, dubbed “Boonana,” on Wednesday when Intego and SecureMac, two Mac-only security vendors, warned Mac OS X users that the worm was aimed at them.

Boonana spreads via messages posted to social networking or microblogging sites. Those messages bait the trap with the subject “Is this you in the video?” and a link to a malicious site. People who bite and click the link are then prompted to run a Java applet.

That applet is key to the malware’s cross-platform capabilities, said Symantec in a note posted to its research blog.

“The [malware] is written in Java, which is a platform independent language,” said Symantec researcher Jeet Morparia. “Individual modules contain Java compiled files, which are packaged in a Java runtime executable. As long as a computer has the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on it, which is often the case across all the platforms, the threat can execute itself.”

Intego and Symantec noted that the worm includes several components, including an IRC connector used by the hacker to issue commands to hijacked computers, a keylogger to steal usernames and passwords, and a rootkit to hide it from security software.

Functionally, Boonana works the same as the better-known Koobface Windows worm. Koobface has been actively infecting Windows PCs for more than two years, although virulent forms used in large-scale attacks didn’t appear until early 2009.

Koobface, an anagram of Facebook, is best-known for infecting PCs through spammed messages on the giant social networking service.

According to Symantec, Boonana includes a component that reads browser cookies of users logged into Facebook, then posts additional bogus messages and links on the site using those Facebook accounts.

A Facebook spokesman downplayed the threat, saying in an e-mail reply to a request for comment that it was a “small-scale attack.” As is its practice, Facebook has blocked access to accounts compromised by Boonana in an attempt to quell the malware outbreak.

Marc Fossi, the director of Symantec’s security response team, echoed Facebook, saying that his group had tracked a number of infection attempts, but that the number was “not in epidemic proportions.”

The important element in Boonana, Fossi continued, is its cross-platform infection ability, courtesy of Java, which is installed on many Windows, Mac and Linux machines. Such threats are rare, he added, as he cited the one example he was familiar with. “I recall [just] one piece of malcode from a few years back that affected Windows and OS X, but I believe it was proof of concept and didn’t really go anywhere,” he said.

Mac OS X has bundled an Apple-maintained version of Java for years, but last week the company announced it was “deprecating,” or dropping it, from OS X. Java is also out as a development platform for the upcoming Mac App Store, according to Apple’s guidelines, and will probably not find a home in the next version of Mac OS X, dubbed “Lion” by CEO Steve Jobs during a sneak peak on Oct. 20.

For Dino Dai Zovi, a noted Mac vulnerability and exploit researcher — and the co-author of the Mac Hacker’s Handbook — Apple’s ditching Java can’t come too soon.

“Most Mac users do not need or even use Java, and [deprecating it] will make them safer than having a large window of vulnerability in a plug-in that is being actively attacked in the wild through exploits that can easily be adapted to target Mac OS X,” Dai Zovi said in an e-mail reply to questions about Java.

“It’s not worth the risk of having it enabled,” he added.

Fossi agreed. “It probably isn’t a bad idea” for Apple to drop Java, he said.

Apple’s operating system rival has said it’s seen an “unprecedented wave” of Java exploits in the last nine months. Last week, Microsoft’s malware group announced that Java exploits had skyrocketed recently, booming from less than half a million in the first quarter of 2010 to more than 6 million in the third quarter.