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To find out that the Apple iPhone would roll out locked to Cingular on a multi-year exclusivity agreement was difficult enough for some folks to swallow. Imagine, then, the pain and suffering that'll be experienced by those in areas that Cingular has forsaken. Case in point: the Burlington Free Press has noted that Cingular offers not a sliver of coverage in the quaint state of Vermont, leaving well over half a million good citizens (Ben and Jerry included, we reckon) without their fix. While our initial instinct might be to buy the phone elsewhere and just roam 'til the cows come home (literally -- this is Vermont, after all), Cingular policy states that a customer's address must lie in a directly covered area -- and even for the few that manage to skate by that one, the carrier's known for canceling accounts that roam excessively. Of course, Cingular points out that eager buyers are more than welcome to buy it contract-free without activating an account, but there's not a lot of fun in that; meanwhile, Apple's staying mum on the subject, perhaps for fear of further agitating hundreds of thousands of irate Vermonters. And the problem is by no means limited to Vermont: residents of large parts of Maine, Virginia, West Virginia, New Mexico, the Dakotas, Arizona, Montana, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and Colorado (among other states) might find that Apple has passed them over come June, unless Cingular goes into turbo mode lighting up new service areas. Anyone out there willing to move for a cellphone?

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Labels: apple, apple iPhone, cellphones, mobile

Posted by Aadi at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments

Apple is apparently taking a dim view of software developers emulating the bright Mac OS X user interface it's developed for its upcoming iPhone handset. Attempts to post graphics that bring the look of the iPhone to existing Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices are being repulsed by legal threats.

Take the case of iPhony, an iPhone-alike launcher application developed for Palm OS devices. Posted online late last week, by Monday it had been withdrawn - well, the downloadable file, at any rate - at the behest of Apple's legal eagles.

Worse, perhaps, the company's attorneys have even threatened news sites that reported on the availability of the iPhone-esque skins, the Sydney Morning Herald alleges. To be fair, like the skins themselves, it's the use of Mac OS X icons that has Apple riled in this case.

Yes, it owns the icons and images of them, and has a right to demand they not be used in products it disapproves of. Websites it's gone after have willy-nilly reposted screenshots of the iPhone-imitating skins without considering the copyright implications.

But since the strength of the iPhone is how it works not how it looks, is all this legal activity really necessary? Dollar to a dime it helps promote the iPhone more than it impacts sales of the device.

Apple has form here, pursuing in the past individuals and companies who've attempted to offer utilities that emulate Mac OS X's Aqua UI and its Dock utility on Windows and Linux machines. It's even got stroppy with folk trying to make older versions of the Mac OS look like Mac OS X.

In March 2005, Google yanked a toolbar utility that operated not unlike Apple's own Dock, apparently at the behest of the Mac maker's intellectual property watchdogs. ®

Labels: apple iPhone, Emulator, google, iPhone, UI

Posted by Aadi at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments

Apple's iPhone is unlikely to become a gateway device for mobile malware, Symantec says. The handset will run an operating system based on Mac OS X, thus opening the possibility that the small number of viruse targeting the platform might be re-purposed to infect iPhone.

However, Concerns about possible mobile infestation of iPhones are "premature" at worst according to Eric Chien, an anti-virus researcher at Symantec.

For one thing the iPhone will be locked down so that consumers will be able to install only selected third party applications. While not dismissing the possibility that iPhone-specific malware could be created, Chien reckons it won't reach the levels currently seen with smart phones running Symbian OS. Nonetheless, vulnerabilities in Mac OS X could create future problems, he warns.

"The likely vectors of infection will be via any vulnerabilities on the device that allow code to execute. Unfortunately, just a single malware writer taking advantage of a single vulnerability could cause havoc, but for the most part such attacks will be limited," he writes.

"If the iPhone remains a closed device with not even Java applications or widgets let alone native code, the risk of infection becomes orders of magnitude lower."

Even though the iPhone is "locked down", interest in the technology is likely to spur the creation of home-brew hacks. The motives of these users is simply to run their own code on the phone, but the techniques pioneered by tech enthusiasts might be re-purposed for more malign purposes.

"Once they install and execute unknown code on their device, there is always a chance of executing malicious code. This scenario happened in the past with the Sony PSP and PSPBrick Trojan," Chien notes.

A mono-culture of devices running the same OS, knowledge among hackers about how software on the device works have been factors driving the creation of numerous items of malware on Windows PCs and the reason why mobile malware, despite considerable hype from some quarters, has been mercifully rare. Chien concludes that this is unlikely to change much with the arrival of iPhones later this year.

His analysis is published on Symantec's security blog here. ®

Labels: apple iPhone, apple ipod, handset, iPhone

Posted by Aadi at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments