While question marks still remain regarding Siri's ability to properly recognize spoken word, judging by the amount of parody videos going viral, Apple's voice assistant software certainly has a pretty enviable career to fall back on in the entertainment industry.
While Macs have been notorious for being impervious to viruses - at least in terms of perception, while they were vulnerable, far more viruses were produced for Windows than OS X - their reputation for impeccable security is certainly being questioned now. Flashback, malware built to grab private information such as passwords entered in by users in applications, has evolved over time into a very dangerous piece of malicious software. In its beginnings, it required user interaction - through a dodgy looking Adobe Flash Installer - to lodge itself into one's Mac.
When it was released in 2010, the iPad was labeled as “a large iPod touch” and predicted to be a market failure by many (including a younger, more naïve version of myself). As it turns out, the fact that it is a large iPod touch is precisely what makes it so darn awesome, especially for non-tech-savvy people like my mother.
Phillippe Starck, a highly-regarded and respected contemporary designer, has revealed in an interview that he's been aiding Apple with a new product set for release in the next eight months, which he describes as being "revolutionary".
Apple has today pushed out an update for OS X which it hopes will close hole that allowed the Flashback Trojan to infect over half a million Macs. The update, named simply Java for OS X 2012-003, comes after over 600,000 Macs were infected by the Flashback Trojan at its peak, leaving third party developers to put together various apps for diagnosing and then cleaning infected systems.
The more popular the App Store has become, the more susceptible users have become to breach of account, it would seem. Naturally, Apple has upped the ante in an effort to combat the potential threat, although as some users have been finding out, the added security measures do seem to bear the hallmarks of a scam.
A new tool has been released by security firm F-Secure which will check a Mac for signs of the Flashback Trojan and, importantly, remove it. Best of all, the app is completely free, that’s right, free!
There's a lot of talk right now about Nokia and its Windows Phone 7 handsets. Specifically, it is the newly released and much hyped Lumia 900 which is seeing most of the headlines and clicks right now.
Much discussion surrounding Apple's ecosystem lately has been about them cutting the cord to the computer through iCloud. However, iTunes remains an important product that some may still need to use (or want to, if they haven't gone entirely to the cloud). And, with that being said, 9to5Mac are hearing from some sources close to Apple that the company has begun seeding iTunes 11 - the next major release of the software - internally.
The Flashback Trojan has caused quite a bit of panic among Mac users, having managed to infiltrate two thirds of a million computers worldwide. Apple has been working tirelessly to try and halt any further escalation, while those in the know have provided way for those affected to check and remove the problem from their stricken Mac.
