With both Android and iOS phones making privacy updates that will make it impossible for Google or Apple to unlock a device without a user’s passcode, even with a warrant, authorities from local police to the head of the FBI to the U.S. Attorney General are saying there should be some sort of backdoor way to gain access to these devices. But what they don’t realize is that leaving in that additional point of access just makes phones more vulnerable to other forms of snooping. [More]
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The Time Has Come: Facebook Forcing Smartphone Users To Download Separate Messaging App
By 7.29.14
Have the urge to send a Facebook message to your ex at goodness knows what time in the morning saying Zeus only knows what? If you want to make that mistake on your phone, soon you’ll have to download the social network’s entirely separate Messenger app, or forever keep your peace. Until the next time you hang out with your pal tequila, at least. [More]
Apple Downplays Reports Of Back Doors To iPhones; Security Expert Says Company Is Being Misleading
By 7.23.14
Late last week, forensic scientist Jonathan Zdziarski announced at a conference that Apple iPhones have back doors, undocumented functions that could allow unauthorized users to wirelessly connect and swipe data from the devices. Apple has since responded with a statement intended to downplay the issue, but Zdziarski insists that the computer company is not being honest with consumers. [More]
Google To Start Alerting Mobile Search Users To Flash-Heavy Sites
By 7.15.14
You know what’s really great? When you’re trying to access a website on your phone and the page you’re looking at uses Flash, which is not supported on iOS devices and hasn’t been supported on Android since version 4.1 started rolling out in 2012. In an effort to preempt user frustration (and nudge sites to upgrade their mobile experiences), Google is now including information about unsupported technology on a site when it turns up in mobile search results. [More]
Former iPhone User Suing Apple Over Unreceived Texts After Switching To Android
By 5.16.14
If you wouldn’t mind casting your mind back to Wednesday, we learned that many former iPhone users who’d made the switch to an Android phone have been having problems receiving text messages from iPhones, if they got them at all. And now one consumer is taking that seemingly unaddressed issue all the way to a lawsuit seeking class-action status. [More]
Trouble Getting Texts From iPhones After Switching To Android? You’re Not Alone
By 5.14.14
UPDATE: A Consumerist reader and former AT&T tech rep has a possible fix for some iPhone-to-Android switchers having this problem. Which, by the emails we’ve gotten since posting the original story below, is happening to a lot of our readers. [More]
Apple And Samsung Back In Court For Round Eleventy Billion Of Their Legal Fight
By 3.31.14
What’s happened once has happened before, and will happen again. Whether or not you ascribe to that kind of Battlestar Galactica/Rust Cohle on True Detective life view, it certainly feels like seeing Apple and Samsung in the legal ring again was inevitable. We’re on about round eleventy billion, give or take an eleventy, as the two head back to court today in a dustup over patents. Again. [More]
Too Much Of A Good Thing? ‘Flappy Bird’ Developer Pulls Game After Surge Of Success
By 2.10.14
Anyone who’s ever eaten an entire cake in one sitting knows that yes, it is possible for there to be too much of a good thing. And that goes for inedible things as well: The sudden success of mobile game Flappy Bird appears to have been too overwhelming for its developer, who pulled the mega popular game from app stores yesterday say he just “cannot take this anymore.” [More]
What’s The NSA Using To Spy On You Now? Angry Birds.
By 1.28.14
The revelations about just how embedded into every facet of modern, technological life the NSA is just keep coming. The spy agency isn’t just collecting calling records and tracking electronics; they’re in your iPhone games, too. [More]
iOS App Vulnerability Allows Hackers To Attack Device Via WiFi
By 10.29.13
A group of mobile security researchers say they have discovered a vulnerability in many mobile apps running on iOS that could allow a hacker to hijack the information being provided to a mobile device when used over an unsecured WiFi network. [More]
How The Heck Do I Decide Whether The New iPads Are What I Want?
October 22, 2013
While the smartphone market has become much more diverse in recent years, Apple’s iPad still dominates the tablet business in the U.S. Today, the company announced the latest iteration of the full-sized iPad — the iPad Air — along with an improved iPad Mini, hoping to continue this dominance. But many consumers aren’t fully informed of how these devices compare to already available Android and Windows tablets. [More]
Microsoft Finally Takes Head Out Of Sand, Opens Up Xbox Music To Android, iOS
September 9, 2013
Nearly a year after replacing its failed Zune music store with Xbox Music, Microsoft has finally come around to the realization that the service, which only worked on computers and wireless devices running Windows operating systems, wasn’t going to convince people to drop their Galaxy S4s, iPhones, iPads, or Kindle Fires. The company announced today that Xbox Music is now available for use on iOS and Android devices, and that web-based streaming is no longer relegated to computers running Windows 8 or RT. [via PCmag.com] [More]
Researchers Find Way To Sneak Malicious Apps Through iOS App Store
By 8.20.13
Considering Apple’s steely grip on the distribution of apps for iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, it’s small wonder that only a very small number of malicious apps have slipped through the company’s screening process over the years. But researchers at Georgia Tech say they have figured out a way to create an app that looks fine when being vetted but can wreak havoc once it’s up and running. [More]
DOJ Proposal: Apple Must Let Amazon, Barnes & Noble Sell E-Books Through iOS Apps
By 8.2.13
Though there are Kindle and Nook apps for iPhone and iPad, restrictions put in place by Apple prevent users from actually making e-book purchases via those apps without those companies having to pay a hefty commission to Apple. You can’t even see the prices Amazon and Barnes & Noble charge for e-books, thus making it difficult to comparison shop. But as part of the proposed remedies following Apple’s loss in the recent e-book price-fixing case, the Justice Dept. says consumers should have the option of buying e-books on iOS devices from Apple’s competition. [More]
Amazon Wriggles Its Way Around Apple’s Restrictions With Update To Kindle iOS App
By 7.31.13
It’s kind of like that song lyric, “Do a little dance, make a little love/get down tonight.” Except in this case the little dance is Amazon’s tricky runaround of Apple’s app restrictions, the love-making is a free sample of an e-book and getting down tonight is well, reading, I suppose. Amazon has pulled off a neat trick with its latest update to the Kindle iOS app in order to skirt Apple’s rules about in-app purchases.
Nike Assured Me An Android App For FuelBand Was In The Works, Ditches That Plan, Shrugs
By 2.11.13
Consumerist reader Jeremy is a fan of Nike’s FuelBand, a fitness tracking wristband that’s become pretty popular in the workout world. But he has an Android phone and currently there’s only an iOS app that syncs up with the FuelBand. So he asked Nike Support on Twitter if it’d be releasing a Droid version and was pleased when it replied that yes, the app was in the works. Cut to today when Nike announced it’s ditching that idea. [More]
Apple Pulls Photo Apps From App Store Because It Doesn’t Want You Seeing Any Nudie Pics
By 1.23.13
While what you do with your smartphone in the privacy of your own home is totally your business, Apple has a strict policy against pornographic images, or really, any nude photos being searchable on applications made for iOS. As such it has issued a smackdown against two of Canadian company 500px’s popular photo-sharing apps, pulling them from its app store citing nudie shenanigans. [More]
Don’t Call Your High School Crush: Facebook Launches Free Voice Calls On Messenger App
By 1.17.13
In case it isn’t embarrassing enough to realize you may have had one drink too many and sent your high school crush a gushing, nostalgia-filled message on Facebook the night before, the company is rolling out a new feature with its Messenger app —the ability to place voice phone calls over a WiFi network. So far the feature is only available for U.S. users so don’t get any ideas about calling your cousin in Australia. [More]
