In the continuing Apple vs FBI saga, BuzzFeed reveals Apple has been cooperating with the government all along, suggesting methods of retrieving information stored on the device without building a back door. One such method involves letting the device back up to iCloud, which may have provided the FBI with information relating to the incidents that took place on December 2. Only the device wasn’t able to back up to iCloud, because someone at the San Bernardino County reset the iCloud password, preventing the iPhone from backing up to iCloud.
Ars Technica clarifies what the FBI is asking Apple for. The FBI knows that it can’t bypass the encryption on the iPhone itself, but what it does want to do is try more than 10 PINs at a time. The only way they can do that is if Apple release a special version of the firmware that’s not only capable of running on the iPhone, but also not rejected by the device as unauthorised — and to do that, the FBI needs Apple to sign the software with their security key.
If the rumours are anything to go by, it looks as though we’ll see an iPhone this year with a dual-lens camera and possibly stereo speakers, with MacRumors saying suppliers are gearing up for production.
Mac App Store certificate issues presented themselves over the past week, but were largely drowned out by the whole Apple and FBI saga. The fix is either to re-download the apps in question, or to reboot your machine.
The launch of Apple Pay in China was apparently so successful that the service couldn’t cope with the number of card registration requests. 9to5Mac clarifies their story by saying the official word from Apple was that it was a staggered rollout, designed to prevent the situation of card registration failures.
Apple has extended their Repair Extension Program for MacBook Pro video issues. Certain models sold between February 2011 and February 2013 may exhibit video-related symptoms such as distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts, and if your machine is affected, you’re now covered until December 31 of this year.
An iPhone sales reward program for Apple Retail employees has been positioned as celebrating the success of the iPhone, but may result in salespeople pushing for iPhone sales where they wouldn’t normally. While sales incentives aren’t new to the retail space, I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’ve heard of an Apple Store employing such tactics in order to boost sales.
The mysterious “other” storage on your iPhone or iPad has been explained before, but this refresher from iDownloadblog tells us about the caches, device settings, and, well, “other” stuff that takes up space but isn’t enough to have a category of its own.
IMore tells us about the best to-do apps for the iPhone. Whether you need an app to get down a quick list of items, or a more advanced tool to manage your tasks, there’s something for everyone.
Tools and Toys checks out a classic Mac Apple Watch dock, which is kinda neat.
Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2016/02/monday-morning-news220216/