Google told the U.S. Federal Communications Commission that Apple did indeed reject the Google Voice application from the iPhone store, despite contrary statements from Apple.Both Google and Apple have responded to questions posed by the FCC about the status of the Google Voice application. Apple said that it was still considering the application.

But Google, whose full comments only surfaced on the FCC Web site on Friday, said that Apple informed it that the Google Voice application was rejected because “Apple believed the application duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone. The Apple representatives indicated that the company did not want applications that could potentially replace such functionality,” Google wrote in the letter.

Apple did not immediately reply to a request for comment about Google’s filing, but in a statement made to The Wall Street Journal it insisted that it has not rejected Google Voice and that it continues to discuss it with Google.

Apple serves as gatekeeper for applications in its iPhone App Store. It has offered a few guidelines about what is not allowed, but has come under fire for rejecting some applications apparently only because they compete with services from either Apple or AT&T.

Google contends in the filing that Apple delivered the news about the rejection of the Google Voice application verbally, during a phone call between Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of product marketing, and Alan Eustace, Google’s senior vice president of engineering and research.

Source: PC World

Saturday, August 01, 2009: After a lot of hype, Apple has confirmed that it has released a software update to fix a vulnerability that could have allowed hackers to take control of the iPhone and use it for identity theft. The vulnerability was discovered by security experts at the Black Hat security conference, on Thursday.

As per the findings of Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators and Collin Mulliner of Fraunhofer SIT — the security experts who found the flaw — the vulnerability would allow a hacker to gain control of the device by sending a single SMS.

The researchers said they notified Apple of the problem more than a month before their presentation at Black Hat. The company had yet to release the patch, so they decided to publicise their findings in an effort to push Apple to act, reports The New York Times.

“We appreciate the information provided to us about SMS vulnerabilities which affect several mobile phone platforms,” an Apple spokeswoman said in a phone interview to PCMAG.com. “This morning, less than 24 hours after a demonstration of this exploit, we’ve issued a free software update that eliminates the vulnerability from the iPhone.”

According to Apple security note, “A memory corruption issue exists in the decoding of SMS messages. Receiving a maliciously crafted SMS message may lead to an unexpected service interruption or arbitrary code execution.”

Source: EFY Times

Showing a new sign of rivalry with the search engine giant, Apple has refused to allow Google to distribute Google Voice application to iPhone through Apple’s App Store. Google Voice is a free application that lets users assign a single number to ring their home, work and mobile phones, and also get voicemail inbox that could be accessed on the Web. But, Apple has reportedly banned iphone applications based on Google Voice.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, a Google spokeswoman said she couldn’t say why Apple had rejected the mobile version of Google Voice. Apple has previously turned away Internet telephony programmes because they repeated key iPhone functions.

Last week, Google said in a blog post that Apple rejected its location-aware mobile app Google Latitude that would have allowed users to track their location and see where their friends were.

In addition, GV Mobile — a third-party Google Voice iPhone app — has also been removed from the App Store.

“We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users,” a Google spokeswoman said.

It’s unclear why Apple did not approve the Google Voice application. However, some media reports say that AT&T may be behind the rejection. AT&T is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the US.

Source:  EFY Times

* Reset your iPhone by holding down the sleep and home buttons until the Apple logo appears.
* Restore your iPhone: In iTunes, click the Restore button under the Summary tab. Restoring the phone will erase contacts, calendars, photos, and other data on the phone, but will restore automatically backed-up information including text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, etc.

However, some issues chronicled below persist:

Visual Voicemail wasn’t accessible by many users from their iPhone 3G S after restoring from a previous model’s backup. Users are required to reenter their voicemail pins when prompted by the iPhone 3G S. If you’ve forgotten your pin, you can reset it by taking the following steps:

* Log onto AT&T myWireless
* Click on Phone/Device
* Click on Reset Voicemail Password
* Press the Submit button

A text message is sent to your phone with a new Visual Voicemail password.

Passwords previously saved for numerous applications were reported lost in the transfer to the iPhone 3G S. Users had to reenter passwords for a number of apps, including (but not necessarily limited to) AIM, LogMeIn, Loopt, MySpace, Palringo, Sirius XM, Tweetie, and Wallet. (Wallet’s database had to be recovered from MobileMe). The password recovery problem is likely attributable to the hardware change from a previous iPhone to the iPhone 3G S.)

Compass has to be reset periodically when it struggles with interference, which happens often enough that iPhone 3G S users are complaining about it. Apple offers some information about calibrating Compass on its Web site, as well as in a support document, iPhone 3G S: Re-calibrate Compass. These explain that the recalibration isn’t always necessary; sometimes you need to just ignore the recalibration messages while Compass self adjusts.

The iPhone 3G S’ Oleophobic screen coating is rumored to be incompatible with screen protectors, so we called several Apple stores to investigate and were told this isn’t true. The sales associate said that we could come into any Apple store and purchase a screen protector for the iPhone 3G S. Protectors for the 3G should also work on the 3G S.

Duplicate Contacts are being reported by a number of users on Apple’s discussion boards. We stumbled upon a nice explanation for and solution to this problem in this article: “About duplicate contacts and calendars on iPhone [OS] 3.0,” via Mac OS X Hints.

Find My iPhone remembers all your devices, including the old iPhone that you just turned off when you upgraded to a new handset last weekend. MobileMe does not appear to support a mechanism that will allow you to remove the tracking of an iPhone or iPod Touch from Find My iPhone. We contacted Apple through MobileMe support via online chat and asked about this.

According to Apple tech support, removing a device from the list involves sending the device a Remote Wipe command. MobileMe will then attempt to send this command for up to two hours and if unable to contact the selected device, it is deleted from Find My iPhone. This information is contrary to the Apple support document, “MobileMe, iPhone OS 3.0: Troubleshooting Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe” which states:

Previously-owned iPhone/iPod Touch appears at me.com/account
If your iPhone/iPod Touch was configured with your MobileMe account, it may still appear when you log in to www.me.com/account, even if you no longer possess the iPhone/iPod Touch. Currently, a device is removed from your account page list only after it is successfully wiped. This article will be updated as more information becomes available.

Note: we think the last sentence points out that Apple is aware of this bug in Locate My iPhone and will announce a fix later. Following the advice given in the online chat wasn’t successful. Nearly 12 hours later, the old iPhone 3G status is still pending a remote wipe in our test. We hope Apple will release a fix for this through the MobileMe Web site.

Wi-Fi connectivity and signal strength complaints have also cropped up after the iPhone OS 3.0 update: some users complain that their phones drop them from Wi-Fi unexpectedly, others that they can’t connect at all. Some users have been able to resolve their connectivity problems by going to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings, while others complained that this simple fix does not work. In the latter case, a restore might be necessary.

Troubleshooting tips
Force Quit has changed in iPhone OS 3.0 for the iPhone 3G S but remains the same for older iPhones that do not support Voice Control. In order to force quit an application, you must:

* iPhone 2G/3G: Press and hold the Home button for a few seconds until the app quits. (Valid for iPhone OS 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0.)
* iPhone 3G S: Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the “Slide to power off” screen appears, then press and hold the Home button until the app quits (usually within 6 seconds).

Apple has recently updated the following support documents that might also be useful if you encounter problems with your iPhone:

* “iPhone Basic Troubleshooting”–some iPhone basic troubleshooting tips.
* “Troubleshooting applications purchased from the App Store”–Try the following troubleshooting steps on your iPhone or iPod Touch in order to resolve an application’s issue.
* “Troubleshooting iPhone and iPod Touch contact and calendar syncing via USB on Windows”–If you’re having difficulty syncing your contacts or calendars to iPhone or iPod Touch with iTunes for Windows via USB, this article can help. Note: this article does not apply to wireless syncing with Exchange ActiveSync or MobileMe.

Some users also might consider following the Apple iPhone Troubleshooting Assistant before calling AppleCare or visiting the local Genius Bar.

Tell us about your iPhone OS 3.0 or iPhone 3G S upgrade problems in the comments.

Source:  CNET Reviews