Tag Archives: iOS 5

Hacker Demonstrates Untethered Jailbreak For iOS 5 [Video]

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Back in November, iOS hacker Pod2g announced in a message on Twitter that he had discovered a bug in the iOS 5 software that could provide an untethered jailbreak. To backup his claims, Pod2g has posted a video to YouTube that demonstrates the hack in action, but he’s yet to provide any indication as to when the jailbreak might go public.

Following his announcement last month, a member of the Chronic Dev-Team verified Pod2g’s exploit and confirmed that it was indeed legitimate, but claimed that it was being kept “highly guarded until the right time.”

Just in case you needed proof of its existence, Pod2g has created a video demonstration (above) of the untethered jailbreak in action on an iPod touch running iOS 5.0.

It’s all very promising for those who are itching to install apps and tweaks that aren’t authorized by Apple, but unfortunately, we have no idea when the jailbreak will be made public. There’s clearly a lot more work to be done before Pod2g releases his hack, but at least we know it’s in progress.

[via AppAdvice]

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How To Display The Battery Percentage On Your iPhone [iOS Tips]

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Today’s tip is a simply one, but it’s a question I get asked a lot when people see the battery percentage in my iPhone’s status bar. The iPhone ships with this feature disabled by default, and Apple hides the option away within the device’s general settings. So, here’s how to enable it!

Open up the Settings app on your iPhone and tap on the ‘General’ tab.

Now hit the ‘Usage’ tab towards the top, and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

You’ll see an option for ‘Battery Percentage’ — simply turn this on and your iPhone will now display your remaining percentage next to the battery indicator in the status bar.

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How To Print Directions From The Maps App In iOS 5 [Tips]

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Having the Maps app on the iPhone is a lifesaver for me. Not only does it help me navigate my way around places I don’t know, but it’ll also tell me how to get there when I leave the house.

However, trying to read directions from an iPhone while driving isn’t ideal, and it’s certainly not safe. Fortunately, iOS 5 allows you to print your directions from directly within the Maps app as long as you have a printer compatible with AirPrint. Here’s how!

To do this, open up the built-in Maps app and begin by tapping the ‘Directions’ button at the bottom. By default, your directions will automatically start from your current location, and the app will assume you’re driving a car. But you can change these if necessary.

Once you’ve told the app where you want to go, simply hit the ‘Route’ button in the top right-hand corner. The app will then calculate your route and present you with your directions.

Now tap the options button in the bottom right-hand corner. Your map will curl up and you’ll find there’s a ‘Print’ button underneath — tap this!

Now you can select your printer. It must be compatible with AirPrint or your iPhone will not find it. However, you can use an application such as Printopia on your Mac to connect to standard printers.

Once you’ve selected your printer and the number of copies you’d like to print, simply hit the print button and your directions will be on their way.

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Apple says it dumped Carrier IQ software in iOS 5

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Apple admitted on Thursday that it has used and supported in the past the CarrierIQ software that has the mobile tech world up in arms for its ability to track information on users’ smartphones. Apple says the software is opt-in only for its customers and it hasn’t used it for tracking keystrokes or messages. The company says it stopped supporting this software “in most” of its products with the latest version of its iOS mobile operating system. Now, after complaints regarding the level of detail the software can record about a user — and questions being asked by U.S. lawmakers — Apple says it will remove the software from all of its mobile devices through a software update.

In a statement, the company said:

We stopped supporting CarrierIQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.

Sprint has admitted to receiving data from CarrierIQ’s software, but it denies using it to track its customers, as has AT&T, which says it uses the information for network management. Verizon, on the other hand, has denied using the software, as has Google on any of the Android phones it makes.

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Apple Turns Its Back On Keylogging Smartphone “Diagnostic” Company Carrier IQ

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Apple comments on the presence of Carrier IQ on some iPhones:

We stopped supporting CarrierIQ with iOS 5 in most of our products and will remove it completely in a future software update. With any diagnostic data sent to Apple, customers must actively opt-in to share this information, and if they do, the data is sent in an anonymous and encrypted form and does not include any personal information. We never recorded keystrokes, messages or any other personal information for diagnostic data and have no plans to ever do so.

Seems like that says it all. Carrier IQ’s not seeing a lot of support from the big boys here, is it?

[via All Things D]

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Keylogging Spyware Carrier IQ Also Comes Installed On Many iPhones! Here’s How To Turn It Off

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The Carrier IQ scandal has broken everywhere since we first reported it yesterday morning. The invasive rootkit is installed on over 140 million phones the world over, and logs everything you do with your device, from the numbers you dial to the smutty pictures you send to your girlfriend.

Yesterday, we reported the story as one proving Steve Jobs right about how Android tracks everything you do, but a day later, things seem a lot less black and white. Carrier IQ’s software comes pre-installed on other devices besides Android, like BlackBerries and Nokias, and as even the name of the software suggests, seems to be something installed by carriers. And, as it turns out, some iPhones. Luckily, disabling it is the easiest thing in the world, and it logs none of your personal information, unlike the software’s more nefarious Android counterpart.

Developer and hacker chpwn explains how Carrier IQ works:

Carrier IQ, the now infamous “rootkit” or “keylogger”, is not just for Android, Symbian,BlackBerry, and even webOS. In fact, up through and including iOS 5, Apple has included a copy of Carrier IQ on the iPhone. However, it does appears to be disabled along with diagnostics enabled on iOS 5; older versions may send back information in more cases. Because of that, if you want to disable Carrier IQ on your iOS 5 device, turning off “Diagnostics and Usage” in Settings appears to be enough.

In other words, all you need to do is install iOS 5 and turn off “Diagnostics and Usage” and Carrier IQ is nuked. Even if you don’t, though, it’s far less dangerous on iOS:

Importantly, it does not appear the daemon has any access or communication with the UI layer, where text entry is done. I am reasonably sure it has no access to typed text, web history, passwords, browsing history, or text messages, and as such is not sending any of this data remotely.

So it seems on iOS, at least, Carrier IQ is fulfilling its function of allowing carriers and Apple to diagnose problems with a handset. It stores only a limited amount of information, none of it personal, and can easily be opted out on. On Android devices, however, it comes pre-installed, logs everything, may or may not be sending your personal data to external servers and is impossible to shut off. So while Carrier IQ may not be unique to Android, the nefarious aspects of the software certainly seem to be,

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First iOS 5.1 Beta Seeded To Developers, With Rumored Battery Life And Siri Improvements!

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Apple has just seeded the first iOS 5.1 beta to developers, along with XCode 4.3 beta. What’s new, only time and playing around with iOS 5.1 will tell, but according to past reports, iOS 5.1 should not only get to the bottom of the iPhone 4S’s battery drain issues, it should also introduce some cool new Siri functionality. We’ll have to wait and see though.

After the jump, the release notes. Are you a developer who has noticed something new in iOS 5.1, or seen the update fix your iPhone 4S battery drain problem? Please (sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)!

 

Introduction

iOS SDK 5.1 provides support for developing iOS applications and includes the complete set of Xcode tools, compilers, and frameworks for creating applications for iOS and Mac OS X. These tools include the Xcode IDE and the Instruments analysis tool among many others.

With this software you can develop applications that run on iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 5.1. You can also test your applications using the included iOS Simulator, which supports iOS 5.1. There are two Xcode iOS SDK 5.1 images, one for installing on a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.6.7 (Snow Leopard) or later, the other for installing on a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).

This version of iOS is intended only for installation on devices registered with Apple’s developer program. Attempting to install this version of iOS in an unauthorized manner could put your device in an unusable state.

For more information and additional support resources, visit:

http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/

Bug Reporting

Please report any bugs not mentioned in the “Introduction” section using the Apple Bug Reporter on the Apple Developer website (http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/). Additionally, you may discuss these issues and iOS SDK 5 in the Apple Developer Forums: http://devforums.apple.com. You can also access more information about iCloud for Developers at: http://developer.apple.com/icloud

Notes and Known Issues

The following issues relate to using the 5.1 SDK to develop code.

Accounts

When creating an iCloud account, you can use any Apple ID as long as it is a full email address and not a MobileMe account. If you have a MobileMe account, you can move that account to iCloud. You can find more information at: http://me.com/move

APIs

  • The NSNetService class and CFNetService APIs do not include P2P interfaces by default. To browse, register, or resolve services over P2P interfaces, an application needs to use the Bonjour DNSService*() APIs noted below.
  • Setting the interfaceIndex parameter to kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexAny in the following API’s will not include P2P interfaces by default. To include P2P interfaces, you must now set thekDNSServiceFlagsIncludeP2P flag when using kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexAny or set the interfaceIndex to kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexP2P. The affected APIs are:
    • DNSServiceBrowse
    • DNSServiceRegister
    • DNSServiceResolve
    • DNSServiceRegisterRecord
    • DNSServiceQueryRecord

GameKit

App Icons and Profile Photos are not loading in apps using Game Center.

iCloud Storage

  • Provisioning profiles must be enabled for iCloud in the iOS Provisioning Portal. You can enable a provisioning profile for iCloud by navigating to the App ID section of the iOS Provisioning Portal and configuring your App ID for iCloud. After enabling the App ID for iCloud, regenerate your provisioning profiles to enable them for iCloud.
  • The setSortDescriptors: method of NSMetadataQuery is not supported.
  • In iOS 5, files that are protected via Data Protection cannot be used with iCloud Storage APIs.
  • File names are case-insensitive in Mac OS X but case-sensitive in iOS. This can lead to problems when sharing files between the two using iCloud. You should take steps on iOS to avoid creating files whose names differ only by case.

Movie Player

Starting in iOS 5.0, in order to facilitate finer-grained playback control, a movie player is not automatically prepared to play upon creation. Call the prepareToPlay method to prepare the movie player. For more information, see MPMoviePlayerController Class Reference

Music Player

Using shake-to-shuffle causes Music app to freeze and playback to stop.

Newsstand

FIXED: Deleting an issue that was marked as the currently reading issue could cause a crash.

Security

In iOS 5, the signing of certificates with MD5 signatures is not supported. Please ensure that certificates use signature algorithms based on SHA1 or SHA2.

Xcode/Developer Tools

  • A bug in the documentation organizer causes an exception when you type in any field in the content area. To prevent the need to log in to the developer website from Xcode, download documentation sets locally using Xcode’s documentation preference pane and enable the ‘Check for and install updates automatically’ checkbox as a workaround.
  • “uninstall-devtools” script mistakenly removes files and packages even if Xcode is still running. Be sure to quit any running copy of Xcode before starting the “uninstall-devtools” script.
  • The Network Link Conditioner daemon cannot be launched after installing the Networking Link Conditioner without a reboot. You can manually workaround the issue with a restart or by the following command: sudo launchctl load /system/library/launchdaemons/com.apple.networklinkconditioner.plist.]
  • In the iOS 5 development tools, it is possible to extract APIs used by an application and have them checked for use of private APIs. This option is offered when you validate your application for app submission.
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iOS 5 Bug Lets You Unlock Your AT&T iPhone 4S For Free, No Jailbreak Required

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A method has been uncovered that unlocks the GSM iPhone 4S for T-Mobile. By taking advantage of an alleged bug in iOS 5, you can supposedly unlock your iPhone 4S on AT&T without jailbreaking.

To perform the hack, you’ll need a T-Mobile Micro SIM and your AT&T SIM from your iPhone 4S.

The method was tweeted by the famous hacker known as Chronic:

  1. Insert original carrier AT&T SIM card
  2. Dial 611 for AT&T customer service hotline and drop the call
  3. Turn on Airplane Mode
  4. Take out AT&T SIM card
  5. Insert T-Mobile SIM card
  6. Make sure WiFi is off ( also tap on ‘Forget this Network” to make sure it doesn’t connect automatically later)
  7. Switch off Airplane Mode and iPhone will search for network. This is followed by the Apple splash screen appearing.
  8. Activation Required will be displayed on the screen
  9. EDGE network will activate automatically – notice the ‘E’ on the top left corner of the screen
  10. Wait for about 20-30 seconds and turn off the phone
  11. Turn on iPhone and the same Activation Required screen will be displayed
  12. When you see one signal bar, tap on Use Cellular Connection
  13. Eject SIM card
  14. Activation Required screen will be displayed the second time
  15. Insert SIM card
  16. Unlocked!

While this workaround has not been definitively proven to work, many seem to think that following these steps will actually unlock the 4S.

Here’s danielscaleb’s success story:

After a little playing around, I confirmed that a certain iOS 5 bug leads to an unlock.  Note, this will only work on GSM models.  I’m going to figure out CDMA models next.  Basically, you’ll need a GSM iPhone 4S, an AT&T SIM card, and a T-Mobile Micro SIM.  Also, you could actually mess up your cellular radio doing this, though its very unlikely.

While this workaround seems like a hit or miss, it also seems to have worked for many people.

Apple sells the GSM iPhone 4S unlocked in the US for the full retail starting price of $649. Keep in mind that, although unlocking does free you from AT&T’s clutches, the iPhone can only use T-Mobile’s slower EDGE network in the US.

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Code hints at iChat features coming to iOS devices

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We’ve heard about and been excited by the possibility of iMessage coming to the OS X desktop, but there are hints that the Mac’s iChat application could jump the other way and become part of Apple’s Messages app on iOS devices. That would make Messages a much more well-rounded communications hub.

If you’re not familiar with iChat, it’s Apple’s multiprotocol IM client that comes preinstalled on every new OS X computer. Users can enter AIM, me.com, Yahoo, Google Talk and Jabber account credentials to use those services, and they can sign in to more than one account at a time. Like Mail for OS X, it’s a flexible tool that can centralize much of a user’s IM-based communication needs.

Code discovered by developer John Heaton (via TUAW) in the most recent iOS update includes mentions to those services that iChat works with out of the box. Of course, Apple doesn’t yet let you sign in to IM services from AIM or Jabber natively on iOS devices, though there are a wealth of third-party options that do in the App Store.

Still, if Messages continues to grow into something that allows access to multiple IM services in one central location, in addition to text messaging and iMessage services, that will expand its usefulness quite a bit. Of course, I’m still hoping iMessage makes it to the desktop first, but this would be a nice small feature update for iOS sometime down the road.

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iPhone 4S Users Around The World Report Frequent Loss of Service For No Apparent Reason

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It seems early iPhone 4S adopters the world over have discovered a new issue with Apple’s latest handset. No, it has nothing to do with poor battery life, but rather a complete loss of signal for no apparent reason. To be clear, this isn’t a new “antennagate” — the issue does not occur while holding the device in a certain position — it’s a new problem that causes the device to lose its signal randomly. Users report they can be enjoying a full five-bar signal one minute, then be greeted by that frustrating “No Service” status the next. One user, who started a lengthy thread reporting the issue over on Apple’s Discussion forums, can’t understand why his signal suddenly vanishes on the device, and there’s little he can do to restore it:

I’ve been using an iPhone 4 on a Vodafone contract for the past 16 months and just bought an iPhone 4S direct from Apple. It arrived on Friday morning and I got it set up correctly as far as I can tell. When I first turn it on, it works lovely and exactly as I would expect, able to make calls, send texts and access the internet via the cellular network. However, at what appears to be random, the network will disappear (no bars of signal) stopping me making calls and texts, but still allowing me to access the internet. Sometimes, the internet goes, but I can still make calls and texts. Other times, everything is gone and I get “No Signal” where it normally says Vodafone UK. So when trying to fix this problem after it’s noticed, I try putting it into Airplane mode and back out. The phone scans for a network and goes back to the same state as before I tried this fix. I have tried resetting network settings, but this doesn’t change anything. The only thing that actually fixes it temporarily is turning the phone right off and back on again.

Razorian Fly reports there is a temporary fix that has worked for some users, which is to turn off the ‘SIM PIN’ feature within the Settings > Phone menu. Because this often fixes the issue, it suggests it is a software bug rather than a hardware fault — as some users have been suspecting:

It’s not a hardware issue, it’s software. For some reason, iOS is cycling the radio on and off, I’m guessing something mixed up with SIM pin permissions. What I had to do was turn on SIM pin, then off, at which point it demanded the PUK code. I was able to get it online through my ATT account. After I entered that PUK, then went back into settings and turned SIM pin off, I haven’t had any problems.

Strengthening this belief is a report from one user, who claims the issue didn’t occur until they installed that latest iOS 5.0.1 software update:

I think I have cracked it. I have read every post and comments and tried and every possible fix. Does not work. I’m using iPhone 4S 16gig bought from Melbourne, use in Cambodia carrier Mobitel. Issue, no signal. 3G come and go. I have to on and off to get back signal sometime aeroplane mode on and off. My iPhone is useless. It was fine on 5.0 problem only exist after I update to 5.0.1.

Whatever the issue may be, it seems Apple needs to address it promptly. The volume of complaints on its forums about the problem suggest it is fairly widespread, affecting a large number of iPhone 4S users. A TUAW reader also claims that European carriers “cannot handle [the] amount of complaints.” While we have no idea what’s causing the issue, it does seem to be affecting iPhone 4S users only. There appear to be no reports from users with earlier devices who are experiencing the same issue. Have you been experiencing this issue on your iPhone 4S?

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