It seems to be an agreed-upon point of view within the Digirati crowd that AT&T is killing the iPhone. If “killing” is not your bowl of soup, then we can substitute “is highly detrimental,” “the Achilles heel,” or “the main reason I switched to another smartphone.” But aside from the few high-profile and outspoken members of the Digirati community, what real reasons exist to prove that AT&T is really the “dark side” in the relationship? In this article, I dissect the great plethora of FUD, bogus, and unfounded claims about AT&T wireless as it relates to the Apple iPhone.

It’s the network, huh?

Those who have voiced and continue to voice their opinions about AT&T’s quality of cellular service as it relates to the iPhone seem to be focusing their attention on one falsely-conceived assumption: that the iPhone would be better off on a different network, such as Verizon Wireless. However, those who think so haven’t thought it all the way through. Here’s why: the iPhone is the kind of device that is extremely easy to use. It makes many features very user friendly – SMS, email and web browsing all shine on the device thanks in part to its awesome user interface. Remember when those features were completely not user friendly on other phones? Both of my parents (who have never used mobile web browsing, SMS, or email on their Motorola RAZRs) now use SMS, email and the browser regularly on their iPhones. In that regard, the iPhone – by its very nature – increases the usability of data by an enormous amount! It’s a device that takes what have been “geek only” features and brings them to the mainstream.

Knowing this, we can conclude that iPhone users consume exponentially more data than non-iPhone users. So here is my question to all those who think that the iPhone would be better off on Verizon/another carrier: do you really think that another carrier would be able to handle the exponentially greater data load brought on by the iPhone any better than AT&T does?

Think about it before you answer. Seriously, keep thinking. If you think that GSM/HSDPA (AT&T network technology) is in some way inferior to CDMA (Verizon network tech) and you are not a wireless network engineer, you have no idea what you’re talking about. There, I said it! I’ve spoken to dozens of cellular network engineers around my area from all four major carriers, and all of them state that while the underlying technologies differ greatly, what really determines the quality of the network is its implementation and the quality of the backhaul.

So who is to say that Verizon, Sprint, or T-Mobile would do a better job than AT&T is doing with the iPhone, given the increased data load the device brings on the network?

Personal experience

Everyone has a personal experience with their cellular device. You hear these stories all the time: “I hate (insert carrier name here) because when I step into the very South East corner of my apartment, put on my cowboy hat, place my left hand on my right ear, and then stand on my tippy-toes I lose service.” Know what I’m talking about? Sure you do! Let me tell you my experience with iPhone 3G S: ever since it fell into my hands on June 19, 2009 (launch date), I have not had one dropped call and have never lost service (had zero bars). You read that right – it has never happened to me. Sure, I’m not in the Digerati capital of the world (San Francisco area). But I’m not in the boonies either – I live less than five minutes driving distance from Boca Raton, FL. Sure it’s not as densely packed as an urban conglomerate such as New York City or San Fran. But everyone I know has a cell phone and so do their 10 year-old kids (iPhones, even).

Show me the evidence!

Having said that, I see absolutely no reason to wish that the iPhone be available on a different exclusive carrier in the U.S. So after thinking it through, you should be careful what you wish for – as the saying goes. Actually, there is one reason that I want the iPhone to be available on multiple wireless carriers: competition, which can happen on multiple levels: plan price, quality of service, or device price, among others. But let me be clear: competition is good for the consumer (and in some cases, for the companies). I’m in no way dissatisfied with AT&T wireless when it comes to the iPhone.

Really?

Perhaps I’m not understanding exactly what is going on here and iPhone users in San Francisco are suffering terribly from dropped calls and poor service. If that is the case, AT&T should look into fixing its service in that area. But – again – let me point out that the dissatisfaction with AT&T as it relates to the iPhone is overblown, overhyped, and – in my experience – only affects the (very) outspoken few. So leave AT&T alone!

In a future post, I will discuss the technical reasons why it’s not in Apple’s best interest, or the interest of me as a consumer, to switch iPhone exclusivity from AT&T to another carrier.

As a member of the geek community, I tend to get asked a lot of tech questions. As soon as people see the screen on my iPhone, the first question I get is “Wow! How did you do that?” I have non-standard icons, an awesome unlock screen, and the ability to answer texts without unlocking the phone. Should you jailbreak? What is jailbreaking? Let’s look at the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Jailbreak

In geek-speak, a brand new iPhone is in jail. Jailbreaking would set it free from Apple’s tight grip. The benefits?

You get full access to the phone. Jailbreaking was developed after the release of the original iPhone in order to allow for third party applications, since – back then – the iPhone SDK* was not available, the App Store did not exist, and only “web apps” were able to run on factory iPhones. Developers and hackers wanted to enable the user to use the iPhone in ways that other smartphones were being used – with a myriad of third party programs. They developed such programs as WinterBoard (to change icons and background), SBSettings (to allow one-touch access to commonly used settings), and even found a way to get custom ringtones on the device (would anyone buy any other phone that didn’t allow for custom ringtones?). Due to Apple’s unrelenting control in the way third party applications interact with the device, the iPhone is severely hampered. Jailbreaking fixes all that. Here are three specific examples:

1. My biggest complaint with the iPhone is the inability to run background apps. There are exceptions to this rule – such as Apple’s few “chosen apps” (you can listen to the iPod while surfing the Internet, but not to Pandora). You can’t record video screencasts of apps in action. You have to quit an app to send a text message. Jailbreaking has solved all of these: no longer do I have to quit an app to send an SMS – iRealSMS (our review here) allows me to text from any open program. In fact, I can even reply or send a text while the phone is locked. While this seems like a small change, for me and for many others that text alot (I hear Alex is a big fan), this one change completely turned my opinion of the iPhone OS around.
2. My second biggest complaint with the iPhone is battery life. Jailbreaking doesn’t have a direct effect on this, but many jailbroken apps do. One of the popular apps that jailbreakers download is SBSettings. It allows the user – from any screen on the phone – to touch the status bar (the one at the top with the time, battery life, etc) and drag down, which displays a list of commonly used settings. The user is presented with such options as to turn on/off 3G, Bluetooth, phone mode, and WiFi. There are options to change brightness, respring (restart the OS without a hard shutdown), and even change the look of the program itself. Turning off active radios can lead to a dramatic increase in battery life, and SBSettings makes these settings much more accessible.
3. After I purchased my first iPhone, I (ironically) began to appreciate Windows Mobile. The fact that I couldn’t see a list of upcoming calendar events from the lock screen was one of my biggest gripes with the device. Jailbreaking solved that. Intelliscreen, by Intelliborn, is an app that displays items such as recent mail, news, and weathero on the lock screen.

There are many more apps that I could describe. However, the aforementioned jailbreak applications are the most important to me. Satirically, Apple has removed apps from its App Store, only to have them reappear as jailbreak apps. Some of these include PodCaster and Google Voice. There are also emulators for the PSX, Super NES, GameBoy, and other gaming consoles; MXTube allows you to download YouTube videos and keep them on the phone. There are hundreds of non Apple-approved apps and at least two full non-Apple app stores (Cydia, Rock Your Phone) for you to explore once you open this Pandora’s Box of awesomeness. While the sandbox that jailbreaking provides is really cool, the real beauty are the many new and ultra-cool toys (apps) in the playground.

Or Jailbreak Not

If Apple is the cool kid that owns the playground, you would be upsetting it if you started to play with toys it doesn’t want you to play with. Truth be told, the official Apple App Store is getting better – with more APIs being available to developers with every iteration of the iPhone OS. That makes many question the relevance of the jailbreak: as Apple makes the iPhone more open, the value of jailbreaking drops significantly – especially with the baggage that comes along with the process.

A jailbroken iPhone is a very fragile creature: install the wrong set of programs and BAM!, you are looking at a phone with a corrupted OS. I go through this about three times per month, and I am very careful about what I install. This is not that difficult to deal with, but seeing an iPhone screen with a sad face on it can be scary if you are not used to hacking technology.

Perhaps the biggest inconvenience with a jailbroken iPhone is the fact that you don’t get to install software updates immediately after they leave Apple’s headquarters. That is, not until the jailbreaking community finds a way around whatever new safeguards Apple has put included in the latest software revision. This process usually takes a few days for point revisions and can be months for a whole new OS (if at all). The newest jailbreak for the 3G S requires certain files to be saved so that the phone can be further jailbroken – not the most user-friendly of tasks.

Security also takes a back seat when you jailbreak. When you bust down the sandbox walls to play on the swings, you allow the ants in. Due to its severe limitations, the iPhone remains one of the most secure phones on the market in factory conditions. It has had a total of two bugs that are real security risks – which is simply awesome given that the device has been out for nearly three whole years. How can it be so secure? It’s the same reason apps can’t run in the background or have command line access: it’s a sandbox that keeps the user safe. Once jailbroken, however, it is much easier to run malicious code on the iPhone. While no major exploit has been discovered for jailbroken iPhones, this is still a very serious risk. So for the time being, security when it comes to the jailbreak is a double-edged sword.

What about the legal side of things? As of right now, the jailbreak stands on very shaky legal ground. There is no law that says it is illegal, and even the DMCA kinda-sorta supports it (search DMCA, reverse engineering for interoperability). So why worry? Apple is actively trying to curb the efforts of any and all exceptions to the DMCA that expressly allow jailbreaking of phones to be legal. The long and short of it is that it’s not illegal… but it’s not legal, either.

There is no try…

Jailbreaking is not something you should do if you are inexperienced with technology. I jailbroke a friend’s iPod Touch; it didn’t take the first time around and the iPod got stuck in a restart loop. Even though I fixed it, the owner freaked out. These are very valuable devices that can be irrevocably damaged. Seeing as how the price tags display several hundred dollar amounts, it’s a risk to say the least. If you are at all nervous about ruining your device, do not do it. I have yet to lose an iPhone or iPod to a jailbreak, but I know it is a possibility. Here’s my easy-to-follow recommendation: if you are comfortable with running beta software on your local machine (not of the Google Beta variety), you are most likely going to be comfortable, if not happy, with the jailbreak. If you are a person that does not know what version of the browser you are using, the jailbreak is not for you. While it is simple to use, the potential problems you may face could be well over your head.

*iPhone SDK: a software development kit (SDK or “devkit“) is typically a set of development tools that allows a software engineer to create applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform (Wikipedia). In a nutshell, it allows developers to easily write native applications for a device. In our case, the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Apple has aired two new iPhone ads: “Share” and “Travel.” The two commercials are in the familiar “There’s an app for that” format, featuring iPhone apps for file sharing and navigation. Videos and our take after the break!“Share” presents Mover and Bump – two free apps that can be used to transfer files as well as contacts between iPhones via Wi-Fi or a 3G connection. The 30-second ad also demonstrates two users playing playing Scrabble from different iPhones, which is made possible either by using Wi-Fi or through the Facebook app.

“Travel” starts out with the question: “so how does the iPhone make traveling easier? It then presents Rick Steves’ Historic Paris Walk ($4.99), which guides users through the city and provides bonus information in the form of text, audio, and video. Playing on the Paris theme, the commercial demonstrates the Paris Metro 09 app  ($4.99) – used to help navigate the city’s public transit systems. The ad concludes with the very useful Postman app: it provides the user with the ability to create virtual postcards and send them to anyone s/he desires.

These ads continue to demonstrate the wealth of apps available for the iPhone and iPod ecosystem. Considering recent App Store developments, however, Apple should be careful not to alienate users or developers. I get asked about the “Google Voice app debacle” even when I’m around non-geeks, illustrating that the matter is not only of importance to technology fanatics. That said, I hope that Apple realizes the potential opportunity it has in an App Store for the Mac platform.

Share

Travel

Eight months ago, I speculated that Apple would release a Mac version of its ever-popular App Store before 2009. The main benefit of having such a store is that it would provide a unified place for Mac users to browse and purchase Mac applications. The success of the App Store for the iPhone/iPod Touch has proven that this concept has great value potential. When do we think this store will launch and what, if any, barriers will need to be overcome?

Barries

Two words: approval process. Needless to say, one of the biggest issues with the iPhone/iPod App Store is the approval process for applications. Some apps get rejected for no apparent reason, others aren’t let in because they “duplicate functionality.” Needless to say, every single reason Apple has provided for not letting an app into the mobile store is flat-out nonsense. Looks like the FCC will finally put the screws to Apple and figure out what’s really going on. In either case, Apple needs to provide clear guidelines for those submitting application for approval/rejection. The same thing would need to happen with the App Store for the Mac. Seeing as how many developers already have their apps made, all they would need to do is submit them to the store.

Also, Apple would need to add a trial period in which users can test out apps. This is an element that’s – even today – severely lacking in the mobile App Store and its presence would be severely missed in the proposed Mac App store, given that many Mac programs cost a lot more than $0.99. Without a trial period, a user would not want to fork over $60 for an app he has not yet tried; moreover, the developer would not want to give his potential users that kind of experience. All this would deter developers from making their apps available in the Mac App Store, rendering the whole thing useless.

Timeframe

How long until Apple releases this beast? That’s the question to which only the C-level executives at Apple know the answer (CEO, COO, etc.) In my original post, I proposed that the new store would be out within 2009. We haven’t heard any rumors of it being in existence quite yet, so maybe Apple is keeping it a very tight secret. Perhaps it’s trying to fix the aforementioned issues with the mobile App Store first, then moving on to the Mac side. Maybe Apple its release will coincide with Snow Leopard (due in September, and be the “one more thing” surprise. Or maybe it’s not even in the cards.

One thing is certain, though: an App Store for the Mac – if released – would provide a unified place for Mac users to browse and purchase applications. Those new to the Mac would benefit greatly from this, since they are less familiar with existing Mac developers and their appropriate websites. One thing’s for sure: since the Mac isn’t a closed platform the way the iPhone/iPod Touch are, users would still be able to get Mac apps from whatever source they desire. And that would not involve jailbreaking!

Hello Captain! Have a seat and welcome to command! Flight Control was developed by Firemint, which is also the company that brings you Real Racing. This fun and addictive game will only put you back 99 cents, but let me tell you why it is worth every penny. If you’ve ever wished for a simple yet entertaining game which you can spend hours playing and not get bored, then this is the app for you.

To start, you are air traffic control and the goal is to land each aircraft on its designated landing strip. There are three different types of aircraft: passenger plane, helicopter, and small-cabin/crop plane. For greater emphasis, each type of aircraft has its own specific landing strip. To land a plane, you just tap the craft with your finger, then draw a path for it to land. Sounds easy, right? Not so fast: as time goes on, more and more aircraft will need to be landed at one time, so it’s important to be as efficient and as quick as possible about the paths you draw and what aircraft you land first. All aircraft have different sizes, speeds, shapes, and turning agilities. Strategy becomes important with an increased amount of planes on the map.

Design

Flight Control is very simple, clean, and cute. Firemint is known for its hard work and detail, and this application shows it off very well. Upon launching the game, I was presented with the option to play game sounds. The in-game music is part of what makes this game so cute: it’s classic without giving off a negatively “olden-golden” vibe. By selecting “no” for in-game sounds, I was able to resume playing music from the iPod app.

The main menu consists of:

• Play! – puts you right into the game
• Airfields - lets you choose your map
• Stats - the place to go to check out detailed statistics of your game play, including a connection to online boards
• More… takes you to a page telling you about Firemint’s other great products
• A red button on the top right, which will take you to the multiplayer section of the game. This is really cool: in multiplayer mode, you are able to take advantage of the new features in iPhone OS 3.0 by connecting peer-to-peer with another iPhone or iPod Touch. Both players play on the same airfield and each can pass planes off his/her screen for the other player to land. Multiplayer mode connects quickly and smoothly and makes for great game play with a friend or relative!

Starting your quest as air traffic control, you’ll see your airfield and an approaching aircraft. The graphics are in a cartoonish style that appeal to all ages and are very pleasing to look at. There is no learning curve to the game’s play and you should be able to begin landing your craft in no time.

Quality/Use

As I mentioned earlier, this game is smooth and stable. It has been tested on OS 3.0 and it works great. No crashes for me so far, just lots of fun and lots of landing! To get your street cred, you have the ability to create an account in order to save your stats onto an online leader board. The game uses the phone’s GPS to find nearby players with scores similar to yours. Traveling around the app is fast and you’ll find no hiccups.

Wrapping Up

Firemint (great name, by the way) has done an outstanding job with smooth game play, great graphics, a very simple interface, and a fun multiplayer system. It’s affordable, fun, and tempts you to come back and get a higher score. Mine was 88 planes landed, what will yours be?

It’s available in the App Store here. Happy landing!

Apple is by no means a newcomer to the education market. Graduating high school seniors wait for the start of the annual Apple summer sale, at which point they can get a free iPod along with the purchase of a Mac. With the iPod Touch occupying the top rung in the iPod lineup, the device is well worth the wait (of the end of the school year). But Apple does much more than give away free iPods to entice students and the education market at large! Apple has abundant resources that offer both faculty as well as school administrators the means to publish content online. This points business back in the direction of the iTunes Store as well as the company’s hardware products.

TUAW reported earlier this month that the University of Florida College of Pharmacy has made it a requirement that students own an iPhone or an iPod Touch. A college requiring a specific kind of cell phone or music player? Isn’t that a bit much? Isn’t college already expensive enough? The Alligator, an independent school news publication, reported on the story back on July 9th. In the story, the Dean of the College of Pharmacy said, “These are the instruments at the forefront that are developing applications for medical uses by the hundreds. We want our students to become adept at using these mobile devices early on because we see this as the future in pharmacy practice.” Quite a tall order to fill. But this wasn’t the first university-wide application of the popular Apple cell phone or music player. Earlier in the year, the University of Missouri implemented the use of an iPod Touch in order to help students retain information. Brian Brooks, associate dean of the Missouri School of Journalism told the campus newspaper about his decision to make the device a requirement for incoming freshmen: “Lectures are the worst possible learning format,” Brooks said. “There’s been some research done that shows if a student can hear that lecture a second time, they retain three times as much of that lecture.”

Can the requirements for iPod Touch/iPhone on college campuses be considered a trend that’s sweeping the nation? It’s hard to tell. The iPod has been around since 2001 and from the day it was born, Apple has yet to see significant market competition. Apple’s most recent quarterly earnings yielded a 7 percent decrease in iPod sales from the same quarter last year, but a 626 percent unit growth for the iPhone. Here’s what the numbers could tell us:

• The iPod line has reached its maturity stage and is already entering the saturation and declining stages or
• The iPhone has become the all-in-one desired by the masses and
• Looks to be eating into iPod sales

Since the iPhone is – as a rule – a higher-margin product, I can imagine Apple prefers that the last of those statements to be true.

Apple is also tacking names and selling Macs when it comes to unified educational sales. The State of Maine has recently decided on supplying its entire body of students in 7th through 12th grades with MacBooks. The state chose to issue the MacBook because the laptop is “durable, flexible, and goes with students to all points of learning.” Moreover, Apple may have hit another gold mine when it comes to the App Store. The College of Pharmacy at the University of Florida directs students to the free app Epocrates (click opens iTunes), which claims it is the “leader in mobile clinical software with more than 625,000 healthcare professionals relying on [its] references to make quick confident decisions at the point of care.” The University of Missouri’s school of Journalism is featured on the Apple website as a sort of poster child for Universities partnering with Apple: the university gets name recognition by a worldwide tech conglomerate while Apple receives real-life scenarios of how Apple technology helps real people.

Apple’s website boasts that the Mac is “the number one computer in schools and on college campuses.” iTunes U has recently become a gold mine for free educational content. Some of the top universities, both in the United States and abroad, have content in the iTunes Store available for not only their students, but also the public at large! Apple’s education website shows just how much Apple is integrated into the educational system: “Today’s students expect constant access to information—in the classroom and beyond. Which is why more and more faculty are using iTunes U to distribute digital lessons to their students,” reads Apple’s mobile learning page. And it doesn’t end there. From an Apple Reps program to advertising for Mac Labs, Apple has the Education market covered from president to student.

In the past, owning a Mac was trendy. Today, it looks like owning a Mac is simply a necessity in the education market: the computers allow students to learn rather than worry about technical issues. And if they already have a Mac, what better media player to buy than an iPod? What better cell phone to buy than an iPhone? The marketing behind all of Apple’s efforts fit together so perfectly, that it becomes very difficult to nit-pick. The credit is due to the pure genius in Apple’s marketing guru Philip Schiller and Retail Vice President Ron Johnson, not to mention CEO Steve Jobs. Is there any better way to infiltrate college campuses or college dorm rooms than the way Apple has laid for itself? I don’t think so!

This kind of marketing genius is sure to pay dividends: after its best non-holiday quarter ever, Apple projected even higher revenues for Q3 2009 at $8.7-8-9 billion. That’s compared to $8.34 billion in Q2. Increased Mac and iPhone sales are sure to be the leading factors that propel these numbers.

What do you think? Does Apple have the Education market covered well on your campus? Can we expect new growth in this market? Let us know in the comments!

Earlier in May, word got out that Apple is planning to invest $1 billion in a server farm. The facility, to be located in the State of North Carolina, will follow a similar (albeit smaller) $600 million undertaking by Google. As could be expected, analysts, bloggers, and the Twitterverse the world over speculated about the possible uses for the investment, but I don’t think anyone hit the nail squarely on the head. I think Apple will use its new server farm to completely cut the cord between its iPhone product line and the desktop. And it will do so in a big way.

Since the iPhone is the premier mobile device made by Apple today, it gives us an idea of what features will migrate down to the iPod line in the future. So let’s take look at the current state of the iPhone and its interaction with the desktop computer. For the most part, an iPhone will synchronize the following items with iTunes: mail accounts, contacts, calendar appointments, bookmarks, stored passwords, user names, and apps. Most of these items can be synchronized today without ever plugging the iPhone directly into a computer: more specifically, contacts, calendar items, and mail can all be synced over-the-air (OTA) with web-based applications from Google (calendar, contacts), Yahoo online services, Microsoft Exchange, as well as Apple’s own MobileMe.

But let’s not forget the original reason for plugging an iPhone directly into a desktop system: music, video, and podcast synchronization. And here’s where the server farm comes into play: I believe that

Apple will use its new $1 billion server farm to back up and sync music, video, and podcasts over the air to and from users’ iPods, iPhones, and iTunes libraries.

Why would Apple want to do this? For starters, it would eliminate the need to plug an iPhone into the computer to perform a sync. Imagine your iTunes library on the desktop being synced to Apple’s servers – much in the same way that contacts and calendars sync to MobileMe today. Since the iPhone will also sync with these servers, all added libraries will stay up to date automatically, whether it’s iTunes running on Windows 7, an iPod Touch connected via WiFi, or an iPhone connected via 3G (AT&T allowing).

Apple is a company that’s well-known for taking an already-existing idea and executing with pure perfection. A few examples: the iPhone was not the first touch-screen smartphone, the iPod was not the world’s first digital music player. But both are nothing short of awesome when it comes to execution: the marketing (market targeting, pricing, sales channel/distribution), ease-of-use, and the sheer “cool” factor that goes along with owning these devices. Apple will make a complicated and confusing technology (synchronization) accessible to the mainstream audience via sexy devices (iPhone, iPod) and simple software (iTunes).

Apple will also achieve a side benefit here for the public good: since a merged copy of the user’s iTunes libraries will live on Apple’s servers, the user will have a back-up in the cloud and not even realize it’s there (until a hard drive goes bad or an iPhone gets dunked in a swimming pool) . In an era where back ups are crucial – yet (unfortunately) implemented by very few – this is a major benefit.

On top of that, it would also makes sense that Apple would enable online access to the stored media from any internet-connected machine. Here’s a use-case scenario: if I’m away from my iMac and the battery in my iPhone’s is drained, I can use my friend’s machine to stream my backed-up media collection straight from Apple’s web-based interface.

It would make sense that Apple bundle this sync functionality with its MobileMe web services package. At the present time, the service provides 20GB standard, with 40GB and 60GB packages available for $49 and $99, respectively. Apple could easily upgrade the default amount of storage to 40GB and provide upgrade plans of 80 and 160GB for a fee. Considering that storage prices are falling, the only thing Apple would have to keep an eye out for is bandwidth – nothing that the company can’t overcome.

So how far off is this dream of the ultimate tech zen? Considering that Apple is still in the early stages of building this data center, I’d put it about a year out. But with calendar, contacts, and whatever other data being synchronized over-the-air, syncing music, movies, and podcasts seems to be the next logical step! Sync FTW!

Join us on today’s TNR Podcast to hear us discuss this story, along with the day’s top tech news, in further detail. We broadcast LIVE at 5:30pm EST Monday – Saturday. Can’t join us live? Grab our RSS feed and subscribe!

Late Friday evening, Apple issued an update to the iPhone operating system in a response to a well-known security vulnerability. iPhone OS 3.0.1 fixes a potential exploit which could allow a remote user to hijack any iPhone by sending a simple series of SMS (text messages).

This update was expected to be released before the BlackHat 2009 security conference last week, where a pair of security researchers who have discovered the flaw presented their findings. Back in 2007, Charlie Miller, security researcher and co-author of The Mac Hacker’s Handbook, demonstrated a WebKit security hole that allowed the hacker to obtain an iPhone user’s personal information. Apple patched the exploit a few days before the demonstration. By contrast, the SMS exploit was patched after Mr. Miller presented details about it. In the days leading up to the patch, I have expressed my frustration with the way Apple and AT&T handled the entire situation from a customer communication and customer service perspective.

I’ve received several responses to that post since the time it was published, most of which directed me to this post, which states that O2 – carrier of the iPhone in the UK – has issued a statement saying that the patch was forthcoming. One carrier in one country communicating to its customers? I think that says enough about how poorly Apple handled the situation.

Any unpatched iPhones are still vulnerable to the attack, so we recommend you run out and update your iPhone ASAP. So far, it looks like the sole purpose of software update 3.0.1. is to fix the security threat, so don’t expect to be surprised with any new features.

Ever since its initial release in 2007, the iPhone – along with its sibling, the iPod Touch – have shipped with a YouTube app. The sole reason for this app’s existence is because the iPhone isn’t capable of displaying Flash content. That much we already know. Yet with such prominent support for YouTube, I’m surprised that competing video sharing sites aren’t protesting with the words “monopoly, monopoly, monopoly.” Yes, I believe that Apple and YouTube‘s parent company, Google, are behaving in a monopolistic fashion when it comes to video on the iPhone.

Flash – the background

Lets set some facts straight first: Flash is the format used to stream video content and display hyper-dynamic websites, among other things. Used by YouTube, Vimeo, Mevio, Hulu, Cnet, Ustream, Justin.TV, and countless other video websites, Flash is the most prevalent video delivery method on the web by a far cry. The only exception to the previous examples is Apple: it uses the beloved H.264 standard to deliver videos on its own website. But what’s important to note here is that Adobe has been trying, time in time again, to get Flash on the iPhone, all to no avail: Apple has had multiple excuses as to why Flash on the iPhone can’t be a reality. The company has cited battery life and a lack in processing power as the two major items that prevent Flash from being available on the device.

Competing mobile operating systems such as Nokia’s Symbian OS, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, and Palm’s WebOS, have all either announced support for, or have already delivered devices that are capable of running the Flash Player. Today, the only Flash hold-outs are the Apple’s iPhone/iPod Touch and RIM’s Blackberry line.  Given these facts, the effects of not being able to play back Flash on the iPhone are quite surprising, and even scary!

Streaming Video on the iPhone

If we look at all the possible ways in which a user can get streaming video on the iPhone, it may initially appear that the options are abundant. We have the CBS TV app, the Ustream app, and – of course – the built-in YouTube app (built-in because the user can’t delete it from the device). Even .MOV video can be streamed to the oiPhone’s Safari browser directly from a web site. But let’s take a look at the underlying technology that enables these apps to work. All of these apps, that’s right – every single application on the iPhone that has the ability to stream video from the web – is built the same way on the back end! Whether it’s CBS TV, YouTube, or Ustream, all of these apps have one thing in common: they all deliver video using the H.264 standard! This means that YouTube, which displays all its videos in Flash on the desktop, must re-encode its entire catalog into H.264, essentially having to store two copies of every video: one in the Flash file format, the other in H.264. This is a major undertaking that requires massive processing power (for transcoding the video) and at least double the amount of storage (to store two versions of the same video file). In a business environment where efficiency is key, this may seem very inefficient. If it seems so, that’s because it is. In fact, this inefficiency is exactly the reason only certain companies have made their videos available on the iPhone for streaming consumption.

CBS and Google’s YouTube are two examples that immediately come to mind: both organizations are huge (inter) national conglomerates that can afford to have this kind of inefficiency in their work flows. Both want to be present on all devices, no questions asked, and both have the scale (eyeballs) to allow inefficiencies to occur. Ustream isn’t a conglomerate by any stretch (although I hope it gets there one day). In that effect, it only makes certain videos available for viewing on the iPhone: it transcodes individuals videos and, thus, is not hindered by the inefficiency of having to transcode all videos that it hosts.

As you can see, the necessity to transcode video content keeps some players from displaying their videos on the iPhone/iPod Touch: smaller video sharing sites such as Vimeo, Viddler, Flickr Video, BreakTV, Veoh, IMEEM, and even the popular Hulu, don’t make their videos available on the devices. These companies either can’t afford the kind of inefficiency associated with the transcoding process, or don’t think that the benefits (income) would outweight the negatives (expenses).

So here’s the real question: is it simply a good business decision on Apple’s part to include a YouTube app on the iPhone, or is it a ploy to kill off all those other video sharing services? Following are arguments for either side of the spectrum:

Good busines is all it is

YouTube is the world’s most popular social video site by a far margin. So it would be wise for Apple to figure out a way to enable its users to access the service. Since the iPhone/iPod Touch (as well as the Apple TV – another Apple device that plays back YouTube content using H.264) don’t support Flash, it is in Apple’s best interest to find a solution to make it all work. In that regard, it did find such a solution: Apple asked Google to transcode the entire YouTube video catalog to H.264.

Anti competitive for sure!

It’s no secret that Apple and Google have some interesting ties: Google CEO Eric Schmidt is on Apple’s board of directors, the two companies appear to have a common enemy (Microsoft), and there is some close collaboration between the two (Google is the default search engine in Safari for the Mac and iPhone, Mac OS X Address Book can sync with Google Contacts out of the box, Google Maps is the only mapping solution on the iPhone/Touch, just to name a few). In a move to increase YouTube’s stranglehold in the video sharing space (since YouTube is still leaking money left and right), Google agreed to transcode YouTube video from Flash to H.264. Somewhere along the way – either before or after beginning the transcoding process – YouTube realized that doing so would be cost-prohibitive for smaller players (the competitors mentioned previously).

So?

Have you heard of the recent Windows 7 developments in the European Union? Quick summary: to ease concerns of competition regulators in the EU, Microsoft has offered to provide users with a ballot upon first starting Windows 7. The multiple-choice ballot will ask the user to select the web browser he prefers to use. If the EU twisted Microsoft’s arms into providing such a “choice,” how is it then that Apple is able to ship the iPhone and iPod Touch that are only capable of playing back web video from only one web site – YouTube?

This is a perfect example of what not to do during a time of confusion: stay silent. After news broke yesterday evening that iPhone users are at risk of having their device taken control of by a hacker, the web, radio, newspapers, TV, and the rest of the mainstream media have picked up on the story. iPhone users that aren’t privy to the details of the situation are scared. Being the go-to tech guy for friends, relatives, and clients, I’ve been receiving questions all day asking for advice. I don’t mind answering questions or helping people out; quite the opposite in fact. But what I do find deplorable is that Apple and AT&T are staying completely mum on the situation: there are no official blog posts, email updates, or – ironically – text messages to iPhone owners regarding the current status of the affairs. And that is poor communication, plain and simple.

Let’s get the basics out of the way: two security researchers – Collin Mulliner and Charlie Miller – have found a serious exploit in the way the iPhone handles SMS messages. If a hacker plays his cards right, he would be able to take complete control of an iPhone by means of sending a text message to the device. Complete control means making phone calls, stealing data, sending text messages without the owner’s consent… you get the idea.

But it gets worse: Apple was notified about the exploit six weeks ago. And in that time, the company has not issued an update to the iPhone OS. By comparison, the Android OS was also vulnerable to a similar attack. Google fixed the problem within a day or two of being notified of the problem. And all that brings us to the present: this evening, the two researchers who found this bug are presenting their exploit at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. Yet the most interesting part of all this is that neither Apple nor AT&T have made any official statements regarding the situation:

• The latest headline on Apple’s Hot News web page reads Apple releases MobileMe iDisk app. That app will surely do us a lot of good when hackers are getting ready to direct our iPhones to call Sri Lanka at $1.23 per minute!
• AT&T’s web page dedicated to all things iPhone doesn’t even have a blog/latest news section. That is, if you can even find the iPhone page within AT&T’s site. Hint: It’s at att.com/iphone.
• And – finally – no text messages have been sent to any customers regarding the status of the situation. I remember that AT&T sent me a message a few months ago when an update to the iPhone OS was released, directing me to connect my iPhone the computer and grab the update. But that was at a time when security wasn’t at the forefront of anybody’s brain. Receiving a text message update today would be far more important than it was back then.

Without knowing what to do and what security precautions to take, my iPhone-owning friends are panicking. They’ve checked apple.com and have found nothing. They’ve Googled the status of the affair, or called me. And I didn’t know what to tell them. So some of them have resorted to turning their iPhones off completely!

Can you join me in saying that this particular case of customer service is a complete and utter example of FAIL?

In Apple’s defense, the company’s iPhone engineers may be frantically trying to figure out the details of the exploit and put out an update. They may be collaborating with AT&T, trying to find the solution to the problem. In fact, that’s what they’re most likely doing at the current moment! But while the engineers are doing that, the customer service departments at both companies need to put out some updates. Nothing special, just something saying that both companies are looking into the situation and expect to release further details at a certain time later today, directing customers to a special web page with updates regarding this particular scenario. This is a situation where Apple’s well-known tradition of silence and secrecy hurts the customer. But then again, the silence is more for the company than the customer, isn’t it?

We will be discussing this story further on today’s TNR Daily Bit Podcast: Live at 5:30p EST (21:30GMT). Join us here.

Image courtesy of ThePhoenix

Update 1: I would like to follow up and say that I understand that the exploit isn’t “in the wild” so to speak: it has not yet had any real-world effects. However, regular consumers (read: not geeks) knew about it and were asking me questions since early morning. So in that regard alone, Apple and AT&T should have done a better job communicating that it is investigating the bug and working on a fix; at the very least! At most, they could have stated the obvious: that the exploit is not yet public and that consumers shoudln’t be worried just yet. Although that could have had its own set of adverse effects. Perhaps it would prompt other “security experts” to find the bug and exploit it themselves on the unaware public.

Update 2: Secondly, Apple should have plain and simple fixed the bug a long time ago (read: when it was told about it). Thanks to Jason Statham in the comments. PS: I’m so delighted we have such high-profile readers and commenters on our site!