U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, ruled last week that the discovery phase of the class-action lawsuit will proceed and ordered Apple to provide relevant documents to the plaintiffs’ legal team by May 17.

Apple fought to have the case tossed out, arguing that the plaintiffs have so far failed to prove that they suffered any injury at Apple’s hands. According to its online privacy statement, Apple says it collects “non-personal information,” suggesting data not directly associated with individuals. The company may collect information such as zip codes, area codes, and the location where an Apple product is used “so that we can better understand customer behavior and improve our products, services, and advertising,”

According to a report on wired.com,  iPhone continues to store location data even when location services are disabled, contrary to Apple’s previous claims. Apple’s explanation in last year does not address why the stored geodata continues to live on the device permanently after it’s transmitted to Apple, nor does it address why geodata collection appears to persist even when Location Services is turned off.

Google does similar geodata collection for its own location-services database. However, it notifies Android users clearly in a prompt when geodata collection will occur, and it also gives users a way to opt out. Also, Android devices do not permanently store geodata after transmitting it to Google.

Will iPhone (probably iPad as well) users get another $15 again for the antennagate case?  What do you think about this legal battle?

According to this report:

The New York Times asked a developer, who asked not to be named because he worked for a popular app maker and did not want to involve his employer, to create a test application that collected photos and location information from an iPhone. When the test app, PhotoSpy, was opened, it asked for access to location data. Once this was granted, it began siphoning photos and their location data to a remote server. (The app was not submitted to the App Store.)

According to the Verge, Apple will very likely release a fix for this issue:

 Apple has been made aware of the issue and is likely planning a fix with an upcoming release of iOS. Those sources also confirmed that the ability to send your photos and videos to a third-party is an error, not an intended feature.

So, for the time being, if you have some very private photos, you should deny any access request for your location info.

In the press conference on July 16, 2010, Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs  defended their design against accusations of antenna reception issues in then new iPhone 4. Affected (actually all) customers were offered two choices: full refund within 30 days, or a free case (because they cannot make enough bumpers).

So, about 18 lawsuits against Apple in US were filed. A big money for lawyers.

In last Friday, a settlement was preliminarily approved.  According to the settlement, US iPhone 4  buyers who never exchanged their phones for a new one, and didn’t take up Apple’s offer for a free “bumper” back in 2010, can claim a new bumper, or take a $15 payout.  By April 30, about 25 million members included in the class-action lawsuit will be notified by email. The claim period will be 120 days starting from April 30, 2012.

Please note, this settlement is only for US customers.The later iPhone 4S does not have such issues due to changes in antenna design.

Apple will post details soon.

1.  Free.
2. Untethered. Once jailbroken, jailbroken forever.
3. Trusted. The team has worked on jailbreaks for years.

Oh, yes, It is GreenPois0n Absinthe, you probably tried it before. Now try the latest version (0.4) for iOS 5.0.1.

Based on all information and rumors, there will no surprise in design and OS. However, hardware boost will be significant: quad-core CPU, LTE network support, and higher resolution. Siri will probably be included–a consolation for Apple fanbois without iPhone 4S. Hopefully, they fixed the battery issues in iPhone 4S.

What else do you think will be packed in iPad 3?

This is how iOS 5.0.1 was released last Thursday.

Apple has admitted to battery-sucking bugs in its recently released iOS 5, has promised a fix, which was released last Thursday (iOS 5.0.1).

But after upgrading, very likely, you still have the same issue. On some forums, some users even reported the update simply made the situation worse.

For the time being, you can not do much if your iPhone 4S unluckily has this issue, because Apple did not release the cause of the problem, as usual. Or perhaps, they haven’t found the real causes yet.

What you need is just a jailbroken iPhone 4 or  iPod Touch 4G. By copying the app onto the device, the iPhone 4 can call up Siri and, more important, it can also connect to the Siri servers. Cool?

You can follow these instructions to install the app yourself. For copyright reasons, we are not authorized to post eh contents here.

To make Siri connect to Siri server using iPhone 4, you may follow these instructions.

It is Siri!

Siri, the most prominent feature in iPhone 4S, now has a security hole. Basically, screen lock will not prevent Siri from doing a lot of things: from sending messages to initialize a phone call on your list. Actually, except  launching apps, Siri can do almost everything when screen lock is on.

This is potentially a security hole because any complete stranger can come up to your iPhone,  and give Siri a spoken command. Unauthorized access is always a nightmare for smartphone owners.

To solve this issue? It is actually quite simple.

The cause of this security hole is due to the default setting that allows Siri to work even when screen is locked. To change this setting you simply  go to Setting-General-Passcode Lock on your iPhone 4S. Then, you can change option for Siri as OFF.  Now, Siri will no longer function when the phone screen is locked.

Free lunch!

We must admit Kindle Fire is priced correctly. With Amazon’s tons of contents, this content tablet will surely capture the largest Android tablet market. According to Maximum PC, this $200 Kindle Fire may outsell all Honeycomb tables combined.

This mans once the Kindle Fire is shipped next month, a lot of users will use the Silk Browser.Most users probably will not know how to disable the caching feature.

The Silk browser will very likely speedup your browsing speed because most of the rendering will be done by Amazon servers.

However, users should try to avoid the Silk Browser. Here are the top 4 reasons you should stay away from Silk Browser, at least, turn off the cloud rendering.

1. Your private data
Don’t believe that Amazon will not collect some sort of your browsing info. There is no free lunch. Amazon is eager to know you better to serve you more contents and products; so they need know more about you. Browsing habit or history is the most important personal data: you may hide your political view for example, but your browsing history will tell a true story.

Also, some websites may show different pages to different users for the same URL. If Amazon cloud caches your page, and serve it to other users, do you want this to happen? If the website has some special promotion for your region, will it be available for you? probably not, because the website will only see that the page is requested by Amazon, not you.

2. Security of Amazon cloud
If you browse through the Amazon cloud using Silk browser, all your password, and all sensitive info will go through Amazon servers. Do you want to take this risk just for the browsing speed?

Once Amazon servers have such data, all hackers and cybercriminals will try to get them. Are you sure Amazon can always keep such info safe? Just for your information, Amazon cloud was down several times in different regions already this year. So, it is not bullet-proof.

3. Possible advertisements.
Again, there is no free lunch. When more and more users are using the Silk browser, Amazon may put advertisements on any webpages they want. They can easily cite the cost reasons: the servers cost Amazon money in every single second.  Maybe, just like Kindle, Amazon will roll out ad-supported Silk browser. If you do not want the ad, pay more.

4. Possible blocking by webmasters
Most websites, especially big sites, serve geo-targeted ads and contents. For example, if you are in UK, when you type Google.com, you will be directed to Google UK site. If you browse websites through Silk browser,  the website will assume you are from one of the Amazon data centers. So, this may annoying webmasters/web owners.

In addition, the Silk browser will predict what you will browse next and fetch the contents before you click the link. This simply generate misleading page views for webmasters. So, webmasters may simply block Amazon IPs, and you not be able to access such sites through Silk browser.

So, stay away from Silk browser. At least, turn off anything related to the cloud rending when you receive you device next month.

Yes, you need some protections, but for your privacy, not your head!

It actually means the web proxy uses https (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), instead of the normal http protocal for their web proxy. This suggests the connection between you and the proxy is secured (to certain extent), and your IT department or your ISP have no way to peer the contents you are browsing. Of course, they know the URL you requested.

This sounds secure and safer. Yes, it does. But do not overestimated the security provided. First, the connection between the http secure proxy and teh site you are browsing may still use http, not https, if the site you are browsing is not using https. Secondly, your ISP or your IT department can still track the URL you visited.

In the downside, there are small performance degradation when using https. And if you are using IE browser, some contents may not be shown properly when the site has both secured contents and normal http contents (e.g., Java script from third party).

Overall, it does make sense of using http secure proxy if you are a bit worry about your surfing privacy. But do not expect too much. If you want to try a http secure proxy, you may go to UtopianPal.com.