I guess we can take potshots at AT&T all day, but the proof is in the pudding. Or activations, in this case: 3.2 million iPhone activations in Q2, which is 10 times the number for the 3GS the year before. Oblivious to the noise about AT&T's network, a full 27% of those activations are new customers for AT&T, which has to be chafing someone's drawers over at Verizon. Here's hoping AT&T takes the $30.8 billion in revenue and sinks it right back into infrastructure or lowering cost to consumers. Full press release from AT&T here.

[via 9to5mac]

The folks from Charleston, SC have done it again.

Twelve South, the clever design house that only makes Apple accessories, has come out with the latest in a string of popular and stylish goodies. We've given away a number of their products, including the BookArc for MacBook, BassJump woofer speaker for MacBook, and the BackPack shelves for iMacs and Cinema Displays.

Yesterday we heard of a new iPad stand from Twelve South, and our initial reaction was a yawn -- everybody and their brother has come out with an iPad stand, and most of them are clunky, ugly, or weigh as much as the iPad. Upon further reading of the press release, we decided differently, and immediately worked with Twelve South to review and give away two of these amazing stands. They shipped a couple of the stands overnight, and we received them this morning.

The Compass (US$39.99) gets its name from the drafting tool, not from the device you use to determine where magnetic north is. Folded into its travel case (included), the Compass takes up a space just 7 inches (17.8 cm) long and 1 inch (2.54 cm) wide. The Compass can be deployed in two modes. In the first, it looks like a tripod with the two compass-like legs holding the iPad and a third, thicker leg keeping the assembly upright. In this way, you can view the iPad in either portrait or landscape orientation. The second mode holds the iPad up in a slightly tilted configuration that is perfect for typing.

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In a report on security in the first half of 2010 Apple has claimed the top spot in the number of security vulnerabilities in their OS and software. According to a report from the security company Secunia, Apple is followed by Oracle and then Microsoft in the number of security flaws reported. It's worth noting that this report does not weigh the severity of these vulnerabilities, only the overall number of them.

Safari itself ranks slightly better in the number of vulnerabilities found in 3rd party applications, taking the number two spot right after Mozilla's Firefox. It may not come as any surprise then that a major Safari exploit was publicly reported yesterday by Jeremiah Grossman, the founder of WhiteHat Security.

The exploit lets malicious sites retrieve your personal data from your Address Book in both Safari 4 & 5 if you have enabled the option to allow Safari to AutoFill web forms with your Address Book info. The exploit does not require the user to even see the forms, it can all happen automatically without you having any idea that you just gave the site your name, company, city, state, country, email and other form data you may have added to your Address Book entry.


It's important to note that this vulnerability does apply to Safari for Windows as well, but it will only grab the personal information you've explicitly typed into Safari directly.

Jeremiah also mentions that he did report this vulnerability privately to Apple on June 17th.

[Hat tip Techmeme & Ars Technica]

By now, everybody who owns an iPhone 4 knows how cool FaceTime is. They're also probably frustrated with the fact that a) you need to make a call at least one time in order to verify that a friend has an iPhone 4 and can actually do FaceTime chats, b) you can't see when friends are on Wi-Fi and ready to talk, and c) you can't leave them a video message when they're off a Wi-Fi network or have their phone turned off.

An upcoming free iPhone app, FacePlant, hopes to change all of that. FacePlant is from the same folks who brought you 12seconds and Rally Up, so they had the necessary savvy to supply both the video messaging piece and the social networking feel that FacePlant provides.

Here's the concept: you sign up for a free FacePlant account, which consists of your name and iPhone 4 number. The app goes through your contacts list, and if there's anyone in that list who is registered with FacePlant, they show up on a list of contacts. If they're ready and willing to talk, their name shows up surrounded by a bright orange bar; if they're offline, their name is outlined in gray. Tapping an active (orange) name displays a dialog that asks if you want to make a FaceTime call, a voice call, or leave a video message.

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With the imminent demise of UIGetScreenImage, a number of readers have asked me how they can use the newer AVFoundation approach to access screen data in their iPhone applications. I went ahead and built some sample code that, when I'm finished messing with it, will be part of chapter 7 of my revised cookbook. I have uploaded the current version to github. It consists of a simple helper class that allows you to start and stop a capture session.

You can request an image from this helper (namely, the last captured image from the buffer), which in this example is loaded into a central image view at the end-user's request. You can also ask it for a view with an embedded preview, using the current session. The example project adds that preview to the navigation bar.

I threw this example together pretty quickly, and as always, I welcome suggestions and improvements.

If you thought Apple wasn't serious about quality you haven't been paying much attention for the past decade. In addition to making better hardware every year (with the exception of iBook keyboards), Apple has now promoted Jeff Williams to Senior VP of Operations; he'll be working alongside Tim Cook (Apple's COO, possibly the successor-designate to Steve Jobs) to ensure the company's products are of the highest quality.

Williams will also keep an eye on the supply chain management side, a critical element in keeping costs low while pushing quality into the stratosphere. As AppleInsider reports, Williams cut his teeth at IBM before moving to Apple, and his expertise in supply chain management shone as he helped get the pieces for the iPod back when it was largely "off the shelf" components -- the shelves being mostly located in China. Williams was instrumental in global rollouts of the iPod and, more recently, the launch of the iPhone. We hope his new position will improve Apple's track record for quality gear.

Comic-Con starts in San Diego today, and I'm down here wandering the aisles, looking for geeky gear and cool games. Scott Pilgrim is already one of the stars of the show, with the excellent comic series having finished up, a new console game coming out soon, and of course the Michael Cera-enhanced movie in theaters in a few weeks. To celebrate, NBC Universal has released this free retro Punch-out game starring the characters from the movie. It's not quite as good as the upcoming console game, but it's an amusing little retro distraction that fans of the movie will get a kick out of.

The app's also connected up for Comic-Con -- it's got news and updates straight from the convention floor, and there is a trailer and gallery from the movie to unlock. Yes, it's adware -- if you have no interest in the movie, there's not really a reason to download the app. But if you're already interested in Scott Pilgrim and want a little more fun from the franchise on your iPhone during Comic-Con, definitely check this one out.

We love iPhone/iPad vs. unwitting criminal stories, especially ones that end happily. Across this category, though, it's hard to hold a candle to the story of Jordan Sturm, Horatio Toure, and one particular purloined iPhone.

As reported by the Chronicle, Sturm was standing on the street in San Francisco's SOMA neighborhood this past Monday when Toure rode up on a bicycle, grabbed the iPhone out of her hand and sped away. Most of the time, the phone would be gone for good, or (with luck) tracked down by Apple's Find My iPhone service. In this particular case, though, there was an easier way.

The iPhone in question is owned by Covia Labs, and it was being used to test the company's Alert & Respond software for police officers and military personnel. CEO David Kahn had asked Sturm to step outside -- with a phone running A&R's GPS live tracking app -- so he could demonstrate the geographic tool to his PR folk. Moments after she walked out the door, the system came to life... and showed an indicator heading off down the street at high speed. Oops.

Sturm ran back inside, they called police; Toure was arrested ten minutes later and about half a mile away, in possession of the stolen phone. Unlucky for him, but lucky for Covia Labs; they saved the cost of a new iPhone and gained a whole bunch of free publicity.

Note: Several commenters are insinuating that this theft was set up as a stunt to provide exposure for Covia Labs. There is absolutely no evidence to support that theory at this time; the suspect was arrested and details on his arrest were provided by the SFPD, per the original SFGate story. The suspect was booked on felony charges and placed in jail.

[via Techmeme]

Photo by oedipusphinx | flickr: cc

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