Hasta La Gadget!

Apple and its developer community have had a few rough weeks: hackers struck Apple’s Dev Center in mid-July, and the company’s efforts to both recover and rejuvenate the portal have been slow going. Things are looking up, however, as the company just sent word that it will restore most of the remaining services this week. These will include crucial elements like enrollments and renewals, although Apple has already extended current developers’ memberships to avoid interruptions. While there’s still a few missing pieces, it’s clear that developers can soon return to business as usual.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Apple

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Source: 9to5 Mac

Apple took its developer portal down over a week ago after a security expert discovered vulnerabilities in the system that allowed it to be breached in various ways. Despite Apple stating that personal information was encrypted, preventing it from being stolen, the system was still taken down and given a complete overhaul, which is nearing completion.

A couple days ago, Apple issued a status update in the form of a lengthy statement, detailing its plan of action and what members could expect. Along with the statement was the addition of a status page, which shows the current state of its system overhaul. At the time, only three of the 3 of the 15 tasks were complete, a number that is now resting at 7.

Apple’s plans included first getting Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, Apple Developer Forums, Bug Reporter, pre-release develop libraries, and videos up. According to the status update pages, the developer forums, pre-release documentation, and videos are still pending, but the dev centers are back up with a green light.

The remaining services still awaiting the green light include the Xcode Automatic Configuration, Member Center, App Store Resource Center, Program Enrollment and Renewals, and Technical Support, in addition to the videos, documentation, and forums mentioned above. Visually, nothing much looks different, but the behinds-the-scenes elements are promised to have been given an overhaul.

Said Apple in a new statement: “We appreciate your patience as we work to bring our developer services back online. Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, software downloads, and other developer services are now available. If you would like to know the availability of a particular system, visit our status page … Thank you for bearing with us while we bring these important systems back online. We will continue to update you on our progress.”

SOURCE: 9to5Mac

Apple Developer Center back up as system overhaul nears completion is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’ve already seen the black version of the Xbox One, obviously, and that’s all we’ve been treated with recently. However, seeing as how the Xbox 360 has been available in both white and black, it would make sense for the Xbox One to go the same route, right? Well, it seems that may actually happen, thanks to a photo posted by a developer that reveals a white Xbox One developer console.

The white dev console could mean that a white version of the Xbox One will be on the way at some point, but no one really knows whether or not it’ll be available at launch or if it’ll come later in the console’s life cycle, similar to how a black Xbox 360 showed several years after the console’s initial launch.

The photo was originally posted on Reddit, and another developer chimed in to say that “the zebra ones were also earlier devkits. We’ve gone through several revisions since the original alpha kit (giant server case) and the current one we have looks like the launch version.” By “zebra”, he’s referring to dev kits that were in both black and white (these we probably see hit retail).

Overall, the white dev kit shown in the photo looks practically identical to the black version that we’ll see at launch, save for the power button, which is slightly different in this case, as well as the missing chrome trim around the disc slot. It seems that a white version is set for primetime, but we wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft waited a bit before adding a new color to the lineup in order to boost sales.

VIA: Neowin

Xbox One white dev console shown off: white is the new black is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’ve been wondering why Apple’s Developer portal was down for a few days, blame it on a security breach. Apple announced yesterday that their dev center was hacked into, but no personal information was accessed, thankfully. So who’s behind the intrusion? A security researcher is taking the credit.

Independent security researcher Ibrahim Balic claims that his effort to breach into the developer portal was not intended to be malicious at all, and he ended up reporting all of the vulnerabilities that he found to Apple. Balic found 13 bugs in total, and was even able to access user details, but he only accessed 73 Apple employees just to prove to the company about the vulnerability.

Balic claims he comes in peace and even contacted Apple to make sure he wasn’t putting them through any difficulty. He says that he hasn’t published or used any of the information that he was able to access, but some users have reported getting password reset notifications after a possible breach to their accounts.

Apple’s Developer portal has been down for four days now, and it’s still showing that it’s down right now. There’s no word on when we might expect it to come back to full throttle, but most likely in the next day or two. While this is certainly an inconvenience for developers, this could pose an even greater problem for beta software versions.

We could see a delay on beta releases for both iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks. It seems Apple is focusing on getting their Developer portal back up and running before anything else, which means it may take longer for beta versions to release. However, we still have plenty of time before Apple’s proposed fall release of iOS 7.

SOURCE: Ibrahim Balic (TechCrunch)

Apple Developer portal breach credited to security researcher is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple’s WWDC 2013 developer session videos have turned up on YouTube, giving an insider insight into what’s due in iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks later this year. The footage – nearly 100 videos including covering the changes in AirPrint, how best to make use of iAd, and how OS X push notifications will work – offers non-developers a glimpse of the goodies that registered iOS/OS X developers have had access to for some time.

As has been the case for some years now, tickets for WWDC 2013 sold out ridiculously quickly. In fact, it took less than two minutes for all of the spaces to go, despite them costing $1,599 apiece.

The lure is the opportunity to get early access to Apple’s upcoming platforms for mobile and desktop, as well as the chance to discuss them with the company’s own engineers. Apple holds multiple developer sessions over the course of the five day event.

What’s unclear is how the videos play into Apple’s WWDC NDA (non-disclosure agreement), which developers are expected to agree to. That’s intended to prevent features Apple hasn’t necessarily publicly talked about from leaking; it’s unclear who has uploaded these videos, and whether it was Apple itself.

If not, then the channel itself is likely to be shut down in short order. For a top-level view on OS X Mavericks, check out our preview.

Update: Apple has confirmed that the video uploads are not authorized by them, and that they will be removed shortly.

VIA Steve Troughton-Smith

Apple WWDC 2013 developer session videos released in full [Updated] is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.