Hasta La Gadget!

It’s a shame you can’t unsubscribe from group texts. This week I was one of the recipients of a never-ending text bacchanal with a bunch of people I didn’t know. But it wasn’t fun or consensual. It was just a good reminder that we need to talk about text etiquette.

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Last month we reported that Southwest Airlines would be offering its passengers gate-to-gate WiFi as part of the FAA’s new ruling where personal electronic devices could be used during all stages of the flight. However this also meant that passengers would have to pay to use inflight WiFi services, which is currently priced at $8 for all-day usage. Well if you don’t need to use all aspects of the WiFi, such as you just need to use the internet for messaging, Southwest Airlines has announced that beginning today, Southwest Airlines will be offering iOS users the ability to send iMessages for just $2 a day.

Basically what this means is that your connectivity will be limited to just sending and receiving iMessages, which we guess is a fair deal if you want to kill some time during the flight. As for Android users, Southwest Airlines has promised that something similar will be headed their way come 2014. “Don’t worry Android users, we’ll be showing you the LUV soon.  Tell us what your favorite Android-based messaging apps are and we’ll ask Santa to make it happen early in 2014!” What do you guys think of Southwest Airlines’ move? Is this a service you would be glad to pay for were you to fly their airlines?

Southwest Airlines Offer $2 iMessaging Service For iOS Users original content from Ubergizmo.

When word broke of the NSA’s surveillance programs earlier this year, major companies named in the leaked documents tried to quash their customers’ privacy fears by issuing statements reiterating their commitment to privacy. Apple did something along the same lines, it said that the encrypting protecting iMessages is so secure that the company itself can’t decrypt it, meaning that even if it receives an order to intercept an iMessage, it can’t. Though earlier this week a group of researchers contradicted this claim and said that the company can read iMessages “if they choose to, or if they are required to do so by a government order.” Apple has now issued a denial.

The researchers from QuarksLab formed a theory about how iMessages can be intercepted, the called Apple’s control over the encryption key infrastructure a weakness and said that the company can change a key anytime it wants, which may result in an iMessage being intercepted and its contents being read. These researchers didn’t say that Apple is reading iMessages, they merely gave a theory which outlines a way that Apple may follow if it wants to read messages. Though Apple says that QuarkLab’s theory is exactly what it is, just a theory. A spokeswoman for Apple said that the iMessage service is “not architected to allow Apple to read messages,” and that the theoretical vulnerabilities described in the theory would require the company to re-engineer the iMessage system to exploit those vulnerabilities. The spokeswoman says that “Apple has no plans or intentions to do so.”

Apple Denies Researchers’ Claims That iMessages Aren’t Entirely Secure original content from Ubergizmo.

The other day we reported that there were some iOS users who were complaining of their iMessage woes, basically stating that the problem was that iMessages sometimes did not deliver, or sometimes it failed to send as a text message in instances where internet was not readily available. A temporary solution was found which was to reset the iPhone’s network settings, and to disable and re-enable iMessage. Granted this isn’t a solution that everyone will know about or know how to do themselves, but in any case Apple has since acknowledge that they are aware of the issue and are working on an update that will fix it.

According to Apple who made a statement to the Wall Street Journal, “We are aware of an issue that affects a fraction of a percent of our iMessage users, and we will have a fix available in an upcoming software update […] In the meantime, we encourage any users having problems to reference our troubleshooting documents or contact AppleCare to help resolve their issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes impacted users.” As it stands there are other bugs that Apple needs to address, so hopefully all of this will be addressed in the company’s next update, presumably with the upcoming iOS 7.0.3 which has been pegged for a release next week.

Apple Acknowledges iMessage Issues, Update On Its Way original content from Ubergizmo.

iMessage has been screwing up. Which, well, isn’t news to people who have been burned by iMessage before. But! It’s been screwing up more than usual. Enough that Apple has finally admitted that a "fraction of a percent" of iMessage users are having issues with the blue text bubble messaging service. Are you included in that fraction of a percent?

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