Hasta La Gadget!

Late last week, we caught wind of a hack that allows iPhone users to receive content from in-app purchases without actually paying for it. Obviously, this is no good, and Apple announced today that it plans to fix the hack in iOS 6, which should be arriving sometime later this year. Of course, saying that it will fix the vulnerabilities in the next release of iOS doesn’t help much when developers are stuck dealing with this hack now, so Apple has also issued a temporary fix that should suffice until iOS 6 is available.

To make sure that you get the money from the content you offer in-app, Apple recommends that developers make use of its receipt validation system, which will compare in-app purchases made with the company’s own records to make sure that nothing fraudulent is going on. By doing this, developers have an extra layer of defense against the vulnerabilities, and should be covered until an official fix is issued along with iOS 6. Apple’s new support documentation goes into further depth about what developers can do to make sure that they aren’t being taken for a ride.

The hack itself allows users to bypass Apple’s validation servers when making an in-app purchase, instead using a proxy to connect to a third-party server and send bogus validation back to the app. This lets users receive the content without any money ever changing hands. It’s unclear how many iOS developers have been affected by this workaround, but CNET says that the number of fraudulent in-app purchases could be as high as 30,000.

Apple offers temporary fix for in-app purchase hack is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Well, we can’t exactly say we saw this one coming. Sparrow, maker of popular email apps for iOS and Mac OS X, has just announced that it’s been acquired by Google. Expectedly, details on the acquisition are being kept under wraps at the moment, but company CEO Dom Leca has confirmed in a blog post that Sparrow will be joining the Gmail team at Google to “accomplish a bigger vision.” Fans of the company’s apps will be glad to know, however, that the team will “continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users” while also working on new things at Google. That does sound like most of their attention will be focused elsewhere, though. You can find Leca’s full statement on the matter at the source link below.

Update: The Verge was able to get some notion of a cost for this deal, with “under $25 million” being a figure assigned to this, a figure that wasn’t inflated due to a bidding war. (That should answer those wondering if maybe Google bought this out from under Apple.)

Filed under: Internet, Software

Google acquires Sparrow, the Apple-focused email app maker originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Jul 2012 12:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve just come back from the cinema after watching The Dark Knight Rises and you’re still amped about the movie, you can quench your thirst thanks to Gameloft. The previously announced The Dark Knight Rises game that was promised this summer is now available for you to get your hands on. The game is a third-person beat-em-up (like most superhero mobile games from Gameloft tend to be) where players are put into the shoes of Batman and have to clean up the streets of Gotham. I haven’t played the game myself, but I’m assuming it will follow the movie’s story line so those of you who haven’t seen the movie should probably stay away unless you want it spoiled.

Contrary to previous reports, Gameloft isn’t releasing this game as a freemium and will set you back $6.99. It is available now from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. If you do check it out, let us know what you think. We’ve heard it’s a hefty download so make sure you’re on WiFi and near a power source for everything to go smoothly.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Smule launches AutoRap, Twitter updates Android and iOS apps,

We took a gander at Divide by Enterproid sometime earlier this year, and here we are with word that the Divide app by Enterproid is now available on the iOS platform, delivering Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) mobility to an even greater number of employees and the IT world in particular. Divide on iOS will be accompanied by a range of business class applications, such as the ability to govern how attachments are opened in addition to delivering secure and separate browser shortcuts for Web apps. Not only that, you are able to integrate additional enterprise applications into its secure workspace.

Nicholas McQuire, Research Director Enterprise Mobility Strategies EMEA at IDC, said, “By separating company apps, data and information from their personal equivalents, businesses don’t have to constantly worry about what their employees might be doing in their personal time and employees don’t have to compromise their privacy. Many businesses globally are increasingly looking for solutions that deliver a great user experience, but cleanly separate personal and company data to reduce liability concerns and overall management complexity of deploying mobile enterprise applications and data.”

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: ChargeCard – a portable charger for your iPhone, Ptch is a new social network for slideshows,

This week several black and white photographs taken back around the year 2002 appeared containing what may very well have been the original iPad prototype – today some much more impressive images have been dropped. The images you’ll see here show not just the supposed original “035 prototype”, but a brand new iPad 2 as well. It seems that someone who owns one of these original beasts found themselves suddenly free to tell the truth about it and took immediate action to make it so.

What you’ll see is the iPad 2 sitting next to what’s being called the original iPad prototype. This device was shown in a story earlier this week which had none other than Apple’s Jonathan Ive confirming the existence of said prototype and that the images matched up to what he remembered from the early 2000s as the prototype in question. This original iPad – made well before such a name existed – had a 12 in display and was nearly an inch thick.

This device has not yet been shown running any software at all, but due to the distinctive lack of any kind of buttons or switches at all, we must assume that it was meant to be a touch-screen unit. The back of the device has an Apple logo in portrait configuration, and the whole back of the device is white plastic. This design places the device right in line with the original white MacBook lineup, rounded corners and everything.

One rather large difference is the area around the front glass panel – it appears to have a space for airflow, this unit perhaps even containing a cooling fan inside!

Have a glance at how different the original is from the most modern of iPad units, and thank your lucky iStars that Apple found a way to make things much, much smaller in the decade between the two. Head to our iPad timeline below as well for additional recent bits on the future of the iPad.

[via Buzzfeed]

iPad original prototype re-appears with 12-inch display is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.