Steve Jobs said no to the new Apple TV UI design five years ago

A former Apple TV engineer took to Twitter last night discussing the latest UI that has been implemented on the Apple TV. For those unfamiliar, the new Apple TV UI was announced at the March 7th media event, along with the new 1080p Apple TV. The new UI isn’t much of a change, but brings larger buttons to the home page. Some love it, many hate it.

Michael Margolis, who formerly served as an Apple TV UI designer, said on his Twitter last night that Steve Jobs said no to the latest UI changes five years ago, however Apple’s senior executives recently approved the new UI…
Margolis further tweeted that “Nobody is [at Apple] to say no to bad design.” Aka, since Steve Jobs has passed away, many things are flying by that wouldn’t have under his rule. Another example is the 4G indicator that AT&T included in Apple’s iOS 5.1 update. Many say Steve Jobs would have never let that fly.

The Apple TV is still considered a hobby device at the Apple HQ. The Cupertino-based company is said to be working on a brand new Apple TV that will revolutionize the industry, but the current $99 Apple TV is not a main focus. The company sold a record 1.4 million units last quarter.

Our own Jeff Benjamin took a look at the new UI a few weeks ago and had mixed feelings about it.

Steve Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson that he had “cracked” a new TV, but Apple has yet to reveal anything. Maybe late 2012, or early 2013 we’ll see what Jobs had in mind.

What do you think of Apple now that Steve Jobs is gone?


‘Attacher’ allows you to open any attachment in iMessage

Attacher is an alternative to the ReceiveAny tweak that we covered previously. It allows you to open previously unsupported files directly from within iMessage.

Although you can’t use Attacher to send unsupported files, it’s still a great free solution for those cases when someone insists on sending one to you
Once you receive a file via iMessage, you’ll notice the blue arrow button next to the attachment. Tapping this arrow will bring up a dialogue menu that will allow you to open the attachment in iFile, or any other supported app for that particular file type.

Again, Attacher won’t let you send attachments, but it’s a great solution for opening various unsupported file types. You can find it on Cydia’s ModMyi repo for free.

What do you think?

US Government would’ve paid Comex $250,000 for exclusive use of JailbreakMe

Jailbreak community owes a lot to adept hackers who find and exploit weaknesses in the design of iOS mobile operating system, thus allowing Apple’s mobile gadgets to run unsanctioned software. It’s more often than not a neverending cat-and-mouse game between Apple and hackers that at the end benefits jailbreakers the most.

Say you’re an expert hacker who just figured an exploit in one of Apple’s products. You could report your findings directly to Apple and help them plug those holes with a software update.

But did you know you could also hand over this valuable information to an exploit broker who will sell it to a government agency and net you a decent profit, minus the broker’s commission? A U.S. government agency, to be precise…
That’s exactly what an exploit broker who goes by the nickname “Grusq” has been doing in the past twelve months. A South Africa native, Grusq started out by hooking up his hacker friends with contacts in government a year ago.

Realizing he might as well charge for his networking skills, he’s now on track to earn a million in revenue this year, 80 percent coming from the U.S. market. Just last month he elicited the $250,000 payout for an iOS zero-day vulnerability sold to a U.S. government contractor.

Forbes has the story:

That iOS exploit price represents just one of the dozens of deals the Grugq has arranged in his year-old side career as a middle man for so-called “zero-day” exploits, hacking techniques that take advantage of secret vulnerabilities in software.

It’s a legit biz and others do it, too! This includes the likes of small companies such as Vupen, Endgame and Netragard, but also major defense contractors like Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. So in a nutshell, a small portion of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars is being spent on purchasing zero-day exploits.

Other buyers might include the Russian mafia (“they pay very little money”), the Chinese government (“the market is very depressed”) and various parties in regions like the Middle East and the rest of Asia.

That JailbreakMe 3.0 exploit by hacker Comex? Agencies would have been willing to pay as much as a quarter of a million dollars “for exclusive use of the attack”, Grusq says. It’s just business and you get to deal with suits working for various government agencies. He puts its best:

You’re basically selling commercial software, like anything else. It needs to be polished and come with documentation. The only difference is that you only sell one license, ever, and everyone calls you evil.

In case you were wondering – yes, iOS exploits command a much higher price than those targeting Android:

An iOS exploit pays more than one that targets Android devices partly because it requires defeating Apple’s significantly tougher security features. That means most agencies can simply develop their own Android attacks, the Grugq says, while ones that can penetrate the iPhone are rare and pricey.

Here’s a rough price list for zero-day exploits that author Andy Greenberg put together based on input from his sources. Interesting enough, each price assumes an exclusive sale and not alerting the software’s vendor.

It goes without saying you need to get hooked up with a guy like Grusq with contacts in high places and negotiating skills to broker a deal for you. And most importantly, you have to be able to present a marketable and unique zero-day exploit.

Still, wouldn’t we all be this fortunate? Are folks like Grugq just savvy entrepreneurs or merchants of death trading the bullets of cyberwar?

Meet us in comments.

Apple confirms Apple TV-related iTunes issues

Have you recently been having problems with your Apple TV not downloading iTunes content? Well if so, you’re not alone. TheNextWeb is reporting that Apple has just confirmed that it is experiencing some issues with its iTunes service.

The problem is accompanied by an error message that reads “this item cannot be downloaded on this network, you must be connected to a Wi-Fi network,” and is preventing folks from downloading or streaming content to their Apple TVs…
Judging by this thread in Apple’s support forums, the issue doesn’t seem to be very widespread. But for those that are experiencing problems, there isn’t much light at the end of the tunnel:

“I just spoke with Apple Support, they are currently having a problem, they don’t know what is causing it. It seems to be on all platforms and the problem only occurs when you try to download anything over 15MB. They do not have an ETA yet for when this problem gets resolved…”

In perhaps a related note, several users have reported to us over the last few days that the App Store has been seeing similar problems. Apps will constantly show a download status of ‘Waiting,’ and will either take longer than usual to download, or time out completely.

It’s kind of frustrating that there isn’t an ETA for a fix on this yet, but at least it doesn’t appear to be affecting very many users. We’ll let you know if Apple makes an official statement regarding the outtage.

Have you been experiencing problems with iTunes or the App Store?