Software : Apple quizzed by Congress over Path row

Apple quizzed by Congress over Path row
Google Wallet fixes pre-paid card issue
In Depth: Office 15: what Metro can do for new Office in Windows 8

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Members of the United States Congress have written to Apple demanding answers over the Path application controversy, which saw iOS users' address books uploaded without consent.

Developers of the social networking app admitted it had mistakenly uploaded the contact information from iPhones, but has since cleared the data from its systems and issued an apology.

However, the case highlighted a flaw that could be repeated with every iOS app. They all have access to the same information, which allows apps to collate and upload the data without your permission.

Now the storm has reached government level, with Congress saying the Path incident "raises questions about whether Apple's iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts."

Questions, questions, questions...

The letter addressed to Tim Cook demands clarification on a number of issues including the company's app privacy guidelines and how the App Store determines whether an app meets that criteria.

Congress also wants to know whether Apple considers "the contents of the address book to be "data about a user"?", while asking how many apps transmit data from the address book.

It also asks this rather reasonable question: "You have built into your devices the ability to turn off in one place the transmission of location information entirely or on an app-by-app basis. Please explain why you have not done the same for address book information."

The letter, which can be read in full on the Energy and Commerce Committee site, requests a response from Cook by the end of the month.

Via: TheNextWeb

Google Wallet fixes pre-paid card issue

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Google has restored the use of pre-paid cards for its Google Wallet service, following last week's security concerns.

The NFC payment service, which isn't exactly setting the world on fire, suspended the use of the cards last week when a serious flaw was discovered.

Unauthroized users were able to clear the data from the Google Wallet app and instantly access the funds.

Google says it has now fixed the flaw, and those few smartphone owners actually making use of the service, can now use pre-paid cards once again.

Ensuring the security

The company said in a statement: "Yesterday afternoon, we restored the ability to issue new prepaid cards to the Wallet.

"In addition, we issued a fix that prevents an existing prepaid card from being re-provisioned to another user. While we're not aware of any abuse of prepaid cards or the Wallet PIN resulting from these recent reports, we took this step as a precaution to ensure the security of our Wallet customers.

"If you are unable to access your previous prepaid card balance for any reason, please contact our toll-free support for assistance."

Only one phone

Currently the Google Wallet app is only available for owners of the Samsung Nexus S 4G on the Sprint network.

Verizon has said it will not feature the app on its range of Android smartphones until Google can prove it can provide "the best security and user experience" for users.

In Depth: Office 15: what Metro can do for new Office in Windows 8

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What Metro can do for Office 15

A major new version of Windows has always come with a major new version of Office to take advantage of the new features.

Metro-style WinRT applications are certainly a major feature for Windows 8. So what's Office 15 (which might be called Office 2012 or Office 2013 depending on when it ships) going to do for Windows 8 and Metro?

The recently announced Office 15 technical preview is only available to selected businesses who are working with Microsoft directly.

The public beta comes this summer, when we'll be able to try it out on the beta or even the release candidate of Windows 8, depending on timing.

Office 15 metro

What it's not going to do is replace all the familiar desktop apps like Word and Excel with touch-first Metro-only equivalents.

We now know there will be desktop versions of the key Office apps. But whether it's x86 or WOA, the desktop Office applications won't be all you get in Office. Office 15 is going to be a mix of desktop and Metro where appropriate.

Yes, we'll see Office reimagined for Metro; what Steve Ballmer called "Office Metro style" at the Financial Analysts Meeting last autumn.

But Metro is more than just the full-screen, immersive, touch-centric Metro-style applications written in WinRT that run on ARM and it's more than the multi-coloured tiles of the Metro Start screen.

The whole clean, typography-inspired, 'authentically digital' (aka not pretending to be a leather notebook or a green felt games table) design language behind Windows Phone and the new Xbox dashboard is also Metro.

We've already seen that showing up in the Office Web apps, in Outlook Web Access, in the control panels for Office 365 and Windows Azure, and in the leaked build of Office 15 last year.

Office 15 is going to bring that look to the desktop apps, as well as to the mobile clients, cloud services and Office servers that will launch at the same time. Microsoft hasn't even hinted publicly at a launch date, although All About Microsoft is predicting it will be at the end of 2012.

Metro office 15 excel

Microsoft has repeatedly said that there's still room for 'rich' desktop applications designed to be used with a mouse and keyboard in Windows 8.

"There are times when you want a dense layout of information, where you want to have lots of control over your windows and lay out lots of things," pointed out Windows interface chief Jensen Harris. That's one good reason that even on WOA, the Office apps we already know about are desktop apps.

Not just for tablets

While Metro-style applications make most sense on a tablet - at least until we see Kinect-enabled desktops and laptops. Anguilo said at Computex last year that "ARM isn't just for tablets" and demonstrated an ultraportable system running on Nvidia's Tegra chipset.

It's also likely that ARM Windows tablets will have optional docking cradles and keyboards the way a number of Android tablets already do. And once you have that, switching to a desktop-style application for complex editing when you sit at a desk makes more sense.

As Angiulo said about using the desktop and Explorer on ARM Windows back at Computex. "You don't have to give up the ability to have control over your PC, just because it's ARM." So it wouldn't really make sense if you had to give up Office, just because it's ARM.

But there's no way the Office team is going to ignore the major new features of WinRT – and with the Office code already rewritten to be clean enough to run efficiently on ARM, some of the work of building WinRT apps is done.

Office 15 powerpoint

There's going to be more to Office 15 that what we already know about. We haven't heard about a bundled desktop version of Outlook on WOA and Outlook is far too important to Office to leave out. Why isn't is in the list Steven Sinofsky gave TechRadar of the WOA Office desktop apps?

First it's a business application; consumers will get most of what they need in the Mail app, which will definitely connect to Exchange, and businesses will pay for Outlook (probably as part of a volume licence that doesn't push up the purchase price of WOA tablets).

Second, we predict Outlook is likely to be a Metro-style WinRT application. As we discovered with the Developer Preview, you can't search emails in a desktop application from the Metro Start screen and only WinRT apps can use the new Share contracts to pass information back and forth.

Emails are something you're going to want to search, and they're a natural way to share information from other apps.

Office 15 word

We're not expecting WinRT versions of all the Office applications; Publisher and Access don't make a lot of sense with a touch interface. But OneNote and Lync – the two applications The Verge has reported specific rumours about – are ideal applications for a tablet, especially as we know the ARM version of Windows will have the same excellent handwriting recognition as x86 Windows.

They fit into what Microsoft has said about improving the meeting experience in Office 15. Plus there are already Windows Phone versions of both (without the handwriting recognition).

And rather than simple document viewers to go with the WinRT PDF viewer (which you'll need to see documents in Metro-style Outlook), we expect to see WinRT versions of Word and Excel as well.

Plus there's the mysterious Moorea desktop app in the leaked Office 15 build that already looks very Metro-like (although it would also make sense as a way to make your own content and links into a finger-friendly view for Metro IE).

Office 15 onenote

The question is how powerful these WinRT apps will be. One thing to remember is that there are already HTML versions of all of these running as the Office Web Apps on SkyDrive and SharePoint which you can already pin to the Metro Start screen, and the IE team has recently been blogging about the various methods of taking HTML5 applications offline in IE10 (and WinRT apps can be written in HTML5).

Back in 2009 we spotted the Microsoft job advert that promised to make Web applications "rock on Windows". It's not ideal (Web apps are designed to run on a server), but the very least the Office team could do would be WinRT versions of the Web apps.

Given that this is the entire set of Office tools, applications and services, we're expecting more.

Yahuui Blog

Wednesday, February 15, 2012