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iOS 4.3.3 is out, location tracking 'fix' in tow
Apple's promised update to iOS to rectify what it perceived as a set of bugs in the system -- namely, an excessively large cache of location information that was backed up to iTunes and hung around even after you switched Location Services off -- is now being distributed to iPhones, iPads and iPod touches out in the wild. To exterminate those problematic aspects of your OS, you know what to do -- hook up to iTunes and get downloading. And yes, it's the full 666.2MB file as usual. P.S. - iOS 4.2.8 looks to be out for Verizon iPhones as well, though we haven't verified this for ourselves yet. Still, it's the same set of changes and the same method to obtain the latest firmware. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
TeleNav bringing hybrid navigation to GPS apps, eases reliance on data connection
If there's two things the world needs, it's a complete lack of international roaming charges, and GPS signals that never fade. Oh, and for Slash to not play the last Super Bowl with the Black Eyed Peas -- we suppose that makes three. At any rate, at least we're moving somewhat closer to a reality that solves the middle issue, with TeleNav announcing this week that it'll be implementing "hybrid navigation technology" into its apps (including the new iOS version) in the very near future. Post-implementation, TeleNav software will automatically cache maps and directions for routes you look up, and if you drop your mobile connection or GPS signal en route, you'll still be able to have a look at the original plan. 'Course, any deviations from the prescribed route will lead to endless frustration, but if you (or your 63 year old father) are familiar with following a paper map, you ought to be just fine. The company asserts that the new addition will be rolling out to "select applications" that it develops for carrier partners "in the near future," and you won't be ask to pay a dime more for the added convenience. Sometimes life's just too kind, eh? Update: TeleNav pinged us to say that its version will actually download full maps to the device (so you'll need a good chunk of free space), so you really won't suffer too much from not having a live connection. Also, the iPhone build is better known as AT&T Navigator v1.8i.
Garmin launches OpenCaching community, pushes caching closer to the mainstream
What's that? You've never heard of caching? For shame! In all seriousness, we're surmising that quite a few of you out there may have overlooked this up-and-coming jewel of recreation, but Garmin's doing its darnedest to change that. The GPS maker has just opened up a new online community at OpenCaching.com, hailed "a completely free online community for creating, sharing and finding geocaches around the world." For those out of the loop, caching is akin to a sophisticated game of hide-and-seek, where individuals download GPX files and then head out on adventures that'll lead them to various surprises and / or treasures. A two-month old honey bun, an original script from Step Brothers, or maybe even a sealed bag of Deutsche Marks from last century -- you know, things of that sort. The site even lets users rank the 'Awesomeness' in addition to size, terrain and difficulty, and while it's obviously hosted by Garmin, it's platform agnostic in nature. Head on over if you're looking to blaze a few trails over the holiday break.
IceClean does system maintenance and optimization for your Mac for free
There are a raft of utilities that provide a front end for the built-in Unix system tasks. Some are free, some cost a little bit, either through a purchase or shareware fee. Cocktail is a great example of a paid app that is very complete but it's not free. OnyX is a good free app with similar capabilities. IceClean does a whole basket of system fix-ups and the price is zippo. We took a look at IceClean a couple of years ago, and it's been updated for Snow Leopard. Everything from triggering background maintenance tasks that normally get done in the middle of the night, to permission repair, preference file verification and cache clearing. The app also has some network utilities for the more technically minded, like traceroute,, netstat and whois. The app can also force the trash can to empty, force eject optical media, and it can clean up many problems with Spotlight. There are a lot of other functions and you can check them at the IceClean website. Remember that like any utility, it's doing some deep digging into the Unix core of Mac OS X, so it isn't a good idea to force quit the app when it's running. It doesn't offer a lot of feedback other than a spinning gear, so caution is the word of the day. The current version supports Snow Leopard, while version 2.5 supports OS X 10.4. All these apps have some overlap, and most of them have some unique features. Check them out to see which ones best meet your needs. [via Mac360]
Slacker Radio 2.0 for iPhone to feature station caching, out 'soonish'
Ever since Slacker Radio decided to flee the hardware business, we've been looking forward to bigger and better things from its mobile apps. If the hands-on that Dave Zatz got with the version 2.0 software for iPhone is any indication we won't be waiting in vain, either. The big news here is station caching: that's right, users will soon be able to store music for off-line access, whether you're listening on a plane or in a dead zone. Exactly how many stations (and for how long) you can store is currently a mystery, although the reviewer said it took about 20 minutes to cache six stations, with each one being good for at least a couple hours playback. In order to take advantage of this, you will need to purchase the Slacker Radio Plus package, and you'll have to wait for the app to be approved by Apple, which could be a couple days from now -- or it could be never, depending on Apple's mood.
Intel teases six-core Gulftown, discusses tera-scale computing
The 32nm dual-core Clarkdale processors that recently made their debut are about to pave the way for Intel's next performance crown chaser, the six-core Gulftown. You might've known that already, but Intel's decided to furnish us with the above slide detailing the particular differences between the two dies, with the most notable being the whopping 1.17 billion transistors that the new CPU will be composed of. The major attraction of Clarkdale chips lies in their power efficiency and competent integrated GPU, but the Gulftown focus will be firmly on the high end. Hence, there's no integrated graphics, but the built-in memory controller supports three channels of DDR3 RAM and even plays nice with lower-powered 1.35-volt sticks. There's also confirmation that the forthcoming hex-core chip will fit inside the familiar LGA-1366 socket, so if you bought a high end Core i7, worry not, you'll be able to replace your still blisteringly quick CPU with an even faster beast. Quad-core variants -- by virtue of disabling a pair of cores -- are on the cards as well, while Intel also took the opportunity to delve into questions of 1Tbps+ bandwidth interconnects and its 80-core processor project, but you'll have to hit up the links below to learn more about those.
Blizzard: Run Oculus, win fabulous prizes
Despite the nerfs in Patch 3.3, it's pretty obvious that whole lot of people still hate Oculus, enough so that they immediately bail when it comes up as a random dungeon. Apparently, it's a substantial number of people doing this, enough that Blizzard's taken notice and taken action. But they're not removing it from the system. Instead, they're incentivizing it -- or, if you prefer to be a bit more pessimistic, turning final boss Eregos into a loot pinata in the most direct way possible. Zarhym's announced that those who happen to get Heroic Oculus with the random dungeon finder and stick it out to the end will find their own personal loot bag in Eregos' cache. The bags will contain two extra Emblems of Triumph, rare gems, and a chance at the Reins of the Blue Drake, formerly the rare mount drop from 10-man Malygos. To make up for the switch, the Reins of the Azure Drake will have a chance to drop from both 10-man and 25-man Malygos. Will this staunch the exodus from Oculus? Will the lust for yet another pretty dragon mount inspire people to tough out the dreaded vehicle mechanics? Or will people just tough it out until they get their drake and start group dropping again? It should be fun to see what happens.
Clarification on the iPhone Spotlight email issue
Earlier today, I posted about the ability to find previously deleted emails using the Spotlight search on the iPhone, adding to the already intense swarm of news surrounding this issue. My findings were that, by ensuring your trash folder was emptied and refreshed, the problem appeared to be solved. However, many of you responded indicating that this did not work for you, and that you were still seeing cached messages. Then Cult of Mac posted an update to their original piece, suggesting that the problem was more specific to POP accounts. Although I had tested both POP and IMAP accounts with similar results, I decided to investigate further. First, to clarify: The problem here is *not* with Spotlight caching the contents of your email, as many have suggested. Spotlight simply indexes the available content on your phone, and logs a pointer to it. When you tap a search result, it opens the associated application and tells that app to view the content. In this case, it sees an email message and asks Mail.app to open it, which it does, because Mail.app still has the message content stored locally. Secondly, this appears to be specific to POP accounts. On IMAP or Exchange accounts, deleted email messages do appear in Spotlight results until the trash folder is emptied, as described in my earlier post. I created a fresh account and configured it for POP access, then downloaded the mail. Searching spotlight, I could see the message I was looking for. I then went back to the message and deleted it, and that's where the fun starts. I conducted this same test multiple times, and found that sometimes, the message would now show up in Spotlight twice, one result opened the message, intact, with the Inbox listed as the folder to return to; the other displaying a message in the trash folder, but with an error displaying the body of the message. Other times, I would only see one result, pointed directly to the trash.
Force help to be more helpful
Being the Kool-aid sipping, Apple fanatic that you are, I'm sure you have already updated to the latest versions of iLife and iWork, right? If you have then it's not unlikely for you to be experiencing the same kind of problem that Rob Griffiths over at Macworld is dealing with as well.Following his recent upgrade to the latest (and greatest!) version of iPhoto, Rob noticed some inconsistencies in the way Help was providing him information. Specifically, he had trouble with locating documentation on the new Faces feature when navigating through iPhoto's Help menu and launching the Help application. Rob was able to locate the documents he sought by using Leopard's Spotlight-esque Help-searching feature and querying for "Faces."During our review of iPhoto '09 we did not come across any issues with the Help documentation. But we here at the TUAW headquarters at the Winter office in Hawaii are too stubborn to read directions. Rob's problem seems to be an old one that has occasionally plagued users through many versions of OS X. He points to another article at Macworld by Chris Breen which covers some tactics for wrangling Help back into line.The culprit in this whodunit case turns out to be Help's cache file (in the library with the candlestick). According to Rob, "Help relies heavily on cache files to present its information to the user." For reasons unknown, upgrading an application does not necessarily cause the cache files to rebuild. In order to force the system to accomplish this, first quit iPhoto then navigate to the current user's home directory -> Library -> Caches (~/Library/Caches) and locate "com.apple.helpui." Once the cache file is located, drag it into the trash and restart iPhoto. Boom! You now have a working-as-intended iPhoto Help viewer.While any application's help cache can become obsolete, Rob notes an increase in likelihood for Apple's own applications. Whether you're experiencing problems with an Apple app or not, deleting the cache file is very likely the solution. Have you had any issues with an application's help viewer? If so, which app was it and how did you resolve it? Let us know in the comments!
10.5.5 update fixes DNS vulnerability
Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.5 update (and Security Update 2008-006) fixes a critical DNS vulnerability that could allow attackers to trick victims into visiting malicious Web sites using what's known as a "cache poisoning attack." We wrote about the vulnerability in August. Although Apple's release notes say BIND was updated "to address performance issues," the update also delivers the promised address port randomization that protects users from such cache poisoning attacks. The original patch offered protection for Apple's servers but did not completely protect client systems. Apple's updates fixed flaws in several applications and system components, including some that attackers could use to run unauthorized software on a user's computer. [Via IDG.]
Cached Leopard Mail images: friend or foe?
TUAW reader Simon wrote in to us, to share one of his favorite new Leopard features--and its unexpected consequences. After clicking on an All Images search, he was astonished to find any number of odd gifs and jpgs pertaining to, um, Viagra, and er, male enhancement. He quickly realized that All Images was displaying bits (and we do mean bits) from Mail's download cache. This means that although he set Mail to not download HTML images, they're getting downloaded anyway. Simple annoyance or possible security breech? You tell us in the comments.
Xbox 360 HDD cache clear code discovered [update 1]
HEXUS.gaming reports that a cache clear code has been discovered for the Xbox 360 hard drive via the dashboard's system blade. To perform the function, access 'memory' in the system blade, and then highlight the hard drive. Now press: Y, X, X, LB, RB, X, X. The following message should appear: "Do you want to perform maintenance on your Xbox 360 storage devices?"If you initiate maintenance, the hard drive's cache will be cleared, including all software updates. Theoretically, this function could be used to un-update Oblivion in order to regain access to the unlimited gold and item duplication glitches. Note: we have not tested this function.Update: corrected code.See also: Oblivion patched for PC, 360 tomorrow
