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iOS code names head for the hills
Apple's modern desktop OS is famous for its feline monikers -- Panther, Tiger, Leopard/Snow Leopard and Lion, among others. But what about the other Apple operating system, iOS? While the code names for those versions aren't used in the public branding and promotion of the iPhone/iPod touch/iPad family the way Mac OS X leans on Lion, they still exist, and there's still a pattern to them. iOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith tweeted the full list of iOS code names over the weekend, and while they might seem a bit random they actually have one thing in common: snow. Alpine, Kirkwood, Timberline, Telluride and the rest are all ski resorts in the western US. Does Scott Forstall enjoy some time out on the slopes? These names are certainly cute, but they also have a dark side. The 'Alpine' code name was used as the default SSH password for earlier builds of iOS, and users who jailbroke their phones but didn't bother to change the password found themselves susceptible to a potentially malicious SSH worm. [via TiPB] Photo by laszlo-photo (cc)
Marvell's SheevaPlug Linux PC fits in its power adapter
Marvell has the technology and the vision, and if the company gets its way the world will soon be overrun by lilliputian Linux machines. Hiding in wall warts and the like, these guys will begin quietly taking over tasks that we once relegated to servers and desktop machines. To this end, the company has just announced that they'll be making the SheevaPlug dev kit available. This is the platform that PogoPlug is based on, consisting of a 1.2GHz Kirkwood processor, 512MB flash storage, 512MB DRAM, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and USB 2.0. This bad boy supports many standard Linux 2.6 kernel distributions, and the whole thing plugs directly into a standard wall socket, drawing "less than one tenth of the power of a typical PC" while in use. Currently available for $99, the company says that it anticipates a price drop to $49 "in the near future."
