Apple’s next iPhone will be cased in ‘Liquidmetal’, according to reports.
Apple's chief executive: Tim Cook.Photo: AP
The iPhone 5, likely to be released later this year, is expected to be cased
in a ‘metallic glass’, otherwise known as Liquidmetal, says a Korean news
outlet citing ‘industry sources’.
The case is expected to be 20 times stronger than the current encasement.
According to The
Register, ‘metallic glass is a metal alloy, but one with the
disordered structure of glass’. The material has been around since the
1990s, but since a new breakthrough in ‘superspeed pulse mould technology’,
this type of glass, which is as tough as metal, can now be used for phone
casings.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment on rumours and speculation.
The technology giant has signed an exclusive deal with Liquidmetal Techologies
Ltd, the inventors of the material. Apple is believed to have paid $11m for
the exclusive arrangement.
The part of the new iPhone expected to be made out of metallic glass is the
back casing – as opposed to the glass display.
The same Korean news outlet has also predicted that the upcoming Samsung
Galaxy S3, due to launch on May 3 in London, will be made out of high-tech
ceramics.
The Downing Street website was also disrupted by computer hackers who targeted the Home Office in protest at the Government’s extradition policies.
The Anonymous hacking network uses as a logo the mask from the comic V For Vendetta
The Anonymous collective has vowed to target British Government sites every week, bringing them offline by overloading them with traffic.
So-called “hacktivists” were able to launch their cyber attack on Saturday night despite announcing it days in advance, raising questions about the effectiveness of Whitehall internet security.
The British branch of Anonymous – a loose global collective of computer hackers who often target law-enforcement websites – first advertised “#OpTrialAtHome” last Monday.
A poster featured the photos of three British citizens who have been sent to the US to face trial – Gary McKinnon, Richard O’Dwyer and Christopher Tappin – together with the slogan “Fight extradition”.
It included the address of the Home Office website and the direction to “charge ya lazers” on Saturday at 9pm GMT.
Supporters would understand this to be an order to join in a “distributed denial-of-service attack” on the website, in which thousands of computers are used to send a flood of requests to visit the victim’s homepage, causing its servers to buckle under the demand.
At the appointed hour, Anonymous Twitter feeds ordered followers to “fire your Laz0rs”, and soon reported “Tango Down” as the target was hit.
Screenshots showed that the Home Office website was inaccessible from 9pm and service was reportedly patchy until Sunday morning.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The Home Office website was the subject of on online protest last night.
“This is a public-facing website and no sensitive information is held on it. There is no indication that the site was hacked and other Home Office systems were not affected.
“Measures put in place to protect the website meant that members of the public were unable to access the site intermittently.
“We will continue to monitor the situation and take measures accordingly.”
The activists also brought down the Downing Street website at about 10.30pm, but a spokesman for the Prime Minister said it only lasted for a “couple of minutes” and there was no suggestion of it being hacked into. The Ministry of Justice denied the hackers’ claims that its website had also been taken offline.
Anonymous explained on Twitter: “It’s a digital protest which is different [from] hacking. UK want their government to listen. We can do it as long as it takes.
“Selling your citizens to foreigners is not acceptable! We are Anonymous, we do not forget, we do not forgive.”
Another message from the group said: “EXPECT a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) every Saturday on the UK Government sites.”
A malware named 'Flashback' trojan has infected over half a million Mac machines in which half of the infected computers were installed in United States, claimed a Russian anti-virus firm.
According to firm, a software 'Dr. Web' has diagnosed about 6,00,000 Macs installed, have the malware infected, which is potentially allowing them to be hijacked and use them as "botnet".
"By introducing the code, criminals are potentially able to control the machine," the BBC quoted the firm's Chief Executive, Boris Sharov, as saying.
"We stress the word potential as we have never seen any malicious activity since we hijacked the botnet to take it out of criminals' hands. However, we know people create viruses to get money," he added.
Though Apple has released a security update, but users who still haven't installed the patch, remain at risk.
The malware, Flashback, was first detected last September, when anti-virus researchers released a software which posed itself as a Flash Player update. Once it was downloaded, it deactivated some of the computer's security software.
Dr Web also identified that 274 of the infected computers it detected, appeared to be located in Cupertino, California which is the home to Apple's headquarters.
Google today went public with its plans to offer augmented-reality glasses, which it’s calling “Project Glass.”
Unveiling the project should make it easier for Google to test the weird-looking glasses in public. As currently designed, they have a horizontal frame that rests on a wearer’s nose, with a wider strip of computer and a little clear display on the right side. So they’re not really “glasses” in the traditional sense at all.
From a video Google put out of how the prototype works, an augmented-reality-glasses wearer can control music, get directions, take pictures, give voice commands and conduct video chats. The glasses don’t cover the whole eye, so it seems like the wearer does something like look up to engage with the display.
Project Glass is part of the Google[x] special projects division that also includes self-driving cars. The glasses team is led by Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and Sebastian Thrun.
The New York Times first reported the project in February. At the time, it said the glasses were expected to go on sale later this year. However, Google said today that it’s unlikely the glasses will hit the market this year.
Getting ready for the next wave of iPhone excitement
As it happened, there was no iPhone 5 in 2011 after all, but the company did announce the iPhone 4S.
However, the new iPhone 5 is still on the cards - we're expecting it to debut in the middle of this year. So we've gathered together all the latest iPhone 5 rumours and rounded them up below.
First though, why not read our complete iPhone 4S review?
It's the phone that appeared when the whole world was looking forward to the iPhone 5 anyway, so make up your own mind whether to make the jump to Apple's latest now or save those pennies for the 2012 iPhone 5 release.
iPhone 5 release date
Rumours that we reported on 18 October claim an iPhone 5 release date of Summer 2012. Analyst Ashok Kumar claimed that the absent iPhone 5 was meant to be the big announcement at the recent event where the iPhone 4Swas launched.Given the pattern of Apple's iPhone launches, we're expecting the next-gen iPhone 5 to debut in mid to late 2012. We reckon it's most likely to be shown off at Apple's Worldwide Developer Event (WWDC), which usually takes place in early June.
iPhone 5 form factor
Unlike the iPhone 4S, the new iPhone will be a completely new design from what has gone before, so that means an entirely new casing as we saw with the iPhone 3G and, later, the iPhone 4.
Interestingly, someone who claimed to have seen a larger-screened iPhone 5 prototype said in November 2011 that Steve Jobs canned the new handset and opted for the iPhone 4S because of the larger screen size of the new device. According to Business Insider, it was feared that a new size would create a two-tier iPhone ecosystem.
Beatweek also claimed in November 2011 that the 5-inch was scrapped "because Apple wouldn't be able to do it properly" this year. However, theDaily Mail (make of that what you will) then suggested that a four-inch version was likely and that Sony has already shipped top secret demo screens to Apple.
iPhone 5 specs
Based on the roadmap of mobile chip design specialist ARM (of which Apple is a licensee), we'll see a quad-core processor debut in the new iPhone 5 - probably called the Apple A6. We know that we'll see other quad core handsets debut in 2012, so it's not too much of a stretch to say that the iPhone 5 will be the same.
We had expected some kind of help in terms of predicting the iPhone 5 CPU from the launch of the new iPad, but the announcement of a slightly tweaked A5X processor really didn't help things there.
iPhone 5 will have 4G/LTE support
With many 4G handsets already announced in the US, it can't be long before the iPhone supports 4G technologies - even if we won't even have a UK spectrum auction until 2012.
4G mobile broadband and LTE explained
Will Strauss from analyst firm Forward Concepts, who says that the next iPhone will feature LTE technologies."They're saving iPhone 5 for the LTE version and that won't be out until next spring," said Strauss.
After the new iPad's launch brought 4G to an Apple device, it's widely expected that 4G will come to iPhone 5.
Steve Jobs' iPhone 5 legacy
Many sites have reported that Steve Jobs was working hard on the iPhone 5 project, which will apparently be a "radical redesign". We shall see... but the fact the iPhone 4S was so similar to the iPhone 4 suggests that Steve was working on something pretty special before
And if you're in a bit of a hurry, we've also got a handy iPhone 5 video detailing the latest rumours on release date, spec and more - so check if out for a quick fix of next-gen Apple fun:
The Wall Street Journal has previously reported that: "Apple is also developing a new iPhone model, said people briefed on the phone. One person familiar said the fifth-generation iPhone would be a different form factor than those that are currently available… it was unclear how soon that version would be available to Verizon or other carriers."
This has since been backed up by reports from Engadget, which state the design will be a 'total rethink'.
iPhone 5 screen
Various sources claim the iPhone 5 will feature a larger, 4-inch screen. Digitimes quotes the source as saying that Apple is expanding the screen size "to support the tablet PC market as the vendor only has a 9.7-inch iPad in the market."
On 23 May 2011, we reported on rumours that the iPhone 5 could feature a curved glass screen. These rumours also came from Digitimes, which said that Apple has purchased between 200 and 300 special glass cutting machines because they're too costly for the manufacturers to invest in.
In March 2012, new reports suggested that the new iPhone 5 would come sporting a larger 4.6-inch retina display.
There's been some speculation that Apple might include Near Field Communication (NFC) technology in the iPhone 5, turning it into a kind of credit/debit card.
However, with the tech being inside the Google Nexus Sand Samsung Galaxy Nexus, as well as a host of other top smartphones, the time for NFC may finally be here.
On 24 June 2011 it was reported that the Google Wallet mobile payment platform could feature on the new iPhone. Eric Schmidt admitted that Google is looking to port the software to other manufacturers.
However, on 31 January 2012 9to5Mac claimed to have spoken with a well-connected developer who disclosed information received from Apple iOS engineers saying they are "heavily into NFC".
The developer in question has not been named, but is working on a dedicated iOS app which includes NFC reading for mobile transactions. When questioned how confident he was on the information he had received his reply was "Enough to bet the app development on".
iPhone 5 camera
Sony makes the camera for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. Speaking at a liveWall Street Journal event, Sony's Sir Howard Stringer was talking about the company's camera image sensor facility in Sendai, a town that was recently ravaged by the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
According to 9to5Mac, he said something along the lines of, "Our best sensor technology is built in one of the [tsunami] affected factories. Those go to Apple for their iPhones… or iPads. Isn't that something? They buy our best sensors from us."
Sources have also suggested the new iPhone could have an 8MP camera. Indeed, Sony announced in January 2012 that it had developed new back-illuminated stacked CMOS image sensors which are smaller in size.
iPhone 5 price
If the iPhone 5 is an evolutionary step like the move from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4S then we'd expect the price to stay more or less the same, although in the UK higher VAT rates may well mean a higher price tag.
It's pretty much nailed on that the new iPhone will cost around £500 for a 16GB / 32GB model (depending on the capacity Apple whacks in there) and unless the iPhone 5 comes with some truly next generation technology that pricing model should hold firm.
Ryan Cleary, the British teenager arrested for allegedly hacking with the LulzSec group has been sent back to jail for breaching his bail conditions.
The Lulzsec logo. The hacker group has been implicated in several security breaches in recent months
Cleary, 19, is said to have contacted LulzSec leader Hector Xavier Monsegur (alias "Sabu"), who was himself revealed to have betrayed LulzSec members, despite his bail terms banning web use.
Cleary has been charged with launching distributed denial-of-service attacks against organisations including the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the BPI. He is said to have breached his bail conditions over Christmas and is now being held in Chelmsford jail after being arrested on 5 March.
Cleary’s lawyer Karen Todner said that he had sent a handful of electronic messages to Monsegur.
Cleary, who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, is now due to reappear before a judge in May.
He was originally detained in a "pre-planned intelligence-led operation” in cooperation with the FBI, the Metropolitan Police said in June.
He was questioned at a central London police station on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act offences. Computer forensics specialists were also examining a "significant amount of material" seized from his address.
LulzSec's victims have included Sony, the US Senate, the NHS and security companies linked to the FBI.
The group splintered from Anonymous, a digital activism collective best known for its cyber attacks last year against corporations such as PayPal that withdrew online services from WikiLeaks. Anonymous has been under investigation for several months by British and American authorities. More than 80 alleged members have been targeted worldwide.
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