Romanian iPhone developer Alexandru Brie was among the first to wonder how Thuat Nguyen’s Vietnamese-language comic books had come to occupy 41 of the top 50 spots in the App Store’s paid books category (in the process, booting Brie’s own app from its usual top-20 perch). In a blog post, Brie put together such evidence as Nguyen’s poor showing in the store’s Vietnamese categories and multiple reviews of his titles alleging fraud to suggest one explanation:
The issue is that it seems people’s iTunes accounts have been hacked, with mass purchases of one developer’s apps being made using their accounts.
Other sites picked up the news and added details; for instance, Apple Insider passed on a tip from a reader about a Chinese cottage industry in iTunes Store account hacking.
Tuesday morning, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller e-mailed that Apple had resolved the situation:
The developer Thuat Nguyen and his apps were removed from the App Store for violating the developer Program License Agreement, including fraudulent purchase patterns.
Muller added that developers, fraudulent or otherwise, “do not receive any iTunes confidential customer data” when somebody downloads one of their apps. She suggested that anybody who sees fraudulent purchases on their iTunes account should have their credit card issuer cancel the stolen number and issue a chargeback for the unauthorized purchases.
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They said the Justice Department contacted some music labels and digital music providers earlier this month.
DoJ staff have mostly asked the companies broad questions about the nature of the digital music market, according to two of the three sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity as the talks were confidential.
“It was a very preliminary conversation,” said one person.
Given Apple’s leading market share the broad questions inevitably involved iTunes, these people said.
Billboard magazine reported on March 6 that Apple had used its market dominance to prevent labels from agreeing to let Amazon.com exclusively debut new songs.
Spokespersons for Apple, Amazon and the Justice Department declined to comment.
Apple has banned at least two prominent iPhone hackers from accessing its App Store.
Sherif Hashim, an iPhone developer who developed a hack for the latest iPhone OS 3.1.3, and iH8Sn0w, who developed the XEMN tool designed to unlock iPhone 3.1.3 radio baseband for the 3G and 3GS, found that their Apple IDs were blocked and accounts deactivated when they tried to access the app store of Monday. Their respective reactions can be found in Twitter posts here and here.
The move sparked concerns that Apple might ban all jailbroken iPhones was accessing the App Store. However, such a move would prevent Apple’s application developers from selling to the millions of users of jailbroken devices and would be especially bad politics following the launch of the Wholesale Applications Community at the Mobile World Congress conference earlier this week.
iTunes is a free application for your Mac or PC. It organizes and plays your digital music and video on your computer. It syncs all your media with your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. And it’s a store on your computer, iPod touch, iPhone, and Apple TV that has everything you need to be entertained. Anywhere. Anytime.
- iTunes no longer ignores your “Remember password for purchases” setting.
- Addresses problems with syncing some Smart Playlists and Podcasts with iPod.
- Resolves a problem recognizing when iPod is connected.
- Addresses issues that affect stability and performance.
The new iPod Nano has some cool features:
- iPod nano video camera allows the shooting of high-quality video in portrait or landscape
- iPod nano comes in a polished anodized aluminum finish in nine electrifying colors
- IPod nano comes with a larger 2.2-inch color display
- Genius Mixes
- FM radio + Live Pause<
- VoiceOver – VoiceOver speaks the names of songs and artists. So you can navigate your music without looking at the screen
- Pedometer and Nike + iPod
- Voice Memos: The built-in mic lets you capture any audio recording you want
The new iPod nano is sleeker, more visually appealing, and stocked with more ability than its predecessors. For the prices of $149 for the 8GB model and $179 for the 16GB model, I am surprised there is not more memory (GB) packaged in these newest models. Storing music, recording audio, and taking videos could easily take up a lot of space, quickly, especially if you’re a digital pack rat. In this writer’s opinion, the base $149 iPod nano should have had 16GB of memory and the $179 model should hold 32GB, like the iPhone 3GS.
It seems Blizzard has been taking on unofficial WoW applications in the Apple Apps Store. According to Gaming Angels, Blizzard has asked the owners of Armory Browser, Warcraft Arena Calculator, and Warcraft Characters to remove the apps. Granted, these are all paid apps, but it seems that Blizzard doesn’t plan on stopping there and will target the free apps next. No explanation for these take-down requests have been posted yet, but many speculate that Blizzard may be creating a few apps of their own.
The programmers who wrote free software that unlocks Apple Inc.’s iPhone Tuesday disputed the company’s claim that their hacks can damage the device, and they promised to battle any attempt by Apple to “brick” modified phones.
In a message posted to the iPhone forum on the Hackint0sh Web site, someone claiming to represent the iPhone Dev Team said the group would answer the firmware update expected this week with a tool of its own that would return any unlocked phone to a factory-fresh condition. That will prevent the iPhone from being “bricked,” or incapacitated, when the update is applied.
“We will provide you with a tool in the next week which will be able to recover your ‘nck’ counter and ‘seczones’ and even enable you to restore your phone to a factory-like state if you are really [determined] to update your phone,” said someone identified as “sam…”
A firmware update, the third since the iPhone went on sale in late June, will be released through iTunes this week. Apple is expected to add new features to the phone, including the ability to purchase music over a Wi-Fi connection.
The iPhone Dev Team spokesman advised users who had already unlocked their phones to not apply the update, saying they should instead wait while others, presumably including the iPhone Dev Team’s own programmers, analyze it. Elsewhere in the message, the spokesman claimed that about 500,000 copies of the free unlocking tool had been downloaded. If true, it would mean that almost half of the iPhones sold so far have been unlocked. Apple announced only two weeks ago that it had just sold its 1 millionth iPhone.
On Monday, Apple issued a formal statement that using such software to unlock an iPhone — or buying an iPhone that has been unlocked — “will cause irreparable damage.”
Apple is releasing a software update later this week that will let iPhone owners access a new feature to buy music downloads via wireless Internet. When combined with the unauthorized hacker software, it will play havoc with the iPhone, says Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller.
In the past, Apple has released software updates simply to prevent others from hacking into its products. But Schiller says that’s not the case here. “We tested the phones and discovered that some of these unlocking programs permanently damage the software,” he says.
Sites such as PureMobile and iphoneunlocked.mostofmymac.com sell the unlocked iPhone for $635 and $599 (compared with Apple’s $399). Other sites (such as iphoneunlockingtools.com, freeit4less.com) sell software for around $70 to open the iPhone.
Phil Leigh, an analyst at Inside Digital Media, says, “Consumers will think twice, but hackers will come back and break the code. They always do.”
Leigh says once hackers began altering the iPhone, Apple had to take a stand.
“Customers will scream and yell about this, but in the end, they don’t have much of a choice. The iPhone is a mass-market product, and Apple doesn’t want people to circumvent it. Most will play by the rules.”
Apple plans to launch a cheaper version of the iPhone in the fourth quarter that could be based on the ultra-slim iPod Nano music player, according to a JP Morgan report.
Kevin Chang, a JP Morgan analyst based in Taiwan, cited people in the supply channel that he did not name and an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office for his report.
Apple filed a patent application document that refers to a multifunctional handheld device with a circular touch pad control, similar to the Nano’s scroll wheel.
Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
Long lines of people turned out on June 29 when U.S. sales began for the iPhone, a mobile phone with a music player and Web browser. Analysts have estimated that sales in the first weekend were as high as 700,000 units.
Chang said a way to follow up the iPhone with a cheaper version would be to convert the Nano into a phone and price it at $300 or lower. The iPhone sells for $500 and $600, depending on storage space. continue reading…