iPhone Sales Top 9 Million

Apple’s iPhone 5s and 5c break a record and sells 9 million units

“This is our best iPhone launch yet?more than nine million new iPhones sold?a new record for first weekend sales,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The demand for the new iPhones has been incredible, and while we’ve sold out of our initial supply of iPhone 5s, stores continue to receive new iPhone shipments regularly. We appreciate everyone’s patience and are working hard to build enough new iPhones for everyone.”

Congrats Apple! I can’t wait to get my 5s in few weeks.

Asymco has a fantastic graph showing how significant the past weekend was for Apple. It even compares it to the competition. Localytics found that the 5s outsold the 5c by 3.5x. This shows that Apple doesn’t even really need to make a “cheap” device.

A German hacker group “breaks” into Touch ID

CCC, one the world’s largest and most respected hacking groups, posted a video on its website that appeared to show somebody accessing an iPhone 5S with a fabricated print. The site described how members of its biometrics team had cracked the new fingerprint reader, one of the few major high-tech features added to the latest version of the iPhone.

It doesn’t look that convincing…but if this is correct, Apple’s moved the bar to breaking into those phones from stealing the phone and a 4 digit (or no passcode) to having:
–  Stolen iPhone
– a 2400 dpi resolution image of the correct fingerprint (where the hell will they get this?) 
– a 1200 dpi laser printer & transparent paper
– Pink latex milk or white woodglue
– a non-trivial amount of time

That doesn’t seem like a real “hack” to me. A real hack would have been something like opening control centre, going to camera, then bypassing the passcode.

Additionally, Touch ID is completely misunderstood by many critics. The point of Touch ID was to help solve the problem that many users go about their daily lives without a passcode. Which is the worst possible scenario. Touch ID solves it to a great extent for general consumers.

Steve Jobs’ childhood home may become historical site

Jobs moved to the house with his foster parents as a 7th grader, and lived there through high school.

In the attached garage, he and Steve Wozniak toiled to assemble the first 50 Apple 1 computers. The pair sold them to Paul Terrell’s Byte Shop in Mountain View for $500 each.

A version of the ranch-style house appears in the recent “Jobs” biopic with Ashton Kutcher.

Nine months later, in 1977, Apple Computer Co. was formally established and moved its operations to nearby Cupertino.

Good for Steve and his family. They deserve this.