WhatsApp Begins Rolling Out End-to-End Encrypted Backups on iOS and Android

Facebook has announced that it has now begun rolling out End-to-End Encrypted Backups on iOS and Android devices.

Starting today, we are making available an extra, optional layer of security to protect backups stored on Google Drive or iCloud with end-to-end encryption. No other global messaging service at this scale provides this level of security for their users’ messages, media, voice messages, video calls and chat backups.

You can either set your own password, or let WhatsApp automatically generate a 64-digit encryption key on your device.

Whatsapp End-to-End Encrypted Backups

Facebook was under a lot of pressure in recent times to introduce this feature, so I’m glad to see it finally arrive now. Considering it has more than 2 billion users, this will be a slow rollout, starting with those who are running the latest version of WhatsApp on iPhones and Android devices. If you see this option, make sure to flip the switch right away.

October 15, 2021 ✚ Permalink

iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 Are Now Available

Sure, iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 aren’t as exciting as some of the other previous releases from Apple, but I’ve still been looking forward to their release over the past few months. I didn’t bother installing any Developer or Public betas until the fourth or the fifth one in the cycle, that too only on my 10.5-inch iPad Pro. So I’m going in with relatively fresh eyes.

There are some remarkable updates being rolled out today by various developers that I’ve been beta testing over the last two months. Similarly, our team at Readdle is shipping a slew of incredible features as well, for our Spark, Documents, PDF Expert, Calendars and Scanner Pro apps. It’s been a massive effort to deliver these updates on Day 1, and everyone is excited to hear your feedback. Try them out, we’re sure you’re gonna love it.

September 20, 2021 ✚ Permalink

WWDC 2018 — San Jose, June 4 – 8

Apple has officially announced WWDC 2018, which will take place at San Jose, California from June 4th to June 8th, 2018. The much-awaited keynote announcing the next versions of iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS will be held on Monday, June 4th at 10:30PM IST.

If you’re a developer and are looking to attend the conference, head over to Register for the ticket lottery.

March 14, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Picking Apart the Crashing iOS String

Manish Goregaonkar has published this absolutely fascinating analysis of the iOS crashing bug that occurs when it comes across a particular text string.

So there’s yet another iOS text crash, where just looking at a particular string crashes iOS. Basically, if you put this string in any system text box (and other places), it crashes that process. I’ve been testing it by copy-pasting characters into Spotlight so I don’t end up crashing my browser.

[…]

I was pretty interested in what made this sequence “special”, and started investigating.

Even if you are not interested in the technical details, I urge you to go read it. The explanation about Indic scripts is incredibly interesting read.

February 16, 2018 ✚ Permalink

App Store Sees Record-Breaking Numbers

Apple has announced that its App Store had a fantastic run in 2017, especially during the holiday season leading up to the new year.

App Store customers around the world made apps and games a bigger part of their holiday season in 2017 than ever before, culminating in $300 million in purchases made on New Year’s Day 2018. During the week starting on Christmas Eve, a record number of customers made purchases or downloaded apps from the App Store, spending over $890 million in that seven-day period.

Apple says that it paid out $26.5 Billion to iOS developers, an increase of over 30 percent compared to 2016. Since its launch in 2008, the App Store has made $86 Billion for iOS developers around the world.

The new App Store introduced in iOS 11 got a lot of things right, and Apple knocked it out of the park with their approach. I’m loving the curation on the US App Store — I just wish I had landed that App Store Editor job I had applied for at Apple India.

January 5, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Some Thoughts on Apple’s WWDC 2017 Announcements

Apple WWDC 2017

At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference 2017 this week, Apple delivered a jam-packed keynote address on Monday. As has been tradition over the last few years, a bunch of us Apple enthusiasts gathered at the iXyr Media HQ to watch the keynote together. Unlike the last few keynotes, the WWDC 2017 keynote address lasted almost 2.5 hours, and the company had so much to talk about. They even completely skipped talking about their sales and growth, and their tvOS platform barely got 2 minutes on stage, only so that Tim Cook could mention that the Amazon Prime Video app is finally coming to Apple TV later this year.

Over the next 140 minutes or so, Tim Cook and other Apple executives took the audience through an incredible journey, in what is touted at one of the best Keynotes that Apple has ever delivered, largely for the sheet number of announcements that the company had to make.

Here is a list of everything major Apple announced at WWDC 2017 and some thoughts on the announcements:

(more…)

June 8, 2017 ✚ Permalink

Apple Announces New iOS App Design and Development Accelerator in Bengaluru

Apple today has announced its ambitious plan to start a Design and Development Accelerator in Bengaluru, the startup capital of India. This initiative has been planned to “support engineering talent and accelerate growth in India’s iOS developer community,” according to Apple’s press release issued today.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO who is currently on his India visit landed in Mumbai today morning and visited the Siddhivinayak Temple. He says,

India is home to one of the most vibrant and entrepreneurial iOS development communities in the world. With the opening of this new facility in Bengaluru, we’re giving developers access to tools which will help them create innovative apps for customers around the world.

This first-of-its-kind center will have Apple experts who will lead briefings and provide one-on-one app reviews for developers in India. It will also provide support and guidance on Swift, Apple’s new programming language that it announced at WWDC 2014.

This Design and Development Accelerator is expected to open in early 2017.

May 18, 2016 ✚ Permalink

Major zero-day exploit found in iOS & OS X

The security flaw itself sounds scary, but the following bit from the article is far more scarier

The Register says the team reported the flaws to Apple in October of last year. At that time, Apple said that it understood the seriousness of the flaws and asked the researchers to give it six months to address them before the exploit was made public. In February, Apple requested an advance copy of the paper, yet the flaws remain present in the latest versions of both operating systems

June 17, 2015 ✚ Permalink