Apple updates MacBook Pro laptops

Apple has updated its MacBook Pro line of laptops yesterday. These new laptops contain faster processors, unbelievable battery life of 10 hours and a graphics processor which is 80% faster than the predecessor. Interestingly the 15" and 17" laptops now contain latest Intel i5 and i7 processors. The best part is that the prices have remained more or less the same!

Updated specifications for 13 inch MacBook Pros (old configuration in brackets)

Updated specifications for 15 inch MacBook Pros (old configuration in brackets)

As you can see from the configuration above,  anyone who recently bought the 13" 2.26GHz MacBook Pro must be cursing themselves.

It is interesting to note that even the high end MacBook Pros have the total memory capped at 4GB. In fact now all configurations carry 4GB. There are two reasons – 4GB RAM is usually good enough for most users and secondly DDR3 RAM is not cheap. If you really want to upgrade to 8GB,  you need to spend a whopping $400 extra!

Ever wondered what is the most expensive MacBook Pro configuration you can buy? Well, you can get the best of the best for a low price of $7,505. This configuration includes a 24 inch LED cinema display and a 512GB solid state drive. Obviously many of us would have to mortgage our house to get one of these!

Most Expensive MacBook Pro (Configuration)

Geohot hacks iPad – blackra1n and Cydia on iPad

Within a week of its release, iPad is hacked by the famous iPhone hacker George Hotz. He had a posted picture of hacked iPad running blackra1n (jailbreaking tool) and Cydia. This means that a new version of blackra1n may be released soon. It is also interesting to note that the exploit screenshot was released just within one day of posting the iPad firmware 3.2 encryption keys.

The advantages of Jailbreaking iPad

Jailbreaking iPad opens up more possibilities than on an iPhone. iPad has better hardware and bigger screen and hence it can replace a netbook with much better battery backup. We may see custom Linux distributions capable of running on iPad. The immediate benefit of course is that iPad users can download applications rejected by Apple from other app directories such as Cydia. It also enables complete customization of iPad OS. Who knows, someday someone may even find a way to run Windows XP on iPad!

However the lack of some of the essential hardware on iPad makes jailbreaking less appealing. For example, lack of an integrated camera.

How blackra1n works on iPhone?

Blackra1n works on a specific exploit on iPhone/iPad devices known as the USB Control Message exploit. By manipulating the call to function usb_control_msg it is possible to overwrite sections of memory.  See this page for the details of this. However in the case of iPad, the precise exploit that Geohot used is not yet known.

Apple bans Adobe Flash cross compiler for iPhone OS 4.0

The latest developer agreement from Apple on iPhone OS 4.0 explicitly states that iPhone programs must be written on Objective C, C or C++ to legally link with the documented Apple APIs.  This means that any sort of cross compiler which creates final iPhone machine code from other technologies are illegal. This change in developer agreement is a direct hit on Adobe’s idea to create a cross compiler for iPhone in its latest release of Flash Professional CS5. Any code generated using this Flash cross compiler is illegal on iPhone OS 4.0.

Apple is refusing to allow flash in its devices claiming that its implementation is buggy and it is not suitable for its devices. So the only option to develop software for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad was to use the Xcode and iPhone SDK on Mac machines. It also meant that developers need to learn Objective C to build iPhone apps. Adobe thought that they can work around these limitations by providing a cross compiler which will convert Flash programs directly into iPhone’s ARM binary code. Till now Apple approved any app submitted to App store provided it met all its guidelines and hence a number of apps built with a preview release of Flash CS5 got into app store.

With iPhone OS 4.0 onwards this whole cross compiler process becomes illegal. Adobe may  probably release iPhone cross compiler as part of Flash Processional CS5. But any developer building an iPhone/iPad application on it will be taking a huge risk since Apple may reject it during App Store submission. Technically there is nothing that can differentiate between the ARM code generated by Xcode and Flash Professional. Apple can insert a unique signature to code, but the same can be easily inserted by Flash professional. But even releasing the cross compiler may be illegal.

Now I think Adobe deserves what it got. They could have directly contacted Apple before going ahead and developing a cross compiler. Things like these should teach giant companies like Adobe that they can’t be arrogant all the time. One day Apple may also get a taste of its own medicine. 

Obviously what Apple did makes a lot of business sense. They want people to use their own platform to build apps. Proliferation of cross compilers is not a good thing in long run. It can lead to inefficient code(?) as well. But the real reason seems to be that Apple wants complete control over its platform. They don’t want somebody to create a better development platform for building apps in iPhone and iPad. It also shows how easy it is to decimate the competition when you put restrictions on a platform. I now wonder why Microsoft was harassed by various governments all these years. Compared to Apple, they are angels

There is one more interesting aspect to the Apple/Adobe tussle. There are a lot of Flash game developers out there. It is not easy to compete with them if you are a pure Objective C developer building games for iPhone. So this is a good news for all the Objective C developers out there!