Apple

Apple Inc supplier Pegatron Corp reported an explosion at a subsidiary's plant in Shanghai over the weekend that it said had injured 61 workers, the latest in a series of incidents that have spotlighted safety concerns at factories in China.

Pegatron Chief Financial Officer Charles Lin told Reuters on Monday that the explosion at the plant, which belongs to Riteng Computer Accessory Co and is located in Shanghai's Songjiang industrial park, had not caused a fire, but 23 of the injured workers needed to be hospitalized.

Things just got a little bit easier and possibly closer to legal for hackers trying to bring Apple's digital personal assistant Siri to iOS devices other than the iPhone 4S, according to a prominent iOS hacker.

A recent update for iOS 5.01 (build 9A406) specifically for the iPhone 4S makes it possible to explore the device's filesystem unhindered using a Mac or PC, according to several tweets from iPhone Dev Team member Musclenerd. 

The iPhone 4S has a number of security flaws, due to the popular and newly introduced voice recognition driven digital assistant Siri.

The most glaring error it would seem, is the ability for anyone to be able to use Siri to make calls and so forth that picks up the device, even if it’s locked with a passcode.

After struggling to gain an edge over its competitors with its BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, Research in Motion has conceded some ground to Apple and Google with the announcement of Mobile Fusion, upcoming security software for the iPhone and Android.

Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM said on Tuesday that the device management software should arrive in the late March. Though the company declined to provide a price for the application, RIM vice-president for enterprise product management did say that it will be "competitive" with rival offerings.

One enterprising hacker has devised a way to use Siri to start and turn off his car remotely. Here’s how he did it:

I created a new ruby plugin that is used by plamoni’s “Siri Proxy”, a proxy server for Apple’s Siri assistant. This proxy server allows for the creation of custom plugins that can intercept recognized speech and perform virtually any function imaginable (programmable, scriptable).

iTunes logo Apple had been aware of a vulnerability in the iTunes update system, fixed in version 10.5.1 released in mid-November 2011, for more than three years. According to security expert Brian Krebs, who has seen email correspondence between the two parties, security researcher Francisco Amato informed Apple of the problem in summer 2008.

Apple is now in control of several new domain names that feature the word 'iPhone' thanks a ruling by the World Intellectual Property forum - even though each of the sites is associated with mobile pornography.

Upon discovery that the legal might of Apple was turning its attention on him, the owner of the domain names agreed to hand them over to the fruity firm. According to Domain Name Wire, as of yesterday the sites had been transferred to brand protection company Mark Monitor, presumably before handing them over to Apple.

It’s the most definitive assurance yet that Apple’s next iPad will include a screen with a near “retina display”-quality resolution: DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim has told CNET that “production has started” for 2048x1536, 10-inch-class tablet screens, and three manufacturers—Samsung, Sharp and LGD—are supplying parts to Apple.

Siri is one of our favorite new pieces of technology, but sometimes we just wished we could use it for something outside of its Apple widget shell (weather, mail, and the calendar) and Web searching. A group of intrepid hackers are doing just that, starting with setting the thermostat.

In the video (below), Pete (@Plamoni on Twitter) shows off how he can use Siri to set his Wi-Fi thermostat using a proxy server. Using the Siri connected proxy hack, Pete is able use voice commands to pull up information about the current temperature and set a new program for the thermostat.

Last last week VMware released Fusion 4.1 an update to its popular virtualization software that adds many improvements and bug fixes. The biggest improvement is the applications ability to run older versions of Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard.

I’ve known for a long time that Fusion can support Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard virtual machines, but Apple’s licensing prohibits this.