Apple

Apple's chief of security operations has left the company just months after the world's largest technology company faced criticism over the tracking down of what has been widely reported as a missing iPhone prototype.

The consumer device giant's vice president of global security, John Theriault, has retired, a person close to Apple said. Apple declined to comment. Theriault joined Apple after a stint as chief of security at Pfizer, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that, he was a special agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Since Apple initially scheduled to implement this requirement in November of this year, this announcement is nothing new and is more of a timeframe shift than anything else; however, it still raises questions and concern over what this means for developers and end users.

Sandboxing is a security technique that acts as a last line of defense against exploited, buggy, or otherwise compromised applications, which Apple is implementing to ensure programs distributed through the Mac App Store are as safe and secure as possible.

Apple has announced that it has found specific flaws in iOS 5 that can be patched to address the battery life issues some iPhone users have experienced with the new software, noting that an update is planned to address the problem in the next few weeks.

In a statement published by Ina Fried of the Wall Street Journal AllThingsD blog, Apple noted, "A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” adding, “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”

Apple's new iPhone 4S has been in users' grubby little hands for a bit over two weeks now. One of the main features of the 4S is the virtual "personal assistant" Siri, a technology that Apple acquired in 2010 and integrated into iOS 5 for integration with the iPhone 4S. When we put Siri through its paces during our iPhone 4S review, we came away with a mixture of bemusement and optimism.

A clever phishing email is making its way around the Web, attempting to trick people into handing over their Apple user name and password to view a purported update to their iTunes account.

With the subject "Account Info Change," the email appears to come from Apple, but the address is "do_not_reply@itunes.com via smtp.com," meaning it came from a third-party email service, the security firm Trend Micro reported. (Legitimate emails from Apple show an "id.apple.com" address.)

A new Trojan horse hidden in a Mac OS X application can steal sensitive user data and take control of the computer’s GPU to generate Bitcoins, a form of currency used online.

In a report released on Saturday, security firm Sophos said that DevilRobber, a Trojan horse that can steal sensitive user data, was found hidden inside copies of Graphic Converter 7.4 downloaded from bit-torrent file-sharing sites.

Japanese-language site Macotakara says a new 15-inch model has entered the test phase.

It's not clear at this point whether this will be an addition to the MacBook Air series--currently offered in 11- and 13-inch sizes--or a new MacBook Pro.

Despite the fact that many consumers were disappointed with the iPhone 4S there is no denying the fact that Siri is quite cool. If you’re not familiar with this new feature it is being touted as a digital assistant capable of recognizing natural speech. This means that instead of using pre-fabricated phrases to get Siri to do what you want all you have to do is speak naturally and, in theory, you will get some results.

Apple has hired Scott Noteboom, the chief of Yahoo's Global Data Center Infrastructure, away from the Web company.

Noteboom, who had led Yahoo's data center operations since 2005, is now a "distinguished gentleman" at Apple, according to his LinkedIn profile. The job change was first reported by GigaOm.

If you have enabled iCloud's Find My Mac feature in OS X Lion, then you will notice that the OS X log-in screen now shows a Guest user account, which when clicked will offer the option for rebooting the system into Safari-only mode.

This mode will run the system in a limited environment where it can be used for Web surfing, but not much else. The system will only allow Safari to run in plain vanilla form without any plugins (including Flash) or extras running, and if you quit the browser then the system will restart back to the log-in screen.