Apple

When Apple announced the iPhone 4S on October 4, 2011, the headlines were not about its speedy A5 chip or improved camera. Instead they focused on an unusual new feature: an intelligent assistant, dubbed Siri. At first Siri, endowed with a female voice, seemed almost human in the way she understood what you said to her and responded, an advance in artificial intelligence that seemed to place us on a fast track to the Singularity.

Initial enthusiasm for Apple's newly introduced Swift language appears to have died down somewhat, based on two monthly programming language popularity indexes.

According to Reuters, who spoke with people familiar with Apple's plans for HealthKit, the tech giant has held talks about the upcoming service with various companies, including Mount Sinai, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins and medical records providers Allscripts and Epic Systems.

Citing sources familiar with Apple's supply chain, Bloomberg reports Apple's partner suppliers in Asia have started mass production of the next-generation 9.7-inch iPad, while a new iPad mini version enters early stages of assembly.

Apple this morning has released OS X 10.10 Yosemite Developer Preview 5.

The new update brings various performance improvements and bug fixes. The previous Developer Preview brought some minor user-interface enhancements and significant speed improvements. Apple also released iOS 8 beta 5.

An open-source project has released the first free application for the iPhone that scrambles voice calls, which would thwart government surveillance or eavesdropping by hackers.

Signal comes from Open Whisper Systems, which developed RedPhone and TextSecure, both Android applications that encrypt calls and text messages.

Do you know how to ride a bicycle? It's easy, isn't it?

But do you remember how hard it turned out to be when you first tried? Who would have thought?

We often forget that many things are "obvious" only with experience, meaning, in fact, that they're not really obvious at all. That's why we do phishing walkthroughs fairly regularly on Naked Security. The idea is to step you through a typical email phish, pointing out the telltale warning signs in the original email and the web pages that follow, so you know what to look for in future.

We’re probably less than two months away from the announcement of the iPhone 6, but if you just can’t wait another minute to tell your fanboy friends that you’ve already pre-ordered the 6, luxury retailer Brikk is ready to accept your pre-orders. But it’s going to set you back at least $4,495.

Developers have been toying with the beta of OS X Yosemite since Apple announced the operating system at WWDC in June. Unfortunately for the rest of us, we have to wait (im)patiently until Yosemite launches officially this fall. Unless you signed up for Apple’s public OS X Yosemite beta program, in which case tomorrow is your lucky day.

OS X users who sign up for this program, which was also announced at WWDC, get access to the beta early without needing a developer account. And beta access will ship Thursday, July 24th.

Information security has never been a more sensitive subject than it is these days, so it’s little surprise that allegations from a security researcher that iOS contains a ‘backdoor’ permitting access to users’ information provoked a strong response from Apple.