Informal Brain

So the biggest question in my mind now is:

When will we see SquirrelFish Extreme for the Mobile Safari browser on the iPhone?

Apple is already winning the mobile browser wars, and the latest WebKit advancements will only solidify that lead.

The latest iPhone firmware was released today.  Version 2.1.

Here are my day one thoughts:

1. Battery Life is much improved.  I had heavy use today and came out with lots of battery life remaining.
2. Contacts is now useable.
3. The Phone application is now usable.  Lag is gone.
4. Keyboard lag is much improved.
5. Safari appears more stable.
6. SMS loads faster but is still slow.  I don’t understand why it takes so long to launch the application still.
7. Genius playlists are cool.  I like them, and they work very well to discover music you might not be listening to very often.
8. 3G performance appears better.  I had a few strange Edge to 3G and back swaps today where it seemed like I didn’t end up with an internet connection until I did a bunch of refreshes in Safari.  Might have been an anomaly.

In the past couple of days there has been a sudden outcry around the security issue with the iPhone pass code bypass issue. I loved this comment on iPhone Atlas today:

“The iPhone is a computer, just like a desktop computer, and so it can easily be booted in such a way that one can mount the disk and delete or modify the device’s configuration - including the passcode configuration. Cracking the iPhone’s passcode is about as complex as changing the root password on a desktop machine, given physical access.

[From iPhone Security Flaw Is the Tip of the Iceberg - iPhone Atlas]

This is something I have been pointing out for some time now. The iPhone doesn’t have any kind of storage based encryption so as the author of the above quote so readily points out that mounting the iPhone as a disk allows access to the configuration files. This allows easy editing of the PLIST files allowing a hacker to disable the pass code and steal the data.

For some time now I have been calling on Apple to give us encryption as an enterprise feature. I noted in a previous blog post that device encryption was the missing enterprise feature when the 2.0 software was announced. I was in shock when I watched company after company (including the military) laud the iPhone 2.0 software. Did they miss the point that the device can be compromised so easily putting their mobile exchange push data at risk?

We need to pressure Apple to add encryption to the device while fixing these pass code problems. Only encryption will protect the device from being mounted as a disk. Until then I would not store sensitive data on the device using push email from exchange, LDAP or POP3. I would be very careful with webmail solutions. For example, we are asking lots of tough questions to IBM around iNotes for Lotus Notes and how much data it allows in the browser cache.

Ask the tough questions…. and continue to demand encryption.

So far I have noticed two positive changes with the 2.0.2 update:

1) The keyboard performance is much, much better across the entire device. Lag has been significantly eliminated when typing.

2) Something has been tuned with the 3G network usage. For example I am seeing the device drop to the EDGE network far more often. This is good, in that previously the device would hold on to the 3G connection too aggressively. I would see the device frequently become hot with 1 bar of 3G and then go to no service. Now, the device immediately switches to EDGE. I am going to try and turn on push tomorrow and see how the device battery holds out. The battery life today and yesterday has been very good.

So far 2.0.2 appears to be a turn in the right direction.

Look at this forum post:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1602608&tstart=0

Look at the statistics on the forum post below!

Wow, that is one large number of views, and comments.

What do you think?