Spies, military looking for hacker-, backdoor-proof circuits




In 2010, the US military had a problem. It had bought over 59,000 microchips destined for installation in everything from missile defense systems to gadgets that tell friend from foe. The chips turned out to be counterfeits from China, but it could have been even worse. Instead of crappy Chinese fakes being put into Navy weapons systems, the chips could have been hacked, able to shut off a missile in the event of war or lie around just waiting to malfunction.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, the spy community’s way-out research arm, is looking to avoid a repeat. The Trusted Integrated Circuit program is IARPA’s attempt to keep foreign adversaries from messing with our chips—and check the circuits for backdoors once they’ve been made.

The US has been worried about its foreign-sourced chips in its supply chain for a while now.

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Apple expecting huge demand for updated MacBook Air in July

It appears that Apple is expecting massive demand for updated MacBook Air models that are likely to be launched shortly after the release of

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Apple to move ARM SoC production away from Samsung in 2012



Apple’s increasingly tenuous relationship with Samsung as a component supplier for its mobile devices could end next year, according to numerous sources inside the semiconductor industry. The company will likely tap contract fab Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to build its next-generation ARM SoCs, currently dubbed “A6,” sometime in 2012.

Rumors of a partnership between Apple and TSMC began in early 2011, prior to Apple’s introduction of the iPad 2 and its A5 processor. Those rumors were later corroborated by sources for EE Times, which suggested Apple was working with TSMC to move its mobile processors to the foundry’s 28nm process. It was later revealed that manufacturing partner Samsung, which produced the A4 processors in the iPhone 4 and original iPad, was still producing the A5 processors for Apple’s next-generation products.

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iOS 5 beta hobbles OS downgrades, untethered jailbreaks



Those who screw up their iPhones with an unsupported jailbreak—or who have bad luck with their iOS upgrades and want to roll back to an older version—are usually able to make everything right again by downgrading their phone’s OS back to the previous version. That practice appears to be on the endangered list, however, thanks to changes within iOS 5. A post at the Dev-Team Blog indicates that Apple is taking steps to inhibit downgrades to previous versions of iOS, in addition to untethered jailbreaks.

Those who regularly jailbreak their iOS devices are usually familiar with the concept of saving your “blobs.” Users can save their SHSH blobs using a tool such as Cydia or TinyUmbrella before upgrading to a new version of the OS so that they can eventually restore that specific device to that firmware via iTunes.

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Etc: Apple has added its own $49 Thunderbolt cable to its online store, as well as Thunderbolt RAID systems from Promise.

Apple has added its own $49 Thunderbolt cable to its online store, as well as Thunderbolt RAID systems from Promise.

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Etc: Apple has added its own $49 Thunderbolt cable to its online store, as well as Thunderbolt RAID systems from Promise.

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Google: half a million Android devices activated daily



At the Google I/O event earlier this year, Google shared some statistics about the growth rate of the Android mobile platform. At the time, the search giant said that approximately 400,000 new Android devices are activated every single day. The number of daily activations has since grown to 500,000, according to Andy Rubin, Google’s Android chief.

That’s a considerable increase from the 300,000 daily activation statistic that Google cited towards the end of 2010. The statistic reflects rising adoption of Google’s mobile platform. Rubin says that Android activations are seeing a worldwide growth rate of 4.4 percent per week.

The breadth of hardware vendors shipping Android across a wide range of devices on many networks is a key factor that has contributed to Android’s popularity. The availability of the iPhone on Verizon’s network has apparently made a small dent in Android’s US marketshare, but the platform remains strong and has continued its ascent.

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Stars aligning on combined Lion, MacBook Air launch in mid-July



The stars are aligning for a mid-July launch of both Mac OS X Lion and updated MacBook Airs, if the rumor mill is to be believed. Three sources across two different sites seem to have similar information regarding the timing of these announcements—one from 9 to 5 Mac, who claims the two products will launch hand-in-hand in the middle of the month (possibly July 14), while the other two are from Apple’n'Apps, who peg the date as July 19.

According to 9 to 5 Mac’s source, the updated MacBook Airs will indeed carry Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, though they will look virtually the same as the current-model MacBook Air. “[A]ccording to a person who has seen the new MacBook Air, exterior changes (if any) were so minute that they were not noticed,” the site wrote. The only exception is the apparent replacement of the Mini DisplayPort logo with a Thunderbolt logo on the side of the machine. The new Airs will also allegedly come preloaded with Lion, consistent with previous rumors.

Apple’n'Apps adds to the speculation by claiming that Apple has been throwing around an internal launch date of July 19 for both products. (The caveat is that the date could change at any time.) Again, the site says that the new MacBook Airs will launch with Lion preinstalled, though it also claims that the Lion golden master should be ready by next week: “The MacBook Air will launch with a Golden Master of Lion, and the GM of Lion should be ready around the 4th of July.”

The expectation that Apple is waiting for Lion in order to roll out the Sandy Bridge-equipped MacBook Airs is not new—previous rumors had also suggested that Apple wanted to launch them together in order to best showcase both products. Not only is the MacBook Air the least traditional of Apple’s notebooks, Lion has a number of features that complement the MacBook Air’s so-called “instant-on” abilities, including Auto Save and Auto Resume, making the MacBook Air one of the best ways for Apple to show off the capabilities of its new OS.

On top of all this, Apple is supposedly expecting increased demand for the new MacBook Air starting in July, according to those within the supply chain. Meanwhile, stock of the current MacBook Air models are dwindling at online retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, Macmall, and others. With Apple’s third quarter earnings announcement scheduled for July 19, it certainly seems as if things are beginning to converge, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see both Lion and updated MacBook Airs appear side-by-side around that time after all.

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