Wake me up when the iPhone OS version 3 demo-thing is done. What happens when you release the most disruptive hand held technology? Well, you have to continue to outdo yourself time and time again. Apple’s preview today was a snooze. Lets review the biggest new features.
Pushed content
This is actually as a result of the iPhone’s inability to run background apps. Ever notice that when you exit Safari and to go read email, that the website doesn’t keep loading in the background? Or how IM clients are web based and must be in the foreground. Apple says that "pushed content" will fix that and provide a new medium for developers.
In-app purchases
You can now purchase content or add-ons from within an application. Great idea. "The first one is free."
P2P blue tooth
Great feature in a gaming device, a bit worrisome in an enterprise-level mobile platform. Just what we need is yet another network-aware vector for attack. Lets hope they did this one securely. I can just imagine a new bread of blue tooth sniper rifles at DefCon.
Copy and Paste
Seriously enough, I have to believe that this one did take a while due to security concerns. With attacks like ClickJacking and untrusted web content, who knows what kind of data is going to be selected and copied into a clipboard. More than likely, that clipboard is part of the underlying "off limits" operating system. This could be new interesting attack vector. Though, you would think that a feature that goes back to at least the 1980's would be more standard by now.
Whats Missing
- The platform still lacks enterprise-class policy compliance tools. The current method for sending out configuration settings is cumbersome and prone to circumvention.
- Centralized accounting and auditing are not anywhere to be found. Want to know how many SMS texts a user sent or who they called or what software is installed? Accountability tools are missing.
- Data on the device is still not encrypted. This alone will disqualify the device for many enterprises.
- What about the historical iPhone attacks that just utilized known bugs in open source software running on the device? No word today if iPhone OS 3 will be kept up to date any faster to thwart these attacks.
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