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reidmainon Google Maps for iPhone

It has always been an option. If you get your phone activated in store it is working the moment you walk out with no input on the customers part.

reidmainon Google Maps for iPhone

Jailbreaking will never go mainstream. It has never been easy and/or safe enough for that. Just like how a small percentage of Android users root their phones.

However "remote controllers" in iOS 6 are definitely the precursor to the Android intents. It will be interesting to see if they make it into iOS 7 as a public API.

reidmainon Google Maps for iPhone

Oh of course Google would want it's application to be the default. Who wouldn't? It is free users.

To my knowledge pure Google Android doesn't package any third-party apps that tap into third-party services which compete with Google. I'm happy that they don't block any apps from being added to the marketplace and for the most part I am happy with Apple for that same stance as well.

I have Chrome, Gmail and Google Maps alongside Safari, Mail and Maps now. Heck even Google Voice competes with Siri. This is only making my life as a iOS user better.

reidmainon Google Maps for iPhone

Yeah if you want to divorce yourself completely from the business side of things I understand that perspective.

I would not however expect a company to do something that would harm them just to please me. They are a business trying to make money to survive. Doesn't matter if it is a massive company or small startup.

EDIT: Ideally I would have like the Google app to have come out a lot quicker than it did so the transition period was better but I'm not sure who to blame for that. Odds are it was Apple who pulled the rug out from beneath Google's feet during the negotiation but that is all here-say and conjecture. Probably 10 years from now we'll read in some book how shit went down.

reidmainon Google Maps for iPhone

Blame them for not giving ground to their competitors?

reidmainon Google Maps for iPhone

I'm not sure upgrading was possible. The old maps app was actually made entirely by Apple while this new one is made entirely by Google. I can't imagine Apple would give a third-party a system level app. Just look at YouTube.

The same reasons why Apple wouldn't package Google Maps with iOS are the same reasons Google wouldn't package iTunes with Android. You don't want to concede ground to your competition. Now if they want to fight for it that is a entirely different story.

reidmainon Nexus 4′s Glass Back, the Worst Idea Since the Last Phone With a Glass Back

If we want to get anecdotal I used my iPhone 4 from launch with no bumper (even after I got the free one). I even dropped the phone three feet directly on it's top left corner and only the dented the metal band.

reidmainon Doom 3 BFG Edition source code released

http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php

This gentlemen got the Doom 3 release to compile for OS X. I'm sure the process is similar.

reidmainon I'm hiring a personal iOS prototyper

He seems to be looking for the mythical developer/designer hybrid. Is $100,000 a decent salary for someone with that skill set?

reidmainon Stolen Money on Gittip, Part 1

I will. I have been flayed by other HNers and made aware of my ignorant position.

reidmainon Stolen Money on Gittip, Part 1

No worries. I was wrong. Better to be corrected and have my feelings hurt than to go on being ignorant.

reidmainon Stolen Money on Gittip, Part 1

True, it is the wrong way. Ideally there would be a better system for this kind of thing. It is the reason why physical authenticators and two phase authentication are becoming more popular.

reidmainon Stolen Money on Gittip, Part 1

You're correct. I was not thinking about conning the system but actually breaking into it which is obviously a lot harder. It is a lot easier to look at ways to dupe the algorithms for determining fraud rather than breaking the system and bypassing them. Thanks for opening my eyes.

reidmainon Stolen Money on Gittip, Part 1

Yeah like scott_s pointed out I did not consider anti-fraud. In my quick glib reaction comment I did not consider all scenarios. Thanks for pointing this out.

reidmainon Stolen Money on Gittip, Part 1

You're 100% correct Rick. I should have been more explicit in my original post. It was a quick glib comment that I should have put a bit more thought into.

There is a reason people don't go around wearing their credit card numbers and SIN on their clothes. The system to protect them should be setup to work its best in the scenario this information is completely exposed but our attempts to hide his information does add a tangible benefit.

reidmainon Stolen Money on Gittip, Part 1

That is a good point. It honestly slipped my mind. Thanks for pointing that out.

reidmainon Stolen Money on Gittip, Part 1

It may be the only thing I can do to help mitigate credit card fraud but is it not the solution to preventing it. Credit card companies should be operating on the theory that people freely throw around their credit card number (because, let's face it, a lot of people do) and come up with solutions that do not rely on hiding that information.

Obscurity of process/information can definitely be a benefit to the security of a system but it should not be the solution. The system should be designed for the absolute worst case scenario where this process/information could be exposed.

I realize this can only go so far until at some point there is going to be some sort of secret that needs to be kept (i.e. physical hardware key, encryption codes, etc) where if this is cracked your system is exposed and at that point you need to have some sort of plan B to regain control and minimize damage.

reidmainon Stolen Money on Gittip, Part 1

Security through obscurity is never the solution.

reidmainon Why Google is so Incredibly Undervalued

"wasted their time fooling around with Facebook and iPhones"

Is the author oblivious to how the average user has changed how the interact with the Internet because of Facebook and the iPhone?

I'm glad he gets off on making an algorithm 10% faster but if people don't use your technology then it means shit.

reidmainon The Magazine

There are a few iOS 6 ARC specific features. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12730202/do-you-need-to-r...

reidmainon The Magazine

I work on ScoreMobile and we're at 79%. Probably over 80% by now.

60% of Pocket users in five days. http://getpocket.com/blog/2012/09/more-than-60-of-pockets-da...

http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/

http://insights.chitika.com/2012/ios-by-device/

The Build & Analyze podcasts (which the author of The Magazine hosts) has talked about it multiple times http://5by5.tv/buildanalyze/96

I do appear to have overstated the 80% number but at this point in time but by the end of the year I'd be shocked if it wasn't over 80% based on the rate of adoption and then number of iPhone 5 being sold.

reidmainon The Magazine

And there are over 400 million iOS devices. If you think you can get a large enough percentage of iPad 1 users to make it worth you while then develop for it. I'd much rather spend my time ensuring it works well on 300+ million other devices.

reidmainon The Magazine

Apps that have hundreds of thousands of daily users are already seeing over 80% of their users are on iOS 6 and this is only after 21 days of it being available.

Any app I make from now on will be iOS 6 and up. The amount of time I spend not having to worry about iOS 5 bugs and testing allow me to add more features that will reach the majority of iOS users.

Spending tens (or possibly hundreds) of hours to make something that already works in iOS 6 work in iOS 5 to reach a small subset of iOS users is not worth it for most developers.

reidmainon A Letter from Tim Cook on Maps

Apple is using AutoNavi (not TomTom) for its map data in China (which Google is using as well). Here's a blog post from someone who lives in China describing why he likes iOS 6 maps more than Google Maps.

http://anthonydrendel.com/blog/2012/9/24/ios-maps-and-china....

reidmainon A Letter from Tim Cook on Maps

Google is in the strange position of wanting to get a piece of hardware into the hands of every person while at the same time having services that they want everyone to use because that is how they make their money.

They are constantly biting their own hand because making any service Android specific limits it's use and making services available on competing hardware limits their own hardware penetration.

Since Apple makes all their money on hardware they just don't care. They focus on making the best hardware they can and then build software on top of it. Jobs for the longest time didn't even want to put iTunes on Windows but eventually relented when people were buying iPods for their Windows PCs.

reidmainon A Letter from Tim Cook on Maps

Do you have a source for that? All the chatter I've heard is that Apple Maps is actually really useful in China.

EDIT: Blog post from someone living in China extolling the virtues of iOS 6 maps http://anthonydrendel.com/blog/2012/9/24/ios-maps-and-china....

reidmainon Electronic Arts Sues Zynga, Says The Ville Is An “Unmistakable Copy” Of The Sims

I'd flip a coin and then shoot myself.

reidmainon Apple’s in-app purchasing process circumvented by Russian hacker

"When Store Kit returns a completed purchase to your payment queue observer, the transaction’s transactionReceipt property contains a signed receipt that records all the critical information for the transaction. Your server can post this receipt to the App Store to verify that the receipt is valid and has not been tampered with."

A double check to be sure nothing is amiss I guess. I do find it strange that they can't guarantee this callback is not trigged by a response from a HTTPS source. Actually maybe they are and this fake cert is what is allowing it so they added this two phase check just in case. But this ability to verify is also kept around if you store these receipts on your server. Before you write them to your DB you can check with Apple to make sure they are legit.

reidmainon Apple’s in-app purchasing process circumvented by Russian hacker

I haven't looked at this in depth but it sounds like they are pretending to be Apple and are sending a counterfeit response to the device. On the device there is a delegate callback that receives a SKPaymentTransaction object which has a bunch of information. I suspect the apps that are affected are just checking the state of the payment and not taking the transactionReceipt property and checking it with Apple to make sure it is legit.

Here is Apple's docs on how to verify a receipt http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Networ...

reidmainon The reality of the Ouya console doesn’t match the hype

My biggest critique with this KickStarter is they are promising hardware in eight months where only a single prototype exists currently. Like the article says, these guys are not Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc so I don't have very much faith in them actually hitting their target date.

I could easily see this shipping on time but with tons of bugs in the hardware or shipping 10 months late because they didn't realize how complicated it was.

Even the Elevation Dock KickStarter, which was the first KickStarer golden goose, has had serious delays and they are building a simple iPhone dock.