Yesterday, we reported that Apple had implemented a two-step verification process for Apple IDs to add another layer of protection against unauthorized access to your account.

Shortly after that, however, a major security hole was discovered on the iForgot website (which allows users to reset their password) where you could reset the password for any Apple ID even if you have just the email and date of birth. This left anyone who hadn’t enabled the two-step verification vulnerable. Read more »

Sources close to Apple are suggesting that the hardware and human interface (software) design teams at Apple are getting closer and more involved in each others’ work.

It’s more evident now that pushing Scott Forstall out of Apple is working wonders in terms of increasing collaboration between Apple’s hardware and software teams. Allegedly Ive is currently pushing a more “flat design” into iOS’s next build. Read more »

The Tablet Z is Sony’s latest Android slate, which was confirmed to go global at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We witnessed its beauty with our eyes and were impressed by its weight and slim waistline. And to tickle the inner geek inside all of us, Sony has put up an official teardown video of the tablet.

Before tearing it down, Sony offers a walkthrough of the Tablet Z and then gets down to business. Read more »

In a rather awkward interview on national Finnish television show, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop didn’t hesitate to unequivocally call the iPhone “embarrassing” after the interviewer showed him his Apple smartphone. Shortly after that, Elop threw said smartphone on the ground.

In his nagging for more information regarding the yet unofficial, but highly rumored Lumia 928, the interviewer shared to Elop that he uses an iPhone, but also expressed his disappointment with the device and a desire to change it for a Lumia 928. Apparently, Elop felt he had no choice, but to throw the expensive smartphone away. Read more »

Apple has introduced a new two-step verification process for accounts that use the Apple ID. This will help protect your account from being accessed from a new device by an unauthorized person.

What this does is whenever you or someone else tries to access your Apple ID from a new device, along with the usual username and password, the device will also ask for a verification key. This verification key will be sent to one of the devices that you have registered. You will then have to enter the verification key into the new device to complete the log in process. This way, if someone gets access to your Apple ID, they won’t be able to log in until they also get access to the verification key. Read more »

With the launch of iOS 6, the podcast feature in the music player app was dropped in favor of a standalone app that had to be downloaded separately from the App Store. As is the trend with recent Apple apps, the Podcasts app made heavy use of skeuomorphism for the UI, with a very realistic looking tape deck UI that had moving elements that kept track with the playback of the podcast.

Unfortunately, all that is gone now with the latest update. The new v1.2 brings with it quite a few new features but gets rid of the tape deck UI for a more conventional playback screen that looks like any other music player. Read more »

HTC and Samsung have started a war of words on Twitter, each mocking the other’s flagship smartphone and saying praising its own. After Samsung didn’t respond to HTC’s initial attack on the 140-symbol network, now the company’s UK branch started shooting In a response to a Twitter user, stating: “Four is always better than one ;-) (cc @htc_uk)”

Naturally, HTC was quick to respond with their UK office even making the answer rhyme: “Plastic is not fantastic, my friend! ;)“. Read more »

So it’s not a pipe dream after all – Google Now for iOS may even be in the works. At the Big Tent summit in India Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was asked point blank when could we see Google Now on the iPhone and had this to say – “You’ll need to discuss that with Apple”, “Apple has a policy of approving or disapproving apps that are submitted into its store, and some of them they approve and some of them they don’t,”.

Although skillfully avoiding giving a direct answer to the question Schmidt didn’t dismiss it entirely giving this blogger the idea that just like it did with Gmail, Maps, Drive and Chrome, Google intends to push its Now service over to iOS. Read more »

If you’re currently jailbroken thanks to Evasi0n you might want to steer clear of that iOS 6.1.3 update as it patches one of the exploits the jailbreak tool uses.

So if you update not only will you lose your jailbreak but as team Evad3rs dev-member David Wang (Planetbeing) says you might need to wait a long time before a new exploit is found and jailbreak is available again. Read more »

A new trojan virus by the name of Trojan.Yontoo.1 has been discovered and has been confirmed to be harmful to both OS X and Windows machines. The virus prompts you to install an adware plugin on Mac, which injects unwanted ads into Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

Symantec also found the Yontoo virus to be effective on Windows machines targeting pretty much every version of the Microsoft OS, except for Windows 8. The virus issues ads on Windows which pretend to be coming from Facebook. Read more »

HTC One production has been troubled lately by component shortages lately and the Taiwanese were even forced to delay the smartphone launch in most of the markets. Yet, HTC is keen to make you so excited about its flagship that you wouldn’t mind waiting a bit longer to get it. Each week we get new videos through the HTC’s YouTube official channel and the newest one advertises the smartphone’s signature BlinkFeed feature.

HTC BlinkFeed is the leftmost pane of the homescreen. It aggregates posts from your social networks and news from over a thousand news sources. You can pick what topics you’re interested in and BlinkFeed will automatically pull up interesting news. You can also use the search function if you’re looking for something in particular. Read more »

According to a survey by Strategy Analytics which was gathered by data collected last fall Apple’s iCloud is the most popular cloud service in the US.

27% of those surveyed who use a cloud service have tried iCloud in US with Dropbox and Amazon Cloud Drive in second and third with 17& and 15% respectively. Read more »

The latest way to bypass the Galaxy S III/Note II/Note/S II lockscreen has been modified and now allows you to completely disable the devices’ locksceens. We already saw this exploit about three weeks ago, but back then it didn’t appear too dangerous as it only gave the intruder access to what’s on one of your homescreen panes.

Now, however, the author has found a way to use it to gain full control of the smartphone. You’ll need lots of time, patience and precision timing to accomplish this trick, but as you’ll see in a second it’s possible. Read more »

Google’s Executive chairman, Eric Schmidt stated today that Chrome and Android would remain separate, as they solve different problems right now. However, he didn’t really reject the possibility of them merging later down the road.

Additionally, Schmidt, who is currently attending the Big Tent Activate Summit in India, hinted that while both OS continue their separate ways, there’ll be more “commonality” between them. Read more »

We have some good news about those planning to get a BlackBerry 10-running smartphone. Today BlackBerry announced the BB10 OS app catalog already offers more than 100,000 titles.

The announcement comes a day before the BlackBerry Z10 flagship launches in the USA and should help ease those concerns of severe app shortages. Read more »