MacRumors

Earlier this year, Apple announced plans to build an iOS App Design and Development Accelerator in Bengaluru, India, for the purpose of supporting engineering talent within the Apple ecosystem and giving developers tools to "create innovative apps for customers around the world," according to CEO Tim Cook.

A few new details about the development center have emerged today, including news that Apple has leased more than 40,000 square feet of space for the Bengaluru offices.

According to sources speaking with The Economic Times, the new Apple center will cover two floors at Galleria, located in North Bengaluru. The office space Apple is interested in is owned by Standard Brick Tile Company, and includes other companies like Atkins and Comviva as tenants within the building.

Tens of thousands of developers in India make apps for iOS, the mobile operating system that is the foundation for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

The company said Apple's team would work to inspire and instruct developers on best practices, help them hone their skills and transform the design, quality and performance of their apps on the iOS platform

Apple's current plan is to open the new iOS App Design and Development Accelerator sometime in early 2017. The space in Bengaluru will be the second biggest of Apple's facilities in India, following the company's proposed 250,000 square foot campus in Hyderabad. That location will be the focus of developments in Apple Maps, with up to 4,000 employees expected to be hired at the site, which will cost the company $25 million to build.

Password management company Dashlane today announced an update to its iOS and Android business apps, Dashlane Business, centered around a way for its users to easily navigate between personal and work passwords on their mobile devices. Called "Spaces," the new tool lets company employees keep track of important enterprise information within Dashlane, while simultaneously allowing for the storage of equally important personal passwords and data.

A desktop version of Spaces hit Dashlane earlier in the summer, along with Dashlane Business itself, introducing similar capabilities for companies to encourage increased privacy among its employee base. The new addition works as a button on the top left corner of the app that users can tap to bring up their Spaces, and either showcase every password stored in Dashlane, or only those in a particular Space.

Thanks to the new update's multitasking ability, more than ever the company said that Dashlane offers "a best-in-class onboarding process, employee experience, and functionality."

“Password management blurs the line between home and work. If an employee practices safe password habits at home, that same mindset will carry over into his or her workplace,” said Emmanuel Schalit, CEO of Dashlane. “The majority of notable breaches stem from password hacks, so it’s critical that companies educate their employees on how to manage their passwords and provide them with tools such as Dashlane that make secure password management simple and effective.”

While the new update is mainly for its enterprise-focused app, Dashlane did confirm that anyone who works for a company that uses Dashlane Business will in turn be able to get all of the advantages of Spaces in the regular consumer app. Those interested in the basic features of Dashlane can check it out for free on the App Store [Direct Link], and the company said that users can expect to see the Spaces update rolling out today.

DVD rental company Redbox has started to test a new movie streaming and download service with some of its customers, according to Variety.

Known for its DVD rental kiosks, Redbox has dubbed its latest online service "Redbox Digital", which comes two years after the company shut down Redbox Instant, the ill-fated joint venture with Verizon that officially launched in early 2013.

The subscription-based service was patently unable to compete with the likes of Netflix, and Redbox has reportedly learned from the experience: it's staying away from subscriptions in order to concentrate on transactional video on demand, according to sources familiar with the company's plans.

An app for the service similar in appearance to Netflix showed up on the App Store last week, allowing trial users to stream or download content from the company's digital catalog. A company spokesmen contacted Variety via email to confirm the news:

We are testing a potential new transactional digital VOD and EST offering, with a small subset of our customers, designed to complement our core kiosk rental business. As we test and learn from our customers, we will make evaluations that determine any future course of action.

The Redbox Digital catalog is said to be dependent on the company's deals with movie studios, meaning some movies could be available at kiosks when they're not available for streaming. However, the digital catalog will have a much larger offering than kiosks, which usually only hold a few hundred titles.

No word was given on pricing, but typical one-off streaming costs are likely work out more expensive than the $1.50 Redbox customers currently pay for physical disc rentals.

Nintendo shares took a beating on Monday after the company released a statement saying Pokémon Go would have limited impact on its quarterly earnings since it only owns 32 percent of the Pokémon Company, which has the licensing rights to the game.

The announcement by Nintendo appeared to take investors by surprise and had an immediate impact on its share price, with stock dropping 17 percent at one point, wiping around $6.4 billion off their value – their biggest decline since October 1990.

The news poured cold water on hopes of a stunning revival for the Kyoto-based game company, which said its earnings outlook would not be revised. Nintendo is due to reveal its Q1 report later this week.

Some observers remained optimistic however, noting that shares were still up some 60 percent compared with levels prior to the game's July 6 launch, adding nearly $12 billion in market value. They argued upward revisions of the company's profit targets so early after the game's release were beyond reasonable expectations.

"The market has overreacted to the Nintendo statement," said David Gibson, a senior analyst at Macquarie Securities Group who spoke to Reuters. Gibson noted the game in Japan had broken records with 10 million downloads in one day.

"I believe that Pokémon Go will be material in the company's earnings given the current trends for the game."

Global rollout of the game continued over the weekend, with Pokémon Go launching in App Stores in France and Hong Kong – the first Asian location outside Japan to gain access to the wildly successful title by U.S.-based developers Niantic.

CEO of Niantic John Hanke took to the stage Sunday at Comic-Con, where he revealed the new features coming to the game in the coming years, including new pokémon and a trading feature that will allow players to trade captured characters.

Niantic also revealed team leaders for Team Mystic, Team Valor, and Team Instinct, with each trainer set to communicate with players within the game world and offer them advice. Hanke promised fans the leaders would be making their way to the game soon.

One of the realities of living in Toronto, Canada, about a two-hour drive from the nearest American city when traffic cooperates, is experiencing a distinctly four-season climate. Winter lives up to the stereotype of being bitterly cold, before giving way to a mild and rainy spring, and eventually a hot and humid summer. The warmth lasts for no more than three to four months, however, before the leaves turn orange in October and Starbucks brings out the Pumpkin Spice Latte.

For the past three months, I have been testing the AyeGear J25 Jacket to see how it holds up to those Canadian extremes, starting with a below-freezing, snowy day in early April to a comparatively sweltering 90º day in mid July. In addition to wearing the jacket around Toronto, I brought it with me on a recent trip to San Francisco, allowing me to test its convenience going through airport security and away from home in general. Ahead, find out if the jacket lived up to the task.

➜ Click here to read more...

For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with The ONE Music Group to give MacRumors readers a chance to win a 61-key portable Light Keyboard that's designed to integrate with an iPhone or iPad to help you learn how to play music.

Each key is backlit and touch responsive, lighting up in time with sheet music and video lessons to make it easy to pick up the basics and move on to more complex songs. It features 64 note polyphony, more than 128 GM tones and 20 preset notes, built-in speakers, an optional pedal socket, auxiliary in and out, microphone plug-in, USB midi output, and a collapsible built-in music stand.

Available in either onyx black or white gold, The One is ideal for beginners, but also well-suited to experienced players. Because many features are controlled via the app, there are no unnecessary buttons allowing it to be more portable than the average keyboard. It weighs 11 pounds and can be powered through an included power supply or six AA batteries for use on the go.

The app that accompanies the keyboard has more than 100 video lessons that users can complete at their own pace, and there are thousands of sheet music to learn. There are also some built-in games designed to make practicing melodies more fun.

The One Music Group also sells a full size Smart Piano that's able to connect to an iOS device, priced at $1,500, but the Light Keyboard is a smaller, more affordable alternative that can be purchased for $300. One MacRumors reader will get a keyboard for free through our giveaway.To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winner and send the prize.

You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page. Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years of age or older are eligible to enter.

The contest will run from today (July 22) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on July 29. The winner will be chosen randomly on July 29 and will be contacted by email. The winner has 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before a new winner is chosen.

Police in Michigan are reportedly attempting to use a 3D model of a fingerprint to unlock a murder victim's phone and reveal clues that could help solve an open case.

Fusion reports that the investigation is still ongoing, therefore details remain murky, but essentially instead of requesting that the phone manufacturer unlocks the murder victim's handset, officers have asked computer scientists at Michigan State University to create a 3D printed replica of the victim's fingers so they can do it themselves.

The victim's body was apparently too decayed for a fingerprint to be directly applied to the phone, but the police already had a scan of the victim's prints from when the man was arrested in a previous case.

Most fingerprint readers like Apple's Touch ID are capacitive, meaning they use electric circuits that close when human skin comes into contact with them, which generates the image of the print.

However, a 3D printed finger doesn't possess the conductivity that human skin does. So, to circumvent the problem, engineers coated the printed fingers in a thin layer of metallic particles so that the fingerprint scanner can read them.

Currently it's unclear whether the method works, as the designers haven't yet delivered the printed fingers to the police to attempt to unlock the victim's phone.

Another potential stumbling block is that if the phone in question is an iPhone, then police may come up against a passcode screen, since newer Apple handsets request a passcode if the fingerprint unlock hasn't been used within eight hours and the code hasn't been entered in six days.

But if the technology is a success, then theoretically the authorities could use it on cases involving living suspects by applying for a court order.

Fusion notes that the courts draw a distinction between a fingerprint password and a memorized one. "Courts generally draw a line between the 'contents of the mind' (which is protected) and 'tangible' bodily evidence like blood, DNA, and fingerprints (which is not)," said Bryan Choi, a security, law and technology researcher.

So while a memorized password might be protected by the Fifth Amendment which protects against self-incrimination, a fingerprint isn't. Indeed, in 2014, a court in Virginia ruled that a suspect can be required to unlock their phone using their fingerprint.

Therefore if a suspect is at large but the police have their phone in hand and their fingerprints on record, there's nothing to say that the method could be used to unlock the device in the owner's absence.

Choi argues that in this day and age, phones should be considered extensions of the mind and therefore protected under the Fifth Amendment and not just the Fourth Amendment (protection against illegal search and seizure).

"We offload so many of our personal thoughts, moments, tics, and habits to our cellphones," Choi told Fusion. "Having those contents aired in court feels like having your innermost thoughts extracted and spilled unwillingly in public."

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has helped to design an iPhone 6 case that detects if a handset is transmitting data when it's in Airplane Mode.

The project was announced yesterday by design collaborator and American hacker Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, the founder of Bunnie Studios and best known for being the first person to hack the Xbox and for legally challenging the DCMA act.

The concept for the case is described in a paper titled Against the Law: Countering Lawful Abuses of Digital Surveillance, which explains that the design is to protect journalists, activists, and rights workers from being tracked by governments.

The case features probe wires that access the phone's antennae through the SIM slot to monitor signal transmission, while audible alarms and a display on the outside of the case inform users of their phone's status.

Snowden and Huang write that using Airplane Mode is "no defense" against radio transmission, which makes such a case necessary:

For example, on iPhones since iOS 8.2, GPS is active in airplane mode. Furthermore, airplane mode is a "soft switch" – the graphics on the screen have no essential correlation with the hardware state. Malware packages, peddled by hackers at a price accessible by private individuals, can activate radios without any indication from the user interface; trusting a phone that has been hacked to go into Airplane Mode is like trusting a drunk person to judge if they are sober enough to drive.

The paper cites the case of American reporter Marie Colvin, who is reputed to have been tracked by the Assad regime in Syria and killed for covering stories about civilian casualties.

According to a lawsuit filed by Colvin's family this year, the Sunday Times journalist's location was discovered in part through the use of intercept devices that monitored satellite-dish and cellphone communications.

You can find out more about the project by reading the white paper at Pubpub.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Pokémon Go finally launched in Japan this morning after the game's release was delayed following an email leak about the developer's sponsored retail partnerships.

Social media excitement reached a peak on Niantic's announcement that it was "finally broadcasting" in the game's birthplace, over two weeks after it was released in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. Pokémon Go is now available in over 30 countries.

The McDonalds sponsorship deal leaked earlier this week is expected to usher in a flurry of business at fast food restaurants around the country as players queue up to capture monsters and train characters at official "gyms".

Wary of the game's popularity, McDonalds has warned players "not to become a bother to customers who are eating", while Japanese authorities have issued safety guidelines in cartoon form for young Pokémon Go players.

The country's National Centre of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity called on users to bring spare batteries with their smartphones to prepare for emergency communications and to refrain from using their phones while walking.

In the U.S., Pokémon Go had 21 million active users less than two weeks after the game was launched. According to brokerage Needham & Co, Apple is set to make $3 billion in revenue from the game's in-app purchases in the next one or two years.

Pokémon Go's ratio of paid users to total users is said to be 10 times that of Candy Crush, which generated over $1 billion of revenue in both 2013 and 2014. Apple's shares have gained 5 percent market value – about $25 billion – since the launch of Pokémon Go on July 6.