Apple has emailed a note to Apple Store and AppleCare employees as well as authorized resellers stating that a small number of third-generation Apple TVs have an issue with Wi-Fi and are eligible for replacement free of charge up to two years after the device was purchased.

Information supplied to the 9to5Mac website mentions that the affected Apple TV products "might experience one of these Wi-Fi related connectivity issues: Cannot locate network, Unable to join network, Dropped or intermittent connection." Serial numbers must be within a specified range in order for the device to be eligible for replacement:

• The last four letters of the serial number must be DRHN
• The third and fourth alphanumeric characters must contain one of these pairs: H9, HC, HD, HF, HG, HH, HJ, HK, HL, HM, HN, HP, HQ, HR, HT, HV, HW, HX, J1, J2, J3, J4, J5, J6, J7, J8, J9

Service providers are asked to make sure that the 3rd-generation Apple TV is running software version 5.2.1 or later, eliminate sources of potential Wi-Fi interference and isolate the issue to the Apple TV. If the symptoms still exist, then Apple will replace the unit.

A small number of Apple TVs eligible for replacement due to Wi-Fi issues originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A small number of Apple TVs eligible for replacement due to Wi-Fi issues originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Recently, TUAW received several emails from users who were attempting to send developers logs for troubleshooting purposes. Those emails, all sent via iCloud email addresses (.mac, .icloud, .me) would vanish before arriving at their destination. Some companies quickly created workarounds so that users seeking assistance could sneak the attachments around what appeared to be a "black hole" devouring emails with extreme prejudice.

An email anonymously sent to TUAW from a reader indicates that Apple has stated they are making adjustments on their end and believe the issue has been resolved.

Apple fixes 'spam hole' issue affecting legitimate messages originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple fixes 'spam hole' issue affecting legitimate messages originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There's nothing more frustrating to a computer user than to have a software-related problem exist for more than a year without it getting fixed by the manufacturer. In this case the users are owners of early 2009 iMacs using the NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 video card. These Macs have had a problem with kernel panics that are traced back that video card ever since late versions of Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) hit the street, but are most prevalent with machines running Lion and Mountain Lion.

Apparently Apple isn't too concerned with the issue, since the support community thread discussing it is now up to 14 pages long, with almost 200 replies. That thread was started by user David Portela almost a year ago, and a number of users have now spoken up about the issue. The issue can be traced to a new kernel extension that was released during the lifetime of Snow Leopard and has not been fixed. Many users note that the issue disappears when they are running versions of Windows on their iMacs via Boot Camp, so the Windows drivers apparently work on Apple hardware better than the Mac drivers do.

If any iMac owners are seeing a similar problem and are tired of the sudden crashes and reboots, we suggest posting on the support community thread to add some more fuel to the fire. For now, the suggestion from Apple support personnel that owners upgrade to a newer Mac is unacceptable.

A TUAW hat tip to Andrea M. for pointing this out

Users unhappy with no Apple response to NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 kernel panic issue originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Users unhappy with no Apple response to NVIDIA GeForce GT 130 kernel panic issue originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 04 Mar 2013 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The other day I was working on some blog posts, and when I pulled up an image in Preview to edit it, I noticed something odd. It looked like the Preview window was transparent, and that I was seeing a window through it. I thought nothing of it until a few minutes later when I closed a number of open windows on my new 27-inch iMac and noticed that a faint "echo" of those windows was visible on my desktop photo. I realized I was seeing some image persistence.

This is nothing new; back in the days of PCs with cathode-ray tube monitors, it was quite common to see the C: prompt burned into some screens, visible even when the monitor was turned off! But this was a bit of a surprise, since I hadn't experienced image persistence for a long time. And on a brand new 27-inch iMac? Ouch.

I'm guessing that something kept my iMac display from going to sleep, resulting in the "burn in." I usually have the display set to go completely dark after 15 minutes, and had never seen this happen before on this or my previous 27-inch iMac.

Immediately I went to the Apple support communities and searched for image persistence and image retention, and I found that this has been a fairly common issue with the new devices. Not only are iMacs prone to persistent images, but some MacBooks are also seeing the problem. (Mike Rose experienced the image persistence issue specific to the MacBook Pro Retina models with LG panels, and ended up having his screen replaced.) There are a number of people who were so concerned that they brought their devices back to the Apple Store and asked for a replacement, but Apple believes that the problem is common to IPS (in-plane switching) LCD panels and not a real issue.

Apple recommends doing exactly what I had been doing -- setting display sleep after 15 minutes of non-use. Fortunately, they also have instructions on what to do if your get a burned-in image despite using display sleep. In knowledge base article HT5455, "Avoiding image persistence on Apple displays," there's a section on using a screen saver to eliminate a persistent image:

1. From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences, and then click "Desktop & Screen Saver."
2. Click the Screen Saver tab.
3. Choose a screen saver.
4. Set the "Start screen saver" time to be shorter than the "Display sleep" and "Computer sleep" settings in the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences.
5. To clear the persistent image, allow the screen saver to run for approximately as long as the image was being displayed.

I had no idea how long the image had been "stuck" on my screen, so I just decided to change the screen saver time to five minutes and the display sleep time to three hours and let the "Flurry" screen saver run for that length of time.

Sure enough, once I returned to my iMac this morning, the annoying persistent images were nowhere to be found. One commenter in the support community suggests that this might be a problem with all IPS LCD panels made by LG, and that this didn't happen with display panels made by Samsung -- a company that Apple seems to want to avoid at this time due to the lawsuit situation going on.

Regardless of the cause, it's refreshing to know that there is a way to correct it and that this does not cause permanent damage to the display. I've changed my iMac settings to go to screen saver after five minutes and to display sleep after 15 minutes, and hopefully I'll never see those persistent images again.

Have any TUAW readers experienced this problem? Did running the screen saver work to eliminate the ghosted images? Let us know in the comments.

The curious case of the persistent image originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 18 Feb 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The curious case of the persistent image originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 18 Feb 2013 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iOS 6 added a feature that allows users to set "Don't Allow Changes" for an account on an iOS device. This setting was handy for schools and enterprises that want to keep devices tied to a certain account and prohibit users from installing unapproved apps. However, as 9to5Mac reports, there are several ways that users can bypass the setting due to a new bug.

The backdoors are remarkably simple to implement. All a user needs to do is go to either the iTunes or App Store app, scroll to the bottom of the screen and tap on the Apple ID button to sign out of the institution's account and sign in with their own. Then they're free to install all of the apps that the school or company were trying to keep off of the device in the first place.

It's a surprisingly blatant bug, and one that Apple has apparently confirmed as something that needs to be fixed. There's a temporary solution (described in the video below), but it restricts organizations from installing updates or pushing apps on those devices. 9to5Mac notes that a 6.1.2 update could arrive as soon as next week to fix an Exchange bug and passcode vulnerability, but whether or not this new iOS 6 bug will be squashed is unknown.

Institutional users get around restrictions with iOS 6 bug originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Institutional users get around restrictions with iOS 6 bug originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A security flaw in iOS 6.1 allows a person to easily circumvent a lockscreen password and access contact information on an iPhone. The bypass method was demonstrated by YouTube user videosdebarraquito and reported by Gizmodo UK.

To bypass the lockscreen password, a person has to hold down the power button, initiate and then immediately cancel an emergency call. Repeating these button presses in a particular sequence will then provide access to the iOS Phone app. Once the Phone app is opened, users can browse contact information, check voicemail, view photos and more.

You can view the bypass method in the YouTube video embedded below. The Verge confirmed in independent tests that this procedure works to bypass the lockscreen passcode.

Update: Not surprisingly, Apple spokesperson Trudy Miller told AllThings D that it is "aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update."

Flaw in iOS 6.1 lets users bypass the iPhone's lockscreen password (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Flaw in iOS 6.1 lets users bypass the iPhone's lockscreen password (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday, Apple rolled out a trio of firmware updates for MacBook users to help address a rare issue that can cause the batteries to malfunction. The update targets the System Management Controller in the MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, which can run into issues as the computer ages. As Apple explains, "This update addresses a rare issue on some Apple notebooks where a battery that has accumulated more than 1,000 charge cycles may unexpectedly shut down or stop functioning."

You can download the fix for your computer of choice straight from Apple's support page, or click the links above.

[Via Macworld]

Apple rolls out firmware update to revive old, troubled batteries originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple rolls out firmware update to revive old, troubled batteries originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is a bit of added insult to injury for Apple, who just yesterday debuted an ad showing off this very feature, one which no doubt got a lot of attention last week as people started setting up their iOS-based Christmas gifts.

Since I love a good theory, go ahead and list your craziest conspiracy-ist theory about why this is happening as of January 1, and what magic makes it disappear on the 7th in our comments.

DND bug: Apple will only disturb you until the 7th originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

DND bug: Apple will only disturb you until the 7th originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember the story earlier this week about police in Mildura, Australia issuing a warning to motorists about Apple Maps when it was found that the app was taking people into the heart of the bush? Apple fixed the issue, pointing the pin for the town into the correct spot. But now, it appears that the company or one of its map suppliers may have picked up the erroneous data from the Australian government.

The Register found a source for the map information; the Australian Gazetteer, which is the "authoritative list of 300,000-plus placenames." The Gazetteer shows two Milduras; the actual town, and an entry for "Mildura Rural City" exactly at the location that Maps erroneously showed the town. The latter entry, according to the Register's commenters, is at the center of the local government area referred to as "Mildura Rural City."

As The Register notes, Geosciences Australia -- the agency behind the Gazetteer -- can't be blamed, since the data ultimately comes from the state of Victoria. Regardless of the source of the move of Mildura into the scorching Murray-Sunset National Park, at least Apple has corrected the issue.

Australian government could be source of Apple Maps bad info originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 11 Dec 2012 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Australian government could be source of Apple Maps bad info originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 11 Dec 2012 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ouch. You know it's a bad day for Pixelmator Team when they have to publicly announce a major bug in their marquee app. The bug causes some Macs to "restart when intensively using Pixelmator" -- like right when you're in the middle of a major project. The issue also causes other nice side effects, such as "the app would stop responding without restarting a computer, or just cause some graphical glitches."

Well, the Pixelmator Team has posted a huge apology to users on their blog, and they've found out what's happened. Apparently, the issue is caused by NVIDIA GeForce graphics card drivers and not by Pixelmator's code. The team notes that they've tried various workarounds and nothing has worked, but the hardware engineers at Apple are on the job trying to figure out a fix.

If you have a Mac with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 120, GT 320M, GT 330M, 9400M or GT 9600 graphics card and use Pixelmator, you may want to use another image editing app for a while until this gets resolved. To find out what graphics card is in your Mac, pull up OS X 10.8.2's System Information Utility and it will be listed in the overview.

Pixelmator announces big bug with OS X 10.8.2 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Pixelmator announces big bug with OS X 10.8.2 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The latest Apple TV Update (version 5.1) is causing headaches for some users. According to a report on Apple Insider citing a thread on the Apple Support Communities website, many of the popular small iOS-based Apple TVs are getting bricked after running the updater.

Once the software update has been run on the Apple TV, users are greeted with a blinking light on the unit and a black screen on their HDTV. One possible fix noted in the Apple Insider post is to manually downgrade the Apple TV software by downloading an IPSW file from Apple, tethering the Apple TV to a Mac or PC using a micro-USB cable and then restoring the software through iTunes.

Apple TV 5.1 appeared on September 24, 2012, but the support discussion has been growing steadily since that time as owners take the time to upgrade their devices.

Apple TV users report issues after updating originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple TV users report issues after updating originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tyler Lee over at Ubergizmo pointed out an interesting OS X bug that affects the way that the Launchpad window is displayed. It's an annoying bug, but strangely enough it's also quite beautiful.

The bug doesn't apply the blur effect when Launchpad is opened -- instead, it applies the crystallize effect which gives your app icons a nice "stained glass" appearance. It doesn't last for long, and the bug apparently isn't hitting many Macs. But it is kinda cool.

If you see the bug in action and happen to be able to nab a screenshot, let us know in the comments.

OS X Launchpad bug is annoying, pretty originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

OS X Launchpad bug is annoying, pretty originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TUAW reader Ryan B wrote us over the weekend, asking if we could confirm a behavior he'd observed when transferring files over iMessage.

"A friend and I noticed today that when you send .mp3 files through iMessage on Mac, the quality of the MP3 is downgraded." He adds, "This appears to only happen with .mp3 files as .m4p's are unaltered when received."

Until now, I'd assumed that whatever data you sent using Messages arrived in basically the same form you sent it in. Apparently not.

We ran a few tests and this is what we found: most files arrive bit-for-bit identical compared to the files that were sent. But sure enough, MP3 files were downgraded considerably. The 5.12 MB stereo 228 kbps file I bought from Amazon was downgraded to 1.4 MB mono 62.4 kbps on receipt after transfer through Messages.

Why is this happening? We're honestly not sure and I'd rather not speculate. We've reached out to Apple for comment but do not expect a reply.

The gallery that follows shows our results.

Gallery: Messages data transfer tests

Messages compacts MP3 audio originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Messages compacts MP3 audio originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NimbleBit sent along an email announcing that the company was holding a fall sale, and it made me do a double take: how does a company whose games are all free hold a fall sale? Surprisingly enough, NimbleBit found a way. From this Friday through Sunday, all of the in-app purchases in NimbleBit's freemium hits Tiny Tower, Pocket Planes and Pocket Frogs will be available for half the price that they usually are, so you'll be able to buy Tower Bux, Plane Bux or Potions or Stamps for half price.

In other NimbleNews (feel free to use that for your blog, guys), the company has released its first animated short based on Tiny Tower to go along with the Pocket Planes series that was already in progress. This one riffs on Tiny Tower's upgradeable elevators, and how they sometimes tend to go a bit too slow .. or too fast. Enjoy by watching it below.

NimbleBit holding a fall sale, first episode of Tiny Tower Shorts out now originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

NimbleBit holding a fall sale, first episode of Tiny Tower Shorts out now originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the Apple service program covers replacing your potentially problematic drive, it does not include backup or restoration of your OS, applications or data: that is on you. Please take our advice and spare yourself much pain and misery -- back up your drive now.

Time Machine is great, but when it comes to backup our firm recommendation is to have a bootable clone of your drive as well. This is particularly useful when you're pulling your digital life back together post-HD replacement. Steve's Mac 101 review of backup options will get you on the right track. (Note that one of our favorite cloning options, Carbon Copy Cloner, was previously free but is now a paid option alongside SuperDuper! and others.)

"But I back up to the cloud," you say, "isn't that good enough?" In this case, not so much. Recovering your entire set of files and apps from your remote service could be expensive and take quite a while. Fortunately, several of the Mac-savvy cloud backup services (CrashPlan and Dolly Drive in particular) have options to do a local backup as a supplement to the cloud safety net.

If you've already had your drive replaced under Apple's program, let us know how it went.

Hard drive recall emails going out to owners of 1TB iMacs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 20 Oct 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Hard drive recall emails going out to owners of 1TB iMacs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 20 Oct 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has also extended the duration of this program more than once, and now will cover iMac hard drive replacements with affected drives for three years after the original retail purchase date or until April 12, 2013, whichever ends up providing longer coverage for the computer. You can check if your machine might be affected by entering your serial number on the program page. Of course, you'll need to back up your data prior to replacement, and you may need your OS installer discs depending on how you plan to restore your machine.

Seagate's had past problems with drive reliability, including a firmware flaw that resulted in data loss.

Apple extends Seagate drive replacement program for iMacs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 14 Oct 2012 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple extends Seagate drive replacement program for iMacs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 14 Oct 2012 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another day, another complaint about iOS 6 Maps. Today, the Taiwanese government is asking Apple to obscure details of a new radar system near Hsinchu Air Base on the island that appear in satellite images.

Apple's doing nothing illegal; it's just a request to have Apple use lower-resolution images in the map of this area. While we don't know exactly where the radar system is or what it looks like, a quick look at the Hsinchu Air Base in both iOS 6 Maps and Google Maps shows that the Apple images are already at a bit lower resolution than the Google images.

In the Google Maps image, I was able to easily discern Taiwanese F-16 fighters sitting next to a taxiway (below). The iOS 6 Maps images (above) were less sharp, although I was able to tell the difference between an F-16, what appears to be F-5E or F, and a Mirage 2000 on a taxiway.

A post on The Verge notes that Google has been asked to obscure images before in the past, so this similar request to Apple is nothing out of the ordinary. For the Maps team, it's probably just another few hours of overtime.

Taiwan asks Apple to obscure radar defense system in iOS 6 Maps originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Taiwan asks Apple to obscure radar defense system in iOS 6 Maps originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday, in discussing the new reports of meeting invitation issues between Microsoft Exchange and iOS 6 devices using ActiveSync, I mentioned that I recall having seen these sorts of problems in prior versions of iOS and OS X, albeit infrequently. The issue manifests as one recipient declining an invitation which mistakenly cancels the meeting for everyone, "hijacking" the meeting out from under the original organizer. My recollection was probably accurate, given the report below from a TUAW reader who prefers not to identify his former employer.

The full rundown is worth reading, but here's the summary: iOS's implementation of ActiveSync, in iOS 6 and well before, may be doing some things (asserting ownership of meetings that in fact do not "belong" to the Exchange account on the iPhone) that theoretically should not be allowed under the protocol specification. Exchange, in turn, is not enforcing the spec and refusing these inappropriate requests as it ought; it's taking them at face value. The end result: meetings get dropped but neither vendor is apparently willing to take point on the issue.

Our reader's story:

The problem with iOS and Exchange is something that we discovered at my previous place of employment. It's a nasty bug and I'm sad to see that it persists. Before I sat down to write you, [I checked with] those folks to see if iOS 6.0 had made it better at all. They reported it was worse.

With that in mind...

We had a term for the problem. It was "meeting hijacking." It describes a scenario in which an iOS device could "hijack" a Microsoft Exchange meeting. The hijacking would make an attendee the organizer of the meeting and if they declined or deleted the meeting, Exchange would then send a decline to [all the other invitees] and cause fairly major issues.

We first witnessed this problem around iOS 4.3, if I remember correctly. We were running Exchange 2007 for tens of thousands of users. We had the latest service packs and cumulative updates installed. (The problem also occurred in iOS 5.0 and higher, and apparently it's not fixed in iOS 6.0 either. It has also been verified against Exchange 2010, but more on that in a minute). To reproduce the issue, here's what we did:

1. Using Outlook for Windows, create a meeting and add attendees. Make one of the attendees an email list that is EXTERNAL to the Exchange organization. That means it cannot be a distribution group in Active Directory. It needs to be a Mailman or majordomo list that is outside the Exchange org.

2. The members of the external email list receive the invitation and accept it. The acceptance is written back to Exchange and put on the calendar.

3. The iOS device owned by a member of the email list picks up the meeting and places it on the calendar. All is happy.

4. At some point, the iOS device syncs the calendar via ActiveSync and suddenly becomes confused about who the owner of the meeting should be (the organizer, in Exchange-speak). The iPhone decides that its owner should become the organizer, since it has no idea who the real owner is, and syncs this property change back to the Exchange server. Exchange 2007 now has a disconnected copy of the meeting with a different owner. Exchange is agnostic about this.

5. Now the iPhone owner declines the meeting for whatever reason. Exchange automatically generates a cancellation or decline notice and sends it out to everyone since the disconnected copy of the meeting has a different owner. This results in mass confusion and sometimes will delete the meeting from the other calendars.

We verified this problem against iOS 4, 5 and 6 with Exchange 2007 and 2010. In Exchange 2010, Microsoft introduced a "calendar repair agent" that is supposed to detect this problem and resolve it. This calendar repair agent is a daily timer job. Microsoft did release patches on Exchange 2007 SP2 and up to correct some of the issues that are similar to this, but this particular problem was never resolved.

Now for the dirty laundry.

We worked for about two years with Microsoft and Apple on this issue. It may have been longer, I don't recall. We had a major support contract with Microsoft and reported this issue to them. I'll spare you the gory details. But the end result was this:

• The root cause is that iOS is able to convince ActiveSync to manipulate properties on meetings that it should not be able to manipulate (namely, the organizer of the meeting). Sometimes, it will make these decisions because for whatever reason it believes [these changes are] in the best interest of the user.

• Microsoft has an ActiveSync specification that calls out what properties should and should not be used during EAS communication. In our troubleshooting it was determined that Apple's manipulation of the organizer field is against the ActiveSync specification. However, ActiveSync will not stop iOS from doing this regardless of the fact that it is "against the specification." ActiveSync will happily accept the change and write the properties from the mobile device even if the ActiveSync spec says that Exchange explicitly should not do this.

The end result:

Apple claims that it's Microsoft's bug because ActiveSync lets it happen. Microsoft claims it's Apple's bug because they wrote code that makes it happen. Microsoft says they "told Apple not to do this but they did it anyway."

Ultimately, we were of the opinion that it was Microsoft's bug to fix since the specification laid down rules of this nature yet is unwilling to enforce them. We pointed out to them that this seemed to be a security issue. They disagreed.

Like I said, I spoke to my old colleagues and they confirmed that the problem still exists and with iOS 6, the meeting hijacks appear to have worsened. They are still in the planning stages of Exchange 2010 so I cannot comment on whether or not the calendar repair agent helps this issue in that particular environment.

Thanks to our reader for contributing his experience. If you've got specific details on troubleshooting this issue or have run into it yourself, please let us know.

Exchange/iOS "meeting hijack" history goes back well before iOS 6 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Exchange/iOS "meeting hijack" history goes back well before iOS 6 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Anyone else notice that the desktop version of iTunes is acting weird today? We were browsing through the top paid apps in several categories (Medical and Social Networking, for example) and noticed that all apps listed are free apps. Amusingly, the top paid app in the Books category is iBooks!

This is one of several reports that have trickled in this week with other unusual behavior in the iTunes App Store. Maybe Apple is tweaking things on the backside in preparation for some big announcement next week? We can only hope.

Hat tip to Appency!

App Store acting wonky by showing free apps in the top paid list originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

App Store acting wonky by showing free apps in the top paid list originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If a 56-page discussion thread on the Apple Support forums is any indication, there appears to be a problem with some MacBook Pros with Retina displays. The Retina displays with the issues show image retention and burn-in; others do not.

TUAW reader Joe K. sent us a note about the issue, which appears to be happening to MBPs with displays manufactured by LG; other displays made by Samsung don't have the problem with image retention and burn-in, are brighter, and seem to display colors with more accuracy.

To determine the make of the Retina display installed in your MacBook Pro, Joe supplied a helpful terminal command:

ioreg -lw0 | grep \"EDID\" | sed "/[^<]*</s///" | xxd -p -r | strings -6

It's basically the same command seen on OSXDaily to check for LG screens on MacBook Airs, which will also tell you how you know if you have a Samsung or LG display. If your display code begins with "LP," it's an LG display. Mike Rose has verified that with his LG panel he sees faint ghosting of Finder windows when he goes into a PowerPoint slideshow with a gray background.

Those who own a MacBook Pro with Retina display and see this problem as described in the thread should contact their local Apple Store or AppleCare for resolution.

Are Retina MacBooks displaying screen issues? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Are Retina MacBooks displaying screen issues? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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