Chez Moncef

John Gruber asks a pertinent question, then offers a plausible explanation:

The big question of course, is why Apple is storing this information. I don’t have a definitive answer, but my little-birdie-informed understanding is that consolidated.db acts as a cache for location data, and that historical data should be getting culled but isn’t, either due to a bug or, more likely, an oversight. I.e. someone wrote the code to cache location data but never wrote code to cull non-recent entries from the cache, so that a database that’s meant to serve as a cache of your recent location data is instead a persistent log of your location history. I’d wager this gets fixed in the next iOS update.

Surprisingly, he also contributes to the alarmism:

It’s worse than that, though, because even if you are encrypting your backups, it’s also available to anyone who has physical access to your iPhone.

That’s only true if you haven’t enabled Passcode Lock on your iPhone. If someone has physical access to your computer and/or your iPhone—and neither of them are password-protected—then that someone has access to everything on them. If you’re really worried about your approximate whereabouts being discovered, then secure your computer and your iPhone. That’s just common sense. Moreover, if you lose your unsecured iPhone, you can set a passcode lock or wipe all your data remotely via Find My iPhone.

Andy Ihnatko can’t decide whether this is troubling or dismissible:

But still! What a nervous can of worms. This is an open, unlocked file in a known location in a standard database format that anybody can read. If someone has physical access to your Mac — or remote access to your user account — it’s a simple matter of copying a file and opening it.

This comes right after he writes this:

It’s pretty much a non-issue if you’ve clicked the “Encrypt iPhone Backup” option in iTunes. Even with physical access to your desktop, a no-goodnik wouldn’t be able to access the logfile.

Earlier today, Shawn Blanc linked to the latest version of TextExpander, noting that it now supports AppleScript. I don’t disagree that TextExpander is a great app, but I prefer Keyboard Maestro—which has been supporting AppleScript for over a year now—and is a lot more powerful. You can get 20% off by clicking my affiliate link, thereby reducing the price to $28.80.

Having given my pitch, I’d like to delve into the original intent of this post: I have a solution for the feature request in Shawn’s aforementioned post. He’d like his string shortcut to paste a random variation of his “thank you” note. This can be achieved quite effortlessly with a text file, a script, and Keyboard Maestro. If TextExpander’s AppleScript support is as good as Keyboard Maestro’s, this solution should work for Shawn:

1. Create a plain text file containing your variations, each on a separate line, and save it to your Desktop. I named mine “variations.txt”.
2. Open AppleScript Editor and save a new script containing the following: 
   set v to alias (“” & (path to desktop) & “variations.txt”)
   set theText to some item of (read v using delimiter linefeed)
3. Open Keyboard Maestro Editor and add a new Macro with the following settings:

• Click on “New Trigger” and select “Hot Key Trigger” or “Typed String Trigger” depending on your preference. You can also add both if you want! I chose a hot key and assigned it to control-option-command-V.
• Click on “New Action” and double-click on “Execute an AppleScript” in the “Actions” pane.
• Click on “Execute text script” and select “Execute script file”.
• Click on the “Unknown” button and open the script you created a few steps ago.
• Click on “ignore results” and select “paste results”.

You should end up with something like this:

That’s it. You’re done. From now on, whenever you press ⌃⌥⌘V while in any text input field, one of your variations will automatically get pasted.

One of the top Tech stories today (according to Zite) revolves around the purported change in the way apps are ranked in the App Store and Android Market. The speculation is that the ranking is now based mostly on usage rather than downloads.

I’ve always questioned the validity of download numbers as a meaningful metric. If a million people downloaded your app, but only a hundred are actively using it, you’re not winning. I have 417 iPhone and iPad apps on my Mac, but I only use 24 regularly.

Why did it take Apple and Google this long to make the change?

(Sources: Inside Mobile Apps, AppleInsider, Guardian, mocoNews)