When BlackBerry announced the black and gold BlackBerry Passport, there was only 50 made available, truly making it a limited edition device. Those 50 were snatched up pretty quick and seemingly shipped out just as fast as they’ve now started arriving buyer’s doors.

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“Thunderstrike” is the name for an attack that can target Mac hardware via the Thunderbolt port. Apple had previously updated the Retina 5K iMac and 2014 Mac mini to partially secure them against Thunderstrike. Now, the upcoming OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 beta should fix the problem for all recent Macs running Yosemite.

Rick Mogull previously explained how Thunderstrike works on TidBITS:

Macs, like all computers, have firmware that swings into action when you push the power button, booting up the computer, loading the operating system, initializing hardware, and performing other functions. Some technologies, such as FireWire and Thunderbolt, interact with this firmware at an extremely low level, below Mac OS X itself, for feature and performance reasons.

The Thunderstrike proof-of-concept takes advantage of this trust to replace the contents of the Mac’s boot ROM with the attacker’s own code, effectively embedding it into the Mac’s hardware and making it impossible to remove using standard techniques. The attack works because Apple relies on software checks to confirm the firmware is valid, and Hudson developed techniques to circumvent those checks (and even replace the encryption key).

To secure against Thunderstrike, Apple likely had to change the code to not only prevent the Mac’s boot ROM from being replaced, but also to prevent it from being rolled back to a state where the attack would be possible again.

That’s the deep, layered process that has been completed in OS X 10.10.2, which was last seeded to developers earlier this week, and will be made available to everyone as soon as it goes into wide release. (OS X 10.10.2 also fixes three recently disclosed Project Zero vulnerabilities.)

In the meantime, no instances of Thunderstrike have been found in wild, and the attack requires either physical access to the targeted computer, or social engineering sufficient to trick the owner into “attacking” themselves.

So, as with other recent Apple-related security stories, be informed but don’t be alarmed. It’s known, it’s not likely to affect anyone reading this, and the fix is on its way.

According to Apple, as of January 19, 2015, 69% of devices — iPhones, iPads, and iPods touch — currently accessing the App Store are running iOS 8. That leaves 28% still running iOS 7, and 3% running iOS 6 or earlier.

The iPhone 4, originally released in 2010, is the only device capable of running iOS 7 that can’t be updated to iOS 8. iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 3 all shipped with iOS 8.

Everything else, including the iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPod touch 5, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, iPad Air, iPad mini, and iPad mini 2, can be updated to iOS 8. It’s reasonable to assume some portion of that 28% is comprised of iPhone 4. Tens of millions were sold between 2010 and 2014 and many are likely still in use. How many is impossible to say.

Presuming you’re not using an iPhone 4 or older device, however, and your device is capable of running iOS 8, and you haven’t updated yet, what are you still waiting for?

Do you not have enough storage space on your device to handle the software update process? Are you afraid iOS 8 will make your device run slower, or will be buggier than iOS 7? Are you extremely cautious and want to wait on iOS 8.2 before updating? Or is there another reason?

Let me know the reason in the poll above, and give me the details in the comments below. If you’ve already updated to iOS 8 but have relatives, friends, or colleagues who haven’t, please send them the link to this poll so they can vote. I’d love to know!

While AT&T may have jumped the gun on posting the changelog earlier this week, it looks like the Android 4.4.4 KitKat update containing VoLTE and the Eye software experience for its HTC One M8 will be rolling out sometime early next week.

There’s been a lot of buzz about “HD audio” lately — some even rumored that it would be included in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus — but the dirty little music secret is this: Humans can’t appreciate the difference if all you’re bringing to the track is more bits. Dave Hamilton does a great job breaking it down on MacObserver:

This difference between 16-bit/44.1kHz audio and anything greater than that has been tested (a lot… in double-blind tests) and we have yet to find any human that can reliably notice that difference. Bit depths greater than 16 bits and sample rates above 44.1kHz simply don’t matter as long as the data is converted properly (and our ability to do that conversion has improved substantially since those very first CDs were released at the dawn of the digital music era).

The whole piece is a terrific, so give it a read.

I’ve spoken to many people knowledgeable in audio and codecs and they’ve all said the same thing as Dave. I’d go so far as to suggest the only valuable thing to come out of the entire ‘HD audio’ movement is the remastering that’s being done to prepare for it. Many of those works were in dire need of it, and the marketing gave labels and studios and excuse to do it. (Even if those new masters would sound just as great at 16-bit/44.1kHz…)