Orbicule

New Year's resolutions

2012-01-06T10:30:00.000+01:00

From the Orbicule headquarters, we wish you a very happy, healthy and safe New Year!

We have some awesome stuff in store for you in 2012. First and foremost, we will unveil Undercover 5. This is not just an upgrade: it's a complete rewrite of our critically acclaimed theft-recovery software. We have taken everything we have learned from 6 years of theft-recovery experience and started from scratch with a brand new system. No single line of code from version 4 remains untouched - literally! Undercover 5 will set a new bar for theft-recovery software. In addition, it will add exciting new features, and it will be even easier to set up. We are well on track to release Undercover 5 in the first half of this year.

Undercover 5 is not the only project we are working on, however. Since the launch of Witness in March 2011, thousands of Mac user have chosen to protect their homes, businesses or dorm rooms with a Witness alarm system. Not without success: Witness already assisted in catching a hospital thief in Virginia, US: http://www.orbicule.com/witness/success

As I'm writing this, we are putting the finishing touches on Witness 2, a major upgrade to our Mac-based home alarm system. Based on the feedback you have sent us, we have added the following features to Witness 2:

Sneak Peek: watch live images from any active Mac in your alarm system.
Auto-activation: Witness uses the location of your iOS device to automatically arm the alarm when leaving your house, and disarm it upon your return. It's magic!
Face detection: you can now setup Witness to only detect motion if it detects a human face. This may come in handy when you have pets running around the house.
Motion detection sensitivity: optimize camera settings for a specific environment.
Multiple cameras: connect and use up to 3 cameras per Mac, making it easier to cover larger areas.
Applescript support: it's now possible to have AppleScripts executed when arming and disarming the alarm, or when motion is detected.

As you can see, Witness 2 is a landmark upgrade. It will be released later this month and best of all it will be free for all registered Witness users. It's our way to say thank you to our early adopters.

We love you, Steve!

2011-11-22T18:01:00.001+01:00

A lot has been written about Steve's life and death over the past six weeks, and rightly so. His vision and clear thinking have guided thousands of people and companies across the globe. Orbicule is definitely one of them. 'No respect for the status quo', our company's tagline, has literally been 'taken' from the Think Different campaign Steve launched upon his return to Apple in 1997.

It's not just about slogans though, we try to let the Steve-mindset and attention to detail permeate everything we do. It's even safe to say that without Steve, Orbicule would not even exist. That's quite an accomplishment for someone we never met in person. Fortunately we were lucky enough to attend and enjoy many of his Stevenotes, being in the same room with the reality distortion field.

Needless to say, we were deeply saddened when we learned about Steve's passing and we felt we should do something to remember him. Just hours after the news broke, the Belgian national television asked us to participate in a short movie to remember and honor Steve. Of course, we accepted immediately.

As a tribute to Steve, we are posting the resulting movie below. Part of it was filmed at Orbicule, and you might recognize the entire Orbicule team in the final shot.

It's our way to say: "thank you Steve, we love you!'.

Your browser does not support the video tag.

Swedish MacBook recovered in Henderson, Nevada

2011-10-13T22:05:00.001+02:00

One of our clients from Sweden just wrote a blog post describing his experiences with Undercover. Thanks to Undercover, the Henderson (NV) police was able to recover the stolen MacBook and - probably equally important - roughly 1500 photos taken during a three week road-trip through California and Nevada.

Our newest cat

2011-09-23T17:08:00.001+02:00

We recently introduced Fluff, a side project that is totally different from our current security lineup.
Fluff is an iOS app that tells the story of a lovable little kitten exploring the beautiful but dangerous outside world. Written for kids aged 2 - 6 years old by Den, the story has been illustrated by our resident graphics designer Winnie Trekker. Fluff has been specifically designed for the iPad, but it works just fine on the iPhone and iPod touch. If you have (grand)children, you should check out Fluff right now!

What you need to know about Undercover on Lion

2011-07-25T13:58:00.012+02:00

Apple released Lion 5 days ago and many of our users have already upgraded their Macs or are planning to do so soon. In this post, we would like to address some common questions and misconceptions about Undercover on Lion.

Reinstalling on Lion
We recommend all our users to download Undercover 4.5 and run the installer, even if Undercover has been installed previously. This will make sure you are running the very latest version. Reinstalling Undercover on a Mac will not use additional license seats if you have a household or site license.

FileVault 2
With OS X Lion comes FileVault 2, an update of Apple's data encryption program. In FileVault 2 a Mac cannot boot unless an admin password is entered. Therefore, third party apps such as Undercover (and Undercover copy-cats) cannot run. Basically in OS X Lion, you must choose between using FileVault 2 or having the chance to recover your Mac using Undercover. We are sorry to have to write this, but this is how Apple designed FileVault 2. If you want to continue using Undercover and data encryption is important to you, there are many other file encryption apps available.

Location menu item
In Lion, a new location menu is present in the upper right corner of the menubar (the arrow icon). This menu lists all apps that have accessed your location in the last 24 hours. Since Undercover uses location, it will show up there as well (under the uclocator name). If you think this menu gives a potential thief too much information, you can easily remove the menu item: drag the com.apple.locationmenu.plist file in /System/Library/LaunchAgents/ out of the LaunchAgents folder. You can always bring the menu item back by moving the plist file back to its folder.

Firmware password
Setting a firmware password will prevent thieves from formatting your startup disk, as the password is needed to boot from another disk than your default startup disk. That's why we recommend to set a firmware password when using Undercover. You can access the firmware password in Lion by booting from the recovery partition.

Update: added information about the firmware utility on the Lion recovery partition. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.

Update 2: corrected information on FileVault 2

Undercover tracks MacBook Air in Hampshire, UK

2011-07-24T12:30:00.004+02:00

Undercover helps recovering another MacBook Air in the UK. Our favorite quote from the story:

When officers turned up at the thief's home in New Milton, Hampshire, 100 miles away, they were even able to match the wallpaper in his living room with that in the background of the photograph.

Read the entire story in the Daily Mail.

ZipRage thinks Witness is hot

2011-07-19T15:23:00.001+02:00

ZipRage just reviewed Witness: "I could see it being a fantastic option for those of you living in a dorm room". Read the review...

Witness 1.2 ready for Lion

2011-07-15T15:05:00.004+02:00

After releasing Undercover 4.5 two weeks ago, we are now completing our Lion compatibility lineup with Witness 1.2. Besides providing full compatibility with Lion, Witness fixes a couple of other issues. We recommend all our Witness users to upgrade to version 1.2. Simply download the installer from the Witness website and run it.

UPDATE: Some users are reporting issues with alarm activation on Lion. We are looking into these issues, and we will release a fix as soon as possible.

First Witness success story

2011-07-08T11:05:00.004+02:00

Only about three months after its introduction, Witness managed to witness its first theft. It snapped pictures of an iPad theft at a hospital in Virginia, US. Thanks to Witness, our customer now has his iPad back, and the police have arrested the thief who had previously stolen money at the same the hospital. Read the entire story...

Undercover likes Lion

2011-06-28T15:33:00.000+02:00

We just released Undercover 4.5. This update makes Undercover fully compatible with the yet to be released Lion (Mac OS X 10.7). In addition, the new version improves location tracking on Snow Leopard and Lion.

Undercover 4.5 is compatible with Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion. You should install it on all your Undercover-equipped Macs. Simply download the installer from the Undercover page and run the installer.

Witness this!

2011-05-04T16:03:00.002+02:00

If you follow us on Twitter or Facebook (and you should ;), you probably already know that last month we introduced Witness, our latest app. Witness turns your Mac into a home alarm system. As soon as your Mac detects motion, Witness sends a push notification to your iOS device, including mugshots of the thief, and even video.

Although we were pretty happy with the end result, we could have never imagined that in its first month, Witness would shatter the monthly Undercover sales record. That's quite a feat, given that Undercover is five years old now and is an extremely successful product. In fact, we have been so busy selling, supporting and updating Witness that we did not even manage to write a blog post about the 1.0 version!

In the meantime, Witness has been featured on or reviewed by Wired, TUAW, Mac360 and numerous other websites. Our favorite review, however, comes from MacStories:

There are many tweaks and hacks available online to turn your iSight into a security system, as well as utilities to lock your Mac from an iPhone or iPad while on the go. I bet many of you have heard of these methods or at least tried to follow one of those tutorials once. Witness, however, does exactly what a great app has to do: it combines multiple functionalities into a beautiful, easy to use and full-featured package that requires minimal setup and just works.

I highly recommend Witness not only because of the beautiful interface approach and usability — it’s the “just works” factor that combines a utility to lock a computer and turn it into a home alarm system that truly impressed me.

Today, we are introducing Witness 1.1, fixing some smaller issues that are inevitably part of a 1.0 release. If you haven't checked out Witness yet, now would be a good time to do so. With the 30-day money back guarantee, there is nothing to lose.

Beta-testers wanted

2011-02-11T21:42:00.003+01:00

During the past months, we have devoted most of our time to an exciting, super-secret Orbicule project. As we are almost done, we would like to have some feedback from outside the company.
If you are interested in helping us make this project succeed, feel free to drop us an email at beta@orbicule.com. We are especially interested in beta testers owning both a Mac and an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch).

Please include the following information:
- Your name and address
- Other software you helped beta-test
- Mac OS X version
- iOS device type and OS version
- iOS UDID (see this post for instructions)

The beta program will start on Tuesday 15 February. Selected testers will receive the first version on that day.

UPDATE: We are no longer looking for testers, thanks for the enthusiastic response!

Undercover user guide

2010-11-18T19:19:00.001+01:00

Information about Undercover is quite abundant on our website. This includes our 'how it works' section, the searchable FAQ, the demo movie and even this weblog. To make it even easier to get started with Undercover, we created a user guide in PDF format. It bundles everything you need to know about protecting your Mac against theft.

More recovery news

2010-10-21T22:25:00.000+02:00

We just published two more recovery testimonials and one full-page recovery story. Head over to our recovery page for more information.

Introducing Incognito

2010-10-12T11:48:00.000+02:00

We just released a Safari extension that protects your online privacy. It's called Incognito and it blocks companies like e.g. Google and Facebook from gathering information about you (or your browsing habits) outside the context of their own websites. The plugin started as a personal project by Albert Jorissen, one of our engineers. He was concerned about the fact that some large companies have access to a staggering amount of information about his online life. Have a look at the Incognito page for more information on this free Safari extension.

New recovery stories

2010-10-11T21:43:00.000+02:00

We just posted five new recovery stories and customer testimonials. Head over to our recoveries page to read how Undercover helped the Florida police to catch a creepy thief / stalker, or how Undercover recovered a brand new iPad in South Carolina. We also have a detailed recovery story from Lille, France and a testimonial from Helsingborg, Sweden.

FOX News just selected Undercover as their top pick

2010-10-01T15:47:00.000+02:00

Watch their review of three iPhone theft-recovery apps.

Undercover iPhone on iOS 4

2010-09-23T22:20:00.006+02:00

We were close to releasing Undercover 2 for iPhone, featuring background location tracking on iOS 4. However, a few days after we started internal beta testing, Apple introduced iOS 4.1 and suddenly our internal Undercover builds stopped working. After some research, it turned out that iOS 4.1 contains a rather serious bug affecting background location tracking. Since Undercover 2 has been designed for background location tracking, there is no point in releasing this new version right now.

As soon as Apple fixes this issue - which we hope will be with the release of iOS 4.2 in November - we will submit Undercover 2 to the App Store. Although this situation is obviously beyond our control, we apologize to our iPhone customers. In the meantime, Undercover 1.6 should keep your iPhones and iPads secured.

Undercover 4.1 update

2010-08-09T16:24:00.000+02:00

We just released Undercover 4.1. This minor update fixes a problem with Skyhook location tracking. We highly recommend all Undercover users to download and install this update. As always, the installer will automatically replace older versions. If you already are a registered Undercover user, you won't be prompted for your license key again.

Undercover is Editors' Choice in Macworld

2010-07-26T15:46:00.008+02:00

Macworld magazine, the world's best selling Apple magazine has just reviewed Undercover 4. We are thrilled with their conclusion: "If you’re toting around an expensive MacBook on your travels, Undercover would be a wise addition to your software setup. It’ll be too late to install it when the Mac’s been stolen." They are giving Undercover the maximum of 5 stars and the prestigious Editors' Choice label. Undercover 4 is a free upgrade for all our registered users.

Undercover iPhone running in the background

2010-05-27T00:01:00.001+02:00

Since the moment we designed Undercover for iPhone, we wanted it to run as a background application, just like our Mac version. Unfortunately, Apple does not allow background apps on the iPhone. Therefore, we are using push notifications in order to launch Undercover remotely on the stolen phone. This creative solution has worked very well in practice, but we would still prefer to have Undercover running permanently.

With the upcoming iPhone OS 4, Apple will allow developers to run their apps in the background. We will gladly oblige by adding full background-support to Undercover iPhone. We plan to release Undercover 2 for iPhone soon after the release of iPhone OS 4. As you have come to expect from us, this new release will be a free update for all existing iPhone app owners.

Undercover 4 is here

2010-04-13T21:07:00.000+02:00

We are very proud to present Undercover 4, our newest baby. The tentpole feature in Undercover 4 is UndercoverCenter, an online system that allows you to track a lost or stolen Mac in real-time. We first introduced UndercoverCenter in November for our iPhone version, and now it's available for the Mac too.

UndercoverCenter allows you to view your Mac's location, as well as all iSight and screenshot images that are transmitted from the stolen Mac. In addition, you (or the police) can now download a zip file that contains all these images, as well as a connection log (often required by the police to obtain a subpoena) and a Google Earth file pinpointing all locations the Mac has visited since its theft.

We did not stop there though. As you know, Undercover is still the only theft-recovery app to offer the possibility to completely block a lost or stolen Mac and to display a full-screen message. This 'plan B', as we call it, can be controlled entirely from UndercoverCenter.

While we are definitely not the first to offer a web-based solution to track a stolen Mac, we are confident that UndercoverCenter is the best solution out there. We hope it sets a new standard in usability, as we designed it to feel like a native Mac app.
We made a video showing off some of the new UndercoverCenter features.

We have been working on UndercoverCenter for about a year, we hope you will be pleased with the end result. Undercover 4 is a free upgrade for all our registered users. Just download the installer from our website and run it. It will automatically remove older versions of Undercover. Simply enter your license key when prompted.

Beta-testers wanted

2010-03-29T12:17:00.001+02:00

Undercover 4 is right around the corner. It will be the most significant Undercover-upgrade yet. As with all previous Undercover upgrades, it will be free for registered users. This applies to all of our clients, including the early-adopters who purchased Undercover 1.0 in January 2006.

To make sure Undercover 4 is issue-free from the start, we are currently looking for a few extra beta testers. We are especially - but not solely - interested in Mac OS X Tiger users.
If you are interested in helping us out, please send an email to beta@orbicule.com. Don't forget to mention your affiliation, the Mac OS X version you are using and the hardware you will be testing on.

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who signed up. We now have enough beta testers.

iPad support

2010-03-12T10:26:00.001+01:00

In case you were wondering about our iPad commitment: Undercover iPhone will run just fine on the iPad from day one. If you already have our iPhone version, just sync your iPad with iTunes to protect your pad. No need to purchase another app. In addition, we will take iPad support a step further by developing an iPad-optimized version.

Three remarkable recovery stories

2010-02-22T15:43:00.003+01:00

By popular demand, we are publishing three brand new recovery successes. The stories describe thefts that have been solved in 2010. All three accounts have been written by the respective owner of the Macs, giving you a real inside look of the entire recovery procedure.

The stories themselves are pretty remarkable:

In the first story, Shanna Warmald's Mac gets stolen on a flight from the U.K. to Canada. Thefts on international flights are always difficult, as it is often unclear which police station is responsible for handling the case. Thanks to Undercover and the help of the Manchester police, she could recover the MacBook.
The second story illustrates how Undercover helped Kenneth Koldewyn and the police to arrange a meeting with the unsuspecting thief after he put the stolen MacBook Pro on Craigslist.
In the last story, Dave Diamond tells us how the Berkeley (CA) police could recover his stolen Mac thanks to Undercover and a little help from iPhoto.

Make sure to visit our recovery page for more Undercover successes.

Undercover recovers stolen Mac in Berkeley, CA

2010-02-09T18:33:00.005+01:00

The MacBook of David D.'s daughter was stolen on January 9 in Berkeley, California. Thanks to Undercover, the Berkeley police station could recover the stolen Mac this past Friday. The iSight pictures obtained by Undercover were key in identifying the thief and locating the stolen goods.

We will soon post a full recovery story on our recovery page, but in the meantime you can read David's forum posts. David has been blogging about the entire recovery procedure on MacResource.com.

Undercover recovers stolen Mac in Belgium

2010-01-27T15:07:00.006+01:00

No better way to start the new year than with a recovery story. While we have already featured many recoveries worldwide, it's great to have a recovery story in Belgium, our home country. Both the theft and the recovery took place in Mechelen, just 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the Orbicule headquarter. You can read the customer testimonial on our recovery page.

What's interesting in this story, is that the screenshots gathered by Undercover were a key factor in identifying the thief. It's important to note that Undercover is the only theft-recovery software thus far to transmit screenshots.

Undercover 1.5 now uses push notifications

2009-11-12T15:35:00.006+01:00

Last week we already announced the availability of undercovercenter.com, a redesigned web portal for Undercover iPhone. Today, we are introducing an update to the iPhone app itself. As promised on this blog, Undercover now has the ability to be remotely activated through push notifications. When reporting a device stolen, you can send it notifications that will trigger Undercover. When you lose your iPhone or iPod, you can use Undercover to display a message on the device.

If you already have Undercover installed on your iPhone or iPod touch, you may download this free update right on your device. If you aren't an Undercover user yet, please check out the updated website or view Undercover directly on the App Store.

Introducing undercovercenter.com

2009-11-04T17:28:00.007+01:00

We are delighted to introduce undercovercenter.com, the new web portal for all our Undercover iPhone users. When installing Undercover on your iPhone or iPod touch, you automatically receive an account at undercovercenter.com. By logging into your account, you will be able to view your device's location history. The web site makes it very easy to declare your iPhone lost or stolen. In case of loss, you can set a message for the finder.

This new website replaces the retrievemyiphone.com portal that has been in use since April of this year. All existing retrievemyiphone.com users have automatically been transfered. One of our aims with the redesign was to make it feel more like a desktop app. We have invested heavily in this new portal, and we hope you'll like it. As always, we welcome your feedback. Feel free to leave a comment or to contact us directly.

If you don't have Undercover iPhone yet, make sure to check it out on the App Store!

Wanted: beta testers

2009-10-21T23:39:00.015+02:00

We are in the process of completing a major update to Undercover iPhone. The upcoming update has an amazing new feature: it will offer the possibility to remotely launch Undercover on your stolen iPhone, in order to track the thief's location. In addition, we completely redesigned and improved the Web-UI, making it even easier to track and recover your lost or stolen device.

We are about to start beta testing and we are looking for testers. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch and are willing to spend about an hour to help us test Undercover and send us your feedback, we would greatly appreciate it. To enroll, please use this link.

Thanks!

UPDATE: We are no longer looking for beta testers. Thanks to everyone who responded!

Undercover 3.2 update is here

2009-09-02T10:35:00.003+02:00

This update fixes a problem of increased network traffic that a small number of our customers experienced with Undercover 3.1 on Snow Leopard. This update is recommended for all users. Simply grab it from our Undercover page and run the installer.

Undercover welcomes Snow Leopard

2009-08-28T10:39:00.014+02:00

Undercover has a tradition of innovation. It was the first theft-recovery app to:

snap pictures of the thief
transmit screenshots (it's still the only one)
simulate a hardware failure (it's still the only one)
offer a plan B, allowing you to completely block the stolen Mac (it's still the only one)
come out as a Universal Binary, running natively on Intel Macs

Today, the innovation continues, as we are introducing the first 64-bit theft-recovery application on any platform. With Undercover 3.1, we not only support Tiger and Leopard, but also Snow Leopard, which is about to be released within a few hours. When running on Snow Leopard, Undercover automatically switches to 64-bit if your Mac supports it. This makes Undercover even faster, more efficient and more secure.

In addition, Undercover 3.1 uses Apple's Core Location framework on all Snow Leopard-enabled Macs. It's the same framework that Apple uses on the iPhone to provide accurate location information.

Here is how to upgrade Undercover when installing Snow Leopard:

Install Snow Leopard (there is no need to remove Undercover first)
Download the Undercover 3.1 installer from our website and run it
There is no step 3

Undercover will automatically detect and remove previous versions of Undercover and it will install the appropriate version for your version of Mac OS X.
Undercover will also detect your registration information, so you won't be prompted to enter that again.

If you are currently running Tiger or Leopard and you have no plans to upgrade to Snow Leopard, there is no need to upgrade your Undercover. On Tiger and Leopard, Undercover 3.1 is exactly the same as Undercover 3.0. It only adds new features on Snow Leopard (64-bit and Core Location).

The innovation won't stop here: Undercover 3.1 is just a small update to ensure that our customers can protect their Snow Leopard Macs from day one. We are simultaneously working on a much more substantial upgrade that will be available this fall.

Car wash recovery story

2009-08-19T11:08:00.006+02:00

We just posted a new recovery story about an iMac stolen from a car wash in Bakersfield, CA. Head over to our recovery page to read how Undercover helped IT manager Brian to get his Mac back in less than a week.

Preparing for the future

2009-06-23T18:00:00.008+02:00

Orbicule is highly committed to OS X. In fact, OS X is the only platform we write software for (both flavours: Mac OS X and iPhone OS). Undercover is not just some port from a Windows app, it has been designed from the ground up for Mac OS X and iPhone OS. Instead of only offering features for the lowest common denominator of all platforms (and we all know what that is ;)), Undercover adds unique functionality such as the iSight capture, screen capture, simulated hardware failure and plan B.

To underscore this commitment, we are pleased to announce that Undercover will embrace Snow Leopard. Not only will we make sure that Undercover runs on Snow Leopard, we will go a step further and offer unique Snow Leopard features. The updated version of Undercover will be available soon after the Snow Leopard release, due in September.

In the meantime, iPhone OS, our other pet platform, has received a major upgrade as well. We plan to have a new version of Undercover iPhone ready this summer. This new version will take advantage of Push Notifications to send alerts to a lost or stolen phone.

In case of loss, push notifications will let you display messages to the finder, and play an alert sound (this comes in handy if you simply forgot the iPhone under your couch).
In case of theft, Undercover will send fake message to the thief. If the thief accepts those messages, the stolen phone's location will be transmitted.

Following a good old Orbicule tradition, these updates will be free to all registered users. Have a great summer!

Undercover is MacFormat choice

2009-06-17T10:41:00.007+02:00

We are proud to announce that Undercover has received 5 stars in an extensive MacFormat review. In addition, our software was selected as an editor's choice.
The Undercover review appears in MacFormat's june issue, and is also available online.

English version of Norwegian recovery story

2009-05-12T15:52:00.004+02:00

Thanks to a spectacular MacBook recovery, Undercover made the front page of one of Norway's most popular newspapers. The amazing recovery story has now been translated and is available on our recovery page.

Undercover recovers stolen MacBook and dismantles drug network in Norway

2009-05-04T16:13:00.007+02:00

Undercover has recovered the stolen MacBook of Petter Røisland (23), living in Norway. By locating the thief, Undercover provided the police with crucial evidence that enabled them to dismantle a criminal network.

The story was published on the front page of 'Dagbladet', a major Norwegian newspaper. The story is in 'Norsk', but even the images alone are worth a look.

An english version of the recovery story will soon be posted on our recovery page.

Bad news for iPhone thieves

2009-04-16T16:54:00.021+02:00

Over the past year, we have received thousands of emails asking when Undercover would make it to the iPhone. We can finally provide a definitive answer: today!

We have been working for over 9 months on the iPhone version. It's not just a port of our Mac version, but a brand new application and - even more important - a brand new backend. Undercove features a secure, web based system that you can use to view your iPhone's last locations or open them in Google Earth. You can also use the system to report your iPhone (or iPod touch) lost or stolen. More information about the product itself is available at the Undercover iPhone page, so I won't repeat this information here.

Instead, I would like to focus on the features that make Undercover truly innovative:

Undercover is built to manage multiple devices per user: it provides a beautiful interface to easily manage several iPhones and/or iPods. This could be very convenient for a family, a school or a company.

The web interface is really easy to use. You can view the last 10 locations at a glance, without having to navigate cumbersome screens or entering arcane hex strings.

There is no way to prevent any iPhone app from being uninstalled (Apple apps are an exception here). However, Undercover significantly increases the recovery chance by pretending to be a game. That's right: when Undercover is launched on a device that is flagged as stolen, it will pretend to be loading game. This will win some time, so that Undercover can obtain the most accurate location.

In order to increase the chance of recovery even more, we will be releasing additional iPhone apps. These apps know how to talk to the Undercover server. So even if Undercover is removed from your phone, its location can still be transmitted. More information on these helper apps will be available soon.

Although we provide a web-based system, we still offer full theft recovery assistance. So just like with our Mac version, you still have access to our world-class recovery center.

In addition to reporting an iPhone stolen, you can also report it lost. In that case, the finder will see a message that you can set when you reported the iPhone lost.

Make sure to have a look at the guided tour movie at the Undercover iPhone page. Winnie will guide you through the process of reporting an iPhone lost or stolen and she will show you what happens on your stolen device.

We hope you'll like Undercover iPhone. Keep in mind that this is just the first version. We have some great ideas in mind for the upcoming updates (which will be free, of course).

TidBITS goes Undercover

2009-03-30T16:10:00.029+02:00

David Blatner has written an interesting article on theft-recovery for TidBITS. He has some nice things to say about Undercover:

Undercover in particular does some things I'd like to see incorporated into a future version of MacTrak, such as taking screen shots as the thief works and simulating a hardware failure to force the thief into bringing the machine in for repair

We could not agree more with David on Undercover's competitive edge.

However, I don't entirely agree with one of the author's points: he states that he does not 'like the idea of a third-party company being the mediator between me and the tracking data'. This is odd, as every theft-recovery solution out there, uses a client-server system. In that respect, data is always mediated and copied to some sort of server before the victim can view it. Even if the software sends the information 'directly' to your email account, that email has been 'mediated' by their servers.

However, more than three years of theft-recovery experience have learned us that having a mediator between the theft-data and the Mac's rightful owner is actually an advantage.

Indeed, some theft-recovery software lets you handle all the recovery work yourself. They simply dump the iSight pictures in your mailbox and that's it.
We don't: we have a fully staffed recovery center that handles hundreds of thefts each year. We have a rich in-house expertise on how to work with law enforcement in each country, including the US and Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia. As a result, we can handle recoveries more quickly and efficiently. We also assist the victim in extracting data from the screenshots he or she receives from the stolen Mac.

Having a mediator really pays off, and we consider that an important part of the service you pay for when purchasing Undercover. It's an asset, not a disadvantage.

That's not to say we handle everything behind the customer's back. Every single customer receives all the information we share with the police.

In addition, having us as a neutral mediator really encourages the police to work on the case and to take to court all the data we provide them with. This becomes much more difficult if the data is gathered by individuals, or shared on photo-sharing websites.

More testimonials from Europe and the U.S.

2009-01-28T11:20:00.004+01:00

We have just added three more testimonials from user who got their Mac back thanks to Undercover. This time, Undercover helped tracing stolen Macs in Italy, Austria and Maine, USA.

Undercover 3 unveiled

2009-01-27T11:03:00.002+01:00

It's here: the most significant update to Undercover since its introduction on January 18 2006. During these three years, Undercover has gone from 1.0 to 2.5 without any upgrade charge. We are continuing this commitment to our users, with the 3.0 release: it's totally free for registered users! Over the coming days, all current users will be notified of this update by email.

The landmark feature of Undercover 3 is of course the Skyhook Wireless integration. It is the same technology that powers location tracking on the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Thanks to Skyhook technology, Undercover 3 can now locate your stolen Mac within a range of 10-20 meters (about 30-60 feet). Having immediate access to your Mac's location will enable our recovery center to provide the police with more details about the stolen machine. In addition, the entire process will be much faster too. There will be no more need to work with the ISP.

Think about it: we can now provide the police with a report that shows where your Mac is being used, who is using it (thanks to the iSight pictures) and what the current user is using it for (thanks to the screenshots we take).

We are confident that Undercover 3 with Skyhook location tracking will make a huge difference in the field. It should enable us to be even more aggressive when it comes to recovering stolen Macs. We currently have a 86% recovery rate. Expect this figure to go up...

How to Upgrade?
Upgrading to Undercover 3 is easy: download and run the installer.
That's it. The installer will automatically replace any previous version.
Undercover automatically recognizes any previous registration, so if you have registered Undercover on that Mac before, you won't see the registration screen again. If it can't find a previous registration, you will be prompted to enter your license key. This license key can be found in the email you have received from Kagi after your purchase. The email is sent by admin@kagi.com, you may use Spotlight to find it.

Check whether Undercover is running on your Mac
If you want to be sure that Undercover is running on your Mac, please follow the instructions below:
- Launch the Activity Monitor application in /Applications/Utilities
- Select "All processes" from the popup menu in Activity Monitor's toolbar.
- You should see a process called uc owned by root

Lost your Undercover ID?
You can always have your Undercover ID delivered again by following these instructions. Make sure to store this Undercover ID in a safe place, we will need it in case of theft.

Undercover 3: coming soon to a Mac near you

2009-01-06T12:16:00.001+01:00

Orbicule is proud to announce Undercover 3, the newest version of our critically acclaimed theft-recovery software. Undercover 3 enables us to accurately determine the location of your stolen Mac within a range of 10-20 meters. This new version uses the same Skyhook Wireless positioning technology used in the iPhone.

Currently, Undercover boasts an industry-leading 86% recovery rate. We are confident that this new version will increase our success rate even more.

Undercover 3 will be available on January 20. It will be a free download for all registered Undercover users. Undercover licenses are available for $49 at our Kagi online store.

UPDATE: We will release Undercover 3 on January 27, not on January 20 as announced previously (see above). The reason for this delay is the presidential inauguration taking place on January 20. We don't want to compete for media attention with Barack Obama! ;)

Orbicule at MacWorld

2008-12-27T22:27:00.002+01:00

Orbicule will have its own booth at Macworld Expo 2009 in San Francisco. We will be there to answer all your questions about Undercover and Macnification. Please feel free to drop by at our booth # 1438, even if you don't have any questions. We are looking forward to meeting you!

Oh, there is one more thing: we will make a major announcement at Macworld. If you can't make it to the city by the bay, please keep an eye on this weblog!

Undercover and the iPhone

2008-12-11T15:02:00.007+01:00

On a daily basis, we are getting requests for an iPhone version of Undercover. Until now, we have been intentionally vague about our iPhone plans, as we did not want to give away too much information before we actually ship the software.

In the meantime, however, some other people and companies have created anti-theft software for the iPhone. No problem with that, we love some competition. Unfortunately, though, all these solutions rely on the fact that the thief himself should launch the theft-recovery application.

I don't know about you, but here at Orbicule we think that this is totally useless and that you could as well ask the thief to turn himself in at the nearest police station. Relying on the fact that a thief should disclose his own location, is not our definition of a secure theft-recovery software. We know most thieves are not that smart, but this is really pushing it. Moreover, a thief could easily remove the software from the iPhone, just like he can uninstall any other third party application. We could have shipped similar software on the AppStore several months ago, but we decided not to: this solution simply does not meet our standards.

Time has come to announce that we have been working for many months on a highly advanced theft-recovery system for the iPhone. As soon as Undercover is released, it will blow anything else out of the water. The system is 95% ready and we are currently testing beta builds. Its release has been a moving target, as we are dependent upon Apple for some of its aspects. But now at least you know that we have been working relentlessly on an iPhone solution and that you will have a decent theft recovery solution to choose from once Undercover iPhone is released.

This is all the information we can share right now, as the Apple NDA keeps developers from disclosing details about unreleased applications.
Please keep an eye on this blog, we will release information as it becomes available. Or follow our Twitter feed at http://twitter.com/orbicule.

FindMySoft gives Undercover 5-star rating

2008-11-11T11:37:00.004+01:00

The reviewers at FindMySoft have assigned the highest rating (excellent) to Undercover:

We are pleased to inform you that your software Undercover 2.5 has been tested on 06-Oct-2008 by one of our software engineers. We would like to congratulate you for the quality of your product. We have updated Undercover details on findmysoft.com. Since Undercover exceeds the quality standards of many other software products in its category it has been granted the "EXCELLENT" software certificate.

More information is available from their website.

Registration window fix

2008-10-07T21:44:00.003+02:00

Some of our users have reported that the registration window does not appear after installing the newly released Undercover 2.5. As a temporary fix, we recommended users that experienced this issue to manually start the registration application.

We now fixed this issue, however. The version number remains at 2.5 since only the registration application has been updated, not Undercover itself. If you already upgraded to version 2.5 over the past few days and you had to manually start the registration process, there is no reason to download and install again. The fact that you had to manually start the registration application did not affect Undercover's functionality.

We sincerely apologize to the handful of users who experienced this inconvenience.

Undercover 2.5 has landed

2008-09-29T11:58:00.010+02:00

We are proud to release Undercover 2.5, the only theft-recovery solution that has been designed exclusively for Mac OS X.
The update is free for all registered Undercover users

Changes since Undercover 2.0
- We removed the dead-Mac feature in which a Mac would start plan B if offline for more than two months, even if it's not listed as stolen. We hoped that this feature would have helped us recover stolen Macs that are never connected. In reality, the feature did not help at all, not even in one case.
- Memory footprint and CPU usage have been dramatically reduced. In most cases, memory footprint is down 75%.
- In addition, Undercover 2.5 sports dozens of under-the-hood improvements and fixes.
- Undercover 2.5 now automatically replaces all previous versions. Simply run the installer and you are all set.

How to upgrade from any previous Undercover version
- Download Undercover 2.5 from the Undercover website and run the installer.
- Undercover automatically recognizes older Undercover versions and removes them.
- Restart your Mac when prompted by the installer
- Undercover 2.5 does not recognize your previous registration: you will need to enter your email address and license key again. You can find your license key in the email that has been sent by Kagi after your purchase. This email has been sent by admin@kagi.com, you may use Spotlight to find it.
- You will then receive the Undercover ID for the Mac you installed Undercover on.

Check whether Undercover is running on your Mac
Undercover will require you to re-enter your Kagi license key. After registration, you will receive an email containing the Undercover ID for the Mac you have registered Undercover on. The fact that you are receiving the email with the UC ID means that Undercover has been successfully installed and is working properly on your Mac.
Important note: The Undercover ID is unique for a particular Mac. This is unlike the Kagi license key, which may be used on a number of Macs if you have a household or site license.

Over the coming days, registered users will be notified of this update by email.

Looking for beta testers [Updated]

2008-08-22T10:20:00.005+02:00

As a major Undercover update nears the beta testing stage, we are looking for testers.
If you would like to participate, please send us an email with the following information:

- The Mac model you can test on
- The Mac OS X version you are running (we need both Tiger and Leopard testers)
- Previous beta-testing work you have done on other software

Testers should prepare to spend about 3 hours over the next weeks to test the newest Undercover release.
Needless to say, participating testers will receive a free Undercover license if they complete the testing procedure.
We only need a few testers, so you need to act quickly

Thanks for the huge number of responses we received. We now have plenty of beta testers for the upcoming Undercover update, so we are no longer looking for candidates

Become a fan of Orbicule

2008-08-21T10:31:00.002+02:00

If you have a Facebook account - and who doesn't these days - you may become a fan of Orbicule. Point your browser to the Orbicule page. We will use this page - in addition to this blog - to post company news, job openings, ...

Remote wipe

2008-07-03T10:16:00.004+02:00

On a weekly basis, users are suggesting a remote wipe functionality for Undercover. In short, this means that we can remotely wipe all files on a Mac if it has been reported stolen. At first, this sounds like a great feature, as laptops are increasingly used as a desktop replacement, often containing sensitive data.

We have thought a lot about remote wipe and there is one major problem with it: the wipe is postponed until the stolen Mac is connected to the internet. There is no way to tell a Mac to delete all its files if you can't talk to it. This means that a thief has access to all data on the Mac until he goes online with the stolen Mac. On average, it takes about ten (10!) days for a stolen Mac to be connected to the internet for the first time, giving thieves plenty of time to view all files and copy them if they are after specific sensitive files. If the information is really confidential, this is totally unacceptable.

Remote wipe is only useful when executed immediately after the theft. This would require a permanent network connection, such as with a cell phone, which is almost continuously connected to its carrier's network. In such a scenario, remote wipe does make sense. However, if the connection isn't permanent as it is on a Mac, remote wipe is just a marketing trick that does not offer any real value. If your Mac contains sensitive data, we highly recommend other security measures, such as encryption (e.g. using FileVault).

No news is good news

2008-05-13T15:42:00.002+02:00

It has been a long time since our last blog post. Somewhere on a web forum, I even read that Orbicule might be out of business. This could not be further from the truth: Undercover is doing better than ever and we are working on the next generation of theft recovery software as we speak. I have to admit that our blog remained silent for quite a while, but that's only because we have been hard at work on several projects.

Many (prospective) customers have inquired about the projects we have been working on. Although we do not comment on unannounced products, you can be quite sure that we will be where Apple's focus is at the moment. At least, if technically and legally feasible. How much clearer can we be? ;-)

I also wanted to let our users and blog readers know that we are taking feedback and blog comments very seriously. We do listen to you! For example, we are currently looking into ways to improve the dead Mac functionality [the feature in which plan B is started automatically if the Mac has not been connected for more than 60 days].

Expect to see some fruits of our labour by the end of September.

Recovery in Surfers Paradise

2008-01-10T15:58:00.000+01:00

Prospective customers are continuously inquiring for new Undercover recovery stories, and rightly so. We already posted two fully illustrated recovery stories on our recovery page. Writing up these stories, illustrating them and making sure these stories are not hindering police and/or court investigations is harder than it seems.

Therefore, we were delighted to receive an email from Dean Katsiris, a client we helped to recover his stolen MacBook: he wrote a detailed recovery report, including iSight images captured by Undercover. Please note that this recovery has taken unusually long, but thanks to the perseverance of Dean and the efficacy of Undercover, the story has a happy end. Enjoy...

Have a great 2008

2008-01-05T15:45:00.000+01:00

We at Orbicule wish you a joyful and healthy new year! May all your dreams come true (or at least some of them).
We also wish you a safe year for yourself, your family and of course for your precious Mac.

After launching Undercover 2, we took some time off to relax and recover as 2008 is shaping up to become an exciting year with a major new product scheduled to be released in Q3 2008. To be continued...

A star is (re)born

2007-10-30T14:29:00.000+01:00

We are proud to release Undercover 2, the only theft recovery solution that has been designed exclusively for Mac OS X and the first native theft-recovery application for Leopard.

With Undercover 2, we hope to recover even more stolen Macs:

We added a dead-Mac-timeout feature: if a Mac is not connected to the net for more than two months, plan B will automatically kick in. That way, we hope to recover at least some of the stolen Macs that are never connected to the Internet.

Undercover now only connects to the Internet when a network change occurs, dramatically reducing network traffic, while making the system even more aggressive.

Memory footprint and CPU usage have been dramatically reduced. In most cases, memory footprint is down 75%.

In addition, Undercover 2 sports dozens of under-the-hood improvements and fixes.

Last but not least, Undercover is now compatible with Tiger and Leopard. One version now works on both operating systems.

Tiger instructions

First, you have to remove Undercover 1.5:

In the Finder, remove the following file: /Library/Launchdaemons/com.orbicule.undercover.plist
Restart your Mac
Choose Go To Folder from the Finder's Go menu
Enter the following path: /etc and remove the uc file in this folder

Next, you can download Undercover 2 and run the installer. You can use your existing Kagi license key (not your Undercover ID) to register Undercover 2. By upgrading, you will not use an additional license seat. In most cases, Undercover will simply recognize your 1.5 registration and it won't ask for a license key.

Leopard instructions

If you have installed Leopard by doing a 'Clean install', or by doing an 'Archive and install' you don't have to do any extra work.
Simply download Undercover 2 and run the installer. You can use your existing Kagi license key (not your Undercover ID) to register Undercover 2. By upgrading, you will not use an additional license seat. In most cases, Undercover will simply recognize your 1.5 registration and it won't prompt you to enter your license key.

If you have installed Leopard by doing an upgrade install, you first have to remove Undercover 1.5 by removing the following file: /Library/Launchdaemons/com.orbicule.undercover.plist. Restart your Mac after this removal. Next, you can install Undercover 2 as described in the paragraph above.

Leopard spotted in the wild (almost)

2007-10-17T12:03:00.001+02:00

Leopard is almost here, and we are getting ready for it. Here is what you need to know about Undercover on Leopard:

- The current version of Undercover (version 1.5), is not compatible with Leopard.
- For the past few months, we have been working on Undercover 2.0, which will run fine on both Tiger and Leopard and which will sport some new features too.
- We will release Undercover 2 as soon as we possibly can. However we can't ship it before we can test Undercover on the final Leopard build. As I'm writing this, Apple has not released it to developers yet.
- If you want to install Leopard before Undercover 2 ships, there is no need to uninstall Undercover in advance. Note that your Mac won't be protected when booted in Leopard until we release Undercover 2.
- As soon as we ship Undercover 2, we will send out emails to all registered users explaining how to upgrade under different scenarios (upgrade, archive and install, clean install).

Just to make it clear for everyone: Undercover 2 will be totally free for all registered 1.x users! Talk about an incentive to upgrade...

Undercover recovers 4 Macs at once

2007-09-11T11:15:00.001+02:00

We are proud to announce a new recovery story. While every recovery is unique, this story is quite special, as we recovered four brand new MacBooks at once. Read the good news yourself on our recovery page.

Exit TheftSensor

2007-09-10T16:42:00.000+02:00

We have decided to halt development of TheftSensor. It has been a difficult decision to make, but we think it's the right choice for several reasons. I'll try to explain.

Last year, when we released the first TheftSensor beta, Apple had just introduced the Apple Remote on some of their Macs, as well as the Sudden Motion Sensor. TheftSensor made innovative use of private, unreleased APIs to access both these hardware additions. For a beta, that's OK. We hoped that Apple in the meantime would release a public API. Now with the Leopard release only weeks away, it does not look like this will happen for Leopard. If we want to make TheftSensor work on both Tiger and Leopard, we will need to use a private API, which is unsupported by Apple and which could break with any software update. As we want to release high quality software this is no option for us. Worse, the API could even change between Mac models, as is the case with the Motion sensor API, which has effectively changed at least two times between different MacBook models. We could keep working around these issues, but we don't like to build on a weak foundation.

Another reason we are not developing TheftSensor any more is that it can be circumvented in many different ways: a thief could plugin a headphone to silence the alert sound. There is no way around this. The same goes for removing the battery or for holding down the power button for a couple of seconds. There are just too many issues that we can't solve, as we obviously don't have any access to the hardware Apple makes. Additionally, TheftSensor won't work when the laptop is turned off (in a backpack) or when it's already sleeping.

Our users have been aware of all these shortcomings too, and that's why most of them installed Undercover alongside TheftSensor anyway. As Undercover is a much more robust theft recovery application that works under almost every scenario and does not have the shortcomings outlined above, we decided it does not make sense to invest any more resources in TheftSensor. We will focus all our efforts on Undercover instead. As I have written before, the next Undercover update will be released soon after Apple releases Leopard and it will feature some major advancements to make Undercover even more effective.

People who really want TheftSensor-like functionality on their Mac should have a look at iAlertU or JackSMS

Now for the good news: we will have an interesting announcement on our website tomorrow, September 11. Please come back soon...

Undercover in The Mac Observer podcast

2007-08-16T14:28:00.000+02:00

Dave Hamilton & John Braun talk about Undercover and other theft recovery software for the Mac. They have some nice things to say about our product, so check out their podcast. You can listen to episode #114 directly in your browser, or subscribe to the podcast using iTunes. The section about Undercover starts at about 25:52, although the entire podcast is worth listening to.

Undercover in Clickx

2007-08-07T10:35:00.001+02:00

It's great to see Undercover being discussed in a Belgian computer magazine. The scoop is for Clickx, one of the most popular multimedia magazines in our home country. The article is available below for your reading pleasure, at least if you understand Dutch....

Animation design contest

2007-08-01T17:20:00.000+02:00

As mentioned in our previous post, the development of the next - Leopard compatible - Undercover release keeps us pretty busy at the moment. Although the application itself takes up most of the development resources, we don't want to forget the UI and graphical aspect of the application either. As you probably know, the current version of Undercover plays a Quicktime movie when the registration screen comes up. If you haven't already installed Undercover, you can view the movie below. [Or even better, simply download and install Undercover, it will even get your Mac back in case of theft...]

For the next Undercover release, we would like to replace this Quicktime movie with something more lightweight and more easily localizable, such as a Flash animation. While at it, the animation could be spiced up a bit as well. Instead of simply outsourcing this animation, we decided to organise an animation design contest.

Here are the rules:

The information provided should be similar to that in the current version (see movie above), although you are free to make the message more creative and appealing

There should be a sound track. You can either use the current sound track, or compose a new one (what a great way to put Garageband to good use)!

The file size should not exceed 2 Megabytes and should be easily editable (in order to make small adjustments or do the localisation).

The animation should include the Undercover logo.

The winner will receive:

A free Undercover household license (worth $59)

Free Undercover updates for life (worth: err well)

His/her name featured on this weblog (we receive about 12,000 unique hits every day)

His/her name name mentioned in the application's documentation

$400 in cash!

All submissions must be received before Aug 20 2007 23:59 GMT. Send them to info@orbicule.com. The winner will be announced on this weblog.

Development update

2007-07-24T09:52:00.001+02:00

This blog has been quiet over the past few weeks. First there has been WWDC07 and subsequently we have gone Undercover ourselves to make sure that the next version of Undercover runs smoothly on Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). Initially we planned to have Undercover 2 out of the door by July, but since Leopard itself has been a bit of moving target, we had to change our plans accordingly. We keep testing on the latest Leopard builds, while ensuring that Undercover remains compatible with Tiger as well.

In the meantime, we are compiling some very interesting, illustrated recovery stories. They are almost ready to go: please keep an eye on this weblog, it will be worth the wait!

What you need to know about the Apple firmware password

2007-05-08T15:52:00.000+02:00

The Apple firmware password can be a very important tool to make your Mac more secure: it basically prevents anyone who does not know the password to reformat your hard disk. For Undercover users, this is particularly useful, since a reformat is the only way to disable Undercover. In spite of its usefulness, the firmware password utility is one of the most poorly understood Apple tools.

Before explaining how to enable the firmware password on your Mac, we first squash some common misconceptions.

Misconception 1: The firmware password does not work on Intel Macs.
This is absolutely untrue: Intel Macs use EFI (Extensible Firmware) and Apple has adapted the firmware password utility to work with EFI. For the end user, this is completely transparent: although the underlying technology is totally different on PPC (Open Firmware) and Intel Macs (Extensible Firmware), the firmware password utility looks and works the same way on every Mac.

Misconception 2: If I enable the firmware password, I will need to enter a password every time I boot my Mac.
Only when booting from *another* disk than your default startup disk, the firmware password needs to be entered. This is what makes the firmware password very convenient: since most of us boot from our default startup disk 99% of the time, one will rarely need to enter a password. At the same time, this prevents thieves from reformatting the HD, because the current startup disk cannot be formatted while in use and booting from another drive without entering the password is impossible.

Misconception 3: If I enable the firmware password, a thief cannot boot my Mac, making Undercover useless.
When enabling the password, a thief can still boot your Mac. The only restriction is that he can only boot your Mac from the default startup disk. As a result, a thief can still work and play with your Mac and Undercover can do its work.
In addition, we recommend to create a dummy user account that has no admin privileges and requires no password. That way, a thief can still login and connect to the net, while your personal files are hidden behind a password protected (admin) account.

Misconception 4: With the firmware password enabled, I will not be able to troubleshoot my Mac in case of a problem.
Since you know the password, you will still be able to boot your Mac from any drive you want, including CDs, DVDs, ... and troubleshoot or reformat your drive. You just need to enter the firmware password when prompted.

Enabling the firmware password on your Mac

Locate the Mac OS X install CD/DVD that came with your Mac.

In the Finder, locate the /Applications/Utilities folder on that disk.

Double click the Firmware Password Utility application inside this folder.

Click the icon to authenticate. Enter an administrator username and password when prompted.

Click Change.

Click to select the checkbox for "Require password to change Open Firmware settings".

Type your password in the Password and Verify fields and click OK. A confirmation appears.

Click the lock icon to prevent further changes.

Quit from the Open Firmware Password application.

Eject the Mac OS X install disk.

NOTE: It is important NOT to use a disk that came with another Mac model. Also, do NOT download the firmware password utility application from the Net! Use the disk that came with your Mac.

More information regarding the Apple firmware password is available on the Apple website at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106482.

New theft web form

2007-05-03T11:45:00.000+02:00

As promised in one of our previous blog posts, we now have a web form available that makes it very easy to report a theft: http://orbicule.com/theft. When launching Undercover last year, we told clients that they can inform us of a theft either by phone or by email. In practice, almost every theft is reported by email. That's why we streamlined the process and created a web form, giving instant feedback to our customers. Another advantage is that victims of theft no longer need to have access to an email account. Any internet connection will suffice to activate Undercover.

Taming Leopard

2007-04-17T14:20:00.001+02:00

Although the next major release of Mac OS X is still some months away, we are proud to report that most of the work has been done to make Undercover sing on Leopard. Current internal builds of Undercover run perfectly on the latest Leopard build (9A410). Although Undercover is a modern application, 'porting' it to a new OS version is always a challenge, because the application is so unusual in many ways (totally hidden, no user interface, ...). We also managed to add two major new features to Undercover. At least one of these features has been discussed previously on this weblog. As things stand now, we plan to release Undercover 2.0 as a free upgrade for both Tiger and Leopard, soon after Apple releases its newest feline. Of course, Leopard is still very much work in progress so we keep testing Undercover on every new release.

Undercover is a "Neat Little Mac App"

2007-03-08T18:28:00.000+01:00

Undercover has been reviewed by the guys from the Neat Little Mac Apps podcast and they love it. They were a bit sceptic at first, but after their review, they have come to the conclusion that Undercover can really make a difference when your Mac gets stolen. So if you were waiting for an unbiased review of Undercover, or if you just want to listen to an interesting Mac podcast, point your browser to the latest NLMA episode. As a plus, you could be winning one of the free Undercover licenses they are giving away!

[Update: the podcast episode with the interview has been posted. It was an interesting experience, although I think my voice really sounds awful].

Recovery statistics

2007-02-28T19:00:00.001+01:00

As almost all of our cases for the past year have been closed, we are ready to report our recovery statistics for 2006, our first year of operation. A lot of our clients have asked for these statistiscs, so we are happy to finally publish them. In order to make reading and / or skimming easier, we are publishing the facts, followed by our comments.

About 2.2% of all Undercover-enabled Macs have been stolen in 2006
This number is even higher than we anticipated. This means that during the average lifetime of a Mac, which is about 4 years, you have a chance of about 8% that it will be stolen.

Of all stolen Macs, 72% are connected to the Internet at least once
This percentage refutes the common misconception that most thieves will never use a stolen Mac on the Internet. Think about it, almost 3 out of 4 thieves will go online with the stolen machine!

Of all stolen Macs that are connected, we were able to recover 96%
If your stolen Mac were to be connected to the Internet, even if it's just for a few seconds, you can be almost certain that we will recover it. Since some cases haven't been closed yet, we hope to end the year with a recovery rate that's even closer to 100%.

All in all, we are extremely pleased with these numbers and we are very proud to report them. We are confident to have one of the highest recovery rates in the industry. The bottom line is that we recovered 96% of the stolen Macs that we were technically able to recover, as there is no way to track a Mac that has not been connected.

You might ask yourself, what happens to the other 28% of stolen machines which are never connected? With the current generation of theft recovery software, they are pretty much out of luck. No software currently on the market today is able to geographically locate a Mac that does not phone home. We want to change that, however, and we want to go for the remaining 28% (= 100%- 72%) that's never connected. The next upgrade to Undercover will be even smarter and it will be able to play its cards, even if the stolen machine never goes online. And before you are asking: yes, the upgrade will be free.

Global Undercover Tracking System (gUts)

2007-02-14T19:14:00.000+01:00

As promised, we will offer you a glimpse of Undercover's future. The first aspect we would like to talk about, is the server backend. A lot of our users might not realize it, but the Undercover software is just one part of the equation. A recovery would be impossible without our servers and our custom server software.

Based on our recovery experiences we have completely rewritten this backend system, streamlining the entire recovery procedure from the moment you report your Mac as stolen until we get the final confirmation from the police that your Mac has been located. The new system enables us to get an even better overview of all thefts, while making it easier and faster to change the status of a stolen Mac.

Over the past few days, we moved all previous thefts to this new system, called gUts, or the global Undercover tracking system. As of today, we started using gUts as our sole recovery system. Unlike its predecessor, gUts is completely written in Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

Many of guts' benefits might not be immediatley apparent to our clients. However, the system will enable us to easily add new features to Undercover, such as reporting a theft through our website. At present, victims of theft have to either email us, or grab a phone and call us. In the very near future, it will be possible to report your Mac as stolen through our new web interface, adding a third reporting possibility.

Another benefit of this new system is that we can gather recovery statistics by pressing one button. As we are just finishing our first year of operation, this feature has been very handy to compile our recovery statistics for 2006. Since so many people have asked us to share statistics and recovery percentages, we will be publishing our statistics for 2006 on this weblog. Stay tuned!

Hiatus

2007-02-11T16:46:00.000+01:00

For more than two months, this weblog has been very quiet. That's about to change: over the next few weeks, we will use this blog to outline our Undercover plans for 2007, share more recovery stories and statistics and give you a glimpse of the things we are currently working on. Stay tuned...

PS: We love you Poe!

Undercover recovers stolen MacBook Pro

2006-11-06T12:55:00.000+01:00

Since the launch of Undercover, hundreds of Mac users have emailed us, asking for some real-world recovery stories. Thus far, we posted one - very unusual - recovery story on this blog. Does this mean that Undercover is not effective in recovering stolen Macs? Not at all.

As outlined before, the problem with recovery stories is that they could violate the privacy of the victims and of the thief. The last thing we want is to give the thief a chance to sue the victim or us for violating his/her privacy. This might sound crazy, but it's a real concern....

That being said, I would like to share another recovery story without violating the privacy of the victim or thief, while still giving enough details to keep the story interesting. Since I thought this story would not only be of interest to the readers of this blog, but to all (prospective) Undercover users, I created a new section on the Undercover website. Enjoy our 2nd recovery story.

post-WWDC season

2006-09-11T11:11:00.000+02:00

This blog has been quiet for some time: I have been attending WWDC, Apple's developer conference in San Francisco. It's been my fifth WWDC in a row, probably one of the best and definitely the most crowded of all.

The funny thing is that over the past 5 years, a similar phenomenon occurs after every WWDC keynote: end users are mostly underwhelmed by the announcements. Thereby, many people forget that WWDC is a developer conference, aimed at informing developers of new technologies and APIs. It's then up to developers to take advantage of these APIs and create some stunning apps that weren't possible before (or would have taken twice as much time). From that perspective WWDC has been a home run: Apple announced an endless array of new technologies that enable developers to integrate their apps even more with the OS and with each other, and to make their applications faster, easier to use and even more elegant. Sorry, I can't give more details here, as all sessions are under NDA, but I can tell you that we have some great new ideas for Undercover, based on this new technology. Moreover, Apple has given their developer tools a complete makeover, especially Interface Builder, making Cocoa application development more enjoyable than it already was. Even with the announcements made thus far, Leopard will be a stunning release, combining great new features for end users (Time Machine, Spaces, ...) with inspiring possibilities for developers (e.g. Core Animation). These developer focused features will ultimately benefit end users as well.

There is more, however, as Apple has not unveiled everything at WWDC. They are still sitting on some top-secret features they can't show us right now. My guess is that some of these featues could be linked to a future hardware announcement (probably as early as tomorrow?). Other of these top-secret features could be interface-related or Finder related (just my wild guesses, this is no rumor site and I have no reliable sources ;-))

Enough speculation, time to go back to work and making Undercover shine on Leopard.

Undercover's 1/2 birthday

2006-07-18T18:58:00.000+02:00

It has been exactly 6 months since Undercover has been released and a lot has happened since then... time for an update.

Airplay
The Undercover concept of using the built-in iSight to secretly transmit pictures of the thief makes a great news or blog story. As a result, Undercover has gotten tons of media attention, much more than we ever hoped. Our theft recovery application managed to make it to the Digg homepage. It also received its own entry on Slashdot and Ars Technica. Of course, Undercover was mentioned many times in the international Mac press as well. For example, Undercover has been listed among the 47 hot new Mac things by Macworld.

Reviews
Undercover has been reviewed three times thus far. The first review was carried out by Mac360. A second review recently appeared in Applicando, the leading Italian Mac journal (Undercover received an awesome 4.5/5 score) and finally the Austrian National Radio praised Undercover for it's ease of use and innovative features. We are still working to have Undercover reviewed by a mainstream US Mac magazine.

Succes stories
Many Mac users are interested in protecting their Macs with Undercover. Before committing to the software, however, they want to know if Undercover really works (which is something I'd be asking myself too, if I weren't the developer). As a result, we have received literally hundreds of requests for Undercover succes stories. Thus far, we have published only one - unusual - recovery story. This ostensible lack of succes stories is mainly caused by our respect for our users' privacy and for the secrecy of the investigations. Although computer theft may not seem like a big deal at first, it's often accompanied by burglary, violence, or even homicide. And even if it's 'only' a computer theft, it's still a crime that requires police investigations. The last thing we want to do is to ruin an investigation by prematurely releasing information (or iSight pictures) of a thief. On the other hand, we really want to show our (prospective) customers that Undercover really works. Therefore, we are preparing to publish more success stories in the weeks and months ahead, as well as some more general things we have learned. Keep an eye on this weblog, because we have some amazing Mac-recovery stories we would like to share...

Undercover on the Austrian national radio (ORF)

2006-06-19T18:50:00.000+02:00

Yesterday evening, the ORF (the Austrian National Radio) reviewed Undercover for their Matrix magazine, a radio show dedicated to computers and new media. Sonja Bettel from ORF tested Undercover in a Vienna-based Mac store by simulating a real theft. While my knowledge of the German language is not good enough to understand everything, I could get most of it and I must say that this show is both informative and entertaining. If your German is better than mine, you should listen to the mp3 version of the show or check out the show's webpage.

Undercover in Macworld

2006-05-15T10:46:00.000+02:00

Undercover is among the 47 hot new Mac things being discussed in the June issue of Macworld. The description on page 58 reads: "If your credit card gets stolen, police can track it down by finding out where the thieves use it. Orbicule's Undercover 1.5 does the same thing for laptops. When you install the app, it registers a unique ID for your Mac on a server and checks in periodically. If your machine is stolen, the system transmits its internet location; Orbicule will then cooperate with law enforcement officials to locate the system physically and recover it. The latest version even adds support for iSight cameras, so your Mac can snap a mug shot of the miscreants."

Needless to say, we are very pleased to see Undercover being selected and discussed by one of the leading Mac magazines!

Introducing TheftSensor

2006-04-24T14:53:00.002+02:00

Today we are unveiling TheftSensor, a brand new application designed for the new MacBook. Taking a page from the car alarm, MacBook Pro owners can enable TheftSensor by pressing the play button on their Apple Remote. When enabled, TheftSensor will start a loud alarm whenever the MacBook is moved, lifted or when its lid is closed. The alarm can be disabled by pressing the play button a second time. Head over to the TheftSensor page and see it in action!

TheftSensor might sound very similar to other applications out there (e.g. iAlertU). I want to stress, however, that we planned this functionality for Undercover 2.0, many months ago. While designing Undercover 2, we decided to spin off TheftSensor as a separate application because many Apple laptops don't have a built-in sudden motion sensor (SMS) just yet. Adding this functionality to Undercover would increase the application's footprint while it would add no functionality for 85% of our user base, so that's why we decided to release this as a separate app. That way, we can get as much feedback as possible from the Mac community. As more and more Apple laptops with SMS become available, we will integrate this functionality into Undercover.

Are you a beta tester?

2006-04-07T15:52:00.000+02:00

We could use some help while working on the next generation Undercover version. If you have a MacBook Pro and if you are interested in testing, drop us an email. Selected testers will receive a free household license. We only need a couple of testers, so we are going to have a deadline of Friday 7 April (that's today) @ 11.59 PM GMT. Note that you do need to have a MBP!

Thanks!

What's next for Undercover?

2006-04-05T15:05:00.000+02:00

If you are an Undercover user, you might have already asked yourself this question. Here is a summary of our Undercover plans for the months ahead.

The next version will be the 1.6 update that will make Undercover significantly smarter while consuming even less bandwidth (not that Undercover is currently a network-intensive app, but any improvement in this area goes a long way). I can't go into more detail right now, but development is going well and we hope to release this update before the end of June.

At the same time, we are working on a method that will enable you to closely monitor Undercover. Many people asked for such a piece of software. It's coming, although it might not be ready to be released alongside the 1.6 update.

Finally, we are currently planning the 2.0 release. This second version of Undercover will most likely be released in 2007. We do have a couple of ideas ourselves of course, but we are also wondering what features you would want to see in this release. If you have any ideas for great new features in Undercover 2, please let us know and/or post a comment.

The big Apple

2006-03-29T13:35:00.000+02:00

The Undercover presentation was a unique experience: it's very satisfying to present your own software in one of Apple's flagship stores. Unfortunately, we could not use the store's theatre as they are rebuilding it and making it even bigger, but the temporary location worked out quite well. The Apple store staff was amazingly friendly and helpful to make sure everything ran as expected. Maybe we will come back to NYC once the theatre reopens...

Another great surprise was that my cousin Sali flew in from the Florida Keys, just to attend my presentation. It was great to see her back after 18 months. Sali is a very gifted illustrator / designer. Make sure to check out some of her work and her weblog. We hope to see her soon in Belgium.

It was my first trip to New York and I'm still quite impressed... I have visited a couple of other 'big cities' (London, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Paris,...). While they are all attractive for different reasons, New York really seems to be a class of its own. At least when it comes to the number of skyscrapers, corporate headquarters and other landmark buildings (such as the U.N.).

There are many things I liked about NY: Ellis Island, walking across the Brooklyn bridge, the MOMA, the Natural History museum, the NYBG, Central Park, the view from the top of Rockefeller center, ... all in all, it's an amazing city and we definitely plan to visit it again.

New York Undercover

2006-03-14T10:34:00.000+01:00

This is not the title for a new TV show, just an announcement that we have been invited to present Undercover at the Soho Apple store in New York! Needless to say, we were excited to accept this invitation. The Undercover demonstration will take place on Tuesday March 21st @ 7 p.m. in the beautiful SoHo Apple store. We hope to meet you there!

Undercover reviewed

2006-03-03T12:10:00.000+01:00

Many people asked us how Undercover behaves in case of theft and whether this system really works. We always tell them that we have done extensive testing of all steps involved and that we did quite a few real-world simulations.

Starting today, we have a more convincing answer: the fine folks at Mac360 have done an independent review of Undercover. For this review, we simulated a real theft. The review describes the different stages Undercover goes through when the Mac is stolen and how each stage works. You can read the review here: part I and part II. Now all people wondering whether Undercover really works no longer have to take our word for it.

The amazing success story

2006-02-23T11:55:00.000+01:00

It has taken a bit longer than anticipated, but I'm finally posting the full story on the London theft. The reason for the delay is that I waited for the 'crime scene' pictures to arrive. Since they still haven't arrived yet, I decided to go ahead and just post the story for your reading pleasure. Additionally, I did not want to interfere with the investigation, or even ruin it by posting the story on our weblog.

I won't keep you waiting any longer. Below is the original theft story as sent to me by Amit Tida, victim of the theft, whose Powerbook had been stolen on February 6th. As you will read, Undercover plays a pivotal role in the recovery of the stolen PB, but in a slightly different way than you would think. Here is the unedited story:

Hi, my name is Amit Tida, I'm a student at SAE institute in London where I'm studying Digital filmmaking and special effects. On 6th on feb, after returning home from shopping, I found that home had been burgled, finding that my powerbook along with other personal possession, had been stolen. After going through the normal procedure with the police and all that, I e-mailed orbicule, with my ID and telling them what happened, so they could black list my powerbook. Within 1 hour or less, I was contacted by Orbicule and they told me that they have started the search and also gave some useful advice. Upset that I was I wanted to carry on with my life, and having uni the next day, I carried on as usual.

During the day I got a call from my mum saying that Orbicule had contacted my home to get more details on the case, so they could contact my local authorities, so I then decided to go home. After reaching home, I decided to go to the back of my house to look for any clues or anything the thieves might have dropped or left. Upon reaching the back gate, I saw my powerbook and seeing it I was so happy, but at the same time a bit confused, (as the night before, when the robbery took place, the police had searched up and down my garden and back gate and found nothing).

Almost at the same time, the investigation team arrived. After taking the powerbook inside my house, and after they searched for finger prints, and all that, they basically turned on the powerbook and searched through it, as they felt that the thieves might have used it, and they came to the conclusion that someone had actually used the powerbook, as they where able to, some how checked some sort of log which said what time the last login was, and said that someone had login in after 4.3 hours after the burglary had been reported. They also came to the conclusion the thief had come back to house near early morning and placed the powerbook at the back of the garden next to the broken gate (where they had supposedly escaped) in fear that they would get caught. As I had stuck a sticker which I made inside my power saying "ORBICULE PROTECTED.... SO DROP IT", when I first got Undercover installed.

That's my story; I'm just so happy as I now have my powerbook and all my work back and able now to give in my coursework on time. If you want to ask me more questions e-mail me at thedirector.akt@gmail.com

I think you'll agree that this is an amazing story. The thieves came back to return the stolen Powerbook because they found the "Orbicule protected" label on the Powerbook. FYI: this label was made by Amit himself, he's an art/creative/filmmaking student after all. The thieves were scared that this Powerbook would lead the police to their home.

While I don't think it would be a good idea to label all Undercover-enabled Macs -- because Undercover relies on the fact that it is a hidden application -- this story does show that theft can be reduced or prevented just by installing Undercover. This could be especially true in schools and corporations where the students/employees know that their Mac is protected.

The most important thing, however, is that I'm very glad Amit got his Powerbook back and that he could submit his assignment on time!

The proof of the pudding...

2006-02-07T16:15:00.000+01:00

This morning, we received an email from a London-based student to alert us that his Powerbook had been stolen and that he had Undercover installed on it. This was the first theft report we received after launching Undercover 20 days ago. Of course we were sad to hear this news, while on the other hand we were very eager to see how Undercover would behave in a real-world theft and we were quite confident that Undercover would help us trace the Powerbook.

A few seconds ago, we received an email from this student to tell us that his Powerbook has been found, thanks to Undercover. This whole story might sound a bit weird, especially since we are releasing a major update to Undercover today, but trust me this is not a joke or a cheap marketing trick. We can't provide more information at the moment, but we will - of course - follow up on this story and inform you as more information becomes available.

Needless to say, we are extremely happy. In the first place we are glad this student can just continue his assignments without going through all the insurance hassle. And secondly, we think this proves how useful a theft recovery application can be!

To be continued.....

[UPDATE: a full story is coming. It will be published as soon as we receive the pictures made by the London Police Department. Please stay tuned.]

It's here! Grab your 1.5 update.

2006-02-07T11:58:00.000+01:00

Undercover 1.5 is out and we are really excited about it. As I announced in the previous post, iSight support is the major new addition to Undercover. We had to do some fine-tuning to make sure we get the best image quality out of the camera, especially with the classic auto-focus iSights (the auto-focus obviously needs a few seconds to provide an optimal image). We have carried out many tests, both internally and with beta testers worlwide and they were all amazed by the efficiency of the iSight feature. All in all, I think this feature will prove to be very valuable when identifying the thief and working with law enforcement. The rapid addition of iSight support would not have been possible without Tim Omernick and his excellent CocoaSequenceGrabber framework. Because Undercover has no 'About box', I would like to use this post to thank Tim for providing this framework to the Cocoa community.

However, iSight support is not the only difference with Undecover 1.0. Security and reliability were two aspects we focused on for this first update and I think this really payed off (see the separate post on hacking Undercover).

The update can be downloaded for free from our Undercover web site.

Hacking Undercover

2006-02-07T11:54:00.000+01:00

Undercover has generated a huge amount of buzz on the web. This has resulted in great coverage (overall very positive), but also in one or two weird "reviews" in which all kinds of claims are made, based on a 'taking the application apart' approach. While some of these claims were correct, many more are absolutely false and that's why I'm not linking them here. More importantly, none of these claims are still true for Undercover 1.5.

We really want Undercover to be the best and most secure theft-recovery application on the planet, so we did not stop after fixing the few issues that were raised. We wanted our software to be really, really secure..... therefore we hired a hacker. Not just some teenage wannabe, a real one named Mike. We sent him a license key and let him play with the Undercover 1.5 beta. We were delighted to learn that he only found one issue and something that could be easily fixed.

Conclusion: we are pretty confident that Undercover 1.5 is one of the most secure applications on your Mac. It is absolutely impossible for a thief to remove the application without knowing the Admin password. You don't have to take our word for it, you can try it yourself.

Help us out... (and get Undercover for free)

2006-01-24T16:56:00.000+01:00

As mentioned in the previous post, iSight support will be the major new feature in the next version of Undercover. Development is going great, but for our test phase, we are looking for someone with an iMac Core Duo. Basically, the only thing you'll need to do is help us test/verify a couple of things. As we see it now, it won't take you more than one hour.

Some rules:
- We only need one person / iMac
- You must have an Intel iMac (iMac Core Duo). no PPC iMac, no MacBook and of course err... no Dell
- If interested, send us an email and include a screenshot of the About Panel of your iMac Core Duo.
- The first reply we get, wins. I apologize in advance to all other participants.

In return, you'll get a free Undercover household license (a $44 value).
Start emailing.... now

[UPDATE: Brian Warren was the first to contact us. The contest is now closed (it only lasted for 29 minutes)]

iSight insight

2006-01-24T16:54:00.000+01:00

Almost a week after the release of Undercover 1.0, I can say that the application has been very well received, both by the press and by our users. What makes us even happier, is that there have been zero support incidents to date. Of course, we have received many questions, suggestions and comments (which is great!) but none of our customers have had trouble installing the application.

Of the suggestions we received, almost 50% were about one specific feature: iSight support. Many users would be delighted to see Undercover taking pictures of the thief (and his surroundings). Today, I can confirm that we are working on this feature and that we are very far along on this. It will be part of the next Undercover update (which will be free for all registered users, of course).

Even during the planning phase of Undercover, iSight support was high on our list already: the major new feature I wrote about in my previous post was referring to iSight support as well. iSight support did not make it into the 1.0 because we wanted to get an Intel-compatible theft-recovery application out as soon as possible. Now that 1.0 is out of the door, we are ramping up development efforts to release Undercover 1.5 by the time the MacBook Pro will hit the market.

Unveiling Undercover

2006-01-18T15:11:00.000+01:00

It's here! After months of hard work, fine-tuning and beta-testing Undercover is now available to everyone (at least, to everyone using a Mac with Tiger, that is). I won't discuss the product's features here, as you can get all the information you need on the Undercover pages.

Instead, I'd like to stress that this is just the beginning for Undercover. This morning, we started working on the first Undercover update, in which we will introduce a major new feature that will set us even more apart from the other solutions out there. I can't be more specific as the competition is probably reading this blog too, but I hope to post more information as development progresses. Needless to say, the update will be free for all registered users.

I promised not to talk about Undercover features just two paragraphs ago, but I'd like to mention one thing that I don't really consider as a feature: Undercover is a universal binary. In English, this means that Undercover runs natively on both PowerPC and Intel based Macs, so it can be used to protect your new iMac or MacBook. Since Undercover is the first theft recovery application to be universal, I thought it was worth pointing out.

Lastly, I would like to thank a couple of people: in the first place, I would like to thank all beta testers. Special thanks to Dan Wood, Vincent Merckx and Jan Morren for their great suggestions, they really improved the product. I'd also like to thank Geert from Easyware for providing me with everything I needed to test and debug Undercover on Intel.

Post #1

2006-01-13T12:50:00.000+01:00

Since this is my first post to the brand new Orbicule blog, I would like to briefly introduce myself and the company. I'm Peter Schols (28) and I'm living in Heverlee, a small town close to Leuven, Belgium, Europe. On January 3, 2006, I have founded a new company: Orbicule.

Orbicule is dedicated to developing innovative, high-quality and fun software for Mac OS X. Although Orbicule is barely three weeks old, these are not my first steps into the world of software development. Back in 2001, while doing a PhD at the University of Leuven, I studied Cocoa and developed a couple of scientific apps, mainly for in-house use. During my PhD, I also started the BioCocoa project, an open-source Cocoa framework for biology and bioinformatics. After my PhD, I started development of iMap, which has been honored with an Apple Design Award during WWDC 2005. Getting this recognition from Apple was a big step: it helped me in taking the decision to start as a full-time, independent, Mac OS X Cocoa programmer.

I will use this blog to talk about our products, but also about being an indie Mac developer and about everything that's going on in the Mac universe. Feel free to leave comments and link to this blog. I hope you will enjoy!

Peter