An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: The macOS Sonoma update that is in testing allows Mac owners who opt to use Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, or another browser to use Apple's Password Manager for filling passwords. Developers and public beta testers running macOS Sonoma can use their iCloud Keychain passwords with non-Safari browsers at this time, autofilling passwords and one-time codes. Third-party browsers can also save new passwords.

Apple has made an iCloud Passwords Chrome extension available for macOS Sonoma users, and it can be downloaded and installed to access Apple passwords on the Chrome browser or any Chromium-based browser. Apple plans to release a similar extension for the Microsoft Edge browser in the near future. Google and other browser developers are also working on implementing support for Passkeys, the password alternative that Apple introduced last year.

Tencent's WeChat said on Tuesday that iPhone maker Apple had opened a store on its social media platform, marking an expansion of the U.S. firm's retail channels in the world's second largest economy. From a report: The announcement by WeChat, China's dominant messaging app which also provides e-commerce, livestreaming and payment services, said users would be able to buy Apple products including iPhones, iPads and Macs from the store. The move by Apple comes as Chinese consumers increasingly turn to social media platforms such as WeChat and ByteDance's Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to shop.

Apple plans to launch its Vision Pro mixed-reality headset in select US markets early next year, with designated sections in Apple stores offering demos, seating, and tools for sizing accessories. Bloomberg reports: The company will designate special areas in the stores with seating, headset demo units and tools to size accessories for buyers. While the device will be sold at all of Apple's roughly 270 US locations, the company is planning the sections for the Vision Pro initially at stores in major areas -- such as New York and Los Angeles -- before rolling them out nationwide, according to people with knowledge of the plans.

Apple said it will offer the headset in other countries at the end of 2024. The company is discussing the UK and Canada as two of its first international markets with Asia and Europe soon after, although a final decision hasn't been made, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing internal matters. Apple engineers are working to localize the device for France, Germany, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea, the people said. Apple will also sell the Vision Pro through its US web store in early 2024 before expanding online elsewhere.

Spotify is no longer supporting Apple's in-app purchase system. In an email to affected subscribers, Spotify says: "We're contacting you because when you joined Spotify Premium you used Apple's billing service to subscribe. Unfortunately, we no longer accept that billing method as a form of payment." Engadget reports: Spotify continues to say that those users will automatically be switched to the company's Free, ad-supported tier at the end of the current billing cycle. "If you wish to keep your Premium subscription, you will need to re-subscribe after your last billing period has ended and your account has been moved on to the Free account."

But that's probably for the best. Due to Apple taking 30 percent of in-app purchases, Spotify users who were subscribed through in-app purchases were being charged an extra $3 per month compared to subscribing through Spotify directly. That's despite the fact that Apple now reduces its commission rate to 15 percent on subscriptions after the first year. Apple said in a regulatory filing from 2019 that it collected that 15 percent fee on roughly 680,000 Spotify customers. Users transitioning from Apple's payments can subscribe to Premium via a credit card or PayPal.

Apple said it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a judge's order in the antitrust case filed by Epic Games, the creator of "Fortnite." The order, issued by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, largely upheld a previous ruling that prohibits Apple from restricting developers from including links to alternative payment options in their apps, potentially reducing Apple's sales commissions. Reuters reports: Apple said in a court filing (PDF) it will ask the justices to take up its appeal of a ruling on Friday by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that kept in place most of the order issued in 2021 by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. [...] Apple's attorneys in Monday's filing said the 9th Circuit reached too far in issuing a nationwide injunction against Apple alleging that it violated a California state unfair competition law. Apple said its petition in the Supreme Court that it will raise "far-reaching and important" questions about the power of judges to issue broad injunctions.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple will introduce an external Mac monitor that can act as a smart home display when a Mac goes to sleep or is shut down. Ars Technica reports: The feature would be available on at least one monitor in an upcoming lineup that will likely include successors to Apple's Pro Display XDR and Studio Display. The newsletter didn't go into much detail about the upcoming displays beyond the smart home feature. Like the Studio Display, a new monitor with smart home capabilities would run on a chip first seen in the iPhone. The Studio Display contains Apple's A13 chip -- the same seen in the iPhone 11 line of smartphones. The upcoming smart display could potentially run on the A16 seen in the iPhone 14 Pro, since that device introduced a similar always-on display feature to Apple's smartphone lineup.

The iPhone 14 Pro's always-on display currently shows what you'd see if you tapped your iPhone to see the lock screen: the time, wallpaper, and app widgets -- albeit at a very dim brightness. Later this year, Apple will launch iOS 17 alongside the upcoming iPhone 15. iOS 17 will introduce a new smart display mode for the iPhone that makes that always-on display mimic the features and information you'd see on a Google or Amazon smart display, a product category that was all the rage at CES a couple of years ago but that has not exactly become ubiquitous. It's fair to expect the Mac monitor's smart display to work a bit like that iOS 17 feature. But while iOS 17 is slated to launch this fall, Gurman predicts that the new Mac display won't hit the market until next year at the earliest.

Apple has been forced to make drastic cuts to production forecasts for the mixed-reality Vision Pro headset, unveiled last month after seven years in development and hailed as its most significant product launch since the iPhone. From a report: The complexity of the headset design and difficulties in production are behind the scaling back of targets, while plans for a more affordable version of the device have had to be pushed back, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the manufacturing process.

Apple has already flagged that the $3,500 "spatial computing" headset device will not go on sale until "early next year," a lengthy gap from its June 5 launch. Analysts have interpreted this as being more to do with supply chain problems than allowing developers time to create apps for the Vision Pro. Two people close to Apple and Luxshare, the Chinese contract manufacturer that will initially assemble the device, said it was preparing to make fewer than 400,000 units in 2024. Multiple industry sources said Luxshare was currently Apple's only assembler of the device. Separately, two China-based sole suppliers of certain components for the Vision Pro said Apple was only asking them for enough for 130,000 to 150,000 units in the first year.

The Verge reports: Some AirPods will be gaining a new hearing health feature, supported by iOS 17, that can check yourself for potential hearing issues and may be able to determine your body temperature via your ear canal, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman in today's Power On newsletter. He also says all of Apple's new headphones will include USB-C, and that the company is planning new AirPods Pro and AirPods Max models — but he doesn't think new hardware is coming soon.

AirPods already support audiograms — audio profiles that tell the AirPods where your hearing may be weakest so that they can tune themselves to your hearing abilities. Right now, you can generate an audiogram using the app Mimi, which Apple would be Sherlocking — an infamous Apple tendency to fold third-party features and apps into its operating system — with a built-in hearing test feature...

Gurman says Apple is also exploring positioning the AirPods as hearing aids, now that the FDA has approved over-the-counter sales of hearing aids without a prescription... Gurman believes the new health features are "several months or even years away," and that although USB-C AirPods may be coming soon, AirPods Pro themselves are so far on a three-year refresh cycle.

Apple is set for a showdown with European Union antitrust regulators, insisting it doesn't need to make any more changes to its App Store after it was hit by formal charges over its treatment of music streaming rivals such as Spotify. From a report: The iPhone maker will argue at a hearing in Brussels on Friday that the EU wrongly accused it of illegal curbs on the likes of Spotify that prevent developers from steering users away from the App Store. Apple will say it's already addressed any possible competition concerns over the past two years with changes that create a fair balance between the interests of Apple and app developers, according to a person familiar with the US firm's thinking, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Apple was slapped with a revised charged sheet by the EU in February, which showed the commission had narrowed its probe, but continued to focus "on the contractual restrictions that Apple imposed on app developers which prevent them from informing iPhone and iPad users of alternative music subscription options." Spotify says that Apple's anti-steering rules prohibit it and other developers "from telling consumers about any deals or promotions through their own apps."

Apple has uploaded the entire first episode of its sci-fi series "Silo" to Twitter, allowing anyone there to watch the opening installment for free. Engadget reports: Silo is based on the science fiction novel Wool by American author Hugh Howey. It takes place on a post-apocalyptic version of Earth, where what remains of humanity is confined to the Silo, a 144-story underground bunker that serves as a self-sufficient underground community. The citizens are told that the world outside the Silo is perilous, but questions arise about what truly lies beyond. It's a clever premise that allows showrunner Graham Yost to explore the book's themes about truth vs. fiction and information as power. Apple has reportedly renewed the series for a second season. You can watch the full episode on Twitter here.

Apple has criticised powers in the UK's Online Safety Bill that could be used to force encrypted messaging tools like iMessage, WhatsApp and Signal to scan messages for child abuse material. From a report: Its intervention comes as 80 organisations and tech experts have written to Technology Minister Chloe Smith urging a rethink on the powers. Apple told the BBC the bill should be amended to protect encryption. End-to-end encryption (E2EE) stops anyone but the sender and recipient reading the message. Police, the government and some high-profile child protection charities maintain the tech -- used in apps such as WhatsApp and Apple's iMessage -- prevents law enforcement and the firms themselves from identifying the sharing of child sexual abuse material.

But in a statement Apple said: "End-to-end encryption is a critical capability that protects the privacy of journalists, human rights activists, and diplomats. "It also helps everyday citizens defend themselves from surveillance, identity theft, fraud, and data breaches. The Online Safety Bill poses a serious threat to this protection, and could put UK citizens at greater risk. "Apple urges the government to amend the bill to protect strong end-to-end encryption for the benefit of all."

Ben Lang, writing for Road to VR: In a somewhat surprising move, Apple confirmed that Safari on Vision Pro will support WebXR. Prior to the reveal of the headset, it was an open question whether the company would entertain the idea of XR experiences through the browser, and even more so if the company would adopt the relatively new WebXR standard. But now Apple has confirmed that Safari on Vision Pro will indeed support WebXR. The company confirmed as much in its WWDC 2023 developer talk titled Meet Safari for Spatial Computing, in which the Apple explained the version of Safari running on Vision Pro is "truly is Safari with the same WebKit engine underneath, plus some thoughtful additions for [Vision Pro]."

Thanks to Safari on visionOS being a fully-featured version of the browser, existing websites should work exactly as expected, the company says. But to go beyond flat web pages, Safari on visionOS includes support for WebXR for immersive experriences and the new tag for 3D models. For the time being, WebXR capabilities on Safari for visionOS are still hidden through a developer toggle, but once enabled it will support the 'immersive-vr' session type, and the 'hand-tracking' feature for user input.

WebXR allows developers to build fully immersive content that can be delivered through a web browser. It's possible to create fully interactive VR games and experiences, like this Beat Saber clone, which can run across various headsets and browsers using the same code, just like a web page can render the same way between different devices and browsers. Apple plans to make WebXR a mainline feature in visionOS Safari after more time collaborating with the rest of the industry on the WebXR standard. With Apple now officially supporting WebXR, the standard can claim truly widespread support [...].

According to a Reddit user, Apple's Visual Look Up feature has been expanded in iOS 17 to include all of the various symbols on a vehicle's dashboard -- "everything from the labels used for HVAC controls, to the warning lights that only turn on when there's a problem," reports Gizmodo. From the report: Apple introduced a feature with iOS 15 called Visual Look Up that uses AI to analyze photos taken with the iPhone's camera and attempt to decipher them, providing more information about what's in the shot. It gave the iPhone the power to determine the breed of the dog you snapped at the park, or what type of flower was growing in your neighbor's garden.

Reddit user yahlover shared several screenshots of the iOS 17 beta successfully recognizing and showing explanations for symbols like the double triangle labelling the button that turns on a car's hazard lights, and even the setting that defrosts the windshield.

Although these symbols are now nearly universal across all vehicles, they can still be cryptic, especially to newer drivers. And while eventually vehicle dashboards will all just be giant screens with the ability to provide more descriptive information about controls and warnings, it's going to be decades before the standard dashboard iconography used today disappears forever.

You can now forgo entering your password on icloud.com and apple.com domains thanks to newly added passkey support. From a report: When running iOS 17 on an iPhone, any Apple site on the web can rely instead on Face ID or Touch ID to authenticate your login. As part of iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma, your Apple ID is automatically assigned a passkey that can be used for iCloud and Apple sites. If you're running iOS 17 on your iPhone, you can try it out now. Just go to any sign-in page with an apple.com or icloud.com domain, like appleid.apple.com or www.apple.com/shop/bag, and look for the Sign in with iPhone button after your enter your Apple ID email address. We've tried this from Safari on the Mac, although you can use passkeys on non-Apple devices as well. Once you select Sign in with iPhone, a QR code is presented that you scan with your iPhone. If you scan the QR code from the Camera app, you can tap the yellow link box to invoke Face ID or Touch ID to authenticate your identity on the web without ever entering your password.

Apple today announced that its self-service repair program will be expanding to the iPhone 14 lineup, 13-inch MacBook Air with the M2 chip, and 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips starting June 21. From a report: First launched in April 2022, Apple's program provides customers with access to parts, manuals, and tools to repair select devices. Apple says the program is designed for anyone with "experience repairing electronic devices," but says the "vast majority" of customers are better off visiting an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider. Apple also announced that customers can now complete the post-repair System Configuration process by placing the device into Diagnostics Mode and following the on-screen prompts. Users no longer need to contact the program's support team to complete this step, which verifies that the parts are genuine and working properly.

A government panel in Japan drew up a set of regulations aimed at opening up the smartphone app stores of U.S. technology giants Apple and Google to competition. From a report: The two companies dominating the smartphone operating system market will be obliged to allow their users to download apps by using services other than their own app stores. The government hopes that the move will spur competition and lead to app price drops. The smartphone OS market is occupied almost entirely by Apple's iOS and Google's Android. The companies control how apps are installed and paid for on their iPhones and Android devices.

The government will create a list of what OS providers must not do in order to stop them favoring their own services and payment platforms. The regulations were drawn up at the government's headquarters for digital market competition, headed by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno. The government aims to submit relevant legislation to the next year's ordinary session of parliament. Apple makes it impossible for iPhone users to download apps without using its App Store. Of Android users, 97% download apps through the Google Play store, although Google does not require them to do so.

Apple, the company, wants rights to the image of apples, the fruit, in Switzerland -- one of dozens of countries where it's flexing its legal muscles. From a report The Fruit Union Suisse is 111 years old. For most of its history, it has had as its symbol a red apple with a white cross -- the Swiss national flag superimposed on one of its most common fruits. But the group, the oldest and largest fruit farmer's organization in Switzerland, worries it might have to change its logo, because Apple, the tech giant, is trying to gain intellectual property rights over depictions of apples, the fruit. "We have a hard time understanding this, because it's not like they're trying to protect their bitten apple," Fruit Union Suisse director Jimmy Mariethoz says, referring to the company's iconic logo. "Their objective here is really to own the rights to an actual apple, which, for us, is something that is really almost universal ... that should be free for everyone to use."

While the case has left Swiss fruit growers puzzled, it's part of a global trend. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization's records, Apple has made similar requests to dozens of IP authorities around the world, with varying degrees of success. Authorities in Japan, Turkey, Israel, and Armenia have acquiesced. Apple's quest to own the IP rights of something as generic as a fruit speaks to the dynamics of a flourishing global IP rights industry, which encourages companies to compete obsessively over trademarks they don't really need. Apple's attempts to secure the trademark in Switzerland go as far back as 2017, when the Cupertino, California-based giant submitted an application to the Swiss Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI) requesting the IP rights for a realistic, black-and-white depiction of an apple variety known as the Granny Smith -- the generic green apple.

The request covered an extensive list of potential uses -- mostly on electronic, digital, and audiovisual consumer goods and hardware. Following a protracted back-and-forth between both parties, the IPI partially granted Apple's request last fall, saying that Apple could have rights relating to only some of the goods it wanted, citing a legal principle that considers generic images of common goods -- like apples -- to be in the public domain. In the spring, Apple launched an appeal. The case now moving through the courts deals only with the goods for which the IPI refused the trademark, which an IPI official said could not be disclosed without consent from Apple, because the proceedings are still pending, but which include common uses such as audiovisual footage "meant for television and other transmission."

The new Mac Studio started shipping to customers this week, giving product reviewers a chance to test Apple's "most capable chip ever." According to new benchmarks by YouTuber Luke Miani, the M2 Ultra features nearly double the GPU performance of last year's M1 Ultra, with notable performance improvements in other areas. 9to5Mac reports: While the M1 Max and M1 Ultra are blazing fast, the difference between the two wasn't as notable as some expected. In many tasks, the much cheaper M1 Max wasn't too far off from the top-end M1 Ultra variant, especially in video editing, photo editing, and 3D rendering. Despite the M1 Ultra literally being 2 M1 Max's fused, the performance was never doubled. For the M2 series, Apple has made some significant changes under the hood, especially in GPU scaling. In Luke's testing, he found that in some GPU heavy applications, like Blender 3D and 3DMark, the M2 Ultra was sometimes precisely twice the performance of M2 Max -- perfect GPU scaling! In Final Cut Pro exports, it nearly doubled again. He also found that the M2 Ultra doubled the GPU performance of the M1 Ultra in these same benchmarks -- a genuinely remarkable year-over-year upgrade.

The reason for the massive performance improvement is that Apple added a memory controller chip to the M2 generation that balances the load between all of M2 Ultra's cores -- M1 Ultra required the ram to be maxed out before using all cores. M1 Ultra was very good at doing many tasks simultaneously but struggled to do one task, such as benchmarking or rendering, faster than the M1 Max. With M2 Ultra, because of this new memory controller, Apple can now achieve the same incredible performance without the memory buffer needing to be maxed out. It's important to note that some applications cannot take advantage of the M2 Ultra fully, and in non-optimized applications, you should not expect double the performance.

Despite this incredible efficiency and performance, the better deal might be the M2 Max. In Luke's testing, the M2 Max performed very similarly or outperformed last year's M1 Ultra. In Blender, Final Cut Pro, 3DMark, and Rise of the Tomb Raider, the M2 Max consistently performed the same or better than the M1 Ultra. Instead of finding an M1 Ultra on eBay, it might be best to save money and get the M2 Max if you're planning on doing tasks that heavily utilize the GPU. While the GPU performance is similar, the M1 Ultra still has the advantage of far more CPU cores, and will outperform the M2 Max in CPU heavy workloads.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: iPhone maker Foxconn is betting big on electric cars and redrawing some of its supply chains as it navigates a new era of icy Washington-Beijing relations. In an exclusive interview, chairman and boss Young Liu told the BBC what the future may hold for the Taiwanese firm. He said even as Foxconn shifts some supply chains away from China, electric vehicles (EVs) are what will drive its growth in the coming decades. As US-China tensions soar, Mr Liu said, Foxconn must prepare for the worst.

"We hope peace and stability will be something the leaders of these two countries will keep in mind," 67-year-old Mr Liu told us, in his offices in Taipei, Taiwan's capital. "But as a business, as a CEO, I have to think about what if the worst case happens?" The scenarios could include attempts by Beijing to blockade Taiwan, which it claims as part of China, or worse, to invade the self-ruled island. Mr Liu said "business continuity planning" was already under way, and pointed out that some production lines, particularly those linked to "national security products" were already being moved from China to Mexico and Vietnam. He was likely to be referring to servers Foxconn makes that are used in data centers, and can contain sensitive information. [...]

Foxconn's hopes to capture about 5% of the global electric vehicle market in the next few years -- an ambitious target given the firm has only made a handful of models so far. But it is a gamble that Mr Liu is confident will pay off. "It doesn't make sense for you to make [EVs] in one place, so regionalized production for cars is very natural," he added. Foxconn car factories will be based in Ohio in the US, in Thailand, Indonesia and perhaps even in India, he said. For now, the company will keep focusing on what it does best -- making electronic products for clients. But perhaps not too far in the future, Foxconn will do the same for clients with electric cars. Either way, with the foray into electric cars, Foxconn is diversifying not just production but also supply lines -- both of which, Mr Liu believes, hold the key to the company's future.

In iOS 17, iPhone users who change their passcode will be able to reset it within 72 hours using the previous passcode. However, users can choose to expire the previous passcode immediately in the Settings app to increase security. MacRumors reports: If you enter an incorrect passcode, tapping on "Forgot Passcode?" at the bottom of the screen will lead to another screen with a "Try Passcode Reset" option. Tapping this option allows you to enter the iPhone's previous passcode and create a new passcode. As a safeguard, an option in the Settings app lets you expire the previous passcode immediately so that it cannot be used to reset the new passcode.

As of the first beta of iOS 17, it is still possible to change an Apple ID account's password with an iPhone's passcode, despite a Wall Street Journal report in February highlighting instances of thieves spying on an iPhone user's passcode in public and then stealing the device in order to gain widespread access to the device. In an interview with Daring Fireball's John Gruber last week, Apple's software engineering chief Craig Federighi said Apple has continued to "look at other ways to address this," but no changes have been made as of yet.