Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, and leaker Jon Prosser say Apple is working on a completely new, high-end version of the MacBook Air. MacRumors reports: The high-end MacBook Air will feature two USB-C ports and a more powerful Apple silicon chip, according to Gurman. The chip will apparently be a direct successor to Apple's M1 chip, featuring the same number of computing cores, but it will run faster. It is also expected to see an increase in graphics cores from seven or eight to nine or 10. This high-end MacBook Air would sit above the current MacBook Air models with the M1 chip, but below the MacBook Pro. Prosser recently unveiled renders that purport to depict the next-generation MacBook Air based on leaked images.

Prosser says that the MacBook Air will be available in a range of color options, much like the 24-inch iMac, and will feature larger function keys, a smaller trackpad, and redesigned feet on the underside of the machine. The biggest change in terms of design from the current MacBook Air seems to be the loss of its iconic tapered design. Instead, the MacBook Air will become considerably thinner as a whole, Prosser explained. Other features rumored to be coming to next-generation MacBook Air models include a mini-LED display and a MagSafe charging port. Gurman believes that the high-end MacBook Air could launch in the second half of this year at the earliest or in 2022, a timeframe that has been echoed by Prosser.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Apple is under investigation by the German competition watchdog. The Federal Cartel Office (FCO) said the initial investigation will look at whether the company is of "paramount significance across markets." Apple said it looked forward to "having an open dialogue" with the FCO about any of its concerns. In a statement, Andreas Mundt, President of the FCO, said it would examine whether with iOS Apple had created "a digital ecosystem around its iPhone that extends across several markets." He added that a focus of the investigation would be the App Store, "as it enables Apple in many ways to influence the business activities of third parties."

Depending on the outcome of its investigation, the FCO said it would look in more detail at specific practices of Apple, in a possible further proceeding. The FCO said it had received various complaints alleging anti-competitive practices, which a further probe could consider. The watchdog noted that App developers had criticized "the mandatory use of Apple's own in-app purchase system and the 30% commission rate associated with this." It had also received a complaint from the advertising and media industry about restrictions on user tracking in iOS 14.5, the watchdog said. The FCO said it would establish contact, where necessary, with the European Commission, which is currently investigating how App Store policies affect music streaming. In response, Apple said the "iOS app economy" supported more than 250,000 jobs in Germany. It added that the App Store had given "German developers of all sizes the same opportunity to share their passion and creativity with users around the world, while creating a secure and trusted place for customers to download the apps they love with the privacy protections they expect."

Apple would be prohibited from pre-installing its own apps on Apple devices under antitrust reform legislation introduced last week, said Democratic Representative David Cicilline, who is leading a push to pass new regulations for U.S. technology companies. From a report: Cicilline told reporters Wednesday that a proposal prohibiting tech platforms from giving an advantage to their own products over those of competitors would mean Apple can't ship devices with pre-installed apps on its iOS operating platform. "It would be equally easy to download the other five apps as the Apple one so they're not using their market dominance to favor their own products and services," the Rhode Island Democrat said. The proposal is part of a package of bipartisan bills that would impose significant new constraints on how tech companies operate, restricting acquisitions and forcing them to exit some businesses. The House Judiciary Committee will mark up the five bills in a hearing next week, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the committee's chairman, said.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said that he believes a proposed European law known as DMA would "not be in the best interest of users," signaling the iPhone maker's opposition to European legislation that would force it to allow users to install software outside of Apple's App Store. From a report: "I look at the tech regulation that's being discussed, I think there are good parts of it. And I think there are parts of it that are not in the best interests of the user," Cook said on Wednesday through videoconference at the Viva Tech conference in France. The European Union proposed two laws regulating big tech companies, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, earlier this year. The DSA focuses on the online ad industry, but the DMA focuses on companies with large numbers of customers -- like Apple, Google and Amazon -- and sets rules requiring them to open up their platforms to competitors.

One of Cook's issues with the law is that it would force Apple to permit sideloading apps on the iPhone, which is manually installing software from the internet or a file instead of through an app store. Currently, Apple's App Store is the only way to install apps on an iPhone, which has made it the focus of lawsuits and regulators around the world. Apple has claimed that its control over the App Store ensures high-quality apps and helps prevent malware. Cook noted that the iPhone's market share in France is only 23% and said that permitting sideloading on iPhones would damage both the privacy and security of users, citing increased malware on Android phones versus iPhones. Google's Android allows sideloading. "If you take an example of where I don't think it's in the best interest, that the current DMA language that is being discussed, would force sideloading on the iPhone," Cook said. "And so this would be an alternate way of getting apps onto the iPhone, as we look at that, that would destroy the security of the iPhone."

Google will open its first retail store in New York City, highlighting the internet giant's effort to promote its consumer hardware devices. From a report: The store, in Manhattan's trendy Chelsea neighborhood, will open to the public Thursday, the Mountain View, California-based company said Wednesday in a blog post. The shop, which is a block away from rival Apple's 14th Street store, occupies part of the first floor of Google's New York offices. Alphabet's Google began experimenting with pop-up stores in 2016, the same year it debuted its Pixel smartphone and Nest smart home speaker. In the years since, the company has introduced a plethora of hardware devices and hosted subsequent pop-ups to learn more about what consumers expect from a retail store, said Jason Rosenthal, Google's vice president of direct channels and membership. "It's like walking into a dream," Ivy Ross, vice president of design, user experience and research for design and services, said during a virtual tour. "I hope customers feel the same way. I want them to be happy and inspired, like I am being in here."

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has said the company's greatest contribution to mankind will be in health. So far, some Apple initiatives aimed at broadly disrupting the healthcare sector have struggled to gain traction, according to people familiar with them and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. From the report: Apple has envisioned an audacious plan for healthcare, offering its own primary-care medical service with Apple-employed doctors at its own clinics, according to people familiar with the plan and documents. To test that and other bold healthcare ideas, it took over clinics that catered to its employees and built a team with scores of clinicians, engineers, product designers and others. Today those ambitions, which aren't widely known, have largely stalled as Apple has shifted the focus of its health unit to something it knows well: Selling devices, specifically the Apple Watch, according to people familiar with its strategy.

The new primary-care service hasn't gotten off the ground, people familiar with it say. A digital health app launched quietly this year has struggled to keep users engaged, say people familiar with the app and the documents seen by the Journal. Some employees have raised questions internally about the integrity of health data coming from the company's clinics that has been used to support product development, according to people familiar with their concerns and the documents.

Google and Apple face a sweeping probe into the "duopoly" power of their mobile ecosystems, in the U.K. antitrust watchdog's latest attack on Silicon Valley. From a report: The increasingly tech-focused Competition and Markets Authority opened a 12-month market study into broad aspects of the iOS and Android systems, saying it feared the companies' dominance is stifling competition. The investigation adds to the regulator's separate investigations into both tech giants. "Our ongoing work into big tech has already uncovered some worrying trends and we know consumers and businesses could be harmed if they go unchecked," CMA Chief Executive Officer Andrea Coscelli said in a statement.

The CMA uses market studies to gather information before upgrading investigations. The mobile review comes as the U.K. watchdog seeks to move to the forefront of tech regulation after emerging from the shadow of European Union regulators at the end of the Brexit transition. The authority is preparing to set up a tech-focused unit and has warned that the largest companies will face extra scrutiny of everything from mergers to monopoly behavior.

"Apple paid a multimillion dollar settlement to a woman after iPhone repair techs posted risque pictures from her phone to Facebook," reports the Washington Post, citing legal documents obtained by the Telegraph.

An unnamed Oregon college student "sent her phone to Apple for repairs after it stopped working" in 2016, and the iPhone ended up at Apple-approved repair contractor Pegatron... Two iPhone repair technicians in Sacramento, uploaded "10 photos of her in various stages of undress and a sex video" to her Facebook account, resulting in "severe emotional distress" for the young woman, according to the Telegraph's review of legal records. Pegatron, a major Apple manufacturer with facilities across the globe, had to reimburse Apple for the settlement and face insurers who didn't want to pay for it, according to the news outlet...

The settlement isn't the first time Apple has had to handle the misdeeds of employees. In 2019, a California woman alleged that an Apple store employee had texted a private picture on her phone to himself. That employee was no longer working for the company after Apple conducted its investigation. Apple store employees at a Brisbane, Australia, location were fired in 2016 for taking candid pictures of female employees and customers' bodies and stealing photos from consumers' phones to rank their bodies.
"Apple keeps a firm grip on the repair of its devices, arguing that allowing only approved retailers and vendors to repair its products ensures the privacy of its customers," the article points out.

"The revelation of the lawsuit pokes holes in the company's stance that only authorized retailers can keep customer information secure."

During the Epic v. Apple trial, an email chain surfaced that reveals Apple seemingly admitted "it manually boosted the ranking of its own Files app ahead of the competition for 11 entire months," reports The Verge. This comes after two monstrous reports by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times showed Apple's App Store clearly and consistently ranking its own apps ahead of competitors. Apple claimed it had done nothing wrong. The Verge reports: "We are removing the manual boost and the search results should be more relevant now," wrote Apple app search lead Debankur Naskar, after the company was confronted by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney over Apple's Files app showing up first when searching for Dropbox. "Dropbox wasn't even visible on the first page [of search results]," Sweeney wrote. As you'll see, Naskar suggested that Files had been intentionally boosted for that exact search result during the "last WWDC." That would have been WWDC 2017, nearly a year earlier, when the Files apps first debuted. The email chain actually reflects fairly well on Apple overall. Apple's Matt Fischer (VP of the App Store) clearly objects to the idea at first. "[W]ho green lit putting the Files app above Dropbox in organic search results? I didn't know we did that, and I don't think we should," he says. But he does end the conversation with "In the future, I want any similar requests to come to me for review/approval," suggesting that he's not entirely ruling out manual overrides.

But Apple tells The Verge that what we think we're seeing in these emails isn't quite accurate. While Apple didn't challenge the idea that Files was unfairly ranked over Dropbox, the company says the reality was a simple mistake: the Files app had a Dropbox integration, so Apple put "Dropbox" into the app's metadata, and it was automatically ranked higher for "Dropbox" searches as a result. I'm slightly skeptical of that explanation -- partially because it doesn't line up with what Naskar suggests in the email, partially because Apple also told me it immediately fixed the error (despite it apparently continuing to exist for 11 months, hardly immediate), and partially because the company repeatedly ignored my questions about whether this has ever happened with other apps before. The most Apple would tell me is that it didn't manually boost Files over competitors, and that "we do not advantage our apps over those of any developer or competitor" as a general rule.

Prosecutors in the Trump administration Justice Department subpoenaed Apple for data from the accounts of House Intelligence Committee Democrats -- including Chairman Adam Schiff -- along with their staff and family members as part of a leak investigation, an Intelligence Committee official and a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN. From a report: Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, another Democrat on the committee, told CNN's Don Lemon on Thursday evening that he was notified that his data had been seized as part of the probe as well. The prosecutors, the New York Times first reported, were looking for the sources behind news stories about contacts between Russia and Trump associates. The leak hunt began with the FBI sending a subpoena to Apple in February 2018, which included a gag order, seeking metadata on more than 100 accounts as part of an investigation into the disclosure of classified information, the person familiar with the matter said.

The gag order was renewed three times before it expired this year and Apple notified the customers. The House Intelligence Committee determined that along with members of the panel and staff, the dragnet collected the records of family members, including at least one minor, the person said. Records seized included those from staff members who had nothing to do with issues related to Russia or former FBI Director James Comey, including Schiff's personal office staff, a House Intelligence Committee source told CNN. Democratic committee leadership is relying on self-reporting to know who has been impacted at this point -- both members and staff, the source said. Swalwell confirmed to CNN that records of family members and a minor had been obtained.

Apple is finally adding support for Windows Precision Touchpad drivers in its latest Boot Camp update. The new 6.1.15 update includes support for Windows Precision Touchpad, including single tap to click, lower-right corner to right-click, down motion to scroll up, and three or four finger gestures. From a report: Various Reddit users noticed the surprise update went live yesterday, and it apparently works better than third-party solutions like Trackpad++ and mac-precision-touchpad that people have had to use for years. "Works way better than both of them with better palm and thumb detection too," says one Reddit user. Microsoft first started introducing Windows Precision Touchpad with Intel in 2013, in an effort to fix what were notorious PC trackpad issues at the time. It has taken Apple a long time to enable Windows Precision Touchpad in Boot Camp, but not every MacBook is supported. An Apple support document notes that only Mac computers with a T2 chip will be able to access Windows Precision Touchpad, which is most MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models from 2018 onward.

Apple has begun testing passkeys, a new authentication technology it says are as easy to use as passwords but vastly more secure. Part of iCloud Keychains, a test version of the technology will come with iPhones, iPads and Macs later this year. From a report: To set up an account on a website or app using a passkey, you first choose a username for the new account, then use FaceID or Touch ID to confirm that it's really you who's using the device. You don't ever pick a password. Your device handles generation and storage of the passkey, which iCloud Keychain synchronizes across all your Apple devices.

To use the passkey for authentication later, you'll be prompted to confirm your username and verify yourself with FaceID or Touch ID. Developers must update their login procedures to support passkeys, but it's an adaptation of the existing WebAuthn technology. "Because it's just a single tap to sign in, it's simultaneously easier, faster and more secure than almost all common forms of authentication today," Garrett Davidson, an Apple authentication experience engineer, said Wednesday at the company's annual WWDC developer conference.

Apple has hired Ulrich Kranz, a former senior executive at BMW AG's electric car division, to help lead its own vehicle efforts. Bloomberg reports: The technology giant hired Kranz in recent weeks, about a month after he stepped down as chief executive officer of Canoo, a developer of self-driving electric vehicles. Before co-founding Canoo, Kranz was senior vice president of the group that developed the i3 and i8 cars at BMW, where he worked for 30 years.

Kranz is one of Apple's most significant automotive hires, a clear sign that the iPhone maker is determined to build a self-driving electric car to rival Tesla and other carmakers. Kranz will report to Doug Field, who led development of Tesla's mass-market Model 3 and now runs Apple's car project, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. [...] Following successful stints at BMW's Mini division and teams working on sports cars and SUVs, Kranz was asked to run Project I, a battery-powered vehicle skunkworks started in 2008. It yielded the all-electric i3 compact and the plug-in hybrid i8 sports car. The former was panned by design critics, and production was very limited on the latter. Kranz left BMW in 2016 and soon became chief technology officer at Faraday Future, an electric vehicle startup based in Los Angeles. He stayed only three months, before co-founding Canoo. Both firms have struggled with their technology and ability to produce vehicles, while Canoo reportedly discussed selling itself to Apple and other companies.

House Democrats are set to introduce a package of five bills as soon as this week that would prohibit tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google from discriminating against rivals or buying potential competitors, two individuals familiar with the discussions told POLITICO -- the most serious effort yet to rein in Silicon Valley's power after years of complaints from Congress. From a report: The most controversial bill would let prosecutors sue to break up major tech companies by forcing the platforms to sell off lines of business if they represent a conflict of interest. POLITICO obtained drafts of all five bills. The legislation aims to enact the recommendations from a blockbuster House Judiciary Committee report last fall on competition in digital markets, which found that the four tech giants have monopolized various aspects of the online economy. It also represents a major test for Congress: Can the lawmakers of both parties who have condemned the tech companies as abusive monopolists come together to do something about it? Democrats on the House Judiciary antitrust panel circulated the draft bills to potential co-sponsors this week. They hope to lure at least some GOP members into supporting the bills, particularly Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, a critic of the large tech companies and the top Republican on the panel.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Facebook is setting its sights on the creator economy, hoping to allow millions of people to make a living off its family of apps. But the company wants to promote offline transactions between creators and companies in order to avoid Apple's 30% cut of in-app purchases, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said Wednesday. "When there are digital transactions that happen on iOS, Apple insists that they take 30% of that. There's a very few number of exceptions. For transactions that happen in iOS, we're going to have to abide by their rules... but in general we're going to look for other ways to help creators make a living and facilitating transactions that happen in other places," Mosseri told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "So, for instance, if we could help brands and creators vet each other and find each other, they could make those transactions happen offline. For affiliate marketing, it's real goods, not digital goods. So we're going to try and lean in to the places creators can actually make a stable living," he added.

Apple generally takes a 30% rake from purchases of software or digital goods from apps distributed through the App Store. That would mean creators would eventually have to split revenue from goods sold within the app between themselves, Facebook and Apple. (Facebook hasn't said how much of a cut it will take, but did say it will be less than 30%.) In order to skirt around that, Instagram could push for creators to connect offline with brands or other people, in an effort to make money off the iOS operating system. It'll be a key issue for the company, which has spent the past several years feuding with the Apple.

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is planning to debut its first augmented reality headset in the second quarter of 2022. MacRumors reports: The research report focuses on prospects for key Apple supplier Genius Electronic Optical, and notes that the company will benefit from a number of upcoming VR and AR products from the likes of Facebook, Sony, and Apple: "We predict that Apple will launch AR HMD [head-mounted display] devices in 2Q22. The device will provide a video see-through AR experience, so the lens is also needed, and Genius is also a key supplier." Apple has been rumored to be working on a pair of AR-related headsets, led by an initial "mixed-reality" device that has variously been rumored to be launching in 2021 or 2022. A sleeker pair of augmented reality glasses is rumored to follow, perhaps around 2025. As recently as January, Kuo was predicting that Apple's initial AR headset would debut sometime in 2021, but by March he had pushed his prediction back to "mid-2022," more in line with today's report.

Some of the uncertainty about timing may be related to a potentially lengthy gap between announcement and launch for the AR headset. As a new platform for Apple, the company may want to announce it a number of months ahead of any product launch to give developers time to prepare. Reports have, however, indicated that Apple's first AR headset will be a pricey, high-end device largely targeted at developers rather than the broader public.

Several of macOS Monterey's features won't be available to users with an Intel-powered Macs. On the macOS Monterey features page, fine print indicates that the following features require a Mac with the M1 chip, including any MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac model released since November 2020: 1. Portrait Mode blurred backgrounds in FaceTime videos
2. Live Text for copying and pasting, looking up, or translating text within photos
3. An interactive 3D globe of Earth in the Maps app
4. More detailed maps in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and London in the Maps app
5. Text-to-speech in more languages, including Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Finnish
6. On-device keyboard dictation that performs all processing completely offline
7. Unlimited keyboard dictation (previously limited to 60 seconds per instance)

Apple's text selection magnifying glass has reappeared in the iOS 15 beta, and Apple's own site confirms its return by listing it as a feature. The Verge reports: Bringing the feature back is a reversal from when Apple made the decision to dump it in iOS 13, which is a bit of a rare occurrence... The new version of the text magnifier seems to be a bit smaller than the old one (in case you've forgotten what it used to look like, you can see a great demonstration here), but it's at least better than the nothing that appears in iOS 13 and 14.

It will, at the very least, solve the biggest problem with the current selection system: that your thumb is covering the text you're trying to select, which makes it a little difficult to see what's being selected until you pick your thumb up from the screen. Then, if you're like me, you'll probably sigh seeing that the wrong thing is selected, then struggle with the text selection handles to try to highlight what you were actually going for (squinting at the small screen the whole time).

Apple on Monday said a new "private relay" feature designed to obscure a user's web browsing behavior from internet service providers and advertisers will not be available in China for regulatory reasons. From a report: The feature was one of a number of privacy protections Apple announced at its annual software developer conference on Monday, the latest in a years-long effort by the company to cut down on the tracking of its users by advertisers and other third parties. Apple's decision to withhold the feature in China is the latest in a string of compromises the company has made on privacy in a country that accounts for nearly 15% of its revenue.

In 2018, Apple moved the digital keys used to lock Chinese users' iCloud data, allowing authorities to work through domestic courts to gain access to the information. China's ruling Communist Party maintains a vast surveillance system to keep a close eye on how citizens use the country's heavily controlled internet. Under President Xi Jinping, the space for dissent in China has narrowed, while censorship has expanded. Apple's "private relay" feature first sends web traffic to a server maintained by Apple, where it is stripped of a piece of information called an IP address. From there, Apple sends the traffic to a second server maintained by a third-party operator who assigns the user a temporary IP address and sends the traffic onward to its destination website.

For the first time, you can code, iterate and build apps on the iPad itself. 9to5Mac reports: Using Swift Playgrounds on iPadOS 15, customers will be able to create iPhone and iPad apps from scratch and then deploy them to the App Store. It remains to be seen how limited or not the development experience will be. It is probably notable that Apple chose not to rebrand this as "Xcode," signifying that you aren't going to be able to do everything you can do with Xcode on the Mac. TechCrunch highlights some of the other new features available in iPadOS 15: iPadOS 15 retains the overall look and feel of the current iPad operating system. The updates in the new OS are mostly centered around multitasking. The iPad's widget support gets a big update with iPadOS 15. The widgets are larger, more immersive and dynamic. And, iOS's App Library is finally available on the iPad, where it tweaks the overall user experience. The feature, added to the iPhone in 2020, presents the user with an organized view of the apps on the iPad.

Also added to iPadOS 15 is a new multitasking system. Called Split View, a drop-down menu at the top of the screen unlocks several multitasking, multiwindow options. The system seems much smoother than the current multiscreen option on iPad OS, which is clunky and hidden. With Split View a feature called Shelf makes it easy to switch between different screens and screen grouping.