An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs On Security: Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geo-locate devices. Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of billions of devices globally -- including non-Apple devices like Starlink systems -- and found they could use this data to monitor the destruction of Gaza, as well as the movements and in many cases identities of Russian and Ukrainian troops. At issue is the way that Apple collects and publicly shares information about the precise location of all Wi-Fi access points seen by its devices. Apple collects this location data to give Apple devices a crowdsourced, low-power alternative to constantly requesting global positioning system (GPS) coordinates.

Both Apple and Google operate their own Wi-Fi-based Positioning Systems (WPS) that obtain certain hardware identifiers from all wireless access points that come within range of their mobile devices. Both record the Media Access Control (MAC) address that a Wi-FI access point uses, known as a Basic Service Set Identifier or BSSID. Periodically, Apple and Google mobile devices will forward their locations -- by querying GPS and/or by using cellular towers as landmarks -- along with any nearby BSSIDs. This combination of data allows Apple and Google devices to figure out where they are within a few feet or meters, and it's what allows your mobile phone to continue displaying your planned route even when the device can't get a fix on GPS.

With Google's WPS, a wireless device submits a list of nearby Wi-Fi access point BSSIDs and their signal strengths -- via an application programming interface (API) request to Google -- whose WPS responds with the device's computed position. Google's WPS requires at least two BSSIDs to calculate a device's approximate position. Apple's WPS also accepts a list of nearby BSSIDs, but instead of computing the device's location based off the set of observed access points and their received signal strengths and then reporting that result to the user, Apple's API will return the geolocations of up to 400 hundred more BSSIDs that are nearby the one requested. It then uses approximately eight of those BSSIDs to work out the user's location based on known landmarks.

In essence, Google's WPS computes the user's location and shares it with the device. Apple's WPS gives its devices a large enough amount of data about the location of known access points in the area that the devices can do that estimation on their own. That's according to two researchers at the University of Maryland, who theorized they could use the verbosity of Apple's API to map the movement of individual devices into and out of virtually any defined area of the world. The UMD pair said they spent a month early in their research continuously querying the API, asking it for the location of more than a billion BSSIDs generated at random. They learned that while only about three million of those randomly generated BSSIDs were known to Apple's Wi-Fi geolocation API, Apple also returned an additional 488 million BSSID locations already stored in its WPS from other lookups. "Plotting the locations returned by Apple's WPS between November 2022 and November 2023, Levin and Rye saw they had a near global view of the locations tied to more than two billion Wi-Fi access points," the report adds. "The map showed geolocated access points in nearly every corner of the globe, apart from almost the entirety of China, vast stretches of desert wilderness in central Australia and Africa, and deep in the rainforests of South America."

The researchers wrote: "We observe routers move between cities and countries, potentially representing their owner's relocation or a business transaction between an old and new owner. While there is not necessarily a 1-to-1 relationship between Wi-Fi routers and users, home routers typically only have several. If these users are vulnerable populations, such as those fleeing intimate partner violence or a stalker, their router simply being online can disclose their new location."

A copy of the UMD research is available here (PDF).

Apple said on Tuesday it plans to ask a U.S. judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department and 15 states in March that alleged the iPhone maker monopolized the smartphone market, hurt smaller rivals and drove up prices. From a report: In a letter to U.S. District Judge Julien X. Neals in New Jersey, Apple said "far from being a monopolist, Apple faces fierce competition from well-established rivals, and the complaint fails to allege that Apple has the ability to charge supra-competitive prices or restrict output in the alleged smartphone markets." In the letter to the judge, Apple said the DOJ relies on a new "theory of antitrust liability that no court has recognized."

The government is expected to respond within seven days to the Apple letter, which the court requires parties to submit, hoping to expedite cases before advancing to a potentially more robust and expensive effort to dismiss a lawsuit. The Justice Department alleges that Apple uses its market power to get more money from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses and merchants. The civil lawsuit accuses Apple of an illegal monopoly on smartphones maintained by imposing contractual restrictions on, and withholding critical access from, developers.

Apple is offering discounts of up to $318 on select iPhone models in China, hoping to "defend its position in the high-end smartphone market, where it faces increasing competition from local rivals such as Huawei," reports Reuters. From the report: The increased competitive pressure on Apple comes after Huawei last month introduced its new series of high-end smartphones, the Pura 70, following the launch of the Mate 60 last August. Apple's previous discounting effort in February appears to have helped the company mitigate a sales slowdown in China. Apple's shipments in China increased by 12% in March, according to Reuters' calculations based on data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). This marks a significant improvement from the first two months of 2024, when the company experienced a 37% slump in sales.

Apple is developing a significantly thinner version of the iPhone [non-paywalled source] that could be released as early as 2025, The Information reported Friday, citing three people with direct knowledge of the project. From the report: The slimmer iPhone could be released concurrently with the iPhone 17, expected in September 2025, according to the three people with direct knowledge and two others familiar with the project. It could be priced higher than the iPhone Pro Max, currently Apple's most expensive model starting at $1,200, they said.

The people familiar with the project described the new iPhone, internally code-named D23, as a major redesign -- similar to the iPhone X, which Apple marketed as a technological leap from previous generations and which started at $1,000 when it was released in 2017. Several of its novel features, such as FaceID, the OLED screen and glass back, became standard in subsequent models.

Apple's grudging accommodation of European law -- allowing third-party browser engines on its mobile devices -- apparently comes with a restriction that makes it difficult to develop and support third-party browser engines for the region. From a report: The Register has learned from those involved in the browser trade that Apple has limited the development and testing of third-party browser engines to devices physically located in the EU. That requirement adds an additional barrier to anyone planning to develop and support a browser with an alternative engine in the EU.

It effectively geofences the development team. Browser-makers whose dev teams are located in the US will only be able to work on simulators. While some testing can be done in a simulator, there's no substitute for testing on device -- which means developers will have to work within Apple's prescribed geographical boundary. Prior to iOS 17.4, Apple required all web browsers on iOS or iPadOS to use Apple's WebKit rendering engine. Alternatives like Gecko (used by Mozilla Firefox) or Blink (used by Google and other Chromium-based browsers) were not permitted. Whatever brand of browser you thought you were using on your iPhone, under the hood it was basically Safari. Browser makers have objected to this for years, because it limits competitive differentiation and reduces the incentive for Apple owners to use non-Safari browsers.

Samsung has released a response to Apple's recently criticized "Crush" ad, which featured the destruction of instruments, arcade games, and sculptures to promote the new iPad Pro. Apple subsequently apologized, with an executive admitting they "missed the mark."

In a video titled "UnCrush," created by BBH USA and directed by Zen Pace, Samsung depicts a woman navigating debris reminiscent of Apple's ad, using a Galaxy Tab S9 and Galaxy AI to play guitar, in contrast to Apple's destructive message. "We would never crush creativity," the caption of Samsung's video reads.

This week, in celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Apple is introducing several new accessibility features. Noteworthy additions include eye-tracking support for recent iPhone and iPad models, customizable vocal shortcuts, music haptics, and vehicle motion cues. Engadget reports: The most intriguing feature of the set is the ability to use the front-facing camera on iPhones or iPads (at least those with the A12 chip or later) to navigate the software without additional hardware or accessories. With this enabled, people can look at their screen to move through elements like apps and menus, then linger on an item to select it. That pause to select is something Apple calls Dwell Control, which has already been available elsewhere in the company's ecosystem like in Mac's accessibility settings. The setup and calibration process should only take a few seconds, and on-device AI is at work to understand your gaze. It'll also work with third-party apps from launch, since it's a layer in the OS like Assistive Touch. Since Apple already supported eye-tracking in iOS and iPadOS with eye-detection devices connected, the news today is the ability to do so without extra hardware. [...]

There are plenty more features coming to the company's suite of products, including Live Captions in VisionOS, a new Reader mode in Magnifier, support for multi-line braille and a virtual trackpad for those who use Assistive Touch. It's not yet clear when all of these announced updates will roll out, though Apple has historically made these features available in upcoming versions of iOS. With its developer conference WWDC just a few weeks away, it's likely many of today's tools get officially released with the next iOS. Apple detailed all the new features in a press release.

An anonymous reader shares a report: There are concerning reports on Reddit that Apple's latest iOS 17.5 update has introduced a bug that causes old photos that were deleted -- in some cases years ago -- to reappear in users' photo libraries. After updating their iPhone, one user said they were shocked to find old NSFW photos that they deleted in 2021 suddenly showing up in photos marked as recently uploaded to iCloud. Other users have also chimed in with similar stories. "Same here," said one Redditor. "I have four pics from 2010 that keep reappearing as the latest pics uploaded to iCloud. I have deleted them repeatedly." "Same thing happened to me," replied another user. "Six photos from different times, all I have deleted. Some I had deleted in 2023." More reports have been trickling in overnight. One said: "I had a random photo from a concert taken on my Canon camera reappear in my phone library, and it showed up as if it was added today."

OpenAI has launched an official macOS app for ChatGPT, with a Windows version coming "later this year." "Both free and paid users will be able to access the new app, but it will only be available to ChatGPT Plus users starting today before a broader rollout in 'the coming weeks,'" reports The Verge. From the report: In the demo shown by OpenAI, users could open the ChatGPT desktop app in a small window, alongside another program. They asked ChatGPT questions about what's on their screen -- whether by typing or saying it. ChatGPT could then respond based on what it "sees." OpenAI says users can ask ChatGPT a question by using the Option + Space keyboard shortcut, as well as take and discuss screenshots within the app. Further reading: OpenAI Launches New Free Model GPT-4o

Apple and Google have launched a new industry standard called "Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers" to combat the misuse of Bluetooth trackers for stalking. Starting Monday, iPhone and Android users will receive alerts when an unknown Bluetooth device is detected moving with them. The move comes after numerous cases of trackers like Apple's AirTags being used for malicious purposes.

Several Bluetooth tag companies have committed to making their future products compatible with the new standard. Apple and Google said they will continue collaborating with the Internet Engineering Task Force to further develop this technology and address the issue of unwanted tracking.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman gave an hour-long interview to the "All-In" podcast (hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg). And speaking on technology's advance, Altman said "Phones are unbelievably good.... I personally think the iPhone is like the greatest piece of technology humanity has ever made. It's really a wonderful product."


Q: What comes after it?

Altman: I don't know. I mean, that was what I was saying. It's so good, that to get beyond it, I think the bar is quite high.

Q: You've been working with Jony Ive on something, right?

Altman: We've been discussing ideas, but I don't — like, if I knew...


Altman said later he thought voice interaction "feels like a different way to use a computer."

But the conversation turned to Apple in another way. It happened in a larger conversation where Altman said OpenAI has "currently made the decision not to do music, and partly because exactly these questions of where you draw the lines..."

Altman: Even the world in which — if we went and, let's say we paid 10,000 musicians to create a bunch of music, just to make a great training set, where the music model could learn everything about song structure and what makes a good, catchy beat and everything else, and only trained on that — let's say we could still make a great music model, which maybe we could. I was posing that as a thought experiment to musicians, and they were like, "Well, I can't object to that on any principle basis at that point — and yet there's still something I don't like about it." Now, that's not a reason not to do it, um, necessarily, but it is — did you see that ad that Apple put out... of like squishing all of human creativity down into one really iPad...?

There's something about — I'm obviously hugely positive on AI — but there is something that I think is beautiful about human creativity and human artistic expression. And, you know, for an AI that just does better science, like, "Great. Bring that on." But an AI that is going to do this deeply beautiful human creative expression? I think we should figure out — it's going to happen. It's going to be a tool that will lead us to greater creative heights. But I think we should figure out how to do it in a way that preserves the spirit of what we all care about here.
What about creators whose copyrighted materials are used for training data? Altman had a ready answer — but also some predictions for the future. "On fair use, I think we have a very reasonable position under the current law. But I think AI is so different that for things like art, we'll need to think about them in different ways..." Altman:I think the conversation has been historically very caught up on training data, but it will increasingly become more about what happens at inference time, as training data becomes less valuable and what the system does accessing information in context, in real-time... what happens at inference time will become more debated, and what the new economic model is there.
Altman gave the example of an AI which was never trained on any Taylor Swift songs — but could still respond to a prompt requesting a song in her style. Altman: And then the question is, should that model, even if it were never trained on any Taylor Swift song whatsoever, be allowed to do that? And if so, how should Taylor get paid? So I think there's an opt-in, opt-out in that case, first of all — and then there's an economic model.
Altman also wondered if there's lessons in the history and economics of music sampling...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Apple's top software executives decided early last year that Siri, the company's virtual assistant, needed a brain transplant. The decision came after the executives Craig Federighi and John Giannandrea spent weeks testing OpenAI's new chatbot, ChatGPT. The product's use of generative artificial intelligence, which can write poetry, create computer code and answer complex questions, made Siri look antiquated, said two people familiar with the company's work, who didn't have permission to speak publicly. Introduced in 2011 as the original virtual assistant in every iPhone, Siri had been limited for years to individual requests and had never been able to follow a conversation. It often misunderstood questions. ChatGPT, on the other hand, knew that if someone asked for the weather in San Francisco and then said, "What about New York?" that user wanted another forecast.

The realization that new technology had leapfrogged Siri set in motion the tech giant's most significant reorganization in more than a decade. Determined to catch up in the tech industry's A.I. race, Apple has made generative A.I. a tent pole project -- the company's special, internal label that it uses to organize employees around once-in-a-decade initiatives. Apple is expected to show off its A.I. work at its annual developers conference on June 10 when it releases an improved Siri that is more conversational and versatile, according to three people familiar with the company's work, who didn't have permission to speak publicly. Siri's underlying technology will include a new generative A.I. system that will allow it to chat rather than respond to questions one at a time. The update to Siri is at the forefront of a broader effort to embrace generative A.I. across Apple's business. The company is also increasing the memory in this year's iPhones to support its new Siri capabilities. And it has discussed licensing complementary A.I. models that power chatbots from several companies, including Google, Cohere and OpenAI. Further reading: Apple Might Bring AI Transcription To Voice Memos and Notes

Apple's plans for AI on the iPhone could bring real-time transcription to its Voice Memos and Notes apps, according to a report from AppleInsider: People familiar with the matter have told us that Apple has been working on AI-powered summarization and greatly enhanced audio transcription for several of its next-gen operating systems. The new features are expected to enable significant improvements in efficiency for users of its staple Notes, Voice Memos, and other apps. Apple is currently testing the capabilities as feature additions to several app updates scheduled to arrive with the release of iOS 18 later in 2024. They're also expected to make their way to the corresponding apps in macOS 15 and iPadOS 18 as well.

Apple has apologized for its tone-deaf "Crush!" ad that sparked a furious backlash with artists, musicians and other creators. AdAge reports that Apple said the video "missed the mark" and has scrapped plans to run the cutesy-turned-cringey commercial on TV. From a report: It's clear that Apple intended for the ad to serve as a metaphor for all the myriad creative tools one has when they throw down $1,000 or more for a new iPad Pro. Run during Tuesday's event, the video shows a series of musical instruments and other tools for human expression, including a guitar, drums, trumpet, amplifiers, record player, TV and much more. "All I Ever Need Is You" by Sonny & Cher soundtracks the clip.

Soon, it's revealed that the objects are all sitting on an industrial crusher, which descends upon the scattered creative instruments, exploding in plumes of satisfyingly colorful smoke. But when the crusher pulls back up, we see that everything was transformed into a shiny new iPad Pro.

Citing a memo distributed to Apple Store employees, 9to5Mac reports that the new iPad Pro and iPad Air lineups will not include Apple stickers in the box -- "a key piece of memorabilia" that dates back as far as 1977's Apple II, notes Ars Technica. While the company says that this is part of its environmental goals to completely remove plastic from its packaging, it begs the question: is the era of stickers in Apple boxes coming to an end? 9to5Mac reports: The M3 MacBook Air that launched in March includes stickers in the box, but Apple Vision Pro (which launched in February) does not. Will the iPhone 16 include stickers in the box? Only time will tell. Ars' Andrew Cunningham writes about the origins of the Apple stickers: Apple has included stickers with its products at least as far back as the Apple II in 1977 when the stickers still said "Apple Computer" on them in the company's then-favored Motter Tektura typeface (I couldn't track down a vintage Apple II unboxing, but I did find some fun photos of Apple enthusiast Dan Budiac opening a sealed-in-box mid-'80s-era Apple IIc, complete with rainbow pack-in stickers). I myself became familiar with them during the height of the iPod in the early to mid-2000s when Apple was still firmly a tech underdog, and people would stick white Apple logo stickers to their cars to show off their non-conformist cred and/or Apple brand loyalty.

As Apple's products became more colorful in the 2010s, the Apple logo stickers would sometimes be color-matched to the device you had just bought, a cute bit of attention to detail that has carried over into present-day MagSafe cables and color-matched iMac keyboards and trackpads. The report notes that you can still request an Apple sticker at Apple Stores at the time of your purchase; however, Amazon, Best Buy, and other retailers don't appear to have them available.

Apple will deliver some of its upcoming AI features this year via data centers equipped with its own in-house processors, part of a sweeping effort to infuse its devices with AI capabilities. From a report: The company is placing high-end chips -- similar to ones it designed for the Mac -- in cloud-computing servers designed to process the most advanced AI tasks coming to Apple devices, according to people familiar with the matter. Simpler AI-related features will be processed directly on iPhones, iPads and Macs, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plan is still under wraps.

The move is part of Apple's much-anticipated push into generative artificial intelligence -- the technology behind ChatGPT and other popular tools. The company is playing catch-up with Big Tech rivals in the area but is poised to lay out an ambitious AI strategy at its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 10. Apple's plan to use its own chips and process AI tasks in the cloud was hatched about three years ago, but the company accelerated the timeline after the AI craze -- fueled by OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini -- forced it to move more quickly. The first AI server chips will be the M2 Ultra, which was launched last year as part of the Mac Pro and Mac Studio computers, though the company is already eyeing future versions based on the M4 chip

Michael Larabel reports via Phoronix: Building off the recent release of Fedora 40, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 is now available for this downstream of Fedora Linux that's optimized to run on Apple Silicon ARM systems. Fedora Asahi Remix continues to be one of the best ways of enjoying a Linux experience atop recent Apple Macs making use of their in-house M1/M2/M3 SoCs. With the Fedora Asahi Remix 40 release there is now conformant OpenGL 4.6 support thanks to the upgraded Mesa. There is also improved device compatibility with its newer kernel.

Fedora Asahi Remix continues to cater to using the KDE Plasma desktop by default. With the upgrade to Fedora Asahi Remix 40 this also means now transitioning to the KDE Plasma 6.0 desktop environment for their flagship desktop experience. A GNOME variant using GNOME 46 is also available. You can learn more about the release via FedoraMagazine.org. Installation options are available at FedoraProject.org.

Less than 24 hours after Apple held a special event to unveil the new, record-thin (0.20 inch, the thinnest Apple device yet) iPad Pro with M4 chip inside, which the company says is optimized for AI, it is facing a loud and fast-spreading public backlash to one of its new marquee video advertisements promoting the device -- a spot called "Crush." VentureBeat: The video features a giant, industrial hydraulic press machine -- a device category famous for appearing in viral videos over the last decade-and-a-half -- literally pressing down upon and destroying dozens of other objects and creative instruments, from trumpets to cans of paint. The ad concludes with the press lifting to reveal these objects have somehow been transformed into a new iPad Pro. The metaphor and messaging is pretty obvious: the iPad Pro can subsume and replace all these older legacy instruments and technologies inside of it, and all in a more portable, sleek, and more powerful form factor than ever before.

It's analogous to similar observations and advertisements other fans and creatives have made in the past about how PCs and smartphones replaced nearly all the individual gadgets -- stereo radios/boom boxes, journals, calculators, drawing pads, typewriters, video cameras -- of yore by offering many of their same core capabilities in a smaller, unified, more portable form factor. [...] People are revolted by the bluntness of Apple's metaphor, the destruction of beloved traditional instruments and objects which people hold in high esteem and affix intangible value to for their creative potential, and the overarching and perhaps unintentional messaging that Apple wants to literally flatten creativity and violently crush the creative tools of yesterday in favor of a multi-hundred dollar piece of luxury technology whose operating system and ecosystem of applications it tightly controls and restricts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In a major shake-up of its chip roadmap, Apple has announced a new M4 processor for today's iPad Pro refresh, barely six months after releasing the first MacBook Pros with the M3 and not even two months after updating the MacBook Air with the M3. Apple says the M4 includes "up to" four high-performance CPU cores, six high-efficiency cores, and a 10-core GPU. Apple's high-level performance estimates say that the M4 has 50 percent faster CPU performance and four times as much graphics performance. Like the GPU in the M3, the M4 also supports hardware-accelerated ray-tracing to enable more advanced lighting effects in games and other apps. Due partly to its "second-generation" 3 nm manufacturing process, Apple says the M4 can match the performance of the M2 while using just half the power.

As with so much else in the tech industry right now, the M4 also has an AI focus; Apple says it's beefing up the 16-core Neural Engine (Apple's equivalent of the Neural Processing Unit that companies like Qualcomm, Intel, AMD, and Microsoft have been pushing lately). Apple says the M4 runs up to 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS), considerably ahead of Intel's Meteor Lake platform, though a bit short of the 45 TOPS that Qualcomm is promising with the Snapdragon X Elite and Plus series. The M3's Neural Engine is only capable of 18 TOPS, so that's a major step up for Apple's hardware. Apple's chips since 2017 have included some version of the Neural Engine, though to date, those have mostly been used to enhance and categorize photos, perform optical character recognition, enable offline dictation, and do other oddities. But it may be that Apple needs something faster for the kinds of on-device large language model-backed generative AI that it's expected to introduce in iOS and iPadOS 18 at WWDC next month. A separate report from the Wall Street Journal says Apple is developing a custom chip to run AI software in datacenters. "Apple's server chip will likely be focused on running AI models, also known as inference, rather than in training AI models, where Nvidia is dominant," reports Reuters.

Further reading: Apple Quietly Kills the Old-school iPad and Its Headphone Jack

Along with introducing a new iPad Air and iPad Pro during its Let Loose event, Apple quietly killed its ninth-gen iPad -- also known as the last iPad with a headphone jack. From a report: The 10th-gen iPad is now the sole entry-level iPad in Apple's official lineup and, as such, has received a $100 price cut. Released in late 2022, the 10th-generation iPad arrived starting at $449, or about $120 more than base entry-level iPads from previous years. Apple justified the price increase with new iPad Air-like features, like a 10.9-inch screen and USB-C support.