The initiative, code-named Kalamata, is still in early developmental stages but is part of a bigger strategy to make Apple’s family of devices work more similarly and seamlessly together, according to the report.

Apple, which has used Intel chips in its computers since 2005, and the computer chipmaker both declined to comment. Intel shares closed down 6.1 percent at $48.92, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq .IXIC ended down 2.7 percent.

Stifel analyst Kevin Cassidy said in a note he believed the market was “over reacting” to the report on Apple’s plans and that Intel’s prospects remained good. “We do not expect any other PC manufacturers will consider designing its own CPUs,” he wrote in the note.

“While it’s possible that Apple may replace Intel in some of its lower-end product lines, we think it will be difficult for Apple to completely replace Intel by 2020, especially on its higher-end offerings,” said Summit Insights group analyst Kinngai Chan.

The Mac plays a small part in Apple’s overall financial picture, with sales of 19.2 million units last year and accounting for 11 percent of Apple’s $229.2 billion in revenue for fiscal 2017.

But while the laptop and desktop computer market has been in a years-long slump amid the rise of smartphones and tablet computers, Mac sales rose 4 percent in 2017. The growth came even as PC sales declined slightly to 259.5 million units, the smallest drop since 2011, according to data from research firm IDC.

While Apple’s reported move away from Intel would be a major shift for its Mac lineup, it follows years of increasing focus on designing its own chips for its devices. The company has been designing its own iPhone processors since the release of the iPhone 4 in 2010 and has steadily increased the amount of chip work it handles itself.

“We can push the envelope on innovation. We have better control over timing, over cost and over quality,” Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said of Apple’s chip efforts last year.

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Source: Reuters

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Why, buy one of Apple’s rumored less-expensive MacBook Airs allegedly dropping later this year, of course.

Predicting what’s going on inside the minds at 1 Apple Park Way is a notoriously tricky proposition, but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities has a track record of being pretty damn good at it. His latest investor note, according to 9to5Mac, suggests the tech behemoth plans to release a MacBook Air “with a lower price tag” sometime in the second quarter of 2018.

At present, a 13-inch MacBook Air sells for $999 or $1,199 — depending on the specifications. While merely the expectation of a lower price tag doesn’t give us a lot to go on, it does suggest that Apple sees a way to get its wildly popular laptop into even more hands: Make it cheaper.

Which, yeah, brilliant.

Kuo has some other thoughts about what may be coming down the Apple-shaped pike, too. Specifically, he notes that we should look for an updated AirPod later this year.

Oh, and he also drops a little nugget of possible truth about the HomePod. Namely, that demand for it is merely “mediocre.” Maybe if they released a cheaper version? Hey, I’m just spitballing here.

So there you have it. Apple, Silicon Valley’s embodiment of innovation, might be changing the game all over again with the revolutionary idea of making its products more affordable. If Kuo is right, your wallet will thank you.

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Source: Mashable

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Following the glitch’s discovery, pranksters had used the symbol on social media, private messages and even Uber’s app to cause problems.

Apple has now issued a software update for its iPhones, iPads, Mac computers, smartwatches and TV set-top boxes.

It is the latest in a series of “text bomb” flaws to affect Apple devices.

Earlier examples include:

• the Chaios bug, which caused the Messages app to freeze or restart if a special link was included in a text
• an exploit triggered by messages featuring a white flag symbol, a zero, a rainbow emoji and a hidden character
• the inclusion of a nonsense word in Arabic

The US firm’s security update refers to the latest flaw as a “memory corruption issue” triggered by “processing a maliciously crafted string”.

The issue was first reported by the developers of the Aloha mobile web browser on 12 February.

It affects Apple’s Messages app as well as third-party services including Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Outlook and Gmail, but not Telegram or Skype, according to the Verge news site.

The Telugu letter involved is not very common in Telugu words, but because the sound it makes is unusual it cannot be easily substituted with another character when required.

Telugu itself is mostly spoken in south-eastern India, where it is the official language of the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

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Source: BBC

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The U.S. tech giant has brought about a design aesthetic with its iPhone and iPad that set it apart from rivals such as Samsung Electronics and Sony and helped make it the most valuable company in the world.

For Europe’s biggest automaker, adopting simplicity as the guiding principle for future styling of electric vehicles (EVs) marks a departure from the era before its 2015 “dieselgate” emissions scandal, when vehicle design conveyed the German group’s engineering prowess and technological ambitions.

“We are currently redefining the Volkswagen values for the age of electrification,” Klaus Bischoff, head of VW brand design, said in an interview. “What’s at stake is to be as significant, purist and clear as possible and also to visualize a completely new architecture.”

With regulators slashing emissions on a fast timetable, dieselgate has also energized the costly shift to EVs that is necessary to compete in China, VW’s largest market, and to avoid future fines in Europe.

Previously a laggard on electrification, VW has pledged 34 billion euros ($42.45 billion) of investment in EVs, self-driving technology and digital mobility businesses across the group by 2022.

The core namesake brand alone will spend 6 billion euros on a new modular platform dubbed MEB designed to underpin over 20 purely battery-powered models such as the I.D. hatchback, I.D. Crozz crossover and the I.D. Buzz microbus.

Bischoff said VW will use the Geneva auto show on March 5-7 to give early guidance on what the post-I.D. generation of EVs might look like, but declined to elaborate.

Bischoff belongs to VW’s old guard, having worked a quarter of a century in VW’s design operations and the past decade as head of the core brand’s design.

He became famous through a video shot at the 2011 Frankfurt auto show that has since drawn over 2 million hits on YouTube.

It showed Bischoff being yelled at by former CEO Martin Winterkorn, who was inspecting a model by South Korean rival Hyundai and had discovered something that had displeased him.

“In the past everything was very centralized, very narrow boundaries were set on the road of success,” Bischoff said. “Today is the most exciting time of my career because I‘m allowed to do things that didn’t use to exist that way.”

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Source: Reuters

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The option to switch off the feature will appear on the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, SE, 6S, 6S Plus, 7 and 7 Plus models.

Last month, Apple apologised after it was found to be deliberately slowing down some of its devices.

Customers were angry that Apple had not been upfront about its actions before the practice was discovered.

Many had long suspected the company slowed older iPhones to encourage customers to upgrade.

Apple admitted slowing some phones with ageing batteries but said it was done to “prolong the life” of the devices.

The ability to switch off the battery saver will appear in iOS 11.3 when it is released later in 2018.

The company said the feature “dynamically manages maximum performance to prevent unexpected shutdowns” but customers will be able to “turn it off”.

Price drops

Replacing an affected iPhone’s battery also restores its performance.

After the practice of slowing older iPhones was discovered, Apple said it would reduce the price of an out-of-warranty battery replacement from $79 to $29 in the US for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later.

In the UK the price dropped from £79 to £25.

“With so many older iPhones in the market the battery performance issues have become a concern for a lot of consumers,” commented Ben Wood from the tech consultancy CCS Insight.

“Apple has also been under regulatory scrutiny so it is likely trying to offer as many options to consumers as possible so they can decide the best way to maximise the battery life on iPhones that are eligible for the new battery programme.”

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Source: BBC

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Speaking in the UK on Friday, Cook said:

I don’t have a kid, but I have a nephew that I put some boundaries on. There are some things that I won’t allow; I don’t want them on a social network.

He didn’t stop at social media. Cook also said he didn’t believe in the idea that the best technologies are those we become obsessed with. “I don’t believe in overuse [of technology]. I’m not a person that says we’ve achieved success if you’re using it all the time,” he said. “I don’t subscribe to that at all.”

Cook joins a multitude of tech personalities in recent years worrying about the negative impact of technology, and social media in particular, on our lives. Sean Parker, Facebook’s first president, admitted last year that he’d helped Mark Zuckerberg build “a monster,” stating: “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Another former Facebook exec, Chamath Palihapitiya, told a group at Stanford Graduate School of Business that the social network could be “destroying how society works” through “short-term, dopamine-driven, feedback loops.”

The two are far from alone in their concern about the effect of social media on our daily lives.

Facebook, for its part, has publicly stated it wants to help. After ending 2017 with an attempt to lure ever-younger children into its ecosystem, CEO Mark Zuckerberg now says he wants to “fix these important issues.”

The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do — whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent. … We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools.

It’s a good first step. For now, though, it’s just talk. Zuckerberg has yet to release a timeline or a roadmap stating how he’s going to address any of these issues. Or, more plainly, which of the social network’s numerous problems he plans to tackle first.

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Source: Thenextweb

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Abraham Masri, a software developer, tweeted about the flaw which typically causes an iPhone to crash and in some cases restart.

Simply sending a message containing a link which pointed to Mr Masri’s code on programming site GitHub would be enough to activate the bug – even if the recipient did not click the link itself.

Mr Masri said he “always reports bugs” before releasing them. Apple has not yet commented on the issue.

On a Mac, the bug reportedly makes the Safari browser crash, and causes other slowdowns.

But users should not be alarmed.

Security expert Graham Cluley wrote on his blog that the bug does not present anything to be particularly worried about – it’s merely very annoying.

“Something about the so-called ChaiOS bug’s code gives your Apple device a brainstorm,” he wrote.

“Ashamed about the mess it gets itself in, Messages decides the least embarrassing thing to do is to crash.

“Nasty. But, thankfully, more of a nuisance than something that will lead to data being stolen from your computer or a malicious hacker being able to access your files.”

After the link did the rounds on social media, Mr Masri removed the code from GitHub, therefore disabling the “attack” unless someone was to replicate the code elsewhere.

“I’m not going to re-upload it,” he said.

“I made my point. Apple needs to take such bugs more seriously.”

Bugs in Apple’s software have been a recurring problem of late.

In November it apologised to its customers for a glaring password flaw which meant its latest Mac operating system could be accessed without a password.

Less serious but highly frustrating was a bug that autocorrected the letter “I” into a strange symbol.

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Source: BBC

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 The drama surrounding Apple’s old iPhone batteries isn’t over yet.Four U.S. House Republicans sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook on Friday asking for answers on batterygate.

In December, Apple admitted to throttling the speed of older iPhones to increase batteryperformance, a long-time conspiracy theory among iPhone users that turned out to be true. As a result, Apple issued an apology to its customers, and announced reduced pricing for out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement, from $79 to $29.

But the apology and explanation from the billion dollar company wasn’t enough for House Republicans, who want more answers on the subject, according to Reuters.

The report also notes that U.S. Senator John Thune sent a similar letter to Apple on Tuesday. Thune is the chair on the the Senate Commerce Committee.

Cook reportedly made $12.8 million in 2017, according to a statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Apple’s Health App accurately records steps and has been pre-installed on the iPhone 6S and newer models.

Data suggesting the suspect was climbing stairs could correlate to him dragging his victim down a riverbank and climbing back up, police said.

The accused – Hussein K – has admitted his guilt but disputed some details.

The 19-year-old medical student Maria Ladenburger was murdered in October 2016 and the trial – at the district court in Freiburg – started in September.

Ms Ladenburger was raped and drowned in the River Dresiam.

The suspect – identified by a hair found at the scene of the crime – refused to provide police with the PIN code to his phone so investigating officers turned to an unnamed cyber-forensics firm in Munich, which broke into the device.

The health data app on iPhones records activity – including how many steps are taken, nutrition and sleep patterns as well as various body measurements such as heart rate.

As well as locating Hussein’s movements, the phone also suggested periods of more strenuous activity, including two peaks, which the app put down to him “climbing stairs”.

An investigator of similar build to the suspect went to the area where the body was found and recreated how the police believe he disposed of the body.

The police officer’s movement data on the same app showed him also “climbing stairs”.

“For the first time, we correlated health and geo-data,” chief of police Peter Egetemaier told the court, according to German paper Die Welt.

Complicating the trial are attempts to pin down Hussein’s real age.

He initially claimed that he was 17 but his father, tracked down to Iran, has disputed this.

Age will play a part in sentencing. The maximum for someone under 18 is 10 years, whereas the adult sentence for such a crime could be up to 30 years.

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Source: BBC

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In an open letter to Apple on Monday, New York-based Jana Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) said the firm must do more to help children fight addiction on its devices.

“There is a developing consensus around the world including Silicon Valley that the potential long-term consequences of new technologies need to be factored in at the outset, and no company can outsource that responsibility,” said the investors, who collectively control $2bn of Apple stock.

“Apple can play a defining role in signalling to the industry that paying special attention to the health and development of the next generation is both good business and the right thing to do.”

The group urged Apple to offer tools to help children avoid addiction and give parents more options to protect their children’s health through monitoring usage. Apple’s iOS already offers limited parental controls, including restrictions on apps, use of features such as location sharing and access to certain kinds of content.

But the investors said that Apple should allow parents to be able set the age of the user of the phone on setup, and implement limits on screen time, hours of the day the phone can be used and block social media services.

They also proposed that Apple should establish an expert committee including child development specialists, which should produce annual reports, and offer Apple’s vast information to researchers on the issue.

The investors cited several studies on the negative effects on children’s mental and physical health caused by heavy usage of smartphones and social media. These range from distractions in the classroom and issues around focus on educational tasks to higher risks of suicide and depression.

The open letter reflects growing concerns on the long-term impact of technology such as smartphones and social media on children. Technology firms are yet to publicly acknowledge the issues around children and their company’s creations, but even Silicon Valley heads have started to raise the alarm. Former Facebook president Sean Parker described the site as made to exploit human vulnerability, saying: “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Another former Facebook executive, Chamath Palihapitiya, said he specifically opted out of social media because it was “eroding the core foundations of how people behave”.

“I can control my decision, which is that I don’t use that shit. I can control my kids’ decisions, which is that they’re not allowed to use that shit,” said Palihapitiya.

With many apps, sites and devices being designed to be as addictive as possible to grow user numbers and maintain eyeballs on screens, children are increasingly being either seen as collateral damage or specifically targeted as the next generation of users.

Apple did not comment.

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Source: Guardian UK

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