Follow Benjamin on Threads to keep up with his latest projects. Benjamin blogs about Apple news and rumors and posts insightful product and app reviews. Read his work on 9to5Mac and his personal blog.
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Security researchers at Versprite have identified security flaws in Airmail for Mac that can expose private data, including an entire account’s email database. The attack requires a user to open a maliciously crafted email and tap a link inside the message. With a combination of technical exploit and phishing attack, it seems like a significant problem.
Apple has registered several new Apple Watch model identifiers in the Eurasian economic database, as spotted by Consomac. Apple is expected to unveil the new watches at its iPhone event in September.
The ‘Series 4’ is listed across a total of six model identifiers, and is noted as shipping with watchOS 5. This filings suggests a slimming down of the lineup compared to what Apples offers with Apple Watch Series 3.
Digitimes has today released a report that covers a variety of topics, focused on Apple’s September launch schedule. Quoting industry sources, the site says that Apple will launch a $1200 Kaby Lake ‘entry-level’ MacBook in September.
They also believe the iPad mini 4 will continue to be sold as-is, and expect Apple to announce the AirPower release date at the 2018 iPhone event, with a price point in the $160-$190 range …
Yesterday, we reported on a hacking incident by an Australian teenager, who downloaded about 90 GB of data from Apple servers.
Apple has given a statement to the press that confirms no personal customer data was exposed or compromised in this incident.
The president of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told his people to stop buying American electronics, specifically noting that Turkish population should switch from iPhones to Samsung devices.
He also promoted the Venus phone by Vestel, a local Turkish smartphone manufacturer. As it stands, Apple iPhone models hold about 15% market share in the region.
Ken Kocienda worked at Apple from 2001 through 2016. On September 4, Kocienda is releasing a new book ‘Creative Selection’ (preorder: Amazon, iBooks), that details Apple’s design process from the inside, retelling his own anecdotes of working on the iPhone and iPad, demoing to Steve Jobs and more.
In this exclusive excerpt, you get a sense of how designing the iPhone software keyboard was anything but obvious. In late 2005, Apple paused all internal development on iPhone and told all engineers to invent keyboard concepts. This excerpt details how Kocienda’s winning design was shot down by Phil Schiller and Tony Fadell, which sent him back to the drawing board …
Apple Music is rolling out a new discovery mix called the Friends Mix, which updates every Monday. It collates 25 songs that your Apple Music friends have been listening to. The mix is appearing for some users across Apple’s platforms and does not seem to be tied to iOS 12 or any other beta software release.
The Friends Mix joins the Favorites mix, Chill mix and New Music mix algorithmic collections on the service.
Apple has removed five Infowars podcasts from the Apple Podcasts platform. Apple confirmed the decision to Buzzfeed News overnight, and is the first major tech company to blanket ban almost all of Alex Jones’ content. Apple said that it does not tolerate hate speech, and clear guidelines dictate the types of content that are accessible on its platforms. Companies like YouTube and Spotify have pulled select episodes before.
Apple is the leading podcast distribution platform and its more drastic approach naturally put pressure on other players to follow suit. Only one InfoWars show remains on Apple’s service, ‘Real News with David Night’. Apple did not say why this show alone was allowed to stay up.
Chinese media outlet Economic Daily News is reporting that Apple will technically launch four new iPhone models later this year. As expected, there would be worldwide launches of the OLED 5.8-inch iPhone X successor and 6.5-inch ‘iPhone X Plus’.
There would also be a 6.1-inch LCD iPhone with a single SIM tray, and a special 6.1-inch model with a dual SIM that is exclusive to China — according to the report.
Update: 11:49 AAPL has now passed the $1T mark and is the world’s first trillion dollar company.
Apple has succeeded in becoming the first public company to hit a trillion dollars … almost. Due to a recent change in the count of total available shares, Yahoo is reporting that Apple has already hit the $1tn mark.
Google Finance reports Apple is at about a $950 billion market cap right now — although that isn’t completely accurate either. With the updated share count, Apple stock has to cross the $207.05 level to officially reach the milestone, as explained by CNBC yesterday.
The company revealed an adjusted outstanding share count of 4,829,926,000Wednesday alongside the company’s third-quarter results. That factors in hefty stock buybacks and nudged the trillion-dollar per share price to $207.05.
For the last few days, Chinese state media started a mini smear campaign on Apple, criticising the company’s App Store policies and voicing frustration at ongoing SMS and iMessage spam in the region.
Reuters reports that the Chinese media quoted an Apple rep announcing that Apple will be rolling out new ways to block iMessage spam accounts, and is developing ‘advanced technology’ to automatically identify junk messages. In a statement to Reuters, Apple said that they have been ‘working to reduce the issue of spam for quite some time’.
Apple stock jumped 4.5% at market open today, following better-than-expected earnings and guidance for the forthcoming quarter. The stock broached $199 and has settled at $198 at time of publishing. Apple’s market cap is now above $970 billion dollars.
The company announced a record June quarter, with $53 billion revenue from 41.3 million iPhones, 11.6 million iPads and 3.7 million Macs.
Apple stock is now within spitting distance of the $1 trillion market cap milestone. Although after-hours trading can be volatile, it is obvious that investors are pleased with Apple’s latest earnings report.
In after-market, the stock hit $197.69 — above its all-time high of $195.96, up 3.6% on today’s close. If the gains hold, Apple will open with a market cap around $990bn tomorrow.
Apple just reported earnings — and as ever the company does not break out unit sales of Apple Watch. However, Apple’s wearables business, which includes Apple Watch and AirPods, continues to be strong. Apple told the FT that wearables revenue is up 60 percent year-over-year.
The iPad Pro is due for an upgrade, and all signs point to a major redesign this fall. The upcoming 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro, replacing the current 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch models, are expected to draw heavily from the iPhone X design. They will feature super-slimmed down bezels and drop the home button in favor of Face ID.
A report last week hinted that the smart connector would be redesigned and relocated. A CAD image from OnLeaks corroborates this finding. In the sketch, you can see a new outline on the back of the iPad. This is presumably the redesigned Smart Connector in its new spot on the rear of the device, horizontally aligned with the Lightning port on the short edge.
In a support article posted overnight, Apple announced that it will repair any iPhones, Macs, iPads and iPods that were directly damaged by the devastating heavy floods that swept through Japan this month. Apple expressed its sympathies for anyone who was affected by the flooding, which has tragically caused hundreds of deaths.
The support naturally goes against Apple’s standard repair policies, which strictly exclude water damage. Apple says that it will attempt to repair any damaged products for free, including via courier delivery (via Macotakara).
Analysts at The Loup Ventures have published the results of the their latest voice assistant comparison test, which involves asking the leading digital assistants 800 questions spanning various domains. Whilst Siri still trails Google Assistant in accuracy, it has improved significantly.
With the same test conducted last year, Siri correctly answered 66% of the questions. The new testing shows Siri is getting smarter, jumping to a 78.5% accuracy rate.
Whilst the smart home is still in its infancy, there are many different types of HomeKit accessory on the market. The HomeKit smart buttons help control other HomeKit accessories like lights or fans. Popular smart buttons available now include the Logitech POP Smart Button Kit, FIBARO The Button, and the Elgato Eve Button. Here’s how to set them up and start using them to control HomeKit scenes, lights and more …
Apple has seeded a private beta for HomePod to Apple corporate and (some) retail employees for a while. iGeneration is reporting that the HomePod OS 12.0 beta, presumably set to be released alongside iOS 12 in the fall, has several major new features for Siri on the HomePod.
The beta reportedly includes phone call features, allowing the user to start and answer calls from the HomePod, as well as Find My iPhone Siri command, and perhaps most dramatically — support for multiple timers are apparently on the cards.
Update: The utility is back! Intel has published a minor update to version 3.5.3, seemingly to address some instability issues. Panic over. Original story below.
The download link for the Intel Power Gadget, which reports info like Mac CPU temperature and current clock speed, has been conspicuously removed from the Intel website today. There’s no explanation on the page as to why the company suddenly removed the download, although it sure is convenient timing. The utility has been used by many tech reviewers to highlight possible thermal problems with the 6-core 2018 MacBook Pros.
Perhaps Apple or Intel have discovered inaccuracies in the tool’s reporting and is now in the process of updating it.
iFixit has followed up on its initial teardown with some focused testing on a the new third-generation keyboard present in the 2018 MacBook Pro. How well does the silicone membrane protect the butterfly mechanism? Pretty well. iFixit showered a 2017 and 2018 MacBook Pro in dust particles and then compared the result.
An internal Apple repair document obtained by MacGeneration appears to be the most direct evidence yet that the silicone covers found underneath each keycap in the 2018 MacBook Pro really is intended to make the keyboard more reliable, rather than ‘quieter’ as Apple marketed it.
In an article targeted at repair technicians, Apple writes ‘the keyboard has a membrane under the keycaps to prevent debris from entering the butterfly mechanism’. It also explains that spacebar design has changed and will require a new repair process.
In the last day or so, Apple has updated its list of HomeKit accessories with some seemingly bad news: all references to HomeKit doorbells have been removed. The page previously featured the August Doorbell Cam as ‘coming soon’.
Infamously, August first promised HomeKit support in 2016, and the Ring Video Doorbell has said that it has been ‘testing’ HomeKit integration for many months. It’s not clear what has caused Apple to remove the listings.
The TrueDepth camera system in iPhone X includes a small Infrared laser called a VCSEL that sprays dots onto the user’s face, which another sensor in the device then reads to create a 3D depth map and enables Face ID to function.
Digitimes reports companies in the VCSEL supply chain are reporting positive outlooks thanks to Apple’s upcoming fall lineup. The company is preparing to debut three new iPhones and two new iPads with Face ID.