Ben Lovejoy

Apple has now moved a total of $7B worth of iPhone production out of China and into India, according to an unnamed government official cited in a new report.

The same official says that Apple plans to hit $40B within the next five years, as the company accelerates plans to reduce its dependence on China …

Rivos, a stealth startup, was accused of stealing Apple chip secrets by poaching staff who took with them “gigabytes of sensitive System-on-a-Chip specifications and design files.” The startup has now countersued the iPhone maker.

The countersuit argues that the restrictions Apple places on staff seeking employment elsewhere are overly broad, and intended to make employees scared to leave the company …

iFixit has done an Apple Watch Ultra 2 teardown, before doing the same thing with the Series 9 – and the internals don’t reveal any significant changes.

In apparent confirmation that the new Double Tap feature is just a software update to the existing accessibility feature, neither teardown revealed any new hardware relating to this …

When I say first impressions of the iPhone 15 Pro Max, I mean just that: I’ve owned the phone for a couple of hours, and so far done nothing other than set it up, play with it a little, and test the new 5x telephoto camera.

I do have to say that the delivery and setup experience wasn’t quite as smooth as it could have been …

We first heard back in June that Spotify Supremium might be the name given to the company’s long-awaited lossless audio tier, and that now appears to have been confirmed by code found within the app.

The code also contains a reference to pricing of $19.99/month, which is in line with a previous report – but may be a tough sell …

The iPhone 15 Pro Max stands out from the other models in this year’s lineup mostly because of the periscope lens, which extends last year’s 3x optical zoom to 5x this year. But Samsung’s main competing phone – the Galaxy S23 Ultra – offers 10x optical zoom. Why doesn’t the latest flagship iPhone do the same?

Apple says there are three reasons for this. Of these, I’d say one is weak, one moderately persuasive, and the third is a killer argument …

Attempts to design an Apple modem chip to replace the Qualcomm radio chips used in iPhones have been ongoing since at least 2018 – but some five years later have been deemed a failure by engineers who worked on the project.

Even by last year, the chip Apple managed to produce was found to be slower than Qualcomm ones, prone to overheating, and so large it would have occupied more than half the space inside an iPhone …

The British government’s hugely controversial Online Safety Bill has today passed in the second chamber of Parliament, and after six years of debate is now set to become law.

While Apple’s iMessage and other end-to-end encrypted messaging apps were saved from being outlawed by the bill, the government hasn’t yet given up the fight …

In what appears to be the latest in a series of T-Mobile security breaches, customers are reporting that they are seeing the personal data of other users when logged into their accounts.

Data accessible includes sensitive information like credit card details, home address, purchase history, and current credit balance …

The iPhone 14 iFixit repairability rating has been dramatically reduced, after the company listened to feedback from consumers and independent repair shops, and admitted that it didn’t take into account the huge barrier imposed by Apple’s parts pairing process.

The phone’s repairability rating has now been reduced from 7/10 to 4/10, which moves the product from “recommended” to “not recommended” …

Update: In seeming response to the White House comments, China has now accused the US of hacking Huawei servers and stealing data.

The iPhone versus Huawei battle is back on in China, following the launch of the Mate 60 Pro (yeah, that’s not an iPod, despite appearances). Sales of the Chinese company’s smartphones plummeted last year, after US tech sanctions blocked it from purchasing 5G radio chips.

The fact that Huawei has now solved this problem has raised a lot of eyebrows, including those of the US National Security Advisor, who commented on it during a recent White House press briefing …

Philips Hue Matter support was first promised by March of this year, before quietly admitting to a delay just a few days ahead of the deadline.

Whatever caused that delay has now been addressed, and Matter integration is now available within the Hue app …

Windows PCs powered by future Intel chips will rival the performance of Apple Silicon Macs, claims the company’s CEO, Pat Gelsinger.

No such claim was made for this year’s chip, Meteor Lake, which will debut on December 14 – but Gelsinger says things will change with Arrow Lake, Lunar Lake, and Panther Lake …

Sure, current iPhones can send data via satellites in emergencies, but two new demonstrations show that we might soon be able to routinely make voice phone calls via satellite connectivity. You can watch the call and 5G demo in the video below.

The test phone call – along with a separate 5G data download – was made from Maui, Hawaii, to Madrid using a new low Earth orbit satellite …

While we’re still waiting to hear whether a federal TikTok ban will be imposed, some 18 state attorneys general are backing Montana’s state-level ban on the short video app. The ban is due to take effect on January 1, 2024.

TikTok is seeking to overturn the ban on the basis that it violates the free speech rights of its video creators, granted by the First Amendment. The app is one of the most popular in the world, used by around a third of the US population …

After an analyst described the Arizona TSMC plant as a “paperweight” – due to the fact that all the chips it makes will have to be sent to Taiwan for the final stage of production – the state’s governor has claimed that this might change.

Governor Katie Hobbs said during a visit to TSMC in Taiwan that the state and the Apple chipmaker are “talking” about upgrading the capabilities of the plant …

iPhone 15 pre-orders are strongly up on those seen for last year’s iPhone 14 lineup, according to a new analyst report.

Wedbush says it’s seeing some 10-12% more pre-orders for this year’s iPhone 15 lineup than it did in the same period last year – and that’s not the only good news for Apple …

While Apple made much of the iPhone 15 Pro weight reduction, achieved by swapping out the stainless steel frame for a titanium one, it did create something of a mystery.

The weight reduction of the iPhone 15 Pro versus last year’s model is relatively modest, yet almost everyone present at the launch event – including our own Chance Miller – said that they could really feel the difference …

Although the previous White House incumbent threatened a US TikTok ban and then quietly dropped it, the idea never quite went away. A new report says that fresh meetings have taken place between Bytedance, the Chinese owner of the app, and US government officials.

Things kicked off back in the summer of 2020 when the previous administration said that it was considering the possibility of banning TikTok over unspecified security concerns that data could be used by the Chinese government. Since the app uses very little personal data, the nature of these fears was not explained …