Ben Lovejoy

An investigation by the Stanford Internet Observatory has found worrying volumes of CSAM on Mastodon. Of particular concern is that the child sexual abuse material included many known examples that should have been automatically detected by digital fingerprinting.

Researchers say that a large part of the issue is the open and decentralized nature of the social media platform …

A billion-dollar Apple lawsuit has been filed on behalf of more than 1,500 app developers, accusing the company of “abusive” commission levels on app sales and subscriptions.

The antitrust lawsuit says that Apple’s monopoly on the sale and distribution of iOS apps means that it is able to set its own commission levels, and that developers have no choice but to accept it …

Update: Details for all 10 states are now online.

Tax-free shopping is available both online and in stores. You’ll want to note the dates in your diary as some participating states give you as little as two or three days.

Sales tax holidays are a great time to buy Apple products in some US states, providing worthwhile savings. Apple has now posted details for the first six states, and we’re expecting either three or four more to follow …

If you’ve never tried one on, you may not know that the Apple Watch Ultra weight is almost twice that of the lightest Series 8, and still notably heavier than 45mm models.

That’s something Apple plans to change this year, according to a Chinese source who correctly leaked the launch of a yellow iPhone 14 model …

Technically, there won’t be any shortage of Vision Pro apps at launch, given that existing iPad apps will run on the platform. But that’s much like arguing that there was no shortage of iPad apps when the device was launched, because iPhone apps ran on the tablet.

Porting apps to Apple’s spatial computer in a way that takes full advantage of the very different environment of Vision Pro takes work – and early signs aren’t looking good …

One of the features of Drive.ai, a self-driving car startup acquired by Apple back in 2019, was the use of external displays intended to let pedestrians and other road users know what the car was doing. A new patent for Apple Car external displays shows how the Cupertino company might improve on this tech.

Drive.ai first fitted external displays to its test vehicles back in 2016, and improved on them in 2018, but Apple thinks more needs to be done …

It’s no surprise that Threads usage fell from the launch peak, as everyone wanted to check out the new kid on the block. But the bad news for Meta’s challenge to Twitter is that the number of active users – and time spent in the app – is continuing to fall …

Two reports yesterday suggested that there might be very limited iPhone 15 availability at launch. The biggest issue is said to be the slimmer bezels of the two Pro models, but it’s unclear as yet whether the non-Pro phones are likely to be affected by other production challenges.

If the issue does indeed only affect one or two models, then we already know what to expect, based on what happened with the iPhone 12 and iPhone 14 …

Reddit protests have been continuing, despite threats by the company to take over subreddits which refuse to end them. The company has now carried out its threat against one of the biggest subreddits – a move which seems set to backfire.

Additionally, a fun crowdsourced art project on Reddit is now being used to post messages protesting against the company’s decision to charge extortionate amounts for API access …

News that Apple has developed its own generative AI model – dubbed Apple GPT – caused a little flurry of excitement yesterday, with John Gruber noting that it caused AAPL’s stock price to briefly spike by 2.7%

Even investors seemed to quickly realise that the news doesn’t mean much, however, as most of that gain was lost by the end of the day …

The start of TSMC Arizona chip production – which will include chips for older Apple devices – has now been officially delayed by the company. Production was scheduled to begin in late 2024, and this has now been pushed back to early 2025.

Apple’s chipmaker had previously acknowledged that construction work had fallen well behind schedule, but had said at the time that this “[did] not necessarily mean” that initial chip production would be delayed …

A Bank of America (BoA) analyst, who correctly predicted that the iPhone 12 would not go on sale in September 2020, is now suggesting that we might see a similar iPhone 15 delay.

BofA Global Research analyst Wamsi Mohan said in an investment note that this year’s iPhone lineup may again go on sale in October rather than September …

iOS 17 has solved one of the biggest accessibility hurdles for iPhone users with limited movement: the dreaded ‘You need to unlock your iPhone first’ message.

Siri is of course a massive accessibility win for people like 9to5Mac friend and quadriplegic Colin Hughes, allowing voice control of a wide range of tasks. But until now, there’s been a major hurdle …

The Netflix Basic tier – which the company had previously attempted to hide – has now been withdrawn in both the US and UK, following the same move in Canada last month.

Removing the package will now force anyone wanting to dump the ads to pay more than twice as much for the Standard plan …

It’s as yet unclear how many Vision Pro games we can expect. Apple very much positioned its spatial computer as a productivity and communications device – and the price certainly makes it an expensive proposition for gaming use – but the company did mention during the keynote that Unity would be providing a visionOS games development platform, PolySpatial.

Unity is now inviting visionOS developers to apply for access to a beta, making it easy to port existing Unity-based games to the headset …

The controversial Apple–Amazon deal struck back in 2018 has been found to be illegal by Spanish antitrust regulators, who have fined the company a total of $218M.

The investigation into alleged price-fixing took two years to complete, and follows similar ones in Germany and Italy – with concerns also expressed in the US …

The White House has announced a plan intended to improve the security of smart home tech. The government will test everything from smart speakers to Wi-Fi routers, awarding a US Cyber Trust Mark logo to products which pass the tests.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will set the standards to be met, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will manage the program …

Apple researcher Aaron spotted backend code showing that Apple Pay Morocco has been activated, and CIH Bank has announced that it is now supporting the service.

Morocco is only the second African country to see Apple Pay rolled out, after South Africa …