Today we are announcing the most significant cryptographic security upgrade in iMessage history with the introduction of PQ3, a groundbreaking post-quantum cryptographic protocol that advances the state of the art of end-to-end secure messaging. With compromise-resilient encryption and extensive defenses against even highly sophisticated quantum attacks, PQ3 is the first messaging protocol to reach what we call Level 3 security — providing protocol protections that surpass those in all other widely deployed messaging apps. To our knowledge, PQ3 has the strongest security properties of any at-scale messaging protocol in the world.
Apple’s security team claims to have achieved a breakthrough “that advances the state of the art of end-to-end messaging.” With the upcoming release of iOS 17.4, iPadOS 17.4, macOS 14.4, and watchOS 10.4, the company is bringing a new cryptographic protocol called PQ3 to iMessage that it purports to offer even more robust encryption and defenses against sophisticated quantum computing attacks.
Such attacks aren’t yet a broad threat today, but Apple is preparing for a future where bad actors try to unwind current encryption standards and iMessage’s security layers with the help of massively powerful computers. Such scenarios could start playing out by the end of the decade, but experts agree that the tech industry need to start defending against them well in advance.
The world’s digital information relies on encryption to keep it secure. Hard drives containing medical data are encrypted, as are the secrets held by national militaries and intelligence agencies. Online credit-card payments, digital signatures, readings from smart meters, the computers in driverless cars and the chips in passports all depend on algorithms, developed in the 1970s, that turn easy-to-read data into encrypted ciphers accessible only to those with a mathematical ‘key’ to unlock them. Those algorithms, in turn, depend on mathematical functions that are straightforward to use to create keys, but difficult to run in reverse to reveal them: the mathematical equivalent of frying an egg.
If practical quantum computers arrive, however, these hard-to-solve problems will suddenly become child’s play. RSA, an encryption scheme that allows systems to share keys, could take a classical computer most of the lifetime of the Universe to reverse-engineer. A quantum computer, researchers estimate, could do the same job in 8 hours. The Diffie–Hellman key exchange, another widely used cryptographic method, named after its two inventors, could also be easily reversed by a quantum machine. A different type of scheme, the Advanced Encryption Standard, is not considered to be under serious threat by computational advances, but it’s often used in conjunction with the other methods and can’t replace their secret-keeping abilities.
I never really expected to cry a hundred different ways, but I’d hoped to feel connected in just as many. This is what mixed-reality headset makers promise, along with the assurance that wearers will be “transported.” Instead, I felt so heavily the weight of aloneness—and the headset—that it distracted from the stories that had been constructed in front of me. I didn’t feel any more connected to the movies than I would on a flatscreen TV. It’s misguided to give credit to a computer for manifesting our emotions, instead of simply providing another gateway to them.
With the Vision Pro, Apple did a reasonably good job of accommodating as many face shapes as it could. But if it truly wants spatial computing to be a thing, it needs to brainstorm ways to make it comfortable enough for the vast majority of people to wear for several hours at a time. Some people are lucky because that’s already their experience. For me, the headset is relatively comfortable. Today, that wasn’t enough. I only made it two-thirds of the way through this article before I had to take it off.
“We said, ‘We’re going to make the best scores app that you could possibly make,'” Cue said.
You can select the teams and leagues that you follow—it’s the same following list you might have already made in the News or TV apps—and the main view of the Apple Sports app can be toggled from My Leagues to My Teams, depending on what scores you want to see. When games are live, they’re updated as close to realtime as possible, right down to the ticking clock. You can also back up to the previous day to see how your team did the night before, or tap Upcoming to see what’s happening later on in the week.
Apple Sports is indeed incredibly fast to load and update. Nearly instantaneous. You might think, “So what, it’s just loading scores and stats, of course it’s fast”, but the truth is ad tech, combined with poor programming, has made most sports apps slow to load. Most apps, period, really. Just being very fast to load ought not be a hugely differentiating factor in 2024, but it is.
In terms of data, the app has everything I would expect as a basketball fan, including play-by-plays, team stats and full box scores. However, you can only go back in time one day to see data from previous games.
In a press release today, Apple says that a new film showcasing the 2023 MLS Cup Playoffs is coming soon for all Vision Pro users. The film was captured in 8K 3D with a 180-degree field of view with Spatial Audio, according to Apple.
Apple has warned an Australian proposal to force tech companies to scan cloud and messaging services for child-abuse material risks “undermining fundamental privacy and security protections” and could lead to mass surveillance with global repercussions.
We’ve now reached stage three: Apple itself using the argument it initially rejected.
You can certainly spend less to get something smaller, so it’s hard to recommend this on any dispassionate basis. The quality is there, and far be it from me to suggest there’s no value in paying more for something that looks nice. If you like the look of this, go for it, but definitely go in knowing it’s gonna be a chunky item in your travel bag.
Matting and framing photos results in a more polished, professional look. That holds true in the digital realm as well, and the Like A Frame app for iOS makes it easy to do just that.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes, despite having a good Internet connection, iCloud just won’t synchronise properly, leaving your Mac and devices with different information? Apple has just explained why this can happen even when iCloud is working fine, and your Mac and devices appear well connected to it. This may be the result of iCloud throttling the sync that should be occurring, and there’s little or nothing you can do about it.
Apple appeared to have blessed this use case, as the tech giant went on to approve 47 more updates to Insight Timer’s app over the course of a 12-month period. When a question arose, Insight Timer explained that these were donations — it doesn’t take a cut of that revenue — and Apple would approve the app.
Late last year, those approvals stopped. An app reviewer told Insight Timer that these donations were no longer considered monetary gifts — they were now “digital content.” That meant they were also now subject to Apple’s commissions. This decision doesn’t hurt Insight Timer’s bottom line, as the app’s main business is subscriptions. Instead, it hurts the community of teachers who generate additional funds via users’ donations. Now, with Apple demanding 30% of that revenue, the teachers are getting a 30% pay cut overnight, so to speak.
Epic’s main argument for countering Apple’s fee bid is that prevailing defendants are not entitled to recover attorney compensation for successfully defending against antitrust claims.
In its court filing, Epic called Apple’s demand for $73.4 million in fees “striking.” It said at most the iPhone maker was entitled to a “far narrower” amount tied to Epic’s breach of Apple’s developer agreement.
Can't wait for MacBook Quantum. I wonder where the crack marketing team will go to, after big cats and California landmarks.
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