Apple told The Washington Post it is easing a key restriction on iPhone repairs. Starting this fall, owners of an iPhone 15 or newer will be able to get their broken devices fixed with used parts — including screens, batteries and cameras — without any change in functionality.
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The company also announced on Thursday that it is extending its anti-theft Activation Lock feature to the parts inside iPhones. If you get your phone fixed by a less than scrupulous repair outfit that used parts from a stolen iPhone, those parts can’t be configured to work correctly.
“‘Parts pairing’ is used a lot outside and has this negative connotation,” Apple senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Ternus, tells TechCrunch. “I think it’s led people to believe that we somehow block third-party parts from working, which we don’t. The way we look at it is, we need to know what part is in the device, for a few reasons. One, we need to authenticate that it’s a real Apple biometric device and that it hasn’t been spoofed or something like that. … Calibration is the other one.”
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“Parts pairing, regardless of what you call it, is not evil,” says Ternus. “We’re basically saying, if we know what module’s in there, we can make sure that when you put our module in a new phone, you’re gonna get the best quality you can. Why’s that a bad thing?”
If you receive emails sent to the addresses known to Apple, and messages to Messages, notifying you of a threat against you, confirm this in iCloud.com and follow the advice given. Otherwise, it’s most likely to be a scam or phishing attack.
Apple's removal of the term "state-sponsored" from its description of threat notifications comes after it repeatedly faced pressure from the Indian government on linking such breaches to state actors, said a source with direct knowledge.
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Apple held extensive talks with Indian officials before releasing the latest set of alerts, the source added. It was not clear if other governments have also raised similar concerns.
The company, which released its first Macs with M3 chips five months ago, is already nearing production of the next generation — the M4 processor — according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new chip will come in at least three main varieties, and Apple is looking to update every Mac model with it, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven’t been announced.
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Apple is aiming to release the updated computers beginning late this year and extending into early next year. There will be new iMacs, a low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, and Mac minis — all with M4 chips. But the company’s plans could change. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.
On Thursday, the company announced it’s expanding its fediverse integrations to 400 more Flipboard creators and introducing fediverse notifications in the Flipboard app itself.
What’s particularly distressing to me is that, although I can imagine a world in which careful regulation and avoidance of algorithms makes phones less addictive, I cannot imagine myself freed from such stubborn vanities.
Ultimately, both Haidt and his critics overstate their evidence. The former’s case isn’t strong enough to prove that iPhones “destroyed” Gen Z, but it also isn’t so weak that it can be dismissed as the mere byproduct of a moral panic.
Apple's bid to dismiss a lawsuit valued at nearly $1 billion was rejected on Friday, with a judge ruling it must face allegations it charged more than 1,500 UK-based developers unfair commission fees on purchases of apps and other content.
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Lenon said that Ennis' lawyers had a realistic prospect of establishing that "Apple's overcharging of commission to app developers based in the UK in relation to commerce transacted on non-UK storefronts did amount to conduct implemented in the UK".
If Mark Gurman's rumor-mongering of the M4 updates to the entire Macintosh line is to be believed, it is, to me, still slightly disappointing that Apple is still not able to update the entire Mac line at one go.
But, come to think of it, even the iPhone line is not updated entirely at one go anymore -- if we are talking about the chip that is sitting inside the devices.
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