When buying a new smartphone, it's important to consider the duration of software updates, as it impacts security and longevity. In a rare public commitment on Monday, thanks to the UK's new Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) regulations, Apple said it guarantees a minimum of five years of security updates for the iPhone 15 Pro Max. "In other words, the iPhone 15 is officially guaranteed to receive security updates until September 22, 2028," reports Android Authority. From the report: This, as VP of Engineering for Android Security & Privacy at Google Dave Kleidermacher points out, means that Apple is no longer offering the best security update policy in the industry. Both Samsung and Google guarantee seven years of not just security updates but also Android OS updates for their respective flagship devices, which is two years longer than what Apple guarantees.

To Apple's credit, though, it has long provided more than five years of security updates for its various iPhone devices. Some iPhones have received security updates six or more years after the initial release, which is far more support than the vast majority of Android devices receive. So, while Samsung and Google currently beat Apple in terms of how long they're guaranteeing software support, that doesn't mean iPhone users can't keep their phones for just as long, if not longer. They'll just need to hope Apple doesn't cut off support after the five-year minimum.

Apple has quietly added a Thread radio to nearly all of its newest iPads, MacBooks, and iMacs. The Verge reports: While the company doesn't list Thread on the specs of any of these products, FCC reports indicate that many of Apple's latest devices have had Thread radios tested for compliance. Generally, you don't test a radio that's not there. We found evidence of Thread testing in the following models: iPad Pro 13-inch (M4) (Wi-Fi + Cellular), iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) (Wi-Fi + Cellular), iPad Pro 11-inch (M4) (Wi-Fi), iPad Air 11-inch (M2) (Wi-Fi + Cellular), iPad Air 13-inch (M2) Wi-Fi, MacBook Air 15-inch (M3), MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3), MacBook Pro 14-inch (M3 Pro or M3 Max), MacBook Pro 16-inch (M3 Pro or M3 Max), iMac (M3, two ports), and iMac (M3, four ports).

The FCC requires manufacturers to list every radio contained in a device and to test them in every possible scenario to make sure they comply with its transmission regulations. Tom Sciorilli, director of certification for Thread Group, told The Verge that the FCC reports reference FCC 15.247, "which confirms the device will essentially 'stay in its lane' and not interfere with other radios when operating." The reports we found are tests of the IEEE 802.15.4 transmitter functionality -- 802.15.4 is the radio standard Thread runs on. While it supports a number of technologies, the reports mention Thread explicitly.

Thread is the primary wireless protocol for the new smart home standard Matter, which Apple helped develop and that is now the underlying architecture for its Apple Home smart home platform. A low-power, low-bandwidth, mesh networking protocol specifically designed for IoT devices, Thread is shown to be faster than Bluetooth and offers better range, making it ideal for connecting products like smart lights, locks, thermostats, and sensors. [...] So why is it there? The Apple Home app runs on Macs and iPads, and Thread radios could allow them to communicate directly with smart home devices and act as Thread border routers. It's possible Apple is planning to turn your Mac or iPad into a home hub, but iPads used to be home hubs, and the company discontinued that capability for its new Apple Home architecture. Those iPads didn't have Thread radios, though.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Popular app Bartender was quietly bought, and a shady certificate replacement, insertion of invasive telemetry, and a lack of transparent responses by the new owners has shaken confidence in the Mac community. Menu bar organization tool Bartender has been around for a long time. For most of its life, it had an excellent reputation, and a responsive developer who communicated clearly with users. That appears to have changed, recently. It all started with a quiet pair of app certificate shifts which went mostly unnoticed.

That is, until app monitoring service MacUpdater found out, and started asking questions. They posted a warning about the app, saying that "The company and developer behind Bartender was replaced in a silent and dubious matter." But, there's a lot more to the story than just that warning. CoreCode, the developer of MacUpdater, did a great deal of research on the new owners and the app situation prior to posting the warning. They detailed their discoveries in a Reddit thread on the matter. Research performed before the warning pointed out that blog entries on the Bartender website shifted to heavily search engine optimized content. This is in contrast to the prior informational entries previously posted by original developer Ben Surtees.

Apple is secretly developing robotic devices powered by generative AI, including a table-top robotic arm with an iPad-like display and a mobile robot for household chores, Bloomberg News is reporting, citing people familiar with the matter.

How will Apple protect user data while their requests are being processed by AI in applications like Siri?

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from Apple Insider: According to sources of The Information [four different former Apple employees who worked on the project], Apple intends to process data from AI applications inside a virtual black box.

The concept, known as "Apple Chips in Data Centers" internally, would involve only Apple's hardware being used to perform AI processing in the cloud. The idea is that it will control both the hardware and software on its servers, enabling it to design more secure systems. While on-device AI processing is highly private, the initiative could make cloud processing for Apple customers to be similarly secure... By taking control over how data is processed in the cloud, it would make it easier for Apple to implement processes to make a breach much harder to actually happen.

Furthermore, the black box approach would also prevent Apple itself from being able to see the data. As a byproduct, this means it would also be difficult for Apple to hand over any personal data from government or law enforcement data requests.
Processed data from the servers would be stored in Apple's "Secure Enclave" (where the iPhone stores biometric data, encryption keys and passwords), according to the article.

"Doing so means the data can't be seen by other elements of the system, nor Apple itself."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Twice before, this Virginia carpenter had awoken in the predawn to start his work day only to find one of his vans broken into. Tools he depends on for a living had been stolen, and there was little hope of retrieving them. Determined to shut down thieves, he said, he bought a bunch of Apple AirTags and hid the locator devices in some of his larger tools that hadn't been pilfered. Next time, he figured, he would track them.

It worked.

On Jan. 22, after a third break-in and theft, the carpenter said, he drove around D.C.'s Maryland suburbs for hours, following an intermittent blip on his iPhone, until he arrived at a storage facility in Howard County. He called police, who got a search warrant, and what they found in the locker was far more than just one contractor's nail guns and miter saws.

The storage unit, stuffed with purloined power tools, led detectives to similar caches in other places in the next four months — 12 locations in all, 11 of them in Howard County — and the recovery of about 15,000 saws, drills, sanders, grinders, generators, batteries, air compressors and other portable (meaning easily stealable) construction equipment worth an estimated $3 million to $5 million, authorities said.
Some were stolen as long ago as 2014, a police spokesperson told the Washington Post, coming from "hundreds if not thousands" of victims...

David Snow reports via Cult of Mac: A new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) shows Apple News+ growing its subscription rate about four times as fast as major news sites are. CIRP showed Apple increased its News+ subscriptions in the United States from 15% to 24% between 2020 to 2024, a 9% increase. In that same period, The New York Times and The Washington Post managed a 2% bump apiece and The Wall Street Journal managed a 3% increase. The results come from data measuring how many Apple product buyers say they subscribe to the News+ service.

CIRP also cited a report indicating that the Apple News+ partnership program is increasingly becoming a lifeline for news websites losing revenue, according to major publishers. And as far as the growth of Apple News+ subscription growth is concerned, it may keep growing as long as the user install base for devices keeps growing. "One-quarter of the U.S. base of Apple customers represents tens of millions of users, an enormous audience relative to what individual media outlets can expect on their own," CIRP noted.

Microsoft seems to be concerned about some of OpenAI's business dealings. From a report: Satya Nadella recently met with Sam Altman to discuss an apparent deal between OpenAI and Apple, The Information reported [hard-paywalled]. According to the outlet, the OpenAI CEO recently reached an agreement with the iPhone maker to incorporate some OpenAI services into Apple products. Nadella was reportedly concerned about the potential impact of a deal on Microsoft's product ambitions, per the report. Apple was said to be considering both Google and OpenAI for the deal, which could be worth billions.

If OpenAI has indeed reached an agreement with Apple, it would be a much-needed win for Altman. The tech boss has faced heightened scrutiny after former employees and board members publicly criticized him. Helen Toner, a former OpenAI director, recently accused Altman of lying to the board "multiple" times and "withholding information."

Apple prioritizes device durability over easier repairs, according to John Ternus, the company's head of hardware engineering, in a recent interview with YouTuber MKBHD. "It's objectively better for the customer to have that reliability," Ternus stated, adding that it is "ultimately better for the planet" due to significantly lower failure rates. Apple tests over 10,000 units of each product before release and incorporates real-world concerns into its testing suite.

Apple is seeking a senior engineer to help build a television and sports app for Android, a sign the company is finally bringing its TV+ service to the rival smartphone platform. From a report: In a job listing published in recent days, Apple said it's looking for someone to lead the development of "fun new features" and "help build an application used by millions to watch and discover TV and sports." The move suggests that the company is looking to gain market share in video streaming -- and is setting aside its rivalry with Android in order to chase additional users. It's rare for Apple to develop software for Google's Android, which competes with its iOS platform. The TV+ service, launched in 2019, is Apple's answer to Netflix or Disney+, and the company has spent heavily on feeding it with original content.

"Apple's done a fantastic job of really innovating on the Mac," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Wall Street Journal in a video interview this week.

. Then he said "We are gonna outperform them" with the upcoming Copilot+ laptops from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung that have been completely reengineered for AI — and begin shipping in less than four weeks. Satya Nadella: Qualcomm's got a new [ARM Snapdragon X] processor, which we've optimized Windows for. The battery lab, I've been using it now — I mean, it's 22 hours of continuous video playback... [Apple also uses ARM chips in its MacBooks]. We finally feel we have a very competitive product between Surface Pro and the Surface laptops. We have essentially the best specs when it comes to ARM-based silicon and performance or the NPU performance.

WSJ: Microsoft says the Surfaces are 58% faster than the MacBook Air with M3, and has 20% longer battery life.
The video includes a demonstration of local live translation powered by "small language models" stored on the device. ("It can translate live video calls or in-person conversations from 44 different languages into English. And it's fast.")

And in an accompanying article, the Journal's reporter also tested out the AI-powered image generator coming to Microsoft Paint.

As a longtime MS Paint stick-figure and box-house artist, I was delighted by this new tool. I typed in a prompt: "A Windows XP wallpaper with a mountain and sky." Then, as I started drawing, an AI image appeared in a new canvas alongside mine. When I changed a color in my sketch, it changed a color in the generated image. Microsoft says it still sends the prompt to the cloud to ensure content safety.
Privacy was also touched on. Discussing the AI-powered "Recall" search functionality, the Journal's reporter notes that users can stop it from taking screenshots of certain web sites or apps, or turn it off entirely... But they point out "There could be this reaction from some people that this is pretty creepy. Microsoft is taking screenshots of everything I do."

Nadella reminds them that "it's all being done locally, right...? That's the promise... That's one of the reasons why Recall works as a magical thing: because I can trust it, that it is on my computer."

Copilot will be powered by OpenAI's new GPT-4o, the Journal notes — before showing Satya Nadella saying "It's kind of like a new browser effectively." Satya Nadella: So, it's right there. It sees the screen, it sees the world, it hears you. And so, it's kind of like that personal agent that's always there that you want to talk to. You can interrupt it. It can interrupt you.
Nadella says though the laptop is optimized for Copilot, that's just the beginning, and "I fully expect Copilot to be everywhere" — along with its innovatively individualized "personal agent" interface. "It's gonna be ambient.... It'll go on the phone, right? I'll use it on WhatsApp. I'll use it on any other messaging platform. It'll be on speakers everywhere." Nadella says combining GPT-40 with Copilot's interface is "the type of magic that we wanna bring — first to Windows and everywhere else... The future I see is a computer that understands me versus a computer that I have to understand.

The interview ends when the reporter holds up the result — their own homegrown rendition of Windows XP's default background image "Bliss."

Apple once designed a Tetris clone that has been found on a prototype version of the third-generation iPod, indicating the company was experimenting with releasing the game on the music player. From a report: It's called Stacker and, obviously, is controlled via the iPod's scroll wheel. The software was spotted by X user AppleDemoYT, who is known for finding rare prototype devices. The prototype iPod is a "DVT" device, meaning it was a mid-stage device that was still in "Design Validation Testing." It has a model number of A1023, which is not a known model number of any iPod version.

The device runs a prototype version of iPodOS 2.0, which is where Stacker comes from. The pieces are moved from left to right using the scroll wheel and they fall when the middle button is pressed. The goal is to clear lines and score points. You know the deal. It's Tetris. It's not the only game found on the prototype iPod. There's something called Block0, which is likely an early version of Brick. The device also features a game called Klondike, which is likely an early version of Solitaire. The music player did eventually get some games, including the aforementioned Solitaire and Brick. AppleDemoYT asked former Apple VP Tony Fadell why Stacker was never released and he said it was because games didn't show up until a "later software release."

Apple has shed more light on the bizarre iOS 17.5 bug that caused long-deleted photos to mysteriously reappear on users' devices. In a statement to 9to5Mac, the iPhone maker clarified that the issue stemmed from a corrupted database on the device itself, not iCloud Photos. This means the photos were never fully erased from the device, but they also weren't synced to iCloud. Interestingly, these files could have hitched a ride to new devices through backups or direct transfers.

Apple executive Phil Schiller admitted in court on Wednesday that the company's court-mandated changes to its iPhone app store payment system have not significantly increased competition. The ongoing hearings in Oakland, California, are determining whether Apple is properly complying with an antitrust order to allow developers to display links to alternative payment options. Despite Apple's implementation of the changes in January, only a small number of apps have sought approval for external payment links.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has expressed frustration with Apple executives, questioning whether they understand the order's intent to increase competition. Schiller defended Apple's response as well-intentioned but acknowledged the need for further action to encourage more apps to utilize external payment options.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is working on all-screen foldable devices. Unlike its competitors, however, its focus seems less on foldable smartphones and tablets, and instead on an all-screen foldable laptop. Ming-Chi Kuo has previously reported that Apple was developing a 20.3-inch MacBook device for 2027, but today the analyst has shared several key new details about the futuristic MacBook model. One such detail is that Apple is now eyeing an earlier 2026 launch for the product.

Here are some of the key features Kuo expects to see in the all-screen MacBook:
1. Multiple foldable screen options are still possible, with the rumored 20.3-inch display potentially replaced by an 18.8-inch panel. The former would, when folded, resemble a current 14-15-inch MacBook, while the latter would correspond better to a modern day 13-14-inch model like the smaller MacBook Air.
2. A 2026 debut is now expected for the device, one year earlier than previously reported.
3. The MacBook is expected to receive an M5-series chip, which lines up with the expected timeline of the M4 spreading to the whole Mac lineup by the end of 2025.
4. Apple's goal is to provide a crease-free design for the foldable display.