Todd Haselton from CNBC reviews Apple Fitness+, with some thoughts on how it compares with Peloton's similar app. Here's an excerpt from his report: Apple's subscription fitness app, Fitness+, launches Monday. I've been using it for the past several days and I think it offers a nice variety of workouts that people will like. You need an Apple Watch to take the prerecorded exercise classes, which are available on iPhones, iPads and the Apple TV. It's a smart way for Apple to make the Apple Watch even stickier. If people get really into the fitness classes, like I have, it will be yet another way Apple keeps people locked in to its ecosystem of products. Why buy another phone, tablet or watch if you really like Fitness+? It also comes at a great time, when people aren't in gyms and are at home looking for ways to exercise.

Like other fitness apps, including Peloton's, which starts at $12.99 a month for classes that don't need the company's connected spin bike, you don't need anything to use it. But, you'll get more out of it if you have any indoor cycle, treadmill, rowing machine or free weights, since some of the classes require equipment. But you don't need anything special. I've been riding a hand-me-down exercise bike, for example. Fitness+ costs $9.99 a month or $79.99 a year. It's also part of the Premier Apple One plan, which costs $29.95 per month, and includes other Apple products like Apple Music, Apple TV+ and extra iCloud storage bundled together at a discount.

Apple is officially launching its so-called "nutrition label" privacy disclosures for all iOS device owners running the latest version of iOS 14. The Verge reports: Apple says the new labels will be required for apps on all of its platforms -- that includes iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS -- and they will have to be up to date and accurate every time a developer submits a new update. Apple is also holding itself to the same standard, something the company clarified last week when Facebook-owned WhatsApp criticized the company for an apparent inconsistency in its requirements, before Apple said it, too, will provide labels for all its own software. The company's own first-party apps will all have the same disclosures on their App Store product pages. In the event an app doesn't have an App Store product page because it cannot be removed, like the Messages app, Apple says it will be providing privacy label information on the web. Every piece of software on the App Store will also have its privacy label viewable on the web, too.

As for how the labels are structured, Apple has broken down data collection into three categories: "data used to track you," "data linked to you," and "data not linked to you." Tracking in this context means the app developer is linking data from the app -- like personal information, or data collected from your device, such as location data -- with other data from other companies' apps or websites for the purpose of targeted advertising or some other ad-related metric. Apple says it's also using the term tracking here to mean sharing user or device information with companies that sell it, like data brokers.

The "data linked to you" portion of the label is any data that can be used to identify you. That means data gleaned from using the app or having an account with the service or platform, and any data pulled from the device itself that could be used to create a profile for advertising purposes. "Data not linked to you" is the portion of the privacy label that clarifies when certain data types, like location data or browsing history, are not being linked to you in any identifiable fashion. Apple has specific, developer-focused information on the new labels at its developer portal page, with more general information available on the consumer-facing page.

The international news agency AFP reports on "a violent rampage at a Taiwanese-run iPhone factory in southern India" leading to over 100 arrests. About 2,000 workers were involved in the protest, reports the Verge, citing the Indian Express newspaper.

The workers are protesting over allegations of unpaid wages and exploitation, according to AFP. "Local media reported workers saying they had not been paid for up to four months and were being forced to do extra shifts..." Workers at the Taiwanese-run Wistron Infocomm Manufacturing near Bangalore smashed glass panels with rods and flipped cars on their side... CCTV cameras, fans and lights were torn down, while a car was set on fire, footage shared on social media showed...

A local trade union leader alleged that there was "brutal exploitation" of factory workers in sweatshop conditions at the iPhone manufacturing plant. "The state government has allowed the company to flout the basic rights," Satyanand, who uses one name, told The Hindu newspaper... Labour unrest is not uncommon in India, with workers paid poorly and given few or no social security benefits.

"Cloudflare, Apple, and Fastly have co-designed and proposed a new DNS standard to tackle ongoing privacy issues associated with DNS," reports ZDNet.

Cloudflare calls it "a practical approach for improving privacy" that "aims to improve the overall adoption of encrypted DNS protocols without compromising performance and user experience..." Third-parties, such as ISPs, find it more difficult to trace website visits when DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is enabled. DoH deployment is on the cards for many major browser providers, although rollout plans are ongoing. Now, Oblivious DNS over HTTPS (ODoH) has been proposed by Cloudflare — together with partners PCCW Global, Surf, and Equinix — to improve on these models by adding an additional layer of public key encryption and a network proxy...

The overall aim of ODoH is to decouple client proxies from resolvers. A network proxy is inserted between clients and DoH servers — such as Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1's public DNS resolver — and the combination of both this and public key encryption "guarantees that only the user has access to both the DNS messages and their own IP address at the same time," according to Cloudflare... "The client behaves as it does in DNS and DoH, but differs by encrypting queries for the target, and decrypting the target's responses..."

Test clients for the code have been provided to the open source community to encourage experimentation with the proposed standard. It can take years before support is enabled by vendors for new DNS standards, but Eric Rescorla, Firefox's CTO, has already indicated that Firefox will "experiment" with ODoH.

Apple has started building its own cellular modem for future devices, a move that would replace components from Qualcomm, Apple's top chip executive told staff on Thursday. From a report: Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies, made the disclosure in a town hall meeting with Apple employees, according to people familiar with the comments. "This year, we kicked off the development of our first internal cellular modem which will enable another key strategic transition," he said. "Long-term strategic investments like these are a critical part of enabling our products and making sure we have a rich pipeline of innovative technologies for our future." A cellular modem is one of the most important parts of a smartphone, enabling phone calls and connection to the internet via cellular networks. Srouji said the $1 billion acquisition of Intel's modem business in 2019 helped Apple build a team of hardware and software engineers to develop its own cellular modem.

Apple has moved its self-driving car unit under the leadership of top artificial intelligence executive John Giannandrea, who will oversee the company's continued work on an autonomous system that could eventually be used in its own car, Bloomberg reports. From the report: The project, known as Titan, is run day-to-day by Doug Field. His team of hundreds of engineers have moved to Giannandrea's artificial intelligence and machine-learning group, according to people familiar with the change. Previously, Field reported to Bob Mansfield, Apple's former senior vice president of hardware engineering. Mansfield has now fully retired from Apple, leading to Giannandrea taking over.

Giannandrea joined Apple in 2018 as its vice president of AI Strategy and Machine Learning before being promoted to Apple's executive team as a senior vice president later that year. He ran Google's machine-learning and search teams before that. At Apple, in addition to the car project, he is in charge of Siri and machine-learning technologies across Apple's products. Mansfield initially retired from Apple in 2012, only to return for less than a year as its senior vice president in charge of chip technology. Mansfield stepped down from that role in 2013 and then remained as a part-time consultant.

The iPhone's original -- and unofficial -- app store has sued Apple, accusing the company of having a monopoly on the distribution of apps. Cydia, an app store created and launched in 2007 by Jay "Saurik" Freeman, one of the original jailbreakers filed the lawsuit against Apple on Thursday. From a report: "Were it not for Apple's anti competitive acquisition and maintenance of an illegal monopoly over iOS app distribution, users today would actually be able to choose how and where to locate and obtain iOS apps, and developers would be able to use the iOS app distributor of their choice," the lawsuit reads. Before Apple created the App Store, Freeman and a group of iPhone hackers created an unofficial app store where users that were willing to jailbreak -- a technique to exploit one or more bug to disable the iPhone security mechanism called code-signing enforcement that allows for only Apple-approved code to run on the phone -- could download and install apps. In 2010, according to Freeman, Cydia had around 4.5 million users.

Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]: In 2014, Apple executives became alarmed when China enacted a new labor law meant to protect workers' rights. The law required that no more than 10% of a factory's workforce be temporary workers. Typically these employees have fewer benefits and legal protections than permanent ones, but Apple's suppliers increasingly relied on them in China's tightening labor market. Apple surveyed 362 of its supplier factories in China that year and discovered that nearly half were over the quota for temporary workers. Eighty factories used temporary workers for more than half their labor force, according to an internal Apple presentation reviewed by The Information. Apple asked its suppliers to come up with plans to reduce their use of temporary workers by a March 2016 deadline, when a two-year grace period for the law expired. However, by the time the law went into effect, little progress had been made.

According to four former Apple employees familiar with its labor issues, Apple for years took no major action against its suppliers for violating the temp-worker labor law out of concerns it would create costs, drain resources and delay product launches. Three of the ex-Apple employees were members of its supplier responsibility team, which is in charge of monitoring violations and enforcing penalties, while the fourth was a senior manager familiar with its operations in China. The former employees, as well as a review of internal Apple presentations and the company's own data on factory hiring between 2013 and 2018, suggests that Apple's strategy for managing its supply chain made it difficult for its three biggest contract manufacturers -- Foxconn Technology, Quanta Computer and Pegatron -- to remain compliant with the labor restrictions. The issue surfaced again publicly last year when Apple admitted that Foxconn had broken the law at its massive iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, which can employ as many as 300,000 workers. Apple says it requires suppliers to abide by local laws and pledges to remove those that won't comply.

Right after the Apple event in October, Samsung mocked the company for not including the power adapter in the iPhone 12 box and also removing it from the older models. Now, as some rumors have predicted, the Galaxy S21's documentation suggests that it will also not come with a charger included in the box. 9to5Mac reports: As reported by Brazilian website Tecnoblog, the new Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+, and Galaxy S21 Ultra have just been approved by ANATEL in Brazil, which is the equivalent agency to the FCC in the United States. The new devices have the codenames SM-G991B/DS, SM-G996B/DS, and SM-G998B/DS, respectively. While the documentation filed at ANATEL doesn't reveal much detail about upcoming Galaxy smartphones, it does reveal a noteworthy change in the lineup of Samsung's phones for the next year. ANATEL says that all three new Galaxy S21 models will not have a charger included in the box. Headphones will not be included either.

More than a week after Black Friday, Apple's announced its AirPods Max over-ear headphones for $549. It's available for preorder now, and will ship Dec. 15. From a report: Apple said its AirPods Max are designed with similar features to its $249 in-ear AirPods Pro, but in an over-ear design. As a result, it offers many of the same features as its AirPods cousins, including simple setup and connections, active noise cancellation, transparency mode to pipe sound from the outside world into your ears along with whatever you're listening to, and "spatial" simulated surround-sound audio. It also comes in five colors, including silver, green and pink. "With AirPods Max, we are bringing that magical AirPods experience to a stunning over-ear design with high-fidelity audio," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in a statement Tuesday.

California is partnering with Apple and Google on an app to let people use their phones to track potential exposure to COVID-19. CNET reports: The digital system uses Bluetooth signals from people's phones to alert them if they've been in contact with someone who's tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The project takes advantage of two of the world's most popular operating systems -- Apple's iOS and Google's Android -- to potentially reach billions of people. To use the features, people can download the app, called CA Notify, starting Thursday. On iPhones, people can turn on the alerts in their phone settings. The companies said they intend to shut down the tools after they are no longer needed to fight the pandemic.

Apple is planning a series of new Mac processors for introduction as early as 2021 that are aimed at outperforming Intel's fastest. From a report: Chip engineers at the Cupertino, California-based technology giant are working on several successors to the M1 custom chip, Apple's first Mac main processor that debuted in November. If they live up to expectations, they will significantly outpace the performance of the latest machines running Intel chips, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the plans aren't yet public. Apple's M1 chip was unveiled in a new entry-level MacBook Pro laptop, a refreshed Mac mini desktop and across the MacBook Air range. The company's next series of chips, planned for release as early as the spring and later in the fall, are destined to be placed across upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, both entry-level and high-end iMac desktops, and later a new Mac Pro workstation, the people said.

[...] The current M1 chip inherits a mobile-centric design built around four high-performance processing cores to accelerate tasks like video editing and four power-saving cores that can handle less intensive jobs like web browsing. For its next generation chip targeting MacBook Pro and iMac models, Apple is working on designs with as many as 16 power cores and four efficiency cores, the people said. While that component is in development, Apple could choose to first release variations with only eight or 12 of the high-performance cores enabled depending on production, they said. Chipmakers are often forced to offer some models with lower specifications than they originally intended because of problems that emerge during fabrication. For higher-end desktop computers, planned for later in 2021 and a new half-sized Mac Pro planned to launch by 2022, Apple is testing a chip design with as many as 32 high-performance cores.

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst calls Qualcomm "a little too unbothered by Apple's M1 Macs" Qualcomm executives brushed off a question about Apple's new M1-based Macs during a question-and-answer session at the company's Snapdragon Summit today, where Qualcomm announced a new flagship smartphone chipset but no upgrades to its year-old chips for PCs... In general, reviews of Qualcomm-powered laptops such as the Microsoft Surface Pro X have celebrated the devices' long battery life, but lamented problems with third-party apps that were originally coded for Intel processors. That stands in stark contrast to Apple's new M1-based Macs, which don't seem to be slowed down as badly by older software...

"It's a great validation of what we've been doing for the past few years and [Qualcomm's product line] is just going to get stronger and stronger as we broaden our scope," said Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm SVP for mobile. Katouzian made sure to subtly call out ways in which Qualcomm's always-connected PCs are superior to Apple's newest Macs. The Macs lack 4G connectivity and still have poor-quality, 720p front-facing cameras... Katouzian also pointed out that (presumably unlike Apple) Qualcomm addresses "many tiers...and many price points" with its 7c, 8c, and 8cx laptop chipsets, letting Windows laptop makers drive prices well below the MacBook Air's $999 list price.

The core problem with Qualcomm's always-connected PC strategy is one that Qualcomm itself can't fix. While Qualcomm could, and probably will, soon announce a laptop chip that's based on the new Snapdragon 888 and has a level of raw power closer to Apple's M1, it's really down to Microsoft, as well as peripheral and app makers to solve the platform incompatibilities that have frustrated PC reviewers.
Hot Hardware cites Microsoft's promises of changes come in future updates to Windows 10, arguing that "with the arrival of x64 emulation and a growing library of native Arm64 apps, Windows 10 on Arm is going to be an even more powerful platform." From a performance perspective, while running Windows 10 on Arm, these [Snapdragon 8cx] chips may currently be at a disadvantage to the Apple M1, but some day in the not so distant future that might not be the case. We have no doubt that Qualcomm is likely working on a new Windows PC-centric SoC that is based on Snapdragon 888 or similar architecture. Qualcomm has promised a 25 percent uplift in CPU and a 35% lift in GPU performance over the Snapdragon 865, with the Snapdragon 888, which already offers a big boost over the previous gen Snapdragon 855/8cx. So, Qualcomm has the potential to put up a strong showing against the Apple M1, whenever its next-generation Snapdragon PC chip launches.
That may be, but John Gruber at Daring Fireball argues that currently "M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux." Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. Well, that just doesn't happen, your instincts tell you. One company, even a company like Apple, doesn't just embarrass the entire rest of a highly-competitive longstanding industry. But just because something hasn't happened — or hasn't happened in a very long while — doesn't mean it can't happen. And in this case, it just happened... M1 Macs completely upend what we can and should expect from PCs. It's a breakthrough along the lines of the iPhone itself in 2007.

9to5Mac reports that Apple announced a repair program for "a small percentage" of iPhone 11s manufactured between November 2019 and May 2020 where the display stops responding to touch: The replacement program is exclusive to the regular iPhone 11 model and does not apply to the iPhone 11 Pro or iPhone 11 Pro Max. Users can check the Apple Support website to find out if their iPhone 11 is eligible for the replacement program using its serial number... Apple will replace the affected iPhone 11 for free.

The repair program covers affected iPhone 11 models for two years after the first retail sale of the unit. Apple may refuse free technical support for devices with physical damages.

45 years after co-founding Apple with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak is starting a business in the green tech and blockchain space called Efforce. CNBC reports: Efforce, which has been in stealth mode for almost a year, is a marketplace for corporate or industrial buildering owners to have "green" projects funded. According to Efforce, "investors can participate in energy efficiency projects buy acquiring tokenized future savings," while companies benefit from such improvements "at no cost." Using blockchain, "a smart contract redistributes the resulting savings to token holders and the companies without intermediaries based on exact consumption/savings data."

According to Wozniak, "energy consumption and CO2 emissions worldwide have grown exponentially, leading to climate change and extreme consequences to our environment. We can improve our energy footprint and lower our energy consumption without changing our habits. We can save the environment simply by making more energy improvements," he said a statement about the company. Wozniak created Efforce "to be the first decentralized platform that allows everyone to participate and benefit financially from worldwide energy efficiency projects, and create meaningful environmental change," he said. The company's cryptocurrency token, trading under the token named WOZX, was made public on Dec. 3 on HBTC, a marketplace for decentralized currencies, and will launch on Bithumb Global, another marketplace for decentralized currencies next week, according to a Medium post about the company.

Apple has always gone out of its way to build features for users with disabilities, and VoiceOver on iOS is an invaluable tool for anyone with a vision impairment -- assuming every element of the interface has been manually labeled. But the company just unveiled a brand new feature that uses machine learning to identify and label every button, slider and tab automatically. From a report: Screen Recognition, available now in iOS 14, is a computer vision system that has been trained on thousands of images of apps in use, learning what a button looks like, what icons mean and so on. Such systems are very flexible -- depending on the data you give them, they can become expert at spotting cats, facial expressions or, as in this case, the different parts of a user interface. The result is that in any app now, users can invoke the feature and a fraction of a second later every item on screen will be labeled. And by "every," they mean every -- after all, screen readers need to be aware of every thing that a sighted user would see and be able to interact with, from images (which iOS has been able to create one-sentence summaries of for some time) to common icons (home, back) and context-specific ones like "..." menus that appear just about everywhere. The idea is not to make manual labeling obsolete -- developers know best how to label their own apps, but updates, changing standards and challenging situations (in-game interfaces, for instance) can lead to things not being as accessible as they could be.

Dan Goodin, writing for ArsTechnica: Earlier this year, Apple patched one of the most breathtaking iPhone vulnerabilities ever: a memory corruption bug in the iOS kernel that gave attackers remote access to the entire device -- over Wi-Fi, with no user interaction required at all. Oh, and exploits were wormable -- meaning radio-proximity exploits could spread from one nearby device to another, once again, with no user interaction needed. This Wi-Fi packet of death exploit was devised by Ian Beer, a researcher at Project Zero, Google's vulnerability research arm. In a 30,000-word post published on Tuesday afternoon, Beer described the vulnerability and the proof-of-concept exploit he spent six months developing single-handedly. Almost immediately, fellow security researchers took notice.

"This is a fantastic piece of work," Chris Evans, a semi-retired security researcher and executive and the founder of Project Zero, said in an interview. "It really is pretty serious. The fact you don't have to really interact with your phone for this to be set off on you is really quite scary. This attack is just you're walking along, the phone is in your pocket, and over Wi-Fi someone just worms in with some dodgy Wi-Fi packets." Beer's attack worked by exploiting a buffer overflow bug in a driver for AWDL, an Apple-proprietary mesh networking protocol that makes things like Airdrop work. Because drivers reside in the kernel -- one of the most privileged parts of any operating system -- the AWDL flaw had the potential for serious hacks. And because AWDL parses Wi-Fi packets, exploits can be transmitted over the air, with no indication that anything is amiss.

A reader writes: Italian regulators have fined Apple $12 million for making misleading and unfair claims about iPhone water resistance. The fine was imposed by L'Autorita Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), which translates literally as the guarantee authority for competition and the market. This is the competition watchdog responsible for ensuring that companies treat both consumers and competitors fairly.

First, it says, Apple made water resistance claims without making it clear to consumers that these were true only in ideal laboratory conditions, and phones had not passed the same tests in real-life conditions. [...] Second, and more seriously, Apple made iPhone water resistance claims in its marketing, but then refused warranty service on phones which suffered water damage.

Apple has been fined ten million Euros, and additionally ordered to publish a notice on its Italian website through a "Consumer protection information" link. The potentially opens the way for similar rulings in other European Union countries, and could conceivably lead to class action lawsuits in the US and elsewhere, now that the issue has been highlighted. SetteBIT notes that the ruling references three Apple ads. Apple tends to delete older ads from its YouTube channel, but the site archives its own copies, providing proof of the claims originally made.

Apple has picked "Code Switch" as the best audio show of the year, marking the first time the company has recognized a single podcast in this way. Engadget reports: Code Switch is NPR's weekly discussion on race. While the series has been on the air for the better part of seven years, it became significantly more popular over the summer as people across the US took to protest the death of George Floyd and other instances of racial injustice.

As in past years, the company also shared a selection of the most popular audio shows people listened to through Apple Podcasts. Few surprises here as old favorites like Stuff You Should Know, This American Life and The Daily came out as the most popular shows in the US. When it comes to shows new to 2020, Unlocking Us, Nice White Parents and CounterClock made the top three for the year. Apple's editorial team had their say as well. They picked California Love, Canary by the Washington Post and Dying for Sex as their favorites of 2020. If you're looking for something new to listen to, all three lists are a good place to start.

Joe2020 writes: Famous developer Hector Martin who put Linux on the PS4 now wants to port Linux to the new Apple M1, and he wants to do it with the help of crowdfunding by making it his full-time job. One can find his official pledge for support here. "Since these devices are brand new and bespoke silicon, porting Linux to run on them is a huge undertaking. Well beyond a hobby project, it is a full-time job," the developer explains.

"The goal is to bring Linux support on Apple Silicon macs to the point where it is not merely a tech demo, but is actually an OS you would want to use on a daily driver device. To do this, there is a huge amount of work to be done. Running Linux on things is easy, but making it work well is hard. Drivers need to be written for all devices. The driver for the completely custom Apple GPU is the most complicated component, which is necessary to have a good desktop experience. Power management needs to work well too, for your battery life to be reasonable," the dev explains. Martin says he hopes to have enough donations to purchase the new Apple Silicon-powered devices and hire other people to help with the job.

Slashdot reader NoMoreACs also shared the news via Mac Rumors.