An anonymous reader writes: A recent vulnerability in WhatsApp shows that there's little defenders can do to detect and analyze iPhone hacks. Some iOS security experts say this is yet another incident that shows iOS is so locked down it's hard -- if not impossible -- to figure out if your own iPhone has been hacked.

[...] "The simple reality is there are so many 0-day exploits for iOS," said Stefan Esser, a security researcher that specializes in iOS. "And the only reason why just a few attacks have been caught in the wild is that iOS phones by design hinder defenders to inspect the phones." As of today, there is no specific tool that an iPhone user can download to analyze their phone and figure out if it has been compromised. In 2016, Apple took down an app made by Esser that was specifically designed to detect malicious jailbreaks.

Apple's VP of Apple Pay, Jennifer Bailey, announced new NFC tags that will let iPhone users make purchases simply by tapping their phones against the stickers, without the need to download a special app first. "The company is partnering with Bird scooters, Bonobos clothing store, and PayByPhone parking meters for the initial rollout," reports 9to5Mac. From the report: Apple also announced that inside the Wallet app, users will soon be able to sign up for loyalty cards in one tap, presumably presented to users as recommendations when they make eligible purchases. Right now, physical Apple Pay transactions require bulky terminals like those you find at retail store checkouts. With the new support, an iPhone will know how to read a specially-encoded NFC tag (that can be as inert as a sticker) and automatically show the Apple Pay purchase interface when a user holds their device near it. No third-party apps or other set up required.

The obvious example is a user can ad-hoc top up their miles on a hired electric scooter simply by tapping their phone or watch to a NFC sticker on the bike. For Bonobos, it will enable simpler self-service shopping with the ability to place NFC tags directly onto clothing rails. The new Apple Pay features will be rolling out later this year, presumably with more partners onboard now that the news is public. This is yet another step towards Apple's goal of replacing the wallet.

A group of iPhone owners accusing Apple of violating US antitrust rules because of its App Store monopoly can sue the company, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. From a report: The Supreme Court upheld the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in Apple v. Pepper, agreeing in a 5-4 decision that Apple app buyers could sue the company for allegedly driving up prices. "Apple's line-drawing does not make a lot of sense, other than as a way to gerrymander Apple out of this and similar lawsuits," wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Apple had claimed that iOS users were technically buying apps from developers, while developers themselves were Apple's App Store customers. According to an earlier legal doctrine known as Illinois Brick, "indirect purchasers" of a product don't have the standing to file antitrust cases. But in today's decision, the Supreme Court determined that this logic doesn't apply to Apple.

"Many are seduced by the idea that they can listen in silence," complains ZDNet columnist Chris Matyszczyk.

"This doesn't seem to be true," he writes, describing a typical experience with some $279.95 Beats Studio3 wireless over-ear headphones: I could still hear so much of what was going on beyond the soccer match or movie upon which my headphones were supposed to be focused. This wasn't noise-canceling. It was noise-dulling... I did a little research. This noise-canceling thing is a splendid hype. The technology works best on quashing -- somewhat -- low-frequency sounds. The more high-pitched elements of life -- human speech, babies on planes, high-revving engines, the Darkness in concert -- get a little flattening at best, once you don your headphones. Door bells, a glass being dropped on the floor, a dog barking -- all these sounds were slightly dulled by my headphones, but still perfectly audible.

I'm not suggesting Beats is solely responsible for the promise of noise-canceling being overblown. I understand it's the same with all other headphones of the genre. It's like a self-driving car that actually needs you to check it's not about to kill you....

Yes, if I wear my Beats for a couple of hours and then take them off, I feel like I'm returning from some sort of purgatorial netherworld. But these things are supposed to cancel noise. You know, like you cancel a subscription or an air ticket. When I decide to cancel my flight from San Francisco to New York, I don't expect to still have to fly to Boise, Idaho.

The Guardian profiles stay-at-home mom Jessa Jones, who taught herself how to fix her daughter's iPhone with online tutorials, eventually leading to motherboard repair work that she found through eBay.

"After recruiting other stay-at-home moms in her neighborhood and teaching them electronics repair, she launched a small business from her dining room called MommyFixits. 'Suddenly our play dates became moms sitting around the dining table fixing mailed-in iPhones,' she told me." As Jones's expertise grew, she discovered that technology manufacturers used underhanded techniques to discourage independent repair. Phone and tablet parts were glued together, causing components to break when pried apart. Schematics and manuals were copyrighted and kept under trade secret. Apple even used their own proprietary "pentalobe" screws, which cannot be removed with common screwdrivers. Despite these barriers to repair, Jones knew that fixing things independently, instead of taking them back to the manufacturer, was almost always possible and often cheaper. To spread her knowledge, she started a YouTube channel called iPad Rehab, which offered step-by-step repair tutorials for other DIY enthusiasts...

According to Nathan Proctor, director of the Campaign for the Right to Repair at the US Public Interest Research Group, this YouTube community is an integral part of a broader political movement that is attempting to wrest consumer agency from an increasingly consolidated electronics marketplace. Proctor says that while in the past there was a legal balance between protecting manufacturers' intellectual property and empowering consumers to tinker with, modify, and repair their own products, the rise of software in electronics has shifted power to manufacturers. Not only are the products more complex and harder to fix, the line between self-repair and hacking has become nebulous, meaning that manufacturers have been able to use digital copyright law to gain a legal monopoly over repair. This, in turn, has created a broader cultural anxiety around self-repair, a sense that when our devices malfunction, the problem can only be dealt with by so-called experts at a specific company.

According to Proctor, YouTube channels such as Jones's are useful in disrupting this dynamic. "I frequently will talk to people who had something break on their phone and were told that they had to replace it with the manufacturer," he said. "But then they go on YouTube and watch a video and realize that fixing it isn't impossible, that you could learn how to or find someone who can." As a result of this, those at the forefront of the online repair community are sometimes met with hostility from manufacturers. Apple has brought suits against unauthorized repair shops and have had their intellectual property lawyers directly contact some YouTube tinkerers.
"What we're giving up when we lose the right to repair," Jones tells the Guardian, "is this sense of investigation and wonder and tinkering.

"We're made to see our devices as if they are these sacrosanct objects but really, they're just a battery and a screen, something that a stay-at-home mom can learn how to fix in her dining room."

Vice's "Future Relics" column asks what people 1,000 years from now will think when they keep discovering abandoned Airpods from 2019: For roughly 18 months, AirPods play music, or podcasts, or make phone calls. Then the lithium-ion batteries will stop holding much of a charge, and the AirPods will slowly become unusable. They can't be repaired because they're glued together. They can't be thrown out, or else the lithium-ion battery may start a fire in the garbage compactor. They can't be easily recycled, because there's no safe way to separate the lithium-ion battery from the plastic shell. Instead, the AirPods sit in your drawer forever...

According to the headphones review team at Rtings.com, AirPods are "below-average" in terms of sound quality. According to people on every social media platform, AirPods are a display of wealth. But more than a pair of headphones, AirPods are an un-erasable product of culture and class. People in working or impoverished economic classes are responsible for the life-threatening, exhaustive, violent work of removing their parts from the ground and assembling them. Meanwhile, people in the global upper class design and purchase AirPods.

Even if you only own AirPods for a few years, the earth owns them forever. When you die, your bones will decompose in less than a century, but the plastic shell of AirPods won't decompose for at least a millennia. Thousands of years in the future, if human life or sentient beings exist on earth, maybe archaeologists will find AirPods in the forgotten corners of homes. They'll probably wonder why they were ever made, and why so many people bought them. But we can also ask ourselves those same questions right now.

Why did we make technology that will live for 18 months, die, and never rot?

An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook visited an Apple Store in Orlando, Florida to meet with 16-year-old Liam Rosenfeld, one of 350 scholarship winners who will be attending Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference next month. Echoing comments he shared with the Orlando Sentinel, Cook told TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino that it is "pretty impressive" what Rosenfeld is accomplishing with code at such a young age, serving as a perfect example of why he believes coding education should begin in the early grades of school. "I don't think a four year degree is necessary to be proficient at coding," says Cook. "I think that's an old, traditional view. What we found out is that if we can get coding in in the early grades and have a progression of difficulty over the tenure of somebody's high school years, by the time you graduate kids like Liam, as an example of this, they're already writing apps that could be put on the App Store."

Microsoft teased its Edge browser for macOS yesterday, but now, download links have appeared online a little early. From a report: Twitter user WalkingCat discovered official Microsoft download links to both the daily Chromium-powered Canary builds of Edge for Mac [warning: direct download link] and the weekly Dev builds [warning: direct download link]. Microsoft has been working to support Mac keyboard shortcuts, and it has been experimenting with button placement so its browser looks and feels like a Mac app. Microsoft is also adding in Touch Bar support, with options for media control sliders and the ability to switch tabs from the Touch Bar. Rounded corners for tabs are also available in the macOS Edge version, and Microsoft is planning to bring this same UI to Windows.

In interviews with Bloomberg, current and former Apple employees say brand building became more important than serving shoppers. From the report: In interviews, current and former Apple employees blame a combination of factors. They say the stores have become mostly an exercise in branding and no longer do a good job serving mission shoppers like Smith. Meanwhile, they say, the quality of staff has slipped during an 18-year expansion that has seen Apple open more than 500 locations and hire 70,000 people. The Genius Bar, once renowned for its tech support, has been largely replaced with staff who roam the stores and are harder to track down. That's a significant drawback because people are hanging onto their phones longer these days and need them repaired. [...] Meanwhile, retail chief Angela Ahrendts (who was hired in May 2014) began moving sales and service onto the web -- encouraging staff to tell customers to "get in line, online." Customers were to make an appointment on Apple's website and then pick up the product at a store. Apple was "trying to streamline things," says one employee, "but in the process made things more difficult for some customers."

Before her arrival, the Apple Store excelled at three key tasks: selling products, helping customers trouble-shoot their devices and teaching them how to get the most out of their gadgets. "Steve Jobs was really keen on stepping into the store and knowing what to do," recalls a former Apple retail executive, who requested anonymity to speak freely. Mission shoppers who wanted to pick up a pair of headphones or an iPhone could get in and out quickly; those who wanted to learn more about their purchase could spend an hour getting trained by a Creative. If someone brought in a busted iPhone, a Genius would sort it out. Over time, according to several current and former employees, Ahrendts upset that finely tuned balance. "You don't feel like there is much engagement at the front of the store, there isn't a push to people," says the former executive. "The store should be a place where you see upgrades happening."

New submitter Schnapple writes: Back in 2009, id Software put Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM on the App Store, but once iOS 11 started phasing out 32-bit apps, they stopped working. Since their source code was published under the GPL, I went in and fixed them up so they would run on modern devices, and also added game controller support and ported them to tvOS so they could run on Apple TV. Then over the last year I did the same for DOOM II and Final DOOM, Quake, Quake II, Quake III: Arena, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and finally DOOM 3. I've chronicled the adventures on my blog. I can't publish them to the App Store for obvious reasons and you'll need to provide your own copy of the game data, but if anyone's interested in trying them out on Apple devices I've posted the sources to GitHub.

In a blog post detailing new features coming to Edge, Microsoft has started teasing what Edge will look like on macOS. The Verge reports: During the company's Build 2019 developer conference, Microsoft is announcing new features for Edge on Windows and teasing the upcoming macOS release. We understand that the release will be available very soon, and Mac users should be able to access both the Canary and Dev builds of Edge just like Windows. Microsoft's implementation of Chromium on Edge has so far seen good performance improvements and reliability on Windows. It's not clear if we'll see similar improvements on the macOS side versus Chrome, but at least it gives Mac users another Chromium option with some Microsoft services and sync integration. MacRumors notes that Edge "will be Microsoft's first web browser on the Mac since Internet Explorer received its last feature update nearly 16 years ago."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple is facing an antitrust investigation that could have been predicted the moment it announced it was getting into the music streaming business four years ago. The company can most likely expect a similar investigation down the road after it launches its video streaming service later this year. The first investigation follows a complaint lodged by music streaming leader Spotify earlier this year, according to the Financial Times. Citing sources, the newspaper reported that the European Commission's competition division has officially opened the case, which will likely involve talking to other services that have been quietly chafing under Apple's App Store rules.

[...] One can debate the relative merits of Apple Music and Spotify in terms of their design, subscription models, and payment to artists. But the reality is that there is nothing revolutionary about Apple Music. Had it been launched by another startup, it certainly wouldn't have 56 million subscribers by now. In Silicon Valley, leveraging one's platform is standard practice and applauded. The EU takes a very different view. European regulators believe it is their job to protect consumers from such practices, which they argue harm innovation, and therefore indirectly limit choice.

"A new report by Which?, an advocacy group in the United Kingdom, found that Apple and HTC both overstate battery life on smartphones, sometimes 'significantly'..." reports Hot Hardware.

"In stark contrast, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony all underestimate or are conservative about battery life with the phones that were tested, based on the organization's methods." "Which? tested nine iPhone models and found that all of them fell short of Apple's battery time claims. In fact, Apple stated that its batteries lasted between 18 percent and 51 percent longer than the Which? results," Which? said. The biggest discrepancy belonged to the iPhone XR, one of Apple's newest generation handsets... Apple claims that the iPhone XR has a talk time of up to 25 hours. However, Which? found that the battery lasted for 16 hours and 32 minutes during its own talk time tests. Apple's rated metric is 51 percent higher...

It seems clear that Which? is using a different method of testing than the manufacturers, but the disparity does not always work against the phone makers. For example, Which? found that Sony's devices lasted 21 percent longer than the manufacturer's own talk time battery life claims.
HTC cited "differences in setup and testing environments" that could explain "some variation," according to the article, and Apple also said they stand behind their battery life claims.

Apple says that the iPhone "is engineered to intelligently manage power usage to maximize battery life. Our testing methodology reflects that intelligence."

Tim Cook and Luca Maestri's remarks on Apple's quarterly analyst call earlier this week: CEO Tim Cook: "For our Mac business overall, we faced some processor constraints in the March quarter, leading to a 5 percent revenue decline compared to last year. But we believe that our Mac revenue would have been up compared to last year without those constraints, and don't believe this challenge will have a significant impact on our Q3 results."

CFO Luca Maestri: "Next I'd like to talk about the Mac. Revenue was 5.5 billion compared to 5.8 billion a year ago, with the decline driven primarily by processor constraints on certain popular models." Apple commentator John Gruber adds, "I asked an Apple source last fall why it took so long for Apple to release the new MacBook Air. Their one-word answer: "Intel." One of the big questions for next month's WWDC is whether this is the year Apple announces Macs with Apple's own ARM processors (and graphics?)."

In recent weeks, an Apple representative and a lobbyist for CompTIA, a trade organization that represents big tech companies, have been privately meeting with legislators in California to encourage them to kill legislation that would make it easier for consumers to repair their electronics Motherboard has learned. From a report: According to two sources in the California State Assembly, the lobbyists have met with members of the Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee, which is set to hold a hearing on the bill Tuesday afternoon. The lobbyists brought an iPhone to the meetings and showed lawmakers and their legislative aides the internal components of the phone. The lobbyists said that if improperly disassembled, consumers who are trying to fix their own iPhone could hurt themselves by puncturing the lithium-ion battery, the sources, who Motherboard is not naming because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said. The argument is similar to one made publicly by Apple executive Lisa Jackson in 2017 at TechCrunch Disrupt, when she said the iPhone is "too complex" for normal people to repair them. The bill has been pulled by its sponsor, Susan Talamantes-Eggman: "It became clear that the bill would not have the support it needed today, and manufacturers had sown enough doubt with vague and unbacked claims of privacy and security concerns," she said.

In a new support document, Apple has indicated that its legacy photo editing suite Aperture will not run in future versions of macOS after macOS Mojave. From a report: The support document provides users with steps to migrate Aperture libraries to Apple's newer Photos app for Mac or Adobe Lightroom Classic. Apple ceased development of Aperture in June 2014 and removed the software from the Mac App Store in April 2015 after the launch of the Photos app for Mac. However, the application continues to function on macOS Mojave for users who still have it installed, albeit with some performance limitations.

Apple has issued a rare public statement following a report by the New York Times on Saturday that alleged Apple was cracking down on apps that its Screen Time feature emulates. From a report: The Times story says that over the past year, Apple has removed or restricted at least 11 of the 17 apps that offer Screen Time-like features. Screen Time is a feature on iOS 12 and later that allows a user to see how much time they spend on their iPhone, what apps they use the most, and the ability for the user or parents of the users to set limitations on the apps. While it's true that Apple has removed some of the apps from the App Store since the company introduced its Screen Time software, the company's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, said the Times did not publish the full reason Apple gave them as to why some of the competing apps were pulled. From Apple's response: Over the last year, we became aware that several of these parental control apps were using a highly invasive technology called Mobile Device Management, or MDM. MDM gives a third party control and access over a device and its most sensitive information including user location, app use, email accounts, camera permissions, and browsing history. We started exploring this use of MDM by non-enterprise developers back in early 2017 and updated our guidelines based on that work in mid-2017.

MDM does have legitimate uses. Businesses will sometimes install MDM on enterprise devices to keep better control over proprietary data and hardware. But it is incredibly risky -- and a clear violation of App Store policies -- for a private, consumer-focused app business to install MDM control over a customer's device. Beyond the control that the app itself can exert over the user's device, research has shown that MDM profiles could be used by hackers to gain access for malicious purposes.

"A man who lost his Apple Watch in the ocean says he was surprised when it was returned to him after six months with all the data and apps still intact," according to a joint report from CNN and Los Angeles TV station KTLA: Robert Bainter often goes body surfing or boogie boarding at Huntington Beach in California, and usually, he has an Apple Watch on his wrist... "A huge wave came -- and I was loving it, rode it -- and then, I pick up my arm, and I'm like, 'Oh my God, what just happened?'" Bainter said. The watch was gone from his wrist. Bainter says he spent an hour looking for it then used Apple's "Find my iPhone" app to turn on lost mode... [Which sends your phone number to the watch's display, in case somebody finds it.]

Each visit to the beach was another opportunity to find the watch, but after six months, Bainter was giving up hope -- until he got a call from a number he didn't recognize. "It was this guy saying, 'Hey, if your name is Rob Bainter and you lost an Apple Watch recently, give me a call. If you can describe it, I'll give this thing to you,'" Bainter said. The man who called found Bainter's watch three miles north of where it went missing... Even more unbelievable, Bainter says the watch worked fine; though the salt water had left a little haze on the screen.

"It worked fine, as though it didn't skip a beat. All the information was there. All the apps were there," Bainter said.

An 18-year-old from New York is suing Apple for $1 billion -- saying an erroneous facial recognition system in their stores wrongfully led to his arrest. An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: Ousmane Bah, who was arrested at his home in November, claims the warrant included a photo of someone else. The lawsuit also said a detective with the New York Police Department concluded the thief caught on the shop's surveillance camera "looked nothing like" Bah. The lawsuit, citing the detective, says Apple uses facial recognition technology to identify shoplifters. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bah said he had an interim learner's permit, which does not have a photo, that had either been lost or stolen. His lawyer said the permit may have been presented as identification at Apple stores, erroneously matching Bah's name with the thief's face in the company's security system. That means every time the perpetrator walked into an Apple store, his face would register as Bah on Apple's surveillance.

Bah had been charged in multiple jurisdictions including New York, Massachusetts, Delaware and New Jersey, according to the lawsuit. Charges in three cases against Bah have been dropped, but the New Jersey case is pending.

"If you're sick of MacBooks but love MacOS, be brave and convert a new laptop into a Hackintosh with our exhaustive guide," writes Motherboard, in an article shared by eatmorekix: Perhaps it's the fact that Apple solders on all of its main parts on its laptops. Perhaps it's the inability for users to repair or upgrade their own machines. Maybe it's the keyboard. For whatever reason, laptops are looking mighty attractive for Hackintoshing these days, despite the knotty qualms some people have with it...

As frustrated by the keyboard and the price as by the fact that nothing was upgradeable on the current generation of MacBook Pros, I went on this journey myself a year ago -- and made it out on the other side much more knowledgeable about why MacOS is a great, quite flexible operating system, often (and unfortunately) placed in a not-so-perfect machine.
It's a long read, but it ends with the author saying he "gained a great appreciation for the process" and ended up with "a fairly stable machine that can handle much of what Apple's own offerings can -- without the incredibly high price to boot."

Despite the (many) technical challenges, "enough of the things that make MacOS worth installing work, and you can make a good weekend project out of this and get a good machine in the end -- one with better specs and more upgradability than many of Apple's own products."