Apple and Qualcomm have settled their royalty dispute, the companies said on Tuesday. From a report: The settlement includes a payment from Apple to Qualcomm as well as a chipset supply agreement, suggesting that future iPhone may use Qualcomm chips. The two companies started proceedings in a trial in federal court in San Diego on Monday, which was expected to last until May. Both sides were asking for billions in damages. In November, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said that he believed that the two companies were on the "doorstep" to settling. Apple CEO Tim Cook contradicted him shortly after, saying that Apple hasn't been in settlement discussions since the third calendar quarter of 2018.

The complicated legal battle centered around modem chips and had been raging in courts around the world since 2016. For years, Apple bought modem chips from Qualcomm, but chafed under Qualcomm's prices and requirement that any company using its chips would also pay licensing fees for its patents. New iPhone models released in 2018 used Intel modem chips, and Apple said in a previous FTC trial that Qualcomm. UPDATE: Intel announced this afternoon that it plans to exit the 5G smartphone modem business, leaving Qualcomm as the only supplier for Apple's iPhones.

Mozilla has launched a petition today to get Apple to rotate the IDFA unique identifier of iOS users every month. From a report: The purpose of this request is to prevent online advertisers from creating profiles that contain too much information about iOS users. IDFA stands for "IDentifier For Advertisers" and is a per-device unique ID. Apps running on a device can request access to this ID and relay the number to advertising SDKs/partners they use to show ads to their users. As experts from Singular, a mobile marketing firm explain, "IDFAs take the place of cookies in mobile advertising delivered to iOS devices because cookies are problematic in the mobile world." IDFAs are different from UDIDs, which stand for "unique device identifiers," which are permanent and unchangeable device identifiers. Apple added support for IDFAs specifically to replace UDIDs, which many apps were collecting for all sorts of shady reasons, enabling pervasive tracking of iOS users.

9to5Mac has learned of several new features expected to be included in iOS 13. From the report: Dark Mode: There will be a system-wide Dark Mode that can be enabled in Settings, including a high contrast version, similar to what's already available on macOS. Speaking of macOS, iPad apps that run on the Mac using Marzipan will finally take advantage of the Dark Mode support on both systems.
Multitasking: There are many changes coming to iPad with iOS 13, including the ability for apps to have multiple windows. Each window will also be able to contain sheets that are initially attached to a portion of the screen, but can be detached with a drag gesture, becoming a card that can be moved around freely, similar to what an open-source project called "PanelKit" could do. These cards can also be stacked on top of each other, and use a depth effect to indicate which cards are on top and which are on the bottom. Cards can be flung away to dismiss them.
Undo gesture: With iOS 13, Apple is introducing a new standard undo gesture for text input on the iPad. The gesture starts as a three-finger tap on the keyboard area, sliding left and right allows the user to undo and redo actions interactively.
Safari improvements: Safari on iOS 13 for the iPad will automatically ask for a desktop version of websites when necessary, preventing a common issue where websites will render their iPhone version even when running on an iPad with a big screen. YouTube is notorious for this behavior, forcing users to rely on a 'Request Desktop Site' button.
Font management: Font management is getting a major upgrade on iOS 13. It will not be necessary to install a profile to get new fonts into the system anymore. Instead there will be a new font management panel in Settings. A new standard font picker component will be available for developers and the system will notify the user when they open a document that has missing fonts.
Smarter Mail: The upgraded Mail app will be able to organize messages into categories such as marketing, purchases, travel, "not important" and more, with the categories being searchable. Users will also be able to add messages to a "read later" queue similar to third-party email apps. Improved multiple item selection: The focus on productivity on iOS continues with the inclusion of new gestures to allow for the selection of multiple items in table views and collection views, which make up for most of the user interfaces found in apps that list large amounts of data. Users will be able to drag with multiple fingers on a list or collection of items to draw a selection, similar to clicking and dragging in Finder on the Mac.
New Volume HUD and other changes: Other features to come with iOS 13 include a redesigned Reminders app, which is also coming to the Mac, a new volume HUD, better "Hey Siri" rejection for common mistaken noises such as laughter and crying babies, better multilingual support for keyboards and dictation, and expanded in-app printing controls. Apple is expected to officially unveil the next major iPhone and iPad OS at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference on June 3rd.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Tens of thousands of perfectly usable iPhones are scrapped each year by electronics recyclers because of the iPhone's "activation lock," according to a new analysis paper published Thursday. Earlier this year, we published a lengthy feature about the iPhone's activation lock (also called iCloud lock informally), an anti-theft feature that prevents new accounts from logging into iOS without the original user's iCloud password. This means that stolen phones can't be used by the person who stole it without the original owner's iCloud password (this lock can also be remotely enabled using Find My iPhone.) The feature makes the iPhone a less valuable theft target, but it has had unintended consequences, as well. iCloud lock has led to the proliferation of an underground community of hackers who use phishing and other techniques to steal iCloud passwords from the original owner and unlock phones. It's also impacted the iPhone repair, refurbishing, and recycling industry, because phones that are legitimately obtained often still have iCloud enabled, making that phone useless except for parts.

Between 2015 and 2018, the Wireless Alliance, the recycling company in question, collected roughly 6 million cell phones in donation boxes it set up around the country. Of those, 333,519 of them were iPhones deemed by the company to be "reusable." And of those, 33,000 of them were iCloud locked and had to be stripped for parts and scrap metal. Last year, a quarter of all reusable iPhones it collected were activation locked. Allison Conwell, a coauthor of the CoPIRG report, told me in a phone call that the Wireless Alliance's findings show that many people donate their devices intending for them to be reused, but they're scrapped instead. In her paper, Conwell suggests that Apple should work with certified recyclers to unlock phones that have been legitimately donated (a survey of random devices conducted by the Wireless Alliance found that more than 90 percent of them had not been reported lost or stolen.) The paper suggests that Apple could either unlock phones that have not been reported lost or stolen for 30 days, or affirmatively ask users whether they had donated their previous phone and unlock it that way.

Apple has another antitrust problem in Europe. Dutch regulators said Thursday that they have opened an investigation into whether Apple has abused its market position by giving preferential treatment to its own apps. From a report: The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets said in a statement that app providers have submitted evidence "which seem to indicate that Apple abuses its position in the App Store." The regulator said it had been studying the issue for 10 months. It said the probe would initially focus on Apple, but it also called on app providers to report any issues with Google's Play Store. "Apps have increasingly become important parts of our daily lives," said the regulator, which added that it "expects Apple and Google to exhibit fair and transparent behavior." Apple said in a statement that it is "confident" the review "will confirm all developers have an equal opportunity to succeed in the App Store." The move comes after Spotify launched a similar complaint against Apple last month with the European Commission.

Developer and blogger Guilherme Rambo, writing for 9to5Mac: Fellow developer Steve Troughton-Smith recently expressed confidence about some evidence found indicating that Apple is working on new Music, Podcasts, and perhaps Books apps for macOS, to join the new TV app. I've been able to independently confirm that this is true. On top of that, I've been able to confirm with sources familiar with the development of the next major version of macOS -- likely 10.15 -- that the system will include standalone Music, Podcasts, and TV apps, but it will also include a major redesign of the Books app.

The new Books app will have a sidebar similar to the News app on the Mac, it will also feature a narrower title bar with different tabs for the Library, Book Store, and Audiobook Store. On the library tab, the sidebar will list the user's Books, Audiobooks, PDFs and other collections, including custom ones. The new Music, Podcasts, and TV apps will be made using Marzipan, Apple's new technology designed to facilitate the porting of iPad apps to the Mac without too many code changes. Further reading: Steven Troughton-Smith Thinks iTunes Breakup is Nigh (DaringFireball).

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Chinese journalists and netizens recently found that Apple Music's Chinese streaming service censored a song by Hong Kong singer Jacky Cheung that references the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, an extremely politically sensitive topic for the Chinese Communist Party. The incident's 30th anniversary is coming up in June. Sophie Richardson, the China Director at Human Rights Watch, called the reported move "spectacularly craven." The Tiananmen protests are emblematic of a larger pro-democracy movement in China that was snuffed out by the Beijing government. Thousands of protesters were killed, but the exact numbers have themselves been censored by Chinese government officials.

Apple Music has also reportedly censored Anthony Wong and Denise Ho, two pro-democracy singers. After being noticed by Chinese netizens, the removals were reported by the Hong Kong Free Press and The Stand, two Hong Kong-based news outlets. Taiwan News also reported the censorship of Cheung's "Ren Jian Dao." The music remains available on Apple Music's North American products. "By removing a song referring the Tiananmen Massacre, @apple is actively participating in the Chinese Communist Party's agenda of scrubbing the colossal violations it has committed against the Chinese people from collective memory and rewriting history," tweeted Yaqiu Wang, a Chinese researcher with Human Rights Watch.

Apple is now offering data migration services for free when customers purchase a new Mac or need to have a Mac replaced for repair reasons. Prior to this month, data migration was priced at $99. From a report: Beginning April 2, there will be no cost for Data Migrations with the purchase of a new Mac or Data Transfers with a repair. Data migration was included as a feature in Apple's One to One program, which was shut down in 2015. One to One allowed customers to pay $99 when purchasing a new Mac to get a year's worth of instruction and help. When Apple ended One to One, data migration was still available as a one-time $99 service.

The surveillance tool dubbed "Exodus" has been ported to the Apple iOS ecosystem. According to Threatpost, the spyware "can exfiltrate contacts, take audio recordings and photos, track location data and more on mobile devices." From the report: Earlier this month, word came that Google had booted a raft of Exodus-laden apps. According to Lookout Security, it turns out that iOS versions had become available outside the App Store, through phishing sites that imitate Italian and Turkmenistani mobile carriers. These are notable in that they abused the Apple Developer Enterprise program. According to Lookout and other research from Security Without Borders, the spyware appears to have been under development for at least five years. It's a three-stage affair, starting with a lightweight dropper that then fetches a large second-stage payload that contains multiple binaries with most of the spy goods housed within them. Finally, a third stage typically uses the Dirty COW exploit (CVE20165195) to obtain root privileges on a targeted device. In delving into the technical details, Lookout saw evidence of a fairly sophisticated operation, suggesting that it may have been initially marketed as a legitimate package for the government or law-enforcement sectors.

In order to spread the iOS app outside of the official App Store, the cybercriminals abused Apple's enterprise provisioning system, which allowed them to sign the apps using legitimate Apple certificates. Lookout's analysis found that the iOS variant is a bit cruder than its Android counterpart, and it lacks the ability to exploit device vulnerabilities. However, the apps were still able to use documented APIs to exfiltrate contacts, photos, videos and user-recorded audio recordings, device information and location data; and, it offered a way to perform remote audio recording, though this required push notifications and user interaction. The good news is that Apple has revoked the affected certificates for this particular crop of apps.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: While Apple CEO Tim Cook may not be able to force schoolchildren to code, there's no law against Cook and Apple using Sesame Street to make preschoolers want to code. Among the original Apple TV+ shows Cook announced at Apple's March Event was Helpsters, an "incredible new preschool show" about coding from "the peeps at Sesame Workshop and Apple."

In a skit on stage at the Steve Jobs Theater [available on YouTube], a Helpster monster from the new show named "Cody" (get it!) explains to Big Bird, "See, coding fosters collaboration, critical-thinking skills, and is an essential language that every child can learn. By teaching preschoolers about coding, we are giving them the opportunity to change the world."
One site described Cody as "a sociopathic tech recruiter muppet," complaining that "Teaching kids about technology is fine. But this is just creepy." They also objected to the show's targeting of pre-schoolers.

"From a developmental point of view, most experts agree very young children should be working on figuring out how to share their toys, not thinking about how to program them."

Bare Bones Software this week announced the return of BBEdit, a popular text, code, and markup editor, to the Mac App Store after a nearly five year hiatus. Bare Bones Software: When the Mac App Store debuted in 2011, BBEdit was one of its first products available for sale. However, due to technical and business constraints we encountered in the store, we decided to withdraw BBEdit from the Mac App Store in 2014. Following BBEdit's exit from the Mac App Store, we had many conversations with our customers, and with Apple, regarding the issues that we had encountered with the store. In the spring of 2018, Bare Bones and Apple announced that, subsequent to the release of macOS Mojave (10.14) and the accompanying refresh of the Mac App Store, BBEdit would be returning to the store.

This was made possible by changes to the OS itself which allow Mac App Store versions of BBEdit to function to their fullest extent while complying with Mac App Store rules; as well as changes to the Mac App Store business mechanics which make it possible for us to distribute our software through the Mac App Store as part of a sustainable business model. A limited features version of BBEdit is free to download and use, while the suite with all the features is priced at $3.99 a month or $39.99 a year. BBEdit remains available on a perpetual license basis for $49.99 via Bare Bones Software's online store and at participating resellers.

Further reading: The Old Guard of Mac Indy Apps Has Thrived For More Than 25 Years.

One of Google's top minds in artificial intelligence has joined Apple in a director role. Ian Goodfellow said on his LinkedIn profile that he switched employers in March. He said he's a director of machine learning in the Special Projects Group. CNBC reports: Goodfellow is the father of an AI approach known as generative adversarial networks, or GANs. The approach draws on two networks, one known as a generative network and the other known as a discriminative network, and can be used to come up with unusual and creative outputs in the form of audio, video and text. GAN systems have been used to generate "deepfake" fake media content.

Goodfellow got his Ph.D. at the University of Montreal in 2014, and since then he has worked at OpenAI and Google. At OpenAI he was paid more than $800,000, according to a tax filing. His research is widely cited in academic literature. At Google Goodfellow did work around GANs and security, including an area known as adversarial attacks. People working on AI at Apple have previously done research that drew on the GAN technology.

The updated fifth-generation iPad mini has been torn apart by iFixit, revealing an "amalgamation of components and designs from other iPads -- the internals of a previous iPad mini, the camera system of an iPad Pro, and the exterior design of an iPad Air," reports Ars Technica. From the report: iFixit has published its teardown of the new, fifth-generation iPad mini -- the first update to Apple's smaller-sized tablet since 2015. The iFixit team -- which sells gear for repairing and servicing gadgets and uses these teardown series to promote said gearâ"noted that the iPad mini looks on the outside like a smaller version of the new iPad Air. But on the inside, it's an updated iPad mini 4, the team wrote.

On opening the tablet up, iFixit discovered a 19.32Wh battery -- the same capacity as the previous-generation iPad mini. But there are some notable changes. The front-facing camera module has been updated to a 7-megapixel Æ'/2.2, like the 10.5-inch iPad Pro. That's a marked improvement over the iPad mini 4. There's also Apple's A12 Bionic system-on-a-chip (the same found in the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR) with 3GB of LPDDR4X DRAM. The updated microphone array has been moved near the selfie cam, and new ambient light sensors support the True Tone feature, which adjusts the white balance of the display based on ambient light conditions for user comfort. The repair site gave the 2019 iPad mini a score of two out of 10 for repairability. "The only positive cited was that a single Phillips screwdriver can deal with all the screws in the device," Ars reports. "However, replacing the battery is 'unnecessarily difficult,' there's adhesive everywhere, and removing the home button (no small feat) is required in order to replace the screen."

Apple has released the fifth-generation iPad Mini. So, of course, the repair experts at iFixit needed to tear it apart. From a report: The new 7.9 inch tablet, launched two weeks ago, sticks to its roots as a revamp of the iPad Mini 4, according to iFixit's teardown published Tuesday. One notable change is the battery connector design, which could prevent people trying to fix a device from accidentally killing the backlight during a repair, according to iFixit. The iFixit team calls this tweak "nifty!"

iFixit also noted that both the screen and battery are difficult to remove. The removal of the display, in particular, if not done carefully, could compromise the Touch ID technology. "Battery and screen replacements are the two most common repairs, and the iPad Mini makes both unnecessarily difficult," iFixit said. "The battery lacks pull-to-remove adhesive tabs, and the display requires a tricky removal of the home button if you want to keep Touch ID after your repair."

After tearing apart Apple's new second-generation AirPods, the repair guide site found that there is no practical way to service or repair them even at a professional shop. They labeled them as "disappointingly disposable." Ars Technica reports: iFixit had to go to almost comical lengths to open the AirPods up, and despite their expertise and tools, the iFixit team was unable to do so without permanently damaging the product. [...] That's disappointing, given that the batteries in the AirPods won't last longer than a few years with heavy use, and they're hard to recycle. Apple does offer to recycle headphones through partners as part of its Apple GiveBack program, but the GiveBack Web portal does not offer a product-specific category for AirPods to consumers like it does with most other Apple products. Consumers may simply select a general "headphones & speakers" category on the site.

The teardown also revealed some differences from the first-generation AirPods. The battery is the same size, but iFixit identified the new, Bluetooth 5-ready H1 chip in the earbuds themselves. The site also found some small differences likely related to Apple's efforts to increase the case's water resistance. For all the details, visit iFixit's teardown page for the product. All told, iFixit gave the AirPods a 0 out of 10 for repairability -- that's low even for Apple products. By contrast, the site also opened up Samsung's Galaxy Buds and gave them a 6 out of 10.

One and a half years after announcing a wireless charging mat for iPhones, Apple Watches, and AirPods called AirPower, Apple has unexpectedly cancelled the accessory. From a report: It notably missed its expected shipping dates multiple times, including a potential release alongside the second-generation version of AirPods and charging case this week. "After much effort, we've concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project," said Apple SVP of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio in a statement today. "We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch. We continue to believe that the future is wireless and are committed to push the wireless experience forward." Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, adds, "This is fairly unprecedented and unbelievable. The AirPods even have a picture of the AirPower on the box."

New submitter _observer writes: Hundreds of users are unable to read their Gmail in Apple's Mail client since the upgrade to macOS 10.14.4, with few workaround available. This is impacting business and personal users, although not all Gmail accounts are impacted. The web client and other clients like Outlook still work -- it is only Apple's Mail client that is not playing along. Users say they are caught in a login loop. It appears that the issue was even found and reported in the 10.14.4 Beta, but not addressed when the update was released. No word from Apple about this. While I am somewhat sympathetic to the software engineers having bugs in code (I am an engineer, too), but this seems to be a big QA miss. Gmail is the most popular free email service and this is blocking a large number of users. This thread on the Apple Support forum is growing rapidly (24 pages and counting)

A leaked internal document outlines a program that looks almost exactly like the requirements of right to repair legislation that has been proposed in 20 states. From a report: As Apple continues to fight legislation that would make it easier for consumers to repair their iPhones, MacBooks, and other electronics, the company appears to be able to implement many of the requirements of the legislation, according to an internal presentation obtained by Motherboard. According to the presentation, titled "Apple Genuine Parts Repair" and dated April 2018, the company has begun to give some repair companies access to Apple diagnostic software, a wide variety of genuine Apple repair parts, repair training, and notably places no restrictions on the types of repairs that independent companies are allowed to do. The presentation notes that repair companies can "keep doing what you're doing, with ... Apple genuine parts, reliable parts supply, and Apple process and training."

This is, broadly speaking, what right to repair activists have been asking state legislators to require companies to offer for years. "This looks to me like a framework for complying with right to repair legislation," Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit and a prominent member of the right to repair movement, told me on the phone. "Right now, they are only offering it to a few megachains, but it seems clear to me that it would be totally possible to comply with right to repair."

Apple News Plus, the company's new magazine (and news) subscription service, is the latest offender because of how easy Apple makes it to subscribe. From a report: Just tap that "Try it Free" button, confirm your payment, and you're off to the races. Thing is, Apple forbids developers from making things seem quite this simple. Typically, Apple protects users from recurring fees by requiring developers to make those numbers so large on the screen that it's painfully obvious what you're getting into, how often you'll pay, and how to cancel if you decide you're not interested anymore. Here are some screenshots from Apple's dev website so you can see just how crystal-clear the developer "guidelines" are. For whatever reason, Apple decided that a cleaner, more attractive layout, one that hides some of the information it asks of developers, was the right choice for Apple News Plus.

Joanna Stern, writing for the Wall Street Journal [the link may be paywalled]: Why is the breaking of my MacBook Air keyboard so insanely maddening? Let's take a trip down Memory Lane.
April 2015: Apple releases the all-new MacBook with a "butterfly" keyboard. In order to achieve extreme thinness, the keys are much flatter than older generations but the butterfly mechanism underneath, for which the keyboard is named, aims to replicate the bounce of a more traditional keyboard.
October 2016: The MacBook Pro arrives with a second-generation butterfly keyboard. A few months later, some begin to report that letters or characters don't appear, that keys get stuck or that letters unexpectedly repeat.
June 2018: Apple launches a keyboard repair program for what the company says is a "small percentage" of MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboards impacted.
July 2018: Apple releases a new high-end MacBook Pro with the third-generation of the keyboard that's said to fix the issues.
October 2018: Apple's new MacBook Air also has the third-generation keyboard. I recommend it, and even get one for myself.

Which brings us to the grand year 2019 and my MacBook Air's faulty E and R keys. Others have had problems with Apple's latest laptops, too. A proposed nationwide class-action suit alleges that Apple has been aware of the defective nature of these keyboards since 2015 yet sold affected laptops without disclosing the problem. "We are aware that a small number of users are having issues with their third-generation butterfly keyboard and for that we are sorry," an Apple spokesman said in a statement. "The vast majority of Mac notebook customers are having a positive experience with the new keyboard." If you have a problem, contact Apple customer service, he added. John Gruber, a long time Apple columnist: I consider these keyboards the worst products in Apple history. MacBooks should have the best keyboards in the industry; instead they're the worst. They're doing lasting harm to the reputation of the MacBook brand.