iPhone users will have to opt-in to tracking starting with iOS 14. Advertisers are "crying foul," reports the Washington Post: [W]ith Apple under the antitrust spotlight, its privacy move has also been called a power move by an advertising industry that is scrambling to adjust to the changes, expected to be included in iOS 14, the company's latest mobile operating system expected to go live next month... "This is not a change we want to make, but unfortunately Apple's updates to iOS14 have forced this decision," Facebook said in a blog post.

Some in the advertising industry see the moves as part privacy, part self-interest on the part of Apple. Apple also offers advertising, and by limiting the amount of data outside marketers collect, Apple's access to the data becomes more valuable. "I think there's probably 30 percent truth in that they're doing it for privacy reasons and it's 70 percent that they're doing it because it's what's good for Apple," said Nick Jordan, founder of Narrative I/O, which helps companies gather data for advertising. "It's a question for regulators and courts whether they should be able to wield the power they do over this ecosystem," he said. "They created it, but can they rule it with an iron fist...?"

Apple says that when customers open apps, they'll be asked whether they'd like to give that specific app permission to track them with something called an "ID for Advertisers," or IDFA. Apple created the IDFA in 2012 to help app developers earn money on iOS. The unique number, assigned to iPhone customers, allows advertisers to track their movements around websites and apps by following that unique identifier... With the new pop-up messages, customers will be forced to make a choice. It is likely that most consumers will opt out of being tracked. Facebook said in a blog post that it would render its off-platform ad network so ineffective that it may not make sense to offer it to developers at all. Facebook said that in testing it had seen a more than 50% drop in revenue as a result of the loss of data from Apple...

"There's been no discussion, no commercial transaction. They're saying this is what we decided is right in the name of privacy and this is what we're going to do," said Stuart Ingis, a partner at the law firm Venable who represents the Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media, an association of advertisers.
"Personally, I don't see the problem here," argues Slashdot reader JustAnotherOldGuy.

The Post notes that Apple runs its own advertising business based on data gathered from its users — but Apple's director of privacy engineering "doesn't consider this data gathering 'tracking'...because Apple collects the data from its own users on its own apps and other services. Facebook and other advertisers, Apple says, gather data on users even when they're not using Facebook."

As previously promised by Apple, Epic's App Store account has now been terminated due to the legal dispute between the two companies after Apple removed Fortnite from the iOS App Store. Epic Games still had a few apps available for iOS besides Fortnite, but they were all removed today. From a report: Fortnite for iOS was updated earlier this month with a new option that allowed users to purchase in-game items directly through Epic's payment system instead of using Apple's In-App Purchases. Once Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store, Epic Games started a public campaign and a legal battle against Apple, which led the Cupertino-based company to announce that it would terminate Epic's developer account. That's exactly what Apple did this Friday, August 28. The App Store now shows an alert saying "this app is currently not available in your country or region" when you try to access Epic's profile or any of their apps through a direct link, such as one from Infinity Blade Stickers app.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a swing at Apple on Thursday, calling the iPhone maker's app store monopolistic and harmful to customers during a company-wide meeting. From a report: "[Apple has] this unique stranglehold as a gatekeeper on what gets on phones," Zuckerberg said to more than 50,000 employees via webcast. He added that the Cupertino, California-based company's app store "blocks innovation, blocks competition" and "allows Apple to charge monopoly rents." While the Facebook CEO was specifically answering a question about Apple blocking gaming-related apps, his comments came at a time where authorities are scrutinizing both Silicon Valley giants for antitrust behavior. [...] Zuckerberg's comments were another signal that there's no love lost in the long-contentious relationship between the leader of the social network and the $2 trillion electronic device maker. "That's innovation that could really improve people's lives," Zuckerberg said on Thursday. "And Apple's just balking at it."

Apple blocked Facebook from informing users that Apple would collect 30 percent of in-app purchases made through a planned new feature, Facebook said. From a report: Apple said the update violated an App Store rule that doesn't let developers show "irrelevant" information to users. The feature lets Facebook users buy tickets for online events directly through the app. Apple's rules say that purchases of digital content have to use the App Store's payments system, giving Apple 30 percent of the total. Facebook says it asked Apple to waive this fee so that all of the revenue could go to event organizers, but Apple refused. The feature is now available, but without the message about Apple's 30-percent cut. Earlier this month, Facebook released an image showing what the message would look like in the app. The planned message on Android was expected to read "Facebook doesn't take a fee from this purchase." According to Reuters, that message doesn't show up in the version of the app downloaded through Google Play, either.

An anonymous reader shares a report from Coywolf News, written by Jon Henshaw: For several years, it's been reported that Google pays billions of dollars to Apple to remain the default search engine on Safari for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The deal ensures that iPhone, iPad, and Mac users search with Google when they use Safari. That is unless they manually change the default search engine in Safari's preferences. The deal between Apple and Google may be coming to an end soon. In July 2020, Reuters reported that the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority was taking aim at the deal. If the U.K. regulators take action, there may be a ripple effect from the European Union, which has a history of going after Google for anti-competitive behavior. Regulators in Europe may force Apple to remove Google as the default search engine and have users choose which search engine they want to use when they first launch Safari.

Regulatory pressure, a contentious relationship with Google, and the maturation of Apple's Siri and iCloud are presenting an opportunity for Apple to create and launch a search engine. There are several signs right now that indicate Apple may be doing just that:

- Apple doesn't need Google's money: Apple is now the world's most valuable company. They may want the money Google gives them, but they don't need it.
- Apple is pouring resources and money into search: Apple is investing heavily in search, as shown in their job postings for search engineers. The job listings reveal they incorporate AI, ML, NLP, and more into all of their services and apps.
- iOS and iPadOS 14 beta bypasses Google Search with Spotlight Search: It's not clear if Apple uses Bing anymore, as results are labeled only as Siri Suggestions. It is clear that Apple has started to return search results within Spotlight Search and is completely bypassing Google altogether.
- Apple recently updated its Applebot web crawler page: In July 2020, Apple published a significant update to its About Applebot support page. The additions are very similar to the details Google provides to webmasters and SEOs. Here are the changes they made to the Applebot support page: Added how to verify traffic from Applebot; Expanded details on the Applebot user agent, including differences between its desktop and mobile version; Expanded robots.txt rules; Added a section stating that they don't just crawl HTML, but also render pages similar to Google; and Added a section on search rankings and the factors that affect how it ranks web search results.
- Applebot has been busy crawling sites: Checking my server logs on WP Engine revealed that Applebot had been regularly crawling my sites daily, something I haven't noticed until now.

Facebook is warning advertisers that they can expect weaker ad performance from iPhone users once iOS 14 comes out next month and is telling them to create second advertiser accounts to contain the disruption. From a report: Many of Facebook's advertising partners rely on Apple's "Identifier for Advertisers" (IDFA) user tracking feature to, for instance, target would-be users by interest and see if they actually clicked on a mobile ad directing them to install a particular app. Changes to IDFA coming with iOS 14 will have a big impact on the marketing strategies for many businesses, and on Facebook's bottom line. In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook says it expects Apple's IDFA changes "will disproportionately affect [Facebook's] Audience Network of advertisers given its heavy dependence on app advertising." Reporter Sam Biddle comments: "What do you think you're saying about your company when things that protect an individual harm your business so drastically that you need to issue a warning?"

Nicolas Rougier, a computational neuroscientist and programmer at INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology in Bordeaux, writes: I organized with [Konrad Hinsen, a theoretical biophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Orleans] the "Ten Years Reproducibility Challenge," whose goal was to check if researchers would be able to run their own code that has been published at least ten years ago (i.e. before 2010). Most participants managed to run it, but it was not without pain. Today, Nature published an article summarizing the different problems we encountered. I myself tried to re-run an Apple II program I wrote 32 years ago on a vintage Apple IIe. This was quite instructive, especially regarding modern software system with the dependencies hell.

jmcbain writes: The benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average, a selection of 30 companies that aims to represent U.S. industries at large, is going to have its largest change in seven years. Notably, Salesforce will replace Exxon on the DJIA (and Amgen and Honeywell will replace Pfizer and Raytheon), marking the end of Exxon's 92-year stay on the index. CNBC notes that Exxon's removal is a sign of the times, "as the company -- and energy sector broadly -- falters, a weakness made all the more apparent by strength in technology names."

Analysts observe that "five tech stocks -- Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook -- are individually larger than the entire U.S. energy sector." But why is this change happening right now? It's apparently due to Apple's upcoming 4-for-1 stock split on August 31, which will significantly reduce the DJIA's exposure to the technology sector. "Basically Apple -- by itself -- took the technology [weighting] within the Dow down from 27.6% to 20.3%. It's a significant decline," Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, told CNBC. "By adding Salesforce, you can come back to 23.1% of the Dow being in technology."

A district court denied Epic Games' motion to temporarily restore Fortnite game to the iOS App Store, but also ordered Apple to not block the gaming giant's ability to provide and distribute Unreal Engine on the iPhone-maker's ecosystem in a mixed-ruling delivered Monday evening. From a report: U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said Apple can't retaliate against Epic Games by blocking the gaming firm's developer accounts or restrict developers on Apple platforms from accessing the widely-used Unreal Engine tools. "The record shows potential significant damage to both the Unreal Engine platform itself, and to the gaming industry generally, including on both third-party developers and gamers," she said, adding that even as Epic Games violated App Store's guidelines, it did not breach any contracts related to Unreal Engine and developer tools.

"Apple has chosen to act severely, and by doing so, has impacted non-parties, and a third-party developer ecosystem," said Rogers. But the ruling was not a complete win for Epic Games, which had also requested the sleeper hit title Fortnite to be restored on the iOS App Store. Rogers said the game will remain off the App Store unless Epic Games attempted to bring it back in accordance with App Store guidelines.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Taiwan-based electronics manufacturers Foxconn and Pegatron are among companies eyeing new factories in Mexico, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, as the U.S.-China trade war and coronavirus pandemic prompt firms to reexamine global supply chains. The plans could usher in billions of dollars in badly needed fresh investments over the next few years for Latin America's second-largest economy, which is primed for its worst recession since the 1930s Great Depression.

According to two of the sources, Foxconn has plans to use the factory to make Apple iPhones. However, one of the sources said, there had been no sign of Apple's direct involvement in the plan yet. Foxconn is likely to make a final decision on a new factory later this year, and work will commence after that, the two people said, adding there was no certainty the company would stick to the plan. Pegatron is also in early discussions with lenders about an additional facility in Mexico mainly to assemble chips and other electronic components, said the people, who declined to be identified as the talks are confidential. Pegatron declined to comment. Foxconn has five factories in Mexico mainly making televisions and servers. Its possible expansion would underscore a broader and gradual shift of global supply chains away from China amid a Sino-U.S. trade war and the coronavirus crisis.

NoMoreACs shares a report: On Friday, the internet erupted in a small way to learn that Apple had successfully forced WordPress to monetize its free app -- forcing it to sell premium plans and custom domain names seemingly just so that Apple could get its traditional 30 percent cut. But one afternoon and evening of surprise and outrage later, Apple is backing off. The company is issuing a rare on-the-record apology, and it says that WordPress will no longer have to add in-app purchases now that all is said and done.

Here's Apple's full statement: "We believe the issue with the WordPress app has been resolved. Since the developer removed the display of their service payment options from the app, it is now a free stand-alone app and does not have to offer in-app purchases. We have informed the developer and apologize for any confusion that we have caused." You'll notice that Apple is positioning this as the developer -- WordPress -- having done the right thing and removed the "display of their service payment options from the app," and to my knowledge that is technically true. But as far as I'm aware, that didn't happen today: it happened weeks or months ago.

Unity Software, a San Francisco-based company known for its popular video game engine, has filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "U." An interesting point it raised in its filing: In particular, operating system platform providers or application stores such as Apple or Google may change their technical requirements or policies in a manner that adversely impacts the way in which we or our customers collect, use and share data from end-user devices. Restrictions in our ability to collect and use data as desired could negatively impact our Operate Solutions as well as our resource planning and feature development planning for our software. Similarly, at any time, these platform providers or application stores can change their policies on how our customers or we operate on their platform or in their application stores by, for example, applying content moderation for applications and advertising or imposing technical or code requirements. Actions by operating system platform providers or application stores such as Apple or Google may affect the manner in which we or our customers collect, use and share data from end-user devices. In June 2020, Apple announced plans to require applications using its mobile operating system, iOS, to affirmatively (on an opt-in basis) obtain an end-user's permission to "track them across apps or websites owned by other companies" or access their device's advertising identifier for advertising and advertising measurement purposes, as well as other restrictions. We expect that Apple may implement these changes as early as fall of 2020.

Microsoft has stepped into the brewing legal battle between Apple and Epic Games over the former's policies with regard to its ubiquitous App Store. From a report: In a declaration filed on Sunday, a senior Microsoft engineer said that allowing Apple to block Epic Games' developer account would deal a significant blow to game makers including Microsoft by making them unable to use Epic's Unreal Engine. The Unreal Engine, a type of gaming engine, is a widely used set of technologies that provides a framework for the creation of three dimensional graphics. Epic licenses the engine to companies that use the technology for a fee. "If Unreal Engine cannot support games for iOS or macOS, Microsoft would be required to choose between abandoning its customers and potential customers on the iOS and macOS platforms or choosing a different game engine when preparing to develop new games," Kevin Gammill, Microsoft's general manager for Gaming Developer Experiences, said in the declaration.

He added that "Apple's discontinuation of Epic's ability to develop and support Unreal Engine for iOS or macOS will harm game creators and gamers." While there are alternative gaming engines, Gammill said that "very few" are available with as many features and the same functionality. The declaration came as part of a lawsuit brought by Epic against Apple over the iPhone maker's rules guaranteeing itself a 30% cut of in-app purchases. The suit is filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Epic Games tested Apple's policy by sidestepping the rule in an update to its hit game Fortnite, and then sued after Apple removed the game from the App Store. The company has brought a similar suit against Google over its Play Store.

Last month Intel's stock lost $50 billion in valuation — while the valuation for Taiwan-based TSMC jumped by over 50%.

The former chief of staff to Intel CEO Andrew Grove (and later general manager of Intel China) explains why this moment was 15 years in the making: Learning curve theory says that the cost of manufacturing a product declines as the volume increases. Manufacturing chips for the whole computer industry gave Intel huge advantages of scale over any other semiconductor manufacturer and resulted in the company becoming the world's largest chip manufacturer with enviable profit margins.

Chaos theory says that a small change in one state of a system can cause a large change in a later stage. In Intel's case, this was not getting selected by Apple for its iPhones. Each successive era of computing was 10x the size of the previous era, so while Intel produced hundreds of millions of microprocessors per year, the mobile phone industry sells billions of units per year. Apple's decision in 2005 to use the ARM architecture instead of Intel's gave Taiwan-based TSMC, the foundry chosen to manufacture the processor chips for the iPhone, the learning curve advantage which over time enabled it to pull ahead of Intel in manufacturing process technology.

Intel's integrated model, its competitive advantage for decades, became its vulnerability. TSMC and ARM created a tectonic shift in the semiconductor industry by enabling a large number of "fabless" chip companies such as Apple, AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm, to name a few. These fabless companies began to out-design Intel in the mobile phone industry and accelerated TSMC's lead over Intel in high volume manufacturing of the most advanced chips. Samsung, which also operates a foundry business, has been another beneficiary of this trend.

WordPress founding developer Matt Mullenweg is accusing Apple of cutting off the ability to update its iOS app -- until or unless he adds in-app purchases so Apple can extract its 30 percent cut of the money. The Verge reports: Here's the thing: the WordPress app on iOS doesn't sell anything. I just checked, and so did Stratechery's Ben Thompson. The app simply lets you make a website for free. There isn't even an option to buy a unique dot-com or even dot-blog domain name from the iPhone and iPad app -- it simply assigns you a free WordPress domain name and 3GB of space. Is Apple seriously asking for WordPress owner Automattic to share a cut of all its domain name revenue? How would it even know which customers used the app? Or was this all a mistake? Apple, Automattic, and Mullenweg didn't immediately reply to requests for comment. As the article points out, all of this is happening in the shadow of Epic Games' gigantic fight against Apple, one that Apple responded to this very afternoon.

Apple responded to Epic Games' lawsuit accusing it of anticompetitive behavior in how it controls the App Store, telling the court that the Fortnite maker violated Apple's rules and shouldn't be placed back into the store temporarily while the legal battle rages. From a report: In its filing, Apple alleges that Epic Games asked for an individual arrangement with Apple, producing three emails from Epic CEO Tim Sweeney that bolster its claim. This is Apple's first significant legal response to Epic Games after the dispute between the two companies spilled into the courts. It comes the week after Epic Games released a direct payment mechanism inside Fortnite designed to bypass the App Store's payment system, from which Apple takes a 30% cut. Apple subsequently removed Fortnite from its store for violating its policies. People who already have Fortnite installed on their iPhones can continue to play, but cannot update or download the app for the first time.

Fortnite-maker Epic Games and Apple are currently embroiled in a public battle over Apple's App Store policies, and in the latest move in the dispute, Epic has announced a Fortnite tournament taking place August 23rd where players can compete to win anti-Apple prizes. From a report: Last week, Epic added a new direct payment system to Fortnite in violation of Apple's policies. Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store the same day, and shortly after, Epic launched a campaign against Apple by suing the company, releasing a "Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite" video mocking Apple's famous "1984" ad, and promoting the hashtag #FreeFortnite. Players who compete in the tournament have the opportunity to win an in-game skin of the evil-looking apple featured in Epic's "Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite" video (cheekily dubbed the "Tart Tycoon"), a "Free Fortnite" hat, and even non-iOS gaming hardware, including an Alienware laptop, a Galaxy Tab S7, a OnePlus 8 phone, a PlayStation 4 Pro, an Xbox One X, or a Nintendo Switch.

A group of news publishers sent a letter to Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook seeking similar deal terms in its App Store that Amazon.com gets for its video-streaming service. From a report: Apple takes 30% of the revenue from most subscriptions in its App Store, then 15% after the first year. But in late July, a congressional antitrust panel disclosed internal emails showing a more-favorable deal struck between Apple services chief Eddy Cue and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. They agreed to a 15% revenue share for Amazon Prime Video customers who signed up through the iPhone app and no revenue share for users who already subscribed via Amazon or elsewhere, the emails showed. "We would like to know what conditions our members -- high quality digital content companies -- would need to meet in order to qualify for the arrangement Amazon is receiving for its Amazon Prime Video app in the Apple App Store," Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, wrote in the letter to Cook. Apple didn't respond to a request for comment. Digital Content Next represents several news outlets that rely on subscriptions for much of their revenue, including The New York Times, News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. The group also represents Bloomberg LP, owner of Bloomberg News.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in 2005, before the iPhone, Apple purportedly helped a U.S. Department of Energy contractor modify a 5th-generation iPod to secretly record and store data. The exact reason why remains a mystery, but an ex-Apple engineer involved in the project thinks it could have been a surreptitious Geiger counter. This bonkers story comes courtesy of David Shayer, a former Apple software engineer who was with the company for 18 years and worked on devices such as the iPod and Apple Watch. Shayer, who wrote the story for TidBITS, recounts a "gray day in late 2005" when his boss's boss, the director of iPod software, told him that he was assigned to a top-secret project with two engineers from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a "special iPod." In actuality, the two engineers were from Bechtel, a U.S. defense contractor for the DOE. The request was to build a normal, functioning iPod that could also secretly record data onto custom hardware. In other words, some spy-level shit. At the time, the iPod wasn't a particularly easy device to modify. That's because according to Shayer, the iPod's operating system wasn't based on any other Apple operating system. Instead, it was based on a "reference platform Apple bought from a company called Portal Player" and cobbled together with code from Pixo, a company started by former Apple engineers who wrote a "general-purpose cell phone operating system." TL;DR -- the iPod OS was complicated, and there wasn't an easy way to figure out how it worked without help from Apple.

It took Apple 42 years to reach $1 trillion in value. It took it just a two more years to get to $2 trillion. From a report: Even more stunning: All of Apple's second $1 trillion came in the past 21 weeks, while the global economy shrank faster than ever before in the coronavirus pandemic. On Wednesday Apple became the first U.S. company to hit a $2 trillion valuation when its shares climbed 1.2 percent to $467.78 in morning trading. It was another milestone for the maker of iPhones, Mac computers and Apple Watches, cementing its title as the world's most valuable public company and punctuating how the pandemic has been a bonanza for the tech giants. As recently as mid-March, Apple's value was under $1 trillion after the stock market plunged over fears of the coronavirus. On March 23, the stock market's nadir this year, the Federal Reserve announced aggressive new measures to calm investors. Since then, the stock market -- and particularly the stocks of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook -- largely soared, with the S&P 500 hitting a new high on Tuesday.