Apple adding privacy fact labels to App Store items

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Apple on Monday began adding labels that reveal what user data is gathered by games, chat or other software offered in the App Store for its popular mobile devices.

The iPhone maker announced plans for such "privacy labels" when it first unveiled the new version of its iOS mobile operating system, which it released in September.

"App Store product pages will feature summaries of developers' self-reported privacy practices, displayed in a simple, easy-to-read format," Apple said in a blog post when iOS 14 launched.

"Starting early next year, all apps will be required to obtain user permission before tracking."

Apple began pushing out the labels on Monday, with the rule applying to new apps for iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Mac computers.

The labels will contain information provided by developers when they submit apps for approval to appear on the App Store's virtual shelves, according to the Silicon Valley-based company.

Apple last week began requiring developers to submit privacy information for use in labels.

"Apple recently required that all apps distributed via their App Store display details designed to show people how their data may be used," Facebook-owned smartphone messaging service WhatsApp said in a blog post explaining what data the app gathers.

"We must collect some information to provide a reliable global communications service."

The aim, according to Apple, is for users to be able to easily see and understand what apps do with their data, from lists of contacts to where they are.

Data types added to labels will include tracking in order to target advertising or sharing with data brokers, as well as information that could reveal user identity.

Apple and Android mobile operating systems provide tools for controlling the kinds of data apps can access once they are installed.

Agence France-Presse

Apple plans to sell Macs with its own chips from 2021 - Bloomberg

Apple Inc plans to sell Mac computers with its own main processors by next year based on the chip designs currently used in its iPhones and iPads, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

The iPhone maker is working on 3 Mac processors based on the A14 processor in its next iPhone, suggesting the company will transition more of its Mac lineup away from current supplier Intel Corp, the report added citing people familiar with the matter.

Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters' request for comment.

-reuters-

Steve Jobs was right: Smartphones and tablets killed the PC

I got an iPad Pro recently, and I’ve fallen madly in love with it.

This was unexpected. I’ve had iPads before, but like a lot of people, I hadn’t found them to be very useful. Tablets were good for surfing the Web and watching Netflix, but they’ve always been dogged by the charge that you couldn’t get a lot of work done on them.

Apple’s latest iPads are different. Not only can you get work done on them; in many ways they’re productivity dream machines. Today’s iPads are powered by custom-designed processors that are faster than the chips on some of the Macs Apple makes, and the iPad’s separately sold keyboard is better and more durable than the accursed, falling-apart mess of a keyboard that Apple is shipping on its much-maligned current line of laptops.

Apple unveiled a new 16-inch MacBook with a revamped keyboard on Wednesday, good news for the many Apple lovers who’ve been grumbling about the company’s lackluster slate of recent Macs. But I think the iPad is already beginning to eclipse the traditional personal computer. In the four months I’ve had this latest model, the iPad Pro has eaten into the time I spend on my phone and my old-school laptop and desktop. Among other things, I now research and write just about every column using an iPad (I still compose many first drafts by speaking into my headphones, but I’m an odd duck).

I thought I had gotten out of the gadget-reviewing business for good last year. Since the smartphone had gobbled up everything from cameras to music players to portable gaming systems, I declared the whole field of gadgetry dead. But just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.

The history of the iPad is a story about consolidation, focus and the power of scale in the tech business. It’s a story about how thoroughly one company, Apple, has dominated the entire hardware business this decade. And it is also, really, a story about the only thing that mattered in tech in the 2010s — the smartphone — and the way that one device became the gravitational center of the entire tech business, shaping every market in the industry, and much of the non-tech world beyond it.

The iPad has always been freighted with great expectations. Although the iPad was unveiled in 2010, three years after the iPhone, development of the iPad predated development of the phone, and Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, always seemed to have his heart in the tablet.

In one of his last interviews before his death in 2011, Jobs declared the iPad to be the future of computing. “PCs are going to be like trucks,” he told journalists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg — meaning the traditional Mac and Windows machines would still be around, but like big rigs, they’d be used by a small set of power users for a dwindling set of specific, high-power tasks. The “cars” of the tech industry, as Jobs saw it, would be phones and tablets.

For a while, he was only partially right. The iPad sold well at launch, but after a few years it hit some hurdles. After Jobs’s death, Apple left the iPad to languish, and did something similar with the Mac.

Meanwhile, something amazing happened with the iPhone and the many Android-based copycat phones it inspired. In the 2010s, smartphones became more popular, more powerful and more profitable than anyone in the tech industry thought possible. Within a few years, their sales and usage eclipsed that of PCs, and for much of the decade they were the fountain of most new consumer innovations across the technology industry. Smartphones made Uber and Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok possible. Smartphone cameras began to surpass stand-alone cameras, turning much of culture and society into a meme-soaked playground where visual media matters more than text.

The smartphone also altered the business dynamics of the tech industry. When the iPhone came out, Apple was just one of many successful hardware companies in the world. But the smartphone decimated a host of phone brands (remember Nokia? Motorola?), and as smartphones gained more power, they began making life impossible for a slate of hardware startups, from GoPro to Jawbone.

On the strength of the iPhone, Apple began capturing a greater and greater slice of the tech hardware business; although it didn’t sell a majority of units, its commitment to the high end of the market allowed it to make the bulk of profits. In the last quarter of 2017, according to one estimate, Apple made 86 percent of profits in the smartphone industry.

Apple’s dominance came despite the fact that the company made some big mistakes and was late to many big innovations. Samsung, not Apple, invented huge-screen phones. Apple’s Mac line was plagued by delays and dead ends, including a 2013 redesign of the Mac Pro that looked like a trash can and proved just as useful. And on the iPad, for many years, Apple just seemed to fall asleep. The iPad’s stylus and keyboard-forward design? Microsoft did it first on the Surface.

Yet none of this mattered. Because of its hold on the smartphone business and a very sticky software ecosystem that users found hard to leave, Apple has been able to incorporate many innovations pioneered elsewhere and sell its customers on a series of peripheral billion-dollar businesses, including the Apple Watch and AirPods.

And ultimately, it’s the ecosystem that explains why I can’t stop raving about the iPad. When it came out, the big knock on the iPad was that it was just a big phone; today, that’s what I love about it — like the Watch or AirPods, the iPad feels intuitive and natural to me because it works just like the device I use most often, my phone.

Like a phone, in most scenarios I find the iPad to be faster, more portable and easier to use and maintain than any traditional PC I’ve ever owned. The iPad’s limited screen space and emphasis on full-screen apps also makes for fewer distractions than on a traditional personal computer. The iPad, like my phone, lets me log in to my bank using my face; the Mac, in 2019, doesn’t even have a touch screen.

The iPad still can’t do everything a laptop can, and I still have to log in to a “real” computer sometimes. I had a long chat recently with Dan Seifert, the deputy editor of the Verge, who uses an iPad every day on the subway but often finds the device infuriating.

“For someone like me, who’s been using a desktop operating system for a long time, there’s a lot of built-in conventions that I’m used to that can be frustrating,” Seifert said. In particular, the iPad doesn’t work with antiquated work flows that are built for PCs. Say you need to log into your company’s bespoke publishing system or expense program? It’s possible those won’t work on your iPad — at least not yet — because they were built for much older devices.

But Seifert agreed with me that many of these uses are a special case. He still uses PCs because often, in Jobs’ parlance, he needs a truck. Most people, however, don’t need trucks, and few of us will need them in the future. Seifert isn’t teaching his kids how to use desktop operating systems like the Mac or Windows, and neither am I.

It took longer than he expected, but Steve Jobs was right. Over the past decade, for most people, in most use cases, phones killed the PC. To get work done, now you just use a big phone — which Apple happens to call an iPad.


2019 New York Times News Service

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Apple to supply parts to independent repair shops for first time

Apple Inc said on Thursday it will begin selling parts, tools and repair guides to independent shops to fix broken iPhones, a major change after years of lobbying against laws in some US states that would have compelled it to do just that.

Apple said the program, which should help ease heavy demand on Apple and its authorized partners to fix millions of cracked screens and fried charging ports, will launch in the United States before being rolled out to other countries.

The back flip means that independent repair shops will be offered official parts for out-of-warranty repairs at the same price offered to authorized service providers, such as Best Buy Inc, which perform warranty work.

Ben Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, said the move could create more opportunities for Apple to sell services or accessories if it encourages iPhone owners to hand down used phones to friends and family.

"That helps them get the product more affordably into the hands of more customers and increases the base," Bajarin said. "Every data point seems to say, if you get someone into the Apple ecosystem, they generally don't leave."

Apple's iPhone sales have declined in the past two fiscal quarters, but sales of accessories such as its AirPods wireless headphones and the Apple Watch, along with paid services like Apple Music, have helped make up for some of the revenue falls.

Independent shops have long complained that the high purchase volumes required by Apple to become an authorized service provider priced them out of the repair market.

The tech giant had previously lobbied against "right-to-repair" bills to supply independent businesses in several U.S. states, including New York and California, citing concerns about maintaining a high service standard. It earlier this year allowed all U.S. Best Buy stores to handle warranty work.

However, the unofficial repair industry that sprang up, using mostly aftermarket parts supplied by third parties, was often unreliable.

Apple said it trialed the new repair program for a year with 20 businesses across North America, Europe and Asia. It did not give a timetable for the international launches.

The program will allow independent stores to set their own prices for repairs and also offer cheaper aftermarket parts. They will be required to return any collected broken Apple parts to the company for refurbishment or recycling.

The program will be free for shops to join, but they will be required to have an Apple-certified technician who has taken a free 40-hour training course and test provided by the company.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; editing by Jane Wardell)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Apple joins businesses' appeal for US to drop China tariff plan

NEW YORK -- Apple Inc, Keurig Dr Pepper Inc, Dollar Tree Inc and Fitbit Inc have joined other companies in filing letters of opposition to a Trump administration plan for more US tariffs on Chinese goods, including iPhones, MacBooks, and single-serve coffee brewers.

The United States and China are resuming talks to end a trade war after more than a month's hiatus. The countries' leaders are expected to meet at the G20 summit in Japan next week.

US President Donald Trump had said he would consider extending tariffs to another $300 billion of Chinese goods if his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping does not yield progress on the trade dispute.

The new round of tariffs would reduce Apple's competitiveness and cut the contribution it could make to the US Treasury, Apple said in an online filing on Thursday.

Apple said in the document it is the largest US corporate taxpayer to the US Treasury and reiterated its 2018 pledge to directly contribute over $350 billion to the US economy over 5 years.

Apple said it would also take a hit because Chinese and other non-US firms do not have a significant US market presence.

"A US tariff would, therefore, tilt the playing field in favor of our global competitors," Apple said.

The levies would also hit AirPods, Apple TVs and batteries and parts. Some of these products were spared from the previous round of tariffs imposed last September on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, but were put back on the list when Trump decided to prepare tariffs on virtually all remaining imports from China.

Officials are in the fourth of 7 days of hearings for US manufacturers, retailers and other businesses to weigh in on the tariff plan. Many individuals and companies have also filed letters and comments to the US Trade Representative in an online docket.

COMPLAINTS LIST GROWS

Coffee and beverage firm Keurig Dr Pepper and technology giant Apple are the latest in a growing list of US companies pressing the Trump administration to abandon plans to impose tariffs of up to 25 percent on another $300 billion of Chinese imports.

Air conditioner maker Carrier Inc, a unit of United Technologies Corp, said the latest round of tariffs on air conditioner parts "will result in significant price increases for US consumers of US-manufactured HVAC equipment," making them less likely to replace older, inefficient systems.

The company said it would take 12 to 18 months to find alternative parts sources, and higher costs may force it to exit lower-priced segments of the air conditioning market.

Companies such as Dell Technologies Inc, HP Inc , and Walmart Inc have already voiced their opposition.

Wearable device maker Fitbit Inc in a letter said tariffs would result in a competitive advantage for Chinese device makers in the US market, sparking "national security concerns by placing sensitive US health, location and financial data within the Chinese government's reach."

Chinese rivals are willing to sacrifice profits to gain market share "in a manner that US companies like Fitbit cannot afford," it said.

FROM COMPUTERS TO K-CUPS

Some 88 percent of all coffee brewers sold in the United States are imported from China, Keurig counsel said in its public comments. The company's own brewers are in over 28 million homes and used in more than 1 million hotel rooms, the letter to the US Trade Representative's Office said.

"This is significant, for the manufacturers directly affected and coffee-drinking US consumers who will have no choice but to pay higher prices for coffee brewers, or forgo their daily morning brew," the company said.

Many US companies rely on China to source a vast array of products. Finding alternative suppliers will raise costs, in many cases more than the 25 percent tariffs, some witnesses have this week told a panel of officials from USTR, the Commerce Department, State Department and other federal agencies.

The proposed list, which will be ready for a decision by Trump as early as July 2, includes nearly all consumer products. It has been loudly opposed by retailers like Dollar Tree, which is one of the top 50 US employers and seventh largest importer, the company said in its public comments.

"Simply put, the imposition of an additional 25 percent duty on the types of everyday, household products that we offer will have a significant and disproportionate negative impact on middle- and low-income American households," Dollar Tree said.

The tariffs could also hit Christmas sales hard, particularly cellphones, computers, toys and electronic gadgets.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Apple opens first official store in SE Asia

SINGAPORE - Apple opened its first Southeast Asia store in Singapore on Saturday, drawing hundreds of excited fans to the swanky two-storey site in the city's upmarket shopping district.

Located on the affluent Orchard Road, the new shop -- easily distinguished by its iconic glass facade -- is expected to be one of the most popular Apple stores in the world according to the US tech giant.

Merchandise such as the iPhone and MacBook were strategically placed on display across the spacious first floor, while the upper level acted as a classroom for customers to participate in hands-on sessions.

Hundreds of shoppers camped out in anticipation of the launch, while more than a thousand thronged the store soon after the doors opened, an AFP reporter observed.

First in the queue was Xiang Jiaxin, a twenty-five-year-old Chinese national working in Macau who had queued for more than 12 hours overnight and planned a holiday to Singapore specially to coincide with the opening.

"I am very happy and excited to be part of this. I have participated in the official store openings in Macau, Guangzhou and Nanjing," he told AFP.

Apple, which has a staggering $256.8 billion cash stockpile, celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. The Silicon Valley legend sprang out of Steve Jobs' garage to reshape modern life with trend-setting gadgets.

Most of its earnings come from the iPhone, which faces increasingly tough competition in a saturated market.

The tech behemoth has almost 500 stores globally with more than a million visitors daily. Aside from Singapore, its Asia shops are located in Hong Kong, China and Japan.

A regional transport, business and financial hub, Singapore attracted 16.4 million visitors last year.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

New ultrathin MacBook, Apple watch launched

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook began showing off features of the new Apple Watch on Monday at a presentation in which he is expected to give details of the launch of the product, the first created under his leadership.

Shares of Apple were up about 1.4 percent at $128.41.

The watch will track exercise, remind wearers of events with a tap on the wrist, and make calls through an electronically tethered phone, since the watch has a built in speaker and microphone.

"I have been wanting to do this since I was five years old," said Cook, who called the device revolutionary. He also laid out other product successes and launched a new MacBook notebook computer that starts at $1,299 and weighs as little as 2 pounds.

Every major car brand had committed to delivering Apple's CarPlay entertainment system, and the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have 99 percent customer satisfaction rates, he said. The Apple Pay payment system is now accepted at 700,000 locations, and Time Warner Inc's HBO in April will debut its streaming HBO NOW service on Apple TV.

Apple also is offering researchers new development tools, called ResearchKit, to help medical researchers design apps for clinical trials, the company said. (Reporting by Edwin Chan and Alexei Oreskovic; writing by Peter Henderson; Editing by Bernard Orr)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com