MacRumors

Apple supplier TSMC, which makes the A-series chips used in Apple's devices, will soon announce plans to build an advanced chip factory in Arizona, reports The Wall Street Journal.

TSMC is expected to announce the plans as soon as Friday after finalizing its decision at a board meeting on Tuesday. The factory could be up and running by the end of 2023 at the earliest.

The new TSMC plant would produce five-nanometer chips, which are the fastest and most power-efficient chips available today, a person with knowledge of TSMC's plans told The Wall Street Journal.

Apple's upcoming A14 chips designed for the 2020 iPhone models will use TSMC's 5-nanometer technology, with production to begin in the second quarter of 2020.

At this time, it's not known if TSMC is getting financial incentives from the U.S. to build a factory in Arizona, nor how many jobs the factory will bring. A typical TSMC factory employs thousands of people.

TSMC had been talking to U.S. officials and Apple about a U.S. chip factory for some time, but the conversations "gained momentum" amid concerns with the fragility of the Asian supply chain.

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Apple today shared its 2020 Supplier Responsibility progress report [PDF], and as noted by TechCrunch, it includes a letter that details Apple's plans to increase safety and protection in its worldwide supply chain in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

Authored by Sabih Khan, Apple's senior vice president of operations, the letter details changes that Apple has made to protect its supply chain partners, such as strict adherence to social distancing, limiting density, and health screenings.

This pandemic has left no country untouched, and we want to thank all our suppliers around the world for their commitment, flexibility and care for their teams as we navigate COVID-19's complex and rapidly evolving impacts. From the outset, we worked with our suppliers to develop and execute a plan that puts the health of people first. Thousands of Apple employees have worked tirelessly to execute that plan in partnership with our suppliers around the world.

Some of the measures that Apple has put in place include the following:

• Personal protective equipment during work and in common areas is required.
• Masks and sanitizer have been provided to employees.
• Enhanced deep cleaning protocols and been implemented.
• Suppliers have redesigned and reconfigured factory floorplans where needed for social distancing.
• Flexible working hours and staggered work shifts have been implemented for maximizing interpersonal space.

Apple is also sharing its plans with other organizations in the hopes of establishing similar standards across the industry.

The 2020 Supplier Responsibility Report was created based on interviews with 52,000 workers, with Apple auditing suppliers in 49 countries, up from 30 in 2018. There were 1142 total audits in 2019. Some additional highlights from the report:

• $1.3 million in recruitment fees were repaid to employees in 2019.
• There was a 53% year over year increase in supplier sites committed to achieving zero waste.
• 30.5 billion gallons of freshwater have been conserved by suppliers to date.
• Apple saw 100 percent participation in third-party audits across tin, tantalum, tungsten, gold, and cobalt smelters and refiners.
• There was a 13% increase in high-performing supplier facilities year over year.
• Less than one percent of Apple's suppliers were considered low-performing.
• Over 154,700 suppliers used SEED learning opportunities in 2019.
• 41 people took part in Apple's intensive app development course with a 100 percent graduation rate.

Full details about Apple's supply chain can be read in the full Supplier Responsibility Report. [PDF]

Apple has acquired California-based virtual reality company NextVR, Apple confirmed to Bloomberg today.

New's of Apple's planned NEXTVR acquisition first surfaced in April, but it appears the purchase wasn't completed until recently. Apple reportedly spent around $100 million to purchase the company.

The NextVR website has disappeared, and there is a message that says the company is "heading in a new direction." Apple gave Bloomberg its standard acquisition statement: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

NextVR melds virtual reality with sports, music, and entertainment, providing VR experiences for watching live events on VR headsets from PlayStation, HTC, Oculus, Google, Microsoft, and other manufacturers.

Prior to its acquisition by Apple, NextVR had established partnerships with the NBA, Wimbledon, Fox Sports, the WWE and more, plus it holds more than 40 patents that could be of interest to Apple.

Apple has been working on multiple augmented, virtual, and mixed reality headsets over the course of the last several years. Just today, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple's augmented reality Smart Glasses that are in the works could launch in 2022.

Along with the smart glasses, there have also been rumors indicating Apple is working on some kind of virtual reality headset that would feature an 8K display for each eye and that would be untethered from a smartphone or computer.

Apple today updated its COVID-19 screening app, created to help people stay informed and take the proper steps to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

Today's update includes updated recommendations for healthcare workers to align with CDC guidelines, plus best practices for quarantining if you've been exposed to COVID-19.

The app update also adds new information for pregnancy and newborns. Apple has also updated its accompanying COVID-19 website to provide the same new information for those who prefer to use the website.

Apple created the COVID-19 app and website in partnership with the CDC, White House Coronavirus Task Force, and FEMA. Along with the features introduced today, the tools provided by Apple let users answer a series of questions on risk factors, recent exposure, and symptoms to receive CDC recommendations on the next steps that they need to take.

The screening tool is available to anyone who is 18 years or older in the United States. Data provided in the COVID-19 app and on the website is not shared with Apple, the CDC, or other government agencies.

Apple has long been rumored to be working on some kind of augmented reality headset, and in a new note to investors, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that he expects the Apple Glasses to launch in 2022 at the earliest.

Taiwanese site DigiTimes also recently said that Apple's AR glasses could launch by 2022 as suppliers work to ramp up development, and The Information has also suggested a 2022 launch date. Rumors have indicated that Apple's first AR headset will look similar to Facebook's Oculus Quest, but with a sleeker design that uses fabrics and lightweight materials to make it comfortable to wear for long periods of time.

Apple Glasses could feature a high-resolution display and are likely to be reliant on the iPhone for processing power to keep them slim and lightweight. The glasses are expected to run a new operating system, rOS (or reality OS), and Apple is exploring touch panels, voice activation, and head gestures as a means of control.

Kuo in the same note said that Apple is working on two new iPad models, which include a 10.8-inch ‌iPad‌ and an 8.5 to 9-inch iPad mini. These new iPads are expected to launch in the second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021, respectively.

We predict that Apple will launch the new 10.8 inch iPad and 8.5–9 inch iPad mini models in 2H20 and 1H21, respectively. GIS will be the main touch panel supplier. The two new iPad models will follow iPhone SE’s product strategy, and selling points will be the affordable price tag and the adoption of fast chips. We believe that GIS will be the primary touch panel supplier for these two new affordable iPad models because the company is the largest medium-size touch supplier, thanks to the cost advantages of Megasite. We think that two new affordable iPad models will significantly contribute to GIS’s revenue because affordable models account for 60–70% of total iPad shipments.

Kuo said that he believes the two new ‌iPad‌ models will follow the ‌iPhone‌ SE's product strategy, which means affordable price points. At 10.8 and 8.5 to 9 inches, both iPads would be larger than the current models.

The existing low-cost ‌iPad‌ is 10.2 inches, while the current ‌iPad mini‌ is 7.9 inches. It's not clear if Apple plans to introduce larger-sized tablets or increase the available display size through bezel reduction.

Kuo previously said that Apple was working on an ‌iPad mini‌ with a mini-LED display that could be released as soon as late 2020, but it's not clear if the larger ‌iPad mini‌ mentioned in today's note is the same ‌iPad mini‌ that will get a mini-LED display.

Mophie today announced the launch of its latest power bank option, the 10,000mAh Powerstation Wireless XL Universal Battery. The Powerstation Wireless XL comes equipped support for Qi-based wireless charging and it includes a USB-C port for fast charging devices.

The Powerstation Wireless XL, which has a glass top design, can charge an iPhone wirelessly, plus it can be charged wirelessly with a Qi-based wireless charger, so you can wirelessly charge the power bank while you also wirelessly charge your phone.

If faster charging for an ‌iPhone‌ or iPad is needed, the USB-C port can be used, and since it's an input/output USB-C port, if you want to charge up the power bank quickly, you can do so over USB-C or the included Lightning port.

For iPhones with fast charging capabilities, the Powerstation Wireless XL can charge them to approximately 50 percent in 30 minutes as the USB-C port delivers 18W of power.

According to Mophie, the Powerstation Wireless XL adds up to 55 hours of additional battery life to an ‌iPhone‌. Priority+ charging ensures power gets sent to your ‌iPhone‌ first and then the Powerstation when recharging, and an LED power indicator lets you know how much time is left.

The Powerstation Wireless XL can be purchased from the Mophie website or from the online Apple Store for $99.95.

Zerodium this week announced that it will not be purchasing any iOS exploits for the next two to three months due to a high number of submissions. In other words, the company has so many security vulnerabilities at its disposal that it does not need any more.

Zerodium is an exploit acquisition platform that pays researchers for zero-day security vulnerabilities and then sells them to institutional customers like government organizations and law enforcement agencies. The company focuses on high-risk vulnerabilities, normally offering between $100,000 and $2 million per fully functional iOS exploit.

In an explicit tweet, Zerodium CEO Chaouki Bekrar said iOS security is in bad shape, noting that there are at least a few persistent zero-day security vulnerabilities affecting all iPhones and iPads. "Let's hope iOS 14 will be better," added Bekrar.

Apple has its own bug bounty program that offers between $5,000 and $1 million for security vulnerabilities in iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, or watchOS.

Tencent security researcher Yuebin Sun today disclosed three security vulnerabilities in Adobe Acrobat Reader for Mac that could allow an attacker to gain root privileges and access sensitive user data.

Adobe patched the vulnerabilities in an update to Acrobat this week, so make sure you are running version 2020.009.20063 or later by opening the app and navigating to Help > Check for Updates.

Adobe has shared a security bulletin with more details.

Apple today indicated that its retail store at the Nave de Vero shopping mall in the Venice area will reopen on Tuesday, May 19, with reduced operating hours of 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time and other health and safety measures in place.

Italian website iSpazio today reported that Apple plans to reopen 10 of its 17 stores in Italy on May 19, excluding locations in the Piedmont and Lombardy regions.

After closing all of its retail stores outside of the Greater China region in mid-March due to the global health crisis, Apple is in the process of reopening locations in some countries, including Australia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, South Korea, and the United States. However, the majority of its stores around the world remain closed.

MacRumors shared a list of guidelines that Apple Stores are following upon reopening, such as social distancing and checking the temperatures of customers.

Apple has been served a warrant by the FBI to obtain information on the iCloud account of U.S. Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who is being investigated for controversial stock trades linked to the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Los Angeles Times, FBI agents served Apple the warrant "in recent days" to gain access to the ‌iCloud‌ data. The information gathered from the warrant's execution was then used as evidence to serve another warrant to obtain the Republican senator's iPhone from his home.

Federal agents seized a cellphone belonging to a prominent Republican senator on Wednesday night as part of the Justice Department's investigation into controversial stock trades he made as the novel coronavirus first struck the U.S., a law enforcement official said. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned over his phone to agents after they served a search warrant on the lawmaker at his residence in the Washington area, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a law enforcement action.

According to the report, the Senator is being investigated for selling a significant percentage of his stock portfolio in 33 different transactions on February 13, just as his committee was receiving daily COVID-19 briefings and a week before the stock market sharply declined.

The value of the trades is believed to be between $628,000 and $1.72 million. Much of that was said to have been invested in businesses that in subsequent weeks were hit hard by the plunging market, the implication being that the trades were made on the basis of information Burr received about the pandemic in the daily briefings.

Apple can decrypt an ‌iCloud‌ backup and provide the information to authorities when ordered to do so via a warrant, because the company views privacy and security issues differently between physical devices that can be lost and ‌iCloud‌. With ‌iCloud‌, it needs to be accessible by Apple so that it can restore the data for the user.

‌iCloud‌ backups contain iMessages and texts, content purchase history, photos and videos, device settings, app data, voicemail password, and health data. Backups don't include information that's easily downloadable, such as emails from servers or apps, and while ‌iCloud‌ backup does encompass ‌iCloud‌ keychain, Wi-Fi passwords, and passwords for third-party services, that information is encrypted in a way that makes it inaccessible to Apple.

More than two years ago, Apple reportedly informed the FBI that it planned to roll out end-to-end encryption for ‌iCloud‌ backups, but ultimately dropped the plan at some point after the FBI objected, although it remains unclear if the federal agency was a factor in the decision.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Global shipments of fingerprint-on-display (FoD) sensors grew nearly eightfold in 2019, according to tech market research firm Omdia (via DigiTimes).

A total of 228.3 million FoD sensors were shipped in 2019, up 674% from 29.5 million in 2018, said Omdia. With FoD sensors having reached the sweet spot for market pricing, FoD shipments are expected to continue rising at a tremendous rate in 2020, expanding to more than 400 million units, Omdia indicated.

Apple stopped using its capacitive Touch ID sensor in its flagship iPhones when it introduced Face ID in 2017's iPhone X, which ditched the Home button in favor of an extended screen.

Apple has since pushed ahead with ‌Face ID‌, adding it to every flagship ‌iPhone‌ since, and even including it in the iPad Pro. Meanwhile, most other smartphone brands have adopted fingerprint-on-display scanners as an advanced biometric identification technology to replace capacitive fingerprint chips. More than 70 smartphone models integrated FoD in 2019, according to Omdia.

Despite Apple's decision to move away from the technology in favor of face recognition, rumors persist about the company's interest in using under-screen fingerprint scanners in its mobile devices. Just last month we heard a report that Apple could feature the technology in an ‌iPhone‌ by 2021, while an anonymous leaker with a fairly accurate track record claimed Apple is developing a new iPad Air with under-the-screen ‌Touch ID‌.

Those rumors also lined up with reports last year from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Barclays analysts, Bloomberg, and others who said they expect Apple to release an ‌‌iPhone‌‌ with both ‌Face ID‌ and under-display fingerprint authentication in 2020 or 2021.

Apple has explored various in-display fingerprint scanner solutions in the past, including fingerprint sensing MicroLED displays, but has not developed in-screen fingerprint technology for a consumer device. Meanwhile, ‌‌Touch ID‌‌ has found a new lease of life on Apple's MacBook keyboards and the latest-generation ‌iPhone‌ SE.

With rumors suggesting Apple is working to gradually reduce the size of the notch housing the TrueDepth sensor, which powers ‌Face ID‌, the most likely scenario is a biometric authentication system that combines both facial and finger sensing tech, enabling a future all-screen device featuring unparalleled mobile security.

Utah in April released "Healthy Together," a contact tracing app aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus by letting people know if they've come in contact with someone who is later diagnosed with the virus.

Utah's Healthy Together app does not use Apple and Google's Exposure Notification API, instead opting for a less private GPS and Bluetooth-based solution that's currently available in a beta capacity. Healthy Together was created by social media startup Twenty, and it does not take advantage of the decentralized, anonymized approach that Apple and Google are implementing, according to a report from CNBC.

The aim of the Healthy Together app is to help the 1,200 Utah Department of Health workers who are doing in-person contact tracing through phone calls. Utah's health department has access to the name, telephone number, and location data of people who test positive for COVID-19 and opt to share their data.

The app uses Bluetooth and GPS to determine when smartphone users come into contact with one another, and if someone tests positive, they can share their location history and contact history over the past 14 days with a contact tracer. Twenty believes that this can cut hour-long phone calls used for contact tracing down to 16 minutes. From Twenty chief strategy officer Jared Allgood:

"Jeff and Sarah are two individuals in this example who don't know each other but they both have the app on their phones. And so the both phones are emitting Bluetooth and GPS signals. Through that data we can identify whether or not two people have spent some time together."

"If Public Health is calling somebody who has the application on their phone, and they've granted permission to see this minimum set of data to do the contact tracing effort, now, instead of spending an hour, you know, interviewing Jeff and trying to fill in the gaps in his memory, they together can step through his list of location history."

Apple and Google's privacy-focused solution does not allow personal information to be provided to public health departments, and it does not involve location-based data collection, unlike Utah's Healthy Together app. Twenty's founders claim that the Healthy Together app is opt-in and users can choose to limit permissions like GPS or Bluetooth if they don't want their location tracked, but it's not clear how this impacts the effectiveness of the contact tracing design as implemented in Utah.

According to the Utah state website, Utah opted out of Google and Apple's solution because Bluetooth alone "gives a less accurate picture" than Bluetooth and GPS location data.

The goal of Healthy Together is to allow public health officials to understand how the disease spreads through the vector of people and places, and both location and bluetooth data are needed to accomplish that.

Bluetooth helps us understand person-to-person transmission, while location/GPS data helps us understand transmission zones -- having both of these important data points provides a more effective picture of how COVID-19 spreads. This data helps policy makers make the best possible decisions about how and where we begin to relax and modify restrictions as our community and economy begin to reactivate.

One of the benefits of the Apple/Google API is background Bluetooth tracking that does not require an app to implement battery draining features or require users to keep it open for smartphone to smartphone communication to be effective. Utah will not have the benefit of the API by opting for an outside solution, which could also impact the effectiveness of the app.

45,000 people have signed up for Utah's contact tracing app, which is about two percent of the state's population. Some estimates have indicated that to be effective, contact tracing apps need to be downloaded by 60 percent of a population.

Apple and Google have said that they're aiming to release the ‌Exposure Notification‌ API in mid-May, so we could see it as early as this week after the release of iOS 13.5. Following the release of the update, the first apps that use the API will be able to be released.

Update: The state of Utah says it has not completely rejected the Apple/Google API, and the following statement was provided to MacRumors:

While Healthy Together does not currently include the Apple/Google API (as it has not been officially launched), neither the state of Utah nor Twenty has completely rejected their solution. As it stands, Apple/Google’s plans are to disallow the use of the API with apps that identify the user or utilize GPS, but there’s still a lot to be learned out about what they ultimately roll out, and Healthy Together is still open to conversations and digging further into the API.

The Healthy Together app was created to meet specifications from Utah’s public health team, and is intended to support and augment the work of their contact tracers, not automate or replace them. Our approach is tech agnostic and built to balance the need for public health effectiveness alongside the need to protect user privacy. Twenty invested heavily in building up a privacy framework that they believe not only meets but exceeds this balance wherever possible (see more here), and remains open to learning and/or adjusting along the way.

Epic Games today unveiled Unreal Engine 5, the newest iteration of its game engine that's used by game developers for many high-profile games. A demo video running on a developer version of the PS5 hardware shows what Unreal Engine 5 is capable of.

Unreal Engine 5 focuses on photorealism that's on par with movie CG and real life, and it will be released in 2021. Unreal Engine 5 will support current-generation consoles, next-generation consoles, PCs, Macs, iOS, and Android.

‌Epic Games‌ detailed two new core technologies that will be coming in Unreal Engine 5, including Nanite virtualized geometry for importing film-quality source art directly into Unreal Engine as virtualized textures and Lumen, a fully dynamic global illumination system designed to react to scene and light changes, which will allow for more realistic shadows and rendering of moving light sources.

Unreal Engine 5 has been designed to make it easy for development teams of all sizes to take advantage of content libraries and tools to create games with unprecedented levels of detail and interactivity.

In addition to Unreal Engine 5, Epic today announced a change to how its royalties work. Developers are now able to keep all royalties for the first $1 million in sales generated, and then it will take five percent of sales after that. Previously, Epic collected royalties on all games after the first $3000 in sales.

Epic is also launching Epic Online Services, an online multi-platform game management system that was originally created for Fortnite. Epic Online Services provides developers with tools for cross-platform matchmaking and account management.