MacRumors

If you have ever complained about Siri on Twitter or likewise, your feedback could actually make its way to Apple executives.

A recent Apple job listing seeks an engineering program manager to "monitor what the world is saying about ‌Siri‌ through social media, news, and other sources." This will include detecting "‌Siri‌ issues that are going viral or otherwise trending" and reporting them to the ‌Siri‌ team and its leadership.

Based on user feedback, the employee will be required to provide recommendations for next steps on areas where the ‌Siri‌ user experience could be improved. The person will also work with Apple's marketing teams to ensure external information like Apple support documents are updated to clear up misunderstandings.

The employee will have a secondary responsibility of working alongside ‌Siri‌ software engineers to ensure the success of Apple marketing campaigns, press events, product announcements, and product launches involving ‌Siri‌.

As noted by VentureBeat, which first discovered the job listing, the employee will be able to "drive rapid-response solutions," hopefully meaning the company will quickly address any trending issues before they become embarrassing headlines like the major FaceTime privacy bug unearthed in late January.

Any improvements to ‌Siri‌ would be welcomed, as the assistant is widely considered to have fallen behind its rivals Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. ‌Siri‌ has already shown some signs of progress lately under the leadership of Apple's recently promoted artificial intelligence chief John Giannandrea.

The USB Promoter Group standards body today announced the pending release of a new USB4 specification.

USB4 converges the Thunderbolt and USB protocols as part of Intel's goal to make Thunderbolt available on a royalty-free basis, which should result in wider and cheaper availability of Thunderbolt accessories like docks and eGPUs.

As USB4 is based on Thunderbolt 3, it offers data transfer speeds up to 40 Gbps, which is twice as fast as the bandwidth of the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 specification. USB4's underlying Thunderbolt 3 protocol also means the specification supports up to two 4K displays or one 5K display over a single cable.

The simplest way to view USB4 is as Thunderbolt 3, but royalty free for manufacturers. Intel will continue to offer Thunderbolt 3 on a standalone basis with a few advantages over USB4, including more support with reference designs and technical issues for manufacturers, according to The Verge.

USB4 will use the USB-C connector design and will be backwards compatible with USB 3.2 and USB 2.0 specifications.

The USB4 specification is on track to be published around the middle of 2019. Over 50 companies are actively participating in the final stages of review of the draft specification, which should include Apple, Intel, and Microsoft, but it might take a few years until the first USB4 devices are released.

In July 2017, Qualcomm filed suit against Apple in San Diego federal court, accusing the iPhone maker of infringing on six U.S. patents related to graphics processing architecture, power consumption, and envelope tracking technologies. Nearly two years later, the case is finally headed to trial.

The trial begins today with jury selection, with proceedings expected to take up to two weeks. It will be the first time a U.S. jury is involved in the major legal battle between the two companies, according to Bloomberg.

The legal battle between Apple and Qualcomm spans multiple countries. The dispute began in January 2017 when Apple sued Qualcomm for an alleged $1 billion in unpaid royalty rebates, just days after an FTC complaint alleged that Qualcomm engaged in anticompetitive patent licensing practices.

Qualcomm has countersued, alleging that its "innovations are at the heart of every iPhone" and "enable the most important uses and features of those devices," adding that it "simply is untrue that Qualcomm is seeking to collect royalties for Apple innovations that have nothing to do with Qualcomm's technology."

Last week, analysts at investment bank Barclays said that Qualcomm is seemingly "running out" of time to reach a settlement with Apple if it wants to win 5G modems orders for the first 5G-enabled iPhones, expected in 2020.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives are getting deeply involved with the behind-the-scenes production of the company's original television shows, which are set to debut later this year. Apple has been "difficult" to deal with on the project, according to unnamed agents and producers working with Apple on its foray into streaming TV (via The New York Post).

Cook and other executives have been described as "intrusive," with the biggest complaint involving numerous notes that Apple has been sending streaming partners as they watch each show and contribute their opinion. Other sources stated there has been a "lack of transparency" and "lack of clarity" on what Apple wants throughout the process.

One agent noted that Apple has been "very involved," explaining that writers and directors typically prefer to work without heavy oversight from higher-ups in corporate. This involvement has included a repeated note sent by Cook telling producers and showrunners, "don't be so mean!" It's unclear which shows this note has been sent to, and how many.

“Tim Cook is giving notes and getting involved,” said a producer who has worked with Apple. One of the CEO’s most repeated notes is “don’t be so mean!,” the source said.

Cook has visited the sets of multiple shows, including the Vancouver set of See, a futuristic science fiction show, and the Los Angeles set of the morning show drama starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.

In terms of the launch, Apple's nitpicking over content and technology has caused numerous delays, and content partners are said to be slightly irritated about these delays. Original rumors suggested the service would see a public launch by the spring of 2019, but now it's believed Apple won't launch its streaming TV service until summer or fall 2019, although an event on March 25 will see the public announcement of the service.

Amid all of this, one producer stated that Apple's overall goal isn't clear enough and that a lack of clarity has caused confusion among many entertainment partners.

Another frustration is that Apple also keeps moving the target on what it wants, sources said.

“They are making big changes, firing and hiring new writers. There’s a lack of clarity on what they want,” the producer said. “A lot of the product is not as good as they hoped it to be,” he said.

We've seen similarly opposing reports over the past few months, with some suggesting that Apple was looking to avoid mature content on its TV shows and others claiming that the company was on the hunt for the next Breaking Bad. Apple might be okay with mature content, as long as it has substance and isn't gratuitous, but again today The New York Post's sources suggest that Apple's notes to showrunners include keeping content suitable for families.

At the same time, it's unclear which shows these notes were given to as Apple has well over a dozen TV shows in development, with vastly different genres among each. We'll know more about Apple's streaming TV service soon enough, as the company's rumored March 25 event is three weeks from today.

A German teenager who discovered a macOS Keychain security flaw last month has now shared the details with Apple, after having initially refused to hand them over because of the company's lack of a bug bounty program for the Mac.

Eighteen-year-old Linus Henze dubbed the zero-day macOS vulnerability he found "KeySteal," which, as demoed in the video above, can be used to disclose all sensitive data stored in the Keychain app.

Henze said he decided to reveal the details to Apple because the bug "is very critical and because the security of macOS users is important to me."

After Henze released the video in early February, Apple's security team reached out to him, but the researcher said he wouldn't disclose the details without a cash reward, arguing that discovering the vulnerabilities takes time.

"Even if it looks like I'm doing this just for money, this is not my motivation at all in this case," said Henze. "My motivation is to get Apple to create a bug bounty program. I think that this is the best for both Apple and Researchers."

Apple has a reward program for iOS that provides money to those who discover bugs, but there is no similar payment system for macOS bugs.

In the wake of the launch of the Galaxy Fold, Samsung has begun shopping around its foldable display technology to other companies. ETNews (Translate) reports that they have specifically provided samples to Apple and Google:

According to the industry on the 27th, Samsung Display made a set of foldable display and delivered it to Apple. This set, which is actually powered like a smartphone, has a 7.2-inch size foldable panel. 7.2 inches is 0.1 inches smaller than the Samsung Folder 'Galaxy Fold'.

Samsung has historically been both supplier and competitor to Apple and other smartphone manufacturers and provides the OLED screens for Apple's top of the line iPhones. According to the report, Samsung doesn't intend to keep foldable technology to itself and is instead working to dominate as a supplier for the technology. Samsung is said to be able to produce about 2.4 million units a year at this time but is considering moving up to 10 million units a year depending on demand.

Apple has been known to be working on foldable display technology for years with patents on the implementation of similar technology. While there are ongoing rumors that Apple has been testing such technologies in the lab, Apple has not been speculated to implement the technology until 2020 at the earliest.

Samsung's new Galaxy S10+, announced on February 20, is set to ship next week with all of the latest technologies Samsung has developed over the course of the last year.

We were able to get our hands on an S10+ early, and we thought we'd take a look to see how it measures up to the iPhone XS Max.

Samsung's Galaxy S10+ uses the design that we've come to expect from modern smartphones, with an edge-to-edge display and slim bezels designed to maximize available screen size. The Galaxy S10+ uses a 6.4-inch 3040 x 1440 OLED display and rather than a notch, there's a hole punch-style cutout that Samsung calls the Infinity-O display.

On the S10, it's a single little circle, but on the S10+, which has a dual-lens front-facing camera, the cutout, located at the right side of the display, is a bit wider. It's an odd location, but like the notch, it kind of blends in and you forget it's there with regular use. The OLED display looks amazing with bright, vibrant colors, as does the ‌iPhone‌ XS Max display, but the display of the S10+ curves down towards the edges.

At 6.4 inches and with these curved sides, the S10+ is not a one-handed device, but then neither is the ‌iPhone‌ XS Max. Rather than using facial recognition like Apple, which Android device manufacturers have yet to master, Samsung implemented an under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. It's neat and works well enough, but it's not as fast or as accurate as Face ID.

Apple's ‌iPhone‌ XS Max has a dual-camera setup, while the Galaxy S10+ is equipped with three cameras: a telephoto, a wide-angle lens, and an ultra wide-angle lens. This is the same general setup that we're expecting in the 2019 successor to the ‌iPhone‌ XS Max, but for now, Samsung has the edge here. We're going to be doing a deeper dive into the S10+ camera, so stay tuned to MacRumors for that.

Samsung implemented a unique "Wireless PowerShare" feature that lets the Galaxy S10+ charge other Qi-based devices like the Galaxy Watch, the Galaxy Buds, and even the ‌iPhone‌. It's quite a neat feature and one that Apple is also rumored to be implementing in the 2019 ‌iPhone‌ lineup. 2019 iPhones should be able to charge the rumored AirPods with wireless charging case that are in the works and other Qi-based devices.

The Galaxy S10+ brings an updated One UI Android skin, which is similar to the stock Android installation on Google Pixel devices. It's quick, fast, and has a system-wide dark mode, which is something that's also rumored to be coming to iPhones in 2019 with iOS 13.

As for internals, the Galaxy S10+ is using either a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip (in the U.S. and China) or its own Exynos processor. Benchmarks have already suggested that the Galaxy S10+ is slower than the iPhone XS Max, but in practice both smartphones are so fast that there's not going to be much of a noticeable difference in performance between the two.

Samsung's Galaxy S10 and S10+ are certainly some of the best Android devices available right now with innovative features and top of the line specs that aren't included in current iPhones. We'll need to wait for September to see what Apple has in store for its own 2019 device lineup, but rumors so far are promising.

Are you impressed with the Galaxy S10 and S10+? Are there features you hope will come to Apple devices? Let us know in the comments.

Apple held its annual investor's meeting at its Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, this morning, where Apple CEO Tim Cook shared some details on Apple's future product plans.

As outlined by Bloomberg, Cook said that Apple is "rolling the dice" on some future products that will "blow you away."

Cook went on to say that Apple's eventual goal is to be able reduce the price of the 2018 Retina MacBook Air, which currently starts at $1,200. In reference to the Apple Watch and the AirPods, Cook said there's a "long, great roadmap" of "fantastic" products on the horizon.

While Cook did not go into more detail, rumors have suggested that AirPods coming in the near future will be available in new colors (black) and will have new functionality including "Hey Siri" support and the ability to be wirelessly charged.

More ambitious products are also rumored to be in the works, including a pair of augmented reality smart glasses and perhaps even a full self-driving vehicle.

On the topic of services, Cook said Apple is well on its way towards meeting the goal it set in 2016, which was to double its $25 billion revenue by 2020. Later this month, Apple is expected to unveil two new products in the services category, including a new streaming TV service outfitted with original television shows and a new Apple News service with access to subscription news sites and magazines for a monthly fee.

Cook touched on other topics at the meeting as well, including Apple's political ideology. Shareholders soundly rejected a proposal that had suggested the ideology of board nominees should be disclosed in an effort to diversity the political opinions of Apple's board.

Cook also said that Apple is pushing for regulation against tech companies like Facebook and Google that build data profiles of their users. Cook first called for new U.S. privacy laws to protect citizens from data collection in October, but Apple has long been an advocate for customer privacy.

For his role in the 2014 iCloud hacks that saw many celebrity photos illicitly shared on the internet, former high school teacher Christopher Brannan has been sentenced to 34 months in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia (via AppleInsider).

Brannan was charged with unauthorized access to a protected computer and aggravated identity theft. Court documents say that he accessed the ‌iCloud‌, Yahoo, Facebook, and email accounts of more than 200 victims, both celebrities and non-celebrities.

He was able to obtain full ‌iCloud‌ backups, photographs, and other information using phishing email accounts that were designed to look like legitimate emails from Apple. He also hacked email accounts by answering security questions using data found on victims' Facebook accounts.

After obtaining Apple account information, Brannan would search for "sensitive and private photographs and videos, including nude photographs."

Brannan is one of multiple people who were found accessing and distributing celebrity photos in the 2014 attack. Ryan Collins, Edward Majerczyk, and Emilio Herrera, and George Garafano have previously been sentenced to prison terms ranging from eight months to 18 months.

When hundreds of nude celebrity photos began leaking on the internet in 2014 as part of what's now known as the "Celebgate" attack, there was initial speculation that ‌iCloud‌ had been hacked.

Following an investigation, however, Apple found that the accounts in question were compromised by weak passwords and skilled phishing attempts.

Apple has since implemented multiple changes to ‌iCloud‌ security, adding two-factor authentication to iCloud.com, introducing email alerts when an ‌iCloud‌ account is accessed either on the web or on another device, and requiring app-specific passwords for third-party apps that access ‌iCloud‌.

Unfortunately, the kind of phishing emails that led to the 2014 celebrity leak are still widely used today, and phishing scammers have only gotten better at what they do.

To thwart phishing attempts, Apple maintains a support page with information on how to avoid fake support calls, phishing emails, and other scam techniques that malicious individuals employ to extract information from Apple users.

Those concerned about being the victim of a phishing attack should take measures to stay safe, including using two-factor authentication, getting a password manager like 1Password and using a unique password for each and every site, and avoiding suspicious phone calls and emails, even if they look like they come from Apple.

Software engineering positions have outnumbered hardware engineering positions in Apple job listings for the first time since at least the first quarter of 2016, according to data-driven website Thinknum.

The website claims Apple's "software and services" job listings have topped its hardware engineering listings since the third quarter of 2018.

Thinknum's Joshua Fruhlinger told us that the data is sourced exclusively from Apple's jobs portal and does not include listings on third-party websites. His website began tracking the listings in the first quarter of 2016, so it's unclear if software job listings have ever topped hardware ones before.

Whether accurate or not, the data is meaningful, as Apple has been focusing on growing and expanding its portfolio of services such as the App Store and Apple Music in recent years. Apple is also expected to introduce subscription-based news and video services at an event on March 25 at Steve Jobs Theater.

Apple has also been increasing its emphasis on machine learning and Siri under new AI chief John Giannandrea, with those areas falling under the software engineering category as well.

There are now over 1.4 billion active Apple devices around the world. That saturation coupled with rising prices has led to lower demand for some products. Last quarter, for example, Apple issued its first revenue warning in 16 years due to "fewer iPhone upgrades" than it anticipated.

With hundreds of millions of iPhones now sold, Apple is focused on building out its ecosystem of services and software features surrounding the device, and it obviously needs plenty of software engineers to accomplish that goal.

Apple today expanded its "There's More to iPhone" marketing campaign to France and the United Kingdom after launching it in Germany late last year.

A new "Why iPhone" page on Apple's website in each country highlights reasons why an ‌iPhone‌ is "more than the device in your hand," ranging from Apple's environmental responsibility to iOS 12 performance improvements to the privacy of features such as Face ID, Apple Maps, and, yes, FaceTime.

Each reason in the list can be expanded to view additional information. Here's what Apple says about protecting user data for example:

At Apple, we believe that data privacy is a fundamental human right. Your personal data belongs to you and no one else.

And while some companies sell your data, we don't. We'll tell you if we collect your data and let you know how it's used. For instance, we may utilize that data to make iPhone more user friendly. And you can always change your settings to limit the amount of information that can be accessed.

Apple today also shared three new "There's More to ‌iPhone‌" videos on its YouTube channel in the United Kingdom:

The marketing campaign is prominently featured on the ‌iPhone‌ page of Apple's website in France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. It has yet to launch in the United States or any other countries we checked.

Apple has been heavily promoting ‌iPhone‌ XR and ‌iPhone‌ XS trade-ins with a prominent banner on the homepage of its website, store signage, App Store editorials, emails to older ‌iPhone‌ users, and more. Apple provided its first revenue warning in 16 years last quarter due to "fewer ‌iPhone‌ upgrades" than it anticipated.