MacRumors

The aluminum used in Apple products ranging from iPhones to MacBooks could be more sustainably manufactured in as early as six years.

Apple today announced it has helped facilitate a collaboration between two of the world's largest aluminum producers, Alcoa and Rio Tinto, on a new carbon-free aluminum smelting process. Together, the companies have formed a joint venture called Elysis, which will work to develop the patented technology further.

Alcoa and Rio Tinto aim to achieve larger-scale production and commercialization of the process, with plans to license the technologies beginning in 2024. If fully developed and implemented, it will eliminate direct greenhouse gas emissions from the traditional aluminum smelting process developed over 130 years ago.

Instead of carbon dioxide, the new process releases oxygen, per Apple's press release:

Aluminum has been mass produced the same way since 1886, when it was pioneered by Alcoa's founder, Charles Hall. The process involves applying a strong electrical current to alumina, which removes oxygen. Both Hall's original experiments and today’s largest smelters use a carbon material that burns during the process, producing greenhouse gases. […]

Alcoa has designed a completely new process that replaces that carbon with an advanced conductive material, and instead of carbon dioxide, it releases oxygen.

Alcoa said it has been producing aluminum at its facility near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with the new process, to varying degrees, since 2009. The process resulted from decades of research and is described as the most significant innovation in the aluminum industry in more than a century.

In Canada, for example, Alcoa and Rio Tinto said the new process could eliminate the equivalent of 6.5 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, if fully implemented at existing smelters in the country. That is supposedly roughly equal to taking nearly 1.8 million light-duty vehicles off the road.

Apple said its involvement started in 2015, when three of its engineers went in search of a better way of mass producing aluminum. Apple ultimately helped bring Alcoa and Rio Tinto together, and has now pledged an investment of $13 million CAD to the joint venture, along with continued technical support.

Apple CEO Tim Cook:

Apple is committed to advancing technologies that are good for the planet and help protect it for generations to come. We are proud to be part of this ambitious new project, and look forward to one day being able to use aluminum produced without direct greenhouse gas emissions in the manufacturing of our products.

Elysis will be headquartered in Montréal, Québec, with the Governments of Canada and Québec each investing $60 million CAD. Alcoa and Rio Tinto will invest $55 million CAD cash over the next three years.

Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and Premier of Québec, Philippe Couillard, were on hand for today's announcement.

Trudeau's statement:

Today's announcement will create and maintain thousands of jobs for Canadians, significantly reduce Canada's carbon footprint, and further strengthen the aluminum industry in North America. It is a truly historic day for the aluminum industry – and for all Canadian aluminum workers – who play such an important role in our economy and our country's future.

Today's news follows Apple's announcement last month that all of its facilities are now powered with 100 percent clean energy and 23 of its suppliers have committed to do the same. Apple also introduced Daisy, a robot that can more efficiently disassemble iPhones to recover valuable parts for recycling.

This initiative is a testament to Apple's commitment to reducing the environmental impact of its products through continued innovation.

Researchers in the United States and China have been performing tests in an effort to demonstrate that "hidden" commands, or those undetectable to human ears, can reach AI assistants like Siri and force them to perform actions their owners never intended. The research was highlighted in a piece today by The New York Times, suggesting that these subliminal commands can dial phone numbers, open websites, and more potentially malicious actions if placed in the wrong hands.

A group of students from the University of California, Berkeley and Georgetown University published a research paper this month, stating that they could embed commands into music recordings or spoken text. When played near an Amazon Echo or Apple iPhone, a person would just hear the song or someone speaking, while Siri and Alexa "might hear an instruction to add something to your shopping list." Or, more dangerous, unlock doors, wire money from your bank, and purchase items online.

The method by which the students were able to accomplish the hidden commands shouldn't be a concern for the public at large, but one of the paper's authors, Nicholas Carlini, believes malicious parties could already be making inroads with similar technology.

“We wanted to see if we could make it even more stealthy,” said Nicholas Carlini, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in computer security at U.C. Berkeley and one of the paper’s authors.

Mr. Carlini added that while there was no evidence that these techniques have left the lab, it may only be a matter of time before someone starts exploiting them. “My assumption is that the malicious people already employ people to do what I do,” he said.

Last year, researchers based at Princeton University and Zheijiang University in China performed similar tests, demonstrating that AI assistants could be activated through frequencies not heard by humans. In a technique dubbed "DolphinAttack," the researchers built a transmitter to send the hidden command that dialed a specific phone number, while other tests took pictures and sent text messages. DolphinAttack is said to be limited in terms of range, however, since it "must be close to the receiving device."

DolphinAttack could inject covert voice commands at 7 state-of-the-art speech recognition systems (e.g., Siri, Alexa) to activate always-on system and achieve various attacks, which include activating Siri to initiate a FaceTime call on iPhone, activating Google Now to switch the phone to the airplane mode, and even manipulating the navigation system in an Audi automobile.

In yet another set of research, a group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign proved this range limitation could be increased, showing off commands received from 25 feet away. For the most recent group of researchers from Berkeley, Carlini told The New York Times that he was "confident" his team would soon be able to deliver successful commands "against any smart device system on the market." He said the group wants to prove to companies that this flaw is a potential problem, "and then hope that other people will say, 'O.K. this is possible, now let's try and fix it.'"

For security purposes, Apple is stringent with certain HomeKit-related Siri commands, locking them behind device passcodes whenever users have passcodes enabled. For example, if you want to unlock your front door with a connected smart lock, you can ask Siri to do so, but you'll have to enter your passcode on an iPhone or iPad after issuing the command. The HomePod, on the other hand, purposefully lacks this functionality.

Apple's second-generation iPhone SE could feature an iPhone X-esque design with a notch, if a sketchy rumor is to be believed, but Face ID is unlikely.

MacRumors has obtained renders and alleged dimensions of the new iPhone SE from case maker Olixar, via online accessories store Mobile Fun, that suggest the device's notch will be approximately half as wide as the one on the iPhone X, almost certainly making it too slim to house facial recognition sensors.

It's hard to imagine that Apple would include Face ID on the iPhone SE in the first place, without significantly raising the price. Including the feature on an iPhone that starts at just $349 would reduce Apple's gross margins and almost certainly cannibalize sales of the iPhone X at $999 and up.

Olixar's renders, which we're told were "obtained from a reliable source" in China, also suggest the new iPhone SE will feature an iPhone X-esque display that stretches nearly edge to edge, surrounded by an aluminum shell with flat sides and chamfered edges, akin to the current model and iPhone 5s.

With an alleged length of 4.7 inches and width of 2.1 inches, the new iPhone SE would be slightly smaller than the current model, remaining suitable for one-handed usage but with a larger display thanks to the fuller-screen design.

The renders do not depict the bottom or back of the device, so it's unclear if there will be a headphone jack or a glass rear shell for wireless charging. As expected, the device does appear to retain physical volume buttons and a mute switch on the side, and a physical power button on the top-right corner.

The biggest question mark is how authentication would work, given the lack of a home button and the unlikeliness of Face ID. Chinese company Vivo's new X20 Plus UD became the first smartphone with an in-display fingerprint sensor early this year, but Apple seems to have elected against that approach.

Overall, this rumor is a sketchy one, but Olixar is confident enough in its Chinese sources to already be accepting pre-orders for iPhone SE 2 screen protectors on Mobile Fun, so we are sharing in the interest of discussion.

Apple hasn't truly updated the iPhone SE since it launched in March 2016, beyond doubling its available storage capacities, but rumors about an updated model have been contradictory in recent months. There are essentially two camps: one expecting a more iPhone X-like design, and another expecting a minor refresh.

Last month, for example, a video shared on Chinese social media website Sina Weibo showed what appears to be an unreleased iPhone SE with an iPhone 5s-like design, glass back, top and bottom bezels, Touch ID, and a headphone jack. However, it's quite possible the device was a knockoff, as are common in China.

If there is a new iPhone SE, a few reports and regulatory filings suggest the device could be announced by WWDC 2018 in June.

Apple is teaming up with investment bank Goldman Sachs for the launch of a new joint credit card that would be placed under the Apple Pay branding. The card could launch as soon as early 2019, according to The Wall Street Journal.

At the same time, Apple would end its partnership with Barclays, which offered customers an Apple rewards program and financing deals through a Barclaycard Apple Rewards Visa. For the new Goldman partnership, which will replace the Barclaycard, the bank is set to offer in-store loans to Apple customers buying iPhones and other Apple products.

Other specifics of the deal are still being decided upon, people familiar with the matter said, mainly including the terms and benefits of the planned credit card, "including the perks for customers." The Barclays/Apple card currently offers interest-free financing on Apple devices and points toward Apple gift cards.

Apple Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are preparing to launch a new joint credit card, a move that would deepen the technology giant’s push into its customers’ wallets and mark the Wall Street firm’s first foray into plastic.

The planned card would carry the Apple Pay brand and could launch early next year, people familiar with the matter said.

Apple is believed to be adding more focus onto its growing services business, which Apple Pay is part of, and the Goldman Sachs partnership could be a way for the company to spread even more awareness of the digital wallet. In a report on Apple Pay adoption by Loup Ventures earlier this year, 16 percent of global iPhone owners were said to have activated Apple Pay. The researchers estimated widespread adoption for the service at 3-5 years from now, "given integration OS and iOS makes it the easiest to use digital wallet."

Apple first debuted Apple Pay in the fall of 2014, and although many retailers joined in support of the platform it has faced push back from companies like Target and Walmart as each try to develop their own digital wallet service. Last spring, Apple said it wasn't worried about the slow adoption of Apple Pay because it saw the mobile wallet as on track to soon become its customers' "primary payment system."

The Federal Communications Commission gave a notice today that states Net Neutrality rules will officially end in the United States on June 11, 2018 (via Reuters). The FCC voted 3-2 in favor of repealing the rules last December, a repeal that was then made official with an entry into the Federal Register in February.

Multi-state lawsuits soon popped up in efforts to block the rollback of Net Neutrality, and now more than a dozen Democratic senators have moved to force a vote on a proposal that would reinstate Net Neutrality protections. According to CNN, the vote is expected to pass the Senate, but will face an "uphill battle" in the Republican-majority House of Representatives, and "would likely be vetoed" by President Trump if it got that far.

Still, Democratic senator Ed Markey cited building momentum for the proposal, with the Senate's vote expected to happen in the middle of next week.

"Our intent is to have it pass in the Senate, the momentum is building," he said. "We expect there to be some considerable momentum coming out of the Senate and 160 will quickly grow towards the 218 that we need to have a vote over there as well."

"When we pass this in the Senate, when we pass it in the House of Representatives, when it's clear the electorate is at 86% favorable for this issue, that we would have a political firestorm throughout this country if President Trump announced that he was going to veto that said protections, replacing it with exactly nothing," he said.

The repeal of Net Neutrality rules will allow internet service providers to block or slow down any website, service, or app they want to as long as they disclose any act of internet throttling to their customers. Those in favor of the repeal say the decision was made to restore broadband internet services as a "lightly-regulated" market.

On the other side, opponents argue that the repeal gives Verizon, Comcast, and other ISPs the free reign to essentially control the customer's internet by dividing users into so-called "fast lanes" and "slow lanes." Apple is one of the many companies against the repeal of Net Neutrality, stating last August that the ruling could "fundamentally alter the internet as we know it," and if it passed it would be put in place to the detriment of consumers, competition, and innovation.

Many websites are issuing alerts about the upcoming Net Neutrality Senate vote by joining the The Red Alert for Net Neutrality project. On sites like Reddit, Tumblr, Etsy, GitHub, and more, visitors will be presented with a large red screen that urges users to contact their local lawmakers and voice their support of Net Neutrality.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues 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.

Apple's widely rumored 6.1-inch iPhone with Face ID may use the same MLCD+ display technology as LG's new G7 ThinQ smartphone, according to a BusinessKorea report today spotted by the blog Patently Apple.

BusinessKorea:

According to the smartphone industry on May 9, Apple is expected to load its next 6.1-inch iPhone model with an MLCD+ display which LG used in its G7 ThinQ smartphone. The MLCD+ display realizes a bright screen with less power consumption than the IPS LCD display.

Whereas a traditional LCD screen has three sub-pixels, forming a red, blue, and green stripe, MLCD+ screens have a fourth white sub-pixel for increased brightness, yet with lower power consumption than an IPS LCD panel. LG's G7 has a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, for example, compared to between 625 nits and 804 nits on the iPhone X.

Like the OLED display on the iPhone X, MLCD+ screens can also display 100 percent of the wide DCI-P3 color gamut for improved color accuracy. The panel in the G7 is capable of 10-bit color depth, so if Apple used this technology, the 6.1-inch iPhone could be more compliant with some HDR standards.

Rumors suggest the 6.1-inch iPhone will essentially be a lower-priced iPhone X, achieved through some cost-cutting design compromises, including the lack of an OLED display. Based on this report, however, it sounds like the device could still have a better display than the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.

The 6.1-inch iPhone will also have an aluminum frame rather than stainless steel, a single-lens rear camera, and may lack 3D Touch, according to former KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. He predicted the device will be unveiled later this year with a starting price of between $700 and $800 in the United States.

Google yesterday introduced the newest version of Android, Android P, at its Google I/O developer conference held in Mountain View, California. Android P includes a few enticing features like a new Dashboard for monitoring usage and an adaptive battery feature for improving battery life, but what was of interest to iPhone users was the new gesture system.

Android P adopts a new gesture-based system interface that's reminiscent of the interface of the iPhone X, so we decided to download the Android P beta to check it out for ourselves.

For years, Android has used a navigation system that focuses on three buttons: home, back, and multitasking. That's gone in Android P, having been replaced with a small oblong button at the bottom of the display that will be familiar to iPhone X users.

Swiping up on the button brings up a card-like interface with an app overview that includes a search bar, your recently used apps, and five predicted apps, while a longer swipe (or a second swipe) brings up the All Apps screen where you can access all of the apps installed on an Android device.

As on the iPhone X, you can use the swipe up gesture from anywhere in the Android operating system, regardless of which app is being used, while a tap goes to the Home screen. A left or right swipe, meanwhile, initiates a "Quick Scrub" gesture that lets you swap between your recently used apps.

The iPhone X's gesture system is intuitive and easy to use, so it's no surprise that Google opted to introduce a similar design, and it's the natural evolution for controlling a smartphone without traditional buttons.

In addition to adopting a swipe-based interface, Android P has some other neat features, a few of which we may see in some form in iOS 12. A new Android Dashboard, for example, is designed to tell you how much time you're spending on your device and in apps in the name of digital health, something that Apple is also expected to focus on this year.

A new Do Not Disturb feature called "Shush" automatically silences Android devices when placed facedown, while a Wind Down option lets Android users set a specific bed time that enables Do Not Disturb and turns the entire phone's interface gray to discourage further use at night.

Google is also introducing a new Adaptive Battery feature that maximizes battery power by prioritizing the apps you're most likely to use next, while a new Auto Brightness feature modifies screen brightness based on your own personal preferences. Some of these features haven't been enabled just yet on all Android devices that are eligible for the beta, but they should be coming soon.

What do you think of the new Android P operating system? Are there features here you would like to see Apple enable in iOS? Let us know in the comments.

Apple is planning to offer subscriptions to select streaming TV and video services through its dedicated TV app that's available on the iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, reports Bloomberg.

The TV app already aggregates television and movie content from a range of different providers into one easy-to-access place, so offering subscriptions is a natural evolution of Apple's efforts to simplify and improve the television watching experience.

Right now, while you can access content from hundreds of apps and cable providers, many require a premium subscription that must be obtained directly from the provider. Services like HBO, Showtime, Starz, Netflix, and more, for example, all require subscriptions, which must be purchased from within a third-party app or website.

Apple is going to offer the TV app subscription options as an alternative to requiring customers to subscribe to various video services from multiple apps and content providers. It will streamline content acquisition for customers, but it will also bolster the company's rapidly growing services business.

Apple is said to be planning to introduce the new subscription feature "in the next year."

There's no word on how Apple's own original programming efforts will factor in to the subscription service. Apple has more than a dozen television shows in the works, and at the current time, it's still unclear whether Apple is building a dedicated service for the content or if it will debut on iTunes or Apple Music.

iPhone users who have been waiting to take advantage of Apple's discounted battery replacement offer may be in luck.

Apple has confirmed that "service inventory of all iPhone replacement batteries is now available without delay," in an internal memo distributed to Apple Stores and its network of Apple Authorized Service Providers on April 27. The document was obtained by MacRumors from a reliable source.

What this means is that Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers can now order iPhone replacement batteries from Apple and receive them without facing extended shipping delays, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every Apple Store or authorized repair shop will have supply available right away.

The information that Apple shared in this internal memo likely applies worldwide, but as with any supply-demand situation, availability of replacement batteries will likely vary by Apple Store and region. Apple's support website still notes that the replacement process may take up to five business days.

Apple previously said that replacement batteries for select iPhone models may be in short supply until late March or early April, and that certainly proved to be the case, as some but not all customers to date have been required to wait up to several weeks for their iPhones to be serviced and returned.

In fact, multiple sources have informed MacRumors that Apple hired third-party contractors, or reassigned existing AppleCare employees in some cases, to help clear the backlog of iPhone battery replacements at some of its stores.

Apple lowered its battery replacement fee to $29 in the United States in late December for the iPhone 6 and newer, as part of an apology over its lack of transparency about slowing down some older iPhone models to prevent unexpected shutdowns. The discount varies in other countries and is available until the end of 2018.

Apple has since released iOS 11.3 with a new feature that enables users to track their iPhone battery's health and performance status. The software update also automatically disables all performance management features that might have been enabled until another unexpected shutdown occurs.

To initiate a replacement, read our guide on how to get an iPhone's battery replaced at an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider. More details about what led to this point can be read in our FAQ.