MacRumors

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation was unable to retrieve data from 6,900 mobile devices that it attempted to access over the course of the last 11 months, reports the Associated Press.

FBI Director Christopher Wray shared the number at an annual conference for the International Association of Chiefs of Police on Sunday.

During the first 11 months of the current fiscal year, Wray says the 6,900 devices that were inaccessible accounted for half of the total devices the FBI attempted to retrieve data from. Wray called the FBI's inability to get into the devices a "huge, huge problem."

"To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem," Wray said. "It impacts investigations across the board -- narcotics, human trafficking, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, gangs, organized crime, child exploitation."

Wray did not specify how many of the 6,900 devices the FBI could not access were iPhones or iPads running a version of Apple's iOS operating system, but encryption has been an issue between Apple and the FBI since last year when the two clashed over the unlocking of an iPhone 5c owned by Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the December 2015 attacks in San Bernardino.

The FBI took Apple to court in an attempt to force Apple to create a version of iOS that would disable passcode security features and allow passcodes to be entered electronically, providing the FBI with the tools to hack into the device.

Apple refused and fought the court order, claiming the FBI's request could set a "dangerous precedent" with serious implications for the future of smartphone encryption. Apple ultimately did not capitulate and the FBI enlisted Israeli firm Cellebrite to crack the device.

Following the incident, there was a push for new encryption legislation, but it largely fizzled out after it was described by tech companies as "absurd" and "technically inept." Apple's fight with the FBI is far from over, though, as there was no final resolution following the San Bernardino dispute.

At the conclusion of the FBI lawsuit, Apple said the case "should never have been brought" and vowed to continue to increase the security of its products.

"Apple believes deeply that people in the United States and around the world deserve data protection, security and privacy. Sacrificing one or the other only puts people and countries at greater risk," Apple said in a statement.

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 customers who participate in Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program and are planning to buy an iPhone X can now use the Apple Store app to get pre-approved for a purchase ahead of iPhone X pre-orders. Pre-approvals will be available for a limited amount of time.

To initiate the pre-approval process, customers will need to download the Apple Store app and choose their preferred iPhone X model to get their loans approved before pre-orders go live this Friday. The process is designed to make it easier for customers to get through the checkout process when pre-orders kick off.

When pre-approval has been obtained, iPhone Upgrade Program customers can use the Apple Store app to complete an iPhone X purchase once pre-orders are live. According to the Apple Store app, pre-orders will begin at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time on Friday, October 27.

Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program is designed to allow customers to upgrade to a new iPhone after at least 12 payments have been made towards an existing iPhone. The Upgrade Program, which includes AppleCare+, requires customers to trade-in their current phones to get a new phone.

iPhone Upgrade Program members are able to use a Trade-in Kit this year to return their existing devices to Apple, alleviating the need to visit an Apple Store to purchase a new device.

iPhone Upgrade Pricing on the iPhone X costs $49.91 per month for the 64GB model and $56.16 per month for the 256GB model.

Upgrading to a new device through the iPhone Upgrade Program last year was a hassle because customers were required to reserve a device at a local retail store and supply was limited, but this year, iPhone Upgrade Program customers will go through the same order process as other customers. Though the wording makes it sound like iPhone Upgrade Program customers will be able to pre-order more quickly than others, that's not the case. This process offers pre-approval for the credit check portion of the iPhone Upgrade Program and does not otherwise speed up pre-ordering.

A fast and easy upgrade process will be essential this year, as rumors have suggested the iPhone X will be in seriously short supply. Available iPhone X stock is likely to sell out quickly, perhaps within minutes of when pre-orders go live. There may be a long wait for an iPhone X throughout the rest of 2017, with supply picking up during the first few months of 2018.

Following pre-orders on October 27, the first iPhone X devices will ship out to customers on November 3.

Apple today seeded the fourth beta of an upcoming macOS High Sierra update to developers, less than a week after releasing the third macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 beta and a month after releasing the new High Sierra operating system to the public.

The fourth macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 beta can be downloaded from the Apple Developer Center or through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store with the proper profile installed.

macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 focuses primarily on bug fixes, performance improvements, security enhancements, and other under-the-hood changes.

It includes a fix for a serious vulnerability in the WPA2 Wi-Fi standard that protects many modern Wi-Fi networks. Using a key reinstallation attack or "KRACK," attackers can exploit weaknesses in the WPA2 protocol to decrypt network traffic to sniff out sensitive information. This attack is not possible with the patch in macOS 10.13.1.

The update also introduces a range of new Unicode 10 emoji like crazy face, pie, pretzel, t-rex, vampire, exploding head, face vomiting, shushing face, love you gesture, brain, scarf, zebra, giraffe, fortune cookie, pie, hedgehog, and more. The new emoji are also available in iOS 11.1 and watchOS 4.1.

macOS High Sierra is a major update that introduces APFS, a new more modern file system, HEIF and HEVC photo and video encoding improvements for smaller file sizes without compromising quality, Metal 2, and several new features for Safari, like autoplay blocking for videos and Intelligent Tracking Prevention to better protect user privacy.

For more on what's new in macOS High Sierra, make sure to check out our macOS High Sierra roundup.

Update: There's a new public beta of macOS High Sierra 10.3.1 available for public beta testers.

Apple today seeded the fifth beta of an upcoming iOS 11.1 update to developers, a few days after releasing the fourth iOS 11.1 beta and over a month after releasing the iOS 11 update to the public.

Registered developers can download the fifth iOS 11.1 beta from Apple's Developer Center or over-the-air once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Developer Center.

iOS 11.1 introduces hundreds of new Unicode 10 emoji like crazy face, pie, pretzel, t-rex, vampire, exploding head, face vomiting, shushing face, love you gesture, brain, scarf, zebra, giraffe, fortune cookie, pie, hedgehog, and more.

Several emoji also feature some small design changes in iOS 11.1, including the dolphin, octopus, bee, snail, and whale characters, among others. The new designs are more detailed and realistic than existing designs.

The update also introduces a fix for a Reachability bug that's been present since the release of iOS 11 and it brings back the 3D Touch App Switcher gesture that has been missing from iOS 11 since its release. With the return of the gesture, iPhone users can once again 3D Touch at the left edge of the display to bring up the multitasking App Switcher interface.

A few other small features are included in the iOS 11.1 beta. The built-in keyboard in iOS 11.1 now offers up multiple emoji symbols when using an emoji-related word, there's an updated camera icon under Restrictions, a new animation when tapping the status bar to scroll upwards, and a faster unlock animation.

As for security fixes, iOS 11.1 addresses a serious vulnerability in the WPA2 Wi-Fi standard that protects many modern Wi-Fi networks. Using a key reinstallation attack or "KRACK," attackers can exploit weaknesses in the WPA2 protocol to decrypt network traffic to sniff out sensitive information.

Though not in the developer/public beta right now, the iOS 11.1 update could introduce the Apple Pay Cash feature, which Apple employees are currently testing in a special version of the beta.

iOS 11 marks a major update to the operating system with systemwide design tweaks, a new Lock screen experience, a revamped Control Center, ARKit, new app features, and an entirely new interface for the iPad that includes a Dock, Drag and Drop support, and a redesigned App Switcher for better than ever multitasking.

Update: Apple has also released a new beta of iOS 11.1 for public beta testers.

Update 2: Many public beta testers are having trouble installing the beta. The update appears to download, reboots back to the home screen, and re-downloads the beta again without installing it.

Update 3: The issue appears to be fixed, so public beta testers should be able to install the new beta over the air.

Apple's operating chief Jeff Williams was in Taiwan today to attend the 30th anniversary ceremony of Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, more commonly abbreviated as TSMC. There, he spoke about artificial intelligence, the future of the semiconductor industry, and more.

Williams first reflected on how Apple and TSMC began working together seven years ago. Today, TSMC is the exclusive supplier of the A10X Fusion and A11 Bionic processors in the latest iPhones and iPads.

First off, thank you. It's a real honor to be here with this distinguished group, and we're here of course to celebrate TSMC's 30 years. And it's amazing as you've seen in the slides, how far technology has been driven over that time. TSMC got its start shortly after the introduction of the legendary Cray II supercomputer, and 25 years later we put this same processing power in people's pockets with an iPhone 4 in 2010. It really is remarkable, and it was actually 2010 that the first seeds of our partnership between Apple and TSMC were planted.

I had flown to Taiwan and had dinner with Dr. Chang and Sophie at their house. It was a wonderful dinner. We were not doing business with TSMC at the time, but we had a great conversation. We talked about the possibilities of doing stuff together, and we knew the possibilities would be great if we could take leading edge technology and marry it with our ambitions. And what seems obvious now, wasn't then, because the risk was very substantial.

The nature of the way Apple does business is we put all of our energy into our new products, and we launch them, and if we were to bet heavily on TSMC, there would be no backup plan. You can not double plan the kind of volumes that we do. We want leading edge technology, but we want it at established technology kind of volumes, and so that may be want Dr. Chang is referring to when he says "intense."

Williams said Apple and TSMC have gone on to ship over half a billion chips as part of a "wonderful partnership" between the two companies, in which billions of dollars has been invested to fulfill Apple's significant production demands.

…Together we decided to take the bet, take the leap, and Apple decided to have 100 percent of our new iPhone and new iPad chips, application processors, sourced at TSMC. And TSMC invested $9 billion and had 6,000 people working 'round the clock to bring up a Tainan fab in a record 11 months. And, in the end, the execution was flawless. And we've gone on together to ship over half a billion chips together in that short window. And I think TSMC has invested $25 billion. $9 billion on that first venture — there are very few companies in the world that $9 billion in capital across everything, not a single bet. So for that, we thank you, Dr. Chang, and everybody at TSMC. It's been a wonderful partnership.

Williams was asked to describe his vision of the next ten years in silicon, but he chose to reframe the question as "do we have enough processing power in our silicon to match our ambitions?" and answered accordingly.

It's interesting, when we look back a decade ago, the question we had was "do we have enough processing power in our silicon to match our ambitions?" The big challenge we had as we moved into the mobile revolution was this tradeoff between performance and power, and the view at the time is you had to choose — you've got one or the other.

Largely as a result of what the fabless model has done, what TSMC has done, what many people in this room have done, Simon and his organization from ARM — we have reached a point where those tradeoffs are not necessary. We have performance in thermally constrained environments. And so this opens up for the next decade a whole new world. So for the next decade, the question is not so much "Do we have enough processing power to meet our ambitions?" Though we need to keep working, of course we need to drive better lithography — don't slow down! — but I think the question for us is "Do we have the right ambitions to go utilize this technology in front of us?"

Williams went on to say that Apple thinks artificial intelligence and on-device processing will be key to the future of the semiconductor industry. He believes these advances will help to "revolutionize healthcare" for one example.

We at Apple are not concerned about the talk of a slowing semiconductor industry. Not the case at all. We think the potential is huge. We believe strongly in both the cloud side, but the future will be a lot of on-device processing. We believe this is the best way to deliver great features without sacrificing the responsiveness and the privacy and the security. We see in our brand-new A11 Bionic chip, which is made right here at TSMC, every time somebody takes a photo, there's over 100 billion operations. That's just mind-boggling. In a single photo, over 100 billion operations. The potential is limitless.

We put a neural engine on the chip, and I won't repeat some of the things that Jensen shared, but we have the same view and vision of the potential of AI to deliver a much safer and efficient autonomous system. The neural engine on our chip has already enabled Face ID, processed locally. And so we view that the next ten years is about the ambition to do what Simon's daughter is asking for, to make life better. And probably one of the most significant examples of this is our opportunity to use transistor technology advances and power scaling to revolutionize healthcare. We think the industry is ripe for change. We think there is tremendous potential to do on-device computing, to do cloud computing as well, and to take that learning, and through machine learning, deep learning, and ultimately artificial intelligence, change the way healthcare is delivered. And we can't think of anything more significant than this.

So I think the question in front of us is "Do we have the right ambitions, and can we go do this?" And there is no such thing as autonomous innovation. Human beings dream it. Human beings drive it. And sure, we'll have deep learning, but there's not autonomous innovation, so it's up to us, this generation over the next ten years, to take advantage of what is in front of us in the silicon world. We at Apple are really inspired, for those of us who started many years ago on a green monochrome computer screen, we're super inspired with the state we're in, and I'll just say this: If in the next ten years, from a society standpoint, we just do a few "gee-whiz" things like flying car kind of dreams, and then the rest of the time we're using the faster chips to do the same things we're doing faster, we will have squandered one of the biggest opportunities in front of us. I think we're at an inflection point, much like my colleagues, with on-device computing, coupled with the potential of AI, to really, really change the world. And we couldn't be more excited about it at Apple, and thank you for your time.

China's Economic Daily News reported that Williams also met with iPhone assembler Foxconn's chairman Terry Gou, but no further details were shared. An earlier report speculated that iPhone X production issues could be one focus.

TSMC provided a live stream of the event that remains available to watch for those who prefer to listen to Williams' comments.

Life insurance provider John Hancock has announced that new and existing members of its Vitality program can receive an Apple Watch Series 3 with GPS only for an initial payment of just $25 plus tax. Additional fees apply for customers who choose a cellular model or other more expensive models.

The cost of the Apple Watch is actually split up into 24 monthly payments, which can be paid off by walking, running, biking, swimming, or completing various other exercises. Vitality members must earn at least 500 fitness-related Vitality Points per month over two years to avoid owing any of the instalments.

By connecting the Vitality Today app to Apple's Health app and confirming data sharing, customers can earn Vitality Points for Light, Standard, and Advanced Workouts towards the monthly goal. Customers can share steps measured by their iPhone or Apple Watch, as well as active calories from the Apple Watch.

The Vitality program is available with select John Hancock life insurance policies in the United States. The free Apple Watch Series 3 offer will be available starting November 6 everywhere except New York.

John Hancock, owned by Manulife Financial, first started offering Apple Watches to a limited number of members last year. About half of the people who received the device achieved their monthly goals and did not pay for the device, John Hancock senior vice president Brooks Tingle told CNBC.

John Hancock is the first life insurance provider to offer the Apple Watch at a discounted rate to its members. Health insurance provider Aetna offers a similar program to its employees, and may expand it to 23 million customers soon.

Today marks the 16th anniversary of the debut of the first iPod, which was introduced by Apple on October 23, 2001. Then Apple CEO Steve Jobs stood on stage at the Apple Town Hall in Cupertino and showed off a device that could fit in a pocket but hold an entire music library.

The first-generation iPod, which Apple advertised with the tagline "1,000 songs in your pocket," was a rectangle-shaped device with a 5GB 1.8-inch hard drive capable of holding 1,000 songs.

It featured a black and white LCD and the first click wheel, a mechanical scrolling interface that let users quickly and conveniently scroll through long lists of music. The click wheel also included easy access buttons for playing, pausing, rewinding, and fast forwarding through music content. The first iPod's battery lasted for up to 10 hours before needing to be recharged, and the device was priced at $399.

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPod, he called it a quantum leap forward and outlined three major breakthroughs: ultra-portability, Apple's legendary ease of use, and auto-sync with iTunes.

iPod is an MP3 music player, has CD quality music, and it plays all of the popular formats of open music. The biggest thing about iPod is that it holds a thousand songs. Now this is a quantum leap because for most people, it's their entire music library. This is huge. How many times have you gone on the road with a CD player and said 'Oh God, I didn't bring the CD I wanted to listen to.' To have your whole music library with you at all times is a quantum leap in listening to music. The coolest thing about iPod is that your whole music library fits right in your pocket. Never before possible.

New versions of the iPod were released on a yearly basis following the launch of the original device, and other notable launches included the iPod Photo in 2004, which had the first color display, the smaller iPod mini in 2004, the tiny iPod nano in 2005, the even smaller iPod Shuffle, also in 2005, and the first iPod touch, which came out in 2007 following the launch of the iPhone.

Today, the iPhone, unveiled six years after the iPod, has largely replaced Apple's original music device. The iPhone does everything the iPod did and more, and has served as an iPod replacement since its debut.

Over the course of the last 16 years, Apple has stayed at the forefront of music technology with the debut of Apple Music, a streaming music service that now has more than 30 million paid subscribers.

Apple retired the iPod nano and the iPod shuffle in July of 2017, and now the iPod touch is the sole remaining iPod the company has for sale. The iPod touch was last updated in July of 2015 and it is not clear if the product will see additional updates in the future.

The iPod touch is available in 32GB and 128GB capacities for $199 and $299, respectively.