MacRumors

Intel's new licensing deal allowing it to manufacture ARM-based chips for smartphones could win over Apple as a customer in as little as two years, placing pressure on current A-series chip manufacturer TSMC, according to Nikkei Asian Review.

The report cited analysts that believe Intel could supply Apple with at least a portion of tentatively named A12 chips for iPhones in 2018, following reports that TSMC will be the sole supplier of A10 and A11 chips for iPhones in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

"TSMC could face tough competition as soon as 2018 or 2019 as Intel is likely to gain orders from Apple by then," Samuel Wang, a veteran semiconductor analyst at research company Gartner, told the Nikkei Asian Review. "Intel has begun to engage with Apple and it aims to grab one or two top-tier customers from TSMC."

The switch to Intel may not have significant implications for iPhone users, but it provides Apple with an opportunity to secure the best manufacturing deal and technologies available. Intel's foundries will manufacture ARM-based smartphone chips based on a 10-nanometer process, which TSMC is also moving towards. The move could also shift at least a portion of A-series chip production to the United States, which could help create new jobs on the company's home turf.

"Intel is definitely the most formidable challenger for TSMC,” a senior Taiwanese chip industry executive said. "There is no rivalry between Apple and Intel so it's really likely that Apple could shift some orders there. The move is also in line with Washington's policy to encourage U.S. companies to make more products at home."

Intel is also expected to supply modems for select iPhone 7 models, including AT&T versions and some international models sold in other countries, as Apple lessens its dependance on existing supplier Qualcomm.

The radically redesigned iPhone coming in 2017 will not feature a Home button, Bloomberg today confirmed in a wider report focusing on new mobile payment features coming to Japan.

Apple is already at work on a major redesign of the iPhone for 2017 that focuses more heavily on the display by removing the Home button, according to a person familiar with the matter.

According to past rumors, the 2017 iPhone, which may be called the iPhone 8, will feature a complete design overhaul with an edge-to-edge flexible OLED display that does away with the top and bottom bezels where features like the Touch ID fingerprint sensor and front-facing camera are housed.

Instead, the functionality of the Home button, including Touch ID, may be built directly into the display. Apple design chief Jony Ive is said to have wanted to build an iPhone that looks like a single sheet of glass for several years, and 2017, the year that marks the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, is when it will happen.

The iPhone display may also feature edges that are curved on both sides, similar to the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, and it is rumored to have a glass body, moving away from the aluminum that's been used for iPhones since the iPhone 5. Other features that may be built into the 2017 iPhone include wireless charging, an enhanced Taptic engine, and new biometric capabilities like iris scanning or facial recognition.

Apple is developing a version of the iPhone for Japan that includes one of Sony's FeliCa chips to enable contactless transit payments, reports Bloomberg.

FeliCa is a tap-to-pay format developed by Sony and built into cards that are used to access Japan's railway and bus system. FeliCa is faster than Apple Pay, allowing transactions to occur in a fraction of a second, which makes it suitable for use in a fast-paced transit environment. It's also able to store e-money that can be used at vending machines and cafes across the country.

Apple plans to work with several transit card providers to create virtual versions of FeliCa transit cards that can be stored in the Wallet app on the iPhone and used in place of a physical card.

The FeliCa chip will let customers in Japan store their public bus and train passes on their iPhones. Users would then be able to tap their phones against the entrance scanners instead of using physical cards. While the FeliCa chip is the standard technology underlying the service, there are several different providers of transit payment cards based on the type of transit and areas within Japan.

The addition of a FeliCa chip to the iPhone will help Apple make inroads into the mobile payment market in Japan, which is dominated by the standard. 1.9 million payment terminals in the country have already adopted FeliCa and FeliCa terminals saw 4.6 trillion yen ($46 billion) in transactions in 2015.

The FeliCa payment feature could be available as soon as next month, built into the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus that Apple plans to unveil in early September. Bloomberg warns, though, that Apple could potentially delay the feature's launch until next year should discussions with Japanese payment networks fall through.

Services like Siri, Cortana, and Alexa are being held back by a lack of advancements in digital microphone technology, reports Bloomberg, citing the opinions of several analysts.

While processors, camera sensors, and other vital iPhone components have evolved rapidly over the course of the last several years, the same can't be said for microphones. Digital microphones still have trouble focusing on filtering out background noise and clearly detecting faraway voices, impacting device listening capabilities.

With artificial intelligence growing in popularity, however, Bloomberg says manufacturers are scrambling to improve microphone tech.

"No doubt, there is an arms race," says Peter Cooney, an analyst at SAR Insight & Consulting. The big tech companies are thinking a lot more about mics than they have for the past few years. Since the 2012 launch of the iPhone 5, "microphone performance has not really improved that much," says Marwan Boustany, an analyst with research firm IHS Markit.

Apple and other companies who rely on microphones to deliver queries to smartphones and other devices are said to want technology improvements that will make them better able to distinguish voices from other sounds at longer distances.

In a recent interview, Apple SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi said that microphones have a big impact on Siri's ability to understand commands. "It's not just the silicon," he said. "It's how many microphones we put on the device, where we place the microphones. How we tune the hardware and those mics and the software stack that does the audio processing." He said Apple's expertise at combining hardware and software gives the company "an incredible advantage" over companies just working on AI with software.

In the same interview, Apple execs said Siri's capacity to interpret commands has reportedly improved greatly following the introduction of machine learning, but in practice, Siri still often fails to hear commands or misinterprets spoken words, mistakes that could perhaps be improved with better microphone technology in the future.

Siri has long been limited to iOS devices and the Apple Watch, but with the launch of macOS Sierra this fall, the personal assistant will expand to Macs. Siri also came to the Apple TV last fall with the launch of the fourth-generation set-top box.

A rare "Celebration" Apple-1 computer has fetched $815,000 in an auction hosted by charity auction site CharityBuzz, one of the highest prices an Apple-1 has sold for at auction. During the final minutes of the auction, bids reached $1.2 million, but it appears the last bid was pulled just seconds before the auction ended.

The "Celebration" Apple-1, so named by computer historian Corey Cohen, features a blank "green" PCB board that was never sold to the public and was not a part of a known production run.

The auction included an original Apple-1 ACI cassette board, pre-NTI, with Robinson Nugent sockets, a period correct power supply, an early Apple-1 BASIC cassette labeled and authenticated by original Apple employee Daniel Kottke, Apple-1 manuals, marketing materials, and Cassette Board schematics.

Unlike other Apple-1 computers that have fetched lower prices, the Celebration Apple-1 is not in working condition but could be restored to full functionality with minor tweaks. Cohen recommended against such restoration to preserve the board's uniqueness. "The Apple-1 board is a not just a piece of history, but a piece of art," he said.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak originally created and sold 175 Apple-1 computers during the summer of 1976, marking the launch of Apple computer, a company that's grown to be one of the largest and most influential in the world. Of those 175 machines, only 60 or so are still in existence, making them quite valuable to collectors.

Several Apple-1 computers have surfaced at auction over the past few years, selling for prices between and $365,000 and $905,000.

10 percent of the proceeds from the CharityBuzz auction will benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Apple today released an iOS 9.3.5 update for the iOS 9 operating system, almost a month after releasing iOS 9.3.4 and a few weeks before we expect to see the public release of iOS 10, currently in beta testing.

iOS 9.3.5 is available immediately to all devices running iOS 9 via an over-the-air update.

iOS 9.3.5 is likely to be the last update to the iOS 9 operating system, introducing final bug fixes, security improvements, and performance optimizations before iOS 9 is retired in favor of iOS 10. iOS 9.3.4, the update prior to iOS 9.3.5, included a critical security fix patching the Pangu iOS 9.3.3 jailbreak exploit. iOS 9.3.5 features major security fixes for three zero-day exploits and should be downloaded by all iOS users right away.

According to The New York Times the three security vulnerabilities patched in the update were exploited by surveillance software created by NSO Group to jailbreak an iPhone and intercept communications.

In an overview of the exploits, security firm Lookout says NSO Group's spyware software, nicknamed "Pegasus," was highly sophisticated, installing itself through a link sent via a text message.

The exploit was initially discovered on August 11 after human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor received a suspicious link and sent it to Citizen Lab and Lookout. Had Mansoor clicked the link, it would have jailbroken his iPhone and installed "sophisticated malware" able to intercept phone calls, text messages, FaceTime calls, email, and more.

Pegasus is the most advanced attack Lookout has seen because it is customizable, can track a range of things, and uses strong encryption to avoid detection. Lookout believes "Pegasus" had been in the wild for quite some time before it was discovered, with some evidence dating back to iOS 7.

Citizen Lab and Lookout informed Apple of the vulnerabilities and the company worked quickly to implement a fix, patching the exploits in just 10 days.

WhatsApp has updated its terms of service and privacy policy to reflect that it will begin sharing select data with Facebook, including the phone number a user verifies during the registration process and the last time a user accessed the service. Facebook, which acquired WhatsApp in 2014, will use the information to provide better friend suggestions and targeted ads and offers to users of its own service.

By coordinating more with Facebook, we'll be able to do things like track basic metrics about how often people use our services and better fight spam on WhatsApp. And by connecting your phone number with Facebook's systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them. For example, you might see an ad from a company you already work with, rather than one from someone you've never heard of.

WhatsApp ensures that nothing users share on the service, including messages, photos, and account information, will be publicly shared onto Facebook for others to see. The updated terms and privacy policy also state that the new data sharing measures will help WhatsApp more accurately count unique users, fight spam and abuse, and improve the overall experience of its messaging service.

Existing WhatsApp users can choose not to share their account information with Facebook. On the iPhone app, before you tap "Agree" to accept the updated terms, tap on "Read," scroll to the bottom, and toggle the control. Users that agree to the updated terms also have an additional 30 days to opt out by going to Settings > Account > Share My Account Info and toggling the appropriate control in the app.

WhatsApp remains committed to providing private communications. All messages sent through the service are not stored on its servers, and end-to-end encryption has been in place since April on the latest version of the app. The updated terms and privacy policy do not affect these security measures.

In a new FAQ about its updated terms and privacy policy, WhatsApp says it will still not allow third-party banner ads on the service.

WhatsApp is free on the App Store [Direct Link] for iPhone.

Apple is working on its own social networking app, in the style of Facebook and Snapchat, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The company, "seeking to capitalize on the popularity of social networks," will focus on video in the new app, letting users record a video, edit it, apply a filter, add doodles, and then send it out to friends. Apple's goal is said to make the app quick and easy to use, with one-handed controls and an interactive process that includes shooting, editing, and uploading videos "in less than one minute."

Apple and CEO Tim Cook are said to be looking to its services business to continue to increase profit as its hardware sales slow down amid a modest update year for its flagship iPhone line. In order to "remain relevant" on the software side of things, the company wants to aim the new app at younger users who are spending 50 minutes a day on Facebook's family of apps (including Instagram and Messenger), and 30 minutes a day on Snapchat.

The growth of Apple’s hardware business is slowing and Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is looking to the company’s services business, such as the App Store and iCloud storage, as a way to generate increased revenue. Apple has failed to successfully launch social-media services in the past, including an iTunes-focused social network called Ping in 2010. Now as Snapchat and Facebook’s Instagram and Messenger apps grow atop Apple’s iOS mobile operating system, Apple is seeking to create its own features to remain relevant, particularly for younger users.

One of the prototype designs for the unnamed app was said to record video in a square-shape, like Instagram, according to a group of people close to the project. The current plans for the app are to offer it as a download via the App Store, but the company could pivot and bundle its proposed social network directly into the existing camera app in iOS. To help bolster its features, Apple is using the same team that created Final Cut Pro and iMovie to develop the social network.

The app is being developed in the same Apple department that developed Final Cut Pro and iMovie software, according to the people. Apple hired Joe Weil, the former president of a New York-based video production company, to lead the vision for the project, the people said. Weil, who co-developed a video blogging app called KnowMe, joined Apple in December 2015, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Ultimately, Apple hopes it can launch the new app sometime next year, but if it doesn't meet the company's expectations -- or if executives see potential problems, along the lines of Ping and Connect -- it could be scrapped.

Besides the proposed video app, Apple has also been working on "multiple social-related features" for iOS over the past year, none of which have launched. One proposed update includes consolidating every communication between a user and a specific contact on one screen, so "two friends could be able to see all text messages, e-mails, and social network interactions between each other in a single window."

No word was given on the launch of the social features not related to the video app, but a team within Apple that rules on the privacy implications of its software will ultimately decide when, and if, any of these experiences make it to a public release. As such, Apple's 2017 launch window for the video app could also be pushed back indefinitely. Still, it's interesting to see the company move to create its own social networking experience, instead of solely designing the hardware on which many people visit apps that may soon be its rivals, like Facebook and Snapchat.

Closer to a wide launch is the company's brand-new and revamped Messages application coming in iOS 10, which elevates the platform above a simple texting service thanks to the addition of features like handwritten messages, full-screen effects, photo doodling, and much more.