Apple retail stores are now receiving information about the company's new system for wirelessly updating iPhone software prior to sale, iGen reports.
Last week, Bloomberg's Mark Gurmanreported that the new proprietary system, called "Presto," will begin operation across the U.S. in April. Gurman first reported on the wireless system in October, describing it as a "proprietary pad-like device" upon which retail store staff can place a sealed iPhone box. The system wirelessly turns on the iPhone inside, updates its software to the latest available version, and then powers it off.
Presto features small lockers that can accommodate six iPhone boxes simultaneously. There are markings to ensure that boxes are correctly positioned for NFC depending on their size. Once correctly positioned, the iPhone will update within 15 to 30 minutes. iGen has now shared a still from a video showing two of the machines stacked one on top of the other:
Presto was developed by Apple's Backstage Operations team, which designs tools for technicians and retail store employees. The company developed "Presto" as a way to avoid selling iPhones in retail stores with outdated software. For example, the iPhone 15 series shipped with iOS 17, but Apple subsequently released iOS 17.0.1 before the devices launched. The update was required to fix an issue that prevented the transfer of data directly from another iPhone during the initial setup process.
Apple apparently intends to have the technology in all U.S. retail stores by early summer. Retail locations outside the U.S. are also now receiving information about how Presto works.
I’d guess that this is not much more than magsafe + some NFC chip that the iPhone “knows” means to turn on and automatically connect to wifi + download the latest update
What security mitigations are in place? If you can tamper with a device that still has tamper proof seal in place
Anyone could do anything to it. What if government uses it as a way to change settings to an iPhone going to a certain politician, or business person, or anyone?
I admit I am no expert on this topic, but how is this not a potential security issue?
In other words, how can Apple guarantee that someone (e.g. the NSA) won't build/steal/buy a similar machine to update phones to a new, custom OS (that NSA created) that is less secure?
Because the machine doesn't install the software, it just turns the phone on and the phone connects to Apple's servers for the update. Unless Apple's servers are compromised, this isn't an issue (and if they are, we have far bigger issues).
This is very smart. In my last position, I often had to deal with users getting "new" phones -- new in box, but they'd been that way for a while -- where the first thing we had to do was update iOS to the latest version. This wouldn't have helped me, since it's only for Apple Stores, but nice to see that any phone you buy in a store should always be on the latest iOS as soon as you take it out of the box.
Anyone could do anything to it. What if government uses it as a way to change settings to an iPhone going to a certain politician, or business person, or anyone?
They would need Apple’s signing keys. IPhones only accept updates signed by Apple.
Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Wednesday April 24, 2024 2:05 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
Top Rated Comments
Anyone could do anything to it. What if government uses it as a way to change settings to an iPhone going to a certain politician, or business person, or anyone?