MacRumors

BlueJeans Telehealth has today announced that it will integrate with Apple's Health app to give more contextual information to healthcare providers.

BlueJeans Telehealth is a HIPAA-ready virtual care system that provides a way for healthcare providers to meet with their patients via a video call, integrating with the workflows of clinical teams to replicate the experience of onsite encounters.

The BlueJeans Telehealth app will now allow patients to share specific categories of health data from Apple's Health app, including heart rate, ECGs, step count, mobility data, sleep, and falls, with their healthcare provider during telehealth appointments, via HealthKit.

Patients can specifically control which encrypted health data they wish to share while supplying healthcare providers with additional information to give more informed advice.

Health data can be selected within the pre-visit patient landing experience or through the televisit tile during the session. Once synced, the healthcare provider will be able to see, expand, and interact with the Apple Health app data, allowing them to observe trends and highlight data on-screen for the patient.

Popular password management app 1Password today previewed the "next generation" of its app, 1Password 8, featuring a more contextual user interface, redesigned menus, improved password generation, and more.

The new update is a considerable update, featuring refinements that make it easier for users to track, manage, and keep an eye on potentially vulnerable passwords. One of the first changes relates to shared password vaults, where 1Password 8 will now offer more visual representation for what passwords are being shared with who.

You'll also notice an indicator next to each shared vault, making it easier to see which vaults are private and which are shared. No guesswork. And items show who they're being shared with.

Throughout the app you're in more control, with more contextual information available at all times. Try dragging-and-dropping an item from a personal vault to a shared vault. When you do, 1Password will show you who will gain access to the item so there's no doubt about what's happening.

Taking some inspiration frm macOS Spotlight, 1Password 8 includes a more powerful search bar, allowing users to be more granular with the search terms based on tags, websites, and more. An important aspect of any good password management app is the oversight of your passwords and their vulnerabilities. 1Password 8 is promising more advanced password oversight with an improved version of Watchtower. The new version includes a new editing experience with "a powerful new password generator, smart suggestions, and simpler file attachments."

On top of front-end user refinements, 1Password is promising improved speeds with its upcoming Mac app alongside continued improvements on end-to-end encryption.

You won't see this change but you'll feel it. The app is incredibly responsive across the board, from unlocking to adding accounts to searching your items — especially when combined with native support for Apple Silicon and all the speed improvements that brings. We're talking breaking-the-warp-barrier speed.

1Password 8 for Mac is available in early access for Mac users wishing to try it out.

Apple today shared a new "Today at Apple" session on YouTube, exploring how to shoot and edit looping videos in the Clips app, with the help of director Romain Laurent and Jahmyra from Today at Apple.

Viewers are encouraged to get involved simply with an iPhone and the Clips app, but may also wish to take advantage of a selfie stick or tripod.

The session covers how to make a simple loop video, match your movement, add an unexpected feature, finalizing looped videos, top takeaways, and export videos.

Apple says its free Today at Apple sessions are meant to inspire hands-on creativity in photography, art, design, video, coding, music, and more using Apple products and accessories like the ‌iPhone‌, iPad, Mac, and Apple Pencil. Initially hosted exclusively at Apple Stores, the sessions started to be offered online during the global health crisis, and Apple also started uploading sessions to YouTube last month.

This is the third Today at Apple session uploaded to YouTube, with the first exploring how to draw yourself as a "Peanuts" character in the Pages app using an ‌iPad‌ and ‌Apple Pencil‌ and the second explaining how to shoot and edit "otherworldly" photos with Night Mode.

Apple announced earlier this year that, with iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, the Find My Network will be able to locate AirPods Pro and AirPods Max. Now, it has emerged that this will be achieved by tethering the AirPods to a specific Apple ID, with an unusual system of covering the ‌AirPods Pro‌'s speaker holes to remove the linked account.

First spotted by 9to5Mac, iOS 15 developer beta five code has confirmed that, to work with Apple's ‌Find My‌ Network, ‌AirPods Pro‌ and ‌AirPods Max‌ will need to be tethered to an ‌Apple ID‌. This means that even if a user connects someone else's AirPods to their device, they will remain tethered to the owner's ‌Apple ID‌.

To remove the configured ‌Apple ID‌ and disable connection to the ‌Find My‌ Network, such as when passing the AirPods to a new user, owners will have to follow a number of manual steps similar to the process for untethering an AirTag.

For ‌AirPods Max‌, users need to hold down the Active Noise Cancelation button at the same time as the Digital Crown for 12 seconds. For ‌AirPods Pro‌, users have to cover the interior and exterior grilles with their fingers while pressing the button on the stem three times in sequence.

Support for the ‌Find My‌ Network will likely come via an ‌AirPods Pro‌ and ‌AirPods Max‌ firmware update alongside iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 later in the fall. First and second-generation AirPods will not support the ‌Find My‌ Network.

Previously, all AirPods devices appeared in the ‌Find My‌ app, but were not remotely locatable using the ‌Find My‌ Network like an ‌AirTag‌, which uses low-energy Bluetooth to feed a device's location back to the owner via nearby iPhone or iPad.

Mozilla has announced the public release of Firefox 91, featuring an enhanced version of its Total Cookie Protection for individual websites.

When you browse the web on your devices, websites will often leave cookies on your system so that they can remember you and what your preferences are.

Some cookies are genuinely useful, as they allow sites to save your personal information (such as your login credentials) so that you don't have to keep entering it every time you visit. However, for the same reason, cookies can pose a privacy risk because of the information they hold about you.

To combat this, Total Cookie Protection makes sure websites can't track users across websites by partitioning data storage into one cookie jar per website.

With Enhanced Cookie Clearing, when a user empties a cookie jar for an individual website, the entire jar is emptied, including any tracking data set embedded from another website, such as Facebook.

Firefox no longer shows individual domains that store data. Instead, it lists a cookie jar for each website visited, making it easier to identify and remove all data a website has stored locally, while also removing any leftover data from third parties embedded in that site.

For Enhanced Cookie Clearing to work, Strict Tracking Protection (Settings -> Privacy & Security) needs to be enabled. Enhanced Cookie Clearing will then be used when using "Clear cookies and site data" in the identity panel (the lock icon) or in the Firefox preferences.

In addition, there's a new "Forget About This Site" option in the History menu that deletes a site from history along with any cookies and caches for it.

Firefox 91 is available now from the Mozilla website.

Apple this week dropped its long-standing lawsuit against Corellium, the security research company that provides security researchers with a replica of the iOS operating system, allowing them to locate possible security exploits within Apple's mobile operating system, The Washington Post reports.

Apple filed a lawsuit against Corellium in 2019, claiming the security company was infringing upon its copyrights of iOS and iPhone. Last year, a judge dismissed Apple's claim that Corellium had infringed upon the tech giant's copyrights, claiming instead that Corellium was operating under fair rules.

While Corellium offers a replica of the iOS operating system that runs on the ‌iPhone‌, the security research firm says that it benefits Apple if anything. By providing security researchers with access to the same operating system that runs on millions of devices, security experts can find security vulnerabilities and potential exploits more efficiently, leading them to be fixed by Apple.

Citing court documents, The Washington Post reports that Apple and Corellium have agreed on a confidential settlement to bring the lawsuit to an end. Despite Apple's grievances with Corellium, however, the settlement does not include Corellium suspending the sale and distribution of tools used by security researchers.

Likely fueled by the lawsuit and the discussion around security research on ‌iPhone‌, Apple last year launched a program that would give security researchers access to specially configured iPhones for researching security vulnerabilities and exploits.

Apple this week began selling refurbished 8th-generation iPad models through its online store in the United States for the first time since the device was released last year. As usual, the refurbished models are discounted by approximately 15% compared to brand new models, with pricing starting at $279 for the 32GB model versus $329 new.

Apple says its certified refurbished iPad models are thoroughly inspected, tested, cleaned, and repackaged in a new white box, with a Lightning cable, power adapter, and manuals included in the box. A refurbished iPad also comes with a new battery and a new outer shell, making it virtually indistinguishable from a brand new iPad.

Introduced in September 2020, the 8th-generation iPad features a 10.2-inch Retina display and the A12 Bionic chip with a Neural Engine.

Refurbished iPads are covered by Apple's standard one-year warranty. This coverage can be extended with an AppleCare+ for iPad plan, available for a one-time fee of $69 or $3.49 per month for 24 months in the United States.

Apple also started selling refurbished 2020 iPad Pro models this week. While certified refurbished iPads represent a decent opportunity for savings straight from Apple, better deals are sometimes available from resellers like Amazon and Best Buy. Be sure to monitor our Apple Deals roundup for the latest discounts on Apple products.

Apple today released the fifth betas of iOS and iPadOS 15 to developers, introducing additional tweaks to the new operating system that's launching this fall.

As we get further into the beta testing process, the changes that are introduced are getting smaller as Apple begins to finalize its design plans for the update. Today's beta focuses on small changes and refinements to iOS and iPadOS 15 features.

Weather App Icon

The design of the Weather app icon has been tweaked slightly. It's a darker blue than the prior version.

Safari Reload Icon

In Safari, when the address bar is collapsed while in the full web page view, the reload icon has been removed from the URL bar. The reload icon still shows in the standard view.

In the prior beta, the reload icon was shown in both views that are demonstrated in the screenshot above. In the current beta, it only shows in the standard view.

iPadOS 15 Safari

In iPadOS 15, today's beta changes the shading of the tab interface in Safari in an effort to make it more clear which tab is the active tab.

iPadOS 15 Home Screen Settings

In the Settings app under Home Screen & Dock, there's now an option on the iPad to use large icons.

With the feature enabled, icons take up more space on the screen so there's less empty area, and it's also easier to tap on the app icon that you need.

Control Center Camera Icon

Apple in an earlier beta refined the icon for the Camera app, and in iOS 15 beta 5, the camera icon in the Control Center is using the newly updated icon rather than the old icon.

Design wise, the new icon does away with the shutter button.

Control Center Sound Recognition Icon

Apple has also changed the icon for the Sound Recognition feature in the Control Center. It was previously a sound wave in a square, but now it is a sound wave with a little magnifying glass search icon.

iPhone Power Off

When turning off the iPhone, there's now a tappable warning that the ‌iPhone‌ will remain findable after it's turned off. If you tap on it, there's an option to "Temporarily Turn Off Finding."

Splash Screens

Apple has added new splash screens with feature descriptions for apps like Photos, Reminders, Home, and Maps.

Background Sounds

There's a new option to turn off Background Sounds when an ‌iPhone‌ is locked, which can be found under Settings > Accessibility > Audio and Visual> Background Sounds.

TestFlight Info in App Store

When you look up an app in the App Store, if you have the TestFlight version installed from a developer, the ‌App Store‌ listing will display the TestFlight version that you have installed and will offer a link to open the TestFlight app.

Legacy Contacts

According to Apple's release notes for the update, Legacy Contacts has been removed in beta 5 and will be re-added in a later update.

Other New Features

Know of something new in the beta that we left out? Let us know in the comments below.

Last week, Apple previewed new child safety features that it said will be coming to the iPhone, iPad, and Mac with software updates later this year. The company said the features will be available in the U.S. only at launch.

A refresher on Apple's new child safety features from our previous coverage:

First, an optional Communication Safety feature in the Messages app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac can warn children and their parents when receiving or sending sexually explicit photos. When the feature is enabled, Apple said the Messages app will use on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments, and if a photo is determined to be sexually explicit, the photo will be automatically blurred and the child will be warned.

Second, Apple will be able to detect known Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) images stored in iCloud Photos, enabling Apple to report these instances to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a non-profit organization that works in collaboration with U.S. law enforcement agencies. Apple confirmed today that the process will only apply to photos being uploaded to iCloud Photos and not videos.

Third, Apple will be expanding guidance in Siri and Spotlight Search across devices by providing additional resources to help children and parents stay safe online and get help with unsafe situations. For example, users who ask Siri how they can report CSAM or child exploitation will be pointed to resources for where and how to file a report.

Since announcing the plans last Thursday, Apple has received some pointed criticism, ranging from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden claiming that Apple is "rolling out mass surveillance" to the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation claiming that the new child safety features will create a "backdoor" into the company's platforms.

"All it would take to widen the narrow backdoor that Apple is building is an expansion of the machine learning parameters to look for additional types of content, or a tweak of the configuration flags to scan, not just children's, but anyone's accounts," cowrote the EFF's India McKinney and Erica Portnoy. "That's not a slippery slope; that's a fully built system just waiting for external pressure to make the slightest change."

The concerns extend to the general public, with over 7,000 individuals having signed an open letter against Apple's so-called "privacy-invasive content scanning technology" that calls for the company to abandon its planned child safety features.

At this point in time, it does not appear that any negative feedback has led Apple to reconsider its plans. We confirmed with Apple today that the company has not made any changes as it relates to the timing of the new child safety features becoming available — that is, later this year in updates to iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and macOS Monterey. With the features not expected to launch for several weeks to months, though, the plans could still change.

Apple sticking to its plans will please several advocates, including Julie Cordua, CEO of the international anti-human trafficking organization Thorn.

"The commitment from Apple to deploy technology solutions that balance the need for privacy with digital safety for children brings us a step closer to justice for survivors whose most traumatic moments are disseminated online," said Cordua.

"We support the continued evolution of Apple's approach to child online safety," said Stephen Balkam, CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute. "Given the challenges parents face in protecting their kids online, it is imperative that tech companies continuously iterate and improve their safety tools to respond to new risks and actual harms."

Apple today seeded the fifth betas of iOS and iPadOS 15 to developers for testing purposes, with the updates coming two weeks after Apple released the fourth betas.

Registered developers can download the profile for the iOS and iPadOS betas from the Apple Developer Center, and once the profile is installed, beta updates will be available over the air.

iOS 15 is a major update that introduces a slew of new features focused on cutting down on distractions and spending more time with friends and family.

FaceTime has a revamped interface with new SharePlay features for listening to music, watching videos, and sharing your screen with your friends and family members, and in Messages, if something like a url, photo, news article, or song is shared with you, you can see the content in Apple's dedicated apps.

Focus lets you create custom notification modes that hide irrelevant apps and notifications when you're doing things like working or spending time with your family so you can better focus on the activity at hand, and there's a new notification summary that de-prioritizes less important notifications so you're not constantly inundated with information.

Maps includes a new 3D view in select cities that lets you see 3D landmarks, there are immersive AR directions when walking, and driving directions are better than ever, especially at complex interchanges.

Safari now supports Tab Groups for improved organization, and extensions can be used in Safari for iOS devices for the first time. Later this year you'll be able to add your ID card to the Wallet app in some U.S. states, and Apple is making it easier to add key cards for hotels, smart home locks, and more to the Wallet app.

Spotlight is better than ever and can bring up more tailored search results, and Photos has a "Live Text" feature that lets you take a photo of something with text like a receipt to translate it into typed text on your iPhone. ‌Photos‌ can also identify landmarks, books, plants, and pets, so you can snap a photo of a plant and get information on what it might be.

Apple has also added multiple privacy improvements, such as a new App Privacy report coming to the ‌iPhone‌ that will let you know how often apps access sensitive info like your location, a Mail feature that hides your IP address, and Siri processing that's done on device.

For a complete overview of everything that's new in iOS 15, we have a dedicated roundup that walks through all of the new features, and Apple has been adding feature refinements throughout the beta testing period. The fourth beta, for example, further tweaked the design of Safari, added MagSafe Battery Pack support, and more.

Apple's Head of Privacy, Erik Neuenschwander, has responded to some of users' concerns around the company's plans for new child safety features that will scan messages and Photos libraries, in an interview with TechCrunch.

When asked why Apple is only choosing to implement child safety features that scan for Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), Neuenschwander explained that Apple has "now got the technology that can balance strong child safety and user privacy," giving the company "a new ability to identify accounts which are starting collections of known CSAM."

Neuenschwander was asked if, in retrospect, announcing the Communication Safety features in Messages and the CSAM detection system in iCloud Photos together was the right decision, to which he responded:

Well, while they are [two] systems they are also of a piece along with our increased interventions that will be coming in Siri and search. As important as it is to identify collections of known CSAM where they are stored in Apple's iCloud Photos service, it's also important to try to get upstream of that already horrible situation.

When asked if Apple was trying to demonstrate to governments and agencies around the world that it is possible to scan for illicit content while preserving user privacy, Neuenschwander explained:

Now, why to do it is because, as you said, this is something that will provide that detection capability while preserving user privacy. We're motivated by the need to do more for child safety across the digital ecosystem, and all three of our features, I think, take very positive steps in that direction. At the same time we're going to leave privacy undisturbed for everyone not engaged in the illegal activity.

He was asked if Apple had created a framework that could be used for law enforcement to scan for other kinds of content in users' libraries and if it undermines Apple's commitment to end-to-end encryption.

It doesn't change that one iota. The device is still encrypted, we still don't hold the key, and the system is designed to function on on-device data... The alternative of just processing by going through and trying to evaluate users data on a server is actually more amenable to changes [without user knowledge], and less protective of user privacy... It's those sorts of systems that I think are more troubling when it comes to the privacy properties — or how they could be changed without any user insight or knowledge to do things other than what they were designed to do.

Neuenschwander was then asked if Apple could be forced to comply with laws outside the United States that may force it to add things that are not CSAM to the database to check for them on-device, to which he explained that there are a "number of protections built-in" to the service.

The hash list is built into the operating system, we have one global operating system and don't have the ability to target updates to individual users and so hash lists will be shared by all users when the system is enabled. And secondly, the system requires the threshold of images to be exceeded so trying to seek out even a single image from a person's device or set of people's devices won't work because the system simply does not provide any knowledge to Apple for single photos stored in our service. And then, thirdly, the system has built into it a stage of manual review where, if an account is flagged with a collection of illegal CSAM material, an Apple team will review that to make sure that it is a correct match of illegal CSAM material prior to making any referral to any external entity. And so the hypothetical requires jumping over a lot of hoops, including having Apple change its internal process to refer material that is not illegal, like known CSAM and that we don't believe that there's a basis on which people will be able to make that request in the U.S. And the last point that I would just add is that it does still preserve user choice, if a user does not like this kind of functionality, they can choose not to use iCloud Photos and if iCloud Photos is not enabled, no part of the system is functional.

Neuenschwander continued that for users who are "not into this illegal behavior, Apple gain no additional knowledge about any user's cloud library," and "it leaves privacy completely undisturbed."

See TechCrunch's full interview with Neuenschwander for more information.

The 2022 iPhones and Macs may feature chips built on the 3nm process, as Apple's leading chip supplier, TSMC, is planning to begin mass production for ‌3nm‌ chips destined for Apple in the second half of next year, according to a preview of an upcoming report by DigiTimes.

The paywalled preview of the full report, which will be published tomorrow, reads:

TSMC is on track to move its 3nm process technology to volume production in the second half of 2022 for Apple's devices, either iPhones or Mac computers, according to industry sources.

Earlier in June, TSMC was reportedly beefing up capacity to begin production of 3nm chips, but ‌DigiTimes‌ at the time refrained from mentioning Apple as a potential initial beneficiary of the new process. Today's preview directly means that just two years after unveiling chips based on the 5nm process, Apple may plan to make a direct jump to ‌3nm‌ as soon as next year.

Apple has already reportedly booked TSMC's entire production capacity for 4nm chips for Apple silicon Macs. That report, however, has no timeline as to when Macs with 4nm chips may debut.

The A14 Bionic chip, first introduced in an updated iPad Air and later put into the iPhone 12 series, is built on the 5nm process. Compared to earlier processes, the smaller architecture provides improved performance and increased energy efficiency. For this year's ‌iPhone‌, Apple will use an enhanced version of the 5nm process.

The full report tomorrow is likely to offer more color surrounding Apple's plan to roll out chips built on the ‌3nm‌ process. We'll be sure to let MacRumors' readers know if the new report shares anything of significance.

Apple plans to launch a new MacBook Air with a mini-LED display and several color options around mid 2022, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said today in a research note obtained by MacRumors. These details line up with previous rumors about the new MacBook Air from sources like Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and YouTube tech personality Jon Prosser.

Kuo said the new MacBook Air will feature an "all-new design" with a similar form factor as the next MacBook Pro models, which are also expected to feature a mini-LED display and flatter top and bottom edges. Previous rumors have suggested the new MacBook Air will also feature a faster Apple silicon chip and a MagSafe-branded magnetic power cable.

Kuo said it is not yet certain whether the existing M1 MacBook Air will be discontinued after the mini-LED model enters mass production, and this could have an effect on pricing. If the M1 MacBook Air is discontinued, Kuo said the mini-LED model will probably start at the same $999 price. If the M1 MacBook Air does remain available for purchase alongside the mini-LED model, Kuo believes it could receive a price cut.

Chinese manufacturer BOE will supply the mini-LED displays for the new MacBook Air, whereas LG, Sharp, and Foxconn subsidiary GIS will supply mini-LED displays for the upcoming MacBook Pro models, according to Kuo.

Apple last updated the MacBook Air with the M1 chip in November 2020.

To alleviate a severe blood shortage, the American Red Cross has teamed up with Apple to offer a 4-month Apple Music trial to those who donate blood, platelets, or plasma during the month of August.

Blood donors will need to donate blood from August 1 to August 31 to get the free 4-month Apple Music special, which will be delivered by email. The trial is limited to new ‌Apple Music‌ subscribers who have not tried the service yet.

Those who donate before August 15 will also be entered to win a VIP journey to the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee.

Appointments to donate blood can be made through the Red Cross website.

(Thanks, Phil!)

Twelve South today announced a new addition to its PlugBug charger lineup with the launch of the PlugBug Slim, a new 20W USB-C charger that's useful for travel with its thin design.

Priced at $24.99, Twelve South describes the PlugBug Slim as a space-saving charger that's 0.67 inches thick (17mm), so it better blends into the wall and fits into tight spaces where furniture might be close to an outlet.

The prongs of the PlugBug Slim are designed to fold down so that it can be tucked into a pocket or slipped into a bag or purse when on the go, and there's a small light at the bottom to let you know when your device is charging.

The PlugBug Slim is a GaN charger, and while there are many GaN charging options on the market now with compact designs, there are fewer that have focused on a slimmer profile for small spaces. At 20W, the PlugBug Slim works with the iPhone models and offers fast charging, charges up the iPad, and supports the HomePod mini.

Twelve South's PlugBug Slim can be purchased from the Twelve South website for $24.99.