Apple released a tiny update to iOS this week designed to avoid a sales ban in China. iOS version 12.1.2 contains software changes exclusive to China that are designed to circumvent Apple's patent dispute with Qualcomm, which won an initial sales ban over claims that Apple violated a pair of its patents. The Verge reports: The update changes the animation for when an app is forced to close, according to MacRumors, seemingly avoiding a Qualcomm patent around app management. Previously a closed app would slide off the top of the screen, but it now shrinks and disappears into the middle of the screen. Last month, Qualcomm won a court injunction that banned Apple from selling iPhone models including the 6S, 6S Plus, 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, and X. iOS 12.1.2 The patents related to how software resizes pictures and manages applications. This fix appears to change application management, but it's currently unclear what, if anything, has changed about the process of resizing pictures.

According to MacRumors forums, some users are complaining of a display issue that causes a bright spot to appear right above the Home button on some 2017 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models. The first complaints popped up in April 2018. From the report: According to iPad Pro users who have the problem, it appears to be an issue with uneven backlighting in that area. MacRumors can confirm the problem, as we have a 10.5-inch iPad Pro on hand that appears to be experiencing the same issue outlined on the forums. Customers have been complaining of the problem for months now, though it continues to be unclear how many iPad Pro models may be impacted by the issue. It is not known if a similar issue will impact the new 11 and 12.9-inch 2018 iPad Pro models, as these devices are too new and the problem appears to surface after several months of usage.

Multiple users who were affected with the bright spot on their screens have been able to take their iPad Pro models to Apple for a replacement, but users who are no longer under Apple's one-year warranty or AppleCare+ have not had luck getting a free replacement device. Out of warranty, Apple is asking customers to pay the display replacement fee, priced at $449 for the 10.5-inch iPad Pro and $599 for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: France won't wait on the rest of the European Union to start taxing big tech. French finance minister Bruno Le Maire says the country will move ahead with a new tax on Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon starting Jan. 1, 2019. The tax is expected to raise $570 million in 2019. France and Germany had originally pushed for an EU-wide 3% tax on big tech firms' online revenues, in part to prevent companies like Apple from sheltering their profits in countries with the lowest tax rates. The deal, which required the support of all 28 EU states, appeared to crumble earlier this month, with opposition from countries including Ireland, home to the European headquarters of Google and Apple.

France and Germany attempted to salvage the deal by scaling it back to a 3% tax on ad sales from tech giants. That would effectively limit the tax to Google and Facebook, excluding companies like Airbnb and Spotify that might have been harder hit under the initial proposal. In the meantime, France is moving ahead with its own tax on Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon, which are collectively known in the region as GAFA. "The tax will be introduced whatever happens on 1 January and it will be for the whole of 2019 for an amount that we estimate at [$570 million]," Le Maire said at a press conference in Paris, the Guardian reported today (Dec. 17).

Cydia, the App Store for jailbroken devices, is shutting down purchases as its creator moves to shut down the store entirely in the near future. "Cydia's creator Saurik made the announcement on Reddit after a bug was discovered in the platform that may have put user data at risk," iPhonehacks reports. "This bug prompted Saurik to clarify the issue and reveal that he has been planning on shutting down Cydia for quite a while now." From the report: The founder clarifies that the bug only puts a limited number of users at risk who are logged into Cydia and browse a repository with untrusted content -- a scenario which Saurik has strongly advised against right from day one. Plus, he also says that this is not a data leak and he has not lost access to PayPal authorization tokens. Coming to the harsh reality, Saurik says that he has been looking to shut down Cydia Store before the end of this year. The reports of a data leak have acted as a catalyst to bring the timetable further up. There are multiple reasons as to why he is looking to shut down the service including the fact that he has to pay for the hefty hosting bills from his own pocket.

Saurik has already gone ahead and shut down the ability to buy jailbreak tweaks in Cydia. This means that one can no longer use the Cydia Store to buy jailbreak tweaks on a jailbroken iPhone. On the bright side, Saurik does intend to allow users to download jailbreak tweaks that they have already paid for. Saurik will also make a more formal announcement about the shutting down of Cydia sometime soon. Do note that this change relates only to Cydia Store and not Cydia the installer which is used to install tweaks on a jailbroken device. The latter will continue to work as usual.

Last week, Samsung introduced its latest smartphone, the Galaxy A8s. Not only is it the first phone of theirs with a laser-drilled hole in the display for the front-facing camera sensor, but it is also their first phone to ditch the headphone jack. Slashdot reader TheFakeTimCook shares a report from Mac Rumors that takes a closer look at the move and the hypocrisy behind it: [The A8s] is also Samsung's first smartphone without a headphone jack, much to the amusement of iPhone users, as Samsung has mocked Apple for over two years over its decision to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 in 2016, a trend that has continued through to the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. While on stage unveiling the new Galaxy Note 7 in 2016, for example, Samsung executive Justin Denison made sure to point out that the device came with a headphone jack. "Want to know what else it comes with?" he asked. "An audio jack. I'm just saying," he answered, smirking as the audience laughed. And earlier this year, Samsung mocked the iPhone X's lack of a headphone jack in one of its "Ingenius" ads promoting the Galaxy S9. Samsung isn't the first tech giant to mock Apple's decision to remove the headphone jack, only to follow suit. Google poked fun at the iPhone 7's lack of headphone jack while unveiling its original Pixel smartphone in 2016, and then the Pixel 2 launched without one just a year later.

A lawsuit filed Friday is accusing Apple of falsely advertised the screen sizes and pixel counts of the displays in its iPhone X, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max devices. The two plaintiffs, who filed the suit in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, are seeking class action status. CNET reports: The suit alleges that Apple lied about the screen sizes by counting non-screen areas like the notch and corners. So the new line of iPhones aren't "all screen" as marketed, according to the 55-page complaint. For example, iPhone X's screen size is supposed to be 5.8 inches, but the plaintiffs measured that it's "only about 5.6875 inches." The plaintiffs also allege that the iPhone X series phones have lower screen resolution than advertised. iPhone X is supposed to have a resolution of 2436x1125 pixels, but the product doesn't contain true pixels with red, green and blue subpixels in each pixel, according to the complaint. iPhone X allegedly only has two subpixels per pixel, which is less than advertised, the complaint said. The lawsuit also alleges iPhone 8 Plus has a higher-quality screen than iPhone X.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Apple said it would update the software of iPhones in China (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) to try to resolve a legal dispute that threatens to stop the company from selling older iPhones in the country. Apple and its longtime chip supplier, Qualcomm, have been fighting in court over Apple's use of Qualcomm's technology. On Nov. 30, a Chinese court ruled Apple must immediately stop selling seven older iPhone models in China because it infringed on two Qualcomm patents. But Apple has not stopped selling those iPhones there. The company has argued the phones are not subject to the ruling because they are running new software that was not discussed at trial. On Friday, Apple said in a statement that it would update its iPhones in China early next week "to address any possible concern about our compliance with the order." Apple said its update would change the iPhones' software so it did not infringe on Qualcomm patents, which relate to switching between apps and changing the size and appearance of photographs.

After securing a win in court earlier this week to ban Apple's older phones, Qualcomm is trying to get the newer iPhones banned too. "According to the Financial Times, Qualcomm has now asked Chinese courts to issue an injunction that bans Apple from selling the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR within the country due to the same case of possible patent infringement," reports The Verge. From the report: The new filing will escalate the companies' legal conflict in China, where Apple has so far ignored a court-ordered sales ban. Apple claims the ban only applied to phones running iOS 11 and earlier. Since its phones have now been updated to iOS 12, Apple believes they can remain on sale, and so it has continued to sell them. According to the Financial Times, the Chinese court's order doesn't specifically mention any version of Apple's operating system. That doesn't necessarily mean Apple is wrong, but it does mean that there's more to be hashed out.

Forbes magazine tested four of the most popular handsets running Google's operating systems and Apple's iPhone to see how easy it'd be to break into them with a 3D-printed head. All of the Android handsets opened with the fake. Apple's phone, however, was impenetrable. From the report: For our tests, we used my own real-life head to register for facial recognition across five phones. An iPhone X and four Android devices: an LG G7 Linq, a Samsung S9, a Samsung Note 8 and a OnePlus 6. I then held up my fake head to the devices to see if the device would unlock. For all four Android phones, the spoof face was able to open the phone, though with differing degrees of ease. The iPhone X was the only one to never be fooled.

There were some disparities between the Android devices' security against the hack. For instance, when first turning on a brand new G7 Linq, LG actually warns the user against turning facial recognition on at all. No surprise then that, on initial testing, the 3D-printed head opened it straightaway. [...] The OnePlus 6 came with neither the warnings of the other Android phones nor the choice of slower but more secure recognition.

Apple said Thursday it plans to invest $1 billion building a new corporate campus in Austin, Texas, that could eventually create 15,000 jobs. From a report: The iPhone maker will also set up new offices in Seattle, San Diego and Culver City, Los Angeles County, as well as expanding operations in Pittsburgh, New York and Boulder, Colorado, according to the press release.

The Austin campus will be located less than a mile away from Apple's existing facilities in the Texas city, which already employ 6,200 people (its largest group of employees outside Cupertino). The new area will initially hold 5,000 employees, with capacity to grow to 15,000 over time.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple is apparently working on its own, in-house developed modem to allow it to better compete with Qualcomm, according to several new Apple job listings that task engineers to design and develop a layer 1 cellular PHY chip -- implying that the company is working on actual, physical networking hardware. Two of the job posts are explicitly to hire a pair of cellular modem systems architects, one in Santa Clara and one in San Diego, home of Qualcomm. That's alongside several other job postings Apple has listed in San Diego for RF design engineers. The Information, which spotted the first job posting, cites sources that go a step further, claiming that Apple is not only potentially working to develop its own modem, but is in fact specifically targeting it for use in future iPhones, with the company looking to leave longtime partner Intel behind in favor of its own, in-house solution.

According to The Information's report, the new modem would still be years away, with even Apple's purported 5G iPhone slated for 2020 using Intel's in-development 5G modem instead. It makes sense logically, too -- if Apple is only just starting to hire now, it'll take at least a few years before it'll actually be ready to ship hardware. But the move would have big ramifications for the mobile space, particularly for Qualcomm and Intel, two of the biggest modem suppliers in the world.

Qualcomm says it has won a ruling in China against Apple that bans the sale of some iPhone models in that country. From a report: The Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled that Apple is infringing two Qualcomm patents and issued injunctions against the sale of the iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X, the San Diego, California-based chipmaker said in a statement Monday. The most recent models introduced in September, the iPhone XS, XR and XS Max, are not covered by the ban.

Long-time Slashdot reader mspohr shares a Guardian article which argues that Apple Store employees "are underpaid, overhyped and characters in a well-managed fiction story" who "use emotional guile to sell products": When customers run into trouble with their products, geniuses are encouraged to sympathize, but only by apologizing that customers feel bad, lest they implicate Apple's products as the source of the trouble. In this gas-lit performance of a "problem free" brand philosophy, many words are actually verboten for staff. Do not use words like crash, hang, bug, or problem, employees are told. Instead say does not respond, stops responding, condition, issue, or situation. Avoid saying incompatible; instead use does not work with. Staff have reported the absurdist dialogues that can result, like when they are not allowed to tell customers that they cannot help even in the most hopeless cases, leading customers into circular conversations with employees able neither to help nor to refuse to do so....

[I]n a move so ridiculous it's almost certain to be a hit, the Genius Bar has been rebranded the "Genius Grove". Windows are opened to blur the distinction between inside and outside, and the stores are promoted as quasi-public spaces. "We actually don't call them stores any more," the new head of retail at Apple, former Burberry executive Angela Ahrendts (2017 salary: $24,216,072), recently told the press. "We call them town squares."
The article argues that since there launch in 2001, Apple Stores "have raked in more money -- in total and per square foot -- than any other retailer on the planet, transforming Apple into the world's richest company in the process."

But it also complains that Apple's wealth "flows from the privatization of publicly funded research, mixed with the ability to command the low-wage labor of our Chinese peers, sold by empathetic retailers forbidden from saying 'crash'."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has never made cheap stuff. But this fall many of its prices increased 20 percent or more. The MacBook Air went from $1,000 to $1,200. A Mac Mini leaped from $500 to $800. It felt as though the value proposition that has made Apple products no-brainers might unravel. For some perspective, we charted out the past few years of prices on a few iconic Apple products. Then we compared them with other brands and some proprietary data about Americans' phone purchase habits from mobile analytics firm BayStreet Research.

What we learned: Being loyal to Apple is getting expensive. Many Apple product prices are rising faster than inflation -- faster, even, than the price of prescription drugs or going to college. Yet when Apple offers cheaper options for its most important product, the iPhone, Americans tend to take the more expensive choice. So while Apple isn't charging all customers more, it's definitely extracting more money from frequent upgraders.

[...] Apple says prices go up because it introduces new technologies such as Face ID and invests in making products that last a long time. Yet it has clearly been feeling price discomfort from some quarters. This week, amid reports of lagging sales that took its stock far out of the trillion-dollar club, it dedicated its home page to a used-car sales technique that's uncharacteristic for an aspirational luxury brand. It offered a "limited-time" deal to trade in an old iPhone and get a new iPhone XR for $450, a $300 discount.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Today, with an update to watchOS, Apple is making its electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG) reading feature available to Apple Watch Series 4 owners. It's also releasing an irregular rate notification feature that will be available on Apple Watches going back to Series 1. Both are a part of watchOS 5.1.2. To take an EKG, you open up the EKG app on the Watch and lightly rest your index finger on the crown for 30 seconds. The Watch then acts like a single-lead EKG to read your heart rhythm and record it into the Health app on your phone. From there, you can create a PDF report to send to your doctor.

The irregular heart rate monitoring is passive. Apple says that it checks your rhythm every two hours or so (depending on whether you're stationary or not), and if there are five consecutive readings that seem abnormal, it will alert you and suggest you reach out to a doctor. If you have been previously diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, Apple's setup process tells you not to use the feature. Apple tells me these features are most definitely not diagnostic tools. In fact, before you can activate either of them, you will need to page through several screens of information that try to put their use into context and warn you to contact your doctor if needed. They are also not the sort of features Apple expects users to really use on a regular basis. The EKG feature, in particular, should only really be used if you feel something abnormal going on, and then you should only share the resulting report with your doctor, not act on it directly. Angela Chen from The Verge notes that these features have only received "clearance" from the FDA, which is not the same thing as FDA "approval": The Apple Watch is in Class II. For Class II and Class I, the FDA doesn't give "approval," it just gives clearance. Class I and Class II products are lower-risk products -- as [Jon Speer, co-founder of Greenlight Guru] puts it, a classic Class I example is something like a tongue depressor -- and it's much easier to get clearance than approval.

AmiMoJo shares a report from 9to5Mac: Apple is facing a new class action lawsuit claiming that it sells select iMac and MacBook models without needed dust filters. In turn, this causes issues such as display imprecations, slowing performance, and more, the lawsuit alleges. The iMac and MacBook lawsuit is being brought forward by law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, which is a class action litigation firm that has gone after Apple before. Most notably, the firm won the infamous $450 million ebooks pricing case against Apple. Since then, Hagens Berman has levied other suits at Apple, including one regarding the performance throttling of iPhones. Hagens Berman's latest lawsuit reads in part: "iMac and MacBook owners have reported dark smudges and spots on the interior of the screens of their desktop computers as well as excessive slowness and break downs of their computers related to the lack of filter on Apple computers. The computer intakes air to cool its components, but with no filter, dust gets trapped inside. This affects the screen and logic board of the computer, leading to dust stuck behind the screen and gummed up motherboards, causing the computer to run slow and/or overheat."

Hagens Berman says "Apple refuses to remedy the defect," instead forcing affected customers to pay "more than $500 to fix this screen defect, and even more if they wish to replace parts integral to the computer's sped and performance." "We believe Apple owes it to the purchasers of these premium, high-end computers to pay for the widespread defect, and we seek to represent iMac owners to recover their losses in costs to repair this defect, or for their loss of use of their computer."

secwatcher shares a report from Threatpost: Two apps that were posing as fitness-tracking tools were actually using Apple's Touch ID feature to loot money from unassuming iOS victims. The two impacted apps were the "Fitness Balance App" and "Calories Tracker App." Both apps looked normal, and served functions like calculating BMI, tracking daily calorie intake or reminding users to drink water; and both received good reviews on the iOS store. However, according to Reddit users and researchers with ESET, the apps steal money -- almost $120 from each victim -- thanks to a sneaky popup trick involving the Apple Touch ID feature.

According to heated victims who took to Reddit to air their complaints, after a user launches one of the apps, it requests a fingerprint scan prompting users to "view their personalized calorie tracker and diet recommendations." After the users use Touch ID, the app then shows a pop-up confirming a payment of $119.99. The pop-up is only visible for a second, according to users. "However, if the user has a credit or debit card directly connected to their Apple account, the transaction is considered verified and money is wired to the operator behind these scams," said Lukas Stefanko, malware analyst with ESET security, in a Monday post on the scam.

Apple plans to hold off until at least 2020 before offering an iPhone that can connect to the next generation of high-speed phone services coming next year, Bloomberg reported Monday. From the report: The delay may make it easier for rivals like Samsung Electronics to win over consumers to phones that connect to 5G networks, which will provide a leap forward in mobile data speeds when they are introduced in 2019. As with 3G and 4G, the two previous generations of mobile technology, Apple will wait as long as a year after the initial deployment of the new networks before its main product gets the capability to access them, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the company's plans.

Apple's previous calculations -- proven correct -- were that the new networks and the first versions of rival smartphones would come with problems such as spotty coverage, making consumers less compelled to immediately make the jump. This time, 5G boosters argue the switch is a much bigger speed upgrade, making Apple's decision to wait riskier. The networks will open the floodgates to new types of mobile computing, 5G advocates say.

After months of back and forth, Apple has permitted Indian telecom regulator TRAI to release its anti-spam app on the App Store. The app, called TRAI DND - Do Not Disturb, went live on the iPhone app store on Friday. The free app, a version of which has existed on Android platform since 2016, allows customers to block unsolicited texts and calls from marketers, a rampant issue that continues to plague customers in India.

The app has been the subject of months-long, heated argument between Apple and TRAI. Apple had argued that the app, which by design accesses message and call logs of a user, violates its privacy policy. The company, however, had agreed to provide some help to the regulator to tap into new iOS features to build the "Do Not Disturb" app. In response, R.S. Sharma, who heads the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, had threatened to take legal action against Apple. "This is unjust, it shows the approach and attitude of this company," he told Reuters in March.

Further reading: Apple approves Indian government's Do Not Disturb app, avoiding iPhone ban.

Apple has reportedly removed 718 apps from the Chinese App Store in the last few days. From a report: The iPhone maker swept out the apps because their developers pushed updates without its permission, The Telegraph reported, citing local reports. Apple warned developers against updating iOS apps without its permission in early 2017. The banned apps included Sogou's search engine and maps, online retailer Pinduodo and car sharing service Togo Car.