Longtime Slashdot reader Dotnaught writes: "Google's Chromium developers have begun work on an experimental web browser for Apple's iOS using the search giant's Blink engine," reports The Register. "That's unexpected because the current version of Chrome for iOS uses Apple's WebKit rendering engine under the hood. Apple requires every iOS browser to use WebKit and its iOS App Store Review Guidelines state, 'Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.'"

Google insists this is an experiment and isn't intended for release. But the stripped-down, Blink-based browser could be preparation for European competition rules that look like they will require Apple to stop requiring that other browser makers use its WebKit engine. "This is an experimental prototype that we are developing as part of an open source project with the goal to understand certain aspects of performance on iOS," said a Google spokesperson. "It will not be available to users and we'll continue to abide by Apple's policies."

In its quarterly earnings report today, Apple said the company passed the 2 billion device milestone while Services have hit a new revenue record. 9to5Mac reports: Apple saw a dip for its Q1 2023 fiscal quarter with just over $117 billion in revenue. That's down 5% YoY -- with the compare being its all-time record for fiscal Q1 in 2022 which saw $123.95 billion in revenue. However, the company pointed out two bright spots with 2 billion of its devices now in use and a fresh revenue record for its Services.

Last year at this time Apple shared it hit 1.8 billion active devices. That means it added more than 200 million Apple devices in the last 12 months to surpass the 2 billion mark. That's impressive since its installed base was growing by around 100-150 million new devices per year since 2019. And active devices doubled from 1 to 2 billion in just seven years. As for the Services, it saw a record $20.8 billion in revenue for the quarter, slightly beating the $19.5 billion estimate.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) wrote to Google and Apple on Thursday, urging both companies to remove TikTok from their app stores. From a report: In a letter addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Bennet urges both leaders to boot TikTok immediately, calling the popular video-sharing app "an unacceptable threat to the national security of the United States." Bennet's letter marks the first time a member of Congress has suggested TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, should not be available for download via the Google Play or Apple App store. "No company subject to [Chinese Communist Party] dictates should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people or curate content to nearly a third of our population," Bennet wrote in the letter.

At the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2023 event today, Samsung announced the Galaxy Book3 Ultra, a 16-inch workstation laptop with a 120Hz OLED screen, an H-Series Core i7 or Core i9, and an RTX 4050 or 4070 GPU. "Samsung makes a number of Galaxy Book models, but this is the first one of the past few years that has really targeted the deep-pocketed professional user -- that is, the core audience for Apple's high-powered and wildly expensive MacBook Pro 16," reports The Verge. "It'll start at $2,399.99 ($100 cheaper than the base MacBook Pro 16), with a release date still to be announced." From the report: Like its siblings in the Galaxy Book3 line, a big draw of this workstation will be its screen. It's got a 2880 x 1800 120Hz 16:10 OLED display (a welcome change from the 16:9 panels that adorned last year's Galaxy Book2) rated for 400 nits of brightness [...]. Elsewhere, using the device felt pretty similar to using any number of other Samsung Galaxy Books, with a satisfyingly clicky keyboard, a smooth finish, a high-quality build, and a compact chassis. The Ultra is 0.65 inches thick and 3.9 pounds, which is slightly thinner and close to a pound lighter than the 16-inch MacBook Pro that Apple just released [...].

I was able to use a number of Samsung's continuity features, including Second Screen (which allows you to easily use a Galaxy Tab as a second monitor) and Quick Share (which allows you to quickly transfer images and other files between Samsung devices). For Samsung enthusiasts, those seem like handy features that aren't too much of a hassle to set up. The one feature I had issues with was the touchpad -- it registered some of my two-finger clicks as one-finger clicks and wasn't quite picking up all of my scrolls. The units in Samsung's demo area were preproduction devices, so I hope this is a kink Samsung can iron out before the final release.

Unfortunately, we don't yet know how it will stack up when it comes to battery life. The M2 generation of MacBooks is very strong on that front -- and given that the Galaxy Book3 Ultra is running a high-resolution screen, a power-hungry H-series processor, and a very power-hungry RTX GPU, I'm a little bit nervous about that. If Samsung can pull off a device that lasts nearly as long as Apple's do, given those factors, hats off to them. Further reading:
The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Is a Minor Update To a Spec Monster
Samsung, Google and Qualcomm Team Up To Build a New Mixed-Reality Platform

In the past year, a new term has arisen to describe an online scam raking in millions, if not billions, of dollars per year. It's called "pig butchering," and now even Apple is getting fooled into participating. From a report: Researchers from security firm Sophos said on Wednesday that they uncovered two apps available in the App Store that were part of an elaborate network of tools used to dupe people into putting large sums of money into fake investment scams. At least one of those apps also made it into Google Play, but that market is notorious for the number of malicious apps that bypass Google vetting. Sophos said this was the first time it had seen such apps in the App Store and that a previous app identified in these types of scams was a legitimate one that was later exploited by bad actors.

Pig butchering relies on a rich combination of apps, websites, web hosts, and humans -- in some cases human trafficking victims -- to build trust with a mark over a period of weeks or months, often under the guise of a romantic interest, financial adviser, or successful investor. Eventually, the online discussion will turn to investments, usually involving cryptocurrency, that the scammer claims to have earned huge sums of money from. The scammer then invites the victim to participate. Once a mark deposits money, the scammers will initially allow them to make withdrawals. The scammers eventually lock the account and claim they need a deposit of as much as 20 percent of their balance to get it back. Even when the deposit is paid, the money isn't returned, and the scammers invent new reasons the victim should send more money. The pig-butchering term derives from a farmer fattening up a hog months before it's butchered.

A new Biden administration report describes Apple and Google as "gatekeepers" of mobile app stores and suggests legislation is needed to spur competition and give app makers and consumers more choices. From a report: The White House is pushing for tech antitrust action in the new Congress, with a new Department of Commerce report laying out what it sees as a harmful app store environment for both consumers and app makers. The report, from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, is the Biden administration's fullest effort to lay out concerns about the app store ecosystem.

There is "real potential harm for consumers" in the way Apple and Google run their app stores, with the companies "inflating prices and reducing innovation," Alan Davidson, NTIA administrator, said in a call with reporters. "We're looking forward to seeing what legislation gets introduced on Capitol Hill.... Our hope is that this analysis can inform how people are thinking about these issues," he said. "We have a real opportunity to make progress on tech and competition in this Congress," said Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council. "We're highly committed to reform in this space and we will work closely with Congress to see whatever is possible."

Apple could be on track to release a foldable iPad as early as next year, according to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. From a report: "I'm positive about the foldable iPad in 2024 and expect this new model will boost shipments and improve the product mix," he tweeted early Monday. Kuo expects it to be joined by a revamped iPad Mini, due to enter mass production in early 2024. Kuo didn't offer many new details on the rumored iPad foldable, but said that it will feature a "carbon fiber" kickstand produced by Chinese component manufacturer Anjie Technology.

Fortune reports on what happened next: As questions piled up over the weekend, Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the entire company in a meeting on Monday to answer questions, and announced then that top executives would take a pay cut this year as part of the company's cost reduction measures, Business Insider reported. Pichai said that all roles above the senior vice president level will witness "very significant reduction in their annual bonus," adding that for senior roles the compensation was linked to company performance. It was not immediately clear how big Pichai's own pay cut would be.
Reuters also points out that Pichai "received a massive hike in salary a few weeks before Google announced layoffs." But Fortune makes an interesting comparison: Pichai's move to cut the pay for senior executives comes only weeks after Apple's Tim Cook announced his compensation would be 40% lower amid shareholder pressure. The iPhone maker had a strong 2022 and remains one of the few tech behemoths that hasn't announced layoffs yet.
Last year Apple's share price still dropped 27%, reports Forbes, and "According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is expected next month to report its first quarterly sales decline in over three years."

Yet Apple seems to have avoided layoffs — which Forbes argues is because Apple didn't hire aggressively during the pandemic. Compared to the other Big Tech companies, Apple scaled its workforce at a relatively slow pace and has generally followed the same hiring rate since 2016. While there was a hiring surge in Silicon Valley during the pandemic, Apple added less than 7,000 jobs in 2020....

The tech companies undergoing layoffs right now hired fervently during their pandemic — and even before. Alphabet has consecutively expanded its workforce at least 10% annually since 2013, according to CNBC....

Since 2012, Meta has expanded its workforce by thousands each year. In 2020, Zuckerberg increased headcount by 30% — 13,000 workers. The following year, the social media platform added another 13,000 employees to its payroll. Those two years marked the biggest growth in the company's history.

Amazon has initiated its plan to separate more than 18,000 white-collar professionals from its payroll. In 2021, the online retailer hired an estimated 500,000 employees, according to GeekWire, becoming the second-largest employer in the United States after Walmart. A year later, the company expanded its workforce by 310,000.
Entrepeneur supplies some context about those layoffs at Google: Reports indicate qualifying staff who were let go will receive their full notification period salary plus a severance package beginning at 16 weeks' pay and two additional weeks for every year of employment. Also part of the package: bonuses, vacation time, and health care coverage for up to six months will be paid for, along with job placement and immigration support.
Entrepreneur also notes reports that Google's latest round of layoffs "affected 27 massage therapists across Los Angeles and Irvine."

Apple is developing software that offers an easy way for users of its upcoming mixed-reality headset to build their own augmented reality apps, as part of an effort to drive mass adoption of the device by broadening the array of content for it, The Information reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: With the software tools, Apple hopes that even people who don't know computer code could tell the headset, via the Siri voice assistant, to build an AR app that could then be made available via Apple's App Store for others to download. The tool, for example, could allow users to build an app with virtual animals moving around a room and over or around real-life objects without the need to design the animal from scratch, program its animations and calculate its movement in a 3D space with obstacles.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Safari users in Hong Kong recently tried to load the popular code-sharing website GitLab, they received a strange warning instead: Apple's browser was blocking the site for their own safety. The access was temporarily cut off thanks to Apple's use of a Chinese corporate website blacklist, which resulted in the innocuous site being flagged as a purveyor of misinformation. Neither Tencent, the massive Chinese firm behind the web filter, nor Apple will say how or why the site was censored. The outage was publicized just ahead of the new year. On December 30, 2022, Hong Kong-based software engineer and former Apple employee Chu Ka-cheong tweeted that his web browser had blocked access to GitLab, a popular repository for open-source code. Safari's "safe browsing" feature greeted him with a full-page "deceptive website warning," advising that because GitLab contained dangerous "unverified information," it was inaccessible. Access to GitLab was restored several days later, after the situation was brought to the company's attention.

The warning screen itself came courtesy of Tencent, the mammoth Chinese internet conglomerate behind WeChat and League of Legends. The company operates the safe browsing filter for Safari users in China on Apple's behalf -- and now, as the Chinese government increasingly asserts control of the territory, in Hong Kong as well. Apple spokesperson Nadine Haija would not answer questions about the GitLab incident, suggesting they be directed at Tencent, which also declined to offer responses. The episode raises thorny questions about privatized censorship done in the name of "safety" -- questions that neither company seems interested in answering: How does Tencent decide what's blocked? Does Apple have any role? Does Apple condone Tencent's blacklist practices?

Apple is taking steps to separate its mobile operating system from features offered by Google parent Alphabet, making advances around maps, search and advertising that has created a collision course between the Big Tech companies. From a report: The two Silicon Valley giants have been rivals in the smartphone market since Google acquired and popularized the Android operating system in the 2000s. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs called Android "a stolen product" that mimicked Apple's iOS mobile software, then declared "thermonuclear war" on Google, ousting the search company's then-CEO Eric Schmidt from the Apple board of directors in 2009. While the rivalry has been less noisy since, two former Apple engineers said the iPhone maker has held a "grudge" against Google ever since. One of these people said Apple is still engaged in a "silent war" against its arch-rival. It is doing so by developing features that could allow the iPhone-maker to further separate its products from services offered by Google.

[...] The second front in the battle is search. While Apple rarely discusses products while in development, the company has long worked on a feature known internally as "Apple Search," a tool that facilitates "billions of searches" per day, according to employees on the project. Apple's search team dates back to at least 2013, when it acquired Topsy Labs, a start-up that had indexed Twitter to enable searches and analytics. The technology is used every time an iPhone user asks Apple's voice assistant Siri for information, types queries from the home screen, or uses the Mac's "Spotlight" search feature. Apple's search offering was augmented with the 2019 purchase of Laserlike, an artificial intelligence start-up founded by former Google engineers that had described its mission as delivering "high quality information and diverse perspectives on any topic from the entire web."

2-year-old MacBooks with Apple's T2 security chip are being turned into parts because recyclers have no way to login and factory reset the machines, reports Motherboard. "It's a boon for security and privacy and a plague on the second hard market." From the report: "How many of you out there would like a 2-year-old M1 MacBook? Well, too bad, because your local recycler just took out all the Activation Locked logic boards and ground them into carcinogenic dust," John Bumstead, a MacBook refurbisher and owner of the RDKL INC repair store, said in a recent tweet. First introduced in 2018, the laptop makes it impossible for anyone who isn't the original owner to log into the machine. "Like it has been for years with recyclers and millions of iPhones and iPads, it's pretty much game over with MacBooks now -- there's just nothing to do about it if a device is locked," Bumstead told Motherboard. "Even the jailbreakers/bypassers don't have a solution, and they probably won't because Apple proprietary chips are so relatively formidable." When Apple released its own silicon with the M1, it integrated the features of the T2 into those computers.

"The functionality of T2 is built into Apple silicon, so it's the same situation. But whereas T2 with activation lock is basically impossible to overcome, bypass developers are finding the m1/m2 chips with activation lock even more difficult," Bumstead said. "Many bypassers have claimed solutions to T2 macs (I have not tried or confirmed they work... I am skeptical) but they admit they have had no success with M1. Regardless, a bypassed Mac is a hacked machine, which reverts to the lock if wiped and reset, so it is not ethical to sell bypassed macs in the retail environment."

Responsible recyclers and refurbishers wipe the data from used devices before selling them on. In these cases, the data is wiped, but cannot be assigned to a new user, making them effectively worthless. Instead of finding these machines a second home, Bumstead and others are dismantling them and selling the parts. These computers often end up at recycling centers after corporations go out of business or buy all new machines. [...] Motherboard first reported on this problem in 2020, but Bumstead said it's gotten worse recently. "Now we're seeing quantity come through because companies with internal 3-year product cycles are starting to dump their 2018/2019s, and inevitably a lot of those are locked," he said. "When we come upon a locked machine that was legally acquired, we should be able to log into our Apple account, enter the serial and any given information, then click a button and submit the machine to Apple for unlocking," Bumstead said. "Then Apple could explore its records, query the original owner if it wants, but then at the end of the day if there are no red flags and the original owner does not protest within 30 days, the device should be auto-unlocked."

Apple has provided iOS 12.5.7, macOS 11.7.3, and other updates for older devices that can't be updated to the latest releases. AppleInsider reports: The new updates are for users still using older devices and operating systems and address similar bugs and security patches available in the recent iOS 16.3 and macOS Ventura releases. The security patch notes list at least 14 different systems affected by security issues that have been patched. The new update versions are: iOS 12.5.7, iOS 15.7.3, iPadOS 15.7.3, macOS Big Sur 11.7.3, and macOS Monterey 12.6.3.

Users may note the skipped iOS versions between iOS 12 and iOS 15. Those are due to where devices were cut off from updating. Every device that could run iOS 13 could run iOS 15, so Apple doesn't update every version. The oldest device supported by iOS 12.5.7, for example, is the iPhone 5s, which was released in September 2013. The oldest Macs supported by macOS Big Sur are the 2013 MacBook Air, Mac Pro, and MacBook Pro. Anyone capable of updating these new updates to the older operating systems should do so as soon as possible. The update addresses known security issues that could put the user at risk.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Apple's first AR/VR headset could be unveiled sometime this spring, and rumors continue to offer more information about what Apple has in the works. A wide-ranging new report from Bloomberg now offers a slew of details on Apple's "Reality Pro" headset, including that the "eye- and hand-tracking capabilities will be a major selling point" for the product. Using external cameras, the headset will be able to analyze the user's hands, while internal sensors will be used to read the user's eyes.

The report explains: "The headset will have several external cameras that can analyze a user's hands, as well as sensors within the gadget's housing to read eyes. That allows the wearer to control the device by looking at an on-screen item -- whether it's a button, app icon or list entry -- to select it. Users will then pinch their thumb and index finger together to activate the task -- without the need to hold anything. The approach differs from other headsets, which typically rely on a hand controller."

More details on the hardware of the headset include that there will be a Digital Crown similar to the Apple Watch for switching between AR and VR. The VR mode will fully immerse the wearer, but when AR mode is enabled the "content fades back and becomes surrounded by the user's real environment." This is reportedly one of the features Apple hopes will be a "highlight of the product." To address overheating concerns, the Reality Pro headset will use an external battery that "rests in a user's pocket and connects over a cable." There will also be a cooling fan to further reduce the likelihood of the headset overheating. "The headset can last about two hours per battery pack," Bloomberg reports. The battery pack is "roughly the size of two iPhone 14 Pro Maxes stacked on top of each other, or about six inches tall and more than half an inch thick." Another tidbit from the report is that the headset will be able to serve as an external display for Mac. "Users will be able to see their Mac's display in virtual reality but still control the computer with their trackpad or mouse and physical keyboard," reports Bloomberg. Apple is also "developing technology that will let users type in midair with their hands."

Additionally, FaceTime on the headset will "realistically render a user's face and full body in virtual reality."

A team of more than 1,000 people have been reportedly working on the first version of the device for the past seven years. It's slated to cost "roughly $3,000" when it debuts sometime this spring.

Apple released iOS and iPadOS 16.3, macOS Ventura 13.2, and watchOS 9.3 today. The updates focus primarily on bug fixes and under-the-hood improvements, but there is one notable addition: Apple ID got support for hardware security keys. From a report: Once they've updated to the new software, a user can opt to make a device like a YubiKey a required part of the two-factor authentication process for their account. It's unlikely most users will take advantage of this, of course, but for a select few, the extra security is welcome. Other additions in iOS 16.3 include support for the upcoming new HomePod model, a tweak to how Emergency SOS calls are made, and a new Black History Month wallpaper. On the Mac side, hardware security key support is joined by the rollout of Rapid Security Response, a means for urgent security updates to be delivered to Macs without issuing a major software update. The watchOS update is oriented around bug fixes.

The New York Times reports: Apple will conduct an asessment of its U.S. labor practices under an agreement with a coalition of investors that includes five New York City pension funds. The assessment will focus on whether Apple is complying with its official human rights policy as it relates to "workers' freedom of association and collective bargaining rights in the United States," the company said in a filing last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The audit comes amid complaints by federal regulators and employees that the company has repeatedly violated workers' labor rights as they have sought to unionize over the past year. Apple has denied the accusations. "There's a big apparent gap between Apple's stated human rights policies regarding worker organizing, and its practices," said Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, who helped initiate the discussion with Apple on behalf of the city's public worker pension funds....

The investor coalition that pushed for the labor assessment argues that Apple's response to the union campaigns is at odds with its human rights policy because that policy commits it to respect the International Labor Organization's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which includes "freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining."
"Apple offered few details, saying that it would conduct the assessment by the end of the year and that it would publish a report related to the assessment."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As part of the Apple Lisa's 40th birthday celebrations, the Computer History Museum has released the source code for Lisa OS version 3.1 under an Apple Academic License Agreement. With Apple's blessing, the Pascal source code is available for download from the CHM website after filling out a form. Lisa Office System 3.1 dates back to April 1984, during the early Mac era, and it was the Lisa equivalent of operating systems like macOS and Windows today. The entire source package weighs is about 26MB and consists of over 1,300 commented source files, divided nicely into subfolders that denote code for the main Lisa OS, various included apps, and the Lisa Toolkit development system.

First released on January 19, 1983, the Apple Lisa remains an influential and important machine in Apple's history, pioneering the mouse-based graphical user interface (GUI) that made its way to the Macintosh a year later. Despite its innovations, the Lisa's high price ($9,995 retail, or about $30,300 today) and lack of application support held it back as a platform. A year after its release, the similarly capable Macintosh undercut it dramatically in price. Apple launched a major revision of the Lisa hardware in 1984, then discontinued the platform in 1985. [...] Lisa OS defined important conventions that we still use in windowing OSes today, such as drag-and-drop icons, movable windows, the waste basket, the menu bar, pull-down menus, copy and paste shortcuts, control panels, overlapping windows, and even one-touch automatic system shutdown.

Apple today announced that Advanced Data Protection is expanding beyond the United States. MacRumors reports: Starting with iOS 16.3, the security feature will be available globally, giving users to option to enable end-to-end encryption for many additional iCloud data categories, including Photos, Notes, Voice Memos, Messages backups, device backups, and more. iOS 16.3 is currently in beta and expected to be released to the public next week.

By default, Apple stores encryption keys for some iCloud data types on its servers to ensure that users can recover their data if they lose access to their Apple ID account. If a user enables Advanced Data Protection, the encryption keys are deleted from Apple's servers and stored on a user's devices only, preventing Apple, law enforcement, or anyone else from accessing the data, even if iCloud servers were to be breached.

iCloud already provides end-to-end encryption for 14 data categories without Advanced Data Protection turned on, including Messages (excluding backups), passwords stored in iCloud Keychain, Health data, Apple Maps search history, Apple Card transactions, and more. Advanced Data Protection expands this protection to the vast majority of iCloud categories, with major exceptions including the Mail, Contacts, and Calendar apps. For more information, you can read Apple's Advanced Data Protection support document.

Music streaming service Spotify, along with other media firms such as Deezer, urged the European Commission to take action against Apple for anticompetitive and unfair practices, in a joint industry letter on Wednesday. From a report: The letter, addressed to the European Union antitrust regulator's Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, demanded the Commission to act fast for the welfare of European consumers. Spotify has for years accused Apple of abusing its market position using its App Store rules to stifle competition. It has previously submitted antitrust complaints against Apple in various countries, alleging the 30% charge Apple requires developers to pay on its App Store has forced Spotify to "artificially inflate" its own prices. "We are writing to you to call for swift and decisive action by the European Commission against anticompetitive and unfair practices by certain global digital gatekeepers, and Apple in particular," read the letter, which was signed by chief executives of media firms Schibsted, Proton and Basecamp.

Apple has announced a new $299 HomePod smart speaker with a similar form factor to the original HomePod released in 2018. From a report: It will be sold alongside the HomePod Mini, the smaller version of the speaker introduced in 2020, and features support for the new smart home standard Matter, allowing it to control compatible accessories. The new HomePod is available to order starting today, and will begin shipping February 3rd. The original HomePod had an unusually rocky lifespan for an Apple product. Originally announced in 2017 with a December ship date, the $349 smart speaker was subsequently delayed to February 2018. When it was eventually released, the HomePod's voice assistant Siri fared poorly against Alexa and Google Assistant, and reviewers criticized how locked into Apple's ecosystem the smart speaker was. Despite getting a $50 price cut in 2019, the HomePod was eventually discontinued in 2021.