Apple appears to be moving along in its development of a foldable iPhone, according to new rumors. The company has apparently asked its Foxconn, its biggest iPhone supplier, to create two prototype foldable shells with displays. From a report: As reported by Tom's Guide on Sunday, which cites Taiwanese website United Daily News, Apple's two prototypes reflect two very different approaches to foldable phones in the industry. Tom's Guide states that one of the designs is similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, which let us remember has a flexible screen with crease in the middle and can be folded. The other is closer to Microsoft's Surface Duo, the outlet notes, a device with two screens that resembles a book and is held together by a hinge. It's not clear whether Apple is working on two separate foldable phones or whether it's testing various ideas for the final new type of iPhone, per Tom's Guide.

Tech's biggest companies just wrapped up a huge year. From a report: The seven most valuable U.S. technology companies -- Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Tesla and Nvidia -- picked up a combined $3.4 trillion in market cap in 2020, powering through a global pandemic and broader economic crisis. Between continued optimism over iPhone sales, Microsoft's growing Teams collaboration product, Amazon's ongoing control of e-commerce and the strength of Google and Facebook's online ad duopoly, Big Tech was neither slowed by Covid-19 nor the rising number of investigations into its dominance. Tesla's wild rally served as the biggest surprise. The stock climbed almost ninefold this year, lifting the electric car maker's market cap from $76 billion at the beginning of the year to $669 billion at Thursday's close. Despite initial factory closures due to the pandemic, Tesla bounced back to deliver a record number of vehicles in the third quarter.

An anonymous reader shares a report [the story is behind a paywall; alternative source]: Seven years ago, Apple made a staggering discovery: Among the employees at a factory in China that made most of the computer ports used in its MacBooks were two 15-year-olds. Apple told the manufacturer, Suyin Electronics, that it wouldn't get any new business until it improved employee screening to ensure no more people under 16 years of age got hired. Suyin pledged to do so, but an audit by Apple three months later found three more underage workers, including a 14-year-old. Apple, which has promised to ban suppliers that repeatedly use underage workers, stopped giving Suyin new business because of the violations. But it took Apple more than three years to fully cut its ties with Suyin, which continued to make HDMI, USB and other ports for older MacBooks under previous contracts. A person close to Suyin, which is headquartered in Taiwan, said that the company hadn't intentionally hired underage workers and that it had passed Apple's audits in later years.

Apple no longer does business with Suyin. But the previously unreported episode, drawn from documents reviewed by The Information and interviews with people who have direct knowledge of Apple's dealings with Suyin, is a stark example of the dilemmas Apple faces in fulfilling its pledges to put workers first and not use manufacturers that consistently violate labor laws. And it demonstrates the fine line Apple has to walk in balancing the need to maximize profits with the expectation that it will prioritize good working conditions for its own employees and its suppliers'. [...] In interviews, 10 former members of Apple's supplier responsibility team -- the unit in charge of monitoring manufacturing partners for violations of labor, environmental and safety rules -- claimed that Apple avoided or delayed cutting ties with offenders when doing so would hurt its business. For example, the former team members said, Apple continued working with some suppliers that refused to implement safety suggestions or that consistently violated labor laws.

Eric Bangeman, writing for ArsTechnica: Despite over 82 million cases and over 1.75 million deaths due to COVID-19, many people are bound and determined to carry on with normal life. For some, that includes attending Saturday night ragers, just like they did in the Before Times. Reports of yet another secret party being broken up by law enforcement have become distressingly common. Getting guests for these secret parties is at least slightly more difficult now that Apple has pulled Vybe Together -- an app with a tagline that invited users to "get their party on" -- from the App Store. The Verge pointed out that the app had largely been flying under the radar until a tweet from Taylor Lorenz of the New York Times brought some unwelcome, but much-needed scrutiny to the app. One of Lorenz's tweets highlighted Vybe Together's TikTok account, which had posted videos of unmasked people partying indoors while advertising New Years Eve parties. According to Business Insider, TikTok has since removed Vybe Together's account for violating community guidelines.

A new report by Sensor Tower reveals that 2020 has been a record-setting year for worldwide spending on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, which collectively passed $100 billion in a single year for the first time ever in November. From a report: The trend of increased spending continued over Christmas, when consumers around the world spent an estimated $407.6 million across Apple's App Store and Google Play. This represents a 34.5 percent year-on-year growth from approximately $303 million in 2019. At the same time in 2019, spending only increased by 17.1 percent year-on-year. Spending on Christmas day constituted 4.5 percent of December's total spending so far, which reached nine billion dollars globally on December 27. The majority of holiday spending was on mobile games, which climbed by 27 percent from $232.4 million at the same time last year to $295.6 million. Tencent's "Honor of Kings" was the leading game with approximately $10.7 million in consumer spending, which is a 205.7 percent increase from Christmas 2019. TikTok was the top app for spending outside of games, generating $4.7 million globally. Following previous years, Apple's App Store captured the majority of spending between the App Store and the Google Play Store, with 68.4 percent of spending, up 35.2 percent year-on-year. The Google Play Store saw $129 million in revenue compared to the App Store's $278.6 million.

krakman writes: Corellium, a security research firm sued by Apple, has won a major legal victory against the iPhone maker. In a ruling that has wide-reaching implications for iPhone security research and copyright law, a federal judge in Florida threw out Apple's claims that Corellium had violated copyright law with its software, which helps security researchers find bugs and security holes on Apple's products. Corellium, co-founded in 2017 by husband and wife Amanda Gorton and Chris Wade, was a breakthrough in security research because it gave its customers the ability to run "virtual" iPhones on desktop computers. Corellium's software makes it unnecessary to use physical iPhones that contain specialized software to poke and prod iOS, Apple's mobile operating system. The judge in the case ruled that Corellium's creation of virtual iPhones was not a copyright violation, in part because it was designed to help improve the security for all iPhone users. Corellium wasn't creating a competing product for consumers. Rather, it was a research tool for a comparatively small number of customers.

Apple is researching keyboards with small displays on the keys to dynamically change the label on each key, according to a newly-granted patent filing. From a report: The filing is titled "Electronic devices having keys with coherent fiber bundles" and was granted to Apple by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on the final patent day of this year. The patent explains how each key on a keyboard could have "an associated key display" connected to "control circuitry in the keyboard" via a "coherent fiber bundle." Apple proposes that each key would be "formed from a fiber optic plate" with "opposing first and second surfaces." While the patent stipulates that each key would need to contain a small display to provide the label, of which any compatible pixel array would work, the foremost technology put forwards by Apple is OLED. The key may be made from materials such as glass, ceramic, metal, or polymer, or even crystalline materials such as sapphire.

One of the oldest and most well-known iPhone suppliers has been accused of using forced Muslim labor in its factories, according to documents uncovered by a human rights group, adding new scrutiny to Apple's human rights record in China. From a report: The documents, discovered by the Tech Transparency Project and shared exclusively with The Washington Post, detail how thousands of Uighur workers from the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang were sent to work for Lens Technology. Lens also supplies Amazon and Tesla, according to its annual report. Lens Technology is one of at least five companies connected to Apple's supply chain that have now been linked to alleged forced labor from the Xinjiang region, according to human rights groups. Lens Technology stands out from other Apple component suppliers because of its high-profile founder and long, well-documented history going back to the early days of the iPhone.

Apple this month announced a new Launch@Apple mentorship program that's designed for first-generation college students, with the program set to launch in early 2021. From a report: According to a PDF describing Launch@Apple, it is aimed at first-generation college freshmen and sophomores who are majoring in finance, mathematics, economics, business, data analytics, and accounting. It matches college students one-on-one with Apple mentors who are able to provide resources for learning and opportunities for professional growth, with the possibility of job shadowing, paid externships, and paid internships. Apple has not publicly announced Launch@Apple, and it's not entirely clear how the word is being spread. MyHealthyApple shared details this morning, and last week, a LinkedIn post highlighted the program. Ahead of when Launch begins in early 2021, Apple is accepting applications from students with a wide range of GPAs.

The Verge writes: Lei Jun, the CEO of Chinese phone maker Xiaomi, has confirmed that its upcoming Mi 11 phone will not come with a charger, citing environmental concerns. While that's a legitimate argument against providing yet another hunk of plastic that resembles all the other chargers people already have, Xiaomi joined other phone makers who poked fun at Apple a few short months ago for not including chargers with the iPhone 12.

Jun made the remarks on Chinese social media site Weibo, saying people have many chargers which creates an environmental burden, and therefore the company was canceling the charger for the Mi 11.

Apple's decision not to include chargers with the iPhone 12 was met with some derision, and competitors like Samsung reminded customers in an ad that charging bricks were "included with your Galaxy." That Galaxy ad has apparently been deleted, however, as rumors continue to build that Samsung won't include a charger with its upcoming Galaxy S21 phones.

"If you just received a new iPhone 12, Apple Watch or iPad, you might not have gotten immediate satisfaction — Apple was having some iCloud issues," reports CNET: The issue started early on Christmas Day, according to the iCloud account and sign-in entry on Apple's system status page. More than a day later, as of late morning PT Saturday, the Apple system status page indicated that the issue with the storage service remained "ongoing." But by 2 p.m. PT Saturday, the iCloud issue was marked "resolved." No specifics were given about how widespread the problems might have been, only that "some users were affected."

The company also noted issues with Apple ID sign-in.

Apple is booting thousands of videogame apps [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] from its platform in China as the government clamps down harder on such content, illustrating the tech giant's vulnerability to state pressure on its business. From a report: The iPhone maker this month warned Chinese developers that a new wave of paid gaming apps are at risk of removal from its app store, according to a memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal, after the company removed thousands of such apps earlier this year. The Chinese government four years ago began requiring videogames to be licensed before being released, but developers were able to skirt the requirement in Apple's app store. Apple hasn't said why the loophole existed or why the company began closing it this year. Foreign software developers lament the change, citing difficulty securing approval in China for their games.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: Facebook is currently waging a PR campaign purporting to show that Apple is seriously injuring American small businesses through its iOS privacy features. But at the same time, according to allegations in recently unsealed court documents, Facebook has been selling them ad targeting that is unreliable to the point of being fraudulent. The documents feature internal Facebook communications in which managers appear to admit to major flaws in ad targeting capabilities, including that ads reached the intended audience less than half of the time they were shown and that data behind a targeting criterion was "all crap." Facebook says the material is presented out of context.

They emerged from a suit currently seeking class-action certification in federal court. The suit was filed by the owner of Investor Village, a small business that operates a message board on financial topics. Investor Village said in court filings that it decided to buy narrowly targeted Facebook ads because it hoped to reach "highly compensated and educated investors" but "had limited resources to spend on advertising." But nearly 40 percent of the people who saw Investor Village's ad either lacked a college degree, did not make $250,000 per year, or both, the company claims. In fact, not a single Facebook user it surveyed met all the targeting criteria it had set for Facebook ads, it says. The complaint features Facebook documents indicating that the company knew its advertising capabilities were overhyped and underperformed. A "February 2016 internal memorandum" sent from an unnamed Facebook manager to Andrew Bosworth, a Zuckerberg confidant and powerful company executive who oversaw ad efforts at the time, reads, "[I]nterest precision in the US is only 41% -- that means that more than half the time we're showing ads to someone other than the advertisers' intended audience. And it is even worse internationally. We don't feel we're meeting advertisers' interest accuracy expectations today." The lawsuit goes on to quote unnamed "employees on Facebook's ad team" discussing their targeting capabilities circa June 2016.

"Interest" and "behavior" are two key facets of the data dossiers Facebook compiles on us for advertisers; according to the company, the former includes things you like, "from organic food to action movies," while the latter consists of "behaviors such as prior purchases and device usage." The complaint also cites unspecified internal communications in which "[p]rivately, Facebook managers described important targeting data as 'crap' and admitted accuracy was 'abysmal.'" Facebook has said in its court filings that these quotes are presented out of context.

Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess said cash-rich technology giants invading the auto industry pose a much bigger challenge for the German manufacturer than traditional rivals like Toyota Motor. From a report: "We look forward to new competitors who will certainly accelerate the change in our industry and bring in new skills," Diess said in a LinkedIn post when asked about reports that Apple is developing a self-driving car. "The unbelievable valuation and the practically unlimited access to resources instill a lot of respect in us." [...] Diess mapped out a plan during an internal meeting last week to pit VW's huge Wolfsburg plant against Tesla's factory that's under construction outside Berlin. The electric-car maker's new site in Gruenheide is bound to stoke competition for engineers, workers and customers on VW's home turf. "I've said it before: the most valuable company in the world will again be a mobility company," Diess said. "It could be Tesla, Apple or Volkswagen." Further reading: Elon Musk Says He Once Considered Selling Tesla To Apple, Tim Cook Didn't Want To Take a Meeting

On Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he considered selling his electric car company to Apple in recent years, but Apple CEO Tim Cook was not even interested in taking a meeting. CNBC reports: Specifically, Musk wrote in a tweet on December 22: "During the darkest days of the Model 3 program, I reached out to Tim Cook to discuss the possibility of Apple acquiring Tesla (for 1/10 of our current value). He refused to take the meeting." It was a rare admission from the mercurial CEO that he once considered giving up control of the company he helped build and take to a market value that's more than the top nine automakers combined. Tesla has not discussed a sale in any financial filing.

On Tuesday, Musk also made remarks about lithium iron phosphate batteries that Apple is reportedly developing for use in vehicles, per a Reuters report on Monday. "Strange, if true," Musk wrote. "Tesla already uses iron-phosphate for medium range cars made in our Shanghai factory.- A monocell is electrochemically impossible, as max voltage is ~100X too low. Maybe they meant cells bonded together, like our structural battery pack?"

According to Reuters, Apple is moving forward with self-driving car technology and is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle that could include its own breakthrough battery technology. From the report: The iPhone maker's automotive efforts, known as Project Titan, have proceeded unevenly since 2014 when it first started to design its own vehicle from scratch. At one point, Apple drew back the effort to focus on software and reassessed its goals. Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla Inc, returned to oversee the project in 2018 and laid off 190 people from the team in 2019. Since then, Apple has progressed enough that it now aims to build a vehicle for consumers, two people familiar with the effort said, asking not to be named because Apple's plans are not public. Apple's goal of building a personal vehicle for the mass market contrasts with rivals such as Alphabet Inc's Waymo, which has built robo-taxis to carry passengers for a driverless ride-hailing service.

Central to Apple's strategy is a new battery design that could "radically" reduce the cost of batteries and increase the vehicle's range, according to a third person who has seen Apple's battery design. [...] As for the car's battery, Apple plans to use a unique "monocell" design that bulks up the individual cells in the battery and frees up space inside the battery pack by eliminating pouches and modules that hold battery materials, one of the people said. Apple's design means that more active material can be packed inside the battery, giving the car a potentially longer range. Apple is also examining a chemistry for the battery called LFP, or lithium iron phosphate, the person said, which is inherently less likely to overheat and is thus safer than other types of lithium-ion batteries. [...]

Two people with knowledge of Apple's plans warned pandemic-related delays could push the start of production into 2025 or beyond. Apple has decided to tap outside partners for elements of the system, including lidar sensors, which help self-driving cars get a three-dimensional view of the road, two people familiar with the company's plans said. Apple's car might feature multiple lidar sensors for scanning different distances, another person said. Some sensors could be derived from Apple's internally developed lidar units, that person said. Apple's iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro models released this year both feature lidar sensors.

Browser makers Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, have banned a root certificate that was being used by the Kazakhstan government to intercept and decrypt HTTPS traffic for residents in the country's capital, the city of Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana). From a report: The certificate had been in use since December 6, 2020, when Kazakh officials forced local internet service providers to block Nur-Sultan residents from accessing foreign sites unless they had a specific digital certificate issued by the government installed on their devices. While users were able to access most foreign-hosted sites, access was blocked to sites like Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix, unless they had the certificate installed. Kazakh officials justified their actions claiming they were carrying out a cybersecurity training exercise for government agencies, telecoms, and private companies. Officials cited that cyberattacks targeting "Kazakhstan's segment of the internet" grew 2.7 times during the current COVID-19 pandemic as the primary reason for launching the exercise. The government's explanation did, however, make zero technical sense, as certificates can't prevent mass cyber-attacks and are usually used only for encrypting and safeguarding traffic from third-party observers. After today's ban, even if users have the certificate installed, browsers like Chrome, Edge, Mozilla, and Safari, will refuse to use them, preventing Kazakh officials from intercepting user data.

Citizen Lab researchers say they have found evidence that dozens of journalists had their iPhones silently compromised with spyware known to be used by nation states. From a report: For more than the past year, London-based reporter Rania Dridi and at least 36 journalists, producers and executives working for the Al Jazeera news agency were targeted with a so-called "zero-click" attack that exploited a now-fixed vulnerability in Apple's iMessage. The attack invisibly compromised the devices without having to trick the victims into opening a malicious link. Citizen Lab, the internet watchdog at the University of Toronto, was asked to investigate earlier this year after one of the victims, Al Jazeera investigative journalist Tamer Almisshal, suspected that his phone may have been hacked. In a technical report out Sunday and shared with TechCrunch, the researchers say they believe the journalists' iPhones were infected with the Pegasus spyware, developed by Israel-based NSO Group. The researchers analyzed Almisshal's iPhone and found it had between July and August connected to servers known to be used by NSO for delivering the Pegasus spyware. The device revealed a burst of network activity that suggests that the spyware may have been delivered silently over iMessage. Logs from the phone show that the spyware was likely able to secretly record the microphone and phone calls, take photos using the phone's camera, access the victim's passwords, and track the phone's location.

The MacRumors site writes: Facebook's recent criticism directed at Apple over an upcoming tracking-related privacy measure is "laughable," according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organization that defends civil liberties in the digital world.

Facebook has claimed that Apple's new opt-in tracking policy will hurt small businesses who benefit from personalized advertising, but the EFF believes that Facebook's campaign against Apple is really about "what Facebook stands to lose if its users learn more about exactly what it and other data brokers are up to behind the scenes," noting that Facebook has "built a massive empire around the concept of tracking everything you do...." According to the EFF, a number of studies have shown that most of the money made from targeted advertising does not reach app developers, and instead goes to third-party data brokers like Facebook, Google, and lesser-known firms.

"Facebook touts itself in this case as protecting small businesses, and that couldn't be further from the truth," the EFF said. "Facebook has locked them into a situation in which they are forced to be sneaky and adverse to their own customers. The answer cannot be to defend that broken system at the cost of their own users' privacy and control."
"This is really about who benefits from the normalization of surveillance-powered advertising..." argues the EFF. And they ultimately come down in support of Apple's new privacy changes.

"Here, Apple is right and Facebook is wrong."

"New COVID-19 restrictions and worsening outbreaks have compelled Apple to temporarily close nearly one fifth of its retail stores during one of the busiest shopping weeks of the holiday season," reports 9to5Mac. 401 of Apple's 509 locations worldwide remain open as of publication. Most open locations in the US are limited to Express storefront pickup of online orders and Genius Support. Walk-in shopping and customers without an appointment are not accepted at Express locations.
The site also notes that Apple recently re-closed all 18 of its stores across Germany and the Netherlands. And the Verge confirms more store closings in the U.S. and around the world: Every California store, all four in Tennessee, all three in Utah, all four in Minnesota, two in Oklahoma, and the stores in Portland, Oregon; Anchorage, Alaska; Omaha, Nebraska; and Albuquerque, New Mexico are all closed this upcoming week — as well as the 16 additional stores in the U.K., Mexico and Brazil starting tomorrow, December 20th. It's not hard to guess why the stores are reclosing, particularly in California where COVID-19 saw its four deadliest days yet in a row last week as part of an ongoing surge, and in London where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has just put the city in emergency lockdown starting midnight.