UPDATE (10/15/20230: The court's order did not stand, and by 2023 Caltech had agreed to drop their lawsuit.

Below is Slashdot's original report from 2020:

The California Institute of Technology (CalTech) said it won a $1.1 billion jury verdict in a patent case against Apple and Broadcom. Reuters reports: In a case filed in federal court in Los Angeles in 2016, the Pasadena, California-based research university alleged that Broadcom wi-fi chips used in hundreds of millions of Apple iPhones infringed patents relating to data transmission technology. "While we thank the members of the jury for their service, we disagree with the factual and legal bases for the verdict and intend to appeal," Broadcom said in a statement. Apple said it plans to appeal the verdict, but declined further comment. The company had said in court filings that it believed all of the university's claims against it resulted from it using Broadcom's chips in its devices, calling itself "merely an indirect downstream party." The verdict awarded CalTech $837.8 million from Apple and $270.2 million from Broadcom. "We are pleased the jury found that Apple and Broadcom infringed Caltech patents," CalTech said in a statement. "As a non-profit institution of higher education, Caltech is committed to protecting its intellectual property in furtherance of its mission to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education."

Apple's redesigned Maps app has arrived. From a report: The company on Thursday said its revamped app is now available for US users and will arrive in Europe "in the coming months." Apple Maps' redesign makes navigation faster and more accurate and gives users "comprehensive views of roads, buildings, parks, airports, malls and more." Apple rebuilt its mapping service from the ground up by outfitting hundreds of planes and cars with custom sensors and lidar, which then covered over 4 million miles. It hopes the latest iteration of its Apple Maps software will be enough to woo users away from Google Maps, Waze and other rivals.

"We set out to create the best and most private maps app on the planet that is reflective of how people explore the world today," Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of internet software and services, said in a press release. "It is an effort we are deeply invested in and required that we rebuild the map from the ground up to reimagine how Maps enhances people's lives -- from navigating to work or school or planning an important vacation -- all with privacy at its core." Along with the new Maps apps, real-time transit will be available in Miami starting Friday, in time for the upcoming Super Bowl.

Apple engineers have put forward a proposal today to standardize the format of the SMS messages containing one-time passcodes (OTP) that users receive during the two-factor authentication (2FA) login process. From a report: The proposal comes from Apple engineers working on WebKit, the core component of the Safari web browser. The proposal has two goals. The first is to introduce a way that OTP SMS messages can be associated with an URL. This is done by adding the login URL inside the SMS itself. The second goal is to standardize the format of 2FA/OTP SMS messages, so browsers and other mobile apps can easily detect the incoming SMS, recognize web domain inside the message, and then automatically extract the OTP code and complete the login operation without further user interaction. By doing this, the process of receiving and entering a one-time passcode could be automated, eliminating the risk of a user falling for a scam and entering an OTP code on a phishing site, with the wrong URL.

Over the course of a year, Apple took down 805 apps in mainland China by its own account. From a report: In Apple's latest transparency report accounting for the first half of 2019, the iPhone maker said it removed 288 apps from China's iOS App Store for both legal and policy violations. The Apple Transparency Report goes out twice a year and details requests received from government agencies and private parties worldwide. The report lists government requests to access information on accounts and devices, but the last two reports also include the number of apps Apple removed that period. When it comes to why those apps are removed, though, Apple is tight-lipped. The reports cite two reasons for app removals: Platform violations, which covers gambling apps (gambling is illegal in China), and legal violations, which according to Apple usually means apps with pornography (also illegal in China) and other illegal content.

[...] The total number of apps missing from the App Store because of government censorship is hard to know. GreatFire has used its tool applecensorship.com to identify 2,678 apps that aren't available inside the mainland China App Store. But this number doesn't paint the full picture. Records of missing apps are only generated when people search for them on the website. And there's no information on whether apps were taken down because of a government request, a decision from Apple or the app makers' choice. Many of the apps recorded were never listed on the mainland China App Store. But the list does provide some insight, like the fact that the 149 unavailable news apps is more than in any other country. "We know that app store removals are happening more often in China," said GreatFire's Karen Reilly. "We know that many of these apps are news sources. We know that many of these apps are VPNs and other software that everyday people use to protect their privacy."

harrymcc writes: New legislation in Russia -- known as the 'law against Apple' -- mandates that smartphone makers must preinstall government apps that will give authorities access to an array of information about the phone's user. Apple, not surprisingly, is trying to wriggle its way out of complying. But whatever happens, it's another case of an authoritarian government pushing around a U.S. tech company for very un-democratic reasons. Over at Fast Company, Josh Nadeau reports on the issue and why the stakes are so high.

An anonymous reader shares a report: On Wednesday, research firm Canalys reported that Apple shipped close to 925,000 iPhone units in India in Q4 2019, up over 200% annually, in what is the company's most impressive quarter in the world's second largest smartphone market to date. Madhumita Chaudhary, an analyst with the research firm, said the company's move to partner with a local bank to make iPhone 11 more affordable helped it hit "a home-run with its pricing strategy" in the country. The iPhone 11, currently available for sale in the country at 64,900 Indian rupees ($909), is available for as low as $550 for some HDFC bank customers. More than 80% of the population in India earns less than $200 a month and smartphones are sold without any bundling with carrier. If that wasn't a tough sell for Apple already, India's local laws have made iPhones even more expensive. Most iPhone models are especially expensive in India as Apple passes on the local import taxes that it pays to the government to its customers in the country. New Delhi maintains strict import duties, but it offers a range of tax benefits to companies that manufacture or assemble their electronic products locally in the nation. The report also claims that Apple plans to start selling iPhones in India online starting Q3 of this year.

Apple reported revenue and profit significantly higher than what Wall Street analysts expected. According to CNBC, "Apple's revenue was up 9% to $91.8 billion," thanks in large part to iPhone revenue, "which was up 8% on the strength of new iPhone models." The report also that Apple's "Other Products" did $10 billion in sales during the quarter, and that Apple Watch, AirPods, and Beats headphones alone would be a "Fortune 150" company. Here's how Apple did compared to Refinitiv consensus estimates: EPS: $4.99 vs. $4.55 estimated
Revenue: $91.8 billion vs. $88.50 billion estimated
iPhone revenue: $55.96 billion vs. $51.62 billion estimated
Services revenue: $12.7 billion vs. $13.07 billion estimated
Other products revenue: $10 billion vs. $9.52 billion estimate
Gross margin: 38.4% vs. 38.1% estimated
Q2 revenue guidance: $63 billion to $67 billion vs. $62.45 billion
Q2 margin guidance: 38% to 39% vs. 38.2% "Apple's range of guidance for next quarter is wider than typical," the report concludes, "a change that Cook attributed to uncertainty caused by the deadly coronavirus, which has shut down travel in parts of China."

Parents cave in to kids' relentless begging for Apple's wireless white earbuds; schools ban the. From a report: AirPods, once just an adult status symbol, are turning up on the playground. Kids' persistent nagging for the tiny wireless earbuds have parents groaning about the cost, the risk of loss or theft and concerns that they scream "privilege." [...] The desire for the high-end tech may well be due to the fact that even very young children see them all over social media, but it also speaks to the rising popularity of "hearables," which my colleagues predicted will be among the life-changing technologies of 2020. By the end of the year, eMarketer predicts, more than one-third of the U.S. population will be using smart ear-worn devices.

Johnny Sanchez's (anecdote in the story) 10-year-old son was begging for AirPods because his three older siblings all have them. Mr. Sanchez, a technology manager at an entertainment company in Los Angeles, finally gave his youngest child his AirPods when he upgraded his own. "We've talked about how it feels cool to have them but you don't rub it in peoples" faces," said Mr. Sanchez. Mr. Sanchez doesn't have to worry about his son showing off to his classmates because he said his elementary school has banned AirPods. Other schools have banned them and regular earbuds too, arguing they cause students to be distracted and can be used to cheat on tests.

John Gruber: Ten years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad on stage at the Yerba Buena theater in San Francisco. [...] Ten years later, though, I don't think the iPad has come close to living up to its potential. [...] Software is where the iPad has gotten lost. iPadOS's "multitasking" model is far more capable than the iPhone's, yes, but somehow Apple has painted it into a corner in which it is far less consistent and coherent than the Mac's, while also being far less capable. iPad multitasking: more complex, less powerful. That's quite a combination.

Consider the basic task of putting two apps on screen at the same time, the basic definition of "multitasking" in the UI sense. To launch the first app, you tap its icon on the homescreen, just like on the iPhone, and just like on the iPad before split-screen multitasking. Tapping an icon to open an app is natural and intuitive. But to get a second app on the same screen, you cannot tap its icon. You must first slide up from the bottom of the screen to reveal the Dock. Then you must tap and hold on an app icon in the Dock. Then you drag the app icon out of the Dock to launch it in a way that it will become the second app splitting the display. But isn't dragging an icon out of the Dock the way that you remove apps from the Dock? Yes, it is -- when you do it from the homescreen.

So the way you launch an app in the Dock for split-screen mode is identical to the way you remove that app from the Dock. Oh, and apps that aren't in the Dock can't become the second app in split screen mode. What sense does that limitation make? On the iPhone you can only have one app on screen at a time. The screen is the app; the app is the screen. This is limiting but trivial to understand. [...] On iPad you can only have two apps on screen at the same time, and you must launch them in entirely different ways -- one of them intuitive (tap any app icon), one of them inscrutable (drag one of the handful of apps you've placed in your Dock). And if you don't quite drag the app from the Dock far enough to the side of the screen, it launches in "Slide Over", an entirely different shared-screen rather than split-screen mode. The whole concept is not merely inconsistent, it's incoherent. How would anyone ever figure out how to split-screen multitask on the iPad if they didn't already know how to do it?

[...] As things stand today, I get a phone call from my mom once a month or so because she's accidentally gotten Safari into split-screen mode when tapping links in Mail or Messages and can't get out. I like my iPad very much, and use it almost every day. But if I could go back to the pre-split-screen, pre-drag-and-drop interface I would. Which is to say, now that iPadOS has its own name, I wish I could install the iPhone's one-app-on-screen-at-a-time, no-drag-and-drop iOS on my iPad Pro. I'd do it in a heartbeat and be much happier for it. The iPad at 10 is, to me, a grave disappointment. Not because it's "bad", because it's not bad -- it's great even -- but because great though it is in so many ways, overall it has fallen so far short of the grand potential it showed on day one. To reach that potential, Apple needs to recognize they have made profound conceptual mistakes in the iPad user interface, mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced, not polished and refined. I worry that iPadOS 13 suggests the opposite -- that Apple is steering the iPad full speed ahead down a blind alley. Further reading: The iPad's original software designer and program lead look back on the device's first 10 years.

Apple applied for a patent for an ambitious design for a new all-in-one computer which integrates both its keyboard and screen into a single curved sheet of glass. The Verge reports: The patent application, which was first spotted by Patently Apple, and which was filed in May last year, describes how the iMac-like computer's "input area" and "display area" could be built into a single continuous surface, while a support structure behind the display could then contain the computer's processing unit, as well as providing space for all the machine's ports.

It's a pretty striking design for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the amount of curved glass involved is far more than Apple has ever used in one of its products before. It's also interesting to see that the company is thinking about taking the iMac's all-in-one design even further, by integrating not just the computer and display together, but also a keyboard and touchpad as well (although the application also describes how the keyboard could be detached during use). The patent also describes how one could dock a MacBook into the device and output the screen to the iMac's display, while its keyboard would pass through a hole in the middle of the machine to let you use it as normal.

Additionally, "the application suggests that its single sheet of glass could fold down its middle to allow you to pack it away when not in use," reports The Verge.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: On January 24, 1984, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the first Macintosh at Apple's annual shareholder's meeting in Cupertino, California, debuting the new computer equipped with a 9-inch black and white display, an 8MHz Motorola 68000 processor, 128KB of RAM, a 3.5-inch floppy drive, and a price tag of $2,495. The now iconic machine weighed in at a whopping 17 pounds and was advertised as offering a word processing program, a graphics package, and a mouse. At the time it was introduced, the Macintosh was seen as Apple's last chance to overcome IBM's domination of the personal computer market and remain a major player in the personal computer industry. Despite the high price at the time, which was equivalent to around $6,000 today, the Macintosh sold well, with Apple hitting 70,000 units sold by May 1984. The now iconic "1984" Super Bowl ad that Apple invested in and debuted days before the Macintosh was unveiled may have helped bolster sales.

If a report from The Wall Street Journal is correct, Apple's TV Plus service that launched late last year has 10 million more subscribers than Disney Plus, which launched at a similar time but with access to almost every TV show and movie Disney owns the rights to. For comparison, Apple TV Plus launched with only 11 titles. Fast Company reports: According to the Wall Street Journal, an Ampere Analysis study found that Apple's fledgling Apple TV Plus service garnered an astounding 33.6 million subscribers in the U.S. in Q4 2019. That puts it as the third-most-popular streaming service in America. Here are the top five streaming video services according to the report: 1.) Netflix -- 61.3 million U.S. subscribers; 2.) Amazon Prime Video -- 42.2 million U.S. subscribers; 3.) Apple TV Plus -- 33.6 million U.S. subscribers; 4.) Hulu -- 31.8 million U.S. subscribers; 5.) Disney Plus -- 23.2 million U.S. subscribers.

To be sure, Apple TV Plus is the video streaming service with the lowest monthly cost at just $4.99, but with only 11 series or movies available at launch in Q4 2019, how on earth did it leapfrog Disney Plus with its catalog of Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar offerings (not to mention Baby Yoda)? The answer probably lies in the fact that Apple began giving away free subscriptions to its Apple TV Plus service to anyone who bought an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV from mid-September onwards. Given that Apple sells tens of millions of those devices a month, it's no wonder Apple TV Plus has accumulated so many subscribers already. However, the real test for Apple will be how many of those subscribers stay on once their year-long free subscription of Apple TV Plus comes to an end.

Attorneys for a former Apple executive will try to convince a skeptical judge that employees can plan a competing venture while still in a job. Reuters reports: Apple filed the lawsuit in Santa Clara County Superior Court against Gerard Williams III, who left the company last year after more than nine years as chief architect for the custom processors that power iPhones and iPads to start Nuvia Inc, which is designing chips for servers. Judge Mark H. Pierce last week issued a tentative ruling allowing the case to proceed but barring Apple from seeking punitive damages.

Apple sued Williams in August, alleging that he breached an intellectual property agreement and a duty of loyalty to the company by planning his new startup while on company time at Apple, spending hours on the phone with colleagues who eventually joined the venture. Apple is not suing Nuvia itself or any of Williams' co-founders and it did not allege any intellectual property or trade secret theft. According to a copy of Williams' agreement that Apple attached to its complaint, the contract required that Williams "will not plan or engage in any other employment" that competes with Apple or is directly related to the company. In a filing in November, Williams argued that Apple's contract was unenforceable because California law allows employees to make some preparations to compete while still in their current job.

Apple on Thursday pushed back against EU lawmakers' call for a common charger, warning the move could hamper innovation, create a mountain of electronic waste and irk consumers. From a report: Apple's comments came a week after lawmakers at the European Parliament called for a common charger for all mobile phones and amended a draft law to say the ability to work with common chargers would be an essential requirement for radio equipment in the bloc. A move to a common charger would affect Apple more than any other company as its iPhones and most of its products are powered by its Lightning cable, whereas Android devices are powered by USB-C connectors. "We believe regulation that forces conformity across the type of connector built into all smartphones stifles innovation rather than encouraging it, and would harm consumers in Europe and the economy as a whole," Apple said in a statement.

Facebook, Amazon and Apple spent record amounts on lobbying in 2019, with Mark Zuckerberg's social-media company leading the so-called FAANG companies in outlays aimed at influencing Washington, according to disclosures filed this week. From a report: Facebook shelled out $16.7 million last year, well above its 2018 total of $12.6 million, its disclosures show. Amazon has reported spending $16.1 million in 2019 vs. $14.4 million a year ago, and Apple said it put forth $7.4 million, topping its 2018 outlay of $6.7 million and its 2017 total of $7.2 million. The other two FAANG companies -- Netflix and Alphabet's Google business -- didn't set records with their 2019 lobbying spending. Netflix disclosed shelling out $850,000 last year, up from $800,000 in 2018 but below its 2015 total of $1.3 million. Google spent $11.8 million last year, down sharply from its 2018 total of $21.7 million as the search heavyweight reorganized its lobbying effort. The spending -- which already was on a record pace for some companies after last year's third quarter -- has come as Big Tech increasingly finds itself in lawmakers and regulators' cross hairs.

Google researchers have exposed details of multiple security flaws in its rival Apple's Safari web browser that allowed users' browsing behavior to be tracked [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], despite the fact that the affected tool was specifically designed to protect their privacy. From a report: The flaws, which were ironically found in an anti-tracking feature known as Intelligent Tracking Prevention, were first disclosed by Google to Apple in August last year. In a soon-to-be published paper seen by the Financial Times, researchers in Google's cloud team have since identified five different types of potential attack that could have resulted from the vulnerabilities, allowing third parties to obtain "sensitive private information about the user's browsing habits." "You would not expect privacy-enhancing technologies to introduce privacy risks," said Lukasz Olejnik, an independent security researcher who has seen the paper. "If exploited or used, [these vulnerabilities] would allow unsanctioned and uncontrollable user tracking. Apple rolled out Intelligent Tracking Prevention in 2017, with the specific aim of protecting Safari browser users from being tracked around the web by advertisers' and other third-parties' cookies.

A report investigating the potential hack of Jeff Bezos' iPhone indicates that forensic investigators found a suspicious file but no evidence of any malware on the phone. Motherboard: It also says that investigators had to reset Bezos's iTunes backup password because investigators didn't have it to access the backup of his phone. The latter suggests that Bezos may have forgotten his password. The report, obtained by Motherboard, indicates that investigators set up a secure lab to examine the phone and its artifacts and spent two days poring over the device but were unable to find any malware on it. Instead, they only found a suspicious video file sent to Bezos on May 1, 2018 that "appears to be an Arabic language promotional film about telecommunications." That file shows an image of the Saudi Arabian flag and Swedish flags and arrived with an encrypted downloader. Because the downloader was encrypted this delayed or further prevented "study of the code delivered along with the video." Investigators determined the video or downloader were suspicious only because Bezos' phone subsequently began transmitting large amounts of data. "[W]ithin hours of the encrypted downloader being received, a massive and unauthorized exfiltration of data from Bezos' phone began, continuing and escalating for months thereafter," the report states.

"The amount of data being transmitted out of Bezos' phone changed dramatically after receiving the WhatsApp video file and never returned to baseline. Following execution of the encrypted downloader sent from MBS' account, egress on the device immediately jumped by approximately 29,000 percent," it notes. "Forensic artifacts show that in the six (6) months prior to receiving the WhatsApp video, Bezos' phone had an average of 430KB of egress per day, fairly typical of an iPhone. Within hours of the WhatsApp video, egress jumped to 126MB. The phone maintained an unusually high average of 101MB of egress data per day for months thereafter, including many massive and highly atypical spikes of egress data. The digital forensic results, combined with a larger investigation, interviews, research, and expert intelligence information, led the investigators "to assess Bezos' phone was compromised via tools procured by Saud al Qahtani," the report states.

Many police departments across the United States already have the ability to crack mobile devices, including the iPhone. From a report: Over the past three months, OneZero sent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to over 50 major police departments, sheriffs, and prosecutors around the country asking for information about their use of phone-cracking technology. Hundreds of documents from these agencies reveal that law enforcement in at least 11 states spent over $4 million in the last decade on devices and software designed to get around passwords and access information stored on phones. OneZero obtained documents from law enforcement agencies in New York, California, Florida, Texas, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, New Mexico, and Massachusetts.

These agencies included district attorneys' offices, local police departments, and county sheriffs' offices. The number of offices with access to phone-cracking tools across the country is likely far greater than what OneZero uncovered. Not all agencies responded to OneZero's request for documents. Some departments and offices claimed the records were exempt from public release. Others told OneZero they would need several months and thousands of dollars to provide the information.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook believes augmented reality, or technology that overlays virtual objects onto the real world, is "the next big thing" that is poised to "pervade our entire lives." From a report: Shanahan asked Cook about major developments in tech he expects in the next five to 10 years. "I'm excited about AR," said the Big Tech CEO, citing augmented reality as an emerging tech space to watch. "My view is it's the next big thing, and it will pervade our entire lives." [...] Cook also sees applications for AR helping with hands-on tasks. "You may be under the car changing the oil, and you're not sure exactly how to do it. You can use AR," he said. Interestingly, the tech CEO sees benefits for AR and connecting people, more than other available technologies. "I think it's something that doesn't isolate people. We can use it to enhance our discussion, not substitute it for human connection, which I've always deeply worried about in some of the other technologies."

Apple dropped plans to let iPhone users fully encrypt backups of their devices in the company's iCloud service after the FBI complained that the move would harm investigations, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing six sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The tech giant's reversal, about two years ago, has not previously been reported. It shows how much Apple has been willing to help U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite taking a harder line in high-profile legal disputes with the government and casting itself as a defender of its customers' information. The long-running tug of war between investigators' concerns about security and tech companies' desire for user privacy moved back into the public spotlight last week, as U.S. Attorney General William Barr took the rare step of publicly calling on Apple to unlock two iPhones used by a Saudi Air Force officer who shot dead three Americans at a Pensacola, Florida naval base last month.

U.S. President Donald Trump piled on, accusing Apple on Twitter of refusing to unlock phones used by "killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements." Republican and Democratic senators sounded a similar theme in a December hearing, threatening legislation against end-to-end encryption, citing unrecoverable evidence of crimes against children. Apple did in fact did turn over the shooter's iCloud backups in the Pensacola case, and said it rejected the characterization that it "has not provided substantive assistance." Behind the scenes, Apple has provided the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation with more sweeping help, not related to any specific probe.