Lit Apple Mac, iPhone, iPad User Group

[sultrysandy]

.
Congress pulls surveillance bill that included protections from warrantless browser searches

Legislation that reauthorized key domestic surveillance laws and would have protected Americans from warrantless searches of browsing data has been pulled, following a Tweet from the president.

The bill, the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act of 2020, would have renewed expired surveillance provisions, some of which date back to the Patriot Act. Of particular note is Section 215, which allows for the government to obtain "tangible things" — including browser and search histories — without a warrant during natural security investigations. That provision has been in effect since 2001 but expired in March, so Congress needs to reauthorize it.

An amendment provision to the reauthorization bill that would have offered barred the FBI from warrantless searches of Americans' browsing history failed in the Senate by one vote in May, prompting a coalition of tech companies and civil rights groups to urge House lawmakers to include similar privacy protections.While the amendment to Section 215 failed, other privacy protections were included in the reauthorization. Since the Senate amended the legislation, it had to go back to the House for another vote.

On May 22, House leaders announced that they had struck a deal to include provisions against warrantless browser history data. A few days later, the Justice Department recommended to President Donald Trump that he veto the bill because those amendments would "weaken national security tools," NPR reported.

However, opposition to the reauthorization continued to mount from all sides. President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday that he hopes Republicans vote no on the legislation until there was an investigation of alleged abuses of surveillance powers by the Obama administration. A day after that, Trump signaled that he would likely veto the bill.

Progressive Democrats also said that they'd vote against it, calling the included privacy protections "far too narrow in scope" and stating that the reauthorization would still "leave the public vulnerable to invasive online spying and data collection."

Sen. Ron Wyden, a leading legislator on privacy issues, shot down his support of the bill on an amendment slated to increase privacy protections for Americans. Following clarification that the Section 215 amendment was narrower than originally anticipated, Sen. Wyden dropped his support and urged the House to vote on his original amendment that failed in the Senate.

The bill was originally passed in the House earlier in 2020. Typically, reauthorizations of the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) are bipartisan, and House Republicans previously supported the legislation. The original Senate amendment that protected Americans from warrantless searches had support from a majority of Senators, but a supermajority of at least 60 is required to end debate and move a proposal such as this to a vote.

On Wednesday, Speaker Pelosi said if Congress failed to approve the reauthorization act, the House would send the original version of the bill, which it passed earlier in 2020, back to the Senate.
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[sultrysandy]

.
How Steve Jobs changed the face of Apple and retail forever

On May 19, 2001, the very first Apple Stores were opened, changing not only how customers would buy Apple hardware and get service for purchases, but also alter brick-and-mortar retail forever.

"This is our store," Steve Jobs said, as he introduced the Apple Store for the first time. He did it in a video launch on May 15, 2001, just ahead of the first-ever Apple Stores opening the following Saturday. The Apple Store, Apple's first foray into its own retail stores, opened its first two locations on May 19, 2001, in Glendale, Calif. and then in Tysons Corner, Virginia. One AppleInsider staffer was present for the opening of the latter store.

In the years since, the Apple Store has grown to more than 500 stores in over 20 countries. It has surged in growth during a very difficult time for the retail sector as a whole, including in the consumer electronics space.

While helping to drive Apple's own growth and playing a key role in the launches of iPod, iPhone, iPad and more, the Apple Store also forever changed the look of computer and electronics retail. And that look has been widely imitated, from Microsoft launching a chain of lookalike stores to Sony attempting the same to actual knockoff Apple Stores in China.

Before the Apple Store

Throughout the 1990s, Apple computers were sold in a combination of chain stores and authorized Apple retailers. Support for customers from the big-box stores was iffy, and related to how often Apple representatives and then later contractors visited, to keep the staff in line.

Starting in 1997, Apple migrated to a "store within a store" concept that it agreed to with CompUSA, shortly after Jobs' return to the company.

At the same time, Apple pulled its products out of most non-CompUSA big box retailers, at a time when Dell was Apple's main competitor and Apple was preparing to launch the original iMac. Apple also revamped its online store.

Jobs decided to open Apple-branded retail stores, and hired executive Ron Johnson, formerly of Target, to run them in early 2000.



The first stores

Apple - Steve Jobs introduces the first Apple Store Retail 2001 - 4:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJtQeMHGrgc&feature=youtu.be




On May 15, 2001, Apple announced that it would open 25 retail stores that year, including its first two that Saturday.

The first stores, as explained by Jobs in his introductory video, were to feature such products in the front section as iMacs and iBooks, as well as the then-new PowerBook G4 Titanium and Power Macs. The iPod, however, would not be released for another five months, and of course it would be six years before the iPhone showed up.

Children using the Flower Power iMacs at Tyson's Corner, the day it opened



Also featured in the store were music, movies, photos and a kids section, as well as non-Apple digital cameras and camcorders. There was also a great deal of boxed software. Even as Apple changed bricks-and-mortar retail, it was radically changing how software was sold, to the point where boxed applications seem peculiar now.

Another initial selling point that is still around in some form, though, is the original incarnation of the Genius Bar, which back then featured pictures of Albert Einstein and other famous geniuses who had been included in Apple's "Think Different" ads of the time. Jobs positioned the in-store "geniuses" as people who were able to answer customers' questions — and if they couldn't, there was a landline to someone in Cupertino who could.

More than 500 fans lined up at the Tysons store starting at pre-dawn that first day. Over the weekend, Tysons and Glendale hosted over 7500 visitors, and sold a combined $599,000 in products over the first two days.

The Apple Store was an immediate success, but it wasn't as if Apple was the first company to try it. Apple was just the first company to do it right. Dell and Gateway both tiptoed into retail before Apple got to it, for instance, but both of their efforts faded quickly.



Sustained success

The Apple Store's success never really abated. Its first urban flagship, on Chicago's Magnificent Mile, opened in 2003, with the first international Apple Store arriving in Ginza, Tokyo, Japan, later that year. Five years to the day after the first two stores, in 2006, Apple opened its iconic "cube" location on Fifth Avenue in New York.

While the number of Apple Stores worldwide crossed 500 with its first location in Korea, which opened in 2018, the originals haven't been forgotten. The store Apple designated number one in Glendale, remains a popular site for fan pilgrimages. But store number two — Tyson's — was still the first to open.



Hard times

While Apple steadily opened more and more Apple Stores around the world after the first US ones in 2001, it also shut them all in 2020. For around two months, stores across the globe were closed because of the coronavirus, and only slowly reopened.

China was the first to see Apple Stores reopening, then later parts of Europe, and next selected ones in the US. At each, there were reduced opening hours, and the whole atmosphere changed as they implemented social distancing and healthcare procedures.

Notably, Apple paid its retail staff during the shut down. It's easy to regard Apple as having limitless funds because it is the biggest company in the world, but still it was paying the wages of staff for over 500 stores for two months.

Deirdre O'Brien (Source: Apple)



The company sent care packages to some employees, and it also kept every one of them clearly updated with what was happening and what Apple was doing.

In a time when other companies were at best furloughing employees and at worst making massive reduncancies, Apple's approach to its Apple Store staff was genuinely praiseworthy.

So too, in a different way, was Apple's balancing of retail and online selling. Right from the start, it was selling boxed software in stores but planning to move applications online.

Then since Angela Ahrendts was running retail and now that Deirdre O'Brien is, the company has managed to keep both its physical and its online stores busy. That will be how Apple was able to keep on selling well even during the lockdowns around the world.

But it is also how it was able to help the millions of people who were suddenly forced to work from home. Even if they couldn't pop out to a local Apple Store, they could order online and get contact-free delivery.

Steve Jobs could not have anticipated the coronavirus pandemic back in 2001, but the steps he took right then with Ron Johnson meant that Apple Stores today can continue to survive even under such pressures.
.

 

[Stillrandy]

Stores

Thanks for that article Sandy. The Apple stores are still unique, refreshing and efficient. Love walking into one. They 'just work'!

 

[sultrysandy]

Thanks for that article Sandy. The Apple stores are still unique, refreshing and efficient. Love walking into one. They 'just work'!

Apple didn't invent the PC, MP3 Player, Smartphone, Brick and Mortar Computer Retail Store, among other products and services, but they give their customers an enjoyable experience. IMHO It's not a difficult concept, but it's not easy to do.


Have an article from thirteen years ago telling behind the scene how they built the Apple Retail Store want to try to post today. Includes The Gap, a warehouse, the Little Blue Box, and how they figured out and learned to succeed at retail.



Interesting while Gateway Country Stores were closing, the so called pundits, experts, analysts were saying that dying Apple was gasping for breath and grabbing at straws for survival.
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[sultrysandy]

Apple: America's best retailer

.
Keep in mind this is thirteen years old.


The high-tech wundercompany has landed - not only on our street corners and in our malls, but also for the first time, on the top 10 of Fortune's Most Admired Companies.



"Sorry Steve, Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work," BusinessWeek wrote with great certainty in 2001. "It's desperation time in Cupertino, Calif.," opined TheStreet.com. "I give [Apple] two years before they're turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake," predicted retail consultant David Goldstein.

Yet five years later, at 4:15 A.M., a light flickered on. Onlookers
were bathed in the milky-white glow of the Apple logo, suspended in a freestanding cube of glass at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South in Manhattan. Dazzling in clarity and 32 feet on a side, the structure was likened variously to a temple, the Louvre Pyramid, Apple's G4 "Cube" computer, a giant button, and even - in the words of NBC's Brian Williams - Steve Jobs' Model T. But it was, everyone could agree, manifestly a store.

"People haven't been willing to invest this much time and money or engineering in a store before," says the Apple CEO, his feet propped on Apple's boardroom table in Cupertino. "It's not important if the customer knows that. They just feel it. They feel something's a little different."

And not just the architecture. Saks, whose flagship is down the street, generates sales of $362 per square foot a year. Best Buy stores turn $930 - tops for electronics retailers - while Tiffany & Co. takes in $2,666. Audrey Hepburn liked Tiffany's for breakfast. But at $4,032, Apple is eating everyone's lunch.

That astonishing number, from a Sanford C. Bernstein report, is merely the average of Apple's 174 stores, which attract 13,800 visitors a week. (The Fifth Avenue store averages 50,000-plus.) In 2004, Apple reached $1 billion in annual sales faster than any retailer in history; last year, sales reached $1 billion a quarter. And now comes the next, if not must-have, then must-see, product.

"Our stores were conceived and built for this moment in time - to roll out iPhone," says Jobs, summoning one to the table with a tantalizing I've-got-the-future-in-my-pocket twinkle. If sales are anywhere near expectations - Apple hopes to move ten million iPhones in 2008 - the typical Apple Store could be selling, in absolute terms, as much as a Best Buy, and with just a fraction of the selling space.

You could say that Apple has landed - not only on our street corners and in our malls but also, for the first time, on the top ten of Fortune's Most Admired Companies. Its peers have watched it upend industries from computers to music. But how did a high-tech wundercompany become America's best shopkeeper?

"I started to get scared," says Jobs. Looking angularly trim in his trademark mock turtleneck and jeans (shopping, one is reminded, has never been integral to his lifestyle), Jobs is describing what he saw circa 2000. The company was increasingly dependent on mega-retailers - companies that had little incentive, never mind training, to position Apple's products as anything unique. "It was like, 'We have to do something, or we're going to be a victim of the plate tectonics. And we have to think different about this. We have to innovate here.'"

The leap into retail, though, would be from a standing start. "We looked at it and said, 'You know, this is probably really hard, and really easy for us to get our head handed to us.' So we did a few things. No. 1, I started asking who was the best retail executive at the time. Everybody said Mickey Drexler, who was running the Gap ." Drexler agreed to join Apple's board. Next, Jobs went looking for the one right person to run Apple retail. The answer was Ron Johnson, then a merchandising chief at Target who was pushing that company's hugely successful foray into affordable design.

"One of the best pieces of advice Mickey ever gave us was to go rent a warehouse and build a prototype of a store, and not, you know, just design it, go build 20 of them, then discover it didn't work," says Jobs. In other words, design it as you would a product. Apple Store Version 0.0 took shape in a warehouse near the Apple campus. "Ron and I had a store all designed," says Jobs, when they were stopped by an insight: The computer was evolving from a simple productivity tool to a "hub" for video, photography, music, information, and so forth. The sale, then, was less about the machine than what you could do with it. But looking at their store, they winced. The hardware was laid out by product category - in other words, by how the company was organized internally, not by how a customer might actually want to buy things. "We were like, 'Oh, God, we're screwed!'" says Jobs.

But they weren't screwed; they were in a mockup. "So we redesigned it," he says. "And it cost us, I don't know, six, nine months. But it was the right decision by a million miles." When the first store finally opened, in Tysons Corner, Va., only a quarter of it was about product. The rest was arranged around interests: along the right wall, photos, videos, kids; on the left, problems. A third area - the Genius Bar in the back - was Johnson's brainstorm.

"When we launched retail, I got this group together, people from a variety of walks of life," says Johnson. "As an icebreaker, we said, 'Tell us about the best service experience you've ever had.'" Of the 18 people, 16 said it was in a hotel. This was unexpected. But of course: The concierge desk at a hotel isn't selling anything; it's there to help. "We said, 'Well, how do we create a store that has the friendliness of a Four Seasons Hotel?'" The answer: "Let's put a bar in our stores. But instead of dispensing alcohol, we dispense advice."

Johnson is telling the story as he walks the floor of Apple's San Francisco store, a perfect stainless-steel box punctuated by a massive skylight, which is throwing sun on a thirtysomething couple getting a tutorial at the Genius Bar. "See that?" says Johnson. "Look at their eyes. They're learning. There's an intense moment - like when you see a kid in school going 'Aha!'"

What else does Johnson see? A guy with a broken laptop. The chances of getting it fixed today are one in three; by tomorrow, two in three. "We're trying to get as fast as the dry cleaner," says Johnson, crossing the glass skybridge that spans the second floor.

The most striking thing, though, is what you don't see. No. 1: clutter. Jobs has focused Apple's resources on fewer than 20 products, and those have steadily been shrinking in size. Backroom inventory, then, can shrink in physical volume even as sales volume grows. Also missing, at the newest stores, anyway, is a checkout counter. The system Apple developed, EasyPay, lets salespeople wander the floor with wireless credit-card readers and ask, "Would you like to pay for that?"

The interiors, too, have been distilled to a minimum of elements. "We've gotten it down so there's only three materials we're using: glass, stainless steel, and wood," says Johnson. "We spent a year and a half perfecting that steel. Stainless steel can be cold if you don't get the finish right. See the bounce? See the blues up there?" No, frankly, but Apple hunted down a Japanese supplier and pushed it to achieve the effect by blasting the metal with small beads.

Suppliers describe working with Apple as both thrilling and scary. "We're used to working on projects with very high standards," says Michael Mulhern of TriPyramid Structures, whose components hold the Fifth Avenue Cube together. "With Apple Stores, everything is two notches above that." And even that doesn't seem to be enough. A few years back Jobs issued a challenge: How small could you make a store and have it still feel big? The resulting "ministore" (not "nano") was just 15 feet wide, with a fabric ceiling that mimics pure daylight.

The minis fit nicely into a real estate strategy that Jobs calls "Ambush the customer." He says he wanted to show Windows users "how much better a Mac is. But Windows users weren't going to drive to a destination." That's why Johnson waited so long for the San Francisco location - a corner off Market Street where people live, work, shop, tour, and play, as he puts it.

"The real estate was a lot more expensive," says Jobs, but it was worth it because people "didn't have to gamble with 20 minutes of their time. They only had to gamble with 20 footsteps of their time."

Downstairs, a man in a hardhat walks in with an iPod nano. Johnson likes this. "When we launched retail, there was a real cult-of-the-Mac mentality," he says. "But our goal was never to have a store for a cult. It was to be a store for everyone. So if you look around here," you see, in fact, the sort of group you'd see in diversity-recruiting brochures. Nor does the store feel like a cult. A club, maybe, in the sense that owning a Mac means joining something. Apple wants the purchase to be the beginning, not the conclusion, of a beautiful - and, it hopes, profitable - friendship.

"Apple has changed people's expectations of what retail should be about," says Candace Corlett of WSL Strategic Retail in New York. "After they've seen Apple, how do they feel looking at a drugstore or the jeans section in a department store?" Other companies are asking themselves the same question. Saturn's car showrooms, general manager Jill Lajkziak told the Detroit News last spring, would have a "more contemporary, more interactive look and feel--like an Apple Store." And several doors down from the Apple Store in the Palisades Center mall in West Nyack, N.Y., is a COMING SOON sign with another familiar name. It's one of two stores Dell is experimenting with. Sorry, Michael: Here's Why Dell Stores & oh, never mind.

Apple, meanwhile, has not returned the compliment by taking cues from others. "Why copy when you can create?" asks Johnson. The Genius Bar, for instance, is now complemented by the Studio, staffed by "Creatives" who offer one-to-one training on everything from putting together your Def Leppard tribute on iMovie to how to deejay your friend's wedding.

That's what makes Apple such a hard study: The subject won't sit still for its portrait. "I can't even remember Apple without the stores," says Jobs. It's a statement of how integral they've become to the company; 8,000 of Apple's 20,000 employees, he notes, work in retail. But it's also a reminder that what we're glimpsing are his taillights.

It's customary, at this point, to say what could go wrong - a string of product misfires, some future Apple backlash, who knows? But the best way to predict the future is to invent it. "Genius sits in a glass house," the Swiss artist Paul Klee wrote. It's on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, and anyone can wander in.
.

 

[Stillrandy]

While I was watching the Dragon/Space-X liftoff on Saturday, they showed video of the Space-X Mission Control Center. What a difference from the traditional NASA Mission Control spaces. Instead of massive consoles, each station had flat, touch screens on modern style desks. My first thought was that it reminded me of an Apple store: simple, sleek, functional, cool. Steve would have been impressed I think.

 

[Scareltt]

If only...

.
Keep in mind this is thirteen years old.


The high-tech wundercompany has landed - not only on our street corners and in our malls, but also for the first time, on the top 10 of Fortune's Most Admired Companies.



"Sorry Steve, Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work," BusinessWeek wrote with great certainty in 2001. "It's desperation time in Cupertino, Calif.," opined TheStreet.com. "I give [Apple] two years before they're turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake," predicted retail consultant David Goldstein.

Yet five years later, at 4:15 A.M., a light flickered on. Onlookers
were bathed in the milky-white glow of the Apple logo, suspended in a freestanding cube of glass at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South in Manhattan. Dazzling in clarity and 32 feet on a side, the structure was likened variously to a temple, the Louvre Pyramid, Apple's G4 "Cube" computer, a giant button, and even - in the words of NBC's Brian Williams - Steve Jobs' Model T. But it was, everyone could agree, manifestly a store.

"People haven't been willing to invest this much time and money or engineering in a store before," says the Apple CEO, his feet propped on Apple's boardroom table in Cupertino. "It's not important if the customer knows that. They just feel it. They feel something's a little different."

And not just the architecture. Saks, whose flagship is down the street, generates sales of $362 per square foot a year. Best Buy stores turn $930 - tops for electronics retailers - while Tiffany & Co. takes in $2,666. Audrey Hepburn liked Tiffany's for breakfast. But at $4,032, Apple is eating everyone's lunch.

That astonishing number, from a Sanford C. Bernstein report, is merely the average of Apple's 174 stores, which attract 13,800 visitors a week. (The Fifth Avenue store averages 50,000-plus.) In 2004, Apple reached $1 billion in annual sales faster than any retailer in history; last year, sales reached $1 billion a quarter. And now comes the next, if not must-have, then must-see, product.

"Our stores were conceived and built for this moment in time - to roll out iPhone," says Jobs, summoning one to the table with a tantalizing I've-got-the-future-in-my-pocket twinkle. If sales are anywhere near expectations - Apple hopes to move ten million iPhones in 2008 - the typical Apple Store could be selling, in absolute terms, as much as a Best Buy, and with just a fraction of the selling space.

You could say that Apple has landed - not only on our street corners and in our malls but also, for the first time, on the top ten of Fortune's Most Admired Companies. Its peers have watched it upend industries from computers to music. But how did a high-tech wundercompany become America's best shopkeeper?

"I started to get scared," says Jobs. Looking angularly trim in his trademark mock turtleneck and jeans (shopping, one is reminded, has never been integral to his lifestyle), Jobs is describing what he saw circa 2000. The company was increasingly dependent on mega-retailers - companies that had little incentive, never mind training, to position Apple's products as anything unique. "It was like, 'We have to do something, or we're going to be a victim of the plate tectonics. And we have to think different about this. We have to innovate here.'"

The leap into retail, though, would be from a standing start. "We looked at it and said, 'You know, this is probably really hard, and really easy for us to get our head handed to us.' So we did a few things. No. 1, I started asking who was the best retail executive at the time. Everybody said Mickey Drexler, who was running the Gap ." Drexler agreed to join Apple's board. Next, Jobs went looking for the one right person to run Apple retail. The answer was Ron Johnson, then a merchandising chief at Target who was pushing that company's hugely successful foray into affordable design.

"One of the best pieces of advice Mickey ever gave us was to go rent a warehouse and build a prototype of a store, and not, you know, just design it, go build 20 of them, then discover it didn't work," says Jobs. In other words, design it as you would a product. Apple Store Version 0.0 took shape in a warehouse near the Apple campus. "Ron and I had a store all designed," says Jobs, when they were stopped by an insight: The computer was evolving from a simple productivity tool to a "hub" for video, photography, music, information, and so forth. The sale, then, was less about the machine than what you could do with it. But looking at their store, they winced. The hardware was laid out by product category - in other words, by how the company was organized internally, not by how a customer might actually want to buy things. "We were like, 'Oh, God, we're screwed!'" says Jobs.

But they weren't screwed; they were in a mockup. "So we redesigned it," he says. "And it cost us, I don't know, six, nine months. But it was the right decision by a million miles." When the first store finally opened, in Tysons Corner, Va., only a quarter of it was about product. The rest was arranged around interests: along the right wall, photos, videos, kids; on the left, problems. A third area - the Genius Bar in the back - was Johnson's brainstorm.

"When we launched retail, I got this group together, people from a variety of walks of life," says Johnson. "As an icebreaker, we said, 'Tell us about the best service experience you've ever had.'" Of the 18 people, 16 said it was in a hotel. This was unexpected. But of course: The concierge desk at a hotel isn't selling anything; it's there to help. "We said, 'Well, how do we create a store that has the friendliness of a Four Seasons Hotel?'" The answer: "Let's put a bar in our stores. But instead of dispensing alcohol, we dispense advice."

Johnson is telling the story as he walks the floor of Apple's San Francisco store, a perfect stainless-steel box punctuated by a massive skylight, which is throwing sun on a thirtysomething couple getting a tutorial at the Genius Bar. "See that?" says Johnson. "Look at their eyes. They're learning. There's an intense moment - like when you see a kid in school going 'Aha!'"

What else does Johnson see? A guy with a broken laptop. The chances of getting it fixed today are one in three; by tomorrow, two in three. "We're trying to get as fast as the dry cleaner," says Johnson, crossing the glass skybridge that spans the second floor.

The most striking thing, though, is what you don't see. No. 1: clutter. Jobs has focused Apple's resources on fewer than 20 products, and those have steadily been shrinking in size. Backroom inventory, then, can shrink in physical volume even as sales volume grows. Also missing, at the newest stores, anyway, is a checkout counter. The system Apple developed, EasyPay, lets salespeople wander the floor with wireless credit-card readers and ask, "Would you like to pay for that?"

The interiors, too, have been distilled to a minimum of elements. "We've gotten it down so there's only three materials we're using: glass, stainless steel, and wood," says Johnson. "We spent a year and a half perfecting that steel. Stainless steel can be cold if you don't get the finish right. See the bounce? See the blues up there?" No, frankly, but Apple hunted down a Japanese supplier and pushed it to achieve the effect by blasting the metal with small beads.

Suppliers describe working with Apple as both thrilling and scary. "We're used to working on projects with very high standards," says Michael Mulhern of TriPyramid Structures, whose components hold the Fifth Avenue Cube together. "With Apple Stores, everything is two notches above that." And even that doesn't seem to be enough. A few years back Jobs issued a challenge: How small could you make a store and have it still feel big? The resulting "ministore" (not "nano") was just 15 feet wide, with a fabric ceiling that mimics pure daylight.

The minis fit nicely into a real estate strategy that Jobs calls "Ambush the customer." He says he wanted to show Windows users "how much better a Mac is. But Windows users weren't going to drive to a destination." That's why Johnson waited so long for the San Francisco location - a corner off Market Street where people live, work, shop, tour, and play, as he puts it.

"The real estate was a lot more expensive," says Jobs, but it was worth it because people "didn't have to gamble with 20 minutes of their time. They only had to gamble with 20 footsteps of their time."

Downstairs, a man in a hardhat walks in with an iPod nano. Johnson likes this. "When we launched retail, there was a real cult-of-the-Mac mentality," he says. "But our goal was never to have a store for a cult. It was to be a store for everyone. So if you look around here," you see, in fact, the sort of group you'd see in diversity-recruiting brochures. Nor does the store feel like a cult. A club, maybe, in the sense that owning a Mac means joining something. Apple wants the purchase to be the beginning, not the conclusion, of a beautiful - and, it hopes, profitable - friendship.

"Apple has changed people's expectations of what retail should be about," says Candace Corlett of WSL Strategic Retail in New York. "After they've seen Apple, how do they feel looking at a drugstore or the jeans section in a department store?" Other companies are asking themselves the same question. Saturn's car showrooms, general manager Jill Lajkziak told the Detroit News last spring, would have a "more contemporary, more interactive look and feel--like an Apple Store." And several doors down from the Apple Store in the Palisades Center mall in West Nyack, N.Y., is a COMING SOON sign with another familiar name. It's one of two stores Dell is experimenting with. Sorry, Michael: Here's Why Dell Stores & oh, never mind.

Apple, meanwhile, has not returned the compliment by taking cues from others. "Why copy when you can create?" asks Johnson. The Genius Bar, for instance, is now complemented by the Studio, staffed by "Creatives" who offer one-to-one training on everything from putting together your Def Leppard tribute on iMovie to how to deejay your friend's wedding.

That's what makes Apple such a hard study: The subject won't sit still for its portrait. "I can't even remember Apple without the stores," says Jobs. It's a statement of how integral they've become to the company; 8,000 of Apple's 20,000 employees, he notes, work in retail. But it's also a reminder that what we're glimpsing are his taillights.

It's customary, at this point, to say what could go wrong - a string of product misfires, some future Apple backlash, who knows? But the best way to predict the future is to invent it. "Genius sits in a glass house," the Swiss artist Paul Klee wrote. It's on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, and anyone can wander in.
.

I remember telling someone. “We should snag a few shares of Apple.” Nope he didn’t listen...

 

[sultrysandy]

I remember telling someone. “We should snag a few shares of Apple.” Nope he didn’t listen...

I skimmed over a research note today that Apple was the first U.S. company to top the $1 trillion mark, and it will also be the first company to surpass $2 trillion. That milestone will be reached in the next four years as the stock rallies about 72% from its current price of $320 and valuation of $1.389 trillion, all the way up to $550 and $2 trillion.



Here's the stock price chart when Apple in 1997 purchased NeXT for its NeXTSTEP operating system and to bring Steve Jobs back.

1080 px x 480 px



2022 px × 900 px Much bigger and easier to read

.

 

[sultrysandy]

Apple CEO Tim Cook email to employees about George Floyd

.
Read the email Tim Cook sent to Apple employees about George Floyd



Apple CEO Tim Cook sent a memo to employees Sunday addressing the killing of George Floyd.

Protests have erupted in cities across the country after the killing of Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police. On Friday, Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was filmed kneeling on Floyd's neck before he died, was taken into custody and charged with murder and manslaughter.

Widespread anger over Floyd's killing sparked protests, clashes with police and looting in several cities.

In the memo, Cook condemned the killing and called for the creation of a "better, more just world for everyone."

"We can have no society worth celebrating unless we can guarantee freedom from fear for every person who gives this country their love, labor and life," Cook said.

Cook also acknowledged that racial injustice exists in the U.S., including in "our criminal justice system" and "in the disproportionate toll of disease on Black and Brown communities," as well as from economic inequality and disparities in educational opportunities.

The memo comes after Apple closed some of its U.S. stores as protests turned violent over the weekend.

Here's the full memo:

Team,

Right now, there is a pain deeply etched in the soul of our nation and in the hearts of millions. To stand together, we must stand up for one another, and recognize the fear, hurt, and outrage rightly provoked by the senseless killing of George Floyd and a much longer history of racism.

That painful past is still present today — not only in the form of violence, but in the everyday experience of deeply rooted discrimination. We see it in our criminal justice system, in the disproportionate toll of disease on Black and Brown communities, in the inequalities in neighborhood services and the educations our children receive. While our laws have changed, the reality is that their protections are still not universally applied.

We've seen progress since the America I grew up in, but it is similarly true that communities of color continue to endure discrimination and trauma.

I have heard from so many of you that you feel afraid — afraid in your communities, afraid in your daily lives, and, most cruelly of all, afraid in your own skin. We can have no society worth celebrating unless we can guarantee freedom from fear for every person who gives this country their love, labor and life.

At Apple, our mission has and always will be to create technology that empowers people to change the world for the better. We've always drawn strength from our diversity, welcomed people from every walk of life to our stores around the world, and strived to build an Apple that is inclusive of everyone.

But together, we must do more. Today, Apple is making donations to a number of groups, including the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit committed to challenging racial injustice, ending mass incarceration, and protecting the human rights of the most vulnerable people in American society. For the month of June, and in honor of the Juneteenth holiday, we'll also be matching two-for-one all employee donations via Benevity.

To create change, we have to reexamine our own views and actions in light of a pain that is deeply felt but too often ignored. Issues of human dignity will not abide standing on the sidelines. To our colleagues in the Black community — we see you. You matter, your lives matter, and you are valued here at Apple.

For all of our colleagues hurting right now, please know that you are not alone, and that we have resources to support you. It's more important than ever to talk to one another, and to find healing in our common humanity. We also have free resources that can help, including our Employee Assistance Program and mental health resources you can learn about on the People site.

This is a moment when many people may want nothing more than a return to normalcy, or to a status quo that is only comfortable if we avert our gaze from injustice. As difficult as it may be to admit, that desire is itself a sign of privilege. George Floyd's death is shocking and tragic proof that we must aim far higher than a "normal" future, and build one that lives up to the highest ideals of equality and justice.

In the words of Martin Luther King, "Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."

With every breath we take, we must commit to being that change, and to creating a better, more just world for everyone.

Tim

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Google sued in $5 billion class action lawsuit for tracking 'private' internet use

A $ billion class action lawsuit has been filed, that alleges Google has been tracking users' browsing habits despite engaging Chrome's Incognito mode.

The lawsuit is seeking a minimum of five billion dollars, and would likely include "millions" of Google Chrome users. The lawsuit, filed in the federal court in San Jose, California, covers users who have used Incognito mode since June 1, 2016.

According to the complaint, Google gathers data through Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager, and other Applications and plug-ins, including smartphone apps.

The complaint, which was seen by Reuters, claimed that Google is capable of learning about users' friends, hobbies, shopping habits, and the "most intimate and potentially embarrassing things" a user searches for.

The complaint states that Google "cannot continue to engage in the covert and unauthorized data collection from virtually every American with a computer or phone."

The lawsuit is hoping to receive $5,000 in damages per user for violating federal wiretapping and California privacy laws.

A Google spokesperson has pushed back against the lawsuit, claiming that the company discloses such risks.

"[W]e clearly state each time you open a new incognito tab, websites might be able to collect information about your browsing activity."





If want, go to post: Google Pixel laptops posted three months ago #248

Not surprised Google would NOT do this. The idea that anything from Alphabet has privacy anywhere near it is ludicrous. Time and time again Google has been caught mining customer data when they said they wouldn't. Their response has always been either to promise to not do that (any more), or we never said that.
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How smartphones have shifted perceptions on police brutality

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Few things have drawn more attention to police brutality incidents than the unflinching eye of smartphones — with the iPhone in particular leading the way.

The ability of smartphones to capture and broadcast shocking images in real-time has increasingly focused attention on a longstanding problem of police brutality in America. Here's a look at why smartphones were needed to bring attention to the problem, along with Apple's complex role in both supporting police and in drawing attention to underlying problems in conduct among police officers.



Protection of businesses and property


Smartphones and other advanced technology likely wouldn't even exist without police serving to protect businesses from pirates, thieves, and other criminal elements. Apple employs its own security but also relies on the police when its retail stores are attacked by looters, robbers, or scam artists.

Originally, serving guard duty in a private policing force was seen as a thankless, undesirable job. The modern concept of a professional, public police force is "a relatively modern invention" first established in Boston in 1838 by shipping merchants seeking to transfer the expense of private security to the public as a socialized police force serving the "collective good," as noted by Olivia Waxman for Time

Initially, police largely served the interests of businessmen and elected politicians, who both paid their salaries and gave them the power to maintain "law and order" in a way that benefitted the affluent voting majority. That power was often flexed to marginalize and repress religious or ethnic minorities, as well as workers protesting for better working conditions. Brutal repressions of efforts to organize labor unions were common in the U.S. as business interests used the police to protect their profits.

Because local political parties typically appointed police captains, they too had the expectation of using the police to intimidate voters and collect bribes that would enable their political machine to remain in power. Into the early 1900s, American police often effectively acted as mafia for crooked commercial interests. During the Prohibition Era, politicized police groups routinely demanded protection money to look the other way for speakeasy operators.

It wasn't until 1929 that the ineffectiveness of law enforcement was scrutinized by President Hoover's appointment of the Wickersham Commission, resulting in efforts to divorce police precincts from the boundaries of political wards in order to minimize influence. But there was also another serious problem that had developed under the political influence of police: racism. This was often expressed in the brutal treatment of Blacks and other minorities, as documented by Smithsonian Magazine.

While police in urban centers of the northern United States had initially been established to protect shipping ports and businesses and crack down on drinking and prostitution, in the South, police militias had largely been organized to enforce the institution of slavery. Slave patrols in the early 1700s chased down people fleeing slavery and protected plantations from uprisings. After the Civil War, "many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves," Waxman wrote.

As police agencies began to professionalize over the last century, the problem of racism continued to grow as white majorities established laws and informal rules designed to maintain segregation. Even in states like California that lacked the South's history of slavery, it was commonplace for housing developments to restrict ownership by race under housing covenants that continued well into the 1960s. Black families routinely faced the threat of having their houses burned to the ground. Public policies including the construction of freeways commonly destroyed Black neighborhoods.

The birthplace of personal computing in California's Silicon Valley was shaped by racist policies that restricted who could live in specific neighborhoods. Yet the products developed there would eventually help to facilitate a shift in thinking and bring attention to longstanding racial problems.



Low cost entertainment


The effective segregation in California and much of the rest of the United States helped distract attention away from underlying race issues. The barriers that intentionally kept affluent areas white also often prevented those populations from seeing the realities of police brutality that often focused on communities of Black, indigenous, and other people of color.

One of those barriers was the reporting of violent police actions by members of the media who often based their narratives on official police accounts. Black newspapers that documented police violence against citizens across the first half of the century rarely reached white audiences.

Instead, mainstream audiences were presented with entertainment that presented narrow stereotypes of Blacks as criminals. In 1989, Fox began airing Cops, a cheap to produce show which presented edited footage of arrests that consistently presented police officers in a positive light and normalized the often rough treatment of the accused. Two decades later, it became the longest-running series on the network, while depicting only flattering portrayals of police to avoid any risk of losing access to the cameramen riding along with active duty police.

In 1991, an independent video camera recording from a balcony in Los Angeles captured a different portrayal of police conduct in the violent beating of Rodney King. That videotape sparked outrage, particularly after the police involved were tried on charges of police brutality but then acquitted. Subsequent riots resulted in dozens of deaths and extensive property damage. But without access to record continuous cases of similar law enforcement brutality during arrests or within jails and prisons, the positively spun presentation of entertainment shows like Cops continued to present a one-sided portrayal of police activity that only ever demonized the accused.

On its own, television failed to present the reality of racism in policing because accounts of police violence were often edited and filtered by journalists seeking to maintain a good relationship with police sources, who were allowed to shape the narratives being presented. That began to change when video cameras moved from bulky professional equipment into mobile devices.



Eye Phone


When Steve Jobs introduced iPhone in 2007, the new device was described as "an iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator," all in one device. Although it could snap basic photos, it wasn't much of a camera and couldn't even record video at all. Yet over the next few years of rapid enhancements, Apple increasingly invested in improving its camera and making photography central to its marketing and ongoing development.

Apple's first custom mobile chip, A4, included a dedicated, custom image signal processor that turned 2010's iPhone 4 into a competitive point and shoot camera. Jobs even compared its form and styling to "a beautiful old Leica camera." Beyond simply taking photos and capturing video, iPhones packed in the processing power, memory, and networking required to share images instantly.

Apple's A4 helped turn iPhone into a powerful mobile camera




Various cameraphones had already existed for many years, but a distinguishing characteristic unique to iPhones was Apple's model of unlimited WiFi networking, along with the iMessage service it introduced in 2011. Unlike existing SMS and MMS 'picture messaging,' Apple developed iMessage as a way to allow users to send photos and videos without cost. Most mobile carriers were still trying to charge per-photo message fees, and some, including Verizon Wireless, even tuned off phones' mobile WiFi features to force users to slowly sync all of their data over the 3G mobile network so they could charge users per-minute networking rates.

Apple's iPhone effectively converted basic cellular telephones from "good enough, carrier friendly" devices offered for free by mobile carriers into a new class of powerful iOS devices that could share images and videos as freely as a desktop computer. Apple's "revolutionary" design of the premium, powerful iPhone rapidly turned the company into the world's most valuable tech company, while raising the minimum expectation of cellular phones and democratizing access to mobile-connected cameras that could instantly broadcast videos across social networks.

The original, fee-based cameraphone model optimized to serve mobile carriers quickly evaporated. Samsung, Google, and other Android partners were incentivized to shift their initial plans for simple phones offered through— and restricted by— mobile carriers into devices designed to work almost identically to iPhones. As a result, powerful phones with advanced cameras quickly became available to virtually everyone at affordable prices.

That meant that anyone could record what was going on, and broadly share their first-hand experience unfiltered to wide audiences.



Black Lives Matter


In 2014, smartphone footage depicting police killing Eric Garner in Staten Island using a lethal chokehold in an arrest related to selling untaxed cigarettes brought new attention to the use of excessive force. Without the "I can't breathe" video of Garner's death, the public would likely have never heard of the incident. Further, the fact that the officer who choked him to death was never indicted caused reporters to rethink the nature of the system that would allow such a killing to take place without any consequences.

The next year, Walter Scott was killed in a police shooting following a traffic stop over a broken brake light in South Carolina. Initial media reports echoed police statements that claimed Scott was shot only after taking the officer's stun gun away and threatening to use it, and that officers attempted to perform CPR on Scott afterward. But then smartphone footage of the incident appeared showing that was not true. The video revealed that the officer rapidly unloaded his gun into Scott, then handcuffed him face down and didn't even attempt CPR. The story rapidly escalated to national news, further revealing the vast difference between official police accounts and reality.

n 2016 Philando Castile was pulled over in Minnesota, also for a traffic stop. The officer approached and immediately shot Castile seven times. The driver's traumatized girlfriend streamed the aftermath of the shooting from her smartphone via Facebook, which subsequently depicted officers arresting her while failing to offer any medical attention to Castile even as he sat dying. Instead, other officers comforted the officer involved in the shooting.

A regular series of similar shootings by active-duty police, by off duty police, and by citizens pretending to be police — often recorded by smartphones — have established unmistakable patterns of brutality often targeting minorities far out of proportion to their population. Efforts to draw attention to and address the causes of such events by groups such as Black Lives Matter have often been met with ridicule and the defense of law enforcement regardless of the circumstances.

BLM has also directed attention to lethal excessive force against whites by police, and to the violent, military-style attacks on protests against police brutality commonly directed against minorities, occurring in stark contrast to how police routinely exercise restraint when dealing with armed, anti-government protestors who are white.

Some protests are not met with police brutality



This year's rapid shift from coverage of COVID-19 lockdown protestors confidently marching with guns into the Michigan statehouse in April, followed by the recent violent crackdown on unarmed protests against police brutality— as well as police attacks on journalists and medics — were all captured by smartphone users, creating evidence of unequal treatment that is impossible to ignore.

International audiences watching the treatment of civilians protesting police brutality in the United States are increasingly seeing conditions as being just as bad as China's attacks on citizen protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere. And in both countries, Apple faces the difficult task of working with governments and police to help solve crimes, stop fraud, investigate thefts, and secure users' privacy, while also facing the reality that those same governments are demanding dangerous encryption backdoors and other unconscionable requests to continue cooperation.

Ultimately, we have to demand and create a material change in how our fellow citizens are treated.

 

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AAPL hits all-time record high stock closing price of $331.50

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Following four months of coronavirus impact, Apple's stock closed at an all-time high on Friday, clocking in at $331.50 at the end of trading.

The new record comes just one week after Apple's stock price fully recovered from a coronavirus-related hit. It's been a tumultuous year for Apple as the company wasn't immune to a broad economic downturn amid the global health crisis.

Supply chain and demand issues in China, where COVID-19 originated, pushed Apple to warn investors on Feb. 17 that it would likely miss revenue guidance for the March quarter.

As the broader financial markets began plummeting in February and March amid lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, Apple's own price took a beating — reaching a low point of $224.37 on March 23.

Apple's share price started to recover in April, after supply and demand began normalizing in China and the rest of the world began transitioning to a new era of remote work and education. Shares of AAPL climbed back past $300 in early May, after a better-than-expected earnings report for the March quarter.

By late May, Apple's share price was back to pre-crisis levels. And, on Friday, the company's stock set an all-time high.

Many financial analysts believe Apple is well-positioned to ride out economic uncertainty in the current pandemic, with at least two analysts predicting that the Cupertino tech giant could be the first to hit a $2 trillion valuation within five years.

1965 px × 905 px

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iPhone Tracking

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iPhone looters find devices disabled, with a warning they’re being tracked

Apple has long used digital anti-theft measures in its stores.

The iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max.



Along with other retailers big and small, Apple Stores have been subject to looting by opportunists amid the ongoing protests around the United States. In response, Apple has again closed all of its stores in the US. Stores had only recently reopened after closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But looters who brought stolen iPhones home, or people who end up buying those phones in person-to-person transactions, are in for what may be a surprise: it appears that the stolen iPhones don't work and may even be tracked by Apple or authorities. This could pose a challenge for regular consumers who buy second-hand iPhones—as well as repair shops—in the coming weeks and months.

Individuals with iPhones allegedly looted from Apple stores found that the phones were automatically disabled and had messages like the following (via Twitter) displayed on-screen:

Please return to Apple Walnut Street. This device has been disabled and is being tracked. Local authorities will be alerted.

A few examples of these messages have surfaced on Reddit and Twitter over the past day or two. That said, we don't know how many iPhones have been taken from Apple Stores and put in circulation.

Apple has been known in the past to use special images of iOS on demo unit iPhones, and those demo iPhones have a sort of kill switch that disables the phones as soon as they are out of range of the store's Wi-Fi network. So none of this is surprising. Also, Apple already offers a service to users called FindMy that allows tracking of lost or stolen iPhones via the user's iCloud account. There's no apparent reason related tools and services couldn't be used by Apple itself.
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Apple sued for '$2 priceless trillion' following 2018 iPhone repair

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And with Apples cash stockpile ambulance chasers and shysters would fill up the store worse than Christmas season

With a market capitalization of $1.446 Trillion and $192.8 billion cash on hand, you know people are going to do stupid things in their greed for money.

A man has attempted to sue Apple, claiming that the company kept his iPhone after a repair, and used "special features" on his phone to develop features in iOS.

Filings on June 1 by Raevon Terrell Parker in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri accuse Apple of taking his iPhone away from him. Parker's centers around a repair of an iPhone in October 2018, but the claims quickly veer into unusual territory.

Parker asserts he went to the Saint Louis Galleria Apple Store to fix an issue with his smartphone, detailed in other supporting documents as an iPhone 7. The store staff fixed the iPhone, but Parker claims they "kept it by deceiving the plaintiff knowing that it was the first phone to have new features," and instead provided a replacement iPhone.

Parker explaining the reason for the lawsuit in his own words.




Related filings concerning an earlier attempt to sue Apple over the matter indicates a number of other issues Parker has with the repair, including the loss of phone settings, the "resetting of passwords," and redownloading App Store purchases.

Furthermore, the supposed "new features" seemingly includes having the iPhone set up to "bypass certain start-up load screen options," which enables the iPhones to "communicate with other devices faster and more accurately. A bolder claim in the earlier legal action includes a request for Parker to be compensated for the "discovery of the Group FaceTime feature."

These features apparently aided Apple in "the creation of iOS 12," which Parker believed he was due to be compensated over in the earlier lawsuit.

Parker's earlier valuation of items claimed under the previous lawsuit attempt.



The earlier filing, dated March 28, 2019, included a valuation of the iPhone 7 in question at $1 trillion, iOS 12 at $1 trillion, "Raevon Terrell Parker's mentality" as "priceless," and with a total amount claimed for materials of "$2 priceless trillion USD." A further $900 is charged for rental of the iPhone 7 by Apple, bringing the total claims amount to "$2 trillion and $900 USD and a priceless item."

The 2019 lawsuit was dismissed by the court in May 2019, after Apple successfully convinced a judge that the complaint failed to state a motion. For the newer lawsuit, Parker also oddly included a filing claiming that he owned the patents for "iOS 12.0.1 and later" and "iOS 13 and later."

As for relief, Parker again wants $1 trillion from Apple, "due to hospitalizations, travel, distress, humiliation, embarrassment, [and] defamation of character." Parker further suggests "I don't think that the plaintiff can be compensated for being labeled crazy."

At this time no court date has been set for the lawsuit to proceed.
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[sultrysandy]

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The Mac originally used Motorola 68K microprocessor, in 1994 The AIM Power PC, then 2006 changed to Intel.

It's been speculated for years Apple design it's own processors for Macs, and seems to be a popular speculation now.






Apple Plans to Announce Move to Its Own Mac Chips at WWDC

• Company readies Macs for next year without Intel processors
  
  
• Apple is holding virtual version of WWDC event week of June 22

Apple Inc. is preparing to announce a shift to its own main processors in Mac computers, replacing chips from Intel Corp., as early as this month at its annual developer conference, according to people familiar with the plans.

The company is holding WWDC the week of June 22. Unveiling the initiative, codenamed Kalamata, at the event would give outside developers time to adjust before new Macs roll out in 2021, the people said. Since the hardware transition is still months away, the timing of the announcement could change, they added, while asking not to be identified discussing private plans.

The new processors will be based on the same technology used in Apple-designed iPhone and iPad chips. However, future Macs will still run the macOS operating system rather than the iOS software on mobile devices from the company. Bloomberg News reported on Apple’s effort to move away from Intel earlier this year, and in 2018. Apple shares were up less than 1% Tuesday while Intel was down less than 1%.

Apple is using technology licensed from Arm Ltd., part of Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. This architecture is different from the underlying technology in Intel chips, so developers will need time to optimize their software for the new components. Cupertino, California-based Apple and Santa Clara-based Intel declined to comment.

This will be the first time in the 36-year history of the Mac that Apple-designed processors will power these machines. It has changed chips only two other times. In the early 1990s, Apple switched from Motorola processors to PowerPC. At WWDC in 2005, Steve Jobs announced a move from PowerPC to Intel, and Apple rolled out those first Intel-based Macs in January 2006. Like it did then, the company plans to eventually transition the entire Mac lineup to its Arm-based processors, including the priciest desktop computers, the people said.

Apple has about 10% of the PC market, so the change may not cut into Intel sales much. However, Macs are considered premium products. So if the company moves away from Intel for performance reasons it may prompt other PC makers to look at different options, too. Microsoft Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Lenovo Group Ltd. have already debuted laptops that run on Arm-based chips.

Apple’s chip-development group, led by Johny Srouji, decided to make the switch after Intel’s annual chip performance gains slowed. Apple engineers worried that sticking to Intel’s road map would delay or derail some future Macs, according to people familiar with the effort.

Inside Apple, tests of new Macs with the Arm-based chips have shown sizable improvements over Intel-powered versions, specifically in graphics performance and apps using artificial intelligence, the people said. Apple’s processors are also more power-efficient than Intel’s, which may mean thinner and lighter Mac laptops in the future.

Apple’s move would be a highlight of this year’s WWDC, which will be held online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of the fluid nature of the global health crisis and its impact on Apple’s product development, the timing of the chip announcement could change.

At the conference, Apple is also readying updates to its other operating systems -- iOS, iPadOS, tvOS and watchOS -- with changes to augmented-reality capabilities, deeper integration with outside apps and services, and improved Apple Watch fitness features. A big priority is improving the performance of its mobile software after last year’s release, iOS 13, suffered from several issues.

The company is working on at least three of its own Mac processors, known as systems-on-a-chip, with the first based on the A14 processor in the next iPhone. In addition to the main central processing unit, there will be a graphics processing unit and a Neural Engine for handling machine learning, a popular and powerful type of AI, the people said. In the past, Apple has made chips for specific Mac functions, such as security.

Intel has faced more competition as its lead in production technology -- a key way to improve semiconductor performance -- has slipped. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. makes processors for many of Intel’s rivals using a more advanced process.

TSMC will build the new Mac processors using a 5-nanometer production technique -- the same approach as for the next iPhones and iPad Pros. Intel rivals Qualcomm Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. also use TSMC to make their chips.

The Apple chip project has been in the works for several years and is considered one of the company’s most secretive efforts. In 2018, Apple successfully developed a Mac chip based on the iPad Pro’s processor for internal testing, giving the company confidence it could announce such a shift this year.
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Apple becomes first U.S. company to hit $1.5 trillion market valuation

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Apple on Wednesday became the first publicly traded U.S. company to hit a $1.5 trillion market capitalization, with shares of AAPL trading at $352.84 by the end of the day.

The Cupertino tech giant's valuation crossed the threshold during the day on June 10, before closing at a $1.53 trillion market capitalization by end of trading. Shares of Apple closed at $352.84, up 2% on the day. Market capitalization is the share price multiplied by the number of outstanding shares. By the last count, Apple has about 4.3 billion outstanding shares.

Apple was also the first U.S. company in history to hit a market valuation of $1 trillion — an achievement that it reached in August 2018.

The company's total count of shares has been sliding over the past few years due to aggressive stock buyback programs. The fewer number of shares are reflected in market capitalization calculations, however.

Apple's new milestone came after a strong performance earlier in the week that pushed AAPL to record highs.

All of this comes during a time of economic uncertainty for many due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. While Apple's stock price plunged earlier in the year, the company's road to recovery eventually saw AAPL shares regain its pre-crisis price in May.

According to some analyst predicitons, Apple also has a clear path ahead to becoming the first U.S. company to hit a $2 trillion milestone within the next few years.
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[sultrysandy]

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Nearly two years ago posted Repair 101 - Restart, post #30. Now it's someone you might consider an unlikely source

Feel if been saying longer than I've been a Geekette, if you've a question or a problem, ask your children. You may feel that they have no attention span, no experience, or whatever else. Children have the benefit of wanting to actually figure out how things work. And watch how they use their devices, they're the reason the word multitasking was created.
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Apple sued for allowing loot boxes in App Store

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Apple on Friday was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit targeting loot boxes in games and apps, a mechanism typically characterized by in-app purchases that present buyers with randomized digital rewards.

A complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges Apple is complicit in promoting gambling and addictive behavior by allowing developers to market apps and games with loot boxes on the App Store.

"Not unlike Big Tobacco's Joe Camel' advertising campaign, Apple relies on creating addictive behaviors in kids to generate huge profits for the Company," the complaint reads. "Over the last four years Defendant's App Store games have brought in billions of dollars, even though the vast majority of the games are free to download."

Loot boxes are broadly defined as in-app purchases that grant users rewards, boosts, costumes, skins, weapons, or other special items. Popular in games, loot boxes provide a randomized chance to gain premium items, a mechanic that some closely associate with gambling. Indeed, real money is spent to obtain these special goods, sometimes through an in-game currency system.

Apple is being targeted by the complaint because it profits from in-app purchases.

"A large percentage of Apple's revenues from App Store games come from the in-game purchases of what are known in the gaming industry as loot boxes' or loot crates,'" the lawsuit alleges. "Dozens (if not hundreds) of App Store games rely on some form of Loot Box or similar gambling mechanism to generate billions of dollars, much of it from kids."

Named plaintiff Rebecca Taylor claims her son, "C.T.," spent at least $25 in iTunes gift cards and his parents' money on loot boxes for Supercell's Brawl Stars. C.T. continues to have access to the iPhone and iPad on which Brawl Stars and other "freemium" games are installed. The complaint does not address Apple's parental control and App Store features that restrict minors from purchasing digital content without a parent's permission.

Also mentioned in the complaint are Mario Kart Tour, FIFA Soccer, and Roblox, which along with Brawl Stars constitute some of the most popular games on iOS.

Apple is also dinged for not explicitly noting the inclusion of loot boxes in App Store descriptions and allowing developers to age rate their own products.

"Thus, there is no notice - and no requirement of any notice by Apple - to the parent or the child that a game contains Loot Boxes or other gambling mechanisms," the complaint reads.

In sum, plaintiffs conclude loot boxes constitute gambling and are therefore in violation of California law.

Complainants seek class status, restitution and disgorgement of the revenues wrongfully retained as a result of Apple's allegedly wrongful conduct, an injunction against further violations and court fees.

The lawsuit is the latest development in a long-running debate over loot boxes, in-game purchases and microtransactions. In 2019, a proposed Senate bill called the ""Protecting Children From Abusive Games Act" sought to ban loot boxes, though the statute is not expected to gain traction.


Case 5:20-cv-03906 Document 1 Filed 06/12/20 Pages 32
https://www.scribd.com/embeds/465435971/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-75UgyQWNT5NtoA6JQrUj
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Ranosmware Attacks

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Rushing to at least post a bit of this before calling it a night and launching new thread Monday morning.


Back in the olden days there were computer viruses, then there were computer hackers. There are all sorts of scams to protect people or to take their money.More common are adware, rogue software, scareware, spyware, and ransomware. And this is on top of how you're being spied on, data collected, minded, and harvested.


Attempting to quickly say something about Ransomware. If you're not familiar. basically your device is infected, and unless you pay, everything is encrypted and you've lost access to it.


If you don't know, companies aren't required to inform the public or customers when they systems are infected. But the government is, and it's more common than you think. 2018 City of Atlanta's computer systems hostage. 2019 Baltimore were taken down. 2019 Georgia courts were hit. Riviera Beach and Lake City in Florida also 2019. Louisiana declared state of emergency after ransomware attacks. August 2019 twenty-thee cities were hit simultaneously during a weekend. Think you get the idea
I"m pretty boring keeping up with this crap instead of the fun you have huh? And working with it is no stroll through the park either.



What happened?

In 2019, the U.S. was hit by an unprecedented and unrelenting barrage of ransomware attacks that impacted at least 966 government agencies, educational establishments and healthcare providers at a potential cost in excess of $7.5 billion. The impacted organizations included:

113 state and municipal governments and agencies.

764 healthcare providers.

89 universities, colleges and school districts, with operations at up to 1,233 individual schools potentially affected.



The incidents were not simply expensive inconveniences; the disruption they caused put people’s health, safety and lives at risk.

• Emergency patients had to be redirected to other hospitals.
  
  
• Medical records were inaccessible and, in some cases, permanently lost.
  
  
• Surgical procedures were canceled, tests were postponed and admissions halted.
  
  
• 911 services were interrupted.
  
  
• Dispatch centres had to rely on printed maps and paper logs to keep track of emergency responders in the field.
  
  
• Police were locked out of background check systems and unable to access details about criminal histories or active warrants.
  
  
• Surveillance systems went offline.
  
  
• Badge scanners and building access systems ceased to work.
  
  
• Jail doors could not be remotely opened.
  
  
• Schools could not access data about students’ medications or allergies.

What was the cost?

Due to the lack of publicly available data, it is not possible to accurately estimate the cost of these incidents. Perhaps the best indication of the potential cost comes from a statement made by Winnebago County’s Chief Information Officer, Gus Gentner, in September: “Statistics let us know that the average ransomware incident costs $8.1 million and 287 days to recover.”



Can discuss this further, attempt to answer questions, and so on if someone is interested.
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[sultrysandy]

Apple: Consumers, advertisers spent $519 billion through apps in 2019

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App Store generated half a trillion dollars in 2019, Apple says

An independent economic study found that the App Store supported $519 billion in commerce throughout 2019, Apple announced on Monday.

According to the study, carried out by economists at the Analysis Group, direct payments made to app developers only accounted for a fraction of total billings and sales in the App Store economy.

Throughout 2019, Apple made $155 billion direct payments to developers through the App Store. While substantial, the authors of the study note that direct monetization "significantly underestimates the size of the Apple App Store ecosystem."

For example, physical goods and services facilitated by mobile apps accounted for $413 billion of the $519 billion that the App Store supported in 2019. That category further breaks down into specific subsections, such as:

• Retail apps, which include traditional stores like Target and physical good marketplaces like Etsy, accounted for $413 billion in sales.
  
  
• Travel apps, like those from airlines or hotel booking sites, clocked in with $57 billion in sales.
  
  
• Ride-sharing apps comprised $40 billion of the m-commerce category.
  
  
• Food delivery apps made up $31 billion of the total amount
  
  
• Grocery apps, which are their own category, generated $14 billion.

Digital goods and services made up $61 billion of the 2019 total. That's a wide-ranging category that includes games, music and video streaming apps, ebook platforms, dating services, and more.

In-app advertising accounted for a similar chunk with $45 billion, 44% of which came from ads shown in games.

The Analysis Group relied on the proportion of use that occurs on apps to estimate sales both on and outside of the App Store. That's because direct billings are a reliable indication of total sales generated by so-called "multi-platform apps."

Although the study didn't cover a time period impacted by coronavirus, Apple notes that the global health crisis has changed how people interact with their devices.

"In a challenging and unsettled time, the App Store provides enduring opportunities for entrepreneurship, health and well-being, education, and job creation, helping people adapt quickly to a changing world," Apple CEO Tim Cook said.

Social media apps, business and education platforms, and food and grocery delivery services have all seen a surge in demand and usage during COVID-19 pandemic. Many traditional retailers are also turning to mobile commerce.

Signs of that boom are already apparent, with investment bank Morgan Stanley tracking 39% year-over-year net revenue growth in May 2020.

During its April 30 earnings call, Apple reported that the App Store hit all-time revenue records for the second quarter and that third-party paid subscriptions grew more than 40% from the year before.

The App Store launched in July 2008, and nearly 12 years later, it's become one of the most influential app marketplaces available in 175 countries across the globe.

"We're committed to doing even more to support and nurture the global App Store community — from one-developer shops in nearly every country to businesses that employ thousands of workers — as it continues to foster innovation, create jobs, and propel economic growth for the future," Cook said.
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[sultrysandy]

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Was like a sign to post this, but don't belive she even looks at this thread.


How your iPhone & iPad can make you a better cook

Your iPhone or iPad can be more than just a search engine for recipes. There are countless ways that your Apple device can help make you a better cook.

Not talking downloading a basic recipe app, giving ourselves a pat on the back, and going on our way. Recipe apps are great but are so common that just discovering new recipes isn't enough to move the needle in terms of the iPhone providing useful while cooking and baking.

While there are many genuinely useful uses for iPhones or iPads in the kitchen, there are also ways that it becomes less than useful and simply unnecessary. Just because a juicer tacks on iPhone connectivity doesn't mean it is a good thing.

This is focusing on is the unique or hardware-connected ways that the iPhone can make a significant difference over its non-connected, non-smart counterparts.

There are generally two ways that iPhone can assist you in the kitchen.



iPhone and appcessories

There are dubious, annoying, and unnecessary ways that manufacturers attempt to drive sales by integrating some form of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection into their kitchen gadgets. In testing of different smart home cooking gadgets, there are a few that stuck out and turn to time and time again.

One of the most growing categories is sous vide. Sous vide is a french style of cooking that immerses your food — often meat — in a precisely heated water bath. The water is moved and heated by a sous vide device. These immersion circulators will keep the water heated to your desired cooking temperature.

Cooking sous vide with the Joule


When grilling, a lot of the moisture in the meat is lost and much of the outside of the meat is overcooked while waiting for the center to get to its perfect doneness. Think a steak. You are able to dial in the exact temperature for mid-rare, cook it to ensure the entire steak, inside to out, is all the exact same temperature before searing the outside for color and flavor for just a few seconds.

It makes a big difference in how juicy and flavorful your food can be. Especially if you are tossing some herbs or other seasonings in the sous vide bag as well.

For some, manually controlling the sous vide and setting a timer is enough, but for some users, the iPhone can help out. One of the more popular sous video machines is the Joule. It is Wi-Fi connected so you can monitor from anywhere, but the setup and recipes are what help the most.

Finding cooking time using the Joule app



You are able to tell the app what piece of meat you are cooking, if it is fresh or frozen, how thick it is, and how done you want it cooked. The app will then tell you exactly how long you need to cook. it takes out all of the guesswork and ensures you don't waste time cooking if you've already reached temp.

Anova, another popular line, can also guide you through the recipes and set the sous vide machines appropriately though the steps. These apps also come with a healthy supply of recipes for uncommon sous vide techniques such as how to make creme brule via the water bath method.

Traeger Ironwood 885 WiFire connected grill and smoker



Another connected accessory we've started to rely on is our Traeger WiFire connected grill and smoker. With a regular grill, your cook times are shorter and connectivity isn't as crucial., but as you encroach on smoker territory, the length of a cook can wildly expand. Not everyone can stick nearby for a ten-hour pork shoulder smoke session.

With its WiFire technology, the entire grill can come to your fingertips. You can see the temperature of the grill, the temperature of what you're cooking, any timers or recipes you're following, and how much fuel you have remaining.

You can also control the grill, including shutting it down and adjusting the temperature.

For example, there's a thing called a "stall" in the middle of a long cook where your lump of meat isn't increasing in temperature. You may need to increase the temperature to push past the stall, to get dinner on the table before 2 A.M. You can do this from your phone, remotely.

Or, perhaps your pork has reached temp earlier than anticipated. You can drop the Traeger grill to its warming mode to not burn through your fuel or overcook your food.

These are genuinely useful features for a smoker that can help elevate your food with minimal effort.

Temperature, as you can tell, is a good tool to have remotely on your phone based on the Traeger WiFire series (Limited time deal TFB57PZBO Pro Series 22 at Amazon) or the sous vide cookers. But those tend to be for longer cook times. Meater is another useful option for shorter cook times without needing new appliances.

Meater wireless probe


Meater, which comes in a two-probe or four-probe configuration, is a great way to monitor steaks, burgers, chicken, or other meat while cooking. These probes are inserted into the food which then connects to the Meater dock.

This Meater dock is what connects them to Wi-Fi and to your phone. Each probe can be set to a different desired temperature so while cooking steaks, three can be mid-rare while one is a more mid-well. Between different desired temperatures and different thicknesses and hotspots on the cooking surface, this is immensely more practical and reduces the guesswork.

This frees you up to not stand over those steaks while preparing the rest of the meal.


Apps that matter

There is no shortage of great and useful cooking apps on the iPhone and iPad. Can't expect to cover even half of the worthwhile options, but here are just a few you can rely on and why.

paprika 3 for iPhone



Paprika, is a great recipe management app. But what really clinches it for us as a favorite is its ability to sync between devices and clip recipes directly from online sources. This lets you nab a recipe from Epicurious, Bon Appetit, or even random one-off blogs and save them to one central database.

All your recipes can be sorted and categorized, images can be added, and items can be quickly added to a shopping list.

It makes the entire process simple, from finding and saving a recipe, to acquiring all the ingredients, to making it step-by-step, to organizing and rating it for later an absolute breeze. Cook using your iPad but shop using your iPhone, so that synchronization between devices is also key.

Mixel, while not just cooking, is another favorite app. This is designed for mixed drinks and cocktails. It is able to catalog your bar's inventory and produce a list of possible drinks that can be concocted based on those ingredients.

Mixel for iPhone



It has a gorgeous, retro design and a ton of new and classic drink recipes to try. Save your favorite drinks, view your spirits, get information on different ingredients, and more without resorting to multiple apps. And what well-cooked meal is complete without a good cocktail.

The last app turn to most often, is Just Timers. It is a simple premise. Within iOS, you lack the ability to set multiple timers at once. In any busy kitchen, one timer is often not going to cut it. Just Timers is what it sounds — just timers. Multiple. Fast-paced kitchens from catering to large family meals and at any given time there are several things cooking at once that need to be kept track of.

Adding a timer in Just Timers



Used to use an analog timer that had multiple lines for up to four timers able to be set at once. But these normal timers weren't easy to remember which went to which and still required manual programming. Just Timers ties into Siri Shortcuts, allowing you to set these timers hands-free which is great when you're busy or your hands are just dirty. Plus, they can be labeled so you know what each timer is counting down for.

As an added bonus, Just Timers works on Apple Watch so you can keep everything right on your wrist.
Get cooking

Needless to say, this is just the start of what the iPhone or iPad can do in the kitchen.

Have seen many other iPhone-connected thermometers, digital scales that guide you through the recipes, meal planning companion apps like Crouton, and more.

When deciding what will and won't be helpful, use your head. Some of this may not be suited for your workflow while others may be more suited. There is no global rule on what works for you but that is why it is great that the iPhone is so versatile. It can be tailored to work with you, rather than you bending to work with it.






yesterday was ransomware, today cooking, tomorrow want to do 5G. I"m all over the damn place.
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[sultrysandy]

Apple in-store Mac trade-in program officially launches in U.S., Canada

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Last evening wanted to post about 5G today, then today there's: CIA's breach with theft of their hacking tools, Justice Dpt Section 230, but decided on Mac trade in so at least something is posted today.

Mac owners can now take their devices to their preferred Apple Store to receive credit toward a new purchase or to cash it out for an Apple gift card.

Announced earlier in June, Apple's official launch of its Mac trade-in program has officially started.

The program will allow customers to trade in older Mac devices in return for credit toward a new purchase. While in-store trade-ins of products like iPhones and Apple Watches have been available for some time, Mac trade-ins were previously restricted to an online program.

While the program launched in the U.S. and Canada as of June 17, it may not have rolled out in all areas. Encourage anyone interested in trading in their Mac in-store to call ahead to make sure your device will be accepted.

As the coronavirus pandemic is ongoing, it may be worth checking whether your Apple Store is fully open, serving customers by appointment only, providing curbside-only support, or closed.
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[sultrysandy]

Apple App Store faces complaints from Basecamp, others, EU probe

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Why Apple’s App Store is under fire



Apple’s business practices are under new scrutiny as officials in Europe announced an investigation this week into whether the App Store — the only way for most people to install apps on an iPhone — violates EU competition rules.

At the same time, top app makers, including Match Group, which makes dating app Tinder, and Epic Games, maker of the popular game Fortnite, criticized Apple over longstanding App Store policies, including the company’s 30% cut of digital purchases, and its proclivity to release software that competes with third-party apps.

Scores of smaller developers also griped on social media about Apple’s App Store rules, following loud complaints by David Hansson, CTO of Basecamp, a private enterprise software developer. Hansson said on Twitter that Apple rejected an update to Basecamp’s new email app, Hey, because of an Apple requirement that certain apps must allow users to pay for subscription services through the app. If implemented, Apple would take 15% to 30% of the revenue from any user who signed up through the app.

“Apple squeezes industries like e-books, music and video streaming, cloud storage, gaming and online dating for 30% of their revenue, which is all the more alarming when Apple then enters that space, as we’ve repeatedly seen. We’re acutely aware of their power over us,” a Match Group representative said in an email.

The App Store is one of Apple’s most important services, a fast-growing unit that brought in over $46 billion in 2019, accounting for nearly 18% of the company’s revenue. Investors see the services business as a growth engine for Apple, and the company has set a public target of $50 billion in services sales this year. Apple doesn’t break out how much of its services revenue comes from the App Store.

“One thing that has come out in recent days is how aggressively Apple is pushing people towards in-app purchases,” said Matt Ronge, CEO of Astropad, which makes software and hardware that enables iPads to be used as a second monitor or drawing tablet. “Seems to me it’s all about that services narrative. And a lot of that growth is from subscription revenue on the App Store.”


What developers are upset about

The App Store is the only way for most users to install software on an iPhone.

In order for a developer or company to update an app on the platform, it has to go through a process called App Review. An Apple employee checks the app against a lengthy list of “guidelines” and, often within minutes, makes a decision whether the update is approved or whether the app maker needs to make changes, as CNBC previously reported.

There are three primary issues developers say they have with the App Store:

Opaque review process. Developers say decisions made during App Review can seem arbitrary, and apps are often removed entirely from Apple’s platform over what developers characterize as minor or unfair reasons. In addition, it can be hard to communicate with Apple representatives and get reinstated.

Basecamp’s Hansson had previously testified at a congressional hearing that app developers live in fear of an arbitrary Apple rejection.

The cut. Apple takes 30% cut of paid apps and in-app purchases. The cut for paid subscriptions drop to 15% after a year. Developers say Apple’s take is excessive and makes their own businesses significantly less profitable.

In its most recent annual filing, Apple said it believes that people buy Apple computers based on the availability of third-party software and noted that developers can stop making software for Apple products if it seems less expensive or more lucrative to develop for competing operating systems such as Google’s Android or Microsoft Windows.

Unfair competition. Software makers also worry that Apple could use data about what is trending on the App Store to create competing Apple apps or features. Once those Apple features are introduced, they often use access to core parts of Apple operating systems that developers don’t have access to, developers allege. Apple introduces features that compete with existing software regularly enough that there’s a nickname for it — “Sherlocking.” It’s a reference to a search tool called Sherlock, which Apple introduced for Macs in 1998, that competed with a third-party product called Watson.

Ronge said Astropad’s product was “Sherlocked” last year when Apple introduced a competing product, Sidecar, as part of its MacOS operating system, despite years of friendly relations between Astropad and Apple’s developer relations department. Because Sidecar is built into the operating system and uses system functions that Astropad does not have access to, it is hard to compete with Apple, Ronge says.

This week, Astropad published a blog post called “Dear Apple” suggesting that Apple gives users the ability to set default apps, offer alternative payment methods that don’t take a 30% cut, and allow some apps to be “sideloaded,” or installed in a way that doesn’t involve the App Store approval process.


Apple vs the world

Apple argues that its close control over the App Store enables the company to make sure software running on iPhones is safe from a security perspective. It also notes that lots of companies make money on the App Store — both directly from Apple-facilitated payments, as well as through general commerce that happens through apps.

“We follow the law in everything we do and we embrace competition at every stage because we believe it pushes us to deliver even better results,” an Apple spokesman said in a statement.

“It’s disappointing the European Commission is advancing baseless complaints from a handful of companies who simply want a free ride, and don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else. We don’t think that’s right — we want to maintain a level playing field where anyone with determination and a great idea can succeed,” the statement continued.

Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, which pays Apple a 30% cut of digital products inside the hit game Fortnite for iPhones, reacted: “Here Apple speaks of a level playing field. To me, this means: All iOS developers are free to process payments directly, all users are free to install software from any source.”

Antitrust pressure over the App Store is building in the United States, too. The House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel is working to get Apple CEO Tim Cook to testify on competition topics alongside chief executives from Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet, according to Politico.

The EU probe is likely a bigger concern for Apple than the “saber-rattling” in the House of Representatives, unless new antitrust litigation is passed, said Chris Sagers, professor of antitrust law at Cleveland State University. One issue for any potential antitrust case against Apple in the United States is that the iPhone doesn’t appear to have dominant market share against Google’s Android — only about 46% of the smartphones sold in the U.S. in the first quarter were Apple’s, according to Counterpoint Research. Google’s Google Play app store also takes a 30% cut of digital purchases.

“The landscape is the same as it has been for the past five or seven years in that Apple is at some risk of the ‘Big Case,’ which would be a monopolization case with the potential to significantly disrupt the company. But I think the risk of that is the same now as it has been for a long time, and it’s not really a very large risk in the United States,” Sagers said.

The tension is coming at a particularly unfortunate time for Apple: The company’s annual software development conference, WWDC, starts next week and will take the form of a series of videos and Cisco WebEx calls because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ronge said he will be monitoring WWDC for Mac news, and that his company will continue to maintain its Apple-oriented products. But his company no longer prioritizes Apple development. Astropad’s big launch planned for this year is Windows support.
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[sultrysandy]

New Mac malware uses 'novel' tactic to bypass macOS Catalina security

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Third post in approximately twelve hours, yet 5G, CIA, and Section 230 are still waiting to be posted.

Security researchers at antivirus firm Intego have discovered a new Mac malware in the wild that tricks users into bypassing modern macOS app security protections.

In macOS Catalina, Apple introduced new app notarization requirements. The features, baked in Gatekeeper, discourage users from opening unverified apps — requiring malware authors to get more creative with their tactics.

As an example, Intego researchers have discovered a new Trojan horse malware actively spreading in the wild via poisoned Google search results that tricks users into bypassing those protections themselves.

The malware is delivered as a .dmg disk image masquerading as an Adobe Flash installer. But once it's mounted on a user's machine, it displays instructions guiding users through the malicious installation process.

The normal prompt that appears when an unverified button is clicked. Credit: Intego



In a tactic described by Intego as "novel," the malware asks users to right-click and open the malware instead of double-clicking it. Per macOS Catalina Gatekeeper settings, this displays a dialogue box that has an "Open" button. Normally, when clicking an unverified file, Apple doesn't allow users to open them so conveniently.

Right-clicking and opening a file allows users to run unverified software more easily. Credit: Intego



Normally, macOS discourages users from opening unverified apps by making the process more difficult. Specifically, forcing users to head into System Preferences to override Gatekeeper. The strategy also saves bad actors from signing up for an Apple Developer account or hijacking an existing one.

Once users actually open the installer app, it runs a bash shell script and extracts a password-protected .zip file that contains a more traditional malicious app bundle. Although it initially installs a legitimate version of Flash, Intego notes that it can also be used to download "any other Mac malware or adware package."

Interestingly, the malware has been spread via Google search results that redirect users to malicious webpages claiming that a browser's Flash Player is out of date. Intego added that the malware has, thus far, been able to avoid detection by most antivirus software.

The actual malicious portions of the malware are re-engineered variants of past macOS Trojans, such as Shlayer or Bundlore. Intego also spotted similar security-evading malware in 2019.


Who's at risk and how to avoid it

Even though Adobe Flash player will officially reach its end of life on Dec. 31, 2020, Intego notes that "outdated Flash" malware tends to be pretty successful. The aforementioned Shlayer Trojan, for example, infects about one in 10 Mac users.

Since the malware is actively spreading via Google search results, the risk for compromise is a bit higher. Intego notes that it appears when users search for the exact titles of YouTube videos.

Users can avoid this malware by only clicking on links that they absolutely trust. If any website asks you to download something unsolicited, get out of there.

Indicators of compromise can include the following apps: flashInstaller.dmv in Downloads; a FlashInstaller.zip file or a file named "Installer" in a subfolder in private/var/folders.

Intego notes that several domains — including youdontcare.com, display.monster, yougotupdated.com and installerapi.com — have been associated with this campaign. Any traffic to or from these domains "should be considered a possible sign of an infection," the researchers said.
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[sultrysandy]

European Commission launches antitrust probes over Apple's App Store and Apple Pay

The EU's antitrust authorities has officially launched two investigations into Apple, specifically surrounding the App Store and with Apple Pay.

Apple is now facing formal investigation into alleged anticompetitive practices over both the App Store and Apple Pay. The European Union's antitrust authority has announced the two conduct investigations, and this is the start of a process that potentially could lead to Apple being fined up to 10% of its annual revenue.

"It appears that Apple sets the conditions on how Apple Pay should be used in merchants' apps and websites," said EU Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager in a statement. "It also reserves the "tap and go" functionality of iPhones to Apple Pay."

"It is important that Apple's measures do not deny consumers the benefits of new payment technologies, including better choice, quality, innovation and competitive prices," she continued. "I have therefore decided to take a close look at Apple's practices regarding Apple Pay and their impact on competition."

In a separate announcement about the App Store investigation, Vestager said that Apple appears to have created a "gatekeeper" role for itself regarding "the distribution of apps and content to users of Apple's popular devices."

"We need to ensure that Apple's rules do not distort competition in markets where Apple is competing with other app developers, for example with its music streaming service Apple Music or with Apple Books," she said.

Apple has responded to the investigation with a very brief statement, critical of the complainants and the European Commission itself.

"It is disappointing the European Commission is advancing baseless complaints from a handful of companies who simply want a free ride, and don't want to play by the same rules as everyone else," Apple said to AppleInsider and other venues.

These two probes follow on from complaints by Spotify that Apple allegedly employs restrictive and anticompetitive rules for developers on the App Store. Spotify filed its complaint in 2019 and Apple has publicly denied its accusations. That Spotify complaint has most recently been followed by the Japanese retail firm Rakuten, which has now made an antitrust complaint to the EU against Apple.

The EU has not announced any timescale for the investigations, and together with any possibly court cases, the probes are likely to take several years.
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