Innholdsfortegnelse for #664 i AppleMagazine

Apple has announced the Bay Area Housing Innovation Fund, a new initiative aimed at creating more affordable homes in the San Francisco area. This marks a significant phase in Apple’s ongoing effort to address the California housing crisis, which has seen many residents unable to afford living in the communities they grew up in. APPLE’S $2.5 BILLION AFFORDABLE HOMES INITIATIVE In 2019, Apple committed $2.5 billion to a comprehensive plan designed to tackle the housing crisis. With soaring costs for renters and potential homebuyers, affordable housing hasn’t kept pace with the region’s growth. Essential community members like teachers, firefighters, first responders, and service workers are increasingly forced to leave their long-time communities due to unaffordable housing prices. BAY AREA HOUSING INNOVATION FUND Out of the $2.5 billion commitment, Apple allocated…

Billionaire Elon Musk says he’s moving the headquarters of SpaceX and social media company X to Texas from California. Musk posted on X this week that he plans on moving SpaceX from Hawthorne, California to Starbase, Texas. X.com (former Twitter) will move to Austin from San Francisco. He called a new law signed Monday by California Gov. Gavin Newsom that bars school districts from requiring staff to notify parents of their child’s gender identification change the “final straw.” “I did make it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children,” Musk wrote. Tesla, where Musk is CEO, moved its corporate headquarters to Austin from Palo Alto, California in 2021. Musk has also said…

California will have to build public charging stations at an unprecedented — and some experts say unrealistic — pace to meet the needs of the 7 million electric cars expected on its roads in less than seven years. The sheer scale of the buildout has alarmed many experts and lawmakers, who fear that the state won’t be prepared as Californians purchase more electric cars. A million public chargers are needed in California by the end of 2030, according to the state’s projections — almost 10 times more than the number available to drivers in December. To meet that target, 129,000 new stations — more than seven times the current pace — must be built every year for the next seven years. Then the pace would have to accelerate again to…

The data of nearly all customers of the telecommunications giant AT&T was downloaded from a third-party platform in a security breach, the company said last weekend, as cyberattacks against businesses, schools and health systems continue to spread globally. The breach, which took place in April of this year but mostly involved data from 2022, hit AT&T’s cellular customers and customers of mobile virtual network operators using AT&T’s wireless network, as well as landline customers who interacted with those cellular numbers. Approximately 109 million customer accounts were impacted, according to AT&T, which said that it currently doesn’t believe that the data is publicly available. “The data does not contain the content of calls or texts, personal information such as Social Security numbers, dates of birth, or other personally identifiable information,” AT&T…

Apple has reportedly enlisted Vietnamese supplier Sunny Optical to deliver a new compact camera module (CCM) for its MacBooks starting next year. This module is anticipated to debut in the M5 MacBook Pro by late 2025. This decision is notable given that Apple previously canceled iPhone lens orders from Sunny Optical due to production issues. Sunny Optical had supplied iPhone lenses to Apple until unspecified production problems led to the termination of their contract. However, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Sunny Optical has now regained Apple’s business. “My latest survey indicates that starting from 2H24, iPhone orders will gradually return to Sunny Optical due to the company’s continuous production improvement and communication with Apple,” Kuo noted. In addition to iPhone lenses, Sunny Optical will be producing CCMs for upcoming MacBook…

Apple continues to innovate and enhance its Apple Watch operating system, and watchOS 11 is no exception. Packed with new features, improvements, and a glimpse into the future of wearable technology, watchOS 11 is set to redefine how users interact with their Apple Watch - including integrating advanced Apple Intelligence into the wearable ecosystem. PACKED WITH FEATURES The truth is that watchOS updates are never quite as exciting as macOS or iOS - the screen real estate means that even significant changes often feel less impactful. But that’s not to say that this year’s updates aren’t significant. Indeed, watchOS 11 introduces an upgraded Smart Stack that includes new widgets such as Shazam, Photos, and Distance. The Smart Stack dynamically suggests widgets based on time, date, location, and daily routines ensuring…

In the race to stay ahead in artificial intelligence, the biggest technology companies are swallowing up the talent and products of innovative AI startups without formally acquiring them. Now three members of the U.S. Senate are calling for an investigation. San Francisco-based Adept announced a deal late last month that will send its CEO and key employees to Amazon and give the e-commerce giant a license to Adept’s AI systems and datasets. Some call it a “reverse acqui-hire.” Others call it poaching. Whatever it’s called, it’s alarming to some in Washington who see it as an attempt to bypass U.S. laws that protect against monopolies. “I’m very concerned about the massive consolidation that’s going on in AI,” U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, told. “The technical lingo is ‘up…

TikTok owner ByteDance can’t avoid the bloc’s crackdown on digital giants, a European Union court said Wednesday in a decision that found the video sharing platform falls under a new law that also covers Apple, Google and Microsoft. The EU’s General Court rejected ByteDance’s legal challenge against being classed as an online “gatekeeper” that has to comply with extra obligations under the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Markets Act. The rulebook, also known as the DMA, took effect this year and seeks to counter the dominance of Big Tech companies and make online competition fairer by giving consumers more choice. TikTok had argued that it wasn’t a gatekeeper but was playing the role of a new competitor in social media taking on entrenched players like Facebook and Instagram owner Meta. The judges,…

One Monday morning in May, I woke up and grabbed my cell phone to read the news and scroll through memes. But it was out of cell service. I couldn’t make calls or texts. That, though, turned out to be the least of my problems. Using my home Wi-Fi connection, I checked my email and discovered a notification that $20,000 was being transferred from my credit card to an unfamiliar Discover Bank account. I thwarted that transfer and reported the cell phone issues, but my nightmare was just starting. Days later, someone managed to transfer $19,000 from my credit card to the same strange bank account. I was the victim of a type of fraud known as port-out hijacking, also called SIM-swapping. It’s a less-common form of identity theft. New…

Apple has once again delayed its plan to implement resin-coated copper (RCC) components in future iPhones, according to Ming-Chi Kuo. Initially set for the iPhone 16, then pushed to the iPhone 17, the change is now postponed indefinitely. Kuo’s initial report last October detailed that RCC technology could thin the iPhone’s mainboard, creating more internal space and simplifying the drilling process since it is fiberglass-free. However, challenges regarding the durability and fragility of RCC have hindered its adoption. “Due to the inability to meet Apple’s high-quality requirements, the new iPhone 17 in 2025 will not use RCC as the PCB motherboard material,” Kuo stated in a recent social media update. If Apple manages to switch to RCC, the change wouldn’t be noticeable to users directly but would allow for more…

SIM-swapping is a growing form of identity theft that goes beyond hacking into an email or social media account. In this case, the thieves take over your phone number. Any calls or texts go to them, not to you. Any protections consumers enabled to secure access to their financial accounts, such as two-factor authentication texts, now can aid attackers and lock out owners. Experts say these scams will only increase and become more sophisticated, while the data show they are on the rise. The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center reports that SIM-swapping complaints have increased more than 400% from 2018 to 2021, with associated personal losses estimated to be more than $68 million. Rachel Tobac, CEO of online security company SocialProof Security, says the numbers are probably a vast underestimate…

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Hong Kong’s government is testing the city’s own ChatGPT -style tool for its employees, with plans to eventually make it available to the public, its innovation minister said after OpenAI took extra steps to block access from the city and other unsupported regions. Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong said on a Saturday radio show that his bureau was trying out the artificial intelligence program, called “document editing co-pilot application for civil servants,” to further improve its capabilities. He plans to have it available for the rest of the government this year. The program was developed by a generative AI research and development center led by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in collaboration with several other universities. The system’s writing assistance functions could help draft,…