The European Commission designated Apple as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act for its iOS and iPadOS platforms, as well as its App Store and its Safari browser. VisionOS is nowhere in that list, but Apple is getting ahead of the commission this time and has announced that apps for the headset distributed on the App Store in the EU can offer alternative payment options. As 9to5Mac notes, Apple made the announcement just before the Vision Pro is released in the region — the headset will be available in France and Germany starting on July 12.
For developers to be able to offer alternative payment methods outside of the App Store, visionOS version 1.2 is required. Developers can already offer alternative payment solutions on Apple's other platforms in the EU, and in those cases, users are redirected to a third-party provider or a website to pay for their purchase or subscription. Chances are, that's also how it's going to work for the headset.
A few days ago, European Union officials said Apple breached DMA rules because there was nothing in its updated terms that allows developers to tell users how much less they could pay if they choose to use the alternative payment options they offer. Authorities started investigating Apple over its potential violation of the DMA's anti-steering rules back in March. The results they released were merely preliminary findings, but if Apple is found guilty, the company may have to pay a fine worth up to 10 percent of its global annual revenue, or tens of billions of dollars.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-says-vision-pro-will-allow-alternate-payment-methods-in-the-eu-143038469.html?src=rss
There's good news for anyone shopping early Prime Day deals. The 13-inch iPad Air with the M2 chip is available for a record-low price ahead of Amazon Prime Day. Our choice for 2024's best overall iPad is down to $749 from $799 for the 128GB model. The sale is running on the Blue, Purple and Starlight models, but the Space Gray option is only $769.
Apple released its 13-inch iPad Air with the M2 chip earlier this year and we're big fans. We gave it a 91 in our review thanks to its great mix of features for the money. For starters, it's the first 13-inch iPad that you don't have to shell out Pro money to get. It offers a 60Hz LCD display, a USB-C port and that M2 chip. The chip means it will likely be compatible with upcoming Apple updates and features for quite some time. Other changes include the front camera existing in landscape and compatibility with a new Apple Pencil Pro.
If you're in the market for something a bit cheaper then check out the 11-inch iPad Air with an M2 chip. It has almost the same features as its larger counterpart (the brightness rating is slightly lower) but is available for $559, down from $599 — a seven percent discount.
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/this-early-prime-day-deal-on-the-13-inch-ipad-air-m2-is-down-to-a-record-low-price-133619864.html?src=rss
I went to a museum recently that had a range of iPods and early generation iPhones on display — it was horrifying. Now, Apple is responsible for my shock, thanks to the new items added its vintage and obsolete products list on July 1. The tech giant has put the first generation HomePod on its list of vintage products. Apple typically labels a product as "vintage" if its been out of distribution for at least five years — however, Apple only discontinued the HomePod three years ago. These products can still get repaired, as long as parts are available.
Apple first announced the HomePod in June 2017 and released it the following February for $349. The device offered an A8 chip, high-quality audio and compatibility with Apple's ecosystem, such as AirPlay.
The first-gen HomePod isn't the only notable item added to the vintage list. Apple has declared its original AirPods as a vintage commodity. AirPods first came on the scene in December 2016 for $159 and has since evolved into multiple generations and a Pro model. After seven years, Apple will label both the first-gen HomePod and AirPods as obsolete, meaning the company discontinues all hardware service for them.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-now-considers-its-first-homepod-to-be-vintage-133039168.html?src=rss
Ever since Apple’s MacBooks switched to the company’s homegrown M-series chips, Windows users have wondered when a similar revolution would happen to their machines. To Microsoft’s credit, it hasn’t been for a lack of trying. Way back in 2012, the company released the Surface RT with an Arm-based processor, which is the same architecture used in Apple’s silicon. Unfortunately, a tiny app library, sluggish performance and limited software compatibility made using one full-time kind of frustrating. Then in 2017, Microsoft renewed its efforts with Windows on Snapdragon. This led to systems like the Surface Pro X, which sported gorgeous hardware that was once again marred by lackluster processing power and spotty software support.
But as the old adage goes: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And after more than a decade of starts and stumbles, Microsoft has done it. By combining the powerful Oryon cores in Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips with its new Prism emulator, Microsoft has turned the Surface Laptop 7 (and its sibling, the Surface Pro 11) into a nearly ideal productivity machine.
Design and display: Premium from top to bottom
While the Surface Laptop 7 (or 7th Edition as Microsoft likes to call it) features fancy new silicon inside, not much has changed on the outside. But I’m not complaining. It has a sleek all-aluminum chassis with clean, minimalist lines, but doesn’t look like a MacBook. Microsoft has also made a few small tweaks like the addition of rounded corners on its display, a new haptic touchpad (similar to what’s on the Surface Laptop Studio 2) and a dedicated key for Copilot (more on that later).
Like before, the Surface Laptop 7 is available in two sizes. The smaller one features a slightly larger 13.8-inch display than before (up from 13.5) while the bigger model has stayed pat at 15 inches. There are also two USB 4 Type-C slots, one USB-A 3.1 jack, a microSD card reader and Microsoft’s magnetic Surface Connect port. So nothing unusual, but more than enough connectivity to handle most situations. And with the 13-inch model weighing just under three pounds (2.96 lb) and the 15-inch option coming in at 3.6 pounds, both versions won’t add much extra heft to your bag.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
As for the display itself, the 15-inch PixelSense LCD display on our Surface Laptop 7 review unit is top-notch. On top of its 120Hz refresh rate, it’s been color-calibrated to deliver accurate hues while also offering great brightness (over 600 nits on a full white screen) and 10-point touch support. It’s even covered by Gorilla Glass 5 to prevent scratches and abrasion. I just wish there was the option to upgrade to an OLED panel like you can on the Surface Pro 11.
Performance and compatibility: New heights for Windows on Arm
The most impressive thing about the Surface Laptop 7 is just how normal it feels. It’s super responsive, has instant wake times and just generally feels extremely speedy. But the best part is that you often can’t even tell the difference between running native Arm software or when the laptop is using Microsoft’s Prism emulator in the background to seamlessly translate apps originally designed for x86 chips. It’s really that smooth.
In benchmarks, the Snapdragon X Elite chip delivers on Qualcomm’s lofty performance claims. For example, in Geekbench 6, the Surface Laptop 7 posted multicore scores of 14,400, which is higher than a similarly equipped Dell XPS 14 with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chip (11,920). In fact, the X Elite in the Surface even managed to top the Core Ultra 9 CPU inside an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16, which maxed out at 12,798.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
However, it's important to note that the performance of the X Elite chip is based on how much juice it gets. On the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7, Microsoft allocates up to 30 watts to the processor. But on the smaller 13-inch model, it caps out at 20 watts, so while it should still be pretty fast, you will get better performance on the larger option. And though the Surface Laptop 7 isn’t fanless like a MacBook Air, even under load the notebook rarely got above a whisper quiet.
Finally, while most tools and apps just kind of work regardless of what architecture they were designed for, with Windows PCs still relatively early in the transition (at least this go around) to Arm-based systems, there are a handful of major apps that need a bit more time. Some of the big ones are Adobe products like Illustrator and InDesign, which won’t be available on Copilot+ PCs until sometime in July, while updated versions of After Effects and Premier Pro might not arrive until closer to the end of 2024.
A quick word on gaming
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Microsoft has never said that the Surface Laptop 7 is a gaming machine. But given numbers from the ESA (Electronics Software Association) showing that 65 percent of Americans play some form of video game on a weekly basis, the laptop’s fragging abilities are probably worth a mention. Unfortunately, while the Snapdragon X Elite chip boasts decent benchmarks, a lot of titles that might otherwise be good fits for the Laptop 7 simply don’t run. A number of these are competitive games like Fortnite and League of Legends, which feature anti-cheat protocols that haven’t been updated to work on Arm-based chips. It’s doubly frustrating because in the case of LoL, the game installs normally and doesn’t display any warnings aside from Riot’s Vanguard system asking you to reboot your system before launching the game. But no matter how many times you do, the game never boots up.
That said, it’s not a completely lost cause. I’ve found that casual 2D titles like Into the Breach and Vampire Survivor run smoothly, so you still have some options. And if you want to play more demanding titles, there’s always streaming services like Xbox Cloud Gaming and NVIDIA GeForce Now, which by nature aren’t affected by architecture or OS limitations.
Copilot+ AI features: More of a bonus than true essentials
One of the big selling points for this new breed of Copilot+ PCs was supposed to be Microsoft’s built-in AI features. But in reality, they're more like occasionally useful bonuses. The tool with the most potential is Recall, which takes screenshots of your desktop so that AI can help you find things later. Unfortunately, due to concerns about its security, the feature will initially only be available to Windows Insiders before it’s officially released sometime in the future.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Meanwhile, other Copilot+ AI tools feel rather limited in scope. The Image Creator button in the Photos app lets you generate pictures based on word prompts and it largely delivers. But results still aren’t as detailed or realistic as what you get from more powerful cloud-based services like Midjourney. But hey, it’s free. To make things more confusing, in Paint, there’s another button also labeled Image Creator, but it’s actually an entirely different feature with a limited number of uses and results that aren’t quite as good as the similarly named option in Photos.
Ultimately, the most useful AI features are Live Captions and the Restyle Image tool in Photos. The former uses AI to creatively edit or transform existing shots, allowing you to change the style of a picture into something that looks like anime or an impressionistic painting, while the letter provides real-time translation for videos, podcasts and more. And even though Microsoft’s captions could be a touch more accurate, it’s generally good enough for you to get the gist of whatever you’re watching or listening to.
Battery life: More than all-day longevity
In case you don't feel like using's Microsoft's included power adapter, the Surface Laptop 7's USB4 ports also support charging.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
Even though emulating apps meant for x86 processors might use a little more juice, the Surface Laptop 7 has more than enough battery life to go around. Though our usual rundown test hasn’t been updated for Arm-based chips yet, when I streamed a 1080p video over Wi-Fi, the device lasted 17 hours and 38 minutes, which is several hours more than I typically get from some similarly equipped Intel and AMD-powered rivals. And in general use, it often felt like the Laptop 7 fared even better, frequently finishing a day with around 50 percent charge.
Another advantage of the Snapdragon X chips is that there’s almost zero battery drain when the system is asleep, which I attribute to Qualcomm’s experience in making efficient smartphone processors. I noticed that the Surface Laptop 7 would lose just one or two percent of battery overnight, which gives you the confidence to leave it unplugged for days at a time.
For charging, you can either use the magnetic Surface Connect port with the included power brick. But another bonus is that the Surface Laptop 7 also supports charging via USB-C, so if you want to travel light and use a universal adapter to keep this and a bunch of other gadgets topped up, you totally can.
Wrap-up
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget
While the road here was beset with bumps and potholes, the Surface Laptop 7 has arrived ready to compete. And it isn’t just a great rival to the MacBook Air, it’s paving a new road ahead for Windows PCs. It’s fast, quiet, has excellent battery life and plays nicely with most of your apps. Sure, a few major programs still need additional support and you may run into issues when trying to play games or installing niche software. And when you spec it up, it can get a bit pricey too. The 15-inch model starts at $1,300, but our review unit with a Snapdragon X Elite chip, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD goes for $2,100. Still, for general productivity, the Surface Laptop 7 and its Snapdragon X Elite chip are a revelation and a revolutionary step forward for Windows as we know it.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-surface-laptop-7-review-success-at-last-120056125.html?src=rss
My relationship with my iPhone’s Photos app is complicated. It’s both my trove of memories and my secret pile of shame. I have thousands of pictures from trips, outings and gatherings with loved ones, but thousands more of myself, food and random internet stuff (tweets, Reddit posts and crossword puzzle hints). Throw in private pictures of things like my tax documents or IDs and the Photos app probably holds all the most important and sensitive things in my life. I spend hours on it each day. I’d be lost without the 73,600 photos and 2,607 videos I’ve stored in it (and the 600GB in my Google Photos of course, I only switched to iOS two years ago).
So when Apple announced a redesign was coming in iOS 18 (and iPadOS 18), I was skeptical and worried. Change? I hate it. My fingers already know exactly where the buttons are; having to relearn everything would suck. How else would I quickly find the screenshots I need?
The good news is, the iOS 18 redesign for the Photos app might make things easier to pull up. Better yet, it could allow people to use their albums in ways that best meet their needs — perhaps those of you who are more utilitarian and less vain about it could benefit too.
I got a closer look at the upcoming changes at WWDC last month. But last week I got a deeper dive when I spoke with Della Huff, Billy Sorrentino and Jon McCormack from Apple’s Photos, design and software teams to learn more about why and how the app was redesigned.
How will the redesigned Photos app look in iOS 18?
At first glance, your Photos might not look too different. As shown off at WWDC 2024, all your pictures will still be the first thing you see. Peer just slightly beyond the surface, though, and the changes are obvious. Gone are the tabs below your images that say “Library,” “For You,” “Albums” and “Search.” And instead of your grid taking up basically the entire page, it now ends about two thirds of the way, with rows of albums showing up below.
I have to say that I was initially annoyed with this change, but once I heard my entire library is just a swipe down away, I was massively relieved. Well, mostly, anyway. The bar at the bottom that lets you jump between annual, monthly, daily and all views will now show years, months and all. That’s fine by me, since I rarely use the daily option.
A new filter button at the bottom left lets you choose what to focus on or cut out of the grid, like screenshots, favorites, portraits, videos and edited images. Swiping sideways will show various collections, either generated by your phone or created by yourself.
Apple
The idea is to reduce “doomscrolling through the grid,” Huff said, referencing an idea McCormack had mentioned before. With over three trillion photos and videos taken each year, Apple users probably don’t want to sit around weeding through blurry shots or screenshots. Helping them get to what they want more quickly is one of the main focuses of the redesign.
But like I said, too much change sucks. Sorrentino said, “It was critical from the very beginning of this design process that we didn't lose any key features that people love today.” So far, it does look like the stuff I use most frequently is either still there or even easier to reach. And though I find it unnecessary that each collection will autoplay as a memory in the redesign, at least it will look nice and won’t take up extra space.
When you swipe to the right of the grid, you’ll see the new Photos Carousel, highlighting what Apple thinks is your best content. This uses “on-device intelligence” that has been in the app and evolving for 15 years and considers data like the people in the shots and the location they were taken in to create mini movies of your outings and activities.
Don’t confuse this with Apple Intelligence, though. This is simply algorithms. In fact, McCormack called it an “intuition.” For example, he said “iPhone knew who my partner was long before I told iPhone who my partner was.” The team is building on the same system that’s been identifying faces and generating Memories here, and in iOS 18 it will start surfacing photo sets featuring groups of people and pets like you and your parents, your partner and your pet or you and your partner. There will also be new collections like "recently edited" and "a smart receipts album that you can put right at the top with pinned collections," Huff said.
She pointed out that in the redesigned Photos app "there's a number of new dimensions and types of content that we're surfacing, like receipts and documents, handwriting, QR codes and more." These can lead to more efficient and relevant search results to help drill down into your library.
How do Apple Intelligence features in the new Photos app work?
Apple Intelligence will bring a few new tools to the Photos app, like Cleanup to erase distractions in the background and text prompts to create narrative Memories with storylines. It’ll also enable a “natural language search” that’ll let you find a picture by describing what’s in them so you won’t have to try to remember where or when the event happened, or worse, doomscroll. It should be as easy as typing “flaming praying mantis with a group of people in shock” instead of searching through the hundreds of pictures you took in Las Vegas. These will require you to have at least an iPhone 15 Pro, though.
During my time with Huff, Sorrentino and McCormack, I learned that Cleanup works on all images in your Photos app, so you could use it in screenshots or downloaded pictures, too. McCormack explained that when you use Cleanup on an image taken in Portrait mode, "we will clean up the original image and then reapply the depth of field effect."
Apple uses "three different AI models" to remove background distractions, McCormack said. The first will "understand the clutter so that when you click on something, we know what to make go away." The other two are an "in-filling model" to replace the hole, as well as one that will understand "the segmentation boundaries of the subject." The latter will prevent Cleanup from leaving divots in your subject's head or accidentally giving them an unflattering haircut.
What can you customize and why does it matter?
Because the new Photos app features collections so heavily, the fact that you can create and pin them where you want makes your favorite images easy to get to. Basically, the entire area below the grid is your playground. “You can organize the structure of the app itself,” Sorrentino said. You can “turn on or off any section of the app,” or reorganize it.
My favorite person is myself, so I’m probably going to put my best selfies in a collection and have it be the one I see first after swiping on the grid. But as part of the collections below the grid, I’m going to have the crochet patterns I’ve taken screenshots of as one I pin high up, as well as important information i frequently refer to like my airline loyalty account numbers.
The beauty of customization in general is how each person can tailor an interface to their individual needs. Maybe you prefer to use Photos a bit more like Pinterest, where you screenshot the car models you're considering buying and put them in an album. Or perhaps you're tracking your meals by taking pictures of your food daily to help plan a menu. Or you're cataloging your outfit, your garden, your stamp collection, or your growing child. You'll be able to create a collection of the photos you want and pin them.
I haven't spent time with the new Photos app yet, so though I'm excited at the promise of what customizability can bring, I'm also reserving judgment. I also enjoy doomscrolling my gallery while I look back at my weekend, since it visually represents my train of thought through the days. Sometimes, I use screenshots to remind myself to do something later in the evening when I'm inevitably staring at pictures of my friend's cute baby again. So the idea of letting Apple filter out what it thinks might be insignificant isn't something that appeals to my control-freak self. Luckily, it seems I can still view all images in my library.
I'd also like to see how the Cleanup tool performs, as well as whether the "natural language search" will perform well compared to Google's recently announced Ask Photos tool. And though I don't create or watch many Memories, I'd be curious about what a video derived from a prompt like "all my outfits from athleisure to formal" would look like.
iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 are currently available to developers as a closed beta, and a public beta is expected later this summer. The full release of the new software is likely to drop in the fall, which is when most people will probably receive the redesigned Photos app when they update their iPhones. Still a few months to go before your fingers have to relearn where everything is, then.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/how-apple-redesigned-its-photos-app-around-customization-120038901.html?src=rss
Amazon Prime Day is still a couple weeks away, but the company is already running discounts on some of its biggest items. The latest deal comes on the Kindle Scribe Essentials Bundle, which includes a 64GB Kindle Scribe, Premium Pen and a leather folio cover. The trio is available for $324, down from $520 — a 37 percent discount.
The Kindle Scribe is one of our picks for best E Ink tablets for 2024, garnering a solid 85 in our launch review. Unlike other Kindles, the Scribe is meant for taking notes or marking up documents. It offers a 10.2” 300 ppi Paperwhite display that's glare-free and front-lit, allowing you to use it just about anywhere. Plus, it works with titles in the Kindle Store, PDFs, Microsoft Word and more.
The Premium Pen functions without any setup and it attaches directly to the Kindle Scribe's side. A shortcut button makes it easy to execute commands like highlight and erase. Then there's the leather folio cover, which protects the Kindle Scribe, closes magnetically and folds into a stand. It's worth noting that this deal doesn't include Pen replacement tips.
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for Prime Day tech deals. Hear from Autoblog’s experts on the best Amazon Prime Day deals for your car, garage, and home, and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-kindle-scribe-essentials-bundle-is-nearly-200-off-at-amazon-135908123.html?src=rss
It's safe to say Apple and the European Commission aren't exactly bosom buddies. The two sides have been at loggerheads over Apple's compliance — or alleged lack thereof — with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a law designed to rein in the power of major tech companies.
Apple said last week it would delay the rollout of certain features in the European Union, including Apple Intelligence AI tools, over concerns "that the interoperability requirements of the DMA could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security." As it turns out, the EU is not exactly happy about that decision.
The call to push back the rollout of Apple Intelligence in the EU is a "stunning, open declaration that they know 100 percent that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already,” EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said at a Forum Europa event, according to Euractiv. Vestager added that the “short version of the DMA” means companies have to be open for competition to keep operating in the region.
Not to leap to the defense of Apple here, but these comments are sure to raise an eyebrow or two, especially after Vestager also said she "was personally quite relieved that I would not get an AI-updated service on my iPhone." Apple does intend to bring Apple Intelligence to Europe more broadly, but it's taking a cautious approach with the tech in that region due to "regulatory uncertainties" and ensuring it won't have to compromise on user safety.
As it stands, the European Commission is carrying out multiple investigations into the company over possible violations of the DMA. This week, it accused Apple of violating the law's anti-steering provisions by blocking app developers from freely informing users about alternate payment options outside of the company's ecosystem. If it's found guilty, Apple could be on the hook for a fine of up to 10 percent of its global annual revenue. Based on its 2023 sales, that could be a penalty of up to $38 billion. The percentage of the fine can double for repeated violations.
Earlier this year, before the DMA came into force, the European Commission fined Apple €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) over a violation of previous anti-steering rules. According to the Commission, Apple prevented rival music streaming apps from telling users that they could pay less for subscriptions if they sign up outside of iOS apps. Apple has challenged the fine.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/eu-competition-chief-jabs-at-apple-from-both-sides-over-ai-delay-140022585.html?src=rss
Amazon Web Services has started an investigation to determine whether Perplexity AI is breaking its rules, according to Wired. To, be precise, the company's cloud division is reportedly looking into allegations that the service is using a crawler, which is hosted on its servers, that ignores the Robots Exclusion Protocol. This protocol is a web standard, wherein developers put a robots.txt file on a domain containing instructions on whether bots can or can't access a particular page. Complying with those instructions is voluntary, but crawlers from reputable companies have generally been respecting them since web developers started implementing the standard in the '90s.
In an earlier piece, Wiredreported that it discovered a virtual machine that was bypassing its website's robots.txt instructions. That machine was hosted on an Amazon Web Services server using the IP address 44.221.181.252 that's "certainly operated by Perplexity." It reportedly visited other Condé Nast properties hundreds of times over the past three months to scrape their content, as well. TheGuardian, Forbes and The New York Times had also detected it visiting their publications multiple times, Wired said. To confirm whether Perplexity truly was scraping its content, Wired entered headlines or short descriptions of its articles into the company's chatbot. The tool then responded with results that closely paraphrased its articles "with minimal attribution."
A recent Reuters report claimed that Perplexity isn't the only AI company that's bypassing robots.txt files to gather content used to train large language models. However, it seems like Wired only provided Amazon with information on Perplexity AI's crawler. "AWS’s terms of service prohibit abusive and illegal activities and our customers are responsible for complying with those terms," Amazon Web Services told us in a statement. "We routinely receive reports of alleged abuse from a variety of sources and engage our customers to understand those reports." The spokesperson also added that the company's cloud division told Wired it was investigating information the publication provided as it does all reports of potential violations.
Perplexity spokesperson Sara Platnick told Wired that the company has already responded to Amazon's inquiries and denied that its crawlers are bypassing the Robots Exclusion Protocol. "Our PerplexityBot — which runs on AWS — respects robots.txt, and we confirmed that Perplexity-controlled services are not crawling in any way that violates AWS Terms of Service," she said. Platnick told us that Amazon looked into Wired's media inquiry only as part of a standard protocol for investigating reports of abuse of its resources. The company has apparently not heard from Amazon about any type of investigation before Wired contacted the company. Platnick admitted to Wired, however, that PerplexityBot will ignore robots.text when a user includes a specific URL in their chatbot inquiry.
Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of Perplexity, also previously denied that his company is "ignoring the Robot Exclusions Protocol and then lying about it." Srinivas did admit toFast Company that Perplexity uses third-party web crawlers on top of its own, and that the bot Wired identified was one of them.
Update, June 28, 2024, 2:20PM ET: We have updated this post to add Perplexity's statement to Engadget.
Update, June 28, 2024, 8:27PM ET: We have updated this post to a statement from Amazon Web Services.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-investigating-perplexity-ai-after-accusations-it-scrapes-websites-without-consent-133003374.html?src=rss
An attack on Microsoft by Russian hackers had further implications than initially reported. The tech giant is notifying additional individuals that emails between them and Microsoft were accessed, Bloomberg reports. A group known as Midnight Blizzard or Nobelium orchestrated this attack, along with the 2020 SolarWinds hack. The US government has previously linked Midnight Blizzard to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.
Microsoft previously informed some individuals that their emails were viewed, but the company is now sharing specifics. "This week we are continuing notifications to customers who corresponded with Microsoft corporate email accounts that were exfiltrated by the Midnight Blizzard threat actor, and we are providing the customers the email correspondence that was accessed by this actor," a Microsoft spokesperson stated. "This is increased detail for customers who have already been notified and also includes new notifications." Microsoft is making customers aware via email, which initially led to concerns that the notification was a phishing scam.
Microsoft first disclosed the hack in January, stating that a password spray attack gained the group access to "a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts" in late 2023. Employees with compromised emails included members of the senior leadership, cybersecurity and legal teams.
At the time, Microsoft said vulnerabilities in its systems were not to blame for the attack but that it would be improving security. However, the US government has brought the heat against Microsoft, with a March report from the Cyber Safety Review Board finding the company's "security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul." In April, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an order requiring federal agencies to analyze hacked emails and secure Microsoft cloud accounts, among other measures. CISA notified all impacted agencies and required them to provide regular updates on the steps taken to thwart this "grave and unacceptable risk."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-reveals-further-emails-compromised-by-russian-hack-130014275.html?src=rss
Apple is finally loosening some restrictions on third-party repairs. The tech giant said in its latest white paper, Longevity, by Design, that it will extend software support to third-party replacement batteries and displays installed into iPhones later this year. This means that it won’t deactivate True Tone and battery health data for iPhone users who receive those third-party repairs.
In case you don’t know what True Tone is, it’s a feature that adjusts the iPhone display’s white balance to match your environment. Currently, Apple disables that feature if the iOS detects that you installed a third-party replacement screen. You won’t suffer that loss anymore as the company “will allow consumers to activate True Tone with third-party parts to the best performance that can be provided” later this year. However, it pointed out that True Tone may not display accurate colors or perform well because third-party displays don’t always gel with Apple’s hardware, so you can choose to disable it if the screen doesn’t work the way you expect it to.
As for third-party replacement batteries, Apple will show their health metrics but it will notify users that it isn't able to verify them. The company says that an internal analysis that found that second-hand batteries with manipulated metrics are sometimes sold as new, and the iPhone’s metrics will mark the maximum capacity at 100 percent even though the battery’s current state won’t reflect that.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/iphone-users-wont-lose-true-tone-other-features-after-third-party-repairs-232926095.html?src=rss