Apple SaysYour iPhone Is Not Expected To Last Longer Than 3 Years

Apple has revealed that the iPhone has a limited lifespan of just three years. 
The Apple Watch and iPhone are both only expected to last for three years, according to the Cupertino giant, while Mac computers and the Apple TV should last for four years.

In a new question and answer section published on Apple's site this week that outlines the company's environmental push, Apple released the life expectancy for various devices, along with the amount of greenhouse gases they are expected to contribute in that time.

Apple analyses the greenhouse gas life cycle for products by looking at the hardware components, size and weight, daily usage patterns, shipping methods and disposal practices.

"Years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for OS X and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices," said Apple in the report.

Is your iPhone built to die?

Conspiracies about whether Apple builds its products so that they die within a few years have circulated for years.
In 2014 Laura Trucco, then a PhD economics student, analysed the number of Google searches for "iPhone slow" across the world over the last seven years and found that the search term spiked whenever a new model was released.
In an attempt to prove the theory, iPhone users have carried out tests involving phones running older software and updated versions to prove that Apple self-sabotages its out-of-date hardware, possibly to encourage users to upgrade sooner.

Apple's environmental push

As part of its new environmental awareness push Apple overhauled the app store this week with a range of Apps for Earth, created in partnership with the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) to raise money and support for conservation.
Apple helped build custom content for 27 apps that promote the WWF's mission, which includes conservation of wildlife, forests, oceans and fresh water. It will donate 100 per cent of the profits to the charities they're associated with from April 14 to 24.
Similar to Apple's Campaign for (RED) in 2014, Apps for Earth involves updates to popular apps such as Kendall & Kylie, Enlight, and Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes.


Source: Telegraph

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Apple vs. The FBI: The timeline of the iPhone encryption case

The Apple vs. FBI controversy going on right now is quite a techno-political drama. At the core of it is a topic that isn’t so simple — encryption — and it’s all unfolding very rapidly, from so many corners of the Internet.

Some people have come up with a snarky shorthand for the case: FBiOS, a portmanteau of FBI and iOS that represents the version of the Apple operating system that would meet the needs of the FBI. Unfortunately, that encapsulation hides the complexity of it all.

The case may have staggering implications. It affects Apple, currently the most valuable company in the world, and it could change the relationship between millions of people and their iPhones: trusted smartphone or a potential government surveillance tool?

To help you stay on top of the story, we’ve put together a breakdown of the important players in the case and the things they’ve done so far. We’ll update this post as events unfold, so you’ll never miss a beat.

Tuesday, February 16

The issue came alive as Reuters reported that U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym of the U.S. District Court’s Central District of California ordered Apple to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) unlock the Apple 5c owned by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two killers in the San Bernardino mass shooting in December.

The news came a week after FBI director James Comey had told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the FBI still had the phone and that it was encrypted, according to USA Today.
One of the key areas where the FBI sought help was getting around the iPhone’s authentication scheme of becoming disabled after a certain number of incorrect passcodes have been entered, according to Reuters.

Wednesday, February 17

Apple chief executive Tim Cook came out swinging in response the court order. He issued a letter on the Apple homepage entitled “A Message to Our Customers.” The FBI had asked Apple “to build a backdoor to the iPhone,” Cook wrote.

The rhetoric was ominous. Cook’s use of the word “backdoor” harked back to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden’s leaked documents describing the NSA’s apparent backdoors into Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft services. All those companies denied the allegations immediately after the initial report of the NSA’s PRISM program. “We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order,” Apple said in a statement.

In the case of the San Bernardino shooter, as Cook wrote in his letter, the FBI was actually trying to make Apple create a new version of iOS. It would have allowed for millions of passcodes to be attempted, such that encryption could be circumvented — and then run the new OS on the now deceased Farook’s iPhone, Cook wrote.

“The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor,” Cook wrote. “And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.”

Cook ended the letter by clearly conveying that Apple would not comply with the judge’s order. “Ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect,” he wrote.

President Obama was surprisingly silent on the whole issue. But White House spokesperson Josh Earnest did tell reporters that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was in fact “not asking Apple to redesign its product or to create a new backdoor” despite what Cook wrote in his letter, Reuters reported. What Obama did personally do on February 17, as the UPI reported, was name former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and former IBM chief executive Sam Palmisano as the chair and vice chair, respectively, of a new Commission on Enhancing Cybersecurity.

Jan Koum, chief executive of Facebook-owned WhatsApp, took to Facebook to show his support for Apple and Cook.

It took about 15 hours, but finally Google chief executive Sundar Pichai came to Apple’s side in a five-tweet comment. “We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access to data based on valid legal orders,” he wrote. “…But that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent.”
Later that same day, the industry group Reform Government Surveillance — which comprises AOL, Apple, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo — published a statement saying that “technology companies should not be required to build in backdoors to the technologies that keep their users’ information secure.”

Some politicians began to rally behind the FBI in its call for Apple to help it decrypt the phone. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), for instance, told CNN that in case Apple doesn’t comply with the FBI’s request, she and Sen. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) are “prepared to put forward a law which would essentially require that.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) issued a statement saying that, “Regrettably, the position Tim Cook and Apple have taken shows that they are unwilling to compromise and that legislation is likely the only way to resolve this issue.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) took Apple’s side. “Companies should comply with warrants to the extent they are able to do so, but no company should be forced to deliberately weaken its products,” he wrote in a statement.

Thursday, February 18

Twitter cofounder and chief executive Jack Dorsey tweeted out his support for Apple and Cook.
Facebook showed its support for Apple in a statement that it provided to VentureBeat:

We condemn terrorism and have total solidarity with victims of terror. Those who seek to praise, promote, or plan terrorist acts have no place on our services. We also appreciate the difficult and essential work of law enforcement to keep people safe. When we receive lawful requests from these authorities we comply. However, we will continue to fight aggressively against requirements for companies to weaken the security of their systems. These demands would create a chilling precedent and obstruct companies’ efforts to secure their products.

Even Michael Hayden, formerly director of the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), came down on the side of Apple, The Week pointed out. Hayden is “America is simply more secure with unbreakable end-to-end encryption,” he told Wall Street Journal editor John Bussey on February 17.


John McAfee, the founder of antivirus software company McAfee Software and a Libertarian presidential candidate, publicly made an offer to decrypt the iPhone 5c in question, free of charge.
But Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both avoided siding with either Apple or the FBI in the case. Clinton described the controversy as a “difficult dilemma,” while Sanders said he was on “both” sides, according to the The Intercept.

Friday, February 19

The case became more interesting as DOJ attorneys filed a motion (PDF) to compel Apple to comply with the FBI’s orders. The attorneys argued that Apple’s unwillingness to work with the FBI “appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy,” as Reuters reported.

The attorneys pointed to a 1977 Supreme Court case pitting the U.S. against the New York Telephone Co. “The conviction that private citizens have a duty to provide assistance to law enforcement officials when it is required is by no means foreign to our traditions,” the justices noted in a footnote to its ruling.

“Apple is not above the law in that regard, and it is perfectly capable of advising consumers that compliance with a discrete and limited court order founded on probable cause is an obligation of a responsible member of the community,” the DOJ attorneys wrote in their filing. “It does not mean the end of privacy.”

Apple countered this by getting on the phone with reporters midway through the day and telling them that the password for the Apple ID for the iPhone had been changed within a day of the government obtaining it. as TechCrunch and others reported. That action blocked Apple from using certain approaches to get around the device encryption, the executives said, speaking on background. For instance, an iCloud data backup after the password change was not possible. Additionally, the executives reportedly pointed out that the encryption workaround the FBI wanted would affect more recent iPhones, even those with the Secure Enclave (PDF) coprocessor on the chip, not just older iPhones without the Touch ID like the 5c.

Meanwhile, in court, Judge Pym disclosed in a filing that Apple had sought relief to make its formal opposition to the order and now has until February 26.

And Apple disclosed in its own filing that it was bringing in prominent information security attorney Marc Zwillinger to represent it. Also representing Apple are Nicola Hanna, Eric Vandevelde, Theodore Boutrous Jr., and Theodore Olson (a private counsel to former presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush).

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump entered the Apple-FBI debate by encouraging people to boycott Apple.
And Comey and Cook were called to testify in front of the House’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, as Re/code reported.




Source: Venture Beat

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Google app for iOS now supports 3D Touch and multitasking for iPad

If you’ve got a new iPhone 6s or 6s Plus in your hand (or pocket), the Google app is now a lot more useful.

Via an update, the mainstay Google app for iOS now supports 3D Touch. A firm press on the icon will let you do cursory text searches, or use your voice. You can also do an image search with 3D Touch.

For those with iPads, Google now supports multitasking. You can use the slide-out view, or use Google in full side-by-side mode.

For all users, the app now tells you about holiday hours, and which times of day are busiest for a given business if you’d rather avoid waiting in line to buy stuff.

Source :The Next Web 

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Apple patents waterproof ports for the iPhone

Apple received approval for a patent this week that might lead to future weatherproof devices. Although the company filed its patent back in June, it only received approval this week. The paperwork centers on "self-healing elastomer" or rubber that can lose and regain its shape to keep the sensitive inner-workings of a device protected. The patent explains that this rubber seal on external jacks, like one for headphones or a power cord, would open up when a plug is inserted. Once it's removed, the covering will reshape and go back to protecting the device's opening.

Some varieties of the elastomer can protect against dust, debris, water, and gas, among other crazy environmental things, so you soon might be able to take a sick dust storm selfie without annihilating your iPhone.

Other companies already use waterproof ports on their devices. Sony's Z5, for instance, and the Samsung Galaxy S6 Active, both have waterproofed headphone and power ports that don't require special covers.

While Apple's new patent doesn't necessarily mean users will get a fully water-resistant device any time soon, Apple does hold a patent for a waterproof logicboard; there's a spongy black material around the circuitry for its protection. Both the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus are built with those logicboards. Even still, the devices aren't fully waterproof, although they're more resistant to water than prior iPhones.



Source :The Verge

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Apple's next iPhone reportedly ditches the headphone jack

Apple's quest for ever-thinner, ever-smarter devices may produce another casualty: your iPhone's headphone jack. A rumor at MacOtakaraclaims that the next iPhone might drop the 3.5mm port and use the Lightning port for audio instead. The move would let Apple slim its phone even further (reportedly, over 1mm thinner than theiPhone 6s) and take advantage of Lightning's features, such as headphone-based DACs and app launching. You'd have to use an adapter for any conventional wired headphones, or else make the leap to Bluetooth.

You'll want to take this rumor with a big grain of salt. MacOtakara doesn't have the greatest track record, and a lot could change in the 10 months between now and the future iPhone's possible launch in September next year. We'd add that such a change-up might be a little beyond the pale -- only a handful of companies make Lightning-based headphones, and there's no guarantee that others will bend over backwards to join them.

With that said, there is precedent for moves like this. A few Chinese vendors already make super-thin smartphones that drop the headphone jack in favor of USB sound. Apple would just be expanding on that concept by giving you features that aren't possible with a simple USB audio passthrough.

Source :Engadget 

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Intel has 1,000 people working on chips for the iPhone

Intel now has a thousand people or more working to outfit a 2016 iPhone with its lauded 7360 LTE modem chip, sources say. If all goes well, Intel may end up providing both the modem and the fabrication for a new Apple system on a chip.

Sources close to the matter say Intel is pulling out the stops to supply the modems for at least some of the iPhones Apple manufactures in 2016. This phone will likely be the iPhone 7. VentureBeat was the first to report on the two companies’ work together, and more pieces are falling into place as the project progresses and grows.

Apple may dual-source the LTE modems in its new iPhones from both Intel and Qualcomm. Today, Qualcomm’s 9X45 LTE chip is baked intoall iPhone modems.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said during a recent earnings call that Intel’s 7360 modem will start shipping by the end of the year, and that new products using the chips will begin showing up next year.

One source said Intel needs a small army of people on the Apple account because of the importance of the project to Intel’s future in the mobile market, because of the complexity of the project, and because Apple is a demanding client with an extremely popular phone.

Our sources don’t believe Apple has officially signed Intel as a supplier of the modem chip, but a deal will happen if Intel continues to hit its project milestones.

Intel failed to seize on the mobile chip market early on, and has been running far behind rival Qualcomm ever since. “This is a must-win for Intel,” one source told VentureBeat.

Another reason for the large number of people on the project is that it could be just the beginning of a much deeper Intel involvement in the iPhone.

A new SOC fabbed by Intel

Sources with knowledge of the situation say that Apple eventually would like to create a system-on-a-chip (SOC) that includes both the phone’s Ax processor and the LTE modem chip. A system-on-a-chip design could deliver significant returns in improved speed and better power management.

Apple would design the SOC, which would carry an Apple brand name, and would license the LTE modem intellectual property from Intel for the SOC, one source said.

This would be a sensible arrangement, in light of the fact that Intel hasn’t excelled at SOC design in the past, and because Apple does vertical integration very well. Apple’s skill in this was most recently seen in the integration of its M9 graphics chip with its powerful A9 chip for the iPhone 6s.

While the SOC would be created from top to bottom by Apple’s formidable chip designers, Intel would get the job of fabricating the SOC using its 14-nanometer process.

Samsung and TSMC, which currently share the fabrication of the iPhone’s A9 chip, also have 14-nanometer processes, but those foundries are said to compromise by making the interfaces with a 20-nanometer process.

Intel’s foundry, by contrast, uses a 14-nanometer process “from front to back,” as our source said. Intel’s process, our sources said, can create silicon chips with superior density and gate pitch.

One of our sources close to Intel said that Apple is also attracted by the fact that Intel is already developing a 10-nanometer process alongside its 14-nanometer process. The 10-nanometer process, which could yield even smaller and faster processors, isn’t ready for large-scale production today, but might be ready for high-volume fabrication in as little as two years.

German imports

Intel’s 7360 LTE chip was created at an Intel facility in Munich, Germany. The facility once housed the modem maker Infineon, which Intel acquired in 2011. Infineon supplied the 3G modems in the iPhone up until 2011, but lost the deal when it sold out to Intel.

One of our sources said Apple engineers have been making trips to Munich, Germany, to work with Intel engineers to optimize the 7360 chip for Apple’s phone. One of the trips was planned to coincide with the Oktoberfest event in Munich, which ran from September 19 through October 4.

Apple has also been hiring some key wireless engineers from the team that developed the Intel LTE chip in Munich.

One of them is Bernd Adler, who led the RF engineering group at Infineon until the sale of the company to Intel in 2011. He was Intel’s mobile chief technology officer before he went over to Apple in August.

Another engineer, Carsten Janus Pedersen, was senior specialist of system software at Intel in 2014 before he left for Apple, where he is now senior baseband engineer. Pederson worked at Infineon as a wireless software engineer until 2011 when the company was sold.

Jing’en Chen, who is now a wireless software engineer at Apple, worked at Infineon until 2011, when he became a staff engineer at Intel. Apple recruited him last year and he started work there in April of 2014, according to Chen’s LinkedIn profile. He’s based in Beijing.

One source said Apple hired these people to work on the collaboration with Intel from the Apple side. Another source said the hires are evidence of a desire on Apple’s part to pull in the expertise needed to bring the design of the modem chip in-house.

Actually, Apple has plenty of ex-Infineon wireless engineers working for it.

Christian Mucke was at Infineon for 10 years, and was VP and general manager there when Intel bought the company. In 2011, he moved from Intel over to Apple, where he’s now a senior wireless architect.

Matthias Sauer was head of system engineering, smartphone platforms, at Infineon until 2009 when he became head of system engineering. He went to work for Apple in 2011 as director of cellular systems architecture.

In all, I counted 17 Apple engineers who worked at Infineon, and note that a great many Apple engineers don’t list their current employer on their LinkedIn profile.

Adding CDMA

Another important piece of Intel’s LTE modem story fell into place at the end of September. Intel confirmed that it bought the CDMA modem assets of Via Telecom. Intel says it will use the technology to add CDMA network connectivity to its LTE modems.

Intel will need the CDMA technology in its modem in order to supply phone makers selling devices into the Chinese market. Carriers like China Telecom use a combination of LTE and CDMA technology in their networks.

While the Chinese market might be the main motivation for the Via Telecom buy, the technology could also be built into a future Verizon iPhone for the U.S. market. Verizon, too, uses a combination of 3G CDMA and 4G LTE in its network.

Possibilities, possibilities

Intel’s mobile chip business is now a two-headed monster. It wants to continue selling low-cost LTE chips in medium-priced phones for developing markets, and it wants to double down on gaining a beachhead in the iPhone with its 7360 modem.

If that beachhead turns into a starring role in the creation of a new Apple SOC, Intel will have taken a large step toward being a major player in the mobile space, and a formidable opponent to Qualcomm.

Source :Venture Beat 

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