Charlotte Henry

Apple introduced Ultra Wideband technology with the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro. Barclays Analysts believe Android smartphones are going to in their footsteps, according to a note seen by MacRumors.

In a research note obtained by MacRumors, the analysts said Android smartphones will be equipped with an all-in-one Ultra Wideband, NFC, and Secure Element chip introduced by Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors last year. It is unclear which Android smartphones will adopt Ultra Wideband first, but Samsung did join a consortium with NXP last year to help develop the technology. In a press release last year, NXP said Ultra Wideband will give mobile devices several new and interesting capabilities, such as being able to unlock a car’s doors when the device comes in close proximity of the vehicle, potentially foreshadowing a feature that could come to the iPhone down the road.

A system transcribing and vetting audio from Skype and Cortana was run for years with “no security measures,” according to a former Microsoft contractor. The Guardian revealed that workers could access recordings through a simple Chrome web app.

The recordings, both deliberate and accidentally invoked activations of the voice assistant, as well as some Skype phone calls, were simply accessed by Microsoft workers through a web app running in Google’s Chrome browser, on their personal laptops, over the Chinese internet, according to the contractor. Workers had no cybersecurity help to protect the data from criminal or state interference, and were even instructed to do the work using new Microsoft accounts all with the same password, for ease of management, the former contractor said. Employee vetting was practically nonexistent, he added.

Mythic Quest will launch on Apple TV+ on February 7. Variety spoke to Rob McElhenney, who he acts in and wrote the show, about what viewers can expect.

The show will be Apple’s first straightforward comedy since launching its streaming platform in November — and a successful launch would be welcome. The platform’s flagship series, “The Morning Show,” recently received three Golden Globe nominations but was widely panned by critics. Other Apple shows, like “Dickinson,” “For All Mankind” and “Servant,” have found modest critical success, but it remains unclear if any of them have truly broken through the crowded pop culture landscape. Apple no doubt hopes that gamers, who collectively spent a record $43.4 billion in the sector in 2018 in the U.S. alone, will flock to the series given its subject matter and the pedigree of its creators.

Jimmy Grewal is not just an ordinary Apple fan. Based in Dubai, he has one of the world’s most impressive collections of the company’s products. Cult of Mac had a chat with him.

Is this heaven? The world’s greatest Apple Store? Nope, it’s Dubai, actually. Home to Jimmy Grewal, a collector of vintage Apple computers and one of the most impressive collections you’re likely to find anywhere. “Dubai is not exactly the hotbed of vintage Apple collecting,” Grewal told Cult of Mac. “Although Apple computers were sold and used here from the early 80s, a lot of those old computers are not [around any more.] The dealers who used to sell them have gotten rid of their inventory and their spare parts. What I don’t already have, I have to import.” Fortunately, Dubai’s geographical location makes this reasonably easy. Grewal has sourced computers from everywhere from the U.S. to Australia and Europe. He scours eBay and Facebook Marketplace, and relies on word-of-mouth to clue him on possible deals.

The official Twitter app for Mac got an upgrade. It added Touch Bar shortcuts and now supports integration with an iPad via Sidecar, Cult of Mac reported.

The version 8.5 update makes it so that you can put Twitter for Mac on your iPad when using Sidecar. It also adds some (but not many) Touch Bar shortcuts for those using a MacBook Pro. Touch Bar support is basic for now. You’ll see a compose tweet button, plus a toggle that lets you quickly switch between your most recent and most relevant timelines. There’s a lot of empty space for now. Nevertheless, it’s a good start. Future updates will likely add other useful buttons for things like direct messages, search, lists, and more.

Apple has been granted a patent for a variable internal illumination color system, according to Patently Apple. Such a system could be used in keyboards and other devices.

Apple’s granted patent covers devices, systems and methods that implement variable internal illumination of input devices of electronic equipment. Input devices include keys of computer keyboards, contact areas on a contact pad (trackpad), buttons on instrument control panels, buttons on a computer mouse, and the like. Rather than having a fixed tone (such as a perceived “warmth” or “coolness”, and/or a particular color component such as a hue) or color for the light emitted by the internal illumination, user experience can be improved by using variable internal illumination, i.e., internal illumination that can be varied dynamically during operation of the electronic device.

Facebook banned “deepfakes” on Monday. However, as The Guardian reported, its updated policy left plenty of loopholes for misinformation to get through.

The policy explicitly covers only misinformation produced using AI, meaning “shallow fakes” – videos made using conventional editing tools – though frequently just as misleading, are still allowed on the platform. The new policy, announced on Monday by Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, will result in the removal of misleading video from Facebook and Instagram if it meets two criteria: It has been edited or synthesised … in ways that aren’t apparent to an average person and would likely mislead someone into thinking that a subject of the video said words that they did not actually say. […] It is the product of artificial intelligence or machine learning that merges, replaces or superimposes content onto a video, making it appear to be authentic.