I’ve opted for the iPhone 12 Pro. However, Luke  Dormehl is going for mini. He explained why he finds the device so compelling over at Cult of Mac.

It’s a blend of classic iPhone and modern iPhone: the handset I’ve wanted since Apple devices started growing progressively bigger around the time CEO Tim Cook took the reins at Apple. Here’s what makes the iPhone 12 mini so compelling. There was something old-school about the iPhone 12 mini from the moment Apple announced it. The company’s slick, socially distanced virtual keynotes aren’t short of impressive visuals, but they’ve not exactly been overflowing with levity. However, the gag with the Russian doll suitcases — the latches on a large one being flipped open to reveal a smaller one inside, which is opened to reveal a smaller one, which is opened to reveal an even tinier one and, finally, the iPhone 12 mini — was just plain fun. It reminded me of the lightheartedness of a Steve Jobs-era keynote.

Apple made great play of the iPhone 12 Pro’s camera and 5G capabilities. The Hollywood Reporter spoke to those in the film industry who think some of the features, particularly the cameras, could help revolutionize filmmaking.

“The new iPhone with Lidar, HDR, and the other camera improvements is a visual effects artist’s dream,” says Academy Award-winning VFX pro Ben Grossmann, who is CEO of Magnopus, an L.A. tech developer that worked with Jon Favreau to create the virtual production pipeline used to make The Lion King. “We used to go on movie sets to do all those things with separate pieces of hardware that could add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars and would take weeks to process into something useable. The notion that you have them all combined in your pocket, with the onboard processing power like that, and a connection to cloud compute over a connection speed that used to cost us tens of thousands of dollars in our machine rooms? It’s a bit more futuristic than I’d thought possible in 2020.”

Amazon announced a host of new hardware products at the end of last month. One of those was the Ring Always Home Cam surveillance drone. Wired highlighted how that product, and others, are prompting major privacy concerns about the company.

Meanwhile, the biometric data that Amazon Go will collect is particularly sensitive, because unlike a password you can’t simply change it if a hacker steals it or it gets unintentionally exposed. Amazon has a strong record for maintaining the security of its massive cloud infrastructure, but there have been lapses across the sprawling business. The stakes are already phenomenally high; the more data the company holds the more risk it takes on. “Amazon has a major genomics cloud platform, so maybe they hold your DNA and now they’re going to have your palm as well? Plus all of these devices inside your house. And your purchase history on Prime. That’s a lot of information. That’s a lot of personal information,” says Nina Alli, executive director of Defcon’s Biohacking Village and a health care security researcher.

The EU has put significant resources into taking on ‘big tech,’ including Apple, in recent years. According to Politico, that is only set to increase.

Under Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s executive arm is planning to merge two major legislative initiatives on competition into a single text, EU officials told POLITICO. One is the so-called New Competition Tool, a market investigation tool that would allow competition enforcers to act more swiftly and forcefully. The other is a part of the Digital Services Act, a new set of rules due to be unveiled in December for companies like Google, Apple and Amazon. Combined, the new powers would be known as the Digital Markets Act and would carry a hefty wallop for tech giants in its crosshairs. “We’re working on a new legislative proposal focused on digital markets, which would feature two complementary pillars, a combination of ex ante regulation and case-by-case enforcement,” Vestager said in a speech Thursday.

Nearly half of iPhone users believe that their device is 5G enable, despite the fact no 5G iPhone exists… yet. AppleInsider reported on the finding of a survey by Global Wireless Solutions.

Protonmail CEO Andy Yen is not happy with Apple. At all. In an interview with The Verge, he described growing tensions between the two firms over the implementation of In-App Purchase rules.

For the first two years we were in the App Store, that was fine, no issues there,” he says. (They’d launched on iOS in 2016.) “But a common practice we see … as you start getting significant uptake in uploads and downloads, they start looking at your situation more carefully, and then as any good Mafia extortion goes, they come to shake you down for some money.” “We didn’t offer a paid version in the App Store, it was free to download … it wasn’t like Epic where you had an alternative payment option, you couldn’t pay at all,” he relates. Yen says Apple’s demand came suddenly in 2018. “Out of the blue, one day they said you have to add in-app purchase to stay in the App Store,” he says. “They stumbled upon something in the app that mentioned there were paid plans, they went to the website and saw there was a subscription you could purchase, and then turned around and demanded we add IAP.”