Apple

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Apple Should Scrap Leather if Its Serious About The Environment

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple is always keen to tout its environmental credentials. However, Adam Oram at iMore makes a really good point. If the company wanted to really improve the impact it has on the environment further, it would stop using leather.

One aspect of Apple’s product lineup no one appears to be looking at, though, is the use of leather. Environmentally, leather is extremely damaging, and it’s surprising to me that Apple has not pursued more eco-friendly alternatives. Apple has a long history with leather, having made a variety of accessories. Right now, in Apple’s product lineup, it has several leather items, including iPhone cases, folios, and sleeves, Apple Watch bands, iPad Smart Covers, MacBook sleeves, MagSafe wallets, and AirTag key rings. These are all supplementary to its hero products, but they are often sold as add-ons when picking up a new phone or tablet.

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Apple Opening New R and D Center in South Korea to Avoid Fine

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple is set to open an academy and R&D center in South Korea. It is part of a deal to avoid a fin from the regulator in the country, ZDNet reported.

Cupertino will open the academy at Pohang University of Science and Technology next year in Spring. The company has opened 12 such academies so far, with the first one being opened in Brazil back in 2013. Becoming a certified ethical hacker can be a rewarding career. Here are ZDNet’s recommendations for the top certifications in 2021. Apple will also open its first manufacturing R&D support centre at the institute, which will also start operating next year. The new academy and manufacturing R&D support centre is part of a deal the iPhone maker made with the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) to avoid being fined for unfairly forcing local telcos to cover advertisement fees and warranty expenses.

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Once a Upon a Time, Phones Were Phones. Then the iPhone Came Along

Andrew Orr ·

Vox has launched the newest season of its podcast Land of the Giants. In the first episode they talked to Apple executives about how the iPhone changed everything.

True story. Once upon a time, mobile phones were … phones. You used them to make phone calls. Maybe you’d send some texts, if you were kind of advanced. The iPhone changed all that. And it changed more than the way we used phones: It changed Apple, and it changed culture, and it overturned industries and created new ones. And all of that happened really, really fast: Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone just 14 years ago. But it’s already almost impossible to imagine what life was like before that.

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Apple Once Threatened to Remove Facebook From App Store Over Human Trafficking

Andrew Orr ·

On Friday a report claims that Apple once threatened to remove Facebook from the App Store in 2019. The cause was human trafficking. (Original, paywalled report here).

The BBC published a sweeping undercover investigation of the practice, prompting Apple to threaten to remove Facebook from its store, the paper said.

An internal memo found that Facebook was aware of the practice even before then: A Facebook researcher wrote in a report dated 2019, “was this issue known to Facebook before BBC inquiry and Apple escalation?,” per the Journal.

Do the right thing, Apple: Remove Facebook.

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Investor Tells Tim Cook - 'The Time Has Come to Change Apple’s Approach' to Antitrust

Charlotte Henry ·

One prominent tech investor has written to CEO Tim Cook urging the company to rethink its approach to antitrust cases and regulators. Roger McNamee had his letter published by Time.

Unless Apple rethinks its approach, regulators will likely have no choice but to undermine its advantage in privacy and security. As a customer, that will piss me off. As an activist trying to reform the tech industry, it will leave me wondering what might have been. I would like to suggest a path to a better outcome. Apple is no longer the plucky upstart it was when Steve Jobs returned two decades ago. The company has a market value bigger than the GDP of all but eight countries in the world. In the trailing four quarters, your firm enjoyed a tax rate of about 14%, which has attracted the attention of Senator Warren, among others, who believe it is too low. Apple has huge economic power, which it uses for competitive advantage. Some of the victims of that economic power are fighting back, not unreasonably, and Apple’s brand with policy makers has taken a beating. The company’s reaction? One of surprise and resentment, which is not working. The time has come to change Apple’s approach.

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Security Researchers are Fed Up With Apple's Bug Bounty Program

Andrew Orr ·

For five years Apple has invited ethical hackers to break into its products to look for flaws. But these security experts are tired of the program.

The best programs support open conversations between the hackers and the company. Apple, already known for being tight-lipped, limits communication and feedback on why it chooses to pay or not pay for a bug, according to security researchers who have submitted bugs to the bounty program and a former employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement.

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NGO Files Antitrust Complaint Against Apple in India

Charlotte Henry ·

India non-profit group Together We Fight Society has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple, Reuters reported. It once again focuses on the cut of App Store transactions the company takes.

The allegations are similar to a case Apple faces in the European Union, where regulators last year started an investigation into Apple’s imposition of an in-app fee of 30% for distribution of paid digital content and other restrictions. The Indian case was filed by a little-known, non-profit group which argues Apple’s fee of up to 30% hurts competition by raising costs for app developers and customers, while also acting as a barrier to market entry. “The existence of the 30% commission means that some app developers will never make it to the market … This could also result in consumer harm,” said the filing

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Examining Apple's Carefree Attitude Towards Employee Privacy

Andrew Orr ·

Zoe Schiffer, writing for The Verge, investigates Apple employees and “the blurring of personal and work accounts.”

This is how it starts: a new Apple employee is told during onboarding that collaborating with their colleagues will require them to make extensive use of iCloud storage, and their manager offers a two terabyte upgrade. This will link their personal Apple ID to their work account — in fact, the instructions for accessing this upgrade explicitly say “you must link your personal Apple ID with your AppleConnect work account.”