Tech News - Mobile

Niantic gained worldwide popularity when they launched their popular AR game, Pokemon Go, two years ago. Now they are offering a preview of the technology they have been developing: the Niantic Real World Platform. According to the company's blog post, “This public preview will provide a sense of how committed Niantic is to the future of AR, and to furthering the type of experiences they have pioneered.”  They will give select third-party developers access to their cross-platform AR tools. Niantic has also acquired the computer vision and machine learning company Matrix Mill, and along with their previous acquisition Escher Reality, they’ve been able to establish what the Niantic Real World Platform looks like today. https://youtu.be/7ZrmPTPgY3I The Niantic Real World Platform can digitize parks, trails, sidewalks, and other publicly accessible spaces and model them in an interactive 3D space that a computer can quickly and easily read. They also will work toward making this technology available to power-limited mobile devices. The Niantic Real World Platform makes use of advanced computer vision, to make AR objects understand and interact with real-world objects in unique ways–stopping in front of them, running past them, or maybe even jumping into them. They are also working towards Contextual AR, where they will explore ideas, for testing and creating demos that can think and visualize. For example, if the platform is able to identify and contextualize the presence of flowers, then it will know to make a bumblebee appear. Matrix Mill, their new collaboration will use computer vision and deep learning, to develop techniques to understand 3D space, enabling more realistic AR interactions than are currently present in the market. Their cross-platform AR technology will also facilitate shared AR experiences. They have developed proprietary, low-latency AR networking techniques for shared AR experiences with a single code base. Niantic will be selecting a handful of third-party developers to begin working with their AR  tools later this year. Developers interested in news about the Niantic Real World Platform can sign up to get early looks of the platform. Apple’s new ARKit 2.0 brings persistent AR, shared augmented reality experiences and more Amazon open sources Amazon Sumerian, its popular AR/VR app toolkit Google open sources Seurat to bring high precision graphics to Mobile VR

Update - 20th August 2019: Apple Card is now available to qualified customers in the US with iPhone 6 and later. To apply, customers can update to iOS 12.4 on iPhone, open Wallet and tap +. The Apple Card 3 percent Daily Cash is now extended to new merchants - Uber and Uber Eats. Update - 23rd August 2019: The article has been updated to include details of how Apple wants users to store and clean the card. At its March event, Apple announced its paid subscription service, Apple Card. This is Apple’s new digital credit card which can be used for purchases and comes with simpler applications, no fees, lower interest rates, and daily rewards. Now, Apple Card is available as a  “preview rollout” since yesterday and will be broadly available to all iPhone owners in the US later this month. The Apple Card is created in partnership with Goldman Sachs and Mastercard. It is available as two options. First, as a digital card which users will be able to access by signing up on their iPhone in the Apple Wallet app.  Second, as a physical titanium card with no credit card number, CVV, expiration date, or signature. All of the authorization information is stored directly in the Apple Wallet app. The card also provides a virtual number for online merchants that don’t take Apple Pay. Users can deactivate it entirely from the Wallet app with a single tap. The preview version is available to a random group of users who have signed up to be notified about the Apple Card. The sign up will require iOS 12.4, address, birthday, income level, and last four digits of their Social Security number. This information is sent to Goldman Sachs, which will approve or decline an application in real-time. Users would also need to enable two-factor authentication. They are also not allowed to modify their Apple device or jailbreak it. The card makes use of machine learning and Apple Maps to label stores and to categorize them based on color. Users can easily track purchases in the Wallet app across categories like “food and drink” or “shopping.” It also has a rewards program, “Daily Cash,” which adds 2 percent of the daily purchase amount in cash to your Apple Cash account, also within the Wallet app. Though, purchases made through the physical card will get just 1 percent cashback. Apple has although faced criticism for its variable APR (Annual Percentage Rate) which starts at 12.99 percent and goes up to 24.24 percent. John Gruber from Daring Fireball wrote, “Variable APRs range from 13.24% to 24.24% based on creditworthiness. Rates as of March 2019.” What a crock of shit this “low-interest rates” line is. Those interest rates are usury, right in line with the rest of the credit card industry. 24% interest ought to be criminal, and 13% is not “low”.” Apple is quite cautious of the card’s privacy features and will store the spending, tracking and other information directly on the device. Jennifer Bailey, VP of Apple Pay said, “Apple doesn’t know what you bought, where you bought it, and how much you paid for it. Goldman Sachs will never sell your data to third parties for marketing and advertising.” Store your Apple Card lot in your wallet without touching another credit card, warns Apple Although Apple's new titanium Apple Card boasts of a multitude of features, it requires detailed handling, care, and cleaning which is quite different from how people use and store their normal credit cards. Apple says you should clean your Apple Card with a microfiber cloth and avoid contact with leather and denim. You should also be placing your card in a slot in your wallet or billfold without touching another credit card. It should not be placed in a pocket or bag that contains loose change, keys, or other potentially abrasive objects. Apple warns that storing the card with other credit cards can scratch and damage it. Apple has previously been criticized for making products that are aesthetically pleasing but easily damaged in everyday use. People on Twitter agree. https://twitter.com/JasonHirschhorn/status/1164352999122071552 https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1164367608038088704 Apple Card also signifies a transition from devices to services. In light of the recent news of Apple’s iPhone sales dwindling, the company is now shifting its focus to other means of revenue growth to keep its consumers occupied in the world of Apple. Apart from Apple card, these include smart home devices, streaming service, and Apple Arcade. You can sign up to be notified of the release of the card on Apple.com Apple’s March Event: Apple changes gears to services, is now your bank, news source, gaming zone, and TV Apple advanced talks with Intel to buy its smartphone modem chip business for $1 billion. OpenID Foundation questions Apple’s Sign-In feature, says it has security and privacy risks

The internet was all ablaze when several security researchers reported that Apple has accidentally reintroduced a bug in iOS 12.4 that was patched in iOS 12.3. Many iOS users are already exploiting this vulnerability to jailbreak their devices with iOS 12.4. https://twitter.com/lorenzofb/status/1163480993707253761 iOS 12.4 jailbreaking As the name suggests, jailbreaking allows you to bypass the rules and regulations imposed by Apple on iOS, tvOS and watchOS operating systems. After getting the root access, you will be able to install software that is unavailable in the Apple App Store, run unsigned code, read and write to the root filesystem, and more. Many researchers shared steps and jailbreaking tools to help Apple users perform jailbreaking on their devices. A security researcher, who goes by the name Pwn20wnd on Twitter, released unc0ver v3.5.2, a jailbreaking tool, yesterday. With iOS 12.4 and unc0ver, you will be able to jailbreak A7-A11 devices. However, it does not currently fully support the A12 processor found in the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR for iOS 12.1.3 and up. https://twitter.com/Pwn20wnd/status/1163537425211150336 Here’s a video by GeoSn0w showing how you can jailbreak your pre-A12 devices (iPhone 5S up to iPhone X) using unc0ver on iOS 12.4 which is currently the latest signed version from Apple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSItdLEr8WI Security implications of jailbreaking your iOS device Though there haven’t been any reports of malicious activity yet, this misstep does put millions of iOS users at risk as jailbreaking your devices can make them less secure. Security researchers are warning users to be careful about what apps they download. A hacker with malicious intentions can target jailbroken iPhones to easily install malware. Pwn20wnd told Motherboard that an attacker could “make perfect spyware” by exploiting this vulnerability. Giving an example, he said, “a malicious app could include an exploit for this bug that allows it to escape the usual iOS sandbox—a mechanism that prevents apps from reaching data of other apps or the system—and steal user data.” He adds, “It is very likely that someone is already exploiting this bug for bad purposes.” Patrick Wardle, a principal security researcher at the Mac management firm Jamf told the Wired, "This is rather inexcusable, as it puts millions of iOS users at risk. And the irony, as others have already noted, is that since Apple doesn't allow us to downgrade to old versions, we're really kind of sitting ducks." Apple and the security research community Earlier this month, Apple sued a Florida-based virtualization company Corellium for copyright infringement. Corellium offers “perfect replicas” or virtual iOS builds that can be used for security research and other purposes. Many security researchers felt that such tools could have been really helpful to identify mistakenly reintroduced vulnerabilities such as this one. "This shows that Apple continues to struggle with security—even on iOS which is clearly their priority. And this was uncovered by an independent security researcher, which illustrates the value such researchers add. Apple's more communicative approach with their new bug bounty program is good, but their attempts to shut down researcher tools like Corellium are bad," said Wardle in a Wired report. This month, Apple did take a few steps towards making its restrictive OS open to security researchers. It shared its plan to offer special iPhones to security researchers next year that will help them find security flaws and vulnerabilities in iOS. These devices will be given to researchers who report bugs through Apple’s bug bounty program for iOS, which was launched in 2016. At this year’s Black Hat conference, the company extended its use to cover macOS, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and more. Read Motherboard's full story of iOS 12.4 jailbreaking to know more in detail. Apple announces ‘WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy’ that considers web tracking as a security vulnerability MacStadium announces ‘Orka’ (Orchestration with Kubernetes on Apple) Microsoft contractors also listen to Skype and Cortana audio recordings, joining Amazon, Google and Apple in privacy violation scandals

“I don’t want to spend $600 to have a box on my head when I play video games” or “Too many cables, not enough games” are some of the statements you’ll hear quite often if you come across a Virtual Reality non-believer. Despite all the criticism that the Virtual Reality gaming industry receives, game developers across the world think differently. This year’s Skill Up report highlights what game developers feel about the VR world. A whopping 86% of respondents said ‘Yes, VR is here to stay’. With issues like heavy hardware, motion sickness, etc, getting fixed as the advancement in the VR technology continues, let’s have a look at other reasons for VR commanding a high level of confidence among game developers. Why is VR here to stay? VR hardware manufacturing is rising The future of Virtual Reality is already set in motion. From Google kickstarting the VR industry by releasing Google Cardboard back in 2014, just look at the number of latest releases in VR headsets in the past six months now and you can do the math yourself. With the likes of Lenovo Mirage Solo, Oculus Go, HTC Vive Pro, Oculus Rift, Sony PlayStation VR and Samsung Odyssey entering the market, it’s quite evident that there is a growing demand for the VR headsets. In addition to headsets being produced extensively, there are dedicated chipsets such as the latest Qualcomm’s XR1 chipset being built to support these headsets and solve the ever-concerning problem in the VR world: High prices. HTC (Vive), Vuzix, Meta, and Pico, are among the others that are working towards creating dedicated chipsets for the standalone headsets. Prices are falling Virtual Reality manufacturers across the globe have a common goal in mind: to make manufacturing of the VR hardware cheaper. Oculus was the first one to drop the prices of the Oculus Rift permanently to $399. Later, Sony joined in by bringing the price of its PlayStation VR  down to as low as $200. Another common complaint regarding the price of the VR headsets is that all VR headsets required additional computing power and hardware to make them operable making it not an average Jane/Joe’s cup of tea. But that problem seems to be fast disappearing with the release of standalone headsets now. Qualcomm recently announced a new chipset for standalone AR/VR headsets at Augmented World Expo. More games to hit the market “There aren’t enough AAA games for the VR world”. Listen closely, and you’ll notice a VR non-believer expressing their disbelief towards the VR world. But, the Virtual Reality Industry is smart. It keeps coming up with ways to pull even the hardcore console gamers into the enticing VR space. The immersive nature of Virtual Reality provides a potential to build fascinating games that catch people’s interest. Events such as the Annual Game developers conference, VR & AR Developer Conference, and PAX East ignite the interest of developers to create these innovative games even more. With already popular VR games such as Doom, Fallout, Perception, etc in existence, there are other games on their way to hit the market. For instance, creators of Titanfall, Respawn Entertainment have announced that a brand new AAA VR title in partnership with Oculus will get released in 2019. Respawn is working hard in this new field and will be challenging other studios in what future gaming for VR looks like. VR isn’t just limited to headsets People confuse VR being limited to just headsets and games. But it is so much more than that. There are different fields leveraging the potential of Virtual Reality. For instance, NASA uses Virtual Reality Lab to train astronauts. NASA is also looking into using headsets like the HTC Vive, VR gloves from 3rd party developers, and assets from games like Mars 2030 and Earthlight to make VR training simulations for a fraction of the cost. Other industries that can immediately benefit from using Virtual Reality are Healthcare, Education, Museum, Entertainment, among others. For instance, Doctors use VR to treat anxiety disorders and phobias, while some at Stanford University used it to set up practice spaces for surgeons. Testing autonomous vehicles for safety purposes also uses the wonders of Virtual Reality for simulation purposes. It will also help speed up the development of Autonomous Vehicles. Similarly, in the education space, one can use Virtual Reality in the classroom to visualize certain concepts related to physics for students. People can be transported back to the Bronze Age with the help of VR in Museums. The Entertainment Industry has been making VR movies such as Walking New York, From nothing, Surge, etc, which create an altogether different experience for the viewers by making them feel like they’re actually present in the scenario of the VR world. Imagine watching Jurassic Park or Avatar in VR! It takes time for any new technology to find user adoption and Virtual Reality has been no exception. But in recent times, it seems to have broken the barriers. One proxy for this claim is the news of VR headsets sale crossing 1 million last year. The ball has started rolling more and more in favor of the VR world. A whole industry is being formed, new technology being made, and VR is no longer just some hype. Top 7 modern Virtual Reality hardware systems SteamVR introduces new controllers for game developers, the SteamVR Input system Build a Virtual Reality Solar System in Unity for Google Cardboard  

Yesterday, Google released Android Studio 3.4, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE). Version 3.3 was released earlier this year. This release is the continuation of 'Project Marble’, Google’s initiative to improve Android Studio features. Android Studio 3.4 has an updated Project Structure Dialog (PSD). It also replaces Proguard with R8 as the default code shrinker and obfuscator. This release also supports the Android Q Beta and Intellij 2018.3.4. New features in Android Studio 3.4 Project Structure Dialog: This is a new user interface front end to manage Gradle project files. PSD allows developers to see and add dependencies to their project at a module level. Additionally, it displays build variables, suggestions to improve build file configuration etc. New Resource Manager: The resource manager is a new tool to visualize the drawables, colors, and layouts across your app project in a consolidated view. In addition to visualization, the panel supports drag & drop bulk asset import, and bulk SVG to VectorDrawable conversion. R8 replaces Proguard: R8 is now used as the default code shinker for new projects created with Android Studio 3.4. R8 code shrinking helps reduce the size of your APK by getting rid of unused code and resources as well as making your actual code take less space. Additionally, in comparison to Proguard, R8 combines shrinking, desugaring and dexing operations into one step. Import Intentions: Android Studio 3.4 will now recognize common classes in Jetpack and Firebase libraries. It will also suggest, via code intentions, adding the required import statement and library dependency to your Gradle project files. Android Emulator Skin updates and Android Q Beta Emulator System Image: Users can now download Android Q Beta emulator system images for app testing on Android Q. Android Studio 3.4 also includes the latest Google Pixel 3 and Google Pixel 3 XL device skins. Read more about this release on the Android Developers Blog. You can download the latest version of Android Studio 3.4 from the Android download page. Android Studio 3.3 released with support for Navigation Editor, C++ code lint inspections, and more Google announces the stable release of Android Jetpack Navigation Android Q will reportedly give network carriers more control over network devices

Earlier this year, Cloudflare launched its 1.1.1.1 DNS service as a resolver to make DNS queries faster and more secure that anyone could use free of charge. The day before yesterday, they announced the launch of 1.1.1.1 mobile app for iOS and Android. DNS services are used by internet service providers to interpret a domain name like “Google.com” into an IP address that routers and switches can understand. However, DNS servers provided by ISPs are often slow and unreliable. Cloudflare claims to combat this issue with its 1.1.1.1 service. On a public internet connection, people can see what sites a user visits. This data can also be misused by an internet service provider. The 1.1.1.1 tool makes it easy to get a faster, more private, internet experience. Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 app will redirect all user apps to send DNS requests through a local resolver on their phone to its faster 1.1.1.1 server. The server will then encrypt the data to avoid any third person from spying on user data. Features of Cloudfare 1.1.1.1 mobile app The app is open source. The app uses VPN support to push mobile traffic towards the 1.1.1.1 DNS servers and improve speed. It prevents a user’s carrier from tracking their browsing history and misusing the same. Cloudflare has promised not to track 1.1.1.1 mobile app users or sell ads. The company has retained KPMG to perform an annual audit and publish a public report.  It also says most of the limited data collected is only stored for 24 hours. Cloudflare claims that 1.1.1.1 is the fastest public server, about “28 percent faster” than other public DNS resolvers. As compared to the desktop version, the mobile app is really easy to use and navigate. Head over to the Cloudflare Blog to know more about this announcement. You can download the app on iOS or Android to test the app for yourself. Cloudflare’s Workers enable containerless cloud computing powered by V8 Isolates and WebAssembly Cloudflare Workers KV, a distributed native key-value store for Cloudflare Workers Cloudflare’s decentralized vision of the web: InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) Gateway to create distributed websites

Apple’s application for patenting some of the Swift features has successfully reached the “Grant” stage. Swift is the Objective-C based programming language that Apple introduced in 2014 and open sourced in 2015 under the Apache License 2.0. By licensing its contributions under the Apache license, Apple grants developers a perpetual, royalty-free license to use all of its patents that are necessary in order to use Swift. Apple submitted two patents 9,329,844 in 2016 and 9,952,841 in 2018. Under the 9,952,841 patent, the company has made 23 claims and 22 claims under the 9,329,844 patent. These patents are mainly about supporting multiple languages in the same compiler, with various specific limitations. These patents will be infringed if you are implementing a Swift compiler, assuming it included Objective-C compatibility and also if another language wanted to add a similar built-in compatibility layer. What could be the consequences of Apple’s patents? These patents caused a huge discussion among the Swift developers. They feel that software patents are silly and should not exist. They believe that we can find prior art for many of the features mentioned in these patents, for instance, optional chaining. One of the Swift developer discussing the consequences of these patents said, “The big problem here is not only ongoing lawsuits but projects that won't ever be started because of the risk of lawsuits. A great example here is that Clang and LLVM (and Swift probably too as directly based on Clang and LLVM) wouldn't be as easy to start or to develop at all if C and C++ were patented.” This could also lead to cases that we are seeing today, for instance, the ongoing Oracle’s copyright and patent claims on Google’s Android operating system, which is built on top of Oracle’s owned Java language. Another example is problems that Mono and other alternative implementations of .NET faced because of Microsoft’s patents. In the future, Apple could also transfer these patents to an independent non-profit organization similar to Linux. One of the developers mentioned his concern on the discussion forum, “But as a contributor to Swift's ecosystem, I feel unsafe now as we have a precedent of Oracle ruining Java's ecosystem 50 with its patents. Can we be sure that Apple never ever does this to any 3rd-party open-source project related to Swift as a "business decision"?”. While some developers are worried, some feel that it is just a countermeasure against patent trolls, “I wouldn’t worry. Apple uses patents as a way to fight trolls and counterclaims. It’s also full of prior art.” You can read the full discussion on Swift discussion forum. Swift 5 for Xcode 10.2 beta is here with stable ABI Swift is now available on Fedora 28 ABI stability may finally come in Swift 5.0

macOS Mojave was released yesterday with plenty of new features and a bypass flaw. The public beta was released in June at Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC 2018. The final version has now been released with visual, utility and security improvements. The changes make macOS more clutter free. There are also certain changes made to the Mac store, iTunes, Safari and some other Apple applications. A new dark mode The new Apple macOS Mojave brings a new dark mode that is system-wide and covers all applications made by Apple. This includes the file browser, Mac App Store, and Xcode among others. The controls go into the background while focusing on what is on the screen for better focus. Third party applications using standard colors via the AppKit will also be adopting the new theme. Desktop changes in macOS Mojave The desktop picture changes throughout the day via Dynamic Desktop. It mimics sunlight and gives an effect of day or night in the desktop. For example, it is dark in the early morning, bright at noon and gets dark again at night. Similar file types can be stacked together to keep your desktop clutter-free.  For example, all PDFs in one stack, images in one, spreadsheets in one, and so on. The files can also be grouped by dates and tags. Finder and Quick Look Files can be found with ease using large previews in Gallery View. All the metadata for all file types is now displayed in the Preview pane. There are shortcuts like rotating an image, creating a PDF, and more all from the Finder using Quick Actions. You can mark up and sign PDFs, crop images, and trim audio and video files via Quick Look. macOS Mojave makes the Finder look for and do certain tasks with abilities to quickly locate a file by how it looks, instantly see metadata, and perform Quick Actions on files without even opening any application. These quick actions can be performed to multiple files at once. More screenshot options Taking screenshots is now easier and just a click away for various kinds of screenshots. Once a screenshot is captured, a small preview is shown on the corner of your screen. You can then click on it and edit the screenshot taken. There is also a new easy to use menu with options for screen recording tools and the option to choose where the screenshot is saved including saving to the clipboard. You can also drag the preview to insert the screenshot into a document. Continuity camera on iPhone macOS Mojave comes with a new feature called Continuity camera. If you click a picture of an object or scan a document with your iPhone, it will automatically appear on your Mac. This way you can quickly click a picture or scan a document and insert it into the document you’re working on. Continuity camera works with different applications like Finder, Mail, Messages, Notes, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. New apps brought to macOS The Mac App Store now has handpicked apps in the new Discover, Create, Work, and Play tabs. Apps from iOS, Apple News, Stocks, Voice Memos and Home are now available in macOS Mojave redone to fit a computer screen. On iTunes, you can search lyrics with a few words you remember and listen to what your friends are listening to. More security controls There are better controls for accessing the camera or microphone on macOS Mojave. There are options to allow or deny when an application is trying to access them. This applies to messages history and mail database. There is also improved intelligent tracking prevention to keep embedded content like social media like buttons, share buttons and comments from tracking you without your permission. Safari now automatically creates, stores and autofills strong passwords for the user. macOS also flags existing passwords that have been reused in Safari for easily updating them. A Privacy flaw allowing unauthorized access Speaking of security and privacy, there is also a flaw in the new macOS Mojave. In a video, Patrick Wardle, an experienced macOS hacker demonstrates a privacy flaw in macOS Mojave. Wardle shows that the security in macOS Mojave can be bypassed to gain access to sensitive user data, like address book information. As told to the Bleeping Computer, "I found a trivial, albeit 100% reliable flaw in their implementation," He also added that it allows a malicious or untrusted app to bypass the new security mechanism and access the sensitive details without authorization. https://vimeo.com/291491984 Wardle tweeted that the improved privacy protections in macOS are not delivered. And this is not specific to the new dark mode, any mode is vulnerable. Source: Twitter Wardle plans to share the specifics and more details about the vulnerability at Objective By the Sea, a Mac security conference to be held in November. You can upgrade to macOS Mojave from the Apple website. macOS gets RPCS3 and Dolphin using Gfx-portability, the Vulkan portability implementation for non-Rust apps Google open sources Filament – a physically based rendering engine for Android, Windows, Linux and macOS macOS Mojave: Apple updates the Mac experience for 2018

Apple announced its financial earnings for fiscal 2018 third quarter yesterday. The Company hit revenue of $53.3 billion, seeing an increase of 17 percent from the last year’s quarter revenue of $45.4 billion, making it company’s seventh consecutive quarter of “accelerating growth”. Also, Apple generated earnings per share of $2.34, which is an increase of 40% from last year. These values beat analysts expectations of $52.31 billion in revenue and $2.18 earnings per share. As you can tell from the chart below, its stock has reached an all-time high of $190.29.  Apple stock report Over the earnings call, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple said: “We’re thrilled to report Apple’s best June quarter ever, and our fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth”. He also added that “Our Q3 results were driven by continued strong sales of iPhone, Services, and Wearables, and we are very excited about the products and services in our pipeline.” Apple’s other financial highlights of Q3 2018: Here are the figures, as reported by Luca Maestri: Net income is $11.5 billion this quarter which is up $2.8 billion, or 32% up as compared to last year. Diluted earnings per share were $2.34 which is up 40% from last year’s $1.67. Cash flow from operations is $14.5 billion, a high from last year’s $12.5 billion. iPhone revenue was 20% year over year, with iPhone ASP increasing to $724 from $606 a year ago. During the quarter, 41.3 million iPhones got sold with double-digit unit growth in several mature markets. Services hit an all-time record revenue of $9.5 billion dollars, a 31% higher than last year’s $7 billion. Macs hit double-digit year over year growth with nearly 60% of purchases during the quarter coming from customers who are new to Mac. Wearables ( Apple Watch, AirPods, Beats ) revenue exceeded $10 billion over the last four quarters, a remarkable accomplishment for a set of products that have only recently entered the market.   Apple data summary Among these, the top three highlights for the company this quarter, as mentioned by Tim, are iPhone revenue, services revenue, and Wearables revenue. According to Tim,“iPhone had a very strong quarter --  active installed base grew by double digits, driven by switchers, first-time smartphone buyers, and our existing customers -- iPhone X was the most popular iPhone in the quarter -- with a customer satisfaction score of 98%”. Now, talking about services, paid subscriptions from Apple and third parties have surpassed 300 million which is an increase of more than 60% last year. Revenue from subscriptions played an important role in increasing the percentage of its overall services business. With almost 30,000 apps available in the app store now, the number of apps offering subscriptions also continue to grow. Other services such as Apple music, cloud services, Apple pay, Apple News, Facetime calls are also going strong these days. And third highlight, Wearables revenue “was up over 60% year over year with growth accelerating from the March quarter”. Other than that, Apple had organized a developers conference in June which included a preview of major advances coming soon to Apple’s four operating systems: iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Tim said over the call that “Developer and customer reaction has been very positive -- we have over 4 million users participating in our new OS beta programs”. Apple’s guidance for its upcoming September Q4 2018 Following are the guidance figures as reported by Luca Maestri: Expected Revenue: Between $60 billion to $62 billion Expected gross margin: between 38 percent and 38.5 percent Expected operating expenses: between $7.95 billion and $8.05 billion Other income/(expense): $300 million Tax rate: approximately 15% before discrete items Apple is constantly taking initiatives to make sure that its current state continues to grow. In fact, major additions are being made to iOS 12 as Tim mentioned that “Siri will take a major step forward with Siri shortcuts which will deliver a new, much faster way to get things done and allow any app to work with Siri”. Other features like Activity Reports and Screen Time in iOS 12 will enable parents to monitor their children's activity from their own iOS devices. With macOS Mojave, new apps like News, Stocks, Voice Memos, and Home will be available on the Mac for the first time. He also added that “Developers will be able to build even more intelligent apps -- using the power of machine learning with CoreML and CreateML. With ARKit 2, iOS 12 will provide an even more powerful platform to make dynamic AR apps, integrating shared and persistent AR experiences, object detection, and image tracking”. The earnings result speaks highly of how Apple’s strategies and efforts have worked for them. Apple’s current market capitalization is worth $956.48 billion, which makes the tech giant only 7% away from becoming the first trillion-dollar company. Apple changes app store guidelines on cryptocurrency mining Apple USB Restricted Mode: Here’s Everything You Need to Know  

A heap buffer overflow vulnerability was found in Apple’s XNU OS kernels by Kevin Backhouse. An exploit can potentially cause any iOS or macOS device on the same network to reboot, without any user interaction. Apple has classified this kernel vulnerability as a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the kernel. It may be possible to exploit buffer overflow to execute arbitrary code in the kernel. The vulnerability is fixed in iOS 12 and macOS Mojave. The vulnerability is caused by a heap buffer overflow in the networking code within the XNU kernel. XNU is a kernel system developed by Apple. It is used in both iOS and macOS, hence most iPhones, iPads, and Macbooks are affected. An attacker merely needs to send a malicious IP packet the target device’s IP address to trigger this. The vulnerability is triggered only if the attacker is in the same network as the target. This becomes easy if you’re using a free WiFi network from a coffee shop. The vulnerability being in the kernel, anti-viruses cannot protect your device. The attacker can control the size and content of the heap buffer giving a potential to gain remote code execution of a device. There are two known mitigations against this kernel vulnerability: Enabling stealth mode in the macOS firewall prevents the attack from taking place. Don’t use public WiFi networks as there is a high risk of being attacked. These OS versions and devices are vulnerable: All devices with Apple iOS 11 and earlier All Apple macOS High Sierra devices up to 10.13.6. This is patched in security update 2018-001. Devices using Apple macOS Sierra up to 10.12.6. This is patched in security update 2018-005. Apple OS X El Capitan and earlier devices The kernel vulnerability was reported by Kevin Backhouse to Apple in time to be rolled out with iOS 12 and macOS Mojave. The vulnerabilities were announced on October 30. For more details visit the LGMT website. Final release for macOS Mojave is here with new features, security changes and a privacy flaw The kernel community attempting to make Linux more secure Apple has introduced Shortcuts for iOS 12 to automate your everyday tasks

Update, 18th July 2018: The European Commission fined Google with €4.34 billion today for breaching EU's antitrust rules. According to the European regulators, Google has put illegal restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators to maintain its dominant position in the internet search market. Google, now, needs to bring this conduct to an end within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet ( Google's parent company). For more coverage on this news, check out the official press release by EU. Google is expected to face a record penalty this month from the European regulators. This is over the concern that Google’s policies threaten its corporate rivals by having manufacturers provide consumers pre-installed Google’s apps on Android devices. The European Union had already charged the tech giant with a $2.72 billion antitrust fine last year for unfair promotion of its shopping services in its search result pages, thereby, breaking the antitrust laws. Many experts speculate that the penalty from Margrethe Vestager, European Union’s Competition chief, could range somewhere around $11 billion which is 10 percent of Alphabet’s (its parent company) annual turnover. Even if it doesn’t get fined for the full $11 billion, any amount over $2.7 billion is bound to set a new record for the company. This antitrust case has the power to cause some big changes to the world’s most widely used mobile operating system. It subsequently has the potential to cause a ripple effect on the overall mobile market altering existing business models. Here’s what you must know about the case before the decision gets made later this week. What are the charges made against Google? Back in April 2015, the E.U. commission had initiated an official investigation into Google and released a statement accusing the company of allegedly using Android to maintain its dominance in the online search market, thereby, hampering the competition. Here are few of the concerns raised: Limiting access to its Play Store unless the phone makers also include the Google search and other Chrome apps, a practice that breached E.U. antitrust rules. It reportedly blocked phone makers from creating devices that are based on the Android open source code but are not affiliated with the Google-owned property. It also provides financial incentives to manufacturers for pre-installing its Search services on devices. For instance, HTC and Samsung need to set Google Search as the default search app and include its Chrome browser within the devices. If not, they lose access to Android’s popular app store which will make it hard for the Android smartphone owners to easily download games or other apps. What has Google got to say? Google doesn’t deny the fact that Android has helped expand its advertising business. But, it has dodged the accusations made by E.U. by saying that its play store allows it to offer the entire package to phone makers which include the browser and other apps, for free. It argues that it provided a base to the phone makers to create low-cost and reliable Android devices. It also emphasized the fact that users are free to download other apps if they want. According to Kent Walker, senior VP at Google, an average Android user downloads more than 50 apps in addition to the ones pre-installed on his/her phone in Europe. It doesn’t take a lot of time to download or replace an app. So, is E.U. convinced with Google’s arguments? E.U. acknowledges some of the points made by the tech giant but is not convinced entirely. According to E.U., Google has set up a restrictive contract with the mobile set manufacturers which forces them to pre-install its apps within the devices. With the help of Android, it has managed to extend the reach of its super popular apps such as YouTube, Google Maps and its play store to millions of users. The E.U.’s concern is that when provided with pre-installed Google services, users would prefer to leverage the existing Google apps over other apps. This unfairly expands Google’s control over the mobile web market. According to comScore, a data provider, six of the top 10 smartphones apps downloaded in Europe’s markets which includes France, Germany, Britain, Spain, and Italy are Google apps. Also, the Chrome browser is used by roughly 65 percent of the smartphone users in Europe. What’s at stake for Google? The stakes are quite high for Google. Apart from the hefty fine, it might have to unbundle its apps from Android and the related contracts. Now, though these apps are widely loved by the Android smartphone users, removing the tech giant's “required” apps from the future Android phones would greatly diminish its market share. It would also hit hard on its advertising sales which is worth billions of dollars. It will also hamper Google’s product quality because it collects the user data through these apps which helps it improve the product quality. All these efforts were a part of its strategy to beat the competition from Apple, Facebook and Amazon to remain at the core of the ever-expanding mobile web. But, if EU had their way, it is one decision away from a domino effect trampling Google’s mobile growth strategy. What next? E.U.’s decision would not mean the end of the world for the tech giant. It can still appeal, but, it’ll have to carefully alter its business practices and decisions. Otherwise, it risks additional penalties for each day as it fails to comply. As for now, we can only wait for the EU decision to watch Google’s next move. Google releases Android Things library for Google Cloud IoT Core Top 5 Google I/O 2018 conference Day 1 Highlights: Android P, Android Things, ARCore, ML kit and Lighthouse  

Yesterday, the team at Ionic released the final candidate version for Ionic v4. The final version of Ionic v4 is expected to be released in early 2019. Ionic is the app platform for web developers for building mobile, web, and desktop apps with one shared code base and open web standards. Ionic v4 RC has been nicknamed Ionic Neutronium following the earlier RC versions Ionic 4.1 Hydrogen, Ionic 4.2 Helium, 4.3 Lithium, etc. With the final release candidate, the API has now been stabilized along with fixing patch and minor releases. Improvements in  Ionic v4 RC? Mobile performance Ionic v4 will come with improvement in app startup times, especially on mobile devices. It comes with smaller file sizes that work well with apps on iOS, Android, Electron, and PWAs.                                                         Source: Ionic Ivy Renderer for Angular users Ionic v4 will be shipped with Angular Ivy Renderer. It is Angular’s fastest and smallest renderer so far and will prove to be useful for Angular and Ionic developers. Interestingly, even a simple Ivy “Hello World” app reduces down to a size of 2.7kb. UI Library Distribution Ionic Neutronium has made improvements to the UI library. It features the use of standard Web APIs like custom elements that are capable of lazy-loading themselves on-demand. Now both Angular and Ionic can iterate and improve independently, and developers can take advantage of these improvements with fewer restrictions. Support for Angular tooling Angular CLI and Router both have become production ready with this release and are  capable of native-style navigation required by Ionic apps. This release also comes with an added support for Angular schematics, so Angular developers can run ng add @ionic/angular to add Ionic directly to their app. Angular, React, and Vue Ionic v4 RC allows users to continue using Ionic in their projects based on React or Vue. The goal behind this release was to decouple Ionic from any specific version of one single framework’s runtime and component model. Last month, Ionic community and Modus Create released the alpha version of @ionic/vue. @ionic/react is in progress and is expected to release soon. Major bug fixes The issues with scrollable options have been fixed. The Cordova browser error has been fixed. Fixes have been made to sibling router-outlets and router-outlet memory. There is an improvement in progress-bar as it looks better now. Issues with virtual-scroll have been fixed. Many users are happy with this release and awaiting the final version in 2019. This might prove to be the perfect new year celebration for the developers as well as the Ionic team. Read more about this releases on Ionic’s blog post. JavaScript mobile frameworks comparison: React Native vs Ionic vs NativeScript Ionic framework announces Ionic 4 Beta Ionic Components  

Android Studio team released version 3.5 Canary 7 of Android Studio, an officially integrated development environment for Google's Android operating system, yesterday. Android Studio 3.5 Canary 7 is now made available in the Canary and Dev channels. The latest release explores bug fixes for the public issues. Improvements in Android Studio 3.5 Canary 7 The illegal character '-' in module name has been fixed. The databinding annotation processor injecting an absolute path into KotlinCompile that can default Gradle's remote build cache has been fixed. Earlier it was impossible to specify more than 255 file extensions for aaptOptions noCompress, this issue has now been fixed. The issue of AAPT2 crashing in case of plurals in XML contain an apostrophe, has been fixed. The refactoring method name didn’t work and has been fixed. Layout preview used to rerender when typing in the XML editor, this has now been fixed. The issue of DDMLIB process using a full CPU core for times when there is no device/emulator connected has been fixed. Kotlin main classes used to appear on the class path before test classes while running unit tests, this has been fixed now. For more information, check out the official release notes for Android Studio 3.5 Canary 7. Android Studio 3.2 releases with Android App Bundle, Energy Profiler, and more! Android Studio 3.2 Beta 5 out, with updated Protobuf Gradle plugin 9 Most Important features in Android Studio 3.2

Yesterday, Lorenzo Sciandra, a React Native developer shared his experience on how the React Native Community took an added ownership over the development of React Native and also enhanced collaboration with Facebook in 2018. In 2019, the community will be sharing guidelines for ensuring quality code that complies to community-agreed standards. Here are the three channels they created for better transparency and sharing the recent happenings in React Native Community: react-native-releases As the name suggests, the react-native-releases repository was created to keep everyone up-to-date about new releases of React Native in a more collaborative manner and get a clear idea of what features would be a part of a certain release. This allowed the team to follow a long-term support approach instead of the monthly release cycle, which they are using in version 0.57.x. discussions-and-proposals The discussions-and-proposals repository was aimed at providing a more open environment for discussing new features or enhancements to React Native. It provided better transparency from the Core and Facebook teams and acted as a communication channel for all the members of the community. The team wanted to adopt an RFC (request for comments) approach instead of having all the discussion and proposals on the main repository. This repository provides a consistent and controlled path for new features to be proposed. Also, the Facebook team is using the RFC process to discuss what could be improved in React and is co-ordinating their efforts around the Lean Core project. @ReactNativeComm The team has created this new Twitter account to give users regular updates on everything going on in the React Native Community i.e. from releases to active discussions. In addition to enhancing the collaboration in the community, the team is also aiming for creating a formal structure. For this, they are planning to enforce a set of standards for all the packages and repos. With these guidelines in place, they will be able to help each other and contribute quality code that conforms to community-agreed standards. In his blog post,  Lorenzo also said, ”This organization can set the example for everyone in the larger developer community by enforcing a set of standards for all the packages/repos hosted in it, providing a single place for maintainers to help each other and contribute quality code that conforms to community-agreed standards.” JavaScript mobile frameworks comparison: React Native vs Ionic vs NativeScript The React Native team shares their open source roadmap, React Suite hits 3.4.0 React Native 0.57 released with major improvements in accessibility APIs, WKWebView-backed implementation, and more!

At the ongoing Mobile World Congress event, Google announced the release of Flutter 1.2, yesterday. This first feature update comes with support for Android App Bundles, improved Material and Cupertino widget sets, and more. Mobile World Congress is a four-day event, starting from 25th of this month. It is the largest annual gathering, where some of the world’s leading companies of the mobile industry talk about their latest innovations and technology. Following are some of the updates Flutter 1.2 includes: Improved Material and Cupertino widget sets The team has been putting their efforts into improving the Material and Cupertino widget sets. Now developers will have more flexibility when using Material widgets. For Cupertino widgets, they have added support for floating cursor text adding on iOS. This can be triggered by either force pressing the keyboard or by long pressing the spacebar. Support for Android App Bundles Flutter 1.2 supports Android App Bundles, a new upload format that includes all the app’s compiled code and resources. This format helps in reducing the app size and enables new features like dynamic delivery for Android apps. Support for Dart 2.2 SDK This release includes the Dart 2.2 SDK, which was also released yesterday. Dart 2.2 comes with significant performance improvements to make ahead-of-time compilation even faster and a literal language for initializing sets. It also introduces Dart Common Front End (CFE) that parses Dart code, performs type inference, and translates Dart into a lower-level intermediate language. Other updates Flutter 1.2 also supports a broader set of animation easing functions, which are inspired by Robert Penner’s work. The team is already preparing it for desktop-class operating systems by adding new keyboard events and mouse hover support. Flutter’s plug-in team has added some changes to Flutter 1.2 that will work well to support the In App Purchases plugin. Along with these updates, they have also made some bug fixes for video player, webview, and maps. Along with Flutter 1.2, the team has also released a preview of Dart DevTools, a suite of performance tools for Dart and Flutter. Some of the tools from this suite including web inspector, timeline view, and others are now available for installation. Read the full set of updates in Flutter 1.2 on the Google Developers blog. Google to make Flutter 1.0 “cross-platform”; introduces Hummingbird to bring Flutter apps to the web Flutter challenges Electron, soon to release a desktop client to accelerate mobile development Google announces Flutter Release Preview 2 with extended support for Cupertino themed controls and more!