MacRumors

Apple today seeded the first beta of an upcoming macOS Catalina 10.15.2 update to developers, one week after releasing the macOS Catalina 10.15.1 update.

The new ‌macOS Catalina‌ beta can be downloaded using the Software Update mechanism in System Preferences after installing the proper software from the Developer Center.

There's no word yet on what improvements the second update to macOS Catalina will include, but it most likely focuses on performance improvements, security updates, and fixes for bugs that weren't able to be addressed in the macOS 10.15.1 update.

When we find out what's new in the macOS Catalina 10.15.2 beta, we'll update this article.

‌macOS Catalina‌ is a major update that eliminates iTunes in favor of new Music, Podcasts, and TV apps, nixes support for 32-bit apps, adds a new Find My app, brings a new Photos interface, and includes multiple privacy enhancements and other app refinements.

For full details on what's new in ‌macOS Catalina‌, make sure to check out our macOS Catalina roundup.

Apple today released iOS and iPadOS 13.2.2, updates to the iOS 13.2 software that was released on October 28.

The iOS and ‌iPadOS‌ 13.2.2 updates are available on all eligible devices over-the-air in the Settings app. To access the updates, go to Settings > General > Software Update.

iOS and iPadOS 13.2.2 are minor updates focusing on performance improvements and bug fixes for issues that were not able to be addressed in iOS 13.2 rather than major outward facing changes.

According to Apple's release notes, the update fixes an issue that could cause apps running in the background to unexpectedly quit, which led to background apps refreshing more often than normal. These frequent app refreshes of Safari, YouTube, and other media apps, led to multiple user complaints. Apple has addressed this problem in the iOS 13.3 beta too.

The update also resolves an issue where the iPhone could lose cellular service after a call, and it fixes a bug that caused cellular data to be temporarily unavailable. Apple's full release notes for the update are below:

iOS 13.2.2 includes bug fixes and improvements for your iPhone. This update:

- Fixes an issue that could cause apps to quit unexpectedly when running in the background
- Resolves an issue where iPhone may temporarily lose cellular service after a call
- Addresses an issue where cellular data may temporarily not be available
- Fixes an issue that caused replies to S/MIME encrypted email messages between Exchange accounts to be unreadable
- Addresses an issue where using Kerberos single sign-on service in Safari may present an authentication prompt
- Resolves an issue where charging may be interrupted on YubiKey Lightning-powered accessories

The release notes for the iPadOS 13.2.2 update are the same, with the exception of the fix for cellular issues.

iPadOS 13.2.2 includes bug fixes and improvements for your iPad. This update:

- Fixes an issue that could cause apps to quit unexpectedly when running in the background
- Fixes an issue that caused replies to S/MIME encrypted email messages between Exchange accounts to be unreadable
- Addresses an issue where using Kerberos single sign-on service in Safari may present an authentication prompt
- Resolves an issue where charging may be interrupted on YubiKey Lightning-powered accessories

Apple has also seeded the first beta of an upcoming iOS 13.3 update that brings Communication Limits in Screen Time, and a toggle for turning off Animoji and Memoji stickers on the emoji keyboard.

European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager today acknowledged that her department has received "many concerns" over Apple Pay and potential anticompetitive issues, noting that "people see it becomes increasingly difficult to compete in the market for easy payments," reports Reuters.

Vestager's comments come after the European Commission sent a questionnaire to a number of companies in August seeking information on whether Apple was restricting online payment options.

The questionnaire asked if companies were under a contractual obligation to enable a certain payment method and also if such contracts included conditions for integrating Apple Pay in their apps and websites.

Regulators wanted to know if Apple has rejected merchant apps as incompatible with the terms and conditions for integrating Apple Pay in their apps.

Apple touts the safety and security of ‌Apple Pay‌, but critics have claimed that Apple stifles competition by locking down the NFC chip in iOS devices to only work with ‌Apple Pay‌, making it difficult for other payment services to compete.

Antitrust concerns over ‌Apple Pay‌ are not the only issue for Apple and the EU at the moment, as the European Commission is also still dealing with Spotify's complaint that Apple's App Store unfairly disadvantages third-party app developers in favor of its own apps and services.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

BritBox, a streaming service offering shows from ITV, the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5, has launched in the United Kingdom (via BBC).

Priced at £5.99 a month, the joint-venture between ITV and the BBC is being pitched as an additional streaming service for viewers who want to view classic British television programs and films, rather than as a direct competitor to Netflix.

BritBox will mostly feature classic series like Cracker, Prime Suspect, Brideshead Revisited, Ashes to Ashes, with comedies including Absolutely Fabulous, Extras, Blackadder and Fawlty Towers. Some archive programs that have been on services like Netflix will now move to BritBox.

More than 600 classic episodes of Doctor Who will be available to stream by Christmas, while shows and movies from Channel 4 and Film4's back catalog will be available in 2020, and original shows from Comedy Central UK will also feature.

Other shows available on the service include Downton Abbey, Gavin & Stacey, Wolf Hall, Love Island and Broadchurch, but it will also include new shows, starting with the drama Lambs of God, which stars The Handmaid's Tale's Ann Dowd, The End of the F****** World's Jessica Barden, and Essie Davis from The White Princess as nuns living on a remote island.

However, some of ITV and the BBC's biggest hits of recent years, such as Killing Eve, Peaky Blinders, and Bodyguard, will not be on it at first, either due to deals with other streaming platforms or because they are still on the broadcasters' own catch-up platforms.

The Guardian reports that the streaming venture has been given a major boost through deals with BT, Channel 4, and mobile company EE.

One of the deals will make BritBox available to tens of millions of EE mobile customers across the U.K., while a wider deal with BT – which owns EE – will make Britbox available to the millions of customers who subscribe to its pay-TV service.

Meanwhile, Channel 4 will provide thousands of hours of TV and film content to BritBox as part of a three-year deal, meaning shows from all the U.K.'s main TV channels will be available on one catch-up platform for the first time.

BritBox enters a streaming market long-dominated by Netflix and Amazon Video, but now quickly flooding with rival services jostling for attention. Apple TV+ launched last week featuring $2 billion worth of original programming, while Disney+ is due to arrive on November 12 boasting 500 feature films and over 7,500 shows, including the entire Pixar library and a raft of original content.

BritBox is available in the U.K. via iOS and Android apps, ‌Apple TV‌, web browsers, and "smart" Samsung TVs released in 2017 or later. BritBox launched in the U.S. two years ago with a different catalog of content and has attracted 650,000 subscribers.

Apple today announced a new employee benefit that's designed to ease the transition back to work for new parents, expanding on the 16 weeks of leave that parents are already provided with an additional four-week grace period.

Apple's head of retail and human resources shared details on the changes with Fast Company.

"What we find a lot of times is people are really excited to get back to work," says O'Brien, Apple's head of retail and human resources. "At the same time, [they] feel like they need to make sure things are really stable and successful at home. And that weighs heavy on people's minds, I think."

Apple's new policy will give parents a four-week period after returning from leave where they'll be paid like full-time employees but will have the flexibility to work part-time or set their own hours with a manager's oversight.

The updated transition period will be available to all new parents, including those who adopt or take in foster children (non-birth parents are allowed six weeks of paid leave rather than 16). Retail workers are also able to take advantage of the parental leave changes.

Along with the new transition period, Apple is expanding leave for adoptive parents by four weeks through a Paid Family Care benefit that lets parents take time off for family illness. Apple is also tripling its financial assistance for families that choose to adopt, providing up to $14,000 towards an adoption.

For all employees, Apple is improving its mental wellness benefits and will double the number of free counseling sessions available to employees per year along with providing telemedicine options.

According to O'Brien, Apple is hoping to make it easier for parents to ultimately return to work after a period of leave. "I think many times working parents feel like they need to deal with that quietly and make it seem perfectly seamless," O'Brien told Fast Company. "We all know life is complicated. So [we're] making it really clear that we're supporting them in that journey."

Apple today seeded the first public betas of upcoming iOS and iPadOS 13.3 updates to its public beta testing group, one day after seeding the first developer beta and a week after the release of iOS 13.2 with new emoji, Siri privacy controls, Deep Fusion, and more.

iOS and ‌‌iPadOS‌‌ 13.3 can be downloaded over the air after the proper profile has been installed from the public beta testing site.

iOS 13.3 brings Communication Limits for Screen Time, a feature that Apple promised would be coming in an iOS 13 update. Communication Limits allow parents to control who their children are able to contact both during downtime and during Screen Time.

The iOS 13.3 update also addresses a multitasking issue where iOS 13.2 users were seeing poor RAM management that caused apps like YouTube and Safari to reload more frequently than normal. After installing iOS 13.3, affected users are now seeing fewer refreshes when accessing these apps, doing another task, and then opening them again.

In the Keyboards section of the Settings app (under General), there's a new toggle that prevents Animoji and Memoji stickers from being displayed as an option on the Emoji Keyboard. Apple has also tweaked the Apple Watch app icon, changing the color of the Digital Crown from black to gray.

Apple today announced an update to its privacy website that touches on various new privacy benefits found in iOS 13, iPadOS 13, watchOS 6, and more. Apple's updated website includes white papers on how the company approaches privacy in Safari, Sign in with Apple, Location Services, and Photos, providing visitors with a deeper insight into the company's privacy mission.

The website reinforces Apple's four core privacy principles: minimizing the data collected from users, processing the data on the device when possible, transparency when collecting data and how it's used, and strong device encryption. You can visit the website for yourself at Apple.com/privacy, which is now highlighting iOS apps like Maps, ‌Photos‌, and Messages, and how they each enhance iPhone users' privacy.

According to Apple, there are multiple recent privacy and security innovations that it has accomplished with its latest software updates:

• Contacts: Any notes stored in the notes section of the Contacts app will not be shared with third party applications when they are granted access to the Contacts app.
  

• Find My: Apple uses end-to-end encryption to communicate with other Apple devices nearby in order to find lost iPhones and Macs, ensuring that it doesn't know the location of the device or the identity of the device that discovered it.
  

• Arcade: No advertising or third-party tracking is ever permitted.
  

• Background tracking notifications: ‌iPhone‌ owners now get notifications when apps are using their location in the background, providing them with a chance to turn this feature off.

You can click on different tabs on the website to view the new white papers for services like Safari, Face ID, Location Services, and more. While the website itself remains a straightforward look at how Apple handles user data, each white paper offers a more nuanced dive into specific programs and services at Apple, and how the company is aiming to enhance privacy with every new update.

The site also includes a tab for its transparency reports, showcasing how Apple is committed to being transparent about responding to government requests for user data around the world. Here you can scroll through each region to see how often Apple has shared user data with the local government, beginning as far back as 2013 and stretching to 2018.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday formally approved the $26 billion merger between T-Mobile and Sprint. The approval was the last regulatory hurdle to creating a new mobile carrier.

The FCC filing means T-Mobile and Sprint will be allowed to join together as "New T-Mobile" to become a dominant third carrier in the United States alongside Verizon and AT&T. The Department of Justice approved the merger in July.

The finalized order came after a 3-2 vote along partisan lines, with both Democrats against it. FCC boss Ajit Pai said in a statement that the merger would be good for consumers and the U.S. as a whole:

"It would bring the benefits of the next generation of wireless technology to American consumers and advance American leadership in 5G. It would help millions in rural America benefit from high-speed 5G mobile broadband service... and it would promote competition."

However, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel was one of the dissenting voices, and argued that the consolidation of the two companies would likely follow the same path as previous mergers, leading to higher prices and poorer service for the majority of customers:

"We've all seen what happens when market concentration increases following a merger. A condensed airline industry brought us baggage fees and smaller seats, even as the price of fuel fell. A condensed pharmaceutical industry has led to a handful of drug companies raising the prices of lifesaving medications, taking advantage of those struggling with illness. There's no reason to think the mobile-phone industry will be different."

Together, the two companies have committed to building out a nationwide 5G network covering 97 percent of the U.S. population within three years and 99 percent within six years. T-Mobile and Sprint have also promised that they will not raise prices for three years following the completion of the merger.

In an attempt to ensure a competitive wireless carrier market, the FFC also wants to see Dish become the fourth nationwide facilities-based wireless carrier in the United States. Dish has announced that it plans to deploy a 5G broadband network capable of serving 70 percent of the U.S. population by June 2023.

A number of states have filed an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. federal court to block the proposed transaction, arguing that the merger is not in the public interest, just like AT&T's attempted acquisition of T-Mobile in 2011 and the attempted merger between Sprint and T-Mobile in 2014, both of which regulators blocked. The lawsuit filed by the bipartisan coalition of more than a dozen state attorneys general remains on the docket and must be resolved before the merger can go forward.

T-Mobile and Sprint anticipate that the merger will be permitted to close by the end of the year. If it does go ahead, it will combine two of the four major wireless carriers in the United States, giving the new company nearly 100 million customers.

Apple advertising partner Media Arts Lab has let go of approximately 50 employees, reports Bloomberg. Media Arts Lab is owned by TBWA\Chiat\Day and Apple is its only client.

Staff cuts were made in multiple divisions, but many of the employees who were let go worked in the strategy division that helped Apple create ads for its newest products.

In a statement to Bloomberg, a Media Arts Lab spokesperson said that the firm's relationship with Apple "has never been stronger."

"Yesterday was a difficult day, as we had to part with some of our talented colleagues," a Media Arts Lab spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. "Our relationship with Apple has never been stronger, but as the needs of our client continue to evolve, we must adapt and continue to evolve the composition of our teams."

Apple's VP of Marketing Communications Tor Myhren said that Apple asked Media Arts Lab to evolve its marketing approach as Apple evolves its own approach too.

Apple's confidence and trust in MAL as our singular ad agency is as strong as it's ever been. As we continue to evolve our marketing approach, we've asked MAL to do the same.

Media Arts Lab has worked with Apple for decades and has been responsible for some of Apple's most compelling ads, including the famous "1984" ad for the original Macintosh, the "Get a Mac" series with Justin Long, and the well-known silhouette ads used for the iPod and iTunes.

More recently, Media Arts Lab was responsible for the "Welcome Home" video for the HomePod starring FKA Twigs, Apple's 2019 "Shot on iPhone" tour featuring bands like Florence and the Machine, and the "Bounce" ad for the AirPods.

Apple started creating some of its ads in house approximately five years ago, but has also continued to work with outside ad agencies. Apple two years ago began focusing more heavily on digital and regional ad campaigns, which previously led to layoffs at TBWA\Media Arts Lab.