MacRumors

Following a drop in ad revenue, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey today told analysts that the social media company is exploring additional ways to make money, which could include some kind of subscription service.

According to CNN, Dorsey said Twitter is likely planning some tests this year of different approaches, but there is a "a really high bar" for when Twitter would ask customers to "pay for aspects of Twitter." The comments were made as part of Twitter's second quarter earnings report.

Twitter is in the "very, very early phases" of exploring different options, and the comments come following a Twitter job opening earlier this month that sought someone to work on a subscription platform codenamed "Gryphon."

Like most other social networks, Twitter is a free service that currently makes money from ad revenue, but Dorsey said there "is a world" where Twitter could also have a complementary subscription service.

"We want to make sure any new line of revenue is complementary to our advertising business," Dorsey said. "We do think there is a world where subscription is complementary, where commerce is complementary, where helping people manage paywalls ... we think is complementary."

Spending on advertising has dropped amid the ongoing public health crisis, which has impacted social networks and other services and sites that rely on ad revenue. Twitter's second quarter ad revenues came in at $562 million, down 23 percent from Q2 2019.

Twitter's earnings report comes following the major Twitter hack last week that saw bitcoin scammers manipulating Twitter employees to gain access to Twitter's internal systems. The scammers were able to access the accounts of many high-profile companies and individuals, including Apple, and Twitter is still working on managing the aftermath of that attack.

Verizon today announced the launch of a new feature called Silence Junk Callers, which is designed to recognize calls identified by Verizon as potential spam or fraud and then automatically send them to voicemail.

Verizon says that this feature is available to Verizon customers who have upgraded to the Call Filter Plus service and who are running the iOS 14 beta.

Call Filter Plus costs $2.99 per month for a single line and it provides services like spam detection, spam filtering, caller ID, spam look up, and a personal block list.

There is a free Call Filter service that Verizon offers, but it does not work with the new Silence Junk Callers feature at this time and it is limited to spam detection and spam filtering. Later this year, Verizon plans to provide the Silence Junk Callers option to all customers with Call Filter for free, so it won't always be limited to the premium subscription plan.

Several states have undertaken an investigation that is seeking to determine whether Apple deceived customers, according to documents discovered by the Tech Transparency Project and shared by Axios.

Details on the investigation are sparse, and it's not clear what Apple is under investigation for. The documentation suggests that the Texas attorney general could sue Apple for violating deceptive trade practices in the state as part of a multi-state investigation, but little else is known.

The document that was shared with Axios is from March and it says that Texas AG's Consumer Protection Division initiated an investigation "for enforcement purposes," and if violations are found, "enforcement proceedings" will be initiated.

As Axios points out, the consumer protection law in Texas policies practices that are false, deceptive, or misleading, but again, there's no specific word on what Apple did to trigger the investigation. A spokesperson for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declined to comment to Axios on the investigation, as did Apple.

Apple also is facing a U.S. antitrust investigation alongside Google, Facebook, and Amazon, as well as an antitrust complaint from the European Commission, both of which are focusing on Apple's App Store fees and policies.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is set to testify in the U.S. antitrust hearing on Monday, July 27 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Apple today seeded the second public betas of upcoming iOS and iPadOS 14 updates to its public beta testing group, two weeks after seeding the first iOS and iPadOS 14 betas to public beta testers. The second public beta corresponds to the third developer beta that was released yesterday.

Public beta testers who have signed up for Apple's beta testing program can download the iOS/‌iPadOS‌ 14 updates over the air after installing the proper certificate from the Public Beta website on an iOS device, with instructions available in our how to. The updates should not be installed on primary devices as this is beta software and could have serious bugs.

• How to Install iOS 14 (Public and Developer Betas)

iOS 14 brings changes to the Home Screen, including widget support. Widgets can now be placed right next to your apps, and with the focus on widgets, Apple has introduced new widgets from default apps and is allowing them to be customized in three sizes.

You can put widgets anywhere on any app page, with new widgets able to be found in the widget gallery. Along with widgets, Apple has introduced an App Library, which is an interface that shows all of the apps on your iPhone both in smart folders that are created automatically and in an alphabetical list.

With the App Library providing access to all your apps, there's now an option to hide entire app pages from your ‌iPhone‌, so you can avoid a cluttered Home Screen.

Apple has worked to make the ‌iPhone‌'s interface more compact, and incoming phone calls and Siri requests no longer take over the whole screen and are instead presented in a banner style, a feature also available on iPadOS.

There's a Picture in Picture mode for watching videos or using FaceTime while doing something else at the same time on the ‌iPhone‌. The Messages app has new features focused on group conversations like pinned conversations, mentions, and inline replies.

A new App Clips feature lets you use small bite sized bits of an app without the need to download the whole app, useful for times when you need an app to buy a coffee, rent a scooter, or make a restaurant reservation. App Clips will work through Apple-designed App Clip codes, NFC tags, or QR codes, and can also be shared in Messages or from Safari.

The Health app supports the Sleep Tracking feature added in watchOS 7, and the ‌iPhone‌ will support the Sleep Mode and Wind Down features designed to help you get a better night's sleep. There's also a new Health Checklist that makes it easier to manage health and safety features like Emergency SOS, Fall Detection, and Medical ID.

The Weather app now provides info on severe weather events and minute-by-minute precipitation readings (U.S. only), and the Maps app supports cycling directions for the first time so bike riders can plan routes with info like busy streets, elevation changes, stairs, and more. Maps also now lets electric vehicle owners plan routes with EV charging spots.

The Home app is smarter with automation suggestions and an Adaptive Lighting feature that lets HomeKit lights adjust their color temperature throughout the day, plus there are new features for ‌HomeKit‌ Secure Cameras.

A new Apple-designed Translate app provides text and voice translations to and from 11 languages, and with an on-device mode, translations can be done entirely on your phone.

Tons of new privacy features have been added in iOS and iPadOS 14. Apps need permission before accessing devices on a local network, you get notified when an app accesses the clipboard, and there are little icons in the status bar of the ‌Home Screen‌ when an app is using the camera or the microphone.

There are also new options for limiting access to select photos and providing apps with an approximate location rather than an exact location for better privacy protection. Safari has Privacy Report that tells you which trackers sites are using, and in the future, the App Store will include a summary of developers' privacy practices in an easy-to-read format.

AirPods can now seamlessly and automatically switch between devices, and AirPods Pro gain a new spatial audio feature for surround sound complete with dynamic head tracking.

As for iPadOS 14, it includes most of the new iOS 14 updates, minus the ‌Home Screen‌ redesign. The biggest change is the new Scribble feature that lets you use the Apple Pencil to write on any text field, with the written text converted to typed text.

Scribble works throughout the operating system so you can use the ‌Apple Pencil‌ for Safari searches, adding new items in Calendar and Reminders, sending Messages, handwriting in the Notes app, and more.

The beta 3 update for developers included a new red Music icon, changes to the design of the Music Library in the Music app, a Clock widget, an updated Screen Time widget, and more, with details available in our beta 3 tidbits article.

For more on everything that's new in iOS and iPadOS 14, make sure to check out our iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 roundups, which have a detailed look on all of the new features.

With Apple gradually reclosing many of its U.S. stores as coronavirus cases increase, The Wall Street Journal has taken a look at Apple's strategies and criteria for deciding when and where to close stores, viewing the company as a retail bellwether.

As noted by analyst Gene Munster in the video, Apple's massive cash reserves and its heavy online presence mean that the company can be more aggressive about closing its locations than many other retail companies. As a result, tracking the company's store closures provides an interesting glimpse of what's happening in various areas of the country and trends looking forward.

Apple shared a few specific details about its store closure criteria with The ‌Wall Street Journal‌, noting that it takes into account the following factors from county-level data:

• Case numbers
• Positivity rates
• Hospital, ICU and ventilator usage
• Asymptomatic testing
• Other factors

Apple says it uses publicly available data as much as possible, but if that data isn't available, it will contact public health departments to request it.

Apple closed all of its retail stores outside of Greater China in mid-March, and in mid-May it began reopening most of its U.S. stores. Just a month later, however, Apple began reclosing many of its retail locations, and nearly half of its U.S. stores are currently closed.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is set to join Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an antitrust hearing held by the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee next Monday, but a new report by The Information takes a look at Cook's reluctance to participate in the hearing and how he and Apple have tried to navigate a polarized political environment.

Some two weeks after the other tech CEOs had agreed to participate in the hearing, Cook was still holding out for fear of getting caught up in issues more relevant to those other companies than Apple.

There was a simple reason for his holdout. According to people familiar with his thinking, Cook was firm in his belief that Apple didn't belong with a group of companies increasingly viewed as antitrust malefactors by lawmakers and regulators, including Amazon, Facebook and Google. What’s more, Cook had spent much of the last four years mostly avoiding the kind of toxic political environment that has engulfed the CEOs of those companies over everything from privacy to censorship to treatment of workers.

But under the pressure of a potential subpoena from Representative David Cicilline, chairman of the committee and a critic of Apple's App Store policies, Cook ultimately agreed to participate in the hearing.

The report indicates that Cook has spent the better part of a month preparing for the hearing, which may touch on a wide range of subjects from App Store policies to Apple's disputes with the FBI over providing methods for law enforcement to access locked devices to Apple's relationships with China.

The full paywalled report goes into much more detail about how Cook has delicately balanced relationships on both ends of the political spectrum, trying to stay above the fray largely by keeping quiet. That approach has helped Apple maintain stability in turbulent times, winning exemptions from tariffs on many of its products and avoiding much of the scrutiny that has been aimed at other tech companies.

Still, Apple and Cook aren't completely immune to criticism, and it remains to be seen whether next week's hearing will lead to any action on antitrust and other fronts.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News 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.

Apple today celebrated the 25th anniversary of its Apple Distinguished Educator program by sharing a profile of Tennessee Tech University professor Carl Owens, one of more than 3,000 educators from 45 countries who have been part of the program over the years.

Owens, who is retiring at the end of this year after a 40-year career in education, is a professor in Tennessee Tech's College of Education and he has relied on Apple products since the original Macintosh in 1984, including in his classes and the learning resource center he runs.

“Apple cut its teeth in education,” says Owens. “In the beginning, before the iPhone or iPad, Apple was the company that had a computer that enabled educators to become greater than what they ever knew they could be.”

Owens has been provisioning each of his students with an iPad for years and uses Apple products to help teach them how to imagine different and creative ways to approach learning.

Collaboration and remote learning have been an emphasis for Owens over the years, and so he was naturally a key figure at Tennessee Tech when the global health crisis began shutting down campuses around the world.

The Apple Distinguished Educator program fosters an international community of K–12 and higher-education teachers focused on innovation, excellence, and leadership tied into the use of Apple products, and is an application-based program.

According to leaks, Apple's upcoming iPhone 12 models could ship with a new Lightning to USB-C cable that includes a braided fabric design, and today serial leaker L0vetodream has shared more images of the purported new design, alongside a similar cable in black.

The photos depict a USB-C to Lightning cable that has a braided design rather than the standard non-fabric design of the current cables. Apple has never released a cable with a braided design for its iPhones or iPads, but it does offer a braided Thunderbolt Pro cable, a black braided Lightning cable that ships with the Mac Pro, and a braided power cable for the HomePod.

Braided cable designs have the potential to be more durable than standard rubber-coated cables, but typically extra reinforcement is included at the end points where the cable heads are positioned, which isn't seen here on the white cable. The cables look similar to existing Apple-designed Lightning to USB-C cables with the exception of the new gray and white braided look on the white.

Apple in 2019 included a USB-C to Lightning cable with the higher-end Pro ‌iPhone‌ models to go along with a USB-C power adapter, while the more affordable ‌iPhone‌ 11 came with a standard USB-A to Lightning cable. That's led to speculation that the braided cables could be exclusive to the higher end ‌iPhone‌ 12 models.

Apple is expected to release four iPhones this fall, including one 5.4-inch model, two 6.1-inch models, and one 6.7-inch model. Rumors suggest the 6.7-inch ‌iPhone‌ and one 6.1-inch model will be higher-end devices with triple-lens cameras, while the 5.4 and 6.1-inch models will be lower-end iPhones with dual-lens cameras and a more affordable price tag.

Apple's new braided USB-C to Lightning cable may be the only accessory that ships with its 2020 iPhones. Multiple rumors have suggested the ‌‌iPhone‌ 12‌ models will not come with a power adapter or EarPods in the box, allowing Apple to save money and cut down on packaging.

Instead, Apple may sell a new 20W power adapter on a standalone basis. This would allow customers to purchase a power adapter separately from Apple or from a third-party manufacturer, and could bring Apple in line with EU proposals for a common charging standard.

Update: In a followup tweet, L0vetodream claims that the black braided Lightning cable shown is "from the iMac Pro," suggesting it's an updated version of the black Lightning to USB-A cable that comes with existing ‌iMac‌ Pro models. Currently only the ‌Mac Pro‌ comes with a black Lightning to USB-C cable, so it's possible L0vetodream simply mistyped his tweet and that is actually what's pictured.

MySmartPrice has unearthed another certification for an Apple battery possibly destined for an iPhone 12 model, although its 2,815mAh capacity requires a revised prediction for the various capacities of Apple's forthcoming devices.

Apple is expected to release four iPhones this fall, including one 5.4-inch model, two 6.1-inch models, and one 6.7-inch model. As a refresher, based on earlier certifications, MySmartPrice previously interpreted the capacities of Apple's ‌‌iPhone‌ 12‌ models in the following manner:

• Apple ‌‌iPhone‌ 12‌ (5.4-inch) – A2471 – 2,227mAh
• Apple ‌‌iPhone‌ 12‌ Max (6.1-inch) – A2431 – 2,775mAh
• Apple ‌‌iPhone‌ 12‌ Pro (6.1-inch) – A2431 – 2,775mAh
• Apple ‌‌iPhone‌ 12‌ Pro Max (6.7-inch) – A2466 – 3,687mAh

This list assumed the ‌iPhone‌ 12‌ Max and ‌higher-end ‌‌iPhone‌ 12‌ Pro would share the same 2,775mAh battery. However, today's finding on the certification platforms C3 and Safety Korea suggests the higher-end "Pro" variant of the two 6.1-inch models could get a more capacious 2,815mAh battery (model number A2479) to power its extra features.

Without corroboration from other sources, the battery capacities for the different models remains pure speculation. But as we noted in a previous report, these capacities are lower than the batteries found in the current ‌iPhone‌ 11 lineup – indeed, the ‌iPhone 11 Pro Max‌ has the largest battery life of any ‌iPhone‌ ever, lasting up to five hours longer than the ‌‌iPhone‌ XS‌ Max per charge.

Assuming these models are destined for ‌iPhone‌ 12, this could be either due to better energy efficiency in Apple's next-generation A14 chip, or because of internal space constraints. All four upcoming devices are expected to debut in the fall and, based on rumors, will have OLED displays, 5G support, a new ‌‌iPhone‌‌ 4-like metal frame, up to 6GB of RAM, up to triple-lens rear cameras with 3D sensing, and more.

Apple will use super-thin rigid PCB boards provided by Tripod Technology in its upcoming mini LED-backlit iPads and MacBooks, according to a new report by DigiTimes.

Apple's mini LED backlight modules will adopt three-layer rigid boards, which require higher flatness and hole density than general rigid PCBs to support mass transfer technology, with materials also having to achieve extremely low shrinkage/expansion rates, the sources said.

According to today's report, Apple has brought Tripod into the supply chain for Apple's forthcoming mini LED devices because of the manufacturer's good cost control capability and production management.

The manufacturer will reportedly share orders for mini LED backlight modules with leading Taiwanese PCB supplier Zhen Ding Technology, but it will need to purchase high-precision drilling machines and other automation equipment to meet the requirement. The supplier is said to be beginning trial production of sample super-thin rigid boards, and could start volume production in early 2021.

Apple is eager to adopt mini-LED technology as it allows for thinner and lighter product designs, while offering many of the same benefits of OLED displays used on the latest iPhones, including good wide color gamut performance, high contrast and dynamic range, and local dimming for truer blacks.

Apple has six mini-LED products in the works that are set to debut in 2020 and 2021, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Apple is said to be debuting the technology in a 12.9-inch ‌iPad Pro‌ for launch later this year, followed by a 27-inch iMac Pro, a 14.1-inch MacBook Pro, a 16-inch ‌‌‌MacBook Pro‌‌‌, a 10.2.-inch iPad, and a 7.9-inch ‌‌‌iPad‌‌‌ mini.

Kuo hasn't given projected launch dates for the other devices with the exception of the ‌‌‌iMac‌ Pro‌‌, which Kuo expects to launch in the fourth quarter of 2020, and the 7.9-inch ‌‌‌iPad‌‌‌ mini, which he says will launch in 2020.

Apple says it has found no evidence of alleged forced labor at one of its key Chinese suppliers, after the U.S. government blacklisted O-film as part of its continuing crackdown on Chinese tech companies.

Camera and touch module supplier O-film Group was one of 11 Chinese companies added to the U.S. Commerce Department's Entity List on Monday over alleged human rights abuses involving China's Uighur Muslim minority. Activists have also launched a campaign accusing firms of "bolstering and benefiting" from exploitation of the minority group.

Reports by U.S. Congress and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), among others, have found that thousands of Uighers have been transferred to work in factories across China under conditions that strongly suggest forced labor. The ASPI has inked the factories to over 80 brands, including Apple, Nike, and Gap.

However, Apple told BBC News on Thursday that it had investigated the claims against O-film and had not discovered anything untoward, despite conducting several surprise audits at O-film facilities.

"We have found no evidence of any forced labour on Apple production lines and we plan to continue monitoring," the firm said.

O-film has been part of Apple's supply chain since 2017, first for iPads and later for iPhones. O-Film currently supplies front-end camera modules and dual-camera modules for Apple's upcoming "iPhone 12" lineup.

The manufacturer has successfully competed for Apple's business by showing that it can meet the company's high quality standards, fending off rival camera module suppliers including Foxconn-owned Sharp of Japan and LG Innotek.

In December 2017, Apple CEO ‌Tim Cook‌ visited one of O-film's factories and praised the tech expertise and work culture, according to a press release on O-film's official website.

Nikkei Asian Review notes that Apple's 2019 suppliers list shows that three out of the four O-film facilities that supply Apple are in Nanchang, where the blacklisted subsidiary is located, although it's not clear if the subsidiary operates any of the facilities that directly supply Apple.

Update: According to DigiTimes' sources in the supply chain, O-film's shipments for Apple will not be affected by the blacklisting in the short term. The sources said O-film's Nanchang site supplies touch control solutions for Android handsets and has become an independent business entity since 2019, while O-film's camera modules for iPhones are mainly assembled at its main production base in China's Shenzhen.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News 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.

Twitter is continuing to investigate last week's security breach that saw the Twitter accounts of Apple and other high-profile figures and companies hacked by bitcoin scammers, and today the social media company confirmed that hackers accessed the Direct Messages of 36 Twitter accounts.

Twitter previously said that no passwords were stolen in the hack, which was a "coordinated social engineering attack" that targeted Twitter employees. Hackers were able to gain access to employee credentials, using that information to access Twitter's internal systems, including bypassing two-factor authentication protections.

The internal tools were used to target 130 accounts, and for 45 of those accounts, hackers initiated a password reset and had full access to the account to send tweets. For eight of the Twitter accounts, the attackers downloaded account information through the "Your Twitter Data" tool that provides Twitter account details and activity, but none of the eight accounts targeted in this way were verified accounts.

For the 130 accounts that were breached, which included the accounts of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, former U.S. President Barack Obama, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, presidential candidate Joe Biden, and others, hackers were able to see personal information like email addresses and phone numbers, and for some accounts taken over, additional information was available.

Twitter has not provided specific details on which of the 36 accounts saw their DMs breached, but hackers did access the DMs of one elected official in the Netherlands. No other former or current elected official had their DMs accessed.

Twitter is communicating directly with the account holders that were impacted and is further securing its system to prevent future attacks. As part of its efforts to stop something similar from happening again, Twitter is rolling out additional company-wide training to guard against social engineering tactics.

SoftBank, the company that owns chip designer Arm Holdings, is exploring options that could include a full or partial sale of Arm, according to rumors, but Apple isn't interested in purchasing the company.

In a report on Nvidia's possible interest in Arm, Bloomberg says that SoftBank approached Apple to see if Apple might want to buy Arm. The two companies reportedly had preliminary discussions, but Apple does not plan to pursue a bid because of Arm's licensing requirements and possible regulatory concerns.

The two firms had preliminary discussions, but Apple isn't planning to pursue a bid. That's because Arm's licensing operation would fit poorly with Apple's hardware and software business model. There may also be regulatory concerns about Apple owning a key licensee that supplies so many rivals. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Apple licenses Arm technology for the A-series chips in its iPhones and iPads, and is also planning to use Arm chips in future Macs, with a transition starting later this year.

According to Bloomberg, Nvidia has approached SoftBank to discuss a potential deal for Arm, but other bidders could potentially emerge. SoftBank is also considering a public stock listing as an alternative to a private sale.

A potential sale to Nvidia or another company would not likely have a major impact on Apple or Apple's licensing of Arm technology because of the regulatory oversight and requirements that would accompany such a deal.

Companies that use Arm technology at the current time also would not be in favor of a deal that does not include assurances that Arm's instruction set will continue to be available for equal licensing opportunities.