MacRumors

The director general of Britain's Security Service is arguing for "exceptional access" to encrypted messages, in the ongoing battle between authorities and technology companies, reports The Guardian.

MI5's director general has called on technology companies to find a way to allow spy agencies "exceptional access" to encrypted messages, amid fears they cannot otherwise access such communications.

Sir Andrew Parker is understood to be particularly concerned about Facebook, which announced plans to introduce powerful end-to-end encryption last March across all the social media firm's services.

In an ITV interview to be broadcast on Thursday, Sir Andrew Parker says he has found it "increasingly mystifying" that intelligence agencies like his are not able to easily read secret messages of terror suspects they are monitoring.

Parker goes on to say that cyberspace has become an unregulated "Wild West" that is largely inaccessible to authorities, and calls on tech firms to answer the question: "Can you provide end-to-end encryption but on an exceptional basis – exceptional basis – where there is a legal warrant and a compelling case to do it, provide access to stop the most serious forms of harm happening?"

The U.K. government has long argued that encrypted online channels such as WhatsApp and Telegram provide a "safe haven" for terrorists because governments and even the companies that host the services cannot read them.

Tech companies have pushed back against various attempts by authorities to weaken encryption methods, such as the FBI's request that Apple help it hack into the iPhone owned by Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the December 2015 attacks in San Bernardino.

Apple famously refused to comply with the request, and has since consistently argued against laws that would require tech companies to build so-called "back doors" into their software, claiming that such a move would weaken security for everyone and simply make terrorists and criminals turn to open-source encryption methods for their digital communications.

On the opposing side of the debate, Britain's cybersecurity agency has proposed that if tech companies sent a copy of encrypted messages and the encryption keys to unscramble them when requested following a warrant, this would allow them to prevent terrorists and criminals from operating out of sight without compromising encryption methods.

However, given that encrypted communication services like WhatsApp and Signal do not have access to private keys that would enable them to decrypt messages, a back door would seem the only alternative.

A spokesperson for Privacy International, a technology human rights group, told The Guardian that strong encryption kept communications safe from criminals and hostile governments.

"The reality is that these big tech platforms are international companies: providing access to UK police would mean establishing a precedent that police around the world could use to compel the platforms to monitor activists and opposition, from Hong Kong to Honduras," the spokesperson added.

Note: Due to the political 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.

Lady Gaga this evening released her latest single, "Stupid Love," with a music video to go along with it. The video was shot entirely on an iPhone 11 Pro.

Prior to the video's release, Lady Gaga shared a series of teaser trailers featuring the new song, and Apple has also highlighted the video on its own YouTube channel in a shorter one minute clip.

There have been other high-profile Shot on ‌iPhone‌ music videos, including the video for Selena Gomez's "Lose You to Love Me" single, also shot on an ‌iPhone‌ 11 Pro.

Lady Gaga's new single, which is available on Apple Music, is the first new song she's released since creating songs for "A Star is Born." Apple previously partnered with Lady Gaga when she performed at Apple Park in May 2019 for the formal opening of Apple's new campus.

Apple regularly adds new games to Apple Arcade, and this week's addition is Crossy Road Castle, made by Hipster Whale, the developer behind the popular Crossy Road game.

Crossy Road is an endless Frogger-style game where the goal is to get various animals and characters across the road, but Crossy Road Castle, which was announced back in October, is a cross between an endless runner and a platformer.

Crossy Road Castle uses a similar art style as Crossy Road, with players guiding characters through a castle that's rife with enemies and obstacles to overcome. The goal of the game is to climb as high into the castle as possible.

Crossy Road Castle can be played solo, but there's also a cooperative mode that allows multiple players to brave the castle using several game controllers or multiple iOS devices.

As with Crossy Road, gameplay will unlock new characters to play. Hipster Whale says that new towers and characters will be introduced regularly.

‌Apple Arcade‌ subscribers can download Crossy Road Castle from the App Store as of today. ‌Apple Arcade‌ is priced at $4.99 per month and provides users with access to more than 100 games with no additional fees or in-app purchases. Crossy Road Castle can be played on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Mac.

The United States Federal Communication Commission is expected to propose fining AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint $200 million in total for improperly disclosing real-time customer location data, reports Reuters.

Proposed fines for the four major carriers in the United States could be announced as soon as tomorrow, and the carriers would have the chance to challenge the fines before they become final. The precise amount each company is fined could change, and could possibly increase.

The FCC in January confirmed that several wireless carriers in the U.S. violated federal law by failing to protect sensitive customer data that included real-time location information.

Carrier location selling practices were uncovered last year when Motherboard reported that Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile had been selling subscriber geolocation data to third-party companies like LocationSmart and Zumigo, with those companies passing the data along to bounty hunters, bail bondsmen, and more.

The FCC launched an investigation into the practices after the U.S. Committee on Energy and Commerce in November 2019 accused the FCC of "failing in its duty to to enforce the laws Congress passed to protect consumers' privacy."

Apple is working on an iPad keyboard that includes a built-in trackpad, reports The Information, citing sources with knowledge of Apple's plans.

Apple has reportedly been experimenting with trackpads for the ‌iPad‌ for a "number of years." Some of the prototypes have featured capacitive keys, though it is not known if this feature is in the finished product. The Information's source says that the keyboard will be made from materials similar to those in Apple's current Smart Keyboard Folio designed for the iPad Pro.

Apple is preparing the keyboard for mass production at the current time, and is expected to release the new accessory alongside the next version of the ‌iPad Pro‌. Current rumors suggest the ‌iPad Pro‌ could be refreshed as soon as March, and Apple is expected to hold a March event (perhaps on March 31) to announce new devices.

If Apple does indeed unveil a new ‌iPad Pro‌ in March, we could see the rumored keyboard released at the same time. Up until now, all of Apple's Smart Keyboards designed for use with iPads have only featured standard keyboard keys. A version with a trackpad would need to be significantly overhauled to make space for the trackpad design.

Back in January, Taiwanese site DigiTimes said that Apple is working on a ‌Smart Keyboard‌ with backlit keys and scissor switches, so it's possible that the upcoming ‌Smart Keyboard‌ with trackpad will also have these features.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is in Birmingham, Alabama today, where he spoke at an event for EdFarm, which will offer Apple's Everyone Can Code curriculum alongside civil rights education conducted through augmented reality.

Following his EdFarm speech, Cook did an interview with Fox Business. The interview is set to air in full on Friday, but in a clip shared today, Cook spoke about the impact of the coronavirus on Apple's business.

According to Cook, he believes that China is starting to get the coronavirus under control, and that he is optimistic about things returning to normal.

It feels to me that China is getting the coronavirus under control. When you look at the numbers, they're coming down day by day by day. And so I'm very optimistic there.

Cook says that Apple's suppliers in China are getting back to work and that production is ramping up.

On the supplier side, we have suppliers, you know, iPhone is built everywhere in the world. We have key components coming from the United States, we have key parts that are in China, and so on and so forth. When you look at the parts that are done in China, we have reopened factories, so the factories were able to work through the conditions of opening. They're also in ramp, so I think of this as sort of the third phase of getting back to normal and we're in phase three of the ramp mode.

In the full interview set air on Friday, Cook will comment on the possibility of the coronavirus disruptions continuing past the second quarter of the year.

Cook's comments come two weeks after Apple announced that it would not meet its revenue goals for the March quarter due to store closures in China and supply issues. Apple is expected to share more information in its next earnings call, which is scheduled for April.

Facebook today announced that it has canceled its F8 developer conference that was set to take place at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California on May 5 and 6.

In a statement, Facebook said that given "growing concerns" about COVID-19, the in-person component of F8 has been nixed. Instead of F8, Facebook is planning locally hosted events, videos, and live streamed content.

This was a tough call to make - F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it's one of our favorite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world - but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on. We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it's important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn't feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance.

F8 is an event that's on the same scale as Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, and last year, it attracted 5,000 attendees. It was also set to take place on May 5 and 6, which is just about a month ahead of when Apple is likely planning to host WWDC 2020 at the same venue. Whether Apple is considering a similar cancelation remains to be seen as WWDC is a month later, but with F8 canceled, there's a possibility.

For the last few years, Apple's WWDC events have been held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in early June. No concrete dates or clear indications of when the event will take place have been discovered as of yet this year, but based on past event dates, we believe June 8 to 12 is the most likely week for WWDC 2020.

The coronavirus outbreak has already caused the cancellation of major events. Mobile World Congress, a huge trade show event that takes place in Barcelona each February, was shut down. The annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco is coming up in March and thus far, many major game companies have dropped out such as Sony, Unity, Microsoft, Kojima Productions, Facebook, and EA.

Despite the dropouts, GDC is "moving forward as planned," even though a state of emergency has been declared in San Francisco. Last year, GDC had close to 30,000 people in attendance. Pax East, another gaming convention that kicked off today, also saw many gaming companies drop out, but the event went forward.

Other events around the world are also being canceled due to coronavirus fears. The Geneva watch show (April 25-28) was canceled, according to Bloomberg, as was an event that Swatch planned to hold in February. The Baselworld trade fair (April 30 - May5) is also said to be mulling a cancellation.

Apple in mid-February said that its March quarter revenue will fall short of expectations due to device supply shortages and store closures in China caused by the coronavirus. Apple CEO Tim Cook says that Apple's "paramount concern" is its employees, partners, customers, and suppliers in China and its first priority is the health and safety of employees, customers, supply chain partners, and the communities in which it operates.

Apple has also said that it is closely monitoring the coronavirus situation.

COVID-19 has infected more than 82,000 people and there have been over 2,800 deaths, primarily in China. Earlier this week, the CDC warned Americans that it expects the virus to spread in the United States, and just yesterday, UC Davis announced that it is treating a patient in Northern California who is the first person in the U.S. believed to have contracted the virus from community exposure.

Leaked proposals from the European Union suggest that smartphone manufacturers in the EU could be forced to make all batteries removable in the future. This would mean that any smartphone brand wanting to sell a handheld in the EU, including Apple, would have to ensure that every device on the market has a user-removable battery (via TechRadar).

This proposal is said to be a long way from being confirmed as it's not even out in the public yet. The documents were leaked by Dutch publication Het Financieele Dagblad, which suggested that the proposal will be officially unveiled in March.

Apple has always made its iPhones with non-removable batteries, encouraging users to take their devices in to specialists if they ever face issues with degrading batteries. The leaked EU proposals suggest that users shouldn't have to rely on outside help in these situations, and that they should be able to simply swap the battery out on their own.

The iPhone would have to undergo massive design changes to comply with a removable battery design. With a removable battery, the ‌iPhone‌ would potentially lose features like waterproofing and a slim design.

Apple is already pushing back against one ongoing change in the European Union, related to a common charging standard for mobile devices. The European Parliament wants one charger to fit all smartphones, tablets, and other portable devices, with the likely candidate to be USB-C.

This could make the Lightning port on current ‌iPhone‌ models incompatible with the law, and Apple's current stance is that the ‌iPhone‌ is too thin to house a USB-C port. Given that the company disagreed with the charging standard vote, it's likely that if the removable battery proposal ever becomes real legislation in the EU, Apple will once again push back against the proposal.

Apple today received FCC approval for a pair of wireless earphones with model number A2015, described as "Power Beats Wireless" in the regulatory documents. These are likely the rumored "Powerbeats4" earphones with "Hey Siri" support that MacRumors uncovered images of in iOS 13.3.1 code last month.

"Powerbeats4" should be an upgraded version of Powerbeats3 with an Apple-designed H1 chip for hands-free "Hey Siri" voice commands and "Announce Messages with Siri." The latter feature allows Siri to read your incoming messages out loud when your earphones are connected to your iPhone or iPad and the device is locked.

Apple already released totally wireless Powerbeats Pro with "Hey Siri" support last year for $249. "Powerbeats4" would stick with a cable between each earpiece like the Powerbeats3, which retail for $199.

FCC filings usually foreshadow the release of new Apple products within days, so "Powerbeats4" could be announced imminently with a press release, unless they are held for an Apple event in March.

Related: Everything We Know About Apple's Upcoming Powerbeats4 Earbuds

Apple has lost two long-serving operations executives, including its VP in charge of manufacturing design and a longtime iPhone operations executive who moved to its AR division, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Nick Forlenza, a vice president of manufacturing design, has retired from Apple, while Duco Pasmooij, another vice president who worked on operations, is discussing an exit in the near future, according to people familiar with the moves. Pasmooij left the operations team over a year ago, moving into a role reporting to the company’s head of augmented reality efforts, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing personnel.

According to the report, Forlenza had worked under Sabih Kahn, Apple's senior VP of operations, as an executive in charge of manufacturing design. Forlenza led a team of supply chain and operations executives responsible for global production processes and manufacturing equipment.

Pasmooij helped lead production operations for the ‌iPhone‌ for many years, but had recently reported to Mike Rockwell, the vice president in charge of augmented reality and virtual reality efforts. The personnel moves aren't related to each other, nor to the recent supply chain disruptions owing to the coronavirus outbreak, according Gurman's sources.

Apple has about 100 vice presidents who help CEO Tim Cook and the senior executive team run the company.

Back in 2017, NVIDIA announced the launch of its GeForce Now streaming gaming service, which it made available in a beta capacity.

After years of testing, polishing, and refining, the GeForce Now service saw its official launch on February 4, so we thought we'd go hands-on with GeForce Now to see how it works on Apple's Macs.

GeForce Now is a streaming gaming service that lets you play GPU and CPU intensive games on Macs that might not be able to natively handle the hardware requirements for a particular title.

All rendering and computing is handled by NVIDIA's servers, where the games are installed. Gameplay is then streamed to your computer, so naturally, a robust internet connection is required to make sure there's no lag.

There's a free version of the GeForce Now service, which provides standard access and limits gaming sessions to one hour, but for $4.99 per month, gamers can get priority access, support for NVIDIA's RTX graphics rendering platform, and longer session lengths.

The $4.99 per month cost (or the free service) does NOT include access to games. You still need to purchase games from supported game stores like Steam to be able to play them using GeForce Now, though there are some free ad-supported titles.

Even though GeForce Now has been in beta for three years, the game library is still a little bit lackluster. There are many newer games that are not supported, but games like Fortnite, League of Legends, Witcher 3, and Destiny 2 are available.

NVIDIA recommends a stellar internet connection, but even with 400Mb/s download speeds, we ran into some troubles. On a 12-inch MacBook, which is certainly not powerful enough to play most games, titles would output at 30 frames per second maximum at a resolution of 1200 x 800, which was not a positive gameplay experience. The game was choppy, blurry, and frustrating to play.

Using GeForce Now on an iMac Pro with the same WiFi connection resulted in similar performance issues, but swapping over to an Ethernet cable for a hardwired connection solved all of our issues.

Playing Destiny 2 over GeForce Now with an ‌iMac‌ Pro on the wired connection resulted in no lag, a much higher resolution and frame rate, and no dropped frames. It was a smooth experience that was much like playing the game on a high-end gaming PC.

When trying a wired connection on the 12-inch MacBook, gameplay was also flawless, so NVIDIA is not kidding about the internet requirements. For the best possible experience, connecting over Ethernet is ideal.

GeForce Now is limited to North America and Europe at the current time, and the gaming library is limited, but as new titles are added, this may be a service worth checking out. It's free to try, so long as you own the game you want to play.

Have you tried GeForce Now? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Since launch, Apple's Mac Pro has been the butt of jokes because of some of its expensive add-ons, such as the option to purchase wheels for an additional $400.

As pointed out by MKBHD in a review published this morning, those super pricy wheels have no locking mechanism, which could be major problem if a wheel-equipped ‌Mac Pro‌ is placed on a desk or a slick floor.

In a demonstration video, MKBHD shows the ‌Mac Pro‌ rolling freely on a slick floor because of the lack of wheel locks.

Those who want to secure their wheeled ‌Mac Pro‌ models will need to use some kind of stopper to prevent accidents, though no lock won't be an issue on many surfaces as long as the ‌Mac Pro‌ is on the floor.

Right now, wheels have to be purchased as a $400 add-on when ordering a ‌Mac Pro‌ for the first time, but in a recent technical overview of the Mac Pro, Apple confirmed plans to begin offering feet and wheels as a "customer installable kit" in the future.

A vulnerability in WiFi chips made by Cypress Semiconductor and Broadcom left billions of devices susceptible to an attack that allowed nearby attackers to decrypt sensitive data sent over the air.

The security flaw was detailed at the RSA security conference today (via Ars Technica), and for Apple users, the issue was addressed in the iOS 13.2 and macOS 10.15.1 updates that were released back in late October.

Dubbed Kr00k, the WiFi chip flaw caused vulnerable devices to use an all-zero encryption key to encrypt part of a user's communications. When applied successfully, the attack let hackers decrypt some wireless network packets sent by a vulnerable device. As described by Ars Technica:

Kr00k exploits a weakness that occurs when wireless devices disassociate from a wireless access point. If either the end-user device or the access point is vulnerable, it will put any unsent data frames into a transmit buffer and then send them over the air. Rather than encrypt this data with the session key negotiated earlier and used during the normal connection, vulnerable devices use a key consisting of all zeros, a move that makes decryption trivial.

Chips from Broadcom and Cypress are used in many modern WiFi devices like smartphones, laptops, Internet of Things products, WiFi access points, and routers.

Our tests confirmed that prior to patching, some client devices by Amazon (Echo, Kindle), Apple (iPhone, iPad, MacBook), Google (Nexus), Samsung (Galaxy), Raspberry (Pi 3), Xiaomi (RedMi), as well as some access points by Asus and Huawei, were vulnerable to KrØØk. This totaled to over a billion Wi-Fi-capable devices and access points, at a conservative estimate. Further, many other vendors whose products we did not test also use the affected chipsets in their devices.

According to ESET Research, which published details on the vulnerability, it was disclosed to Broadcom and Cypress along with potentially affected parties. At this time, patches for devices from most major manufacturers have been released.

ESET Research recommends making sure all of the latest updates have been applied to WiFi capable devices to patch the vulnerability.