MacRumors

The Wall Street Journal today published a profile of Tony Blevins, Apple's vice president of procurement, providing an inside look at Apple's corporate culture and what Blevins does for the company.

As Apple's vice president of procurement, Blevins' job is to get suppliers to cut their prices, and he will apparently stop at little to score a favorable deal for Apple, which has earned him the nickname "the Blevinator."

Blevins was, for example, the key driver behind encouraging Apple suppliers to deprive Qualcomm of royalty payments during Apple's ongoing dispute with the chipmaker. He negotiates with suppliers, enforces manufacturing details, and manages semiconductor suppliers.

His negotiating skills are so important to Apple that Cook tapped him to manage negotiations for Apple's spaceship-shaped Apple Park campus. When getting bids for the curved glass used for the structure, he invited glass makers to Hong Kong, put them in separate conference rooms, and went from room to room to get the lowest price, ultimately saving Apple hundreds of millions of dollars.

Blevins does not hesitate to drop suppliers, and in one example, after STMicroelectronics refused to lower the price of gyroscope sensors in 2013 despite Blevins' threats to find a different supplier, STM lost Apple's business.

Blevins is also the go to for making sure that suppliers adhere to Apple's nondisclosure agreements, which can carry fines. In 2017, Japan Display disclosed that it had received orders for liquid crystal displays, and The Wall Street Journal subsequently confirmed that Apple was one of the smartphone makers that had expressed interest in LCDs, leading to trouble for Japan Display.

Mr. Blevins called a top Japan Display executive and accused him of violating Apple's nondisclosure agreement. "Are you stupid?" he said, according to a person familiar with the call.

Apple demanded Japan Display pay $5 million for breaching the non-disclosure agreement. Japan Display didn't pay, but promised to submit news conference materials to Apple before events so Apple can review it. A Japan Display executive told The ‌Wall Street Journal‌ that Apple's supplier agreements are "torturous."

When asked for comment, Blevins opted not to speak to The ‌Wall Street Journal‌, saying "I'm a loyal company guy." The full profile on Blevins, which goes into much more detail, can be read over at The Wall Street Journal.

Apple today overhauled its Apple jobs website, introducing a new look and a new video in an effort to better recruit employees. The updated video on the site features the different Apple logo designs that Apple first created for its Mac-centric event in October 2018.

The site displays different Apple logo designs whenever it's reloaded, and the video also features animated logo designs with a recruiting message spoken over the designs.

To the constant beginners who sing off-key against the beat. To those unfamiliar with convention, unmoved by rules, and reborn with every new discovery. Those open to daydreams and night dreams and visions and mirages. Who can see the millions of shades of green in a field of grass. Whose days are filled with mysteries that cannot be solved with facts. You are more powerful than you think... and you are welcome here.

As with before, the jobs site features sections outlining the different Apple teams, opportunities for students, Apple's philosophy, and jobs at retail locations, with an overview of all of the locations where Apple operates stores, as well as a section for creating a profile for job hunting.

Apple's new site design is up and running now and anyone who is interested in checking it out.

Apple today announced the launch of a new Apple Watch Connected program that should benefit both gyms and gym-goers.

The program will reward gym-goers for using an Apple Watch to track their workouts, with incentives varying by gym. At participating Crunch Fitness locations, for example, members can earn up to $4 off the cost of their membership per week if they meet certain activity goals, according to CNBC.

In return, gyms could attract new customers who wear an Apple Watch and see increased loyalty from existing members.

It is free for gyms to join the Apple Watch Connected program, so long as they meet the requirements, including having iPhone and Apple Watch apps to track workouts, offering rewards and incentives, and accepting Apple Pay. Apple also encourages gyms to offer GymKit-enabled equipment for improved Apple Watch syncing.

Four gym chains are rolling out support for the program in the United States starting today, including Basecamp Fitness, Crunch Fitness, Orangetheory Fitness, and the YMCA, according to CNBC:

Basecamp will launch Apple Watch Connected to all of its clubs over the next year. YMCA will start with its greater Twin Cities locations this week followed by 22 additional YMCA branches in the coming weeks before expanding further. Crunch Fitness is launching Apple Watch Connected in two Manhattan gyms this week with more coming. Finally, Orange Theory will deploy it in all U.S. facilities in 2020, starting with two Manhattan locations on Thursday.

Last month, Orangetheory Fitness announced that it would begin rolling out Apple Watch support to its gyms in the first quarter of 2020. The gym chain created a small accessory called the OTbeat Link that attaches to an Apple Watch band, allowing the Apple Watch to sync with the chain's heart rate monitoring system.

As noted in our coverage yesterday of the latest Safari Technology Preview 99, Apple has removed all support for Adobe Flash. Safari Technology Preview is basically a beta of the next version of Safari proper, all but confirming that Apple is officially ditching support for Flash in the next version of its native Mac browser.

This means that when the next version of Safari is released, users will no longer be able to install or use Adobe Flash in the browser. The elimination of Flash support should not heavily impact users, given that most other popular browsers have already moved away from the format. Likewise, iPhone and iPad users won't be affected because Apple's mobile operating system has never supported Flash.

It was way back in July 2017 that Adobe announced plans to end-of-life its Flash browser plug-in. Adobe said it was ceasing development and distribution of the software at the end of 2020, and encouraged content creators to migrate flash content to HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly formats.

Adobe's Flash Player has always suffered from a seemingly never-ending stream of critical vulnerabilities that have exposed Mac and PC users to malware and other security risks. Vendors like Microsoft and Apple have had to work continually over the years to keep up with security fixes. Apple went so far as to stop selling Macs with Flash pre-installed, to ensure they weren't being shipped with outdated versions of the software and putting users at risk.

Some readers may fondly recall Steve Jobs' famous 2010 open letter offering his "Thoughts on Flash," in which the former Apple CEO railed against Adobe's software for its poor reliability, lack of openness, incompatibility with mobile sites and battery drain on mobile devices. Jobs also criticized Adobe for being "painfully slow" to adopt enhancements to Apple's platforms, and said that Apple refused to be at the mercy of a cross-platform development tool when it came innovation.

We don't know when the next version of Safari browser for Mac will be released to the public. In any case, it's safe to say that Flash will not be missed.

Google researchers discovered multiple security flaws in Apple's Safari web browser that let users' browsing habits be tracked despite Apple's Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature.

Google plans to publish details on the security flaws in the near future, and a preview of Google's discovery was seen by Financial Times, with the publication sharing information on the vulnerabilities this morning.

The security flaws were first found by Google in the summer of 2019, and were disclosed to Apple in August. There were five types of potential attacks that could allow third parties to learn "sensitive private information about the user's browsing habits."

Google researchers say that Safari left personal data exposed because the Intelligent Tracking Prevention List "implicitly stores information about the websites visited by the user." Malicious entities could use these flaws to create a "persistent fingerprint" that would follow a user around the web or see what individual users were searching for on search engine pages.

Intelligent Tracking Prevention, which Apple began implementing in 2017, is a privacy-focused feature meant to make it harder for sites to track users across the web, preventing browsing profiles and histories from being created.

Lukasz Olejnik, a security researcher who saw Google's paper, said that if exploited, the vulnerabilities "would allow unsanctioned and uncontrollable user tracking." Olejnik said that such privacy vulnerabilities are rare, and "issues in mechanisms designed to improve privacy are unexpected and highly counter-intuitive."

Apple appears to have addressed these Safari security flaws in a December update, based on a release update that thanked Google for its "responsible disclosure practice," though full security credit has not yet been provided by Apple so there's a chance that there's still some behind-the-scenes fixing to be done.

Apple today seeded the third betas of upcoming iOS and iPadOS 13.3.1 updates to developers, one week after seeding the second betas and more than a month after the release of iOS 13.3 with Communication Limits for Screen Time.

iOS and iPadOS 13.3.1 can be downloaded from the Apple Developer center or over the air once the proper developer profile has been installed.

iOS 13.3.1 includes a "Networking & Wireless" toggle that turns off the U1 Ultra Wideband chip in the latest iPhones. The feature, located in the Privacy > Location Services section of the Settings app, turns off location for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Ultra Wideband.

Apple added this location toggle after it was discovered that the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max continue to track user location even when location services options are disabled. This is because there are international regulatory requirements that mandate the U1 chip be disabled in certain locations.

The new toggle makes sure location tracking is off for the U1 chip at all times. Apple has also added a new "Play Again" button when replaying content that you've already watched in the TV app.

Along with these features, the iOS 13.3.1 update also likely includes bug fixes for issues unable to be addressed in the iOS 13.3 update. Specifically, it could address some issues with Communication Limits, fixing a workaround with the Contacts app that allowed children text someone who contacted them from an unknown number.