MacRumors

Apple has removed the 4K LG UltraFine Displays from its online Apple Store in the United States, continuing a trend of pulling the display from its online stores around the world. Before disappearing from the store, the display had been listed as "Sold Out" for quite some time.

It's not clear why Apple has stopped selling the 4K LG UltraFine Display, but it is several years old at this point, having first debuted in 2016.

The 4K and 5K UltraFine Displays were designed by LG in partnership with Apple and were created to be used with the 2016 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pro models, which supported Thunderbolt 3 for the first time.

The 21.5-inch 4K LG UltraFine Display offered a resolution of 4096 x 2304 with support for P3 wide color gamut and 60W of power delivery for charging a MacBook. It was selling from Apple for $700 before being pulled from the online store.

LG recently debuted a new 4K UltraFine Display, but this new model, priced at $1300, was not designed in partnership with Apple and it doesn't seem like Apple is planning to replace the existing model with this one in its retail stores.

Apple is working on an Apple-branded display that will be sold alongside the high-end high-throughput modular Mac Pro that's in the works, but with a rumored 6K resolution and a 31.6-inch screen size, it's sounding like it's going to be ultra high end (and expensive) and not a replacement for traditional 4K and 5K displays.

iOS apps and features including Shortcuts, Screen Time, and iMessage effects will be coming to macOS later this year, after they're first unveiled at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference in June. The information was shared today by 9to5Mac's Guilherme Rambo, who spoke with people familiar with the development of macOS 10.15.

The major update to macOS, which is expected to launch in the fall, will include support for Siri Shortcuts. Apple updated the previous Workflow app for iOS to become ‌Siri‌ Shortcuts in September 2018, alongside the release of iOS 12. It allows you to create multi-step automations that you can initiate with a simple ‌Siri‌ command.

Today, Shortcuts has expanded to numerous third-party apps like American Airlines and Caviar. Later this year, Mac computers will get "system-wide" support for ‌Siri‌ Shortcuts, according to today's report.

Secondly, macOS 10.15 will see the addition of Screen Time, which tracks your device usage and reports back to you at the end of each week with statistics on what apps you use the most. Parents can use the feature to limit the time their kids spend in certain apps, and people trying to take a break from social media can set time limits on apps like Instagram and Twitter.

On macOS, this feature will work essentially the same as it does on iOS. It'll be housed in a new panel in System Preferences to customize its settings, and an overlay will appear when time limits are exceeded, where you can close the app or bypass the Screen Time lock with a passcode.

Lastly, macOS will be getting iMessage screen effects that have been exclusive to iPhones and iPads for a few years. These include full screen effects like Echo, Balloons, Confetti, and Lasers. On current versions of macOS, when an iPhone user sends these effects and they're read on a Mac, the iMessage screen on Mac simply states "Sent with [Effect Name]" below the message.

Today's news follows previous reports about Apple's plans to tie the iOS and macOS ecosystems more closely together. This includes letting developers release universal apps that work across ‌iPhone‌, iPad, and Mac devices, which could happen by 2021. Last year at WWDC, Apple also ported a few iOS apps to macOS for the first time, including Home, News, Voice Memos, and Stocks.

Apple supplier Foxconn today said that it remains committed to its contract to build a display plant and research facility in Wisconsin (via Reuters). The company's comment comes a few days after Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said that the state wanted to renegotiate the Foxconn deal, partly due to the belief that the Taiwanese company was not expected to reach its goal of creating 13,000 jobs in Wisconsin.

Foxconn's original goal for the project was to eventually employ 13,000 workers on the site, and today the company has confirmed that it "remains committed" to this plan. Foxconn initially announced the project in 2017 at a White House event alongside President Donald Trump. Governor Evers recently took office in January 2019, inheriting the deal to Give Foxconn $4 billion in tax breaks and other incentives.

“Foxconn’s commitment to job creation in Wisconsin remains long term and will span over the length of the WEDC (Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation) contract and beyond.”

Over the years, Foxconn's Wisconsin plant has gone through many iterations as the supplier faced new roadblocks and cost-cutting measures. The plant was designated as a TV display factory in its early stages, then pivoted to small to medium-size displays for smartphones, infotainment systems, and other "niche products".

In early 2019, Reuters reported that Foxconn would greatly scale back its plans to produce displays of any kind in Wisconsin and instead focus on research and development. The news came from Louis Woo, assistant to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, who said Foxconn is "not building a factory" in Wisconsin.

According to Woo, the steep cost of making advanced screens for TV sets and other devices in the United States led to the decision. Around the same time, the company confirmed it had slowed its pace of hiring, down to about 5,200 people expected by the end of 2020.

As of now, Foxconn has fallen short of its employment goals in 2018, hiring just 178 full-time workers rather than the 260 it intended to for the year. The supplier has to meet certain hiring and capital investment goals under its current contract to qualify for tax credits in Wisconsin. With its inability to meet the 260 hiring target last year, it failed to earn a tax credit of up to $9.5 million.

Will Smith, his wife Jada Smith, and his son Jaden Smith today visited Apple Park to discuss the environment and Jaden's Just Water company, according to a tweet Apple CEO Tim Cook shared on Twitter this evening.

Just Water is a water company that sells ethically sourced spring water in paper-based bottles with sugarcane caps, all of which is more environmentally friendly than a standard plastic bottle. In addition to plain spring water, Just Water also offers infused flavors like lemon, tangerine, and apple cinnamon.

In celebration of Earth Day, Apple plans to host environment-themed Today at Apple sessions at its Apple retail stores. The company will also feature original stories and app collections in the App Store and will host an Earth Day Apple Watch challenge.

Back in March, Facebook announced that millions of Facebook passwords were stored on its servers in plain text with no encryption. At the time, Facebook also said that "tens of thousands" of Instagram passwords were also stored in the same unencrypted format, but as it turns out, the actual number was much, much higher.

In an update to its original blog post, Facebook now says that millions of Instagram passwords were stored on its servers in a readable format.

Update on April 18, 2019 at 7AM PT: Since this post was published, we discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format. We now estimate that this issue impacted millions of Instagram users. We will be notifying these users as we did the others. Our investigation has determined that these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed.

These unencrypted, plain text passwords were accessible to thousands of Facebook employees, and while Facebook says that there's no "evidence to date" that anyone within Facebook abused or improperly accessed the passwords, it's highly concerning.

Instagram user names, unlike Facebook usernames, can be highly appealing to thieves. Short names can sell for quite a lot of money, which makes Instagram passwords rather valuable.

Facebook was not forthcoming about the discovery of additional impacted Instagram accounts, burying it in a month-old blog post and, as Recode points out, releasing the update just before the Mueller report came out and media sites were distracted.

Facebook will be notifying Instagram users whose passwords were improperly stored, and Instagram users who are concerned about their accounts should change their passwords and make sure two-factor authentication is enabled.

Facebook's latest security leak comes just a day after news spread that Facebook harvested the email contacts of 1.5 million Facebook users without their consent and used the data to build a web of social connections.

Earlier this week, a scathing report also outlined how Facebook leveraged user data to punish its rivals and reward companies who paid heavily into Facebook advertising and shared data of their own.

Apple likely paid somewhere around $5 to $6 billion to settle its ongoing legal battle with Qualcomm, according to estimates shared today by UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri (via CNBC).

The $5 to $6 billion payment would have been for royalty fees that Apple had stopped paying over the course of its two year legal fight with Qualcomm.

Qualcomm may also be receiving between $8 and $9 per iPhone from Apple in ongoing patent royalties, a figure calculated based on guidance numbers that Qualcomm provided following the settlement. Qualcomm said that it expects its earnings per share to increase by $2.

Apple previously paid $7.50 in royalties, so at $8 to $9 per ‌iPhone‌, Apple would be shelling out more cash than it did before.

Apple appears to have had no alternative but to settle with Qualcomm, as it had no other way to source 5G chips for its 2020 ‌iPhone‌ lineup. Apple initially planned to use Intel chips, but rumors suggested Intel wasn't meeting development goals, leading to tension between Apple and Intel.

Just hours after Apple and Qualcomm announced a settlement deal, Intel said that it was exiting the 5G smartphone modem business and would not be making 5G smartphone chips at all.

It's not entirely clear if Apple settled with Qualcomm because it knew of Intel's plan to abandon 5G chip development or if Intel made the decision after learning of Apple's settlement plans, but either way, it leaves Apple with no choice but to re-adopt Qualcomm chips for future iPhones.

Smartphone makers like Samsung will have 5G smartphones available starting this year, so Apple could not afford to delay the rollout of its 5G iPhones. Launching in 2020 already puts Apple somewhat behind, but 5G networks from U.S. carriers are still very much in development.

Following news of the settlement, Qualcomm's stock has gone up over 38 percent, marking a big win for the San Diego company. The agreement includes a six-year licensing deal along with a "multiyear chipset supply agreement."

It sounds like Apple will need to rely on Qualcomm for the foreseeable future, but Apple is working on its own modem chip technology, which may eventually allow it to drop Qualcomm as a modem chip supplier.

All three 2019 iPhones will feature 12-megapixel single-lens front cameras, up from 7-megapixels on the iPhone XS, ‌iPhone‌ XS Max, and ‌iPhone‌ XR, according to the latest research note from well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

The note, obtained by MacRumors, adds that the next ‌iPhone‌ XS and ‌iPhone‌ XS Max models with 5.8-inch and 6.5-inch OLED displays respectively will also feature triple-lens rear cameras, including a 12-megapixel telephoto lens, 12-megapixel wide-angle lens, and a 12-megapixel super-wide-angle lens supplied by Sony:

We forecast the camera upgrade will be one of the new 2H19 iPhone's major selling points. Critical spec upgrades are as follows. (1) Rear cameras of 6.5-inch OLED, 5.8-inch OLED, and 6.1-inch LCD will likely upgrade to triple-camera and dual-camera, respectively. A super-wide camera will be newly adopted by the triple-camera system, which is equipped with the 12MP/1um CIS provided exclusively by Sony. (2) The front camera of all three new iPhone models will likely upgrade to 12MP CIS+5P lens (vs. current 7MP CIS+4P lens).

Kuo believes the next ‌iPhone‌ XR with a 6.1-inch LCD display will sport a dual-lens rear camera, as the WSJ previously reported, although he did not provide megapixels or any other camera specifications for that model. The rear camera on the current ‌iPhone‌ XR is a single 12-megapixel wide-angle lens.

Kuo says the rear super-wide-angle lens and front camera lens on the next ‌iPhone‌ XS and ‌iPhone‌ XS Max will adopt "black lens-coating technologies," which will make the lenses look "inconspicuous," as hinted at previously.

The rumored triple-lens camera design for the next iPhones has proved quite controversial, but the special coating should help the far-right lens blend into the black bezels for a more aesthetically pleasing look.

The triple-lens camera design was first leaked by OnLeaks:

A chart from the research note:

Kuo says the new iPhones will be introduced in the second half of 2019. This is no surprise, as Apple has unveiled new iPhones in September every year since 2012. Last year, the ‌iPhone‌ XS and ‌iPhone‌ XS Max became available to order on September 14, followed by the ‌iPhone‌ XR on October 19.

Apple has opened a new lab that will study how it can expand upon its current recycling processes through machine learning and robotics. The company announced the news today, along with other environmentally-focused updates, including that it will quadruple the number of locations where United States customers can send their iPhone to be disassembled by its recycling robot Daisy in a major expansion of its recycling programs.

In regards to its new lab, Apple is calling it the "Material Recovery Lab" and says that it will be dedicated to looking for innovative solutions that will improve on traditional methods of recycling. The lab will work with Apple engineering teams and members of academia to address and propose solutions to current recycling challenges. The 9,000 square foot lab is located in Austin, Texas.

The recycling expansion also includes select iPhones returned to Best Buy stores throughout the United States and KPN retailers in the Netherlands. With the Apple Trade In program, those interested can also turn in their eligible devices to be recycled at any Apple Store or on Apple.com.

Apple says that Daisy can now disassemble 15 different ‌iPhone‌ models at the rate of 200 per hour, and after materials are recovered from the robot they are recycled back into the manufacturing process. Apple has received nearly 1 million devices through its recycling programs and each Daisy robot can disassemble 1.2 million devices each year.

In 2018, the company refurbished more than 7.8 million Apple devices and helped divert more than 48,000 metric tons of electronic waste from landfills.

“Advanced recycling must become an important part of the electronics supply chain, and Apple is pioneering a new path to help push our industry forward,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. “We work hard to design products that our customers can rely on for a long time. When it comes time to recycle them, we hope that the convenience and benefit of our programs will encourage everyone to bring in their old devices.”

Lastly, the company has released its 2019 Environment report with more information on its climate change solutions. These include Apple's recent announcement that 44 of its suppliers -- like Foxconn and Wistron -- have committed to 100 percent renewable energy for their production of Apple products.

To celebrate Earth Day on April 22, Apple will have environmentally themed Today at Apple sessions at all Apple Stores, feature original stories and app collections on the App Store, and run an Earth Day Apple Watch challenge. The company will also support the efforts of non-profit organizations like Conservation International, SEE Foundation, and The Recycling Partnership, which are all focused on protecting and preserving the environment.

The front page of Apple.com has been updated as well, prompting visitors to learn more about Apple and its environmental efforts.