MacRumors

iPhones with aftermarket batteries installed by third-party repair shops are now eligible for service at Genius Bars and Apple Authorized Service Providers, according to an internal Apple document obtained by MacRumors from three reliable sources. The change was first reported by French blog iGeneration.

This is significant news for ‌iPhone‌ repairs, as the Genius Bar and AASPs were previously instructed to deny service of any kind for an ‌iPhone‌ with a third-party battery, regardless of the circumstances.

If the repair is unrelated to the battery, the Genius Bar and AASPs are now instructed to ignore the third-party battery and proceed with service as normal, according to Apple's internal document. This could include repairs to the display, logic board, microphones, and so forth, with normal fees applying.

If the repair is related to the battery itself, the Genius Bar and AASPs are now permitted to replace the third-party battery with an official Apple battery for the standard fee. Before starting the repair, the Genius Bar must drain the third-party battery to less than 60 percent of a charge.

In the event Apple cannot safely remove a third-party battery due to broken or missing battery tabs or excessive adhesive, the customer is entitled to an ‌iPhone‌ replacement at the standard whole-unit out-of-warranty price.

The updated guidelines went into effect Thursday and should apply worldwide. Apple will still decline service for iPhones with third-party logic boards, enclosures, microphones, Lightning connectors, headphone jacks, volume and sleep/wake buttons, TrueDepth sensor arrays, and certain other components.

iFixit's director of communications Kay-Kay Clapp:

This decision proves that now, more than ever, the third-party repair ecosystem is an integral part of maintaining Apple's high-quality customer experience. If Apple is getting enough third-party repaired phones for a policy change, they clearly don't have the reach or capacity to maintain all the iPhones that they've sold. All of us, including Apple, benefit from the service provided by the repair community.

Apple similarly loosened its repair policy for iPhones with third-party displays back in February 2017.

Updated on March 7 with minor correction about whole-unit replacement fee.

Apple has registered the domain name PrivacyIsImportant.com, according to a WHOIS record discovered by MacRumors. The records indicate that Apple took possession of the domain name on Monday.

The record's contact information now lists Apple Inc. as the organization, complete with its address, phone number, and domains-related email. The registrar is CSC, a firm that protects domain names for large corporations.

The domain name does not yet point to an active website, so it's unclear if or how Apple will use it, but it is certainly possible the company could be planning a privacy-focused marketing campaign along the lines of its "what happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone" billboard at CES 2019 in Las Vegas.

Apple has always been committed to privacy, which it believes is "a fundamental human right," but a marketing campaign could help reassure customers of that position after a major FaceTime privacy vulnerability surfaced in late January.

With foldable smartphones from the likes of Samsung and Huawei now out in the open, speculation has been piqued over whether Apple will follow suit. We know the company has explored ideas related to foldable phones in patent applications, but Apple is unlikely to release a foldable iPhone unless it can meet strict quality standards, and judging by the bulky designs and expensive price tags of early foldable devices, that could still be some ways off.

One innovation in particular that Apple could be holding out for is foldable glass. Early folding phone manufacturers have been relying on plastic polymers to make their flexible displays, but unlike glass, plastic creases and crinkles over time. The material is also less robust and easier to scratch, which is why the deviation from traditional glass smartphone panels is all the more noticeable.

Corning, the makers of Gorilla Glass, is known to be actively developing a foldable glass solution that could one day find its way into a future foldable ‌iPhone‌. Corning is a long-time Apple supplier, and its Gorilla Glass products have been used in the ‌iPhone‌ and the iPad for several years, which makes its current work on glass that's 0.1mm thick and can bend to a 5mm radius all the more interesting.

"In a glass solution, you're really challenging the laws of physics, in that to get a very tight bend radius you want to go thinner and thinner, but you also have to be able to survive a drop event and resist damage," Corning general manager John Bayne recently told Wired.

"The back of the problem we're trying to break, the technical challenge, is, can you keep those tight 3- to 5-millimeter bend radii and also increase the damage resistance of the glass. That's the trajectory we're on."

According to Wired, Corning is combining its experience with Willow Glass, which can roll up like a sheet of paper, and Gorilla Glass, which gets its strength from an ion-exchange process. Unfortunately, that process involves dipping glass into a molten salt solution, and salt corrodes the transistors found in display applications, which makes Willow Glass unsuitable for phones. Corning's work is currently focused on overcoming this challenge.

"We have glasses we've sampled to customers, and they're functional, but they're not quite meeting all the requirements," Bayne says. "People either want better performance against a drop event or a tighter bend radius. We can give them one or the other; the key is to give them both."

Bayne thinks the company's foldable glass will be ready for the mainstream in a couple of years. With a bit of luck, the $200 million that Apple granted Corning out of its $1 billion Advanced Manufacturing Fund will help the U.S. company achieve that goal.

iFixit reports that Apple may have already taken steps to reduce the likelihood of 2018 MacBook Pro users experiencing display lighting issues dubbed Flexgate. Affected machines could see uneven lighting that looks like a "stage light" effect with the display potentially failing completely over time.

iFixit was tipped off by MacRumors forum user Olivia88 posting in our Flexgate megathread that their 2018 13" ‌MacBook Pro‌ appeared to have a longer cable than previous models. iFixit confirmed this finding:

Since we were just wrapping up writing the repair manual for the 2018 model anyway, we checked inside our 2018 15” MacBook Pro again to measure its cable against its 2016 predecessor—and found the 2018 cable was, in fact, a full 2mm longer. Since this change appears in both our 15” model and Olivia88’s 13” model, it’s plausible this change is present in multiple, if not all, 2018 MacBook Pros.

iFixit speculates that this could prevent some of the wear and tear that had previously caused the failure though they weren't able to say for certain.

Apple has yet to publicly acknowledge the issue, and our Flexgate guide covers what your options are if you are affected by this issue.

Apple recently acquired the patent portfolio of Lighthouse AI, a home security company that went out of business at the end of last year, reports London-based site IAM.

Lighthouse AI created in-home security cameras with people, pet, and facial recognition that used advanced AI techniques to distinguish adults from kids and to customize alerts. It also supported voice-based natural commands like "let me know if the kids aren't home by 4pm on weekdays" and "what did the kids do while I was out yesterday?"

Lighthouse had several patents that have been snapped up by Apple. Most include standard security camera features, but there are a couple that are related to the depth sensing technology that Lighthouse used. A list of granted and pending patents that Apple purchased (via AppleInsider) are below:

• 9,396,400: Computer-vision based security system using a depth camera
• 9,965,612: Method and system for visual authentication
• 10,009,554: Method and system for using light emission by a depth-sensing camera to capture video images under low-light conditions
• 20170032192: Computer-Vision Based Security System Using a Depth Camera
• 20180367962: Two-Way Communication Interface for Vision-Based Monitoring System
• 20180246964: Speech Interface for Vision-Based Monitoring System
• 20180374325: Method and System for Incident Sharing in a Monitoring System

Lighthouse ultimately went out of business because it was unable to compete in a crowded home security camera market where it was pitted against higher-profile companies like Ring, Nest, Logitech, and Arlo.

There have never been rumors suggesting Apple has an interest in creating a home security camera product, but some of the technology used by Lighthouse could be applied to other hardware. Apple already uses facial recognition technology in iPhones and iPads with the launch of Face ID, and it is rumored to be including 3D camera tech in 2020 iPhones and iPads.

Apple today seeded the fourth beta of an upcoming iOS 12.2 update to developers for testing purposes, two weeks after seeding the third beta of iOS 12.2 and a month after the release of iOS 12.1.4.

Registered developers can download the new iOS 12.2 beta from Apple's Developer Center or over-the-air once the proper configuration profile has been installed from the Developer Center.

iOS 12.2 expands Apple News to Canada for the first time, with Canadian iPhone and iPad users able to read news stories in English, French, or both. Apple says that during the beta, content will be more limited than it will be when the update is released.

There are four new Animoji included the iOS 12.2 beta, including a boar, a shark, a giraffe, and an owl. Animoji can be used within the Messages and FaceTime apps.

The software introduces support for AirPlay 2 and HomeKit on third-party TVs in light of recent AirPlay 2 announcements, with a new option for limiting TV access joining the speaker access option in the Home app. There's also a redesigned TV remote in Control Center, and when paired with tvOS 12.2, you can ask Siri to play specific TV shows, movies, and music on your ‌HomeKit‌ devices like the Apple TV.

For some AT&T users, there's a new "5G E" icon for the cellular signal, replacing the standard LTE icon. This is a bit misleading of AT&T, because the ‌iPhone‌ does not support 5G, nor is the network AT&T calls 5G E actual 5G. Instead, it's an upgraded version of LTE, with more info available here.

The Wallet app's interface has been streamlined and tweaked, there's a new interface for Apple Pay Cash, and the Downtime feature in Screen Time now allows you to customize by day. Apple has also made minor changes to some icons, including the ‌AirPlay‌ icon, and introduced new Safari features, with a full list available in our iOS 12.2 tidbits post.

Apple is improving Safari's privacy in iOS 12.2 through a new Motion & Orientation toggle located under Settings > Safari > Privacy > Security, which is disabled by default. The setting needs to be enabled on to allow websites to display content that relies on motion data from the accelerometer and gyroscope in the ‌iPhone‌ and ‌iPad‌.

iOS 12.2 confirms that Apple is planning to release second-generation AirPods with "Hey ‌Siri‌" support, thanks to a hidden "Hey ‌Siri‌" AirPods setup screen in the beta. The inclusion of the AirPods setup option in the beta indicates that Apple could perhaps be planning to release new AirPods when iOS 12.2 is released.

The update also features hints of an upcoming Apple News subscription service, which could see a Texture-like magazine service added to Apple News. The iOS 12.2 update is likely to see several rounds of beta testing before it launches to the public.

Everything new in iOS 12.2 beta 4

- ‌Apple News‌ - Apple has introduced a new icon for ‌Apple News‌ with a simpler design featuring a stylized red N on a field of white.

- Control Center Remote icon - The Remote icon in Control Center now resembles a remote instead of using an ‌Apple TV‌ logo.

Update: Apple has also made the fourth beta of iOS 12.2 available to public beta testers.

Google's Project Zero team in November found a "high severity" macOS kernel flaw that was recently disclosed (via Neowin) following the expiration of a 90 day disclosure deadline.

As explained by Google, the flaw allows an attacker to modify a user-owned mounted filesystem image without informing the virtual management subsystem of the changes, meaning a hacker can tweak a file system image without user knowledge.

This copy-on-write behavior works not only with anonymous memory, but also with file mappings. This means that, after the destination process has started reading from the transferred memory area, memory pressure can cause the pages holding the transferred memory to be evicted from the page cache. Later, when the evicted pages are needed again, they can be reloaded from the backing filesystem.

This means that if an attacker can mutate an on-disk file without informing the virtual management subsystem, this is a security bug. MacOS permits normal users to mount filesystem images. When a mounted filesystem image is mutated directly (e.g. by calling pwrite() on the filesystem image), this information is not propagated into the mounted filesystem.

According to Google, Apple has not yet fixed this issue. Apple is planning to implement a fix in an upcoming software update, however.

We've been in contact with Apple regarding this issue, and at this point no fix is available. Apple are intending to resolve this issue in a future release, and we're working together to assess the options for a patch. We'll update this issue tracker entry once we have more details.

Google released the details on the bug without a fix from Apple because of its Project Zero policies. After discovering a security flaw, Project Zero provides details to the company that makes the software, providing them with 90 days to fix it before disclosure.

Google then publicly shares details on security flaws when a bug is fixed or when the 90-day deadline expires. Apple was informed of the bug in November, and the 90 day period elapsed without a fix.

Mac users should, as always, be wary of the files they're downloading to avoid attacks like this, making sure to download files only from trusted sites. It's not known if this is a bug that's easy to exploit, but Google has marked it as severe because it has the potential to bypass macOS safeguards.

If you have ever complained about Siri on Twitter or likewise, your feedback could actually make its way to Apple executives.

A recent Apple job listing seeks an engineering program manager to "monitor what the world is saying about ‌Siri‌ through social media, news, and other sources." This will include detecting "‌Siri‌ issues that are going viral or otherwise trending" and reporting them to the ‌Siri‌ team and its leadership.

Based on user feedback, the employee will be required to provide recommendations for next steps on areas where the ‌Siri‌ user experience could be improved. The person will also work with Apple's marketing teams to ensure external information like Apple support documents are updated to clear up misunderstandings.

The employee will have a secondary responsibility of working alongside ‌Siri‌ software engineers to ensure the success of Apple marketing campaigns, press events, product announcements, and product launches involving ‌Siri‌.

As noted by VentureBeat, which first discovered the job listing, the employee will be able to "drive rapid-response solutions," hopefully meaning the company will quickly address any trending issues before they become embarrassing headlines like the major FaceTime privacy bug unearthed in late January.

Any improvements to ‌Siri‌ would be welcomed, as the assistant is widely considered to have fallen behind its rivals Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. ‌Siri‌ has already shown some signs of progress lately under the leadership of Apple's recently promoted artificial intelligence chief John Giannandrea.

The USB Promoter Group standards body today announced the pending release of a new USB4 specification.

USB4 converges the Thunderbolt and USB protocols as part of Intel's goal to make Thunderbolt available on a royalty-free basis, which should result in wider and cheaper availability of Thunderbolt accessories like docks and eGPUs.

As USB4 is based on Thunderbolt 3, it offers data transfer speeds up to 40 Gbps, which is twice as fast as the bandwidth of the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 specification. USB4's underlying Thunderbolt 3 protocol also means the specification supports up to two 4K displays or one 5K display over a single cable.

The simplest way to view USB4 is as Thunderbolt 3, but royalty free for manufacturers. Intel will continue to offer Thunderbolt 3 on a standalone basis with a few advantages over USB4, including more support with reference designs and technical issues for manufacturers, according to The Verge.

USB4 will use the USB-C connector design and will be backwards compatible with USB 3.2 and USB 2.0 specifications.

The USB4 specification is on track to be published around the middle of 2019. Over 50 companies are actively participating in the final stages of review of the draft specification, which should include Apple, Intel, and Microsoft, but it might take a few years until the first USB4 devices are released.