MacRumors

The assumed names of this year's iPhone lineup -- "iPhone 7" and "iPhone 7 Plus" -- have been confirmed by "reliable sources" speaking with Japanese site Mac Otakara. The sources said that Apple is following this name scheme to avoid confusion of having back-to-back iPhones with "S" in the name, even though the iPhone 7 will largely be a minor update over the iPhone 6s.

The new report nixes the chance for an additional third tier "iPhone 7 Pro," which was a rumored dual-lens alternative to the single-lens "iPhone 7 Plus" early in the rumor cycle. The less-powerful camera option was said to be created by Apple as a fallback in case the dual-lens technology didn't pan out. Now that everything seems to be going well for the company in this area, and mockups have repeatedly shown a dual-lens camera enclosure, it makes sense for Apple to revert to the well-known "Plus" moniker for its next-generation 5.5-inch dual-lens iPhone, and drop any reference to "Pro" altogether.

Otherwise, Mac Otakara reiterates on the expected rumors of the iPhone 7: there won't be a 3.5 mm headphone jack, it will house an A10 chip, and it will introduce a new flush, capacitive Home Button in lieu of the traditional physical switch. That last aspect of the new iPhone has been a bit more up in the air in the weeks ahead of the September launch, since it's hard to fully decipher whether recent image mockups confirm one way or the other if the Home Button is pressure-sensitive or not.

It's believed that the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus will be revealed at an Apple event on September 7, with pre-orders beginning two days later on September 9. A recent leak from AT&T has pushed back the reported launch of the new iPhone, however, suggesting that Apple could be preparing a wide release on September 23, although the original rumor of September 16 is also still a viable option.

Earlier this month, Apple's head of security engineering Ivan Krstic gave a talk at the Black Hat Conference, an annual event designed for the global InfoSec community. During the event, Krstic spoke about Apple security and unveiled the company's new bug bounty program.

Krstic's briefing is now available in full on YouTube, shared this morning on the Black Hat YouTube channel in a video entitled "Behind the Scenes of iOS Security."

In the talk, Krstic covers three major iOS security mechanisms -- HomeKit, Auto Unlock, and iCloud Keychain -- in "unprecedented technical detail," along with other iOS security measures.

HomeKit, Auto Unlock and iCloud Keychain are three Apple technologies that handle exceptionally sensitive user data - controlling devices (including locks) in the user's home, the ability to unlock a user's Mac from an Apple Watch, and the user's passwords and credit card information, respectively. We will discuss the cryptographic design and implementation of our novel secure synchronization fabric which moves confidential data between devices without exposing it to Apple, while affording the user the ability to recover data in case of device loss.

Data Protection is the cryptographic system protecting user data on all iOS devices. We will discuss the Secure Enclave Processor present in iPhone 5S and later devices and explain how it enabled a new approach to Data Protection key derivation and brute force rate limiting within a small TCB, making no intermediate or derived keys available to the normal Application Processor.

Traditional browser-based vulnerabilities are becoming harder to exploit due to increasingly sophisticated mitigation techniques. We will discuss a unique JIT hardening mechanism in iOS 10 that makes the iOS Safari JIT a more difficult target.

The most notable moment of Krstic's briefing features the unveiling of Apple's first ever bug bounty program, which will see the company paying out up to $200,000 to researchers who discover vulnerabilities in Apple software. Apple's bug bounty program, initially limited to a few dozen researchers, launches this September.

Apple has signed some kind of music agreement with Cash Money Records and its co-founder rapper Birdman, marking its first exclusivity deal with a full record label instead of individual artists, reports MusicBusinessWorldwide.

Apple Music head of content Larry Jackson and Birdman himself both confirmed the deal through Instagram posts, with Jackson calling Birdman a "tough negotiator." Details on the deal were not provided, so it is unclear what exactly it might entail.

Cash Money Records represents popular, well-known artists that include Drake, Young Money, Lil Wayne, and Nicki Minaj, suggesting the deal could result in future agreements that will see content from artists signed under Cash Money Records available exclusively on Apple Music. MusicBusinessWorldwide speculates that the deal could involve exclusive releases or co-created content.

Apple may well have stumped up a big cheque to make it happen, potentially alongside some promotional guarantees regarding both iTunes and Apple Music itself.

One possible option: Apple paid out a weighty advance to Cash Money, at least some of which will be recouped from the label's future Apple Music/iTunes income.

Another: the two parties are co-creating content, whether music or video, which will remain exclusive to Apple.

Apple has worked with closely with Cash Money Records artist Drake in the past, and his latest album, "Views," was an Apple Music exclusive for a week when it launched in April. Drake also appeared at the Worldwide Developers Conference where Apple Music was introduced, and Apple produced the music video for "Energy" using its in-house production team.

Apple executives see exclusive and original content as a way to drive subscribers to Apple Music and they have worked hard to establish deals with artists like Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry over the course of the last few months. Since its launch in June of 2015, Apple Music has seen steady growth, and as of June 2016, the service has more than 15 million paying subscribers.

Update: According to Bloomberg, Apple's deal with Cash Money Records was about a future documentary rather than exclusivity agreements. Apple and Cash Money Records will team up to make a documentary, which will likely be used to promote Apple Music.

Details on what the documentary might be about are not yet available.

At today's Intel Developer Forum, Intel announced a new licensing deal with ARM, which will see Intel taking advantage of ARM technology in an effort to attract more manufacturing companies to its factories.

Under the terms of the deal, Intel plans to allow third-party semiconductor companies to use its 10-nanometer production lines for manufacturing ARM-based chips for smartphones, expanding the production options available to companies like Apple.

Apple currently produces custom-designed ARM-based chips that are manufactured by companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), but with Intel and ARM's new licensing deal, Apple (and other manufacturers) could potentially use Intel to fabricate its chips.

LG Electronics has already inked a deal with Intel and will use Intel's foundry business to manufacture 10-nanometer chips for future LG devices. It is not clear if Apple will strike a deal with Intel, as rumors suggest Apple already has an agreement in place with TSMC to produce 10-nanometer A11 chips destined for the 2017 iPhone and other 2017 devices, but the possibility exists for future chips.

TSMC is also said to be the sole manufacturer of the A10 chip that will be used in the upcoming iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

Last week, MacRumors covered photos of what appear to be the front and rear of bare iPhone 7 logic boards, and since that time we've been able to study these boards and compare them to previous iPhone generations' bare and populated logic boards.

Comparing the boards with existing component offerings and information suggests that Apple has indeed moved on from Qualcomm as its baseband modem supplier and switched to Intel for the upcoming iPhone generation. This does not preclude Apple from having other versions of the iPhone 7 or 7 Plus logic boards which feature a Qualcomm modem, such as an international model with differing LTE band options, as has been rumored.

The image above shows the previously leaked and annotated logic board front with the probable location of the Intel baseband modem annotated. The pad pattern for the part in this location is markedly different than the pad pattern for the Qualcomm MDM9635, as shown in iFixit's parts catalog. The pad pattern of this mystery part also appears to match the dimensions listed on Intel's website for similar baseband modem offerings to the rumored XMM 7360 design solution.

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At today's Intel Developer Forum, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and other Intel execs showed off its 7th Generation Core, Kaby Lake. While information shared on Kaby Lake was limited, there was an on-screen demo of two machines equipped with Kaby Lake processors, shown editing 4K video and using built-in graphics to play popular Blizzard game Overwatch.

Kaby Lake is hardware accelerated for the HEVC Main10 profile, meaning it can "play the highest quality 4K premium content on the market today without a hitch." An HP two-in-one laptop on stage was used to edit 4K video and a Dell XPS laptop was used to show off Overwatch, which ran seamlessly on the machine thanks to Intel's efforts to "push the boundaries of processor graphics."

For those unfamiliar with Kaby Lake, it is the third chip manufactured using Intel's 14-nanometer process, following Broadwell and Skylake. It's a semi-tock with optimized microarchitecture, offering support for Thunderbolt 3, native USB 3.1, and DisplayPort 1.2.

According to Krzanich, Kaby Lake processors are already shipping to Intel's manufacturing partners and will launch in new devices coming this fall, something we already knew following a July earnings call. Krzanich did not provide a further breakdown on when chips appropriate for some of Apple's machines long overdue for updates will launch.

Intel often launches low-power 4.5W Y-series chips and 15W U-series chips first, neither of which are suitable for use in the machine that people are most curious about, the MacBook Pro. According to an old Intel roadmap, Kaby Lake chips appropriate for use in the MacBook Pro, the iMac, and the Mac mini won't launch until the very end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017, meaning any Apple machines released in the fall of 2016 may be limited to Skylake chips.

Rumors suggest the MacBook Pro is getting a major overhaul this year, with a slimmer design, Touch ID support, and a built-in OLED touch panel. There's no specific word on a launch date, but it is expected sometime after the September iPhone event and before the end of the year, pinpointing October or November.

During today's event, along with touching on its 7th Gen processors, Intel outlined Project Alloy, a "merged reality" open source hardware project described as "the next version of VR," allowing objects from the real world to be brought into the virtual world and vice versa. On stage, this was demonstrated with a dollar bill that was used to manipulate a virtual object. Intel also announced TXL labs, a production studio "dedicated to pushing the limits of technology for production," and a new drone platform.

With Apple set to launch the iPhone 7 next month rumors about the phone and the event where it will debut have been picking up. We've already heard information suggesting the iPhone 7 will be introduced at an event set to take place on Wednesday, September 7, two days after the Labor Day holiday, and now it appears we may have some insight into the actual release date.

While Apple typically releases the iPhone about two weeks after introducing it, suggesting a September 16 launch date, new scheduling information from AT&T shared by 9to5Mac indicates that the iPhone 7 might not launch until later in the month, on September 23.

A leaked AT&T retail schedule featuring "Merchandising Reset" hours indicates employees will need to spend several hours reorganizing AT&T stores on both September 9, 2016 and September 23, 2016. It's possible this schedule pertains to the iPhone, but there's no concrete proof that it does.

Previous information from notable smartphone leaker Even Blass has suggested pre-orders for the iPhone 7 will take place on Friday, September 9, two days after the prospective debut event, which is in line with the schedule from AT&T.

Blass has also predicted an iPhone launch for September 16, but if this AT&T information is accurate and does pertain to release preparations, that previous prediction could be incorrect. September 16 and September 23 are both likely candidates for an iPhone release date.

Regardless of when Apple plans to release the iPhone 7, we don't have long to wait for an unveiling with only three weeks to go until the rumored September 7 event date. Media invites for the event are likely to go out next week, perhaps on Thursday August 25 or Friday, August 26.

Microsoft today launched a new commercial for its Surface Pro 4, comparing the tablet computer to Apple's iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard. The ad -- titled "What's a Computer? Just ask Cortana" -- was posted on YouTube today with a description claiming that "just because you call something a computer doesn’t mean it fits the description." The new ad is clearly targeting Apple's new "What's a Computer?" ad campaign and "Super. Computer." slogan for the iPad Pro.

The ad centers around a party that Siri is holding for its new Smart Keyboard, telling the Surface Pro 4 "I'm a computer now, like you." The Surface Pro 4 responds, asking if Apple's tablet has an Intel Core i7 processor, full access to Microsoft Office beyond the mobile app versions, a trackpad, and external port options. Siri responds with, "Like I said, I just got a keyboard."

The ad ends with the tagline, "Surface does more. Just like you." The new ad today follows a similar anti-Apple theme of many Microsoft ads, which have previously focused on comparing the Surface Book and MacBook, and Windows 10 and OS X. For Christmas last year, the company released a more peaceful ad that centered around a group of Microsoft Store employees singing seasonal carols outside of an Apple Store.

The Surface Pro 4 starts at $899 for 128GB of internal storage and 4GB of RAM, and going up to as much as $1,799 for 256GB of internal storage and 16GB of RAM. Comparatively, the 12.9-inch iPad Pro starts at a smaller $799 for 32GB and maxes out at $1,099 for 256GB, with all models including 4GB of RAM.

Apple is planning an all-new research and development center in China, attempting to boost its presence and market share in the country following multiple reports of the iPhone's dwindling returns as users flock towards low-cost alternatives. The R&D center, said "to be built by the end of the year," will mark Apple's first location of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region (via Reuters).

The announcement comes from Apple CEO Tim Cook, on a visit in China this week, who spoke with Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli on Tuesday and detailed the company's plans for the center. Those details weren't specifically disclosed to the public, so it's still unclear where the new R&D center will be located, or how many employees it might house.

Apple's new research and development center will be built by the end of the year, Cook told Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, one of China's most senior officials, according to the official Chinese state broadcaster.

The pledge comes after the head of China's industry and technology regulator in May told Cook he hoped Apple could deepen its cooperation with the country in research and development and stressed information security.

Cook's August trip marks his second visit to China this year, following a tour of Beijing in May where he met with App Store developers and Didi Chuxing president Jean Liu. Although once Apple's second largest market in the world, the company announced during last month's earnings report that its revenue in China dropped 33 percent year-over-year, ultimately allowing Europe to overtake China as its second biggest market, following the United States.

Concern about Apple's future in China stems from the country's heavy focus on potentially invasive foreign products and services, leading to events like the closure of the iTunes and iBooks store earlier in the spring, due to the launch of a controversial dystopian film. Apple has faced lawsuits due to similar occurrences as well, making it hard for the company to focus solely on helping the iPhone gain traction against China's plentiful low-cost smartphone options.