MacRumors

Apple will today introduce an Apple Music student plan that discounts the streaming service by 50 percent for those who are enrolled in an eligible college or university (via TechCrunch).

The new plan means any academic student in the United States can now pick up an individual Apple Music membership for $4.99 a month, rather than pay the standard $9.99 subscription rate.

U.S. students won't be the only ones to benefit though, as the plan is also open to students in the U.K., Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. The actual cost is expected to vary slightly from country to country, but all markets will see 50 percent off the standard subscription rate.

The student discount is offered for up to four continuous or non-continuous years after sign-up, so students are able to take gap years or breaks between semesters and still sign up again when they return to study. Additionally, the plan is open to all students of all ages, regardless of degree.

The membership tier will be available starting today to both new and existing subscribers. Students can sign up or change their membership online, or go through the Apple Music mobile app. Apple is using student verification technology provider, UNiDAY, to ensure that those who are signing up as students are actually enrolled at a supported institution.

News of the student plan comes two days after it was reported that Apple is planning to overhaul its year-old music streaming service to make it more intuitive. The company is set to redesign the user interface, which will be "bolder, yet simpler", with an emphasis on black and white backgrounds and text as well as more of a focus on album art.

Additionally, the "New" tab in Apple Music is being replaced with a "Browse" option with better organizational tools for finding new content, and Apple will encourage users to use a simplified "For You" section. The new Apple Music app will reportedly debut at WWDC in iOS 10 and will be introduced through an iTunes update on the Mac.

Apple is looking to purchase "large expanses of real estate" in the San Francisco Bay Area for its much-rumored car project, codenamed Project Titan, according to The Wall Street Journal. Google parent company Alphabet and several car manufacturers, such as Tesla and Mercedes Benz, are also on the hunt for more space, according to Hudson Pacific, one of the Bay Area's largest landlords.

“We’re seeing the Toyotas of the world, the Teslas of the world, BMWs, Mercedes. Ford now is out in the marketplace looking for space,” [Hudson Pacific Properties CEO Victor Coleman] said on the landlord’s quarterly investor call. “I haven’t even mentioned the 400,000 square feet that Google’s looking to take down and the 800,000 square feet that Apple’s looking to take down for their autonomous cars as well.”

While the size Coleman references is fairly big, car production plants tend to be even larger. Tesla's Fremont, California factory is 5.3 million square feet while Ford's Flat Rock, Michigan plant, one of its smaller factories, is 2.9 million square feet. For comparison, Apple's new headquarters is 2.8 million square feet while Google's Mountain View campus is 4.8 million square feet.

In recent months Apple has been leasing more space repeatedly for its car project in the Bay Area. In March, Apple leased a former Pepsi bottling plant in Sunnyvale, California. The Cupertino company has also leased and purchased several smaller, secret buildings likely being used to develop Apple Car technologies. In January, Apple gained approval from the San Jose city council to develop a 4.15 million-square-foot campus in the city.

The WSJ also notes that Apple is in the process of growing its Apple Car team, which had 600 employees last year. Earlier today, it was reported that Apple had hired a former Google employee with experience in electric vehicle charging.

Immersion, a company that develops and licenses haptic touch feedback technology, today filed a second lawsuit against Apple and AT&T, accusing the MacBook and MacBook Pro of violating one patent and the iPhone 6s of violating three additional patents not mentioned in the original lawsuit.

According to Immersion, iPhone 6s and MacBook features like 3D Touch and the Force Touch trackpad infringe on its intellectual property. The four patents included in today's lawsuit are as follows:

- U.S. Patent No. 8,749,507: "Systems and Methods for Adaptive Interpretation of Input from a Touch-Sensitive Input Device"

- U.S. Patent No. 7,808,488: "Method and Apparatus for Providing Tactile Sensations"

- U.S. Patent No. 8,581,710: "Systems and Methods for Haptic Confirmation of Commands"

- U.S. Patent No. 7,336,260: "Method and Apparatus for Providing Tactile Sensations"

The fourth patent is the one that Immersion accuses the MacBook, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the 15-inch MacBook Pro of violating, and AT&T, while named in the iPhone 6s claim, is not named in the MacBook infringement claim. According to Immersion, the Force Touch trackpad built into these products uses haptic feedback technology belonging to Immersion.

Apple's Force Touch trackpad utilizes haptic feedback to mimic the feeling of pressing on a physical button. The trackpad is able to distinguish between a light press and a harder press, with the pressure-sensitivity used to enable different gestures.

In the original lawsuit filed in February of 2016, Immersion accused Apple and AT&T of infringing on three patents with the iPhone 6, 6s, 6 Plus, 6s Plus, Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport, and Apple Watch Edition. Immersion has added AT&T to the lawsuit because AT&T sells Apple products and offers guides, directions, and other materials that "encourage and facilitate infringing use by others."

Immersion's patent lawsuit, in which the company requests a jury trial and seeks compensatory damages, is accompanied by a second complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission, seeking an inclusion order to prevent the sale of the accused Apple devices in the United States.

Apple CEO Tim Cook's fourth annual CharityBuzz auction ended this afternoon, raising more than $500,000 for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. The auction, which garnered more than 40 bids, includes a one hour lunch date with Tim Cook At Apple's Cupertino headquarters along with passes to a forthcoming Apple keynote event.

Two people are able to attend the lunch meeting with Cook, with the experience set to last for approximately one hour. While lunch is included in the price of the auction, travel and accommodations are not. The offer expires on May 5, 2017, and the winner will be able to schedule their appointment on a "mutually agreed upon date."

In the final hours of the auction, bidding ramped up significantly, jumping from $275,000 yesterday afternoon to the more than $500,000 finishing price.

It's possible the auction winner will be able to use the keynote event tickets to attend the keynote for the Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple is expected to debut new versions of iOS, OS X, watchOS, and tvOS, and perhaps new Mac models.

Proceeds from the auction will benefit the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, a charity Tim Cook has supported for several years. Earlier in 2016, Tim Cook was elected to the RFK Center's board of directors.

Apple today announced a new partnership with SAP to "revolutionize" the mobile work experience for its enterprise customers by combining native iPhone and iPad apps with the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. Under the partnership, Apple and SAP will create a new software development kit and training academy to help developers and enterprise customers create tailored business-focused iOS apps.

"This partnership will transform how iPhone and iPad are used in enterprise by bringing together the innovation and security of iOS with SAP's deep expertise in business software," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "As the leader in enterprise software and with 76% of business transactions touching an SAP system, SAP is the ideal partner to help us truly transform how businesses around the world are run on iPhone and iPad. Through the new SDK, we're empowering SAP's more than 2.5 million developers to build powerful native apps that fully leverage SAP HANA Cloud Platform and tap into the incredible capabilities that only iOS devices can deliver."

The new SAP HANA Cloud Platform SDK will be developed exclusively for iOS and will give enterprise customers simple tools for "quickly and efficiently" building apps for iPhone and iPad based on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. According to the press release, the native apps will provide access to core data and business processes on SAP HANA while also taking advantage of Apple hardware features like Touch ID, Location Services, and Notifications.

Under the partnership, a new SAP Fiori iOS design language will be created, and SAP will also develop a suite of native iOS apps for "critical business operations" built on Apple's Swift programming language.

A significant number of users on Reddit and Twitter, corroborated by multiple tips we have received, are affected by an ongoing App Store issue preventing a number of popular iOS apps from showing up in search results unless already installed, including Google, Periscope, Spotify, Tidal, Tumblr, Uber, Vine, Waze, and many others.

The search issues appear to be widespread, affecting iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch customers throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, and elsewhere since early Thursday morning. Apple has yet to update its System Status page with any reported issues as of 6:00 a.m. Pacific, but it has historically been slow in reflecting outages.

Update: The search issues also appear to extend to iTunes and the Mac App Store.

Update 2: Apple is aware that users have been "experiencing a problem with the App Store" since about 2:00 a.m. Pacific. Apple is "investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available."

Update: Apple's System Status page indicates the App Store issues were resolved shortly after 8:00 a.m. Pacific. Search results now appear to be functioning normally.

Los Angeles police investigators have discovered a workable method to bypass the hardened security features of a locked iPhone 5s, according to The Los Angeles Times.

In court documents seen by the newspaper yesterday, LAPD detectives found a "forensic cellphone expert" who could unlock the iPhone 5s belonging to April Jace, the slain wife of "The Shield" actor Michael Jace, who is accused of killing her at their L.A. home in 2014.

The claim appeared in a search warrant filed during the same period that the FBI was demanding Apple unlock the earlier model iPhone 5c of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. In that high-profile case, the FBI eventually unlocked the phone with the help of professional hackers, paying them up to $1 million for a tool exploiting a security vulnerability.

According to FBI director James Comey, the method obtained by the bureau only worked on a "narrow slice of phones", which did not include models of the iPhone 5s and after, presumably because the latter devices are equipped with Apple's proprietary Secure Enclave, a separate security-hardened portion of the core processing chip with its own secure boot and personalized software where private encryption keys are stored and used to secure data.

Prior to the the FBI's acquisition of its hacking method, several security experts warned that the ability the bureau sought from Apple would in fact work on later devices, while Apple claimed back in February that the method the FBI asked it for to unlock an iPhone 5c was also possible on newer devices with the Secure Enclave. According to TechCrunch, Apple said at the time that the technical solutions would be different than they are on the iPhone 5c, but not impossible.

According to The Times, the search warrant filed in the April Jace killing did not detail the method used by the LAPD to open the later-model iPhone 5s, nor did police reveal the identity of the cellphone expert. It's also unclear what operating system April Jace's phone had.

The iPhone 5s has been at the center of the investigation after it was claimed that the actor and his wife argued "about their relationship" via text message shortly before he is alleged to have shot her. Michael Jace's attorneys successfully persuaded a judge to delay his murder trial, arguing that the dead woman's phone should undergo a more exhaustive search than one initially conducted by police.

Shortly after her killing, April Jace's cellphone was locked by a passcode, which "hindered" the investigation. But in January 2015, an Apple technician was ordered by an L.A. judge to help police extract data from the phone, according to the search warrant.

That attempt apparently failed to obtain any information and a second attempt by the L.A. County district attorney's office the same month left the phone "disabled". The following month, authorities tried to inspect the iPhone but it didn't even turn on, the warrant stated.

But in March, investigators learned that a forensic cellphone expert could "override" the security features and let authorities view the phone's contents. A senior investigator with the district attorney's office was apparently then able to examine the phone in April. Jace, 53, is currently awaiting trial in the case.

Last week it was reported that the FBI will not reveal to Apple the method it used to hack into the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter, because it does not have the rights to the technical data about how the method functions. Apple wants details on the flaw so a fix can be implemented. Until it does, the FBI can keep using the vulnerability so long as it remains unpatched.

Amid its dispute with the FBI, reports suggest Apple has already begun work on implementing stronger security measures to protect iOS devices in order to counter the threat of hackers rather than the government. Apple has also said it has revamped its internal security teams.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues 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.

Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, co-founders of Siri, the virtual assistant now built into all of Apple's iOS devices, are set to demonstrate their newest artificial intelligence project on Monday, reports The Washington Post. Viv, the name of the AI bot, is more advanced than Siri and is able to carry out complex tasks by mimicking the "spontaneity and knowledge base" of a human assistant.

Viv can, for example, set up a dinner reservation and purchase movie tickets all based on one query, parsing ticket prices to find deals and offering suggestions if a movie is sold out or a restaurant has no seating available. Completing the same task with Siri would require multiple commands and human interaction. In an example given by The Washington Post, the Viv team uses it to order pizzas from a nearby restaurant, with Viv parsing numerous voice-based topping and side dish orders without ever needing to open an app.

Grubhub chief executive Matt Maloney said he rushed to sign up with Viv two years ago, impressed with the idea of allowing consumers to perform different activities without having to toggle between services. "No one has been able to say, 'I want the movie ticket, and the bottle of wine, and some flowers on the side' -- all in one breath," he said.

The goal with Viv, according to Kittlaus, is to offer a way for humans to interact naturally with services through complex human-to-human style conversations, a project Kittlaus and Cheyer have been pursuing since before the development of Siri.

Siri was built around the same premise, but underwent changes under Apple's leadership. "Steve [Jobs] had some ideas about the first version, and it wasn't necessarily aligned with all the things that we were doing," Kittlaus told The Washington Post.

Google and Facebook have already made offers to purchase Viv, but it is not clear if Kittlaus and Cheyer have plans to sell the technology. The Viv Labs team wants to see the technology built into a wide range of devices, and Kittlaus says the company will "pick the path that gets us there."

Internet-based subscription television plans are growing in popularity, and YouTube is the latest company rumored to be working on a standalone television service. According to Bloomberg, YouTube is developing a paid subscription service called "Unplugged," offering a bundle of channels for a set price.

YouTube has already built the infrastructure necessary for the service and is prioritizing its development for a 2017 debut. YouTube has been in talks with major media companies like NBCUniversal, Viacom, Fox, and CBS, but has not yet been able to secure rights for the service.

YouTube is said to be aiming to build a streaming service similar to the service Apple hoped to offer before putting its streaming TV plans on hold. It would include a "skinny bundle" of channels from the four major U.S. networks along with a few popular cable channels priced at around $35 per month.

YouTube is also considering plans offering a collection of less-watched television channels or smaller groups of channels built around different themes, such as comedy or lifestyle.

YouTube would charge one subscription for the main bundle, and extra, smaller monthly fees for these theme-based groups, one of the people said.
Using this approach, YouTube could show it is capable of bringing new viewers to many of these second-tier channels, a major concern for large media companies that depend on TV for most of their profits.

If YouTube can make it work, media companies may be more open to including more-successful channels later, one of the people familiar said.

Along with YouTube, Hulu is also building its own competing streaming television service. News of Hulu's plan surfaced earlier this week and was confirmed this morning by Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins.

Hulu's subscription model will offer customers cable-style access to popular broadcast television networks and cable channels to complement its existing streaming service, plus it will include a cloud-based DVR feature. Hulu is also aiming to launch its live TV subscription plan in 2017 and is close to signing deals with partners like Disney and Fox. Pricing for the service has not yet been announced, but rumors suggest it will be available for around $40.

"This means our viewers will be able to enjoy live sports, news and events all in real-time without a traditional cable or satellite subscription," said Hopkins. "We're going to fuse the best of linear television and on-demand in a deeply personalized experience optimized for the contemporary, always-connected television fan."

As network executives grow accustomed to establishing deals for streaming television services, Apple may be able to revisit its television plans. Apple has been working on some kind of subscription TV service for several years, but executives have not been able to establish deals with content owners. Apple's latest streaming plans reportedly fell apart because media companies demanded more money than Apple wanted to charge for its TV service and were reluctant to unbundle channels.