MacRumors:

Apple has sent gift packages that include an iPad, face masks, hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, and more, to its employees stranded in Wenzhou and Hubei due to the coronavirus, according to details shared on Chinese social network Weibo.

While over half of Apple Stores have reopened on shortened hours in China, many retail, corporate, and manufacturing staff remain at home. Families who have received the care packages are said to be “moved” by Apple’s efforts.

A letter enclosed in each parcel says that the iPads are provided for children’s online learning or to help pass the time during the “prolonged stay at home.”

What a lovely gesture by the company.

Fast Company:

Earlier this week, the Dutch newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad published a scoop (via Business Insider) that sent ripples through the tech industry: the European Union is drafting legislation that would legally require tech companies to make products with batteries that users could easily replace on their own.

If passed, the legislation would require everyone from Apple to Samsung to fundamentally redesign all the phones they currently make–not to mention tablets and wireless earbuds like the AirPods. Both initiatives are aimed at reducing e-waste, but while a common charging standard makes more sense from a technical and design perspective, mandating all devices have user-replaceable batteries is a horrible idea.

I couldn’t agree more. While there certainly is a subset of users who want/need replaceable batteries, I’d bet most users no longer see it as much of an issue.

Throughout March, Apple Stores worldwide will host a series of over 5,000 Today at Apple sessions titled “She Creates” to highlight inspiring female creators using photography, design, technology, business, music and film to address tough topics, explore new perspectives and empower their communities. Select stores will host more than 100 sessions led by women across industries and mediums who are empowering those around them through creativity, including co-chair of the Women’s March Linda Sarsour, musicians Meghan Trainor and Victoria Monét, designer Carla Fernández, and many more.

This is a great month long event. Apple also said there will be special sessions by female creators at select stores around the world. You can find out more about those on Apple’s web site.

Reuters:

Apple Inc has agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle litigation accusing it of quietly slowing down older iPhones as it launched new models, to induce owners to buy replacement phones or batteries.

It calls for Apple to pay consumers $25 per iPhone, which may be adjusted up or down depending on how many iPhones are eligible, with a minimum total payout of $310 million.

Friday’s settlement covers U.S. owners of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7Plus or SE that ran the iOS 10.2.1 or later operating system. It also covers U.S. owners of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later before Dec. 21, 2017.

The lawyers plan to seek up to $93 million, equal to 30% of $310 million, in legal fees, plus up to $1.5 million for expenses.

Hopefully, this will get extended to those of us who had those phones but live outside the US.

TechHive:

I’ve long maintained that the value of 8K displays is not in the increased pixel count. There’s a limit to the resolution that humans can discern on video screens at normal seating distances, and increasing the pixel density beyond that limit offers no advantage.

But where, exactly, is that limit? More specifically, do 8K displays offer any benefit in terms of perceived detail compared with 4K under normal viewing conditions? In collaboration with Pixar, Amazon Prime Video, LG, and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), Warner Bros. recently addressed this question in a well-designed, double-blind study to see if people could discern a difference between 4K and 8K with a variety of content.

The results are predictable and exactly what many of us suspected.

ZDNet:

Twitter has canceled all non-essential employee travel. On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) upgraded the global risk from the new coronavirus to “very high” as the virus continued to spread. There are more than 83,000 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus and at least 2,800 reported deaths. The disease has been detected in more than 50 countries and the number of infections continues to rise.

While we won’t know the coronavirus’ effects on the overall nature of work for some time, one sector of the tech economy that’s already feeling an immediate impact are industry events. Whether as a result of travel bans, laws banning large gatherings, or an abundance of caution, tech conferences are being cancelled, postponed, or converted to virtual events. Companies are also instituting travel restrictions for employees. So, I decided to use this Monday Morning Opener to compile a list of the events that have been cancelled, pushed back, changed format, or are being held as scheduled.

And this is just the list of tech conferences affected. All kinds of conferences in many other sectors are being affected. MotoGP motorcycle races in Qatar and Thailand have been canceled as well.

Eryk Bagshaw, The Sydney Morning Herald:

Nike, Apple and a major manufacturer building trains in Australia are among the dozens of global brands implicated in a new report on forced labour in China, amid growing international concern over the treatment of the Uighur people.

The report, by the US State Department-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute, alleges some factories that supply the brands appear to be using Uighur workers sent directly from re-education camps.

The Washington Post ran a more detailed, first-hand account of the said forced-labor in this chilling article.

From The Post:

When their shifts end, the Uighur workers — almost all women in their 20s or younger — use hand gestures and rudimentary Mandarin to buy dried fruit, socks and sanitary pads at the stalls. Then they walk around the corner, past the factory’s police station — adorned with Uighur writing telling them to “stay loyal to the party” and “have clear-cut discipline” — to dormitories where they live under constant supervision.

The Uighur workers are afraid or unable to interact with anyone in this town, north of Qingdao, beyond the most superficial of transactions at the stalls or in local stores, vendors say. But the catalyst for their arrival here is well understood.

“Everyone knows they didn’t come here of their own free will. They were brought here,” said one fruit-seller as she set up her stall. “The Uighurs had to come because they didn’t have an option. The government sent them here,” another vendor told The Washington Post.

And:

The researchers found 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that have used Uighur workers hired through labor transfer programs from Xinjiang since 2017. The factories are owned by firms that feed into the supply chain of some of the world’s best-known companies, including Apple, Dell and Volkswagen, the report finds.

BOE Technology Group, which supplies screens to Apple, and O-Film, which makes iPhone cameras, both use Uighur labor, either directly or through contractors, the report found. Apple lists both companies on its latest supplier list.

From Apple:

“Apple is dedicated to ensuring that everyone in our supply chain is treated with the dignity and respect they deserve,” said spokesman Josh Rosenstock. “We have not seen this report but we work closely with all our suppliers to ensure our high standards are upheld.”

More on this story sure to follow.

New York Times:

As China encourages people to return to work despite the coronavirus outbreak, it has begun a bold mass experiment in using data to regulate citizens’ lives — by requiring them to use software on their smartphones that dictates whether they should be quarantined or allowed into subways, malls and other public spaces.

And:

People in China sign up through Ant’s popular wallet app, Alipay, and are assigned a color code — green, yellow or red — that indicates their health status.

And:

The Times’s analysis found that as soon as a user grants the software access to personal data, a piece of the program labeled “reportInfoAndLocationToPolice” sends the person’s location, city name and an identifying code number to a server. The software does not make clear to users its connection to the police. But according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency and an official police social media account, law enforcement authorities were a crucial partner in the system’s development.

Collision of worlds here. The battle to contain coronavirus. Government requiring its citizens to use software that is said to share personal data with police.

The words iPhone and Apple do not appear in the article. Wondering if this software exists for iPhone and, if so, the route it took to get approved for distribution.

MacSurfer:

Dear MHN Readers:

Not seeing a viable future with subscriptions, MacSurfer and TechNN will cease operations effective immediately. Please allow a few weeks to process forthcoming refunds. If need be, subscription inquiries can be addressed to the Publisher at the bottom of the Homepage.

Thanks kindly for your support, and thanks for the memories…

MacSurfer’s Headline News Team

After they went full subscription, I stopped visiting the site but I’m still sorry to see them go. Back in the day, they were a great resource for headlines.

TechCrunch:

An iPhone app built by controversial facial recognition startup Clearview AI has been blocked by Apple, effectively banning the app from use.

Apple confirmed to TechCrunch that the startup “violated” the terms of its enterprise developer program.

TechCrunch found Clearview AI’s iPhone app on an public Amazon S3 storage bucket on Thursday, despite a warning on the page that the app is “not to be shared with the public.”

The page asks users to “open this page on your iPhone” to install and approve the company’s enterprise certificate, allowing the app to run. But this, according to Apple’s policies, is prohibited if the app’s users are outside of Clearview AI’s organization.

Clearview just keeps getting sleazier and sleazier.

FOXBusiness:

Apple CEO Tim Cook discusses coronavirus’ impact on Apple and the evolving educational demands of jobs in America.

It always makes me nervous when Cook pimps Trump.

BBC:

In 2015, the boss of a card payments company in Seattle introduced a $70,000 minimum salary for all of his 120 staff – and personally took a pay cut of $1m. Five years later he’s still on the minimum salary, and says the gamble has paid off. Since then, Gravity has transformed.

“Before the $70,000 minimum wage, we were having between zero and two babies born per year amongst the team,” CEO Dan Price says. “And since the announcement – and it’s been only about four-and-a-half years – we’ve had more than 40 babies.”

More than 10% of the company have been able to buy their own home, in one of the US’s most expensive cities for renters. Before the figure was less than 1%.

Rosita Barlow, director of sales at Gravity, says that since salaries were raised junior colleagues have been pulling more weight.”When money is not at the forefront of your mind when you’re doing your job, it allows you to be more passionate about what motivates you,” she says.

This was a great story when we first reported on it almost five years ago and I’m happy to see it continue to be a great story. But, as I predicted and to the CEO’s dismay, other companies haven’t followed suit.

CNET:

When you’re trying to decide which ecosystem to install in your house — which lights, which doorbell, which smart cams, which router — you should be thinking about whether your platform of choice works consistently, which devices it works with and whether it will keep your information safe. After working for years in the CNET Smart Home and comparing all those aspects, I’ve arrived at what to me was a surprising conclusion: Apple’s HomeKit might actually be the best smart home platform.

Yes, seriously.

I haven’t used much in the way of smart home technology but I’ve done a lot of research on it in preparation for having at least a “less dumb” home. When it comes to privacy and security, what Apple has and has planned for HomeKit attracts me the most.

Above Avalon:

Last month marked the tenth anniversary of Apple unveiling the iPad. The occasion took on a somber feel as the most common reaction in tech circles ended up being sadness and disappointment for what the iPad had failed to become. While some are convinced that the iPad is in some way a victim of neglect, mismanagement, or even worse, such feelings are misplaced. We don’t need to feel bad for the iPad.

I hold a very different view of the iPad at 10 years old. In recapping the 2010s, I went so far as to position the iPad as one of two most important tech products of the decade (the iPhone being the other one). The iPad has become ubiquitous in various industries and sectors, and in the process, it has altered modern computing.

How can there be such a dramatic difference in opinion when it comes to iPad?

I certainly don’t feel bad for it. As a matter of fact, I still lust for an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil.

Do you ever edit photos on your iPhone? Perhaps to crop them for posting on social media? Or to add circles and arrows to highlight a funny bit?

The linked article takes this one step further and shows you how to add text to your annotations.

Dan Moren, Macworld:

At the end of last year, rumors began to circulate that Apple was investigating the possibility of developing an iPhone with no ports at all, which could see the light of day as early as 2021.

And:

But going portless entirely? The company has already done so on devices like the Apple Watch or the HomePod. Surely, though, the iPhone will always need a port. Or will it? More recently, it’s started to seem as though this speculation isn’t as far-fetched as some have initially thought.

I would bet against this, but Dan does make some solid points. Past as precedent, the Apple Watch does indeed survive without a visible port. To be fair, though, there is a secret port under the bottom band.

So maybe the middle ground is a future iPhone with a hidden, diagnostic port, usable by Apple to avoid having to crack the iPhone case to diagnose a phone gone wrong.

First things first, this from a paywalled article from The Information that’s been making a lot of noise:

Apple is planning to release an iPad keyboard accessory later this year that will include a built-in trackpad, the latest step in its effort to position the tablet device as an alternative to laptop computers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company will likely release the accessory alongside the next version of the iPad Pro expected later this year, the person added.

And this, from the headline linked article by Jason Snell:

I’m excited. For a long time I’ve been an advocate for iPad keyboards and pointing devices, and this potential product would offer a way for Apple to differentiate the iPad Pro from its increasingly capable lower-end iPads.

But I’ve got a lot of questions, too.

Follow the link. These are some thoughtful questions.

A few thoughts of my own:

Is there a need for a pointing device? Are we approaching an uncanny valley with a device that looks an awful lot like a MacBook with a touchscreen, but without the unifying elements like the Finder and window-management system that make a MacBook so intuitive to use?

From this article by The Verge’s Dieter Bohn:

I don’t want Apple to fall back on the crutch of just using desktop OS paradigms to solve the iPad’s user interface intuitiveness problem. The last thing we should want is for the iPad to turn into a Mac. It’s on a different path and it would be a shame to have those ideas tossed out the window just so we can have more traditional windows on the iPad.

I’m in the same camp as Dieter. I’d hate to see the lines between the MacBook and iPad get blurry. As is, I know when to reach for my iPad, my iPhone and my Mac. Different tools for different jobs.

If the report is true, it will be interesting to see what Apple has in mind.

move:

Let’s talk about the best and worst cities for motorcycle enthusiasts to live in. If you’re looking for a place where you can enjoy more quality time on your bike in safety, then you’ll love the top 10 cities on our list.

I’m surprised that two cities I’ve lived and ridden in – Portland, OR and Nashville, TN – didn’t score higher. Unsurprising that cities in the West scored the highest while East coast cities, particularly in the heavily populated NYC area, scored the worst.

MacRumors:

Facebook today announced that it has canceled its F8 developer conference that was set to take place at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California on May 5 and 6.

In a statement, Facebook said that given “growing concerns” about COVID-19, the in-person component of F8 has been nixed. Instead of F8, Facebook is planning locally hosted events, videos, and live streamed content.

F8 is an event that’s on the same scale as Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, and last year, it attracted 5,000 attendees. It was also set to take place on May 5 and 6, which is just about a month ahead of when Apple is likely planning to host WWDC 2020 at the same venue. Whether Apple is considering a similar cancelation remains to be seen as WWDC is a month later, but with F8 canceled, there’s a possibility.

The Loop’s Publisher and I talked about this on last night’s Your Mac Life show. Apple has definitely had high-level discussions about WWDC and whether it should go ahead or not and, if not, what would take its place. Perhaps a “virtual” WWDC similar to what Facebook just announced?

Scott Jones:

If I’m honest, at the time I wasn’t thinking at all about trying to catch Marc Marquez in mid-air. I merely hoped to catch someone with both wheels off the ground.

I knew Turn 1 was a high speed section of Laguna Seca’s layout, and for this reason you don’t often see photographers there. MotoGP bikes are going somewhere around 165mph as they crest the hill and turn slightly left, too fast for even the best pro DSLRs and lenses to track focus.

This article combines two of my passions – motorcycling and photography. Jones is an incredible MotoGP photographer and the story of this amazing image is a combination of luck, perseverance, skill, equipment, and a talented shooter all coming together to get The Perfect Shot. Imagine trying to get a specific image (both wheels off the ground, race winner, etc.) of a motorcycle traveling at 165mph coming up over a blind hill.

9to5Mac:

The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus were really popular smartphones and Apple sold them up until about a year and a half ago. There are lots of customers who are still using the devices but with A9 processors from 2015, they’re starting to show their age (not to mention battery performance throttling). If you’re curious how much faster a new iPhone would be compared to your iPhone 6s, check out the latest speed test pitting the two against each other.

We get used to our machines, iPhones and otherwise, running at certain speeds. Perception plays a big part. But this test shows that, while the iPhone 6s is still a “capable” device, it predictably doesn’t hold a candle to the latest and greatest.

The so-called “Steve Jobs auction” opens for bidding on March 5th and includes a fully functional Apple-1 computer, a Steve Jobs signed Macintosh PowerBook, some signed contracts, and a bunch of other interesting items.

Take a look, treat yourself.

Kurt Schlosser, GeekWire:

Two years after launching a chain of convenience stores without cashiers or checkout lines, Amazon is opening its first “Amazon Go Grocery” store in Seattle on Tuesday morning, enlarging the footprint for surveillance-style shopping and signaling a larger challenge to the broader world of brick-and-mortar retail.

Surveillance-style shopping! Gotta remember that one.

You enter the store and scan a QR-code, which is tied to your account, lets you pay for your groceries. Once you’re in:

Hundreds of cameras in the ceiling overhead make up the key technological component of the just-walk-out concept.

And:

The cameras are keeping track of those “interactions” with the product and know exactly what is being taken off shelves and put back. Allowing people to do this type of “considered shopping” plays into the Go Grocery concept of making sure that customers don’t have to do anything unnatural when it comes to how they shop.

This is an incredibly difficult problem to solve. Not to mention the ethical problems involved in eliminating certain jobs from the chain. Great for Amazon’s financials, not so great for the humans involved.

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.