Eddy Cue Says He ‘Disagrees Vehemently’ With Those Who Believe Apple’s Pace of Innovation Has Slowed

Just over a decade after the iPhone launched, and six years after Steve Jobs passed, some critics believe that Apple’s pace of innovation has slowed. Unsurprisingly, Apple’s services chief Eddy Cue doesn’t share that opinion.

“I disagree vehemently with that and I think we’ve been incredibly innovative,” said Cue, in a recent interview with Indian publication Livemint.

Cue pointed out that both the iPad and Apple Watch launched after the iPhone, while noting that revolutionary products take time. He also believes that Apple’s work on Mac, macOS, and iOS has led the market.

Apple historically has a track record of coming out with industry-defining products, whether it’s the Mac or iPhone or iPod. But over the past decade, there’s a been perception that the pace of innovation and the pace at which Apple has come out with game-changing, breakthrough products has slowed somewhat. What do you have to say about that?

No way! First of all, the iPhone is 10 years old. That is the last decade. The iPad came after that and the Watch came after that. So, I disagree vehemently with that and I think we’ve been incredibly innovative. That doesn’t even take into account the work that has been done on the Mac, iOS and MacOS, from that standpoint where I think we’ve led the market. When you think of the products that we’ve built over time, you own a lot of them. And you just assume that every year was a new product. But it wasn’t. You can’t do revolutionary new products, every two months or six months or whatever. They take time.

The rest of the interview was primarily focused on Apple’s roadmap for India, which Cue described as a “very long-term opportunity.”

Cue said Apple is focused on three areas in India, including the App Store, Apple Maps, and a bundle of other services such as iCloud and Apple Music. Of note, he said Apple is “working on” bringing Apple Pay to India.

The digital payments business is widely being seen as the biggest battleground in India now and in the near future. What are Apple’s plans on that front?

Our head of Apple Pay, Jennifer Bailey, is here with me. And Apple Pay is something that we definitely want in India. The challenge with payment mechanisms is that there isn’t really a lot of global scale. You deal with individual markets at a time … but India is one of those markets where we hope to bring Apple Pay to.

Cue said Apple doesn’t have an exact launch date to announce for Apple Pay in India at this point since it’s not “a 100 percent” yet.

In the full-length interview, Cue also reflects upon the leadership styles of past and present Apple CEOs Tim Cook and Steve Jobs, and on Apple’s increasing efforts to produce original content.

Related Roundup: Apple PayTags: Eddy Cue, India
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DxO Updates iOS App With Advanced Time-Lapse Features, Launches New Battery Pack Accessory

DxO today announced a new update for its DxO One iPhone-connected camera accessory, introducing a new time-lapse option with exclusive “Auto Ramping” technology and multi-camera Facebook Live capabilities. There are also a few new accessories that were revealed today, including an external Battery Pack, Cable Back Door, and Tilt Stand.

The version 3.0 update to the DxO One iOS app streamlines the app’s creation of time-lapse videos, and includes the company’s “Auto Ramping” technology, which avoids flicker effects by providing consistent exposure and white balance across all images. When users start a time-lapse shot, the iPhone can be used normally while the camera continues to take pictures.

For Facebook Live, DxO One users will be able to instantly create a live video stream through the DxO iOS app. With a new multi-camera mode, the app leverages both the DxO One itself and both iPhone cameras to give users the ability to experiment with their photography and capture photos that can’t be taken with just an iPhone.

This area of the app provides a mini control panel so users can preview all three camera views to compose shots, adjust lighting, and generally prepare for a live broadcast. The control panel also allows for easy jumping between camera viewpoints, and users can switch sound recording to come from the DxO One or the iPhone’s built-in microphone.

“While smartphones have made significant progress in terms of image quality, they don’t come close to the photos and videos a real camera like the DxO ONE can offer. Most importantly, you have to hold them in your hand, and you constantly need them for other things, like making calls, sending messages, or checking your social networks,” explains Jérôme Ménière, DxO’s CEO and founder.

“The DxO ONE is the first photo and video camera designed to operate as both a handheld and remote device. It’s even able to function remotely over a long period of time — for example, you can use it outside to record a time-lapse or Facebook Live video. Because it works in perfect harmony with your smartphone, it is the ideal photo and video assistant for this device.”

In regards to the new accessories, DxO is launching a Battery Pack to ensure that users can accomplish all of their photography and videography goals without having to worry about battery life. The Battery Pack includes a “Cradle,” two rechargeable batteries, and a USB adapter. Each battery adds up to one hour of battery life, and the USB adapter lets users charge the DxO one directly from an external pack.

The DxO One attached to the new Battery Pack accessory
The Cable Back Door connects the DxO One to an external battery pack when the camera is being used with the company’s Outdoor Shell. DxO said this is mainly targeted at users who capture time-lapse videos and other content outdoors. Since DxO One can also be used in a standalone mode, the company is launching a Tilt Stand, which holds the camera at five different angles.

Version 3.0 of DxO One on the iOS App Store will be available for users to download today as a free update. In terms of accessory costs, the Battery Pack will be sold at $59.99, the Cable Back Door will be included with any purchase of the Outdoor Shell on DxO’s online store, and the Tilt Stand will be packaged into the DxO One moving forward.

The company is also launching an Android app and camera with USB Type-C in the coming weeks. The iOS-compatible DxO One camera is available for $499.99 on the company’s website.

Tag: DxO One
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Huawei Mate 10 hands-on: Faster, more helpful AI

The most important phones of the year have already been announced, but one company might still be able to pique our interest. Huawei unveiled its AI-focused Kirin 970 processor at IFA, saying the chip’s real world benefits would be shared at the launch of its next flagship. Now, the company is ready to reveal how the Kirin 970 performs in a phone. The Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro were designed around AI — so much so that Huawei wants to call them “intelligent machines.” We don’t know how much these intelligent machines will cost yet, but Huawei told Engadget to expect the prices to be competitive. From my brief time with some preview units at a recent demo in New York, the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro certainly have useful AI features and could be worthy competitors to the latest phones from Apple, Google and Samsung.

Those who are familiar with the Mate series will notice how different the latest flagship looks compared to previous generations. In place of a matte metal finish is a glossy glass back with a horizontal inch-high gray stripe under the cameras. This band subtly blends in with the rest of the rear but catches your eye when it reflects light, making for a fetching effect. All four sides of the handset are slightly curved, too, so the device feels sleeker and easier to grip.

The Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro differ in a few ways. The Pro has a larger 6-inch OLED screen than the regular model (which measures 5.9 inches diagonally and uses an LCD panel). Strangely, the Pro’s display resolution is just 2,160 x 1,080, while the smaller phone has a sharper 2,560 x 1,440 screen. Huawei said it did this to conserve the Pro’s battery, among other reasons it declined to share.

Other differences between the two phones include RAM and storage capacity, as well as the type of LTE radio. The Mate 10 has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, while the Mate 10 Pro has 6GB of memory and 128GB of space. To compensate for its lower capacity, the regular Mate 10 has a microSD slot but its bigger brother doesn’t. The Pro also has a Cat 18 radio, which means it supports gigabit LTE speeds of up to 1.2GBps, while the smaller phone doesn’t. Finally, the Mate’s fingerprint sensor is built into the home button, while the Pro’s is located on the rear under the cameras. All these differences considered, the Pro doesn’t necessarily feel like the superior of the two; it has a slightly bigger and technically better screen, though I didn’t notice a change in quality as I switched devices.

I eventually learned to tell the difference between the phones by their overall shape. The Mate 10, with its 16:9 aspect ratio, is wide and squat compared to the Pro, which has a ratio of 18:9. Like many of this year’s flagship phones, the two Mates’ displays stretch across the front for an “all-screen” effect with almost no bezel. Despite the different resolutions and display types, both phones appeared equally colorful and crisp though they seemed a little dim under direct sunlight.

Both phones sport the same dual rear-camera setup, which Huawei co-engineered with Leica — a partnership that has been ongoing for several years now. A 12-megapixel RGB camera is paired with a 20-megapixel monochrome sensor here, and both lenses feature apertures of up to f/1.6 — which is the largest on smartphones to date, alongside LG’s similarly equipped V30. The V30 uses a glass lens, though, which may deliver better image quality than the Mates, and LG uses wide angle and telephoto lenses instead of color and monochrome sensors. Still, the Mate 10 phones yielded lovely pictures with vivid colors and sharp details.

That’s thanks in part to Huawei’s AI in the native camera app. When you point the Mate 10’s camera at an object, it recognizes the subject and automatically adjusts the settings. It’ll not only tweak capture settings like ISO, exposure compensation and white balance in real time, but post-processing effects as well. I aimed the phone at some cupcakes on a plate, and a food icon appeared at the bottom left of the screen. The phone then bumped up the saturation to make the colors richer.

Huawei says the camera can recognize up to 13 scenes right now, including landscapes, low-light, portrait, flower, sunset, snow, cat, dog and text. I don’t know why there are different settings for dogs and cats (Huawei has yet to answer my question on this), and I unfortunately didn’t get to try the camera out on those animals. But during my demo, the Mate 10 phones accurately distinguished between people, food, flowers and landscapes. Over time, Huawei says the AI-powered model will evolve so that it recognizes more scenes and learns to identify more objects. The company will train its AI using users’ photos in the cloud, and then push out updates periodically.

I was impressed by how quickly the cameras recognized things. An icon for the detected object appeared almost instantly after I pointed the phone at it, and even when there was a delay, it was never longer than a second. This is likely due to the Mate 10’s Kirin 970 CPU, which carries a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) to manage AI-based tasks. While the graphics processing unit handles things like rendering the image on your viewfinder and the main processing unit takes care of saving the image to your phone or capturing metadata, the NPU focuses on processes like object recognition. On other chipsets without an NPU, the latter task would be slower since it would be performed by another unit that’s already in use.

The Mate 10’s 8-megapixel front camera doesn’t support scene recognition, but it does have a Portrait-mode feature for bokeh in your selfies. Unlike this year’s Huawei P10, which also features Portrait mode on the front cameras, the Mate 10 uses AI to better identify faces in your picture to apply the background blur more precisely. This was hit or miss during my demo; sometimes it recognized my coworker’s face next to mine and adjusted the blur to surround him. Other times, it blurred out his head or parts of his hairline. Still, this is an improvement over the P10, which routinely blurred out my friends’ faces in my group selfies.

The Kirin 970 chip offers other benefits as well. In addition to improving overall performance by pre-allocating resources to apps it predicts you’ll launch, the NPU can also be used by third-party apps to speed up machine learning tasks. Developers can choose to tap the NPU by using Huawei’s own API for the Kirin 970, Google’s TensorFlow Lite or Facebook’s Caffe 2 AI frameworks. So far, Microsoft has updated its Translator app to make use of the NPU to speed up the translation of signs. I tried this out on some Chinese sentences that Huawei placed around its demo area, and the process was indeed speedy. Since I’ve never used Microsoft Translator on another phone, I can’t say if it is faster than before.

Few other apps are tapping the NPU at the moment, so I couldn’t see if there would be other performance benefits during my demo.

The rest of the phone’s improvements are less exciting. The Mate 10 will run Android 8.0 Oreo with Huawei’s EMUI 8.0 skin, which has new features like a floating navigational button for easier one-handed control and the option to open incoming notifications in split screen when you’re viewing a full-screen video or playing a game.

Both the Mate 10 and the 10 Pro pack large 4,000mAh batteries, which can be recharged up to 58 percent in 30 minutes. The new flagships are also the first phone to be “end to end” certified for battery safety by German certification organization TÜV Rheinland, meaning the cells are tested on their own as well as inside the phones.

All told, the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro represent a refined focus for Huawei. While it continues to add popular features like all-screen displays and dual cameras to its flagships, Huawei is showing that it is capable of innovating in its own products. Concepts like the AI camera and NPU are not only novel, but helpful. Even though it’s too early to tell how they’ll perform in the real world, the new Mates already provide an intriguing preview of how well-executed AI applications can benefit users.

NBA’s first AR game lets you pop-a-shot with your iPhone

The NBA’s already cranked up its virtual reality output, and now it’s taking baby steps into augmented reality too. The league’s new iPhone game lets you play virtual pop-a-shot outdoors, which is as straightforward as it sounds. Just download the “NBA AR” app, point your phone at a chosen spot, and start shooting hoops on a virtual backboard and court. You’ll have to frantically flick your iPhone, though, as there’s a 30-second time limit on each round. When you’re done, you can share your high score on social media, iMessage, and email — and check how you stack up on the in-game leaderboard. NBA AR is available for free right now on the App Store.

The game relies on Apple’s ARKit AR platform, restricting it to newer iPhone models (including the 6S and beyond) running on iOS 11. The NBA is the latest big name to try out Apple’s tech, which Tim Cook claims will one day be as essential to brands as a website. The likes of Ikea and Edmunds have taken the bait, both releasing AR lifestyle apps aimed at shoppers. But, everyone else (it seems) is busy chasing the breakout success of Pokémon Go. According to recent data from Sensor Tower, games are by far the largest category of all ARKit apps on the App Store. So, don’t be surprised if the NBA’s small-scale release, which it touts as the first AR game by a US sports league, is followed by plenty others.

Apple Park ‘Nearly Complete’ as Construction Begins on Basketball Courts and Other Employee Amenities

Apple Park is officially nearing completion as 2017 winds down, according to a new drone video that has captured footage of the company’s campus. Shared by Matthew Roberts, the video comes nearly one month after an update in late September showed off Apple Park at sunset, and almost one year after “major landscaping changes” appeared around the campus.

Now, according to Roberts, Apple Park is “nearly complete,” with fewer pieces of construction equipment dotting the site. Landscaping remains a focus for the remaining work, and paths are being paved throughout the campus to connect buildings and areas of Apple Park for its employees. In terms of complete buildings, the new video showcases the finalized Visitor’s Center, which members of the media got to visit during the iPhone X event in September.

Roberts’ drone video also shared progress made on the sporting areas at Apple Park that the company has built for workers to unwind, including an outdoor spot for basketball and tennis courts currently in the middle of construction. Elsewhere on the campus, there’s also a 100,000 square foot fitness center for employees to work out in.

Although Apple Park isn’t yet officially finished with construction, some workers have already moved in to offices on the campus, and Apple hosted its iPhone X event at the Steve Jobs Theater last month. Once it is finally completed and all employees are moved in, Apple Park will house 12,000 workers across its 2.8 million square foot campus.

Tag: Apple Park
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Apple Maps Transit Directions Expand to Ireland

Apple Maps has added public transit directions for Ireland, as pointed out by developer Steven Troughton-Smith on Twitter. With the updated directions, users in Ireland can now choose from a few different public transportation routes when traveling around Ireland.

Transit directions are available in a few cities like Dublin and Cork, including transportation provided by Bus Éirann, Aircoach, and more. There’s also support for city-specific transit options like Dublin’s electric rail system the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) and Dublin Bus.

Unfortunately, most of the transit options in Ireland are facing service cancellations in the face of Hurricane Ophelia, which made landfall around 1 p.m. local time. Many transit advisories listed in Apple Maps mention cancellations lasting from 10 a.m. to at least 7 p.m. local time in Ireland.

Apple has been adding public transit directions to new cities around the world since the feature first debuted in iOS 9 in 2015. Some of the latest areas to get the feature include Taiwan, Ottawa, Edmonton, Québec City, and Hungary.

Tags: Apple Maps, transit, Ireland
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What you need to know about KRACK, the WPA2 vulnerability

Exploit in WPA2 means it’s open season on your Wi-Fi network, no matter what router you use.

For years we’ve all depended on the WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access) protocol to secure our Wi-Fi networks. That all comes to an end today.

Security researcher KU Leuven has revealed what he has labeled KRACK; an exploit that attacks a vulnerability in the handshake of the WPA2 protocol that you most likely use to protect your Wi-Fi at home and millions of small businesses around the world use, too.

Speaking at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Dallas, Leuven explained that this exploit may allow packet sniffing, connection hijacking, malware injection, and even decryption of the protocol itself. The vulnerability has been disclosed to the people who need to know these sorts of things early to find a fix and US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team) has released this prepared bulletin:

US-CERT has become aware of several key management vulnerabilities in the 4-way handshake of the Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) security protocol. The impact of exploiting these vulnerabilities includes decryption, packet replay, TCP connection hijacking, HTTP content injection, and others. Note that as protocol-level issues, most or all correct implementations of the standard will be affected. The CERT/CC and the reporting researcher KU Leuven, will be publicly disclosing these vulnerabilities on 16 October 2017.

According to a researcher who has been briefed on the vulnerability, it works by exploiting a four-way handshake that’s used to establish a key for encrypting traffic. During the third step, the key can be resent multiple times. When it’s resent in certain ways, a cryptographic nonce can be reused in a way that completely undermines the encryption.

How do I stay safe?

To be honest, for the next couple of days there aren’t a ton of public options available to you. We’re not going to tell you how it works or where to find more information on how exactly the attack works. But we can tell you what you can (and should do) to stay as safe as possible.

• Avoid public Wi-Fi at all costs. This includes Google’s protected Wi-Fi hotspots until Google says otherwise. If your carrier forces your phone to Wi-Fi when in range, visit the forum for your phone to see if there’s a workaround to stop it from happening.
• Only connect to secured services. Web pages that use HTTPS or another secure connection will include HTTPS in the URL. You should contact any company whose services you use and ask if the connection is secured using TLS 1.2, and if so your connection with that service is safe for now.
• If you have a paid VPN service that you trust you should enable the connection full-time until further notice. Resist the temptation to rush and sign-up for any free VPN service until you can find out if they have been vetted and will keep your data secure. Most don’t.
• Use a wired network if your router and computer both have a spot to plug in an Ethernet cable. This exploit only affects 802.11 traffic between a Wi-Fi router and a connected device. Ethernet cables are relatively cheap and an eyesore strung across the carpet is worth it. Look for a Cat6 or Cat5e spec cable and there should be no configuration needed once plugged in.
• If you use a Chromebook or MacBook, this USB Ethernet adapter is plug-and-play.
• Relax.

What could happen if I am on an attacked network?

This hack can’t steal your banking information or Google password (or any data on a correctly secured connection that uses end-to-end encryption). While an intruder may be able to capture the data you send and receive, it can’t be used or even read by anyone. You can’t even read it unless you allow your phone or computer to decrypt and unscramble it first.

An attacker may be able to do things like redirect traffic on a Wi-Fi network or even send bogus data in place of the real thing. This means something harmless like printing a thousand copies of gibberish on a networked printer or something dangerous like sending malware as a reply to a legitimate request for information or a file. The best way to protect yourself is to not use Wi-Fi at all until you’re directed otherwise.

uhhh shit it’s bad yup pic.twitter.com/iJdsvP08D7

— ⚡️ Owen Williams (@ow) October 16, 2017

Ubiquiti has been said to already have a patch ready to deploy for their equipment, and if this turns out to be true we should see the same from companies like Google or Apple very soon. Other, less security-conscious companies may take longer and many routers will never see a patch. Some companies who make routers are much like some companies who make Android phones: any desire to support the product stops when your money reaches their bank. Of course, if this rumor turns out to be false all bets are off.

Does this really matter?

This is not a case where you should feel immune because your data isn’t valuable enough. The majority of attacks using this exploit will be opportunistic. Kids who live in your building, shady characters who drive the neighborhood looking for Wi-Fi APs and general mischief makers are already scanning Wi-Fi networks around them.

WPA2 has had a long and fruitful life with nary a public exploit until today. Here’s hoping the fix, or what comes next, can enjoy the same. Stay safe!

Facebook to train UK students as cyber safety experts

Facebook has pledged more than £1 million to help turn British schoolchildren into “digital safety ambassadors.” The scheme, created by Childnet International and The Diana Award, will teach students about social media, cyberbullying and the hazards of the wider internet. They will then act as a support group for their friends and fellow pupils, fielding questions and leading online safety initiatives in the classroom. Facebook says its investment will allow every UK secondary school to have its own digital safety ambassador, should they be interested in the project. In total, that could be an extra 4,500 pupils sharing good advice with their peers.

Digital safety ambassadors fall into two camps. The Diana Award trains anti-bullying ambassadors with a mixture of face-to-face training, online resources and forums. The charity, set up in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, also provides an online newsletter and monthly challenges, which can be assigned to students as homework, that tackle LGBTQ+ issues, racism and online behaviours and attitudes. Childnet, meanwhile, creates “digital leaders” with a dedicated online curriculum about internet safety and “resilience building.” Facebook’s funding will extend the reach of both programmes with more classroom visits and better online resources.

As part of the announcement, Child International, The Diana Award and Facebook have created a physical, immersive experience in London called ‘House of Us.’ It will run today and tomorrow and allow young people to experience many of the problems that their contemporaries face online, as well as the impact a friendly, reliable support system can make. The installation will include an “audio maze” that mimicks the complex emotions people feel while being bullied, and a light room that responds to positive feedback and support. Staff will survey the students afterwards and use their comments to shape future projects and classroom resources.

Via: The Telegraph

Source: The Diana Award

The Morning After: Monday, October 16th 2017

Welcome to the middle of October. As the pumpkin spice lattes floweth over, we’ve taken a look at the ropey world of fast-food tech stunts — and highlight the weekend news.

From the Pizza Parka to the Windows 7 Whopper.
A ridiculous history of fast-food PR tech stunts

Who doesn’t love a good over-the-top marketing stunt? Recently we’ve seen a lot of those, including Pizza Hut’s Pizza Parka, a coat made of the same insulating materials as its delivery pouches. Because why not? Here are some other terrible / great ones. (Delete as applicable.)

Three Texas closures suggest coal isn’t coming back any time soon.
Coal power plant closures are ramping up despite White House plans

The Trump administration may hope it can reverse coal power’s decline by ending the Clean Power Plan and other eco-friendly efforts, but the industry’s moves suggest otherwise. Luminant has announced plans to close three major coal plants in Texas (in Freestone, Milam and Titus counties) between January and February 2018. The shutdowns will take a combined 4,200MW of power off the grid — enough to run over four million homes, as Reuters notes. The news boosts the expected capacity of 2018 power plant closures to over 13,600MW, or a whopping 79 percent more than the known closures for this year.

The cofounders are stepping down from management to create new IPs.
11 years after creating ‘League of Legends,’ Riot is making a new game

The two founders of Riot Games announced that they’re handing off the management of League of Legends to other administrators, so they can make a new game — the publisher’s second big video game release in 11 years of operation.

But wait, there’s more…

• First-ever negative-emissions power plant goes online
• The best 4K TV on a budget
• First ‘Rocket League’ Halloween event kicks off October 16th
• Recommended Reading: ‘Lore’ makes the leap from podcast to TV

Classic FM’s video game show is returning for a second series

Classic FM is bringing back High Score, a weekly radio show dedicated to video game music. The first series ran for six weeks in April and May, and was presented by Jessica Curry, a BAFTA-wining composer and co-founder of now-on-hiatus game studio The Chinese Room (Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, So Let Us Melt). Curry will return for season two, which runs for six weeks starting on November 4th at 9pm. The first and final instalments will be request shows, while the middle four explore themes such as love, quests, and the best video game music of 2017.

The first series of High Score was a huge success for Classic FM. The show smashed records for ‘Listen Again,’ the station’s seven-day catch-up service, by appealing to both video game enthusiasts and those with a general love for sweeping, orchestral scores. “We were so encouraged by the response to the first series of High Score,” Sam Jackson, managing editor for Classic FM said. “Since the launch of Classic FM 25 years ago, the station has been a pioneer and aimed to break down the barriers to classical music, so we can’t wait for the new series.” Classic FM, if you need a reminder, is available online, on DAB radio and 100-102 FM in the UK.

Source: Classic FM (Press Release)