HiTechEdge

Category: Tech

All news related to tech.

  • Apple Enables 5G Updates for iPadOS

    Apple Enables 5G Updates for iPadOS

    Apple has enabled iPadOS updates over 5G, giving users the opportunity to update their iPads using their wireless data.

    In the early days of iOS, Apple did not allow users to download OS updates via their wireless plans. Instead, OS updates required a WiFi connection. As unlimited plans became the norm, Apple changed their stance, allowing OS updates over 4G LTE.

    With the iPhone 12, Apple expanded wireless OS downloads to include 5G as well. Now the company has rolled out the feature to the latest 12.9 and 11-inch iPad Pros, both of which support 5G.

    Apple currently has three different 5G data modes: Allow More Data on 5G, Standard and Low Data Mode. To update over 5G, users will need to enable the More Data mode.

    Allow More Data on 5G: Enables higher data-usage features for apps and system tasks. These include higher-quality FaceTime, high-definition content on Apple TV, Apple Music songs and videos, and iPadOS updates over cellular. This setting also allows third-party apps to use more cellular data for enhanced experiences. This is the default setting with some unlimited-data plans, depending on your carrier. This setting uses more cellular data.

    Given the high speeds 5G offers, 5G OS updates are a welcome addition to the new iPad Pros.

  • Netflix May Be Moving Into Gaming

    Netflix May Be Moving Into Gaming

    One of the biggest streaming platforms may be making a move into gaming, as Netflix looks for an executive to lead the effort.

    Netflix is one of the most successful streaming platforms, with more than 207 million subscribers. As the company continues to look for ways to stay competitive, gaming is a logical area for possible expansion.

    According to a report by The Information, Netflix is currently looking for an executive that could head up its gaming initiative. The company is looking to possibly create a service similar to Apple Arcade, a service that will not be ad-supported.

    The company all but confirmed its plans in a comment to GameSpot:

    “Our members value the variety and quality of our content. It’s why we’ve continually expanded our offering–from series to documentaries, film, local language originals and reality TV,” Netflix told GameSpot. “Members also enjoy engaging more directly with stories they love–through interactive shows like Bandersnatch and You v. Wild, or games based on Stranger Things, La Casa de Papel and To All the Boys. So we’re excited to do more with interactive entertainment.”

    Should Netflix’s plans prove successful, it would open an entirely new opportunity for the company, ensuring growth for years to come.

  • Google Will Open First Store in NYC

    Google Will Open First Store in NYC

    Taking a page from Apple and Microsoft, Google plans to open its first store in NYC.

    Apple’s retail stores have been a big part of the company’s success, becoming some of the most valuable stores in retail, per square foot. Although never achieving the same success, Microsoft’s stores were a familiar site in many shopping malls around the country before the company closed the vast majority of them.

    Google hopes to strike gold with its own retail store strategy, the first of which will be opened in NYC, in Chelsea. Google’s description of its store sounds very similar to an Apple Store.

    The company made the announce on its official blog.

    At the Google Store, customers will be able to browse and buy an extensive selection of products made by Google, ranging from Pixel phones to Nest products, Fitbit devices to Pixelbooks and more. Or they can shop online at GoogleStore.com and pick up their orders in store. Throughout the store, visitors will be able to experience how our products and services work together in a variety of immersive ways, which we’re excited to share more about when the doors open.

    We’ll have experts on hand to help visitors get the most out of their device, such as troubleshooting an issue, fixing a cracked Pixel screen or helping with installations. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a longtime Pixel user, are curious about our Nest displays or want to participate in one of the how-to workshops we’ll offer throughout the year — our team will be able to provide you with help that’s specific and personalized to your needs. 

    Should the Chelsea location prove successful, it’s a safe bet the company will likely expand its retail footprint. In the meantime, the Chelsea location will be open summer 2021.

  • Mac Viruses and Malware Have Reached ‘Unacceptable’ Levels

    Mac Viruses and Malware Have Reached ‘Unacceptable’ Levels

    Mac viruses and malware have reached an ‘unacceptable’ level, according to testimony from Apple senior VP Craig Federighi.

    Many interesting details have emerged in the Epic vs Apple court case over the future of the latter’s App Store ecosystem. One of the most fascinating, however, is just how much the Mac is already being impacted by security threats.

    Not that long ago, the Mac had the reputation of not being affected by malware or viruses. This was due to two factors: the platform’s UNIX underpinnings and security through obscurity. Because the Mac held such a low percentage of the market, it simply wasn’t worth it for hackers to invest a lot of resources to make Mac-specific malware.

    According to Federighi, that appears to have changed in a big way. When Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers asked why the Mac could allow app installs from multiple sources, but not iOS, Federighi drew a stark contrast between the level of security and protections the two platforms offer.

    “It is regularly exploited on the Mac,” Federighi explained. “iOS has established a dramatically higher bar for customer protection. The Mac is not meeting that bar today.”

    Federighi emphasized the disparity between the number of Mac users and iOS users, and the value of their respective ecosystems, making the point that things would be far worse for iOS users if it took the same approach as the Mac.

    “And that’s despite the fact that Mac users inherently download less software and are subject to a way less economically motivated attacker base,” Federighi continued. “If you took Mac security techniques and applied them to the iOS ecosystem, with all those devices, all that value, it would get run over to a degree dramatically worse than is already happening on the Mac.”

    All of this led to the admission regarding Apple’s view of the current state of Mac malware.

    “And as I say, today, we have a level of malware on the Mac that we don’t find acceptable and is much worse than iOS,” Federighi said. “Put that same situation in place for iOS and it would be a very bad situation for our customers.”

    Federighi’s explanation is at the heart of the case Apple is making, that keeping apps operating within its ecosystem help it provide the security and protection that people are paying for when they buy an iPhone or iPad. In contrast, individuals who don’t want that protection can buy Android.

  • Google and Samsung Combining Wear OS and Tizen info Unified Platform

    Google and Samsung Combining Wear OS and Tizen info Unified Platform

    Google and Samsung have announced they are combining their wearable platforms into a single unified one.

    Apple is currently the market leader in the wearables market, with Samsung coming in third-place. Google, on the other hand, hasn’t been able to break into the top five, prompting it to purchase Fitbit to give it a boost.

    Google and Samsung are now joining forces, combining Google’s Wear OS and Samsung’s Tizen into a single, unified platform that will help both companies better compete. The unified platform will be called “Wear,” although one can’t help but hope they come up with something with at least a little more pizazz.

    Bjorn Kilburn, Google Director of Product Management, Wear, outlined some of the benefits of the unification in more detail.

    For performance, our teams collaborated and made apps start up to 30% faster on the latest chipsets with smooth user interface animations and motion. To achieve longer battery life, we’ve worked to optimize the lower layers of the operating system – taking advantage of low-power hardware cores to enable better battery life. That includes handy optimizations like the ability to run the heart rate sensor continuously during the day, track your sleep overnight and still have battery for the next day. Finally, our unified platform will make it easier for developers to build great apps for the watch.

  • Google’s Play Store Privacy Changes Won’t Match Apple

    Google’s Play Store Privacy Changes Won’t Match Apple

    Proposed privacy changes for Android developers will fall short of the protections Apple offers, according to new reports.

    Google made headlines when it informed developers it would be changing how privacy is handled. Developers will soon be required to disclose the security features their apps offer, whether an app adheres to Google’s Families policy, if the app’s safety section has been independently verified and if data collection is optional or required.

    Despite offering significant improvements over the current privacy protections, Google’s level of protection will still fall short of Apple’s recent moves, according to AppleInsider.

    In particular, Google wants advertisers to continue to be able to target ads, as well as quantify how effective those ads are. In contrast, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) is specifically aimed at preventing advertising’s from tracking users.

    According to AppleInsider, two Google employees say the company is working to improve privacy, but dragging its feet at the same time. The company clearly has more to lose than Apple, since it makes the bulk of its income from advertising. In contrast, Apple makes the bulk of its money from hardware and paid services, meaning it doesn’t treat people’s data as the product.

  • Amazon Bans Facial Recognition for Police Use Indefinitely

    Amazon Bans Facial Recognition for Police Use Indefinitely

    Amazon has extended a ban on the use of its facial recognition tech by police until further notice amid ongoing privacy concerns.

    Last year, amid a wider backlash against police use of facial recognition, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM announced they would no longer sell their technology to police departments. Clearview AI had already been drawing scrutiny for its shady privacy practices, scraping social media platforms and websites to amass a database of billions of photos it used in its facial recognition platform. The death of George Floyd was the final straw, forcing tech companies to evaluate how their technology was being used.

    Facial recognition, in particular, has struggled to ensure fairness and equality. Studies have shown that facial recognition software often has racial biases that unfairly impact people of color. There have been published examples of Black individuals wrongly accused of a crime after being misidentified by facial recognition.

    Amazon had initially put a one-year hold on sales of its tech, but is now extending that ban until further notice, according to Reuters. Amazon did not comment on the reasons for the move, but its decision has already been met with support.

    “Face recognition technology fuels the over-policing of Black and Brown communities, and has already led to the false arrests and wrongful incarcerations of multiple Black men,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy project director at the American Civil Liberties Union.

  • Amazon Offering $9 Billion for MGM

    Amazon Offering $9 Billion for MGM

    On the heels of news Amazon was in talks to acquire MGM, a new report says the offer on the table is $9 billion.

    Amazon is already one of the leading streaming platforms, thanks to its Prime Video service being bundled with its Amazon Prime package. Nonetheless, the company has enjoyed critical and popular success with shows like Bosch and The Man in the High Castle. Reports emerged yesterday that Amazon was in talks to purchase MGM in an effort to boost its content catalog even more.

    According to a new report by Variety, Amazon is offering $9 billion to make the deal happen. MGM was reportedly looking for a buyer as early as December, but Amazon has emerged as the front-runner among possible suitors.

    MGM has an extremely deep movie catalog, boasting the James Bond franchise, Hobbit, the Rocky/Creed franchise, The Silence of the Lambs, The Magnificent Seven and Four Weddings and a Funeral. It’s TV catalog includes the Stargate franchise, Fargo, Vikings, American Gladiators and more.

    A successful deal would be a major win for Amazon and give it a leg up in the streaming wars.

  • Apple Preparing MacBook Pro and Air Updates

    Apple Preparing MacBook Pro and Air Updates

    Apple is preparing its next round of MacBook Pro and Air updates, adding a 14 and 16-inch Pro and faster M1 processors.

    Apple introduced the new MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac mini last November, with all of them sporting the company’s new M1 chip. Based on the same designs that have powered the iPad and iPhone for years, the M1 immediately won rave reviews for its performance and battery life.

    The company is now preparing to add a 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro as soon as early summer, according to Bloomberg’sMark Gurman. In a move that’s sure to please Apple’s professional customers, the new MacBook Pros are expected to have a redesigned chassis that will include additional ports, an HDMI port and an SD slot — features that were removed from previous models in some of the company’s most unpopular moves.

    The new MacBook Pros will have 10-core chips, eight high-performance and two high-efficiency cores. The chips will be offered in two variations, differentiated by either 16 or 32 graphics cores. The chips will also support a maximum of 64GB of memory, a major upgrade over the 16GB in current M1 models.

    An updated MacBook Air is also expected as early as the end of the year, building on the success of the current M1 Air. Gurman’s sources say the MacBook Air’s chip will contain the same computing cores, although they will run faster. The graphics cores will also increase from the current 7 or 8 to 9 or 10.

    Mark Gurman is one of the most reliable Apple-watchers. If his sources are correct, the updates will bring welcome changes to Apple’s laptop lines and raise the bar for laptop performance.

  • WhatsApp Delays Privacy Changes in Brazil

    WhatsApp Delays Privacy Changes in Brazil

    WhatsApp is delaying rollout of its new privacy policy in Brazil amid pushback from the government.

    Facebook caused a firestorm of controversy when it announced it would share WhatsApp data with other Facebook-owned companies. The announcement sparked a mass exodus of users to more privacy-conscious apps, such as Signal and Telegram. While users initially would lose access if they failed to agree to the new policy, Facebook later altered course, saying users would experience limited functionality if they failed to agree.

    Governments have joined in the pushback as well, with Germany and India opposed to the move. Brazil joins the list of companies with concerns over the changes. The country’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), national consumer body Senacon, competition watchdog Cade and the Federal Prosecution Service have been in talks with WhatsApp, according to ZDNet.

    Under the agreement, users will retain full functionality for three more months, while the Brazilian agencies continue to scrutinize the new privacy policy.

    “WhatsApp has informed that it will not close any account, and that no user in Brazil will lose access to the application’s features in the 90-day period after May 15 as a result of the enforcement of the new privacy policy and the new terms of service,” said Brazilian authorities in a statement.