Apple CarPlay, the interface that lets you cast your phone to your car’s infotainment screen, may finally be coming to Tesla’s electric vehicles. CarPlay is nearly a decade old at this point, and it has become so popular that almost half of car buyers have said they won’t consider a car without the feature, and the overwhelming majority of automakers have included CarPlay in their vehicles.

Until now, that hasn’t included Tesla. CEO Elon Musk doesn’t appear to have opined on the omission, though he has frequently criticized Apple. In the past, Musk has said the goal of Tesla infotainment is to be “the most amount of fun you can have in a car.” Tesla has regularly added puerile features like fart noises to the system, and it has also integrated video games that drivers can play while they charge.

For customers who want to stream music, Tesla has instead offered Spotify, Tidal, and even Apple Music apps.

But Tesla is no longer riding high—its sales are crashing, and its market share is shrinking around the world as car buyers tire of a stale and outdated lineup of essentially two models at a time when competition has never been higher from legacy and startup automakers.

According to Bloomberg, which cites “people with knowledge of the matter,” the feature could be added within months if it isn’t cancelled internally.

Tesla is not the only automaker to reject Apple CarPlay. The startup Lucid took some time to add the feature to its high-end EVs, and Rivian still refuses to consider including the system, claiming that a third-party system would degrade the user experience. And of course, General Motors famously removed CarPlay from its new EVs, and it may do the same to its other vehicles in the future.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/11/after-years-of-saying-no-tesla-reportedly-adding-apple-carplay-to-its-cars/

Rather than continue the endless revision cycle, Espinosa took a different approach. According to Hertzfeld, Espinosa created a program that exposed every visual parameter of the calculator through pull-down menus: line thickness, button sizes, background patterns, and more. When Jobs sat down with it, he spent about ten minutes adjusting settings until he found a combination he liked.

The approach worked. When given direct control over the parameters rather than having to articulate his preferences verbally, Jobs quickly arrived at a design he was satisfied with. Hertzfeld notes that he implemented the calculator’s UI a few months later using Jobs’s parameter choices from that ten-minute session, while Donn Denman, another member of the Macintosh team, handled the mathematical functions.

That ten-minute session produced the calculator design that shipped with the Mac in 1984 and remained virtually unchanged through Mac OS 9, when Apple discontinued that OS in 2001. Apple replaced it in Mac OS X with a new design, ending the calculator’s 17-year run as the primary calculator interface for the Mac.

Why it worked

Espinosa’s Construction Set was an early example of what would later become common in software development: visual and parameterized design tools. In 1982, when most computers displayed monochrome text, the idea of letting someone fine-tune visual parameters through interactive controls without programming was fairly forward-thinking. Later, tools like HyperCard would formalize this kind of idea into a complete visual application framework.

The primitive calculator design tool also revealed something about Jobs’s management process. He knew what he wanted when he saw it, but he perhaps struggled to articulate it at times. By giving him direct manipulation ability, Espinosa did an end-run around that communication problem entirely. Later on, when he returned to Apple in the late 1990s, Jobs would famously insist on judging products by using them directly rather than through canned PowerPoint demos or lists of specifications.

The longevity of Jobs’s ten-minute design session suggests the approach worked. The calculator survived nearly two decades of Mac OS updates, outlasting many more elaborate interface elements. What started as a workaround became one of the Mac’s most simple but enduring designs.

By the way, if you want to try the original Mac OS calculator yourself, you can run various antique versions of the operating system in your browser thanks to the Infinite Mac website.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/the-mac-calculators-original-design-came-from-letting-steve-jobs-play-with-sliders-for-ten-minutes/

Focused on original content

Another obvious way to grow Apple TV is through more subscribers. With talk of Warner Bros. Discovery considering a sale, it’s worth wondering if Apple TV may try to grow through acquisition. But the execs Screen International spoke with seemed focused on building out Apple TV’s library with originals. Cue noted that “at least in the timeframe that we’re thinking about right now, we’re not looking at licensing any content or adding anything to our service.”

“We’re building an all-original services; we’re not building on the back of pre-existing IP or library,” Jamie Erlicht, one of Apple’s heads of worldwide video, said.

More directly, when asked if Apple might buy Warner Bros., A24, or Disney, Cue pointed out that Apple hasn’t historically done “a lot of major acquisitions.”

“We do very small acquisitions in general, not related to Apple TV, so I don’t see that happening because we like what we’re doing,” Cue said.

Since its 2019 debut, some have questioned whether Apple TV is an authentic attempt to improve streaming options for customers, or if Apple TV is a “vanity project,” as Screen International put it, or if the service is merely a tool for getting people to buy other Apple products. Naturally, the interviewed executives claimed that the service is built on a commitment to distributing unique and premium shows and movies.

The interview provided more insight into how Apple TV leadership defines the latter. Zack Van Amburg, one of Apple’s heads of worldwide video, said:

A core tenet of everything Apple does is the notion that humanity needs to be at the center of it, and that’s everything from app design to hardware engineering, to everything in between. We try to think a little more deeply about that.

Our shows and our movies tend to be about the emotional experience, the stakes involved, even when we’re doing a comedy.

https://arstechnica.com/apple/2025/11/apple-has-no-plans-to-bring-ads-to-apple-tv/

After several weeks of testing, Apple has released the final versions of the 26.1 update to its various operating systems. Those include iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, visionOS, and the HomePod operating system, all of which switched to a new unified year-based version numbering system this fall.

This isn’t the first update that these operating systems have gotten since they were released in September, but it is the first to add significant changes and tweaks to existing features, addressing the early complaints and bugs that inevitably come with any major operating system update.

One of the biggest changes across most of the platforms is a new translucency control for Liquid Glass that tones it down without totally disabling the effect. Users can stay with the default Clear look to see the clearer, glassier look that allows more of the contents underneath Liquid Glass to show through, or the new Tinted look to get a more opaque background that shows only vague shapes and colors to improve readability.

For iPad users, the update re-adds an updated version of the Slide Over multitasking mode, which uses quick swipes to summon and dismiss an individual app on top of the apps you’re already using. The iPadOS 26 version looks a little different and includes some functional changes compared to the previous version—it’s harder to switch which app is being used in Slide Over mode, but the Slide Over window can now be moved and resized just like any other iPadOS 26 app window.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/apple-releases-ios-26-1-macos-26-1-other-updates-with-liquid-glass-controls-and-more/

Apple’s iPhone Air was the company’s most interesting new iPhone this year, at least insofar as it was the one most different from previous iPhones. We came away impressed by its size and weight in our review. But early reports suggest that its novelty might not be translating into sales success.

A note from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, whose supply chain sources are often accurate about Apple’s future plans, said yesterday that demand for the iPhone Air “has fallen short of expectations” and that “both shipments and production capacity” were being scaled back to account for the lower-than-expected demand.

Kuo’s note is backed up by reports from other analysts at Mizuho Securities (via MacRumors) and Nikkei Asia. Both of these reports say that demand for the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro models remains strong, indicating that this is just a problem for the iPhone Air and not a wider slowdown caused by tariffs or other external factors.

The standard iPhone, the regular-sized iPhone Pro, and the big iPhone Pro have all been mainstays in Apple’s lineup, but the company has had a harder time coming up with a fourth phone that sells well enough to stick around. The small-screened iPhone mini and the large-screened iPhone Plus were each discontinued after two generations.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/early-indicators-analyst-reports-suggest-apples-iphone-air-isnt-taking-off/

Il CEO di Apple, Tim Cook, ha promesso che l’azienda continuerà ad aumentare gli investimenti in Cina. Lo ha riferito il ministro cinese dell’Industria e dell’Informazione, Li Lecheng, durante la visita in corso del manager statunitense a Pechino.

Il ministro cinese Li ha invitato Apple a rafforzare la collaborazione con i fornitori locali, mentre Cook ha confermato l’impegno a intensificare la cooperazione con la Cina. Il Paese è il più grande mercato di Apple al di fuori degli Stati Uniti e resta un polo produttivo strategico per la società di Cupertino.

Le dichiarazioni arrivano mentre il produttore dell’iPhone cerca di aggirare i dazi imposti da Washington sulle spedizioni provenienti da Paesi come la Cina e l’India – dove si concentrano i principali stabilimenti produttivi – aumentando gli investimenti negli Stati Uniti fino a 600 miliardi di dollari nei prossimi quattro anni.

Durante la visita, ha scritto Bloomberg, Cook ha incontrato figure di spicco dell’industria tecnologica e ha annunciato una donazione all’Università Tsinghua, una delle più prestigiose del Paese. Nei giorni precedenti era stato a Shanghai, dove ha visitato l’Apple Store, incontrato sviluppatori di videogiochi locali e il designer delle popolari bambole Labubu, che gli ha anche regalato un esemplare personalizzato.

Cook ha inoltre confermato che l’iPhone Air sarà in vendita in Cina dal 22 ottobre, dopo un ritardo dovuto a questioni regolatorie.

Tim Cook non abbandona la Cina, il motivo? Gli ingegneri

Nonostante la volontà di Trump di riportare la produzione negli Stati Uniti, la realtà è che Apple continua a considerare la Cina il cuore pulsante della propria filiera. Cupertino sta cercando di diversificare la catena produttiva spostando parte della manifattura in Vietnam e India, ma con risultati altalenanti: Foxconn, uno dei principali fornitori, ha recentemente richiamato ingegneri cinesi dalle fabbriche di iPhone in India, segno che il modello produttivo cinese resta, per ora, insostituibile.

Tim Cook ha spiegato in una recente intervista che Apple produce in Cina non per il basso costo della manodopera — perché non è più il Paese dei salari minimi come anni fa — ma per le competenze tecniche straordinarie che si concentrano lì. “In Cina – ha detto – ci sono tantissime competenze in un unico posto. Le persone che lavorano nella filiera hanno una formazione solida, spesso anche umanistica che agli ingegneri americani manca, e forse è anche per questo che sanno risolvere problemi complessi con metodo e creatività”.

Leggi le altre notizie sull’home page di Key4biz

https://www.key4biz.it/ma-liphone-si-fa-sempre-in-cina-trump-lo-sa/550645/

Ott 14, 2025 Marina Londei Gestione dati, In evidenza, News, Privacy, RSS, Tecnologia 0

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In un nuovo post sul proprio blog, Apple ha espresso i suoi dubbi su una legge che rende obbligatoria la verifica dell’età per tutti coloro che vogliono scaricare applicazioni dallo Store o effettuare acquisti in-app.

La nuova legge – SB2420 – entrerà in vigore in Texas a partire dal 1° gennaio 2026 e prevede che chiunque voglia creare un account Apple (ma anche Google) a confermare di avere più di 18 anni; per fare ciò, gli sviluppatori e gli operatori dei marketplace di app dovranno di fatto raccogliere informazioni sull’età dei nuovi utenti, ovvero tramite caricamento di carte d’identità e dati dei genitori o tutori. 

“Pur condividendo l’obiettivo di rafforzare la sicurezza dei minori online, temiamo che SB2420 vada a impattare la privacy degli utenti richiedendo la raccolta di informazioni sensibili e di identificazione personale per scaricare qualsiasi applicazione, anche se un utente vuole semplicemente controllare il meteo o i risultati sportivi” ha affermato la compagnia.

La critica mossa da Apple sulla verifica dell’età è infatti relativa all’applicazione indiscriminata della legge. Per la compagnia non si tratta però soltanto di un problema di privacy, ma di un peso aggiuntivo per gli sviluppatori: quando la legge verrà definitivamente approvata, tutti gli account Apple di persone sotto i 18 anni saranno obbligati a far parte di in un gruppo “In famiglia” e saranno i genitori o i tutori a dover confermare tutti i download, gli acquisti e le transazioni; ciò “impatterà gli sviluppatori che dovranno implementare nuove funzionalità e modificare il comportamento delle proprie applicazioni per essere a norma di legge“.

Questa disposizione non rimarrà confinata in Texas, ma diventerà legge anche in Utah e Louisiana nel corso del 2026, e potenzialmente anche in altri stati U.S.A.

Secondo Apple, sarebbe opportuno che la legge introducesse l’obbligo del controllo dell’età solo per quelle applicazioni che sono classificate come potenzialmente non adatte ai minori.

In ogni caso, per supportare gli sviluppatori, Apple ha annunciato l’introduzione di nuove funzionalità che facilitano l’implementazione dei controlli di età. Gli sviluppatori possono già integrare l’API “Declared Age Range” ed entro fine anno saranno disponibili nuove feature che permettono di riottenere il consenso dei genitori in caso di aggiornamento delle app.

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https://www.securityinfo.it/2025/10/14/apple-si-oppone-alla-verifica-delleta-per-il-download-delle-app/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=apple-si-oppone-alla-verifica-delleta-per-il-download-delle-app

Apple on Friday announced significant updates to its bug bounty program and the company is now offering up to $2 million for complex exploit chains. 

Since the launch of its public bug bounty program in 2020, Apple has awarded a total of more than $35 million to over 800 security researchers. Multiple hackers earned $500,000 for their work, Apple said.

The tech giant recently unveiled Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE), an always-on memory-safety protection for iPhones designed to combat sophisticated attacks such as the ones conducted by mercenary spyware vendors. 

Apple believes these spyware attacks are the only ones that actually pose a significant threat to its customers and the company now wants to boost the security of its products even further against sophisticated attacks. 

It’s doing this by harnessing offensive security talent from outside the company, specifically by significantly increasing bug bounties for vulnerabilities such as the ones that would be leveraged in the exploit chains of mercenary spyware attacks.

Specifically, the top reward for a zero-click exploit chain that achieves remote device compromise, has been increased from $1 million to $2 million. Apple pointed out that this is the base pay and researchers can in theory get as much as $5 million if they earn bonuses for Lockdown Mode bypasses and vulnerabilities discovered in beta software. 

Apple noted in a call with reporters on Thursday that for someone to earn a $5 million reward is not easy or likely, but it is theoretically possible.

Apple is also significantly increasing bug bounty payouts for an application sandbox escape (from $150k to $500k), attacks requiring physical access to a locked device (from $250k to $500k), wireless attacks requiring physical proximity (from $250k to $1M), and remote hacking that requires one-click user interaction (from $250k to $1M).

The company has also announced that one-click attacks through the web browser, which have to bypass its WebKit protections, will be rewarded with up to $300,000 if they can achieve code execution with a sandbox escape. The reward can increase up to $1 million if the exploit chain is taken even further to achieve unsigned code execution with arbitrary entitlements. 

The tech giant is also boosting rewards for categories where no exploit has been demonstrated to date, such as a Gatekeeper bypass on macOS ($100,000) and unauthorized iCloud access ($1 million). 

The new payouts will go into effect in November 2025. 

Apple on Friday also introduced a concept that involves flags, similar to capture-the-flag (CTF) competitions. These so-called ‘Target Flags’ are meant to make it easier for researchers to objectively demonstrate their findings and to know what reward they should expect for their report. 

“When researchers demonstrate security issues using Target Flags, the specific flag that’s captured objectively demonstrates a given level of capability — for example, register control, arbitrary read/write, or code execution — and directly correlates to the reward amount, making the award determination more transparent than ever,” Apple explained. 

“Because Target Flags can be programmatically verified by Apple as part of submitted findings, researchers who submit eligible reports with Target Flags will receive notification of their bounty award immediately upon our validation of the captured flag,” it added.

Target Flags are supported on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, visionOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

Apple also announced that exceptional research will continue to receive bonuses, and it has decided that even low-impact vulnerabilities may be rewarded with $1,000 to encourage researchers to continue reporting their findings.

Related: Apple Seeks Researchers for 2026 iPhone Security Program

Related: Apple Updates iOS and macOS to Prevent Malicious Font Attacks

Related: Apple Sends Fresh Wave of Spyware Notifications to French Users

https://www.securityweek.com/apple-bug-bounty-update-top-payout-now-2-million-35-million-paid-to-date/

Apple yesterday announced a plan to comply with a Texas age verification law and warned that changes required by the law will reduce privacy for app users.

“Beginning January 1, 2026, a new state law in Texas—SB2420—introduces age assurance requirements for app marketplaces and developers,” Apple said yesterday in a post for developers. “While we share the goal of strengthening kids’ online safety, we are concerned that SB2420 impacts the privacy of users by requiring the collection of sensitive, personally identifiable information to download any app, even if a user simply wants to check the weather or sports scores.”

The Texas App Store Accountability Act requires app stores to verify users’ ages and imposes restrictions on those under 18. Apple said that developers will have “to adopt new capabilities and modify behavior within their apps to meet their obligations under the law.”

Apple’s post noted that similar laws will take effect later in 2026 in Utah and Louisiana. Google also recently announced plans for complying with the three state laws and said the new requirements reduce user privacy.

“While we have user privacy and trust concerns with these new verification laws, Google Play is designing APIs, systems, and tools to help you meet your obligations,” Google told developers in an undated post.

The Utah law is scheduled to take effect May 7, 2026, while the Louisiana law will take effect July 1, 2026. The Texas, Utah, and Louisiana “laws impose significant new requirements on many apps that may need to provide age appropriate experiences to users in these states,” Google said. “These requirements include ingesting users’ age ranges and parental approval status for significant changes from app stores and notifying app stores of significant changes.”

New features for Texas

Apple and Google both announced new features to help developers comply.

“Once this law goes into effect, users located in Texas who create a new Apple Account will be required to confirm whether they are 18 years or older,” Apple said. “All new Apple Accounts for users under the age of 18 will be required to join a Family Sharing group, and parents or guardians will need to provide consent for all App Store downloads, app purchases, and transactions using Apple’s In-App Purchase system by the minor.”

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/apple-and-google-reluctantly-comply-with-texas-age-verification-law/

And most glaringly, Apple noted that xAI is not a rival or consumer in the smartphone industry, where it alleges competition is being harmed. Apple urged the court to reject Musk’s theory that Apple is incentivized to boost OpenAI to prevent xAI’s ascent in building a “super app” that would render smartphones obsolete. If Musk’s super app dream is even possible, Apple argued, it’s at least a decade off, insisting that as-yet-undeveloped apps should not serve as the basis for blocking Apple’s measured plan to better serve customers with sophisticated chatbot integration.

“Antitrust laws do not require that, and for good reason: imposing such a rule on businesses would slow innovation, reduce quality, and increase costs, all ultimately harming the very consumers the antitrust laws are meant to protect,” Apple argued.

Musk’s weird smartphone market claim, explained

Apple alleged that Musk’s “grievance” can be “reduced to displeasure that Apple has not yet ‘integrated with any other generative AI chatbots’ beyond ChatGPT, such as those created by xAI, Google, and Anthropic.”

In a footnote, the smartphone giant noted that by xAI’s logic, Musk’s social media platform X “may be required to integrate all other chatbots—including ChatGPT—on its own social media platform.”

But antitrust law doesn’t work that way, Apple argued, urging the court to reject xAI’s claims of alleged market harms that “rely on a multi-step chain of speculation on top of speculation.” As Apple summarized, xAI contends that “if Apple never integrated ChatGPT,” xAI could win in both chatbot and smartphone markets, but only if:

1. Consumers would choose to send additional prompts to Grok (rather than other generative AI chatbots).
2. The additional prompts would result in Grok achieving scale and quality it could not otherwise achieve.
3. As a result, the X app would grow in popularity because it is integrated with Grok.
4. X and xAI would therefore be better positioned to build so-called “super apps” in the future, which the complaint defines as “multi-functional” apps that offer “social connectivity and messaging, financial services, e-commerce, and entertainment.”
5. Once developed, consumers might choose to use X’s “super app” for various functions.
6. “Super apps” would replace much of the functionality of smartphones and consumers would care less about the quality of their physical phones and rely instead on these hypothetical “super apps.”
7. Smartphone manufacturers would respond by offering more basic models of smartphones with less functionality.
8. iPhone users would decide to replace their iPhones with more “basic smartphones” with “super apps.”

Apple insisted that nothing in its OpenAI deal prevents Musk from building his super apps, while noting that from integrating Grok into X, Musk understands that integration of a single chatbot is a “major undertaking” that requires “substantial investment.” That “concession” alone “underscores the massive resources Apple would need to devote to integrating every AI chatbot into Apple Intelligence,” while navigating potential user safety risks.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/openai-mocks-musks-math-in-suit-over-iphone-chatgpt-integration/