The Browser Company is developing a new, much simpler browser distinct from Arc, which has proven too complex for mainstream adoption despite a strong following among power users. The Verge's David Pierce reports: Arc is not dying, [says CEO Josh Miller]. He says that over and over, in fact, even after I tell him the YouTube video the company just released sounds like the thing companies say right before they kill a product. It's just that Arc won't change much anymore. It'll get stability updates and bug fixes, and there's a team at The Browser Company dedicated to those. "In that sense," Miller says, "it feels like a complete-ish product." Most of the team's energy and time will now be dedicated to starting from scratch. "Arc was basically this front-end, tab management innovation," Miller says. "People loved it. It grew like a weed. Then it started getting slow and started crashing a lot, and we felt bad, and we had to learn how to make it fast. And we kind of lost sight, in some ways, of the fact that we've got to do the operating system part."

The plan this time is to build not just a different interface for a browser, but a different kind of browser entirely -- one that is much more proactive, more powerful, more AI-centric, more in line with that original vision. Call it the iPhone of web browsers, or the "internet computer," or whatever other metaphor you like. The idea is to turn the browser into an app platform. Miller still wants to do it, and he wants to do it for everyone. What does that look like? Miller is a bit vague on the details. The new browser, which Miller intimates could launch as soon as the beginning of next year, is designed to come with no switching costs, which means among other things that it will have horizontal tabs and fewer ideas about organization. The idea is to "make the first 90 seconds effortless" in order to get more people to switch. And then, slowly, to reveal what this new browser can do.

The chief scientist of the Asia Pacific Network Information Center has a theory about why the world hasn't moved to IPv6. From a report: In a lengthy post to the center's blog, Geoff Huston recounts that the main reason for the development of IPv6 was a fear the world would run out of IP addresses, hampering the growth of the internet. But IPv6 represented evolution -- not revolution. "The bottom line was that IPv6 did not offer any new functionality that was not already present in IPv4. It did not introduce any significant changes to the operation of IP. It was just IP, with larger addresses," Huston wrote.

IPv6's designers assumed that the protocol would take off because demand for IPv4 was soaring. But in the years after IPv6 debuted, Huston observes, "There was no need to give the transition much thought." Internetworking wonks assumed applications, hosts, and networks would become dual stack and support IPv6 alongside IPv4, before phasing out the latter. But then mobile internet usage exploded, and network operators had to scale to meet unprecedented demand created by devices like the iPhone. "We could either concentrate our resources on meeting the incessant demands of scaling, or we could work on IPv6 deployment," Huston wrote.

Adobe's Fresco painting app is now free for everyone, in an attempt to lure illustrators to join its creative software suite. The Verge reports: Fresco is essentially Adobe's answer to apps like Procreate and Clip Studio Paint, which all provide a variety of tools for both digital art and simulating real-world materials like sketching pencils and watercolor paints. Adobe Fresco is designed for touch and stylus-supported devices, and is available on iPad, iPhone, and Windows PCs. The app already had a free-to-use tier, but premium features like access to the full Adobe Fonts library, a much wider brush selection, and the ability to import custom brushes previously required a $9.99 annual subscription. That's pretty affordable for an Adobe subscription, but still couldn't compete with Procreate's $12.99 one-time purchase model.

Starting today, all of Fresco's premium features are no longer locked behind a paywall. The app first launched in 2019 and isn't particularly well-known compared to more established Adobe apps like Photoshop and Illustrator that feature more complex, professional design tools. Fresco still has some interesting features of its own, like reflective and rotation symmetry (which mirror artwork as you draw) and the ability to quickly animate drawings with motion presets like "bounce" and "breathe."

If you want to sign up for a subscription to Hulu or Disney+, don't bother taking out your iPhone. Disney is now telling would-be customers to pay for subscriptions on Disney's own site, instead of on Apple's App Store -- though people who've already started paying for either service via Apple can keep doing that. From a report: The two companies are still working together on some projects. But the App Store split does represent a rift between two longtime partners, so it's definitely worth noting.

Disney's rationale is clear here: When customers sign up for Disney subscription services via Apple, Apple takes up to 15% of the monthly fees those services generate. And Disney CEO Bob Iger has made it clear that he doesn't want to pay that anymore. "We have to look at the way we're distributing," Iger said at an investor conference in May. "Unlike Netflix, we distribute largely through third-party app stores. There's obviously an advantage to that to some extent, but there's a cost to that, too. And we're looking at that."

An anonymous reader writes: T-Mobile and AT&T say US regulators should drop a plan to require unlocking of phones within 60 days of activation, claiming that locking phones to a carrier's network makes it possible to provide cheaper handsets to consumers. "If the Commission mandates a uniform unlocking policy, it is consumers -- not providers -- who stand to lose the most," T-Mobile alleged in an October 17 filing with the Federal Communications Commission. The proposed rule has support from consumer advocacy groups who say it will give users more choice and lower their costs.

T-Mobile has been criticized for locking phones for up to a year, which makes it impossible to use a phone on a rival's network. T-Mobile claims that with a 60-day unlocking rule, "consumers risk losing access to the benefits of free or heavily subsidized handsets because the proposal would force providers to reduce the line-up of their most compelling handset offers." If the proposed rule is enacted, "T-Mobile estimates that its prepaid customers, for example, would see subsidies reduced by 40 percent to 70 percent for both its lower and higher-end devices, such as the Moto G, Samsung A15, and iPhone 12," the carrier said. "A handset unlocking mandate would also leave providers little choice but to limit their handset offers to lower cost and often lesser performing handsets." In July, the FCC approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the unlocking policy in a 5-0 vote.

The FCC is proposing "to require all mobile wireless service providers to unlock handsets 60 days after a consumer's handset is activated with the provider, unless within the 60-day period the service provider determines the handset was purchased through fraud."

Apple's latest iOS update has removed the "C" button from its Calculator app, replacing it with a backspace function. The change, part of iOS 18, has sparked debate among users accustomed to the traditional clear function. The removal of the "C" button represents a significant departure from decades-old calculator design conventions, The Atlantic writes. From the story: The "C" button's function is vestigial. Back when calculators were commercialized, starting in the mid-1960s, their electronics were designed to operate as efficiently as possible. If you opened up a desktop calculator in 1967, you might have found a dozen individual circuit boards to run and display its four basic mathematical functions. Among these would have been an input buffer or temporary register that could store an input value for calculation and display. The "C" button, which was sometimes labeled "CE" (Clear Entry) or "CI" (Clear Input), provided a direct interface to zero out -- or "clear" -- such a register. A second button, "AC" (All Clear), did the same thing, but for other parts of the circuit, including previously stored operations and pending calculations. (A traditional calculator's memory buttons -- "M+," "M-," "MC" -- would perform simple operations on a register.)

By 1971, Mostech and Texas Instruments had developed a "calculator on a chip," which condensed all of that into a single integrated circuit. Those chips retained the functions of their predecessors, including the ones that were engaged by "C" and "AC" buttons. And this design continued on into the era of pocket calculators, financial calculators, and even scientific calculators such as the ones you may have used in school. Some of the latter were, in essence, programmable pocket computers themselves, and they could have been configured with a backspace key. They were not.

The FBI has arrested an Alabama man who is accused of hacking the Securities and Exchange Commission's X account in January. From a report: The indictment alleges that 25-year-old Eric Council Jr. worked with co-conspirators to take control of the account and post a fake message from SEC Chair Gary Gensler about Bitcoin ETFs that caused the price of Bitcoin to jump by more than $1,000 momentarily.

To carry out this scheme, Council is accused of creating a fake ID using the information belonging to the person in control of the SEC's X account. He then allegedly tricked AT&T into providing a SIM card with the victim's phone number and install it into a new iPhone he purchased. Finally, Council was able to gain control of the SEC's account using recovery authentication codes sent to the number, and later return the iPhone to the Apple Store where he'd bought it.

Apple is enhancing its Business Connect tool, allowing companies to customize how they appear in emails, phone calls, and payment interfaces on iPhones. The Verge reports: Each registered business can confirm its info is accurate and add additional details like photos or special offers. Collecting verified, up-to-date business information could be useful for Apple if it ever launches its own search engine or inside features for Apple Intelligence instead of sending users to outside sources like Google, Yelp, or Meta. Branded Mail is a feature businesses can sign up for today before it starts rolling out to users later this year, potentially making emails easier to identify in a sea of unread messages.

Additionally, if companies opt into Business Caller ID, Apple will display their name, logo, and department on an iPhone's inbound call screen. This feature should come in handy when you're trying to figure out whether the random number that's calling you is spam, or if it's a legitimate business. It will start rolling out next year. A smaller update coming to Apple's Tap to Pay service will let companies show their logo when accepting payments instead of just displaying a category icon. You can read more about it in Apple's press release.

In a press release this morning, Apple announced a new iPad Mini with a faster A17 Pro chip that supports Apple Intelligence. The Verge reports: The new Mini is mostly a spec bump: it runs a new A17 Pro chip, which Apple says has a 30 percent faster CPU, 25 percent faster GPU, and a Neural Engine twice as fast as the previous model. The device also supports the new Apple Pencil Pro, which is a nice touch for the Mini-toting artists out there, and comes with 128GB of storage in the base model rather than 64GB. (Those AI models need all the space they can get.) The Wi-Fi 6E chip is faster, the USB-C port is faster, everything about the iPad Mini is the same as before only faster this time.

The only real design change with the new Mini is the colors. Apple's gone more colorful with a lot of its products this year, and the Mini comes in new purple and blue models. In photos they look muted rather than vivid, though, so don't expect the eye-popping new colors on the iPhone 16.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday, NYC-based software developer Nick Spreen received a surprising alert on his iPhone 15 Pro, delivered through an early test version of Apple's upcoming Apple Intelligence text message summary feature. "No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment," the AI-penned message reads, summing up the content of several separate breakup texts from his girlfriend -- that arrived on his birthday, no less. Spreen shared a screenshot of the AI-generated message in a now-viral tweet on the X social network, writing, "for anyone who's wondered what an apple intelligence summary of a breakup text looks like." Spreen told Ars Technica that the screenshot does not show his ex-girlfriend's full real name, just a nickname.

This summary feature of Apple Intelligence, announced by the iPhone maker in June, isn't expected to fully ship until an iOS 18.1 update in the fall. However, it has been available in a public beta test of iOS 18 since July, which is what Spreen is running on his iPhone. It works akin to something like a stripped-down ChatGPT, reading your incoming text messages and delivering its own simplified version of their content. On X, Spreen replied to skepticism over whether the message was real in a follow-up post. "Yes this was real / yes it happened yesterday / yes it was my birthday," Spreen wrote. In response to a question about it being a fair summary of his girlfriend's messages, he wrote, "it is."

We reached out to Spreen directly via email and he delivered his own summary of his girlfriend's messages. "It was something along the lines of i can't believe you just did that, we're done, i want my stuff. we had an argument in a bar and I got up and left, then she sent the text," he wrote. How did he feel about getting the news via AI summary? "I do feel like it added a level of distance to it that wasn't a bad thing," he told Ars Technica. "Maybe a bit like a personal assistant who stays professional and has your back even in the most awful situations, but yeah, more than anything it felt unreal and dystopian."

Porch pirates across the country for months have been snatching FedEx packages that contain AT&T iPhones -- within minutes or even seconds of delivery. From a report: The key to these swift crimes, investigators say: The thieves are armed with tracking numbers. Another factor that makes packages from AT&T particularly vulnerable is that AT&T typically doesn't require signature on delivery. Doorbell camera videos show the thefts in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Michigan, Georgia, Florida and Texas. The details are similar: A FedEx driver drops off a box with an iPhone from AT&T. Then a person walks up -- sometimes wearing an Amazon delivery vest -- and plucks the package off the front step. The heist can be so quick that in some videos, the FedEx driver and thief cross paths.

"They know what's getting delivered and the location," said Detective Lt. Matt Arsenault from the Gardner Police Department in Massachusetts, which is investigating several recent thefts. "They meet the delivery driver at the front door and take it." Since the pandemic, parcel carriers have reported a rise in porch thefts as workers have returned to offices and fewer people are home during the day to receive packages. Now, a spate of thefts that began a few months ago is targeting FedEx deliveries for AT&T. The two companies said they were working with law enforcement to investigate, and declined to disclose how many such packages have been stolen.

Alypius shares a report from 9to5Mac: It was revealed this weekend that Chinese hackers managed to access systems run by three of the largest internet service providers (ISPs) in the US. What's notable about the attack is that it compromised security backdoors deliberately created to allow for wiretaps by US law enforcement. [...] Apple famously refused the FBI's request to create a backdoor into iPhones to help access devices used by shooters in San Bernardino and Pensacola. The FBI was subsequently successful in accessing all the iPhones concerned without the assistance it sought.

Our arguments against such backdoors predate both cases, when Apple spoke out on the issue in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris more than a decade ago: "Apple is absolutely right to say that the moment you build in a backdoor for use by governments, it will only be a matter of time before hackers figure it out. You cannot have an encryption system which is only a little bit insecure any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. Encryption systems are either secure or they're not -- and if they're not then it's a question of when, rather than if, others are able to exploit the vulnerability."

This latest case perfectly illustrates the point. The law required ISPs to create backdoors that could be used for wiretaps by US law enforcement, and hackers have now found and accessed them. Exactly the same would be true if Apple created backdoors into iPhones.

9to5Mac: Following apparent photos of an M4 MacBook Pro box and a subsequent unboxing video, the unreleased model has now been offered for sale on a Russian classified ads site -- at a highly inflated price, naturally. Multiple units were advertised before the listings were removed, and it does now seem increasingly likely that the leaks are real.

Apple Pro tweeted a screengrab of one of the listing, which offered what appears to be the base model 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro, with the previously reported specs of 16GB unified memory, 512GB SSD, and three Thunderbolt 4 ports. We've also seen Geekbench results for a machine identified as "Mac 16,1" with performances in line with the reported specs. Rather than a one-off leak, it has been claimed that there are some 200 units out there. The ad on Avito was asking 720,000 rubles, which is around $7,400.

In a new 32-page filing (PDF), the Department of Justice indicated that it was considering a possible breakup of Google as an antitrust remedy for its search and advertising monopoly. The remedies necessary to "prevent and restrain monopoly maintenance could include contract requirements and prohibitions; non-discrimination product requirements; data and interoperability requirements; and structural requirements," the department said in the filing. CNBC reports: The DOJ also said it was "considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features -- including emerging search access points and features, such as artificial intelligence -- over rivals or new entrants."

Additionally, the DOJ suggested limiting or prohibiting default agreements and "other revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products." That would include Google's search position agreements with Apple's iPhone and Samsung devices -- deals that cost the company billions of dollars a year in payouts. The agency suggested one way to do this is requiring a "choice screen," which could allow users to pick from other search engines. Such remedies would end "Google's control of distribution today" and ensure "Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow."

"Alleged photos and videos of an unannounced 14-inch MacBook Pro with an M4 chip continue to surface on social media, in what could be the worst product leak for Apple since an employee accidentally left an iPhone 4 prototype at a bar in California in 2010," writes MacRumors' Joe Rossignol. From the report: The latest video of what could be a next-generation MacBook Pro was shared on YouTube Shorts today by Russian channel Romancev768, just one day after another Russian channel shared a similar video. The clip shows a box for a 14-inch MacBook Pro that is apparently configured with an M4 chip with a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, three Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a Space Black finish. According to the "About This Mac" software menu shown in the video, the MacBook Pro in the video is allegedly an unreleased November 2024 model. [...]

Apple is well known for having a culture of secrecy, so this magnitude of leak is rarely seen for its products. As previously mentioned, this could be the most significant leak for Apple since Gizmodo obtained and shared photos of an iPhone 4 prototype that a then-employee of the company accidentally left behind at a bar in California. In that case, Apple got law enforcement involved, but how it acts this time around remains to be seen.

The Verge's Gaby Del Valle reports: New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last week on charges including fraud, bribery, and soliciting donations from foreign nationals, told federal investigators he forgot his phone password before handing it over, according to charging documents. That was almost a year ago, and investigators still can't get into the phone, prosecutors said Wednesday.

During a federal court hearing, prosecutor Hagan Scotten said the FBI's inability to get into Adams' phone is a "significant wild card," according to a report from the New York Post. The FBI issued a search warrant for Adams' devices in November 2023. Adams initially handed over two phones but didn't have his personal device on him. The indictment does not mention what type of device Adams uses. When Adams turned in his personal cellphone the following day, charging documents say, he said he had changed the password a day prior -- after learning about the investigation -- and couldn't remember it. Adams told investigators he changed the password "to prevent members of his staff from inadvertently or intentionally deleting the contents of his phone," the indictment alleges. The FBI just needs the right tools. When investigators failed to break into the Trump rally shooter's phone in July, they sent the device to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, where agents used an unreleased tool from the Israeli company Cellebrite to crack it in less than an hour.

iFixit's iPhone 16 teardown revealed a new battery removal process that does away with the usual pull tabs, instead opting for an adhesive that debonds when exposed to a low electrical current. "It only takes about a minute and a half for it to come unstuck," reports Engadget, citing Apple's repair guide. iFixit tech Shahram Mokhtari said, "I'm not sure we've ever had a battery removal process go so cleanly and smoothly." From the report: Only the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus have the new adhesive, and they've earned a 7/10 on iFixit's repairability scale. "Apple definitely seems to be leveling up on repairability," Mokhtari, adding Apple has "landed another repairability win" with this year's base iPhones thanks to the new battery removal procedure. Further reading: iPhone's 80% Charge Cap Barely Boosts Battery Life, Year-Long Test Reveals

An anonymous reader shares a New Yorker story: Ultimately, the iPhone 16 does little to meaningfully improve on the experience I had with the 12, besides, perhaps, charging with a USB-C, as my laptop does, cutting down on the number of cords I have to keep track of. Instead, the greatest leaps in Apple's hardware are largely directed at those niche users who are already invested in using tools such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The company has announced that, within a month or so, the new phones will be able to operate its proprietary artificial-intelligence system, which means that users may soon be relying on A.I. to perform daily personal tasks, like navigating their calendars or responding to e-mails. The 15 and 16 Pros can take three-dimensional photos, designed for V.R., using the Apple Vision Pro. Thus far, I don't use A.I. tools or V.R. with any frequency and have no intention of doing so on my iPhone.

The fact that I do not need an iPhone 16 is a testament not so much to the iPhone's failure as to its resounding success. A lot of the digital software we rely on has grown worse for users in recent years; the iPhone, by contrast, has become so good that it's hard to imagine anything but incremental improvements. Apple's teleological phone-design strategy may have simply reached its end point, the same way evolution in nature has repeatedly resulted in an optimized species of crab. Other tech companies, meanwhile, are embracing radical departures in phone design. Samsung offers devices that fold in half, creating a smaller screen that's useful for minor tasks, such as texting, and a larger one for watching videos; Huawei is upping the ante with three folds. The BOOX Palma has become a surprise hit as a smartphone-ish device with an e-ink screen, similar to Amazon's Kindle, which uses physical pixels in its display. Dumbphones, too, are growing more popular by intentionally doing less. Apple devices, by contrast, remain effective enough that they can afford to be somewhat static.

A year-long test of Apple's 80% charge limit feature on the iPhone 15 Pro Max has revealed only marginal benefits to battery health. MacRumors editor Juli Clover reported her device maintained 94% battery capacity after 299 charge cycles, compared to 87-90% capacity for iPhones without the limit. The opt-in setting, introduced with iPhone 15 models, aims to extend battery longevity by restricting maximum charge.

Clover adhered strictly to the 80% limit for 12 months, noting occasional inconveniences like depleted batteries during long days. While the test showed slightly better battery health retention, Clover questioned whether the trade-off in daily usability was worthwhile. She adds: I don't have a lot of data points for comparison, but it does seem that limiting the charge to 80 percent kept my maximum battery capacity higher than what my co-workers are seeing, but there isn't a major difference. I have four percent more battery at 28 more cycles, and I'm not sure suffering through an 80 percent battery limit for 12 months was ultimately worth it. It's possible that the real gains from an 80 percent limit will come in two or three years rather than a single year, and I'll keep it limited to 80 percent to see the longer term impact.

Apple's latest macOS 15 "Sequoia" update, released earlier this week, has disrupted security tools from major providers including CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, and Microsoft, according to reports. The extent and cause of the disruption remain unclear.