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Apple has launched “Apple One”, a subscription plan that bundles together its various services.Users will be able to stick together its variety of different content offerings into one subscription, at a slightly cheaper rate.The decision to launch the bundle has already come under criticism from Spotify, who argued that Apple offering its Music and other subscriptions together is “unfair” and that its behaviour “threatens our collective freedoms to listen, learn, create, and connect”.The new Apple One subscription begins with an “individual” membership. That costs $14.95, and includes Apple Music, TV+, its Arcade games service, as well as 50GB of iCloud storage.A family membership costs $19.95 per month. That gives access to the same services, plus 200GB of iCloud storage, and can be shared by up to six family members.Users can also pay more for the “Premier” membership. That costs $29.95 each month, and adds News+, its new Fitness+ workout classes, and 2TB of iCloud.Read moreThe pricing in the UK will be the same number in pounds.It will be available this autumn, Apple said. It will be available in 100 countries and regions when it launches.At the beginning, the Premier plan will only be available in Australia, Canada, the UK and US, since News+ is only available in those countries so far.Users will get 30 days free for their first month, though Apple specific that was only for services those users do not already have.“Apple One makes enjoying Apple subscription services easier than ever, including Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud, and more,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of internet software and services, in a statement. “With Apple One, you can access the best of Apple entertainment across all your favourite devices with one simple subscription.” Apple said that the individual plan offers savings of up to £6 per month, compared with buying the services individually. The premier plan represents a reduction of £22 per month, if users were already buying all of the subscriptions included in that plan on a monthly basis.

Apple made no mention of the iPhone 12 at its major September event.The company would normally have been expected to be unveiling the new phone this week, but already admitted that its release had been delayed by a “few weeks”, seemingly at least in part because of global lockdowns. That had led many to speculate that the phone would not be ready for a full release after the traditional September event.Apple made no mention of the phone at all, however, not even indicating when it might be unveiled or making any reference to an upcoming handset.Apple is rumoured to be releasing four new iPhones: two versions of the normal iPhone 12, as well as two different sizes of the Pro model. They are expected to include new LiDAR sensors that can capture a 3D model of an environment, a design more akin to the latest iPads, and improved processors and cameras.

Facebook has been ignoring evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been disrupting political events across the world, alleges a former data scientist who was fired by the company.In her 6,600-word report, mid-level employee Sophie Zhang also claims to have had power over world events, making decisions that “affected national presidents”.“In the three years I’ve spent at Facebook, I’ve found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions,” wrote Zhang, as reported by BuzzFeed News.“I know that I have blood on my hands by now.” The post documents a number of alleged scandals, including a “politically sophisticated network of more than a thousand actors” attempting to influence local elections in Delhi this year. She said Facebook removed the network without public disclosure. Other alleged scandals involved “inauthentic scripted activity” to promote certain Ukrainian politicians, an ongoing investigation into inauthentic accounts used by the ruling party in Azerbaijan, and a coordinated campaign to boost President Hernandez of Honduras which is still allegedly happening.It is claimed the company took months to act on evidence that an administrator of the Honduran president’s Facebook page was running hundreds of fake accounts to boost engagement on the president’s posts.Read moreDespite taking down the network in July 2019, the operation was quickly restarted – a fact Facebook reportedly did not disclose.“A year after our takedown, the activity is still live and well”, Zhang wrote.In Azerbaijan, a network of inauthentic accounts were used to attack opponents of president Ilham Aliyev and the New Azerbaijan Party, in activities similar to the Russian troll farm which attempted to influence the 2016 US election.The data scientist said that Facebook has not disclosed this influence campaign.In Bolivia, there was “inauthentic activity supporting the opposition presidential candidate in 2019” but the engineer claimed her workload meant this was not a priority.Later that year, the country was rocked by “mass protests leading to dozens of deaths” and the removal of socialist president Evo Morales.Zhang also said she worked to take down the “inauthentic scripted activity” in Ukraine that supported Yulia Tymoshenko, leader of the All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” political party, as well as former prime minister Volodymyr Groysman.However, Facebook’s priorities were allegedly more focused on news that would harm the company itself.The memo claims that Facebook does not prioritise the protection of the democratic process in smaller countries, instead focusing on the US and western Europe.“With no oversight whatsoever, I was left in a situation where I was trusted with immense influence in my spare time,” the scientist wrote. She says that a colleague said “that most of the world outside the west was effectively the Wild West with myself as the part-time dictator – he meant the statement as a compliment, but it illustrated the immense pressures upon me”.“Facebook projects an image of strength and competence to the outside world that can lend itself to such theories, but the reality is that many of our actions are slapdash and haphazard accidents,” she continued.“It’s an open secret within the civic integrity space that Facebook’s short-term decisions are largely motivated by PR and the potential for negative attention.”Read moreScandals published in the New York Times or Washington Post would have a higher priority than those not, the engineer was reportedly told directly at a Facebook summit this year.“It’s why I’ve seen priorities of escalations shoot up when others start threatening to go to the press, and why I was informed by a leader in my organisation that my civic work was not impactful under the rationale that if the problems were meaningful they would have attracted attention, became a press fire, and convinced the company to devote more attention to the space.”The report alleges that “viewpoints weren’t respected unless [the engineer] acted like an arrogant asshole”, and was told that “human resources are limited” when stopping malicious activity related to election interference.“We’ve built specialised teams, working with leading experts, to stop bad actors from abusing our systems, resulting in the removal of more than 100 networks for coordinated inauthentic behaviour,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to The Independent.“It’s highly involved work that these teams do as their full-time remit. Working against coordinated inauthentic behaviour is our priority, but we’re also addressing the problems of spam and fake engagement. We investigate each issue carefully, including those that [the data scientist] raises, before we take action or go out and make claims publicly as a company.”Replying to BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac on Twitter, Facebook’s vice president of integrity Guy Rosen said that what the engineer was describing were “‘fake likes’ – which we routinely remove using automated detection”.“Like any team in the industry or government, we prioritise stopping the most urgent and harmful threats globally. Fake likes is not one of them,” he continued.It is unclear exactly what Rosen was referring to in this tweet, due to the multiple reports of Facebook’s inaction in the piece.Facebook did not comment on Rosen’s tweet when asked by The Independent.This is not the only recent instance of an ex-Facebook employee criticising the company.And a senior Facebook engineer who collected evidence of the company providing preferential treatment to right-wing pages was also reportedly fired recently for breaking its “respectful communication policy”.

Apple has launched Fitness+, new workout classes meant to be used with the Apple Watch.They include yoga classes, indoor cycling and runs.It puts the company in competition with other companies such as Peloton, many of which have rapidly grown in popularity as people have looked for ways to work out from home.The classes will be used on the iPhone that is linked to the Watch, by allowing people to complete studio workouts led by Apple’s own instructors.  They can also be accessed on the Apple TV.But they will integrate tightly with the Apple Watch, allowing people to close their tracking rings by working out using the Fitness+ exercises.Read moreIt is just the latest content offering from Apple. The company last year introduced a range of features including Apple TV+, which has led to it making its own television shows and films.The Fitness+ feature will be released before the end of the year, the company said.Anyone buying a new Watch will get three months of the service for free, the company said. It did not say how much it will cost otherwise.

The Apple Watch Series 6 has been revealed, with a host of new features.It brings a selection of new colours, in a gold stainless steel finish, a “graphite” colour as well as blue and red aluminium ones.The new Apple Watch also has a pulse oximeter, which can measure the amount of oxygen pumping around the body. That feature – which is present in competitors’ smartwatches such as those from Garmin and Fitbit – can help understand general health, as well as potentially alerting people to respiratory infections such as Covid-19.As well as adding the new sensor, Apple will collaborate with health researchers to launch new studies, including one that will aim to understand whether blood oxygen measurements can be used to fight the coronavirus crisis.The new Watch also includes a new “S6” processor that will allow it to work more quickly, Apple said.And it will also have a more visible screen, as well as an always-on altimeter that will measure how high up people are, for tracking activities such as hikes.Read moreThe Watch will cost $399 in the US, the company said. But it will also release a new, cheaper version – called the Apple Watch SE – that will include some of those features but a slower process and other changes.Apple also said that the new Watch will also bring a host of updates to the watch faces that come with the watch. They include tools such as Memoji faces on the watch, and one that measures how quickly the wearer is travelling, it said.Other software features include a new tool called “Family Setup”, which allows watches to be set up without using a phone, for children or other people who might not have access to their own iPhone. Instead, it will be managed by a parent, for instance, who can give their child an Apple Watch that will have its own phone number and can be tracked.That marks the first time that an Apple Watch can be used independently of an iPhone, which has been required to use the wearable at all. It will be available on the Series 4 or later.The company also revealed a new kind of watch band, named the “solo loop”, which doesn’t have any clasp or buckle. Instead, it just goes straight around the wrist, and can be bought in a number of different sizes to ensure it fits, as well as colours.

Apple has revealed the Watch SE, a new and cheaper version of its wearable.Traditionally, the company has just continued to sell its older devices at a cheaper price.But for the first time it introduced a specific version made to come at a lower price, named the Apple Watch SE.It will cost $279, compared to the $399 the newer versions start at.