The Independent Articles

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.

Samsung’s latest smartphone, the Galaxy Z Fold2, is about to go on sale, and it indicates the company’s commitment to a new kind of device: The folding phone.When I talked to Samsung’s Conor Pierce, it was a topic he returned to repeatedly. Samsung’s corporate vice president for UK and Ireland knows his phones, having spent 10 years at Nokia and Microsoft working on some of their key Windows Phones handsets.We talk – on video call, of course – and he is animated about the work Samsung is doing. He refers modestly to the team’s successes, rather than his own, and he is friendly and at ease – but don’t let that fool you. I have never spoken to a senior exec more au fait with the facts and figures, as he quotes another percentage or number relevant to the story.And the story is one of a company which still sells more phones than anyone else, but is reluctant to sit on its achievements. In the last few weeks, the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra phones have been unveiled alongside a new tablet, new smartwatch and true-wireless earbuds that are shaped like kidney beans (but are better at transmitting music to your ears than actual legumes).
The new Galaxy Z Fold2 has a complicated name: Z refers to Samsung’s folding phones, and Fold2 indicates it’s the sequel to last year’s Fold which had an uneven start. It was delayed after announcement when reviewers removed a screen protector that should have stayed in place and dirt got underneath, causing problems. The Fold and Fold 2 are both small tablets which fold in half to become phones.
In between was the company’s second folding phone, the Z Flip, which was a regular-sized phone that folded down into something more pocketable. It’s a great phone, but it felt a little fragile, that you needed to handle it with care. The Z Fold2, however, feels solid and robust.
Read more“The engineering hours that go into building a folding device is phenomenal,” Pierce says. “Some of the changes that we’ve made from the original Fold last year are very appealing for customers. There’s now a full screen display on the front cover and the hinge mechanism is changed as well. The engineers added a hideaway hinge so that you can actually change the angle and leave it in place so you can watch a movie as it sits down. They’ve also introduced a new sweeper technology which ensures that we don’t get particles embedded within the hinge – it’s a huge amount of engineering genius that goes into these devices.”
There’s no doubting the designers’ intention to create something high-end. In Samsung’s elegant Mystic Bronze finish, the Galaxy Z Fold2 looks more like a piece of jewellery than a phone, made to the same critical tolerances as a deluxe watch. But the fact that it’s designed to fold in half makes it thicker, when folded, than other phones. So, will customers really embrace folding handsets?

Sony has reportedly reduced production of the upcoming PlayStation 5 console due to production issues of the chips on the console.Sony has lowered production from 15 million units of the next generation console to 11 million units, according to Bloomberg.It increased orders in July, anticipating many sales ahead of the console’s “holiday 2020″ release date, but manufacturing costs for its SOC (system on a chip) have cut its ability to build them.The SOC is the main circuit which integrates all aspects of the console, including the central processing unit (CPU), memory, input and output ports, and secondary storage.The Independent has reached out to Sony for comment.Read moreThe launch of the PlayStation 5 was reportedly unhindered by the coronavirus although the company said that it made significant changes to the way production has had to be handled.”Regarding the launch of PlayStation 5, although factors such as employees working from home and restrictions on international travel have presented some challenges in regards to part of the testing process and the qualification of production lines, development is progressing with the launch of the console scheduled for the 2020 holiday season,” Sony said at the time.”Major problems have not arisen in the game software development pipeline for Sony’s own first-party studios or its partners’ studios,” it continued.

Notably, the event won’t include the iPhone: for the first time in years, perhaps the biggest consumer product in the world is late.But there will be a new Apple Watch, probably new iPads, and likely updates to the software that all of those things run on. Apple could also launch some more surprising changes, including its “Apple One” subscription and the first of its entirely new Macs.Here’s everything that’s expected from the “Time Flies” event, which will be held virtually on 15 September.New Apple WatchIt seems fairly clear that the Apple Watch will be the big focus of this year’s event. From the “Time Flies” name to the loops on the invitation, everything seems to gesture towards the new watch being the centre of proceedings.Read moreOr that might, in fact, be new watches: Apple is likely to release the Series 6, as well as something to replace the Series 3, which has been on sale recently as the cheaper option and has been available since 2017.Less clear is what those new watches might have on their predecessors. Extra battery life seems a near-certainty, given the focus on sleep tracking; there have been suggestions that it could also include a pulse oximeter, for checking how much oxygen is being carried by the blood; it seems almost certain that it will have a faster chip. But there’s likely to be more, especially if the watch is taking centre stage at its own event.Apple is also rumoured to be getting rid of the “Force Touch” option that was one of the key innovations of the Apple Watch when it first arrived. It has disappeared from new versions of the software, and the iPhones have dropped it too, suggesting that the Series 6 could be the first Watch not to have it.New iPad AirThe other big and near-certain hardware release this year is a new iPad Air. Apple is said to be adopting the design of the iPad Pro in its cheaper model, bringing the same screen that stretches right across the front and more square design.On the iPad Pro, the lack of home button and TouchID is made up with FaceID in the top of the display. That’s not going to be the case for the iPad Air, according to rumours; instead, there will be a fingerprint sensor in the power button, which would be a first for Apple.As well as that major design change, the new iPad will probably bring the USB-C port from the Pro, as well as an updated, faster processor.For some time, this has felt less like a rumour than an obvious development: when Apple held its big services event last year, introducing its paid-for games, news and TV subscriptions, it seemed to make sense that they’ll all be bundled into each other. And now it finally seems to be happening.The subscription appears to be called Apple One and will include a variety of options, allowing users to choose which of the online services they want to stick in. That will include not just TV+, News+ and Arcade, but other longer-standing ones like Music and iCloud Storage, rumours have suggested.References to Apple One have started to appear, presumably by accident, in Apple’s own software, all but confirming that it is coming, and probably soon. But the Bloomberg report that revealed the name and other details of the service suggested it would be ready alongside the new iPhones, and so it could be one for the October event.New softwareApple revealed iOS 14, iPadOS 14, WatchOS 7 and MacOS Big Sur at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Now, the company is likely to reveal some information on at least some of those products, though the MacOS updates are sometimes left for later in the year.iOS 14 could be the most interesting of those updates in itself. Usually, the release of the new phones and new software for them come at the same time – this year, the iPhone 12 is delayed, but iOS 14 is seemingly not. Apple is still likely to announce an iOS 14 release date at this event, but it will be unusual to see them do so without any reference to the phone.iPadOS and WatchOS will presumably get their time to shine alongside the new versions of the products they run on. WatchOS has already included some indications of what might be coming in the new hardware: it gets rid of the “Force Touch” gesture that has allowed users to press hard on the screen for extra menus, suggesting that won’t be in the watch, and the sleep tracking features suggest that better battery life could be on the way.And Big Sur appears to be further through its development cycle than MacOS often is at this stage of the year. As such, it could get an earlier than normal release – especially if it is needed for new computers.This would be something of a wildcard, but not one that is entirely impossible. Apple promised major new Macs by the end of the year, and that time is approaching.At its WWDC event in June, Apple revealed that it would be moving to use chips of its own design, rather than those from Intel, bringing the computers in line with the iPhone and iPad.The first of those computers is rumoured to be a new 12-inch MacBook, and that is said to be coming fairly soon. As such, it could be announced or at least previewed at the September event.Apple has been fairly transparent about the process of moving to its own silicon – in part because it has to be, since it is relying on developers to support the changes. So even if the laptop doesn’t arrive this month, there might be mention of it at the event.New HomePods and AirPodsApple is rumoured to be working on two big new ways of actually getting music into your ears: a smaller and cheaper HomePod, and new AirPods that are shaped as headphones rather than earphones.Both have been rumoured to be in the works for the upcoming season. But Apple might opt not to do so at any event: the demonstration of the HomePod at its first unveiling was technically challenging, and the AirPods Pro were unveiled through a press release in October last year. So even if they’re coming, they might not do so at ether the September or October event.There almost certainly won’t be any phones at all at this event. The phone has been delayed, and there has not been a single reliable rumour to suggest otherwise.But Apple will presumably have to say something, even if only in passing, about the iPhone, if only to stop people waiting all the way through the event for it and being disappointed when it doesn’t arrive. So it might at least confirm, subtly, that the handsets will be revealed next month, or at least at some point in the future.Apple has been notably open about the fact that its phones have been delayed by lockdowns, announcing that they would be a “few weeks” later in a call with investors over summer; if nothing else, it has to do so because the calendar of iPhones release is both very reliable and integral to Apple’s fortunes. So it could be similarly open at the new event, perhaps revealing roughly what the new release schedule is.The delay of the iPhone also surely has another effect: given that the company will now almost certainly hold an event in October, anything else that’s not ready can presumably be pushed back until then. That could mean anything else from this list – with the possible exception of the Apple Watch, given the name of the event – might also not arrive for a few weeks.