uroshnor

So the article does not really describe likely what’s is happening.

Right now , iOS reads NDEF format over NFC, and can respond in a few other formats. (And its pretty strict, it doesn’t do Smart Posters for example, which are a modification of NDEF).

E-Passports can be encoded in as few different ways, but most are BAC encoded. This means the NFC data is an encrypted blob, and the encryption key is derived from the data on the photo page.

That’s why at a check in kiosk, you usually put your e-Passport face down and the photo page is being scanned concurrently with reading the chip.

If you try it today, the Phone realists the epassport is there, but it rejects the encrypted data as invalidly formatted.

Apple doesn’t need to open up access to the NFC subsystem to read an e-passport, they just need to add an API that supports reading the common encrypted passport formats (eg reading a BAC e-Passport with a supplied key). If they were being super slick, they’d have an API that extracted the key material from an image of the photograph page in the vision framework, and you could pass that straight on to the CoreNFC code.

If they can do that its super-slick flow, and may even enable Apple Wallet to hold government grade identity cards.

gatorguy said:

sog35 said:

gwydion said:

sog35 said:

gwydion said:

Shocking, an advisor for one of the interested parts says that the ruling could be overturned in benefit of the part he is advisor.

or it could be common sense that you can't change laws on things that happenned 10 years ago

No law was changed

Yes it was. If it wasn't the EU would have charged Apple 10 years ago

No, it really wasn't. The Irish agreement was an exception to the standard corporate tax laws even if it was an allowable one. and while the EU's interpretation of the competition laws to deem them applicable to Apple's tax situation might be new, the laws themselves aren't. 

There is no agreement between Apple & Ireland.

Any multinational company could adopt a similar structure and achieve a somewhat similar tax result (its easier for a company selling goods (e.g. Apple), versus a company selling locally delivered services (like IBM or HP enterprise)

That is not acceptable, and the EU is right to want to change that situation , but they arguably don't have the legal authority to impose the outcome they are attempting to in this case (if Apple had an agreed exception to normal Irish tax law, they would have the leverage).

This is primarily a US company issue as the US is almost unique globally in that it attempts to tax company revenue regardless of where it was generated in the world. In Apple's case , goods made in country C, and sold in country B, are being assessed by country A as needing to have their profit being taxed in country A.

Apple has adopted a structure that gives it control of when it repatriates those profits to country A, and therefore when it pays tax on it.

What that means it that taxable income sits in offshore limbo, effectively paying no tax anywhere, until the US declares a tax holiday and it is repatriated.

Thus whole issue goes away if the US corporate tax rate is lowered , or the US enters into multi-lateral taxation agreements with other countries broadly (as many other countries have done), or the OECD comes up with some other option that the US signs on to (e.g. Adopting a convention bas d on concepts such as tax should be paid at point of revenue generation - i.e. where the finished goods are sold)

Tbe US government has refused to deal with this issue for 50+ years, other than congress voting about 3 times for tax holidays (which is really just kicking the can down the road).

The Trump "solution" will likely be lower US taxes, and possibly also declare a tax holiday. That's probably the worst of the 3 alternative options, but at least it's doing something.

The article isn't strictly correct in a few areas.

Apple has supported location services level accuracy for emergency services since 2010 (maybe 2011 ?) with 3GPP Release 10 support. However, this approach had two problems  

- Apple was one of handful of vendors who exposed the full level of the phones awareness of location to the carrier network when requested - a lot of hem were just cell tower accuracy

- it requires the carrier to put in & maintain infrastructure to support it being accessible by the emergency services call centre

US, Japan and South Korea required carriers to implement this, but many other countries did not.

So the big advantage of AML isn't the accuracy on iPhone - its that the governments didn't need to go to the effort of forcing the carriers to implement that part of the 3GPP standards, and the carriers didn't need to spend the money to do it.

AML forces the effort back onto the handset OS vendor.

Google denied to ship AML in Android from 2016, so ~50% of the market went from patch support to a consistent GNSS level of accuracy, without involving the carriers.

The problem with AML is it uses SMS to send the location of the phone, and SMS is both insecure and unreliable delivery. There's a big risk with AML that in an emergency situation like an active shooter, mass casualty event, or natural disaster, that the SMS delivery will be delayed or dropped due to network congestion, and the feature will be useless just when its needed. It is likely to be fine for "steady state" events like a car crash or other accident though - so its not useless, just has significant limitations.

Whilst some of the governments involved view it as "THE" solution, AML in its current form is probably not much more than an interim step, and the reliability security and privacy issues are addressed either by an improved version of AML, or something else

Cornholieo said:

Uhh no. There are more OLEDs on phones in circulation than iPhones. Apple makes their money using old technology which can be purchased for cheap, then optimizing their software to run on these cheap machines that sell at a premium. HTC and Apple signed an agreement, which allows for the companies to copy each other, which is why so may iPhones have been adopting HTCs look. I just hope the new phone comes with HTCs DAC, which offers the best sound quality of any phone on the market. While iOS is more efficient on cheaper machines, I still gravitate to Android for its Customizability, versatility, and flexibility. I also don't like the idea of being trapped in an ecosystem, people should be allowed to chose default apps, and not have them chosen for them. I do hope that Apple learns that people are different, think different, and not just a bunch of lemmings.

So there's a pretty standard collection of meme's in that, but what the heck, I'll feed the troll:

1. Apple's IPS displays are't cheap & old tech. They routinely out-perform OLED in terms of colour range and correctness. That is kind of handy if you are shooting and editing photos on the camera. Third party supply chain analysis and third party screen analysis confirms this. 

2. Yes they are lower resolution than some Android phones. Problem is, they are already higher resolution than what most of the population can see at normal phone viewing distances. So going to a 4K screen mostly makes no difference except slower graphics (as the GPU is overloaded) , and the need for a bigger battery (due to the power drain). The one area where having a 4K screen does help is VR, , which right now is a very niche use-case (but it is important for a small fraction of users).

3. The chase screen size spec -> bigger battery -> bigger phone is a massive driver in many Android designs. Even high end Android phones might not be able to drive their screen at more than 15-20 FPS, whereas iPhones are in 60+. Because the Android vendors cheaped out on GPU.

4. Despite throwing 8 core CPU at the problem, Android phones still lag iPhone in CPU performance - even though A series CPU are usually 2 or 4 core. And that doesn't factor in that Apple ships GPU that crush virtually everything else on the market, AND makes it easy for the developer to use the GPU for general purpose computation  in conjunction with the CPU.

5. Apple believes that vertically integrated is a necessity, not a choice, so it's always going to be a walled garden of some sort.

6. The great thing about Android is choice. Or more correctly, the appearance of choice. Android is so diverse, anything you want to say about it it, is both true and false at the same time. 

7. There is one thing you can't choose with mainstream Android, and that's the product. Why ? Because the product is you. There are Android forks that don't treat the user as the product but they are without Google, and eitherr very expensive e.g. Boeing Blackphone, or borderline going out of business eg Silent Circle.

8. In most cases, the real customization & versatility comes from the Apps you run, not tweaking the user interface. There are't really equivalents to things like HealthKit, ResearchKit and CareKit on Android for example. Very frequently , if an App exists on both iOS, and Android, it has greater functionality on iOS. The value in being able to tinker, where Android is usually easier, applies to a much narrower slice of the population. 

9. Apple's Accessibility features are market leading, and vastly ahead of a Android.

if you can park the malware & privacy issues , and it works for you, then that's great. But the popularity of Android isn't driven by what it can do for the user. It's driven by what it can do for carriers, advertising companies , and handset vendors, at the expense of the user.

I'll stop channeling DED now.

So 2 part problem;

- Patents : Apple has already paid Nokia under FRAND terms for most/all of the tech involved. What Nokia is doing is "patent re-engineering" to try and extract additional revenue from the market, by tweaking existing patents, getting the new ones re-issued, and then claiming non-FRAND licensing terms for essentially the same thing but under a new patent. That will get dealt with in a court, but it's dodgy AF.

- Withings may be withdrawing from HomeKit - they have basically stated they are setting up their own cross platform rival system - it would not make sense for Apple  to push / promote an orphaned Withings product 

Peza said:

I must say I’ve noticed the little arrow appear at the top of the screen a lot these days. I was suspecting iOS sending data, glad to see it confirmed, also not glad as it makes a complete mockery of privacy and security settings in iOS, and makes Apples ‘what’s on your iPhone stays on your iPhone’ advertising campaign seem incredibly hypocritical. I’ve noticed the gps arrow on my iPhone XR and iPad Pro.

Apple has recently proved it is no different, indeed in some cases worst, then Amazon or Google or even Facebook with data collection recently. And appears to only be offering solutions once caught red handed with its hand in the cookie jar!. It really should be the polar opposite. Particularly considering all the health information the company gathers on you if you wear an Apple Watch.

Perhaps as suggested, it would be far better for Apple to be completely upfront and honest about it’s data collecting and tracking features, in plain English and not buried in cleverly worded text in a multi page end user agreement. Change it’s wording.
That way they won’t appear as the bad guys, and everyone knows where they stand. Location services are useful, just be up front with how they work.

So there's a few things in this that don't quite add up, but I'll bite.

Perhaps you could articulate how Apple is "worse" than Amazon, Google or FaceBook with respect to data collection ? That is an extraordinary claim that warrants extraordinary evidence to support it (given Amazon, Google and Facebook are 3 of the world's largest collectors of personal information, and all of them actively generate income from the personal information they collect, and two of them own two of the largest data brokerages in the world)

Second the arrows don't mean Apple has collected ANY data about location at all. Words have meaning to lets get specific - if Apple "collects" data then its sent from your device to Apple centrally, and in a form Apple can decrypt or read - ie it leaves your device in some form, and Apple itself can do something with the data. eg A lot of the "Find My" service data passes through Apple servers, but Apple can't decrypt it, as its encrypted with asymmetric keys that only exist on a users devices. So its not "collection". How "Find my" works was explained in a talk by Apple at BlackHat 2019 this year.

If a process or App running on the device does something that is requests location-related information, that does not automatically mean that Apple "collected" it. Even if data is sent to Apple, it doesn't mean Apple can read it. Saying any process triggering an arrow in the UI constitutes collection of data is wrong from both a technical and legal perspective. 

Thirdly, the way that location services work, is things like monitoring for iBeacon region entry/exit, or "awareness of what country am I in" will by definition access location information. 

Fourthly the arrow may not have anything to do with GPS, and the AppleInsider commentary is wrong in framing things that way. Apple devices use GPS, GLONASS, Baidu, Galileo and QZSS satellite systems, but they also use cell towers, Bluetooth and Wi-fi network mapping. All of that underlying location stuff has different levels of accuracy, and some of it works indoors, some of it only outdoors. Software doesn't access almost any of that directly - a developer usually has to set up a Core Location Manager instance to get called back when the device knows the location to the requested accuracy. eg Apple knowing what set of transit directions to supply in Maps, only requires a resolution to the city level - typically 10's of km, and wouldn't generally be considered a sensitive level of location, but it would totally trigger an arrow.

nunzy said:

Apple is second to none. Google sells you to the highest bidder.

Google is the highest bidder. When you dig in to it, yes they are collecting an insane amount of data that no organisation should ever have. But (unlike Facebook) they are super guarded about how much of it they share. They know it’s their frown jewels. Historically Android has been a huge enabler for third parties to collect data as well , but that’s subtly different from sharing what they have collected.

The threat to to privacy between Facebook and Google is different:

- FB is mostly opt in to services that frankly you can live a happy and functional life without, but they casually and carelessly allow third parties access to the information

- Google is much more insidious, collects way way more data, and is sitting on a mountain of it that they are trying to work out how to monetise. But they are also far more careful than FB about not casually sharing personsl info with 3rd parties. 

So long as you did not choose a career path of “social media influencer” , anyone can live without Facebook & instagram, but getting through modern life without search and maps is a whole different ballgame.

if a government collected as much info on people as Google, it would be viewed as an outrageous violation of human rights. Now they don’t have to , and can just order Google to hand over when they need it.

anton zuykov said:

frankie said:

Of course he does.  He needs to take credit for anything to stoke his ego, even though all of this money was already earmarked to be spent on regular employees, etc in the first place. 

Where are the ACTUAL jobs?  From what I've read Apple will now spend HALF of what it did last year on taxes, which is already a joke.

I love Apple products but give me a break.

Actually they weren't going to do that under past tax code. That is evident by the size of a cash pile they accumulated over all these years overseas.  You can’t spend those money on employees unless you bring the money HERE...at 40% tax rate...since rate was too high, Apple were not bringing the money back...until trump’s tax cuts, that is.
You can’t really spin this, oh wait, no, you totally can... by mistake I tried to view you as a reasonable person, attributing to you the traits you evidently do not possess.. Please, forgive me for being so naive. 

Repatriating the money is motivated by contents of the bill, but not an essential part of it. 

The bill contains a section on a tax holiday for repatriating cash - that part has occurred on several occasions previously in the last 40 years.

We won’t really be able to tell the longer term impact of the rest of the bill on overseas cash holdings by companies - it’s possible that more will simply choose to HQ overseas and become foreign companies with an American subsidiary for example.

It’s entirely possible the 1.4 trillion gap between the bill’s revenue and government expenditure will simply accelerate the decline of America as a global power.

On the other hand , the outcomes from the tax bill might be net positive long term - it’s just too early to tell. However the recent announcements of repatriation of current large offshore holdings is NOT caused by the bill as a whole, just one part of it.

sflocal said:

Fortunately, Android has a far, far larger market share so these developers can simply go and mooch whatever personal data they want from Android users.  

A major reason why I use an iPhone is precisely due to Apple's privacy policies.  If those developers feel the need to base part of their business models in tracking my whereabouts - most likely without my explicit permission - then cry me a river.

That’s the thing. It doesn’t, in the markets that matter to these vendors. Android’s global share is largely propped up by its high penetration at low price points in developing countries.

in places like the US/UK/Australia iOS is often around 50% (or higher)  of installed base, due to the useful longevity of devices (even when Android sells more new devices they drop out of usage faster, and under-index in installed base).

So I get why they are worried - it will hurt them from a product standpoint.

I think Apple is doing the right thing, and not anti-competitive because it does not compete with these SW vendors.

Kuyangkoh said:

Well well, Apple its time to buy the company that built parts for Iphone....ie oled, memory etc and see how Korean corrupt govt reacts

Apple can’t afford it. Samsung’s component business is just another part of a sprawling, massive conglomerate - finance/banking/construction/cars/healthcare/Ships/etcetc .The whole thing is something like 15% of South Korea’s economy . All in the 4 big chaebol in SK are something like 40% of their economy - such concentration of ownership does not happen much elsewhere and there is a whif of truth to what is good for Samsung is good for SK, that enables behaviours that elsewhere would be viewed as corrupt or protectionist