Juli Clover:
With head gestures, users can control Siri on the AirPods Pro with a shake or a nod of the head. If you get a phone call, for example, you can shake your head no if you don't want to answer it, or nod to accept the call. Siri interactions can be used for responding to incoming messages, calls, and notifications.
Apple is adding Voice Isolation to the AirPods Pro to cut down on loud background sounds to make you easier to hear, and there is a new Personalized Spatial Audio feature specific to gaming.
Previously:
Update (2024-10-22): Chris Welch (Hacker News):
With iOS 18.1 and the soon-to-be-released AirPods firmware update, the AirPods Pro 2 will offer hearing protection at all times across noise cancellation, transparency, and adaptive audio modes. There’s no “concert mode” or a specific setting to toggle. You can think of this as an expansion of the loud sound reduction option that was already in place. Hearing protection is on by default, and Apple says “an all-new multiband high dynamic range algorithm” helps to preserve the natural sound of concerts and other live events.
[…]
For those 18 years and older with mild to moderate hearing loss, the AirPods Pro 2 can now serve as a clinical-grade hearing aid. Once enabled, you can also toggle on a “Media Assist” setting that uses your hearing test results to optimize the sound of music, phone calls, and video content.
AirPods Audio Health iOS iOS 18
John Brayton:
On both macOS and iOS, sandboxed apps use group container folders to share data between the main app and extensions, such as the Subscribe in Unread share extension and Unread’s widgets.
[…]
On beta releases of Sequoia (macOS 15) using the “group.” prefix results in the customer getting an alert with this text at every launch:
“Unread.app” would like to access data from other apps.
Keeping app data separate makes it easier to manage your privacy and security.
I fixed this by changing the group container identifier.
Martin Höller:
I don’t like [how] Sequoia restricts how shared group containers can be named. So far I used “group.com.bluebanana-software.iyf”, which leads to a permission dialog each time the app is started. Now it needs to be “<TeamID>. com.bluebanana-software.iyf”.
To migrate to the new container, the user needs to actively give permission to access the old file as now it is outside of the app’s sandbox.
Adam Overholtzer:
Thankfully it only seems to impact “native” Mac apps built for Sequoia. Existing apps and Catalyst apps (mine anyway, knock on wood) don’t seem to show the popup.
Previously:
Update (2024-09-12): Pedro José Pereira Vieito:
Mac Catalyst apps can use the group.* Group Container identifiers because Apple does add that identifier to their provisioning profile (like with iOS apps). Mac App Store apps can also use them as they are signed by Apple.
Unfortunately, Apple is not currently adding the App Groups entitlement to the provisioning profiles of native Mac apps, so you will get the permission prompt when developing an app or when distributing it outside the App Store.
Previously:
Update (2024-10-08): Pedro José Pereira Vieito:
Now even ChatGPT has this issue. They are distributing the app outside the Mac App Store with a group.* App Group and Apple is not adding that App Group in the provisioning profile…
Mac Mac App Store macOS 15 Sequoia Sandboxing Transparency Consent and Control (TCC) Unread App
Arjun Kharpal (ruling, Hacker News):
Europe’s top court ruled against Apple on Tuesday in the tech giant’s 10-year court battle over its tax affairs in Ireland. The case stems back to 2016 when the European Commission ordered Ireland to recover up to 13 billion euros ($14.4 billion) in back taxes from Apple.
[…]
Apple said in a filing on Tuesday that it will incur a one-time income tax charge of about $10 billion in its fourth fiscal quarter ending Sept. 28, 2024.
Charlotte Edwards and Theo Leggett (via John Gruber):
The original decision covered the period from 1991 to 2014, and related to the way in which profits generated by two Apple subsidiaries based in Ireland were treated for tax purposes.
Those tax arrangements were deemed to be illegal because other companies were not able to obtain the same advantages.
[…]
Apple said in a statement: "This case has never been about how much tax we pay, but which government we are required to pay it to. We always pay all the taxes we owe wherever we operate and there has never been a special deal.
I think first part is misleading because if Apple had been paying a different government it would have been paying more in taxes. That was the entire reason behind setting up the tax shelter. However, as I’ve written before, I think it is accurate to say that Apple didn’t get a special deal. Other companies could have done the same thing, if they had the resources and motivation to set up such a tax avoidance scheme.
The Irish government has argued that Apple should not have to repay the back taxes, deeming that its loss was worth it to make the country an attractive home for large companies.
[…]
Although corporation tax rates for businesses are set nationally, and are not subject to the EU’s jurisdiction, the trade bloc does have extensive powers to regulate state aid and in this case, it argued that by applying very low tax rates to Apple, Ireland was granting it an unfair subsidy.
Steve Troughton-Smith:
Ireland ‘didn’t want the money’ because the government thought it might risk future Apple investment in the country (Apple was, at the time, planning a huge new datacenter here. Apple later scrapped those plans because protests lead to delays)
The Irish taxpayers sure as hell want the money.
Rui Carmo:
Yes, it’s a bucketload of money. No, it’s not to be “paid”, its been in escrow all this time. And yes, it accumulated due to Ireland’s very deliberate setup as a tax haven for tech companies, which brought them a lot of investment that would otherwise not have been done in the EU.
Old Unix Geek:
Ireland is actually harming the rest of the EU with its actions, since requiring Apple to pay similar taxes to everyone else might have helped EU competitors to the large US tech firms survive.
And it disadvantaged other European countries, which is why the EU said that it went against Ireland’s agreement in joining the Common Market.
Previously:
Update (2024-09-11): ensignavenger:
I read through the first part of the ruling to get a better idea of what happened. Apparently, Apple wrote to the Irish tax authorities, and said “this is how we plan to calculate our taxes” and the Irish tax authority said “okay, no problem, that works for us” and the EU commission investigated some years later, and said “wait, was that method of calculating taxes available to all Irish companies?
noirbot:
[It] feels odd that Ireland has now essentially gotten all the benefits of offering this illegal deal by having Apple do business there and now also gets all the back taxes that Apple probably wouldn’t have paid to Ireland if they hadn’t gotten the deal.
Update (2024-09-19): Timothy Taylor (via Hacker News):
I wrote a decade ago about the Double Irish Dutch Sandwich, a strategy for corporations to evade taxes that was widespread and large-scale enough to come to the attention of the International Monetary Fund.
[…]
However, a combination of Irish tax reforms in 2015 and changes in the US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 made this strategy ineffective: “Consequently, Irish companies began paying royalties directly to American parent companies instead of routing them through tax havens.”
Apple Business European Union Ireland Lawsuit Legal Taxes
Ariel Zilber (via Hacker News):
Apple successfully killed proposed legislation in Louisiana that would have required the iPhone maker to allow developers who market their apps on the app store to use an alternative payment system by threatening to cancel the making of a Will Smith film in the state, according to a report.
In 2021, lawmakers in the Bayou State were keen on approving a bill that would have allowed developers of apps to use alternative payments systems which would have circumvented Apple’s app store.
[…]
“He basically said that if we didn’t kill the bill, he’d kill the movie and hurt our economy,” Magee told the Journal.
Perhaps Apple TV+ is more strategic than I thought. It’s expensive to run, but it’s dual-use in that it produces salable content and can also be used for lobbying.
Previously:
Antitrust App Store Apple TV+ Business In-App Purchase iOS iOS 14 Legal
