As Apple heads toward next month’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), cast your mind back almost 30 years. That’s when something happened that arguably put events in motion that led to Apple becoming the company it is today. That was when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs returned to the top job at WWDC 1997 — the first such event after Apple acquired NeXT.
The big debt to NS
It took until 2000 to fully realize what the NeXT purchase meant; that’s when the Mac OS X Public Beta was released. The operating system has seen many twists and turns since then, but the NeXTStep OS acquisition forms the basis on which the Apple software ecosystem has been built. Mac, iPhone, iPad – even Apple Watch and Vision Pro – all share elements of it.
You can see its traces each time you use an application that makes use of a macOS API that uses the NS — ‘NeXTStep’ prefix. That means you’re using NeXT when you work in SwiftUI, use Apple’s core frameworks, or write code for use across different platforms in
Apple’s platforms are secure by design, but when it comes to authentication, the company seems to be protecting employees more than it protects IT admins. It’s an attack vector just waiting to be exploited — if it hasn’t been already.
As noted first by Six Colors, the problem is that administrator and People Manager accounts on Apple Business Manager (ABM) can’t sign in using federated authentication, even though they manage the federation process for everyone else.
What are the implications?
What this means in practice is that when admins engage with the authentication process, they need to do so using non-federated Apple Account sign-in with Apple’s two‑factor authentication (typically via a trusted device or trusted phone number using SMS/voice). That’s weird; it means the key accounts that manage protection for sometimes thousands of devices are still only protected by a six-digit SMS code sent to a specified phone number. We know that SMS authentication is risky, with three well-
Intel's deal with Apple highlights the strategic shift towards diversified chip supply chains, boosting US semiconductor manufacturing resilience.
The post Intel signs deal with Apple, shares double to all-time high appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Echoing concerns from other security experts, Orange Cyberdefense (OC) recently warned that employees have become the biggest security threat faced by business.
Now, in the latest illustration of its ongoing security response, Apple is putting new protections in place in macOS 26.4 that should help – but employee education remains critical as hackers turn to complex, multi-stage, social engineering attacks to infest systems with malware.
Your people are your weakness
The data tells its own story. OC explains: Employees account for 57% of all security incidents and 45% of these incidents come when workers bypass or ignore security policies by, for example, using unapproved tools.
Attackers are actively searching for and exploiting those kinds of policy workarounds, seeking weaknesses in commonly used, but unapproved, tools. Users really should educate themselves.
While companies can put some mitigations in place using device management and policy controls to constrain app use and down
AirPods Pro 3 | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Apple's rumored AirPods with cameras are nearing a stage where the company will test early mass production, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. Currently, Apple testers are "actively using" prototypes that are in the design validation test stage, which is one step before the production validation test stage.
The AirPods' cameras "aren't designed" to snap photos or video but instead can take in "visual information in low resolution" that users can query Siri about, like asking the AI assistant what they should cook with the ingredients they have in front of them, according to Gurman. They may also use the cameras to help with things like turn-b …
Read the full story at The Verge.
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) takes place in just a few weeks. Everyone expects the company to explain its approach to AI deployment on its platforms. With that in mind, here’s what several months of speculation suggest Apple will announce, though the details remain to be disclosed.
Apple is investing billions of dollars in these plans; R&D spending reached 10.3% of revenue in the second quarter, up from 7.6% in Q1. Given Apple’s accelerating revenue, on a dollar basis this means the company’s R&D spend is up 34% from a year ago.
“We believe AI is a really important investment area for Apple, and we’re going to be doing that incrementally on top of what we normally invest in our product roadmap,” said Apple CFO Kevan Parekh during Apple’s latest fiscal call. (AI isn’t Apple’s only spending target, either.)
While the billions Apple is investing are dwarfed by the huge infrastructure investments made by pure AI players, Apple’s infrastructure already exists — in the form
Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging it misled consumers about the AI capabilities of the iPhone 15 and 16. The complaint claimed Apple exaggerated the readiness and functionality of Apple Intelligence features, particularly an upgraded Siri, influencing purchase decisions with capabilities that were incomplete or delayed. Without […]
