In response to the U.S. state of Montana banning TikTok from operating there as of January 1, 2024, the first U.S. state to do so, it’s expected that TikTok users and/or civil liberty groups will attempt to fight the ban in court. U.S. state Montana on Wednesday banned the CCP-controlled TikTok app, with the state’s lawmakers saying they aimed to protect residents from alleged intelligence gathering by the Chinese Communist Party. Sapna Maheshwari and David McCabe for The New York Times: A court battle over First Amendment rights appeared to be brewing in Montana on Thursday, in response to the state banning TikTok from operating there as of Jan. 1, the first prohibition of its kind in the nation. Under…

At WWDC 2023, on June 5th, Apple will attempt to do for mixed-reality headsets what it’s previously done for personal computers, portable media players, tablets, smartwatches, and smartphones. No everyone is convinced Apple will be able to do so. Apple VR/AR headset concept by Antonio DeRosa Mark Gurman for Bloomberg Businessweek: Despite Apple’s track record, an air of doubt surrounds the device, expected to be sold under the Reality name. It will run on a new xrOS operating system and cost about $3,000. Billions of dollars of investment into computers you wear on your face from the tech industry’s largest companies and well-funded startups have yet to produce a breakout success. The device [Apple CEO Tim] Cook will present, say…

At WWDC 2023, on June 5th, Apple will attempt to do for mixed-reality headsets what it’s previously done for personal computers, portable media players, tablets, smartwatches, and smartphones. No everyone is convinced Apple will be able to do so. Apple VR/AR headset concept by Antonio DeRosa Mark Gurman for Bloomberg Businessweek: Despite Apple’s track record, an air of doubt surrounds the device, expected to be sold under the Reality name. It will run on a new xrOS operating system and cost about $3,000. Billions of dollars of investment into computers you wear on your face from the tech industry’s largest companies and well-funded startups have yet to produce a breakout success. The device [Apple CEO Tim] Cook will present, say…

Macworld More than a decade ago, on the heels of the iPad’s announcement, I took to the pages of Macworld–then still available as a physical object shipped to your home–to describe it as not just a third device, but a third revolution. And at the time it was: Apple’s attempt to once again remake the idea of personal computing, a thesis it would return to several times in the subsequent years, perhaps most cogently expressed in the What’s a computer? ad from 2017. But in recent years, that future has seemed in jeopardy, as the iPad has entered a kind of holding pattern, like the understudy waiting in the wings that is never asked to step into the main role.…

The Department of Justice has charged a third ex-engineer over the alleged theft of self-driving car tech in 2018, after the engineer tried to hand Apple's trade secrets over to a Chinese autonomous driving tech company.Apple's self-driving vehicle testbedAnnounced on Tuesday, the DoJ revealed it had filed charges at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco against Weibao Wang on April 11, 2023. Wang stands accused of the theft and the attempt at taking Apple's "entire autonomy source code," tracking systems, behavior planning systems, and system hardware descriptions. Read more...

Macworld Macs have a high price so it’s understandable that many Mac users will want to put off replacing them for as long as they can. But just how long should you expect a Mac to last? You may also be considering buying a secondhand Mac and wondering how old is too old? For example, is that 2017 iMac for $400/£400 a good deal, or would you be better off spending a bit more on a newer model? One factor to consider is the age at which most Macs start to experience issues, such as random shutdowns and degraded batteries that no longer hold their charge. Unfortunately, at one point repairing your Mac or MacBook will no longer be a…