The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday said it has charged former Apple engineer Weibao Wang with attempting to steal the firm’s technology related to autonomous systems, including self-driving cars, and then fleeing to China. Wang is the third former Apple employee to be accused of stealing autonomous trade secrets for China. The allegations against Wang come after another Apple employee, Xiaolang Zhang, pleaded guilty in San Jose federal court to a similar theft involving trade secrets in Apple’s car division. Sarah N. Lynch, David Shepardson, and Karen Freifeld for Reuters: “We stand vigilant in enforcing U.S. laws to stop the flow of sensitive technologies to our foreign adversaries,” Matt Olsen, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, told…

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...

General Motors is blowing it by barring the widely-used Apple CarPlay (and Google’s derivative Android Auto) that allow drivers to bypass vehicle’s infotainment systems, shifting instead to an built-in infotainment system, Google Automotive, for future electric vehicles. Apple’s next generation CarPlay deeply integrates with a vehicle’s hardware, providing content for multiple screens within the vehicle. John Gapper for Financial Times: Surely I am not the only one to groan at this prospect: many people prefer their smartphone software to their vehicles’ inbuilt displays. As Benedetto Vigna, Ferrari’s chief executive, remarked at the FT’s Future of the Car event this week, “For a car company to become a tech company is not easy . . . We are used to the operating systems we have…

The Apple Watch's health features are making headlines this month, and have been credited with saving at least two lives. Fall Detection came in handy in two emergency situations in Minnesota and Ohio. In Minnesota, Apple Watch user Michael Brodkorb was hit by a vehicle that then fled the scene. His Apple Watch detected the impact using Fall Detection and dialed 911 after he was unable to respond. "I was just shocked," he said. "I mean, just the sheer force of what it's like to get hit by a vehicle." Along with calling 911, the Fall Detection feature alerted his wife and children inside the house, so he was able to get immediate help. He ended up with injuries to…

Apple assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., known as Foxconn, reported its third consecutive quarterly profit miss, after the company succumbed to a persistently weak Android phone market. The logo of electronics contract manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, is displayed at its headquarters in Taipei. Photo: Agence France-Presse Bloomberg News: The company known as Foxconn, which makes most of Apple’s signature devices, reported net income of NT$12.8 billion ($417 million) for the first three months. That compared with the NT$29.8 billion average analysts’ estimate. Revenue rose almost 3% for the period, based on monthly sales figures. Stronger-than-expected iPhone sales during the March quarter failed to completely offset weakness in overall Android phone-making. Foxconn and…

On Tuesday, General Motors (GM) named former Apple executive Mike Abbott as the executive vice president of its software division. Reuters: Abbott, whose appointment is effective from May 22, will spearhead development of vehicle and enterprise software technologies. At Apple, Abbot led a team responsible for the development of core infrastructure for all of the company’s cloud-based services including iCloud iMessage, Private Relay, Mail and account security. MacDailyNews Take: Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you! Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon. The post GM names former Apple exec Mike Abbott as executive vice president of software unit appeared first on…