How AI and Machine Learning Works at Apple

Backchannel:

This story of Siri’s transformation, revealed for the first time here, might raise an eyebrow in much of the artificial intelligence world. Not that neural nets improved the system — of course they would do that — but that Apple was so quietly adept at doing it. Until recently, when Apple’s hiring in the AI field has stepped up and the company has made a few high-profile acquisitions, observers have viewed Apple as a laggard in what is shaping up as the most heated competition in the industry: the race to best use those powerful AI tools. Because Apple has always been so tight-lipped about what goes on behind badged doors, the AI cognoscenti didn’t know what Apple was up to in machine learning. “It’s not part of the community,” says Jerry Kaplan, who teaches a course at Stanford on the history of artificial intelligence. “Apple is the NSA of AI.” But AI’s Brahmins figured that if Apple’s efforts were as significant as Google’s or Facebook’s, they would have heard that.

The Trident Exploit for iOS

Bill Marczak and John Scott-Railton of the Citizen Lab:

Ahmed Mansoor is an internationally recognized human rights defender, based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and recipient of the Martin Ennals Award (sometimes referred to as a “Nobel Prize for human rights”). On August 10 and 11, 2016, Mansoor received SMS text messages on his iPhone promising “new secrets” about detainees tortured in UAE jails if he clicked on an included link. Instead of clicking, Mansoor sent the messages to Citizen Lab researchers. We recognized the links as belonging to an exploit infrastructure connected to NSO Group, an Israel-based “cyber war” company that sells Pegasus, a government-exclusive “lawful intercept” spyware product. NSO Group is reportedly owned by an American venture capital firm, Francisco Partners Management.

The ensuing investigation, a collaboration between researchers from Citizen Lab and from Lookout Security, determined that the links led to a chain of zero-day exploits (“zero-days”) that would have remotely jailbroken Mansoor’s stock iPhone 6 and installed sophisticated spyware. We are calling this exploit chain Trident. Once infected, Mansoor’s phone would have become a digital spy in his pocket, capable of employing his iPhone’s camera and microphone to snoop on activity in the vicinity of the device, recording his WhatsApp and Viber calls, logging messages sent in mobile chat apps, and tracking his movements.

If you’ve got an iPhone or iPad: upgrade it to iOS 9.3.5 as soon as possible.

Apple Announce Music Festival Lineup

Apple has announced their Apple Music Festival lineup: Alicia Keys, Bastille, Britney Spears, Calvin Harris, Chance the Rapper, Elton John, Michael Bublé, OneRepublic, Robbie Williams, and The 1975.

The full lineup was announced today by Julie Adenuga, the London voice of Beats 1, an Apple Music radio station that celebrates the best new music every day. Apple Music lets fans get even closer to their favorite performers during the Apple Music Festival with exclusive playlists, artist news and backstage interviews throughout September. The 10 spectacular nights of live performances will be made available live and on-demand to Apple Music members in 100 countries on their iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, PC, Apple TV and Android phones.

Inside Tim Cook’s Apple

Apple

Fast Company has a fantastic, and in-depth, profile on Apple:

With Macs, iPads, and software applications and services, Apple isn’t a one-trick pony like BlackBerry, to use an example cited by those most freaked out about the recent iPhone slowdown. It recorded $50.6 billion in sales during that “disappointing” quarter, more than the combined revenue of Google parent Alphabet ($20.3 billion) and Amazon ($29.1 billion) over the same period. Its $10.5 billion in profits outpaced not just the combination of Alphabet ($4.2 billion) and Amazon ($513 million) but also Facebook ($1.5 billion) and Microsoft ($3.8 billion).

“I don’t read all the coverage on Apple that there is,” Cook tells me a few days after my lunch with Cue and Federighi. “The way that I look at that is, I really know the truth.” And he’s ready to talk about it.

The piece is written by one of the the authors of Becoming Steve Jobs, which is the book I most recommend (even over his own biography) people read to understand Apple and Steve.

It’s About Passion, Not Algorithms

Mark Sullivan interviewed Apple Music’s Bozoma Saint John for Fast Company:

We should be paying attention to all of the ways that people want to listen to music, I mean, truly. Each point of interest is equally important as the other. I really like R&B from 1993, but I really like R&B that I just heard last week, too. How do I get served both of those things, because I am a complex music listener? By the way, you don’t have to be a music-phile in order to have that experience. Even a casual listener at the end of the day does not want to listen to the same thing again and again and again. You do want fresh; you want to be served something. I have learned that the balance of all of those things between the security of listening, to everything I want to listen to, and being served something new, the experience of U.S. consumers or me as a consumer, all those things should be rated equally.

Apple to Introduce 100 New Emoji in iOS 10

Apple

Apple:

More than one hundred new and redesigned emoji characters will be available to iPhone and iPad users this Fall with iOS 10. This exciting update brings more gender options to existing characters, including new female athletes and professionals, adds beautiful redesigns of popular emoji, a new rainbow flag and more family options.

‘Carpool Karaoke’ Series Coming Exclusively to Apple Music

The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Apple has bought the rights to “Carpool Karaoke” and will be releasing episodes exclusively on Apple Music:

The viral segment that broke out on the Late Late Show With James Corden is being turned into its own series, which will air first exclusively for subscribers to Apple’s music streaming app.

Carpool Karaoke, which will be produced by CBS Television Studios and Fulwell 73, the production company of Late Late Show executive producer Ben Winston, will expand on the segment’s format with celebrity guests who sing along to their favorite songs and surprise fans during their ride. The host of the series is expected to be announced at a later date; Corden is not expected to take the wheel.

Apple Music Getting Audio Fingerprint Matching

Jim Dalrymple, writing for The Loop, on how Apple Music has started to use fingerprint-based song matching to fix the (annoyingly bad) metadata-based system it was using before:

Apple has been quietly rolling out iTunes Match audio fingerprint to all Apple Music subscribers. Previously Apple was using a less accurate metadata version of iTunes Match on Apple Music, which wouldn’t always match the correct version of a particular song. We’ve all seen the stories of a live version of a song being replaced by a studio version, etc.

I can’t believe this isn’t what the service launched with. The key feature for me has been the combination of my library with a streaming library and every time this fucked up I wanted to randomly delete a line of code from whomever wrote the system so they could feel my pain.

Apple Proposes New Streaming Music Royalty Structure

Robert Levine, writing for Billboard, about Apple’s new proposed royalty structure for streaming music services:

Apple’s suggested royalty structure would make accounting simpler and more transparent, but it would also make it more costly to run a free service, since streaming companies would have to pay a minimum rate, rather than a percentage of revenue. The current system arguably benefits Spotify and YouTube, since their free tiers don’t generate much revenue compared to paid services.

Seems win/win for Apple here: They score points with artists, and they make Spotify look bad.

Searching for a Good Reason to Remove the Headphone Jack

Headphones

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

I have a point of view on all this, but I’m trying very hard not to get mad about something that hasn’t happened. This is a tech unicorn, an unannounced feature on a nonexistent product, and it’s important to keep that in mind. Still, it’s not a bad intellectual exercise to ponder why Apple might make such a move, and what the ramifications might be.

The speculative conclusion at the end about the rumored “AirPods” sounds right to me. What I really hope for is that any wireless headphones that Apple ship don’t use Bluetooth, but instead use a new, maybe proprietary, technology along with Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a massive pain in the ass to use with multiple devices and flaky as hell.

One thing I have seen when I’ve talked about this with some non-techy friends: they either don’t care at all and just use whatever headphones come with their phone or they really care and find this to be an absolute abomination. I don’t see much middle ground. We discussed this whole thing in more detail on this week’s episode of Encore because it really does fascinate me to no end. The tradeoffs seem almost unbearably negative, but yet it seems so inevitable at the same time.

Apple Exploring Tidal Acquisition

Apple

Daisuke Wakabayashi, Hannah Karp, and Patience Haggin, writing for the Wall Street Journal on how Apple is apparently looking into buying Tidal:

The talks are ongoing and may not result in a deal, these people said. Apple is exploring the idea of bringing on Tidal to bolster its Apple Music service because of Tidal’s strong ties to popular artists such as Kanye West and Madonna.

I’m not sure if this makes much sense, but Nick Heer nails what has to be the thinking:

One of the ways they differentiate themselves is to swoon artists enough for them to make their newest releases exclusive to a platform for a short amount of time before it’s generally released. A bunch of these exclusives over the past year went to Apple Music, but those they didn’t get — the newest albums from Kanye West, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and other high-profile artists — all went to Tidal. If Apple were to maintain those relationships post-acquisition and keep the ones they have, they’d have the exclusive release market effectively cornered.

On That Patent to Disable the iPhone Camera

Apple

Lots has been written about Apple receiving a patent that would allow infrared signals to temporarily disable the phone camera. I think Stereogum writer Collin Robertson best expresses my thoughts:

That might be OK … assuming the technology is only used at concerts and doesn’t extend to, like, disabling phone cameras during instances of police brutality and/or sociopolitical/religious unrest.

Most of the time patents never actually lead to shipped products, I hope that’s the case here.

Next iPhone to See More Subtle Changes

Daisuke Wakabayashi and Eva Dou, writing for the Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. plans to break with its recent pattern of overhauling the design of its flagship iPhone every two years and make only subtle changes in the models it will release this fall, according to people familiar with the matter….

The biggest planned change in this year’s phones is the removal of the headphone plug, which will make the phone thinner and improve its water resistance… Apple plans bigger design changes for 2017, the 10th anniversary of the original iPhone.

The “like the 6S but without a headphone jack” is going to get beat to death by the tech press. I’m willing to bet the internals are a nice upgrade. At this point Apple should just introduce new colors since the outside appearance is what seems to matter the most to some people. But, it definitely looks like it’s time to prepare for our 3.5mm jack-less world.

Apple E-Books Antitrust Settlement

amazon

From Amazon:

In November 2014, a federal court approved a Settlement of antitrust lawsuits brought against Apple, Inc. (“Apple”) by State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about the price of electronic books (“eBooks”). Those settlements resulted in credits for qualifying Kindle books purchased between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012. These credits are funded by Apple.

Head on over to Amazon to see if you’ve got any credit.