Apple unveils new products, schedules privacy crackdown
Apple spruced up its product line at a meeting Tuesday while slipping in quiet notice of a software update, now due in a few days, designed to enhance the privacy of iPhone users at the trouble of digital advertisers such as for example Facebook.
Timing for the software upgrade trickled out throughout a series of announcements for new iPads, iMac computers and more throughout a pre-recorded event that sometimes appeared like a one-hour infomercial for Apple.
Apple also unveiled a fresh subscription option for podcasts and a tool called AirTags - coin-sized devices which can be mounted on keys, backpacks, purses and other items to help persons track them down via iPhone if they're misplaced.
The AirTags, due to get April 30, will require the iPhone software update called iOS 14.5. That update will also add a new feature requiring software to obtain explicit permission from users before tracking their activity and whereabouts. Apple said in a footnote to its AirTags announcement that the update will be released at some point next week.
Apple had previously only said that the update will be obtainable in the spring. A similar software update is developing for iPads as well.
The brand new privacy tool could drain vast amounts of dollars of earnings from apps such as Facebook, which count on following persons around on iPhones to acquire private information that helps them sell targeted ads.
That feature, called App Tracking Transparency, will force apps to acquire permission before collecting such surveillance data, even those that are already installed on these devices. To date, such applications have been absolve to track iPhone users automatically unless people make an effort and trouble to prevent the snooping.
Apple at first planned to released the ant-tracking feature last September, but delayed it to give programs that ad-dependent “free” apps to adjust to the changes. Facebook spent section of the delay blasting Apple for a change that it says could make it problematic for smaller programs to survive without charging consumers. Concurrently, Facebook has acknowledged to investors that its ad revenue may be hurt.
On the merchandise front, Apple is rolling out new iMacs with better cameras and speakers for improved video meetings and sound and new iMac keyboards with the same fingerprint ID sensor that unlocks iPhones and iPads. The most recent iPad Pros will continue to work on ultrafast 5G wireless networks that remain being built out.
Apple's new paid podcast option will join an extremely crowded field of digital antertainment and information subscription services. Those already include several from Apple, including music and video streaming options that feed off the nearly 1.6 billion devices currently used by the company's mostly affluent customers.
The popularity of those services and products have turned Apple into among the world's most profitable companies with a market value of $2.2 trillion, twice where it stood when the pandemic began.
Source: japantoday.com
