Technology

What's Up With Apple: Alleged Scam App, Trolling for Car Parts Suppliers, and More 

Paul Ausick

Published: January 13, 2022 7:44 am

An old scam app has apparently reappeared on the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) App Store. Would you like to buy an iPhone app that syncs a roomful of iPhones into one big speaker system?

Sounds pretty cool. AmpMe will only cost you $9.99 a week with automatic renewal (that’s $520 a year, more than a subscription to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times). But all the reviews are five-star ….

So why isn’t Apple pulling the app? According to Sean Hollister at The Verge, there’s a simple reason: “[AmpMe is] not one of the worst offenders, and the state of the tech industry is that many, many companies profit from the ‘whoops, forgot to cancel my subscription’ phenomenon, including Apple itself.” AmpMe recently lowered its subscription price to $4.99 a week, a mere $260 annually. That’s still higher than an annual subscription to The New York Times.

Apple has been losing some top technical talent, and Bloomberg has reported that another chip designer who worked on the M1 chip left the company to join Microsoft’s server-chip project. Mike Filippo began working at Apple in 2019 as a chip architect, after a 10-year stint at Arm, the chip designer Apple, Nvidia and many other firms use.

A report in Korea IT News claims that a team from Apple visited South Korea last month in a search for suppliers of electrical components for the still-mysterious Apple Car. According to the report, Apple will decide by the end of 2022 on its supply chain and “start its full-scale development.”

Apple also reportedly proposed making an equity investment in one of the parts makers. At the same time, however, Apple “demanded” that the unnamed company double its production capacity. The report had no information on whether the Korean firm accepted Apple’s offer.

At least some potential suppliers are not interested in a deal. One industry official commented:

There are many parts companies that do not even consider becoming partners because the conditions that Apple car business demands are so harsh. And security is very strict, so sharing information is not easy.

Briefly noted:

Executives from Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Oracle are scheduled to meet with White House officials Thursday to discuss software security issues. The recent Log4j flaw discovery has gotten people’s attention.

Apple has settled a lawsuit with employees of some Apple Stores who demanded to be paid for time spent in bag-check lines when they left work.

A bug fix release (iOS 15.2.1) is now available. The update fixes a problem with Apple’s CarPlay software and another issue with sharing photos sent from an iCloud link.

In a related development, Apple will change the wording of a message it displays to iPhone owners who are unable to use the Private Relay feature. According to MacRumors, “The new message says that Private Relay is turned off, but it explains that either a cellular plan does not support it or that it has been deactivated in Cellular Settings.”