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Apple is more than just the iPhone manufacturer. This $2 trillion company's decisions impact many facets of technology, financials, and everyday life. When the company is rumored to be getting into something new, the entire world pays attention. And since 1997, AppleInsider has been covering this fascinating electronics maker from every possible angle. From details of the next-generation iPhone and MacBook to key indicators expected to drive the company’s stock price, AppleInsider Daily has you completely covered on a daily basis.
Welcome to the AppleInsider Daily podcast for Friday, February 23rd, 20-24. I'm Charles Martin, and we begin today with ... a programme note.
This is the 375th, and final, episode … at least for now … of the AppleInsider Daily Podcast. Although this podcast has been well received by our impressively global audience, and I have been very grateful for our enthusiastic listeners and the reviews you have left on Apple Podcasts, it is a mutual decision between management and myself that I want focus more on providing content for the main site, as well as supporting our other two podcasts, the weekly AppleInsider podcast and HomeKitInsider, and I’m really looking forward to that. In the meantime, back to the day’s news.
Many of the big changes coming to the App Store are arriving with the iOS 17.4 release early in March. As a result of testing of those changes, a bug has been found in the beta for 17.4 that caused the EU version of Apple’s App Store to demand an extra security step that should only be required for future third-party stores.
The bug involved asking permission before installing an app or requesting access to hardware features like the microphone, which is properly needed for independent App Stores, but not for Apple’s own store, since the user is already signed in under their Apple ID. In an email to AppleInsider, the company confirmed this was a bug, and will be fixed before the final release.
In rumour news, Apple is reportedly testing a new tool called "Ask" for AppleCare support advisors that uses machine learning to generate answers based on data learned from an internal database. This would assist advisors working with AppleCare users to resolve unusual problems by reporting details of an issue into the “Ask” program, which would then generate advice or answers. The Advisors could then mark the provided answers as “helpful” or “unhelpful.”
Apple believes that by training the program only on it own internal databases, it should reduce incorrect answers or AI “hallucinations” that have plagued LLM-based AI chat bots. AppleInsider rates this report as “likely.”
In Apple Vision Pro news, multiple users on Reddit have shared images of a clean-cut shear in their Apple Vision Pro front glass appearing for seemingly no reason. The front glass is a single sheet cut to act as a lens for the tracking cameras, but such precise engineering doesn’t leave much room for tolerance or error.
Thus far, the shear reported in a number of the posts about the problem show it to happen right at the nose bridge. The crack generally appears when users leave the headset stored with the battery pack overnight.
One popular theory for the problem believes that charging with the soft cover on or while in the Travel Case accessory may create a situation that overheats the glass, leading to slight expansion and a crack at the weakest point. It is possible that there could be a partial production run more prone to the problem than others, but so far users who report the issue have been told to pay the AppleCare deductible of $300 for a repair — or, if they don’t have Applecare, $800 for the glass repair.
If the problem should later be revealed to be an inherent defect, Apple tends to refund users the repair fees, at least with Mac repairs that later become part of a repair program. If this nose bridge glass crack happens to you, the best course of action is to call Apple Support, provide as many details as possible about your actions before the crack appears, and ask for the case to be escalated for examination about a potential device defect.
AppleInsider would also like to hear from readers and listeners who have had the glass crack without being involved in any kind of drop or accident and reported it to AppleCare. We have already verified that as of this report, no Genius Bar appointments have been made relating to this kind of damage across 24 stores, mostly on the east coast, that we monitor.
Turning to Apple TV+ news, actor Tom Huddleston has narrated a new nature documentary called “Earthsounds” that premiered globally on Friday on the streaming service. The project was made by Offspring Films, which also helmed the excellent nature documentary “Earth at Night in Color,” which Huddleston also narrated.
“Earthsounds” was filmed over 1,000 days in various environments, including the Queensland rainforest in Australia, the Antarctic ice shelf, the dunes of Namibia, and underwater coral reefs in the tropics.
In industry news, the worldwide total sales of 5G smartphones has now exceeded two billion — and while Apple was a little late to that party initially, the high sales of the iPhone 12 line made it the world’s most popular 5G smartphone within two weeks, pushing the industry to deploy 5G even faster. Back when 4G or LTE was the cutting edge, it took an entire year longer for smartphones to sell two billion units with that technology.
In the world’s richest and/or most developed countries, 5G smartphones make up the majority of smartphones, while 4G/LTE smartphones still tend to dominate poorer or underdeveloped countries. As the cost of 5G technology continues to drop, the advanced tech will come to more lower-end phones.
Finally for today, nobody is immune from scams, and we must all be ever-vigilant for offers and come-ons that sound too good to be true — because they usually are.
In addition to the literal billions of dollars lost every year to scammers in the most developed nations, a company in Iran used the promise of obtaining inexpensive iPhones — which are not officially sold in that country — used celebrity endorsements to trick Iranians into spending $700 on the promise of imported iPhones, and once they paid they were told to wait 45 days for the delivery to arrive … which of course it never did.
The owner of the Kouresh Company, a man named Amir Hossein Sharifian, has since fled the country, and protestors are picketing Tehran’s police headquarters demanding action against the Kouresh Company. Sharifian is said to have made some $35 million US on the scam, but claims he only owes $2.7 million
With the help of Interpol Iranian law enforcement now says they will be extraditing Sharifian to stand trial. Even Iranians who were able to obtain iPhones elsewhere are stuck with limited Apple services, owing to the company’s lack of a presence in Iran.
You can hear more news and analysis from AppleInsider on the WEEKLY AppleInsider podcast that’s out every Friday, as well as our HomeKitInsider podcast that's out every Monday -- links to both shows are in the notes for this one.
I've been Charles Martin, and it has been my honour and pleasure to be your host for the AppleInsider Daily podcast for Friday, February 23rd, 20-24. Thank you for listening.