The mock commercial presented during the Conan show presents an iPhone with no screen

Smartphones are an important part of our lives and it’s impossible to imagine a world without them. However, people have started spending a lot more time using them and neglecting other activities. As a result, Apple decided to develop some tools to help people reduce their screen time, which attracted some funny reactions. Comedian Conan O’Brien presented a mock commercial during his show where he poked fun at Apple’s initiatives.

Conan makes fun of Apple’s attempts to reduce screen time

By spending too much time in front of a smartphone screen, we can really issue a bad influence on our health. Therefore, Apple decided it was time to act and came up with some possible solutions. It developed some tools which should help users reduce their screen time, but others saw the funny part of it.

The show Conan presented a parody of an Apple commercial with probably the only device that could cure smartphone addiction. The mock phone displayed in the video was called iPhone Basic and presented an innovative way to reduce screen time, since it actually had no screen.

The iPhone Basic had no display, no screen, buttons, or any other hardware component that could attract users. This can be a parody on how attached we have become to our smartphones since any small distraction can get us hooked. Apart from the incredibly basic phone, the Conan mock ad also displays stock photos of active people and ends with the slogan “We release you”.

What strategies will Apple take against smartphone addiction?

On a less humorous note, here are the tools that Apple will provide to help us reduce our screen time. One of them is called Do Not Disturb and keeps notifications away during bedtime. It blocks them from appearing within this timeframe, but also lets users block them completely from the lock screen. Instead, they can find them in the notification center.

The second tool is simply called Screen Time and it puts together reports on your phone usage. These reports can highlight apps that are overly used or pinpoint potentially unhealthy behaviors. Screen Time is related to another tool called App Limits that lets you set some limitations for certain apps.

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Daisy can recycle about 200 iPhones in an hour

Apple is determined to celebrate Earth Day accordingly, so it made an exciting announcement only a few days before the big day. The company respects its tradition, and will release a recycling robot. The robot, called Daisy, follows the 2016 mechanism who bore the name of Liam, and can disassemble iPhones in no time.

Apple announces Daisy the recycling robot

Apple takes recycling seriously, so it decided it was time to continue the heritage of Liam. This way, Daisy was created, a more professional recycling robot found in the Austin Apple facility. Daisy is, in a way, Liam’s child, as Apple used parts of the old robot to build the new one.

The main purpose of this recycling robot is to dismantle old iPhone pieces. Then, it sorts them all, and puts away whatever is reusable. Also, Daisy is really quick. In about an hour, it should finish disassembling about 200 old iPhones. The method is effective and keeps all reusable parts safe, without damaging any of them.

Since Liam, Apple made great progresses with the recycling robot Daisy. It is far quicker, and can operate on a much larger number of old iPhones in a shorter time. In a year, Liam dismantled 1.2 million smartphones. During the same timespan, Daisy is able to work on 1.7 million devices.

New recycling ideas from Apple

At the moment, Daisy is available only within the Apple facility. However, the company is planning to develop more models of the recycling robots and bring them to other parts of the country. It has already made plans to bring one to Europe, for instance.

It seems Apple has more plans for Earth day apart from the recycling robot. The other one is GiveBack, a combination between Recycling and Trade-Up. By using it, people should have it easier with trading old iPhones and making them available for recycling. If they bring these devices back, they can get special discounts on new phones.

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Apple submitted the set of disability emojis to the Unicode Consortium

Soon after the successful release of Animoji, Apple is planning to bring a new set of emojis on the market. It has already submitted a series of new symbols to the Unicode Consortium, as this organization needs to approve the emojis before people can use them. In this new series, there are plenty of disability emojis that should address to anyone, regardless of their conditions.

Apple submitted a series of disability emojis

On Friday, March 23^rd, Apple put up a new list of emojis, and submitted this proposal to the supreme emoji authority, the Unicode Consortium. The disability emojis are included in a broader category described by the company as “accessibility emojis”. Their purpose is to help as many people relate to them as possible.

Apart from the disability emojis, including guard dogs, hearing aids, wheelchairs, and prosthetics, Apple focused more on diversity. As a result, the emojis will include both sexes and a multitude of skin colors and ethnicities. The new set has 45 items, and we can say it’s pretty diverse. Apple wanted to help disabled people no longer feel like outsiders, and it thought introducing these disability emojis would be a good idea.

The list of disabilities included in the set is far from complete

Apple was not alone when it designed these diverse emojis. It made use of a great deal of help from the Cerebral Pansy Foundation, the National Association of the Deaf, and the American Council of the Blind. However, if you have a disability that is not included in the new set, you shouldn’t feel offended.

Apple admitted the first bunch of disability emojis is far from complete. However, the company thinks it’s great for a start, and the list of accessibility emojis will definitely increase in the future. Unfortunately, it might take a while until you can use the symbols on your device. The next meeting of the Unicode Consortium should take place next month. However, Apple might include the new emojis with the 12.0 emoji update, which won’t happen before 2019.

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The new import tax will increase the prices of Apple products

Apple is well-known for its good quality products that also come for a relatively big price. At the moment, people have to get used to the fact that the latest Apple smartphone costs $999. However, Trump might make iPhones more expensive due to the next import tax.

Trump imposed a bigger import tax

On March 22^nd, President Trump announced a new import tax that applies to products coming from China. This tax should be of 25 percent on import products that are all worth $50 billion. This will seriously affect most tech goods, and Apple is one of the brand that will experience it directly.

Now you might wonder how this is possible. Apple is, indeed, an American company. It is based in California, and all the product designs start in the United States. However, the tax refers to manufacturing, and all Apple products are manufactured in China. This means the tax will make iPhones more expensive.

President Trump thinks this decision will benefit our country. He says the huge number of imports coming from China cause a great trade deficit in the US. According to him, this is the biggest trade deficit exhibited by a country.

“We have a tremendous intellectual property theft problem,” says Trump.

The increase of the tax will make iPhones more expensive

Let’s see how the import tax will make iPhones more expensive. The new regulation imposes a 25 percent increase on the prices of the imported products. Therefore, the 64GB iPhone X will rise from $999 to $1249. Of course, all the other Apple products will see a great increase in their prices. Also, the gadgets that haven’t been launched yet will start from a bigger base price.

This decision came after the analysis of the latest trade deficit. In 2017, it reached $375 billion, and the president decided he wanted to reduce it by at least $100 billion. Unfortunately, tech enthusiasts will suffer, and especially Apple fans. No one agrees with making iPhones more expensive, but this is what it’s going to happen.

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According to a MacRumors report, Apple Inc is now facing 59 class action lawsuits in the U.S. over its alleged practice of purposely slowing older iPhones to entice customers to upgrade to newer and often more expensive models.

MacRumors also found that the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation plans to centralize most of the lawsuits as the complaints are often overlapping. A court near the tech giant’s California headquarters will likely hear the cases.

The panel will decide if the complaints will be sent to a single court during a hearing on March 29. Similar cases filled across several states are traditionally centralized. So far, 16 district courts were asked to solve complaints against Apple in the Batterygate scandal. Internationally, Apple was sued by customers in six other states.

The lawsuits started pouring in late December when the company admitted that it had been throttling the performance of older handsets via software updates.

Apple Slowing Down Older iPhones, But Reasons Vary

Apple Inc dismissed rumors that the practice was designed to benefit its bottom line. It argued that the slowdowns were necessary to prevent chemically aged batteries from unexpectedly restart the iPhones when the CPU was overwhelmed.

Apple secretly rolled out the feature with iOS 10.2.1. Most customers are angry that they weren’t told about the practice. The change was never mentioned in the operating system’s release notes. In a later statement, the company described the practice as “improvements” to prevent unwanted shutdowns of the phones.

Apple finally acknowledged that the “improvements” were deliberate throttling of the phone’s performance after a Primate Labs report showing that older iPhones were slowed down by their maker surfaced in the media. The company apologized for the inconvenience and slashed the retail price for new batteries to $29 through the end of the year.

Apple continues to deny any planned wrongdoing.
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A man from Florida is warning other AirPods fans that his pair overheated and exploded while he was working out at a local gym. Jason Colon from St. Petersburg, Fla., said he saw white smoke coming out of the wireless headphones while in use.

He quickly pulled the earbuds out and put them down. He then went to call a gym staff member to help him out. When he returned, though, the earbuds likely exploded since there were only some pieces left.

It was already popped. I didn’t see it happen, but I mean, it was already fried,

the man told a local news station.

He added that the AirPods had traces of “flame damage”.

It is not the first time a piece of hardware blows up unexpectedly. Such explosions are caused by overheated batteries, which can damage the device beyond repair when they blow up.

AirPods Could Have Damaged Man’s Ears

The explosion of the AirPods was so strong that ruptured the casing, which makes the earbuds hazardous for health as they could have exploded in the man’s ears.

Colon confirmed that he cannot fathom what would have happened to his ears if that scenario had happened. He believes that his ear lobes would have been severely burnt in such explosion.

What’s more, it is not the first time a pair of earbuds explode. In 2017, an Australian woman saw her wireless headphones blow up while on a flight. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau confirmed the incident and that the earbuds were defective.

The woman said she heard a loud sound and felt a “burning on her face”. She immediately threw the headphones to the ground. The devices were reportedly on fire, but the crew was able to put out the blaze. It is unclear what brand the headphones were.
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On Monday, NYPD cops were asked to hand over to the department their aging Windows phones and upgrade to one of the two iPhone 7 models. Over the coming week, police officers patrolling the south of Manhattan will have a new tool to combat crime.

NYPD’s Jessica Tisch who runs the department’s Information and Technology unit said 600 cops get an upgrade to the iPhone every day. “We’re seeing a lot of excitement,” Tisch added. Cops are over thrilled since their new handsets are faster and more precise.

Police officers picked an iPhone 7 or an iPhone 7 Plus if they wanted a smaller or a larger screen. Once every law enforcement officer in Manhattan gets an iPhone, the phones will be handed out to Brooklyn cops, then Queens cops.

One police officer praised the new tools for being indispensable to a patrol officer. With an iPhone, a police officer can do nearly instant criminal background checks, access life-saving details on 911 calls, and obtain real-time footage of a crime or the mugshot of a suspect a lot faster than on a Windows phone.

Smartphones Making NYPD Cops’ Work Easier

Police officers noted that with help of smartphones, 911 calls reach them before the department even hears about them. In 2014, Mayor de Blasio agreed to give $160 million in taxpayer funds to the NYPD to equip every police officer with a smartphone.

One police officer said that with help from a smartphone he can get to a crime scene before the department’s dispatcher tells him to do so on the radio. Some cops even stopped a robbery in progress before the dispatcher informed them about the crime on the radio. And all this thanks to the 911 app.

Other cops said the app helped them apprehend criminals quickly. If they have waited for the dispatcher to inform them on the suspect’s location, the suspect would have escaped. The iPhones also enable officers access CCTV footage or photos of suspects in real time.
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Some iPhone X users have complained that their $1,000 handset doesn’t allow them to take incoming calls due to an unusual glitch.

The phone has been touted as a state-of-the-art mini-computer equipped with complex facial recognition software. But despite the latest technological advancements, the Apple’s flagship smartphone cannot do what the most basic, $10 mobile phone does – answering calls.

Angry users have reported on forums that when there is an incoming call the phone’s screen remains unresponsive for about 10 seconds, which makes it impossible for the users to tap the button that answers the call.

One user said that there is a delay of six to eight seconds between the ringtone of an incoming call and the display’s response.

iPhone X Users Took to Apple Forums to Complain

Hundreds of iPhone X owners have reported the same issues, while Apple’s forums are flooded with such complaints. Other users said that they cannot see the calls but hear them. The delay between the ringtone and the screen lighting up was described as “significant” by another user.

An Apple spokesperson said the company was looking into the issue.

According to a Canalys report, Apple sold 29 million iPhone X phones during the last holiday season, which makes it the best seller in the smartphone category before the holidays. Apple claims that the latest iPhone model is the best-selling iPhone in the company’s history.

The iPhone X (or iPhone Ten) celebrates the popular smartphone’s tenth-anniversary. But the recent glitch is not the first issue to affect the phone. There were production delays that affected its release date. Plus, sales volumes in the last quarter are weaker than anticipated, which led to a 4% “correction” loss in Apple shares last Friday.

The stock slip was caused by the earnings report released a day prior, which showed that sales slid 1 percent, missing the market’s expectations, even though the company’s net profit beat all previous forecasts.
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Apple’s legal woes are not over yet as the monster scandal spurred by the company’s decision to remotely slow down older iPhones’ performance aka the Batterygate is ongoing.

Since the scandal broke out, the tech giant was slapped with 32 class-action lawsuits nationwide. Plus, a series of government investigation will look at Apple’s business practices more closely.

Patently Apple, a website that keeps a close watch of lawsuits filed against Apple, found that there are 32 class actions against the tech company in the United States. The site couldn’t tell how many other similar lawsuits are affecting the company internationally.

This week alone, five people and entities sued Apple including law firm Hagens Berman which once forced the tech giant to shell out $450 million for an illegal price fixing.

Apple Facing 32 New Class Action Lawsuits

The recent lawsuits allege unfair conduct, breach of implied duty, breach of fair dealing, fraudulent conduct, and trespass to chattels. The latest is the most interesting since it means altering somebody’s property without their consent.

Two decades ago, spammers faced numerous trespass to chattels lawsuits for tampering with somebody else’s computer networks. The plaintiffs that sued Apple recently claim that the iPhone maker’s fraudulent updates that slowed down their phones are an example of trespass of chattels.

According to one of the lawsuits, the iOS updates were rolled out even though Apple was perfectly aware that the older handsets’ hardware could not meet the new performance demands. Nevertheless, the so-called fixes remotely throttled performance and reduced the utility of the devices.

Plaintiffs claim that Apple’s actions caused them injury as their handsets are now affected by long-term degradation in both performance and value. Users also accuse Apple of indirectly pushing them to upgrade their devices to the latest iPhone models to the company’s financial benefit.
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