Several AI companies have recently been accused of collecting data used to train large language models (LLMs) without the consent of the affected parties.

The latest of the accusations come from Ifixit and Freelancer, which say Anthropic has collected data from the sites, even though they used a protocol to prevent that from happening. According to Freelancer CEO Matt Barrie, their site received 3.5 million hits from Anthropic’s Claudebot in four hours, making the bot “the most aggressive” to date.

Ifixit CEO Kyle Wiens, in a comment quoted by Engadget, said Anthropic is taking content without paying for it and forcing iFixit to use its own developer resources to fend off the data collection scheme.

Apple will reportedly delay introduction of Apple Intelligence on iPhones until it ships the iOS 18.1 update after the iPhone 16 ships this fall. I don’t see this as solely because the tech won’t be ready — developers are already testing it — but suspect regulatory challenges and Apple’s own wider deployment plans led to the delay.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) hype is all encompassing. The industry is spending billions on it, electricity grids are struggling to maintain it, and regulators are preparing to constrain it. It is a speeding train packed with potential, but momentum is so rapid a mistake could send it off the rails. 

That’s a concern across the industry, one regulators are also attempting to understand. US regulation seems voluntary right now, while in Europe the much tougher EU Artificial Intelligence Act should come into effect this year. 

Apple joins the White House 

In the US, Apple has joined the White House Voluntary AI Safeguards program with 15 other major firms, including Amazon, Google, Meta, and Open AI. The aim of the group is to move toward safe, secure, and transparent development of AI technology.

The goal: to “mitigate AI’s safety and security risks, protect Americans’ privacy, advance equity and civil rights, stand up for consumers and workers, promote innovation and competition, advance American leadership around the world, and more,” the White House said.

While there is always a big element of poacher-turn-gatekeeper in any voluntary industry group, this slightly more laissez-faire approach will probably benefit the industry.

Europe is tougher

It’s different in Europe, where the Act takes the form of a sprawling piece of legislation that will take time to fully comprehend and implement. I expect the complexity of this law means most providers in the AI space will eventually mimic Apple and delay the introduction of services while they figure out how to be compliant. The laws are also being introduced in a staggered way across three years, which could make it harder to reach compliance.

Similar laws are being put in place globally, creating a complex regulatory environment in which most AI services will be forced to slow new product integration. For Apple as a platform provider, the regulatory complexity is amplified.

In this context, it makes a lot more sense for the company to switch on any of Apple’s new Intelligence services only once it has achieved enough clarity to guarantee compliance, particularly in the EU where the company has said it’s delaying the services pending such clarity. (Outgoing EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s seemingly antagonistic response to that request underlines why Apple was concerned.)

Smoke and fire

That’s not to say there’s no smoke at all around this potential fire. Apple Intelligence will not be an iPhone-only animal, it will be available across the company’s entire ecosystem: iPhones, iPads, and Macs. That means the system needs to be widely tested across all these products, including analysis around compliance (above).

We know Apple is likely to have news to share about Macs and iPads this fall, as that’s when the company usually updates its hardware. That news is likely to include the introduction of new Apple Silicon processors, and it’s almost a certainty it will lean deep into its core messages around privacy, edge device AI, secure AI, energy and hardware integration when it does introduce new hardware.

Happy Thanksgiving

Teasing out those launches with the introduction of new AI features across its operating systems will only boost attention around the launch of new hardware. That attention should turn into sales, particularly as we hit the US shopping season and computer users consider the personal and economic consequences of the recent Microsoft/Crowdstrike failure. Against this backdrop, there’s never been a better time to introduce the world’s most advanced and best-designed hardware equipped with the world’s safest and most privacy-conscious form of AI service, Apple Intelligence. 

Summing up

With all of this in mind, I find it hard to be too concerned about Apple’s “delay” in launching its AI service. Regulation and its own internal product launch plans mean a later launch will still excite consumers, while helping it realize the much anticipated bounce in hardware sales everyone now expects as AI goes mainstream. I’m just not entirely certain any of us are truly ready for what the consequences of mass market AI might be. 

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

As governments everywhere continue to deal with the economically damaging fallout of last week’s appalling Crowdstrike/Microsoft disaster, it’s no surprise to see more governments switching to Apple’s most stable platform.

To put things into context, Parametrix Insurance has analyzed the consequences of last week’s global blue screen of death incident and assesses the economic cost of the moment on the world economy as being in the multiple billions of dollars. Estimated direct financial loss across the Fortune 500 was $5.4 billion, Parametrix said. 

That’s a painful amount to lose.

This did real damage

While it has subsequently been claimed that 97% of affected systems are back in operation, that still leaves hundreds of thousands of business-critical PCs that aren’t doing their job. I’ll be looking more closely at these consequences next week. I imagine businesses that became reliant on these products are already exploring their options — after all, that kind of $5.4 billion cost was almost certainly never anticipated by IT departments when estimating the TCOs of their PC fleets.

These incidents will undoubtedly make a lot of people think twice when it comes to their next hardware upgrade. After all, as business becomes increasingly mobile, and services migrate to the cloud, the strength of vendor lock-in is shrinking to the extent that it is becoming much easier to transition to multiple platforms to build business resilience against future debacles — or move to a platform characterized by lack of such drama, which is Apple.

Is it time to migrate?

Apple is ready if you are. 

Not only is the company now equipped with a wide and diverse range of enterprise-focused companies such as Addigy, Jamf, Kandji and all the other firms I speak with each week, but its future-focused platforms are inherently more resilient by design. That’s why Apple dumped support for kernel extensions years ago, among other examples. While no platform is ever completely secure, the vast majority of problems on Apple’s platforms emerge through user error, not globally deployed automated PC-borking software updates.

Of course, the bias that Apple is a consumer product that isn’t fit for the enterprise runs deep, and shifting that view is taking time — though events such as the Crowdstrike disaster should help people question that opinion. 

I think the momentum to diversify is growing. 

Apple is ready for government

That the German government is switching to Apple speaks to this trend. The procurement office of Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior and Community’s (BMI) recently concluded a deal with Bechtle for the supply of up to 300,000 Apple devices across the entire federal administration. That means all government agencies will use iPhones and iPads equipped with Apple’s iNDIGO (iOS Native Devices in Government Operation) platform.

iNDIGO offers built-in security features, regular updates, hardware-based encryption and strict data protection policies and has been approved by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) for the secure sharing of confidential content classified as “for official use only” (VS-NfD).” 

It’s very similar to the increasing adoption of Apple products across US government. Apple is also “actively participating in several governmental security evaluations and certifications globally,” the company says.

Time to switch?

As I see it, for companies looking to build more resilience in IT after the Crowdstrike strike, news that Apple’s platforms are considered good enough and secure enough for active use by national governments should lay to rest the utterly mistaken myth that Apple’s devices aren’t good for business. Apple is now ready for government. It’s ready for business.

Finally, of course, regardless of whatever platforms you choose to deploy, it seems sensible to check the terms and conditions of any mission-critical service to ensure you’ll get compensated in the event a software patch breaks your business and costs you money. Why should any customer pay for a product that fails?

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

From the editors of Computerworld, this enterprise buyer’s guide helps IT staff understand what the various unified endpoint management (UEM) platforms can do for their organizations and how to choose the right solution.

The Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Competencia (CNMC), Spain’s competition authority has begun an audit of Apple’s App Store, according to Reuters.

According to the authority, Apple may have introduced different commercial conditions for developers who sell mobile applications through the App Store. If so, Apple risks fines of up to 10% of the company’s global revenue.

Apple denies any wrongdoing, saying Spanish developers of all sizes compete on equal terms on the App Store. The company says it will continue to work with the CNMC to sort things out.

The App Store has also come under scrutiny by other European regulatory agencies as well as in the UK.

Apple introduces new iPhone models every fall. This year’s model will, of course, introduce significant support for artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of Apple Intelligence — but what else is expected from the company’s most important product? We’ve filtered through the rumor-mill to find out so you, or your business, can get some perspective on whether it’s time to update your iPhone fleet.

Things are happening in the background

In the shadows, things are moving fast. Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams visited Shenzhen, China this week. He met with senior Chinese officials and discussed various plans, including the new applied research lab the company intends to open. Call me suspicious, but I can’t help but imagine Williams might have also visited the Foxconn factory there to check the manufacturing process and sign off on iPhone production, given factories in India and in China are now recruiting staff to build the next-generation Apple smartphone. (India now accounts for 14% of global iPhone production, and that is expected to accelerate as Cupertino builds more resilience into its supply chain with its China+ strategy.)

Apple executives also seem to have visited other key companies across the supply chain in recent months, with CEO Tim Cook meeting with suppliers in China and Vietnam as recently as April. Apple announced plans to spend more on suppliers in Vietnam during that visit. While all roads don’t necessarily lead to phone, it’s not at all unlikely that component deals will be part of the conversation. That India recently relaxed some tariffs on imported smartphone components also seems relevant.

In other words, the body of (circumstantial) evidence says the Apple machine is preparing to hum into action. So, what should we expect? 

A processor fit for AI phone

The faster A18 chip is expected to be 3-nanometers, which suggests performance and battery life improvements. Power efficiency is also expected from the improved display in the devices, and it’s possible the company might seek to further differentiate its Pro family device with A18 Pro chips. 

AI is what will be driving the sales pitch here. Those A18 Pro chips will possibly feature a more powerful neural engine, making the devices the ultimate in Apple AI phones. That’s also why the RAM inside increase, up to 8GB, speculation claims.

Apple will hit the market hard, pushing home the message that these iPhones are the world’s most advanced devices for mobile AI, with a processor more capable than anyone else’s, and a private, on-device AI to help you get things done. We’ll find out the extent to which AI is being hyped in due course.

Bigger, tougher, heavier

Expect larger 6.3-in. and 6.9-in. OLED display sizes for the Pro and Pro Max models. The non-pro iPhones will remain the same size as current models, while the pros will be a little wider, taller, and a tiny bit heavier than current models. The displays might also be more scratch-resistant than before.

Apple’s spatial reality field

The 48-megapixel cameras will introduce a new vertical camera lens, likely to make the devices more capable of capturing spatial video. The iPhone 16 Pro could also gain the 5x optical zoom introduced in the Pro Mac last year.

Capture and action buttons

Speculation claims we should expect new capture (like a camera shutter) and action buttons on all the new iPhones. Apple introduced an Action button with the iPhone 15 Pro models in 2023.

Uh-oh: New prices

Driven by increasing component costs, the company is likely to include price increases across the range, so don’t be too surprised.

Battery improvements

The iPhone 16 Pro models might use stacked battery technology. This means batteries have a better lifespan and last longer between charges than before. It seems plausible Apple has shifted to this tech because it expects iPhone users to run a lot of processor intensive AI tools on the devices. There’s good news for charging, too, with 40W wired charging and 20W MagSafe charging, up from 27/15W, respectively.

Networking

The Pro models will be equipped with Wi-FI 7 and use improved versions of Qualcomm’s 5G radios, which are smaller, use less power, and support 5G Advanced. The latter is kind of important if your company is using private or sophisticated 5G services, as they are likely to work better on these devices. Standard iPhones might at last get Wi-FI 6E.

Under display Face ID?

Recent industry news in which a UK component supplier lost its Apple business hints that the company might make changes to FaceID. What those changes are remains unknown: Could these be the first iPhones to ship with under-display FaceID?

USB-C

This is inevitable. And overdue.

More to come

Expect the trickle of iPhone predictions to continue right up until Apple introduces the device in fall. Until it does, take all the speculation with a large pinch of salt. 

What about the iPhone 17?

Apple rumors are heading into prescience. We’re also being told the iPhone 17 lineup for 2025 is expected to include the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Max. 

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says there will be a new iPhone 17 slim mode next year. He believes Apple will make a series of changes to enable that slim phone, including the introduction of a single camera lens; with a 6.6-in. display, A19 chip, and Dynamic Island, the device should still impress. What we don’t know is whether the 5G chip Apple plans will be one made by Apple. Kuo seems to think it will — and that this will be the most expensive iPhone you can buy.

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

Meta’s newly unveiled Llama 3.1 family of large language models (LLMs), which includes a 405 billion parameter model as well as 70 billion parameter and 8 billion parameter variants, is a boon for enterprises and a bane for proprietary LLM vendors, analysts and experts say.

Regulatory authorities in the EU, UK and US have signed a joint statement to ensure effective competition in the AI ​​sector, according Reuters. In the statement, they write that generative AI (genAI) has developed rapidly in recent years and that technological inflection points can introduce new ways to compete, innovate, grow, and catalyze opportunities.

The three parties also pledged that they will work together under their respective laws to ensure that the AI ​​market remains competitive and that both consumers and businesses are treated fairly.

This includes fair treatment, prevention of exclusionary tactics, and close scrutiny of investments and collaborations between today’s AI bigwigs and rising upstarts in the market.

In this case study, Deryck Webb from the Government of Alberta (GoA) explains how Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) and Nerdio enabled employees to access workspaces from anywhere across the most remote parts of Canada — particularly vital for those involved in critical services, such as wildfire management.

Originally relying on on-premises Citrix and VMware solutions, GoA found Azure Virtual Desktop to be a more robust, cost-effective alternative as part of its Microsoft 365 licensing. By partnering with Nerdio, GoA was able to streamline its Azure Virtual Desktop deployment, providing seamless access and improved user experience for over 3,000 monthly active users.

The intuitive Nerdio platform enabled the GoA team to efficiently manage virtual machines and optimize resource allocation, creating a secure and reliable remote work environment, while Nerdio’s advanced analytics and Auto-scaling features allowed the organization to save up to CAD $36,000 monthly on AVD storage.

about how the Government of Alberta leveraged Nerdio to enable remote work here.