Enlarge / The Apple M1 is a world-class processor—but it feels even faster than its already-great specs imply. Howard Oakley did a deep-dive investigation to find out why. (credit: SOPA Images via Getty )

Apple's M1 processor is a world-class desktop and laptop processor—but when it comes to general-purpose end-user systems, there's something even better than being fast. We're referring, of course, to feeling fast—which has more to do with a system meeting user expectations predictably and reliably than it does with raw speed.

Howard Oakley—author of several Mac-native utilities such as Cormorant, Spundle, and Stibium—did some digging to find out why his M1 Mac felt faster than Intel Macs did, and he came to the conclusion that the answer is QoS. If you're not familiar with the term, it expands to Quality of Service—and it's all about task scheduling.

More throughput doesn’t always mean happier users

There's a very common tendency to equate "performance" with throughput—roughly speaking, tasks accomplished per unit of time. Although throughput is generally the easiest metric to measure, it doesn't correspond very well with human perception. What humans generally notice isn't throughput, it's latency—not the number of times a task can be accomplished, but the time it takes to complete an individual task.

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  Apple Music on an iPhone with these new audio features enabled. [credit: Apple ]

Today, Apple announced that its Apple Music streaming app will get two major new audio features next month: lossless audio support and spatial audio with Dolby Atmos for a wide range of supported headphones and speakers.

Apple Music will play songs in Dolby Atmos automatically when users play the music over the built-in speakers in "the latest versions" of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, as well as through a connected Apple TV 4K or AV receiver. Songs will also automatically use Atmos when played on AirPods or Beats headphones that have Apple's H1 or W1 chips. Users will be able to manually enable Atmos on other headphones by tweaking the app's settings.

Spatial audio will be limited to certain songs, but Apple says "thousands of songs" across numerous genres "including hip-hop, country, Latin, pop, and classical" will support it at launch, with more to come.

Enlarge / Just some of the characters that don't star in games anymore, according to Roblox.

Roblox, the massively valued user-created gaming platform, has removed any mention of "games" from its user interface. It's a seemingly small semantic change that nonetheless could have some major implications in the ongoing Epic Games v. Apple trial .

The Verge notes that what was once the "Games" tab on the Roblox website is now listed as "Discover" (though the URL still retains the old roblox.com/games/ address). Individual games are now referred to as "experiences" across the website and the mobile Roblox apps, while the word "game" seems to have been scrubbed altogether.

"The term 'experiences' is consistent with how we’ve evolved our terminology to reflect our realization of the metaverse," a Roblox spokesperson told The Verge. "Roblox is an online community where people do things together in virtual worlds, and over the years, we began referring to these worlds as experiences, as they better represent the wide range of 3D immersive places—from obbys [obstacle courses] to virtual concerts—that people can enjoy together with their friends."

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  Corning's glass products, close up. [credit: Apple ]

Apple has invested an additional $45 million in US-based Corning Incorporated, the maker of Gorilla Glass, the companies announced today.

A news release from Apple says the investment will help "expand Corning's manufacturing capacity in the US" and "drive research and development into innovative new technologies that support durability and long-lasting product life."

The investment will come out of Apple's $5 billion Advanced Manufacturing Fund, which was established in 2017 to invest in manufacturing jobs and infrastructure in the United States related to Apple's products like the iPhone.

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  After permanently bricking two AirTags, stacksmashing succeeded in breaking into and reprogramming a third. [credit: stacksmashing ]

This weekend, German security researcher stacksmashing declared success at breaking into, dumping, and reflashing the microcontroller of Apple's new AirTag object-location product.

Breaking into the microcontroller essentially meant being able both to research how the devices function (by analyzing the dumped firmware) and to reprogram them to do unexpected things. Stacksmashing demonstrated this by reprogramming an AirTag to pass a non-Apple URL while in Lost Mode.

Lost Mode gets a little more lost

When an AirTag is set to Lost Mode , tapping any NFC-enabled smartphone to the tag brings up a notification with a link to found.apple.com. The link allows whoever found the lost object to contact its owner, hopefully resulting in the lost object finding its way home.

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  This is the current MagSafe charger, which is sold separately from the iPhone 12. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Bloomberg has published yet another report sharing details of a planned Apple product launch. This time, the publication's sources say Apple is working on a magnetically attached battery pack for iPhones—it would be the first Apple-designed iPhone battery pack that does not double as a case.

The accessory would use the MagSafe feature introduced with the iPhone 12 lineup in October. It would magnetically attach to the back of new iPhones and presumably provide power wirelessly via the Qi standard that iPhones have adopted. According to Bloomberg's sources, the first prototypes have a "white rubber exterior."

Apple has also already shipped some MagSafe accessories for the iPhone, including a charging cable that uses the magnets and other components to optimally align the charging coils and produce faster charging speeds than were possible with previous iPhone models with non-MagSafe Qi charging capability.

Enlarge / The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro, side by side. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple has posted multiple job listings indicating that it is hiring engineers to work on 6G technology internally so it does not have to rely on partners like Qualcomm as the next generation of wireless technology hits several years down the line.

The job listings, which were first spotted and reported by Bloomberg , include titles like "Wireless Research Systems Engineer - 5G/6G" and "RAN1/RAN4 Standards Engineer."

The listings have statements like "You will be part of a team defining and doing research of next-generation standards like 6G," "You will research and design next-generation (6G) wireless communication systems for radio access networks with emphasis on the PHY/MAC/L2/L3 layers," "Participate in industry/academic forums passionate about 6G technology," and "Contribute to future 3GPP RAN work items on 6G technology."

Enlarge / GoSearch22 isn't, technically speaking, any sort of "virus." But it's certainly not anything you'd want on your shiny new M1 Mac. (credit: Pete Linforth )

Last year, Apple released Macbooks and Mac Minis powered by a new ARM CPU—the Apple M1. A few months later, malware authors are already targeting the new hardware directly. Wired interviewed Mac security research Patrick Wardle, who discovered an M1-native version of the long-running, Mac-targeted Pirrit adware family.

Apple M1, malware, and you

ARM CPUs have a very different Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) than traditional x86 desktop and laptop CPUs do, which means that software designed for one ISA can't run on the other without help. M1 Macs can run x86 software with a translation layer called Rosetta, but native M1 apps of course run much faster—as we can see by comparing Rosetta-translated Google Chrome to the M1 native version.

When it comes to malware, Apple users have long benefited from the minority status of their platform. Ten years ago, macOS's operating system market share was only 6.5 percent, and few malware authors bothered to target it at all—but today, that market share is approaching 20 percent. That increase in popularity has brought malware vendors along with it; the macOS malware ecosystem is still tiny and relatively crude compared to the one plaguing Windows, but it's very real.

Enlarge / Fortnite on an iPhone... back when that was a thing. (credit: Savusia Konstantin | Getty Images )

Epic Games, maker of Fortnite , is loading up a new map in its ongoing fight against Apple as it files an antitrust complaint against the mobile phone maker in the European Union.

Epic alleges in its complaint that Apple uses its sole control over iOS apps to block competitors and benefit itself at developers' expense in violation of European competition law, the company said today.

"What’s at stake here is the very future of mobile platforms," Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said in a written statement. "We will not stand idly by and allow Apple to use its platform dominance to control what should be a level digital playing field. It’s bad for consumers, who are paying inflated prices due to the complete lack of competition among stores and in-app payment processing. And it’s bad for developers, whose very livelihoods often hinge on Apple’s complete discretion as to who to allow on the iOS platform, and on which terms."