Enlarge / This demonstration of Microsoft's Project xCloud as played with a Razer Kishi controller, attached to a standard Android smartphone, could be a hint of what's to come to iOS devices in Spring of 2021. (credit: Microsoft)

In a blog post today outlining everything from upcoming games to plans for Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft announced that Xbox cloud gaming will come to iOS mobile devices and Windows PCs in spring of 2021.

On Windows PCs, the games will stream through the Xbox app or a Web browser, whereas the service will be limited to the mobile Web browser on iOS devices.

Microsoft's game streaming features require an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, which also includes an on-demand library of downloadable games for both Xbox platforms and Windows PCs, the EA Play downloadable game library, as well Xbox Live Gold, the company's online multiplayer service.

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  Apple Fitness+ on an iPhone and Apple Watch. [credit: Apple ]

The big Apple news today was the introduction of AirPods Max, but Apple made a smaller announcement today, too: Apple Fitness+ will launch next Monday, December 14.

Apple Fitness+ is a new service that incorporates music from Apple Music, the health-tracking features of the Apple Watch, and original workout videos led by accomplished trainers, according to Apple. It's the latest in a series of new services that Apple has launched to bolster its revenue over the past couple years, such as Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, and Apple News+.

At launch, Fitness+ will offer the following workout programs:

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  AirPods Max. [credit: Apple ]

This morning, Apple made a surprise announcement : it has started taking orders today for its long-rumored over-ear headphones bearing the AirPods brand. Called AirPods Max , they take design cues from existing Apple products and use several internal sensors and microphones to deliver "computational audio" features.

Priced at $549, AirPods Max are fully wireless headphones, and they use Bluetooth aided by Apple's custom tech to connect to audio sources like an iPhone or a computer. They come with a "Smart Case" that protects the headphones for storage, and puts the headphones in a low-power sleep mode. Additionally, the case has a Lightning port, allowing users to charge the headphones with an included Lightning to USB-C cable.

The above-mentioned sensors include an optical sensor, a position sensor, a case-detect sensor, and an accelerometer in each ear cup, and a gyroscope in just the left ear cup. There are also nine microphones. One is devoted exclusively to voice pickup, while the other eight are used for active noise cancellation; two of the mics perform double duty.

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  2015 13-inch i7-powered MacBook Air at left, 2020 13-inch M1-powered MacBook Air at right. [credit: Lee Hutchinson ]

Citing sources close to Apple, a new report in Bloomberg outlines Apple's roadmap for moving the entire Mac lineup to the company's own, custom-designed silicon, including both planned released windows for specific products and estimations as to how many performance CPU cores those products will have.

The M1, which has four performance cores (alongside four efficiency cores), launched this fall in the company's lowest-end computers—namely, the MacBook Air and comparatively low-cost variants of the Mac mini and 13-inch MacBook Pro. These machines have less memory and fewer ports than the company's more expensive devices. The Macs with more memory or ports, such as the 16-inch MacBook Pro, are still sold with Intel CPUs.

According to the report's sources, Apple plans to release new, Apple Silicon-based versions of 16-inch MacBook Pro and the higher end 13-inch MacBook Pro configurations in 2021, with the first chips appropriate for at least some of these computers arriving as early as the spring, and likely all of them by the fall. New iMac models that share CPU configurations with high-end MacBook Pros are also expected next year.

Enlarge / That's a lot of screen. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Earlier this year, Apple patched one of the most breathtaking iPhone vulnerabilities ever: a memory corruption bug in the iOS kernel that gave attackers remote access to the entire device—over Wi-Fi, with no user interaction required at all. Oh, and exploits were wormable—meaning radio-proximity exploits could spread from one near-by device to another, once again, with no user interaction needed.

This Wi-Fi packet of death exploit was devised by Ian Beer, a researcher at Project Zero, Google’s vulnerability research arm. In a 30,000-word post published on Tuesday afternoon, Beer described the vulnerability and the proof-of-concept exploit he spent six months developing single handedly. Almost immediately, fellow security researchers took notice.

Beware of dodgy Wi-Fi packets

“This is a fantastic piece of work,” Chris Evans, a semi-retired security researcher and executive and the founder of Project Zero, said in an interview. “It really is pretty serious. The fact you don’t have to really interact with your phone for this to be set off on you is really quite scary. This attack is just you’re walking along, the phone is in your pocket, and over Wi-Fi someone just worms in with some dodgy Wi-Fi packets.”

Enlarge / The iPhone 11 Pro Max. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Italy has again hit Apple with a fine for what the country's regulators deem to be misleading marketing claims, though the fine is only €10 million ($12 million)—a pittance from a company like Apple.

This time around, Italy's Autorita Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) claims that Apple told consumers that many iPhone models are water resistant but that the iPhones are not as resistant as Apple says. In one example, Apple claimed the iPhone 8 was rated IP67 for water and dust resistance, meaning the phone could survive for up to 30 minutes under three feet of water. But the Italian regulator says that's only true under special lab conditions with static and pure water conditions.

An announcement by the AGCM specifically names the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone XR, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max. Presumably, the claims would also apply to the iPhone 12 line, but that line was only just introduced to the market.

A Growl notification. (credit: Aurich Lawson )

Growl , a key part of the Mac desktop experience for 17 years, is being retired. Christopher Forsythe, who acted as the lead developer for the project for years, announced the retirement in a blog post on Friday.

Launched in 2004, Growl provided notifications for applications on Macs (it was also offered for Windows) before Apple introduced its own Notification Center. Notification Center was added to macOS (then styled Mac OS X) in the Mountain Lion update in 2012, but it first debuted on iOS a year earlier.

Here's a snippet of Forsythe's announcement:

Enlarge / It would be great to see Linux running and fully operational on Apple M1 hardware like this Mac Mini—but it seems unlikely to happen. (credit: Produnis / Jim Salter )

In a recent post on the Real World Technologies forum—one of the few public internet venues Linux founder Linus Torvalds is known to regularly visit—a user named Paul asked Torvalds, "What do you think of the new Apple laptop?"

"I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux," Torvalds replied. "I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new [Macbook] Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS."

Torvalds, of course, can already have an ARM based Linux laptop if he wants one—for example, the Pinebook Pro . The unspoken part here is that he'd like a high-performance ARM based laptop, rather than a budget-friendly but extremely performance constrained design such as one finds in the Pinebook Pro, the Raspberry Pi, or a legion of other inexpensive gadgets.