Adobe delivers native Photoshop for Apple Silicon Macs and a way to enlarge images without losing detail

Adobe has been moving quickly to update its imaging software to work natively on Apple’s new in-house processors for Macs, starting with the M1-based MacBook Pro and MacBook Air released late last year. After shipping native versions of Lightroom and Camera Raw, it’s now releasing an Apple Silicon-optimized version of Photoshop, which delivers big performance gain vs. the Intel version running on Apple’s Rosetta 2 software emulation layer.

How much better? Per internal testing, Adobe says that users should see improvements of up to 1.5x faster performance on a number of different features offered by Photoshop, vs. the same tasks being done on the emulated version. That’s just the start, however, since Adobe says it’s going to continue to coax additional performance improvements out of the software on Apple Silicon in collaboration with Apple over time. Some features are also still missing from the M1-friendly addition, including the ‘Invite to Edit Cloud Documents’ and ‘Preset Syncing’ options, but those will be ported over in future iterations as well.

In addition to the Apple Silicon version of Photoshop, Adobe is also releasing a new Super Resolution feature in the Camera Raw plugin (to be released for Lightroom later) that ships with the software. This is an image enlarging feature that uses machine learning trained on a massive image dataset to blow up pictures to larger sizes while still preserving details. Adobe has previously offered a super resolution option that combined multiple exposures to boost resolution, but this works from a single photo.

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It’s the classic ‘Computer, enhance’ sci-fi feature made real, and it builds on work that Photoshop previously did to introduce its ‘Enhance details’ feature. If you’re not a strict Adobe loyalist, you might also be familiar with Pixelmator Pro’s ‘ML Super Resolution’ feature, which works in much the same way – albeit using a different ML model and training data set.

Adobe’s Super Resolution in action

The bottom line is that Adobe’s Super Resolution will output an image with twice the horizontal and twice the vertical resolution – meaning in total, it has 4x the number of pixels. It’ll do that while preserving detail and sharpness, which adds up to allowing you to make larger prints from images that previously wouldn’t stand up to that kind of enlargement. It’s also great for cropping in on photos in your collection to capture tighter shots of elements that previously would’ve been rendered blurry and disappointing as a result.

This feature benefits greatly from GPUs that are optimized for machine learning jobs, including CoreML and Windows ML. That means that Apple’s M1 chip is a perfect fit, since it includes a dedicated ML processing region called the Neural Engine. Likewise, Nvidia’s RTX series of GPUs and their TensorCores are well-suited to the task.

Adobe also released some major updates for Photoshop for iPad, including version history for its Cloud Documents non-local storage. You can also now store versions of Cloud Documents offline and edit them locally on your device.

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Apple starts assembling iPhone 12 in India

Apple is beginning to assemble the iPhone 12 in India as it ramps up its production capacity in the world’s second largest smartphone market. Foxconn, a contract manufacturing partner of Apple, is assembling the iPhone 12 model — though currently no other iPhone 12 model — Pro and Pro Max, and Mini — in the country.

The move underscores how India is emerging as a big production hub for global smartphone makers. Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus have been assembling their smartphone models in India for more than half a decade and have increased their production capacities in recent years.

To attract global giants, New Delhi has been offering tax benefits to firms that locally produce in India and in recent quarters has significantly increased the perks.

“We are optimistic and looking forward to building a strong ecosystem across the value chain and integrating with the global value chains, thereby strengthening electronics manufacturing ecosystem in the country,” said India’s IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad last year.

Apple began locally assembling select iPhone models in India in 2017 — beginning with the iPhone SE — though for the initial years the company’s contract partners locally produced only older iPhone models in the country.

Analysts have estimated that Apple, which launched its online store in India last year and is working to set up its first physical retail store in the country this year, plans to move between seven to 10% of its iPhone production to India as it looks to cut reliance on China. TechCrunch understands the figure is “wild speculation.”

The iPhone maker suffered a setback in India late last year after a violent protest broke at a facility in Wistron, one of its key manufacturing partners of Apple, near Bangalore last year. But the Taiwanese firm appears to have resolved the issues. It said last month that it was rehiring workers and will soon be resuming production at its facility.

“Apple is dedicated to making the best products and services in the world to delight our customers. We are proud to be starting production of iPhone 12 in India for our local customers,” said an Apple spokesperson in India in a statement.

Apple assumes just 2% of the Indian smartphone market, but it has grown in recent quarters. Apple shipped more than 1.5 million iPhone units in India in the quarter that ended in December, up 100% year-on-year, making this its best quarter in the world’s largest smartphone market to date, according to research firms Counterpoint and CyberMedia Research.

Unlike several foreign firms that offer their products and services at low prices in India, Apple has focused entirely on a small fraction of the population that can afford to pay big bucks, said Jayanth Kolla, chief analyst at Convergence Catalyst. And while it took several years, Apple has carved out a slice of the market that is growing, he said.

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A bug in a popular iPhone app exposed thousands of call recordings

A security vulnerability in a popular iPhone call recording app exposed thousands of users’ recorded conversations.

The flaw was discovered by Anand Prakash, a security researcher and founder of PingSafe AI, who found that the aptly named Call Recorder app allowed anyone to access the call recordings from other users — by knowing their phone number.

But using a readily available proxy tool like Burp Suite, Prakash could view and modify the network traffic going in and out of the app. That meant he could replace his phone number registered with the app with the phone number of another app user, and access their recordings on his phone.

TechCrunch verified Prakash’s findings using a spare phone with a dedicated account.

The app stores its user’s call recordings on a cloud storage bucket hosted on Amazon Web Services. Although the public was open and lists the files inside, the files could not be accessed or downloaded. The bucket was closed by press time.

At the time of writing, the cloud storage bucket had more than 130,000 audio recordings, amounting to some 300 gigabytes. The app says it has more than 1 million downloads to date.

TechCrunch contacted the app developer and held this story until the flaw was fixed. A new version of the app was submitted to Apple’s app store on Saturday. The release notes said the app update was to “patch a security report.”

Despite a brief response to our initial email acknowledging the security issue, the app developer Arun Nair has not returned several requests for comment.

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Apple releases important iPhone, iPad, Mac and Watch security patches

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French startup lobby targets Apple with ‘privacy hypocrisy’ complaint

Apple is facing another privacy complaint in Europe: A startup lobby group, France Digitale, has asked the country’s data protection watchdog to investigate alleged breaches of EU rules.

The complaint, reported earlier by Politico, follows two similar complaints lodged in Germany and Spain by EU privacy campaign group noyb last year.

All these complaints are (directly and indirectly) targeting Apple’s IDFA — aka its mobile device Identifier for Advisers — with noyb arguing Apple should be gathering consent from users in the EU prior to assigning this unique device (whose purpose is, as the name suggests, to enable device tracking for ad targeting).

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France Digitale’s complaint also raises competition concerns, pointing to a looming switch by Apple — to require opt in for third party apps to track users — and contrasting that with a ‘personalized advertising’ setting in iOS which it says lets Apple track users and is switched on by default.

It suggests that default is contrary to requirements under EU law (citing consent standards in the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation; GDPR).

The France Digitale complaint also raises questions over the level of data access Apple provides iOS users related to the ad targeting it carries out — saying users are only provided with “generic data (year of birth, sex, location)”, rather than fuller targeting data.

In a statement responding to the complaint, an Apple spokesperson told us:

The allegations in the complaint are patently false and will be seen for what they are, a poor attempt by those who track users to distract from their own actions and mislead regulators and policymakers. Transparency and control for the user are fundamental pillars of our privacy philosophy, which is why we’ve made App Tracking Transparency equally applicable to all developers including Apple. Privacy is built into the ads we sell on our platform with no tracking. We hold ourselves to a higher standard by allowing users to opt out of Apple’s limited first-party data use for personalized advertising, a feature that makes us unique.

The CNIL has also been contacted for comment on the complaint.

The latest IDFA-related complaint against Apple is a little unusual as it’s not coming from a privacy group — but a startup lobby.

Evidently, though, Apple’s decision to switch to requiring opt-in from iOS users to third party tracking (rather than opt out) is ruffling feathers. (The move also led to a publisher lobby group in France to file a competition complaint last year). The not-so-subtle subtext, here, is Apple is being accused of privacy hypocrisy.

Asked why France Digitale is making a privacy complaint against Apple, a spokesman told TechCrunch: “Startups play by the rules. We expect the world’s largest tech company to do so. We believe no scale-up can thrive without a regulatory level-playing field.”

“We are merely asking the CNIL to enforce the law. Privacy watchdogs investigate our startup members all the time. Lets them use their expertise on the bigger cats,” he added.

While the group has attracted some quick publicity with the complaint to the CNIL, under GDPR’s one-stop-shop mechanism the matter would have to be referred to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission — which is Apple’s lead data supervisor in the EU — which would then take a decision on whether or not to investigate. So there’s unlikely to be any quick regulatory action on this issue.

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Polestar, ChargePoint introduce seamless charging in new partnership

A new alliance between Swedish electric performance automaker Polestar and EV infrastructure startup ChargePoint takes aim at the charging experience with the debut of an in-car app that will let customers seamlessly charge their Polestar 2 model vehicles.

Seamless charging—being able to pull up to a charging station, plug in and let the vehicle handle billing and payment—has been dominated by Tesla through its branded Supercharger network. Most other EV drivers have to pay for charging using an RFID card or smartphone, and the convenience level is on-par with a traditional gas station. The partnership eliminates the need for these extra items at ChargePoint’s more than 130,000 stations. The app will embed directly into Polestar 2’s in-car “infotainment system,” which runs on Google’s Android Automotive OS.

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There have been some inroads into seamless charging elsewhere, most notably by Electrify America, the entity established by Volkswagen as part of its settlement with U.S. regulators over its diesel-emissions scandal. It introduced an in-car payment technology dubbed Plug&Charge last November that will allow 2021 models of the Porsche Taycan, Ford Mustang Mach-E and Lucid Air to seamlessly charge at its stations.

The partnership also takes aim at the buying experience, another area that Tesla’s cornered with its branded Wall Connector home charger. Polestar 2 drivers will now be able to order the $699 ChargePoint Home Flex home charger alongside the purchase of a Polestar 2 and arrange for home installation prior to vehicle delivery.

It’s a blueprint for future collaboration between the two companies, ChargePoint senior VP Bill Loewenthal said in a statement. The partnerships may be the start of many more alliances between automakers and EV infrastructure companies who see user experience as a key part of their value proposition.

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Apple releases results from its Women’s Health Study

Last week, Apple announced early results from its ongoing hearing health study. Conducted alongside the University of Michigan School of Public Health, the figures were released to mark World Hearing Day. Now, a day after International Women’s Day, it’s releasing results tied to its Women’s Health Study.

As with the hearing study, the figures are collected from those who choose to participate via the Research app the company launched back in 2019. It’s all a part of Apple’s attempts to take a more serious approach to user health, built, in part, on data collected through the Apple Watch and iPhone.

Early results note that symptoms like nausea and sleep changes are common, along with more frequently discussed things like bloating and cramps. The study also notes that many of the tracked symptoms are common and consistent across age, race and location — even though they may not be widely discussed. The company says the efforts are, in part, to de-stigmatize discussions around these sorts of symptoms.

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Data was collected from some 10,000 participants around the U.S. with a range of different ages and ethnic backgrounds. While much of the data collection is still in early stages, Apple and research partner Harvard are looking to study the connection between menstrual cycles and a variety of different health conditions, including infertility, polycystic ovary syndrome and perimenopause.

“What researchers and physicians in the scientific community want and need to know is more about the menstrual cycle, its relation to long-term health, as well as more about what environmental factors might affect cycle length and characteristics,” Harvard’s Dr. Shruthi Mahalingaiah said in a statement. “With this study, we are creating a larger foundational data set on this topic, which can eventually lead to further discovery and innovation in women’s health research and care.”

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Apple releases results from hearing health study

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Apple releases important iPhone, iPad, Mac and Watch security patches

Apple has released a set of security updates for iPhones, iPads, Macs and Watches. There are no new features — but these are updates you will still want to install.

As part of these security fixes, iPhones and iPads will update to iOS and iPadOS 14.4.1, watchOS users will update to 7.3.2 and macOS Big Sur will update to 11.2.3. Those on older versions of macOS can install the latest version of Safari, bumping the version to 14.0.3.

Apple says these are “important” security updates and are “recommended for all users.”

These patches fix the same vulnerability — a memory corruption bug in WebKit, the engine that powers Apple’s Safari browser. The bug can be triggered by visiting a malicious web page containing code that can exploit the vulnerability. Once exploited, an attacker can run malicious code on the affected Apple device.

The bugs were reported by Google and Microsoft, but are not believed to be actively exploited by malicious hackers unlike recent security flaws.

Last month, Apple pushed out iOS 14.4 to fix three WebKit vulnerabilities that were being “actively exploited.” The vulnerabilities were chained together to break into the underlying iPhone software.

If you haven’t already, update today.

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