Apple, Google parent Alphabet and Intel in letters to lawmakers on Thursday revealed a bit of background information concerning the recent airing of Meltdown and Spectre chip vulnerabilities, saying Intel notified U.S. cyber security officials of the flaws only after their existence was made public.
Qualcomm on Wednesday revealed the Snapdragon X24, its latest LTE modem for mobile devices, with peak download speeds hitting 2 gigabits per second — though Apple may choose to forego the technology in its next iPhones.
The European Union on Wednesday announced that it determined chipmaker Qualcomm illegally shut out rivals when it paid Apple billions of dollars to stick with its LTE baseband chips for five years. Qualcomm will pay a hefty price for its misdeeds: 997 million euros, or $1.23 billion U.S.
Following Intel's release of patches to combat the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in its chips, the processor producer has confirmed that reports of PCs rebooting are not limited to just older chip generations, with newer releases also confirmed to be susceptible to rebooting when using the updated firmware.
The identification of the "Meltdown" and "Spectre" vulnerabilities in Intel- and ARM-based processors — including chips used in Apple's Macs, iPhones, and iPads — can be credited almost entirely to a Google security researcher in his early 20s, Jann Horn.
Israeli plaintiffs are seeking to file a class action lawsuit against Apple, ARM, and Intel over the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities recently uncovered in Intel and ARM-based processors.
In an open letter released on Thursday, Intel chief Brian Krzanich outlined the company's response to the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities while reassuring customers that his company views security as "an ongoing priority."
Intel's legal woes surrounding the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities in its processors are increasing, with more legal firms filing class action suits against the chip company, this time on the behalf of its shareholders over the revelation of the flaws and the effect on the value of the company's shares.
A new Thunderbolt 3 chipset has arrived called "Titan Ridge" that supports not only DisplayPort 1.4, but it also provides to vendors the ability to allow peripherals to fall back on USB 3.1 speeds if not connected to a Thunderbolt 3 host.
Intel's latest processor launch is a collaboration with long-time rival AMD, with the two chip firms working together to create a pair of 8th generation Core processors that are equipped with Radeon RX Vega M graphics, with the onboard AMD GPU potentially helping with the creation of more powerful notebooks or small form-factor computers like the Mac mini that do not require a dedicated GPU.
Intel is staring down class action lawsuits in California, Indiana, and Oregon over the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities exposed in modern processors, which can be used to access restricted memory in unpatched devices.
Updates released in early December should already have dealt with "Meltdown" and "Spectre" vulnerabilities on older Intel Macs, according to Apple's release notes — but a late Friday retraction of the claim has shed some doubt on the situation.
Following the news that both Intel- and ARM-based processors can be susceptible to various hacks, Apple issued a statement on Thursday announcing that it has already implemented some fixes in the latest iOS and macOS releases, with more still to come. However, there are not currently any known exploits taking advantage of "Meltdown" and "Spectre."
Intel has responded to reports of a wide-reaching kernel memory security issue, saying that it is an industry-wide issue, and not specific to Intel — but the company fails to quantify specifically what it is doing to solve the problem.
After a public disclosure of a security flaw with nearly every Intel processor produced for the last 15 years, concern grew that a fix may take up to 30 percent of the processing power away from a system. But Apple appears to have at least partially fixed the problem with December's macOS 10.13.2 — and more fixes appear to be coming in 10.13.3.
A newly discovered silicon-level flaw in Intel's chip designs is forcing operating system manufacturers to update kernels and other software components to rectify the issue, changes that will reportedly result in performance slowdowns of up to 30 percent.
Though it has an exclusive space gray finish and gorgeous all-in-one chassis, the new iMac Pro is all about performance. AppleInsider has put it to the test, to show just how much bang for your buck you'll get out of this 5 grand investment.
Looking to reduce its reliance on legal foe Qualcomm, Apple is said to be eyeing a partnership with Taiwan's MediaTek, which could supply baseband modem chipsets for iPhones beginning in 2018.
The start of iMac Pro sales means customers now know exactly how much their custom configurations will cost, and when they are expected to ship. Buyers interested in the top-of-the-line desktop can expect to fork over more than $7,000 for an 18-core beast, though it won't ship until February.
While current iPhones are limited to 2x2 MIMO technology, Apple is now rumored to upgrade to 4x4 MIMO for its 2018 iPhone models, offering users the fastest cellular LTE speeds available yet in an iPhone.
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Mikey Campbell
Roger Fingas
Neil Hughes
Malcolm Owen
AppleInsider Staff
Mike Wuerthele
