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Today’s topics include news on the next iPhone, recent security updates from Apple, a fine AT&T must pay because of the theft of customer data and a new high-performance battery from Stanford scientists.
Apple’s next iPhone could be named the iPhone 7, instead of being tagged as a mid-generation iPhone 6S, due to many feature advancements that the company thinks warrant a completely different name.
The prospects of a revised naming scheme for the next iPhone is being cited by Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at KGI Securities, who said he thinks that the feature updates are so significant that the model name change will occur.
Under Apple’s existing product naming patterns, a mid-generation iPhone update based on the current iPhone 6 model would typically be named the iPhone 6s, as the company has done for several years.
For months, Apple has been previewing the new Photos App, which has now officially landed in the new OSX 10.10.3 Yosemite update that first became generally available on April 8.
Perhaps even more noteworthy, though, is the volume of security updates that are included in the 10.10.3 milestone. Apple is patching a long list of vulnerabilities across its OS X operating system that were found by both internal Apple resources and external security researchers.
Among the security issues patched in OS X 10.10.3 is a security vulnerability in its administration framework. The issue was reported by security researcher Emile Kvarnhammar, CEO at TrueSec.
AT&T has agreed to pay a $25 million penalty stemming from the theft of customer data in call centers in Mexico, Colombia and the Philippines. The Federal Communications Commission carried out extensive investigations of the data breach in cooperation with the U.S. Secret Service.
According to senior FCC officials speaking on background, the data breach was carried out by a massive international phone theft ring that used the customer data to unlock stolen phones for resale.
Scientists at Stanford have created high-performance aluminum-ion batteries that offer long-lasting power, fast charging and lower costs than traditional lithium-ion or alkaline batteries, according to an April 6 announcement from the university.
What’s more, the new aluminum-ion batteries are safer to store and can be recharged many more times than batteries built using existing technologies, Stanford reported.