Some iPhone users are set to receive payouts as part of a controversy over Apple’s battery technology. Owners of older devices who joined a lawsuit over what was termed “batterygate” are set to receive around $65, according to the lawyers behind it. The payments relate to a controversy that erupted in 2017, when users complained that Apple was intentionally limiting the performance of their iPhones. As their devices aged, they found, Apple would place restrictions on how fast the devices could run. Apple said the restrictions were a way of ensuring that older devices could continue to function even as their batteries degraded. The older batteries did not provide reliable or constant power, and so spikes in performance could mean the devices would spontaneously shut down otherwise. But users complained that they had not been told about the change and had no way to turn it off. It also played into a persistent belief that Apple slows down older devices as part of “planned obsolescence” aimed at encouraging people to buy new iPhones – though there is no evidence that is the case. The controversy meant that lawyers brought complaints on behalf of owners of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus, 7, 7 Plus, or the first-generation iPhone SE, in 2018. Now they have achieved success in what they say is “the largest all-cash recovery in a computer intrusion case in history”. The settlement stipulated that Apple would pay at least $310 million to affected customers, which is expected to work out at about $65 each. But users must have signed up before October 2020, when a deadline passed, if they want to receive it, and only those 100 million people who did so will be part of the settlement. Apple has not publicly commented on the proceedings. It had appealed the settlement, but an appeals court in the US has since dismissed that case, allowing the payments to go forward. Read More Something unexpected is happening to people’s iPhone 14s, owners claim Apple is working on a mysterious new project called ‘Watch X’, report claims Apple is planning a host of powerful new Macs, rumours say

Apple’s new headset is expensive, not “magical” and is fundamentally different from Meta’s vision for the future, Mark Zuckerberg has said. The Vision One headset was revealed during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this week. The company showed off both the hardware and a new idea for “spatial computing”, which will be available next year. Apple’s headset costs $3,500, and comes with a range of features including detailed displays and cameras that allow people to see out into the real world while they are using it. It also puts Apple in competition with Meta, which has been producing its own Quest headsets for years. Its headsets are considerably cheaper – with the upcoming Meta Quest 3 costing $499 – though are lacking in some of the same features. Now Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has responded to the launch of that headset, saying that it represents a “vision of the future of computing” that is “not the one I want”. He also said that Meta had already explored all of the technology in Apple’s headset. It had opted to avoid using some of that technology in its own products in part because of the high cost that would be required to do so, he told staff in a meeting that was first reported by The Verge. Mr Zuckerberg suggested that was one of a range of philosophical differences between Meta’s approach to the headset and Apple’s. He also pointed to Meta’s aim to feature social features at the heart of its own headsets, as well as fitness features. “From what I’ve seen initially, I’d say the good news is that there’s no kind of magical solutions that they have to any of the constraints on laws of physics that our teams haven’t already explored and thought of,” he said. “They went with a higher resolution display, and between that and all the technology they put in there to power it, it costs seven times more and now requires so much energy that now you need a battery and a wire attached to it to use it. They made that design trade-off and it might make sense for the cases that they’re going for. “But look, I think that their announcement really showcases the difference in the values and the vision that our companies bring to this in a way that I think is really important. We innovate to make sure that our products are as accessible and affordable to everyone as possible, and that is a core part of what we do. And we have sold tens of millions of Quests. “More importantly, our vision for the metaverse and presence is fundamentally social. It’s about people interacting in new ways and feeling closer in new ways. Our device is also about being active and doing things. By contrast, every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself. I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not the one that I want. “There’s a real philosophical difference in terms of how we’re approaching this. And seeing what they put out there and how they’re going to compete just made me even more excited and in a lot of ways optimistic that what we’re doing matters and is going to succeed. But it’s going to be a fun journey.” While Meta and Apple work together in many ways, they have occasionally clashed. Apple’s introduction of privacy features has in recent years curtailed the tracking required for Facebook’s ad business, for instance, which has occasionally to friction between the two.

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Twitter has received an unlikely endorsement from a Taliban leader amid woes as the number of users of the Elon Musk-owned platform is “tanking” following the release of Meta’s rival app Threads. Taliban leader Anas Haqqani tweeted his approval of Twitter over other social media platforms, highlighting what he thought were some advantages of the Musk-owned site. “Twitter has two important advantages over other social media platforms,” Mr Haqqani tweeted. “The first privilege is the freedom of speech. The second privilege is the public nature & credibility of Twitter. Twitter doesn’t have an intolerant policy like Meta. Other platforms cannot replace it,” he said. Twitter has been facing major hurdles since the Tesla and SpaceX chief took over the company last year with further hardship after Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg launched the Threads app. It appears that the number of Twitter users may also be “tanking” following the release of Threads, according to Cloudflare’s chief executive Matthew Prince. Mr Prince showed a graph last week highlighting an apparent decline in Twitter’s popularity since Mr Musk’s takeover of the company, along with a steep drop after the launch of Threads. A record number of users have flocked to Mr Zuckerberg’s Twitter-clone with the app gaining over 100 million sign ups within days of its launch. “That’s mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet. Can’t believe it’s only been five days!” the Meta boss said. While Twitter appears to have fallen out of favour with many users, The Taliban, however, still seems to prefer it over Threads. After “free-speech absolutist” Mr Musk took over Twitter and fired over three-fourths of the company’s workforce, including entire teams behind content moderation, social media experts expressed dissatisfaction over the rise of hate speech on the platform and advertisers as well as regular users have exited the site. But according to Mr Haqqani, a Taliban thought-leader, the biggest draw of Twitter – where the militant group continues to post updates – is the site’s flexible moderation policy. This is in contrast to Meta’s Facebook which views the Taliban as a terrorist organisation and disallows it from posting on the platform. Read More Who are the key members of the Taliban’s new all-male government? It’s wishful thinking to believe in a more moderate Taliban Taliban rename women’s ministry as office for group’s moral police $44 billion and eight months later. It’s finally all over for Elon Musk Instagram Threads hits 100 million users, becoming easily the fastest growing app ever Twitter traffic ‘tanking’ after record-breaking Threads launch

A top engineer at Twitter has announced he is quitting his role with the company following the glitch-ridden launch of Florida governor Ron Desantis’s 2024 presidential campaign on the social media platform. “After almost four incredible years at Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday,” Foad Dabiri, who was an engineering chief at Twitter, tweeted on Thursday. The Twitter engineer’s exit from the company comes a day after Mr DeSantis’s long-anticipated 2024 campaign bid for the White House on a Twitter livestream. Mr DeSantis’s campaign launch announcement on Twitter Spaces – the platform’s audio group-chat feature – was marred by a a host of glitches, including long silences and persistent echoes. The Twitter app reportedly crashed for several users who tuned in to listen to the announcement and at one point the Republican governor himself disappeared from the livestream. Mr Musk – who had boasted about several overhauls to the microblogging site since his takeover of the company to make Spaces better – shut the initial Spaces event and started a new one. The second event where Mr DeSantis read a short speech, reportedly gathered fewer listeners than the first, attracting about 161,000 people, according to Twitter’s public-facing data. The buggy event, according to many users on the social media platform, is a reflection of how Twitter under Mr Musk is far from operating smoothly. Since Mr Musk’s takeover of Twitter, he has laid off nearly three-fourths of the company’s workforce, following which the platform has faced several technical issues. Earlier this week, a bug caused tweets deleted by some users in the past to resurface on their timelines, and weeks earlier, many users complained that they were unable to post images and share external links. Mr Dabiri was the engineering lead at Twitter’s Growth Organisation. He tweeted on Thursday that during his stint with the company, he “experienced two distinct eras” before and after Mr Musk’s takeover. “And then came ‘2.0.’ What an extraordinary journey it has been. To say it was challenging at the outset would be an understatement,” Mr Dabiri said. The engineering chief however did not comment on why he was leaving Twitter, and whether it is linked to the problems with the DeSantis livestream. Both Twitter and Mr Dabiri did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment. “Working with Elon Musk has been highly educational, and it was enlightening to see how his principles and vision are shaping the future of this company,” he tweeted. Read More Ron DeSantis news – live: DeSantis floats pardoning Trump and Jan 6 rioters after ‘train wreck’ Twitter launch AOC jokes more people watched her gaming online than listened to glitch-ridden DeSantis launch DeSantis pushes past embarrassing campaign start, outlines travel schedule for early state visits AOC jokes more people watched her gaming online than listened to DeSantis launch What is Twitter Spaces and why did it go so wrong during DeSantis’s 2024 launch? What are Elon Musk’s political beliefs?

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