An appeals court ruled that Apple doesn't have to pay $503 million to VirnetX, a company often accused of being a patent troll. The court didn't reverse the original patent-infringement decision though, it just said the amount must be recalculated or a new trial held. Cult of Mac reports: VirnetX Holding Corp is sometimes referred to as a patent troll because it doesn't produce any products. It just collects patents, forces other companies to pay licensing fees on them, or files lawsuits when it thinks its patents have been infringed. VirnetX and Apple have gone head-to-head multiple times over the years. In this latest case, the iPhone maker was ordered to pay $302.4 million because FaceTime infringes on two patents. This was later increased to $439 million.

The figure had apparently grown to $503 million before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected that amount, according to Bloomberg. In its decision, the court decided that Apple can't re-argue the question of whether VirnetX's patents are valid. But the company does get a chance to lower the penalty.

President Trump on Wednesday toured a Texas plant that makes high-end Apple computers, chatting with Apple's chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, and accepting a plate with the words "Assembled in USA." From a report: It was a pretty typical publicity event, until the end. Mr. Trump walked in front of the news cameras and took credit for the plant, suggesting it had opened that day. "For me, this is a very special day," he said. Mr. Cook stood next to him, stone-faced. The plant has been making Apple computers since 2013. Immediately after Mr. Trump's comments, Mr. Cook thanked the president and his staff. "I'm grateful for their support in pulling today off and getting us to this far. It would not be possible without them," he said. He did not correct the record. The moment was part of a bizarre afternoon in Texas, where the president played up a six-year-old factory as evidence of his three-year-old presidency's success in bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. It showed Mr. Trump's willingness to leverage his influence over American companies in his pitch to voters that he deserves another four years in the White House. And it illustrated the complicated position that Mr. Cook and other corporate executives find themselves in with this president, forced to stand silently by while he sometimes misleads about their businesses.

[...] On Wednesday, Mr. Trump called Mr. Cook a "very special person" because of his ability to create jobs. He turned to Mr. Cook and said, "What would you say about our economy compared to everybody else?" Mr. Cook replied, "I think we have the strongest economy in the world." "Strongest in the world," Mr. Trump said. The president then took questions on the impeachment inquiry and launched into a tirade against "the fake press." Mr. Cook stood silently nearby.

Guilherme Rambo, one of the top Apple secret-spillers, says Apple locked him out of his developer account, preventing him from accessing critical tools needed to create and update iOS and Mac apps. From a report: In a blog post detailing his problem, Rambo revealed that Apple locked him out in August. Since then, all his attempts to resolve the issue met a dead end, he says. Rambo's post doesn't mention that he digs through Apple beta software looking for clues about unreleased Apple products -- and publishes his findings on 9to5Mac. That might be the precise reason why he's locked out. A famously secretive company, Apple historically took harsh measures against leakers and rumor mongers.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In years past, Microsoft's wildly popular Minecraft-themed Hour of Code tutorials were browser-based, pretty much allowing schoolchildren to participate regardless of whether their schools used PCs, Macs or Chromebooks. "Computer science is a foundation for every student," Microsoft explained on a web page about the Hour of Code, adding that "a quality computer science education should be available to every child, not just a lucky few."

But that was then, and this is now.

"The new Minecraft Hour of Code tutorial," explains a new announcement at Microsoft-sponsored Code.org, "is now available in Minecraft: Education Edition for Windows, Mac, and iPad." So, when will the Chromebook version be available? Silly Rabbit, the 2019 Minecraft Hour of Code is for Windows and Apple kids! From the Minecraft 2019 Hour of Code Lesson FAQ:

Q. Does the Hour of Code Lesson work on Chromebooks?

A. The Hour of Code Lesson is not compatible with Chromebooks. If your class has Chromebooks and would like to do a Minecraft Hour of Code lesson, we recommend using one of the [old] Minecraft tutorials on Code.org."

Yes, but that means schoolkids with Chromebooks won't be exposed to the teased AI for Good concepts introduced in the 2019 Minecraft tutorial, which seems at odds with Microsoft's professed focus on democratizing AI and putting AI developer tools in the hands of "every public sector organization around the world."

sbinning shares a report from AppleInsider: IBM has published its latest study focusing on the benefits of Apple products in enterprise, and has found that a fleet of over 200,000 Macs leads to far lower support costs, smaller numbers of support staff, and happier employees versus a Windows deployment. In the study presented on Tuesday, IBM says that employees that used Mac machines were 22 percent more likely to exceed expectations in performance reviews compared to Windows users. Mac-using employees generating sales deals have 16% larger proceeds as well.

Turning to employee satisfaction, the first-of-its-kind study shows that Mac users were 17 percent less likely to leave IBM compared to their Windows counterparts. Mac users also were happier with the software available, with 5 percent asking for additional software compared to 11 percent of Windows users. A team of seven engineers is needed to maintain 200,000 Macs whereas a team of 20 is needed for that number of Windows PCs. During setup, the migration process was simple for 98 percent of Mac users versus only 86 percent of those moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Windows users were also five times as likely to need on-site support.

Microsoft is planning to bring its Defender antivirus to Linux systems next year, reports ZDNet: Microsoft announced the brand change from Windows Defender to Microsoft Defender in March after giving security analysts the tools to inspect enterprise Mac computers for malware via the Microsoft Defender console.

Rob Lefferts, corporate vice president for Microsoft's M365 Security, told ZDNet that Microsoft Defender for Linux systems will be available for customers in 2020.
In October TechSpot reported that Defender placed in the top 10 among all major antivirus programs, narrowly beating established software like Bitdefender, Kaspersky, and Mcafee with an online protection rate of 99.96%, according to testing by independent lab AV-Comparative.

Mac developers are reporting that apps made using Electron (which is a framework that allows companies to ship web apps in a native app wrapper) are now being rejected by the automated Mac App Store review process. From a report: The apps in question are getting flagged because of their usage of private API calls. These API calls are not in the app itself, but part of the underlying Electron framework. The detected private API symbols include:" CAContext CALayerHost NSAccessibilityRemoteUIElement NSNextStepFrame NSThemeFrame NSURLFileTypeMappings." Apparently, the Electron framework has used these APIs for years. What has happened is that Apple has upgraded its server-side app review processes to detect more violations of its App Review guidelines, and now this private API usage is being identified. Individual Electron app makers are a bit helpless as the issue can only really be fixed by pushing changes in the Electron code itself. It does not appear that Electron is doing anything extreme, certainly nothing malicious. App Review doesn't care about why an app is using private API, it's a hard and fast rule (at least in theory).

Apple this year differentiated the iPad by creating a superset of iOS that only works on the company's tablet, the cleanly named iPadOS. In theory, iPadOS fixes the many shortcomings of previous iOS versions that tried to serve two masters, the iPad and the iPhone. But some fundamental issues remain. From a column: Apple's iPadOS page is adamant that a world of possibilities is now "ours." The "Features" section provides a long, long list of new iPad talents. Without getting into the embarrassing details about the klutziness that makes me a good product tester because I tend to do things that knowledgeable users already know how to do, I'm confused and frustrated by all of these "possibilities." For relatively simple tasks such as using multiple apps side by side or opening more than one window for an app such as Pages, the iPad support site is cryptic and, in some cases, just plain wrong. As just one example, the on-line guidance advises: "go to Settings > General > Multitasking & Dock..." Trouble is, the General section of Settings on my iPad Pro doesn't have a Multitasking & Dock section. A little bit of foraging gets me to the Home Screen & Dock section where, yes, the Multitasking adjustments are available.

On the positive side, one now has a real Safari browser, equivalent in most regards to the "desktop" version, and the ability to open two independent windows side by side. Because I feel self-conscious about my mental and motor skills, I compared notes with a learned friend, a persistent fellow who forced himself to learn touch typing by erasing the letters on his keyboard. He, too, finds iPadOS discoverability to be severely lacking. There are lot of new and possibly helpful features but, unlike the 1984 Mac, not enough in the way of the hints that menu bars and pull-down menus provide. It all feels unfinished, a long, long list of potentially winning features that are out of the reach of this mere mortal and that I assume will remain undiscovered by many others. Kvetching aside, we know that Apple plays the long game. Today's stylus equipped and mouse-capable iPad shows great promise. (I connected my trusted Microsoft Mouse and its two buttons and wheel -- no problem.) It clearly has the potential to become a multifaceted device capable of a wide range of interactions. From the simplest one-finger control enjoyed by children and adults alike to the windows and pointing device interactions "power users" hope for, the iPad shows great potential -- and the need for more work to make the new features more discoverable.

David Shayer, who worked as a software engineer at Apple for 18 years across iPod, the Apple Watch, and Apple's bug-tracking system Radar, among other projects, looks at the current iOS and macOS releases and tries to work out why they are so buggy. He writes: 1. Overloaded Feature Lists Lead to Schedule Chicken: Apple is aggressive about including significant features in upcoming products. Tight schedules and ambitious feature sets mean software engineers and quality assurance (QA) engineers routinely work nights and weekends as deadlines approach. Inevitably some features are postponed for a future release, as we saw with iCloud Drive Folder Sharing. In a well-run project, features that are lagging behind are cut early, so engineers can devote their time to polishing the features that will actually ship. But sometimes managers play "schedule chicken" since no one wants to admit in the departmental meeting that their part of the project is behind. Instead, they hope someone else working on another aspect of that feature is running even later, so they reap the benefit of the feature being delayed without taking the hit of being the one who delayed it. But if no one blinks, engineers continue to work on a feature that can't possibly be completed in time and that eventually gets pushed off to a future release.

2. Crash Reports Don't Identify Non-Crashing Bugs: If you have reporting turned on (which I recommend), Apple's built-in crash reporter automatically reports application crashes, and even kernel crashes, back to the company. A crash report includes a lot of data. Especially useful is the stack trace, which shows exactly where the code crashed, and more importantly, how it got to that point. A stack trace often enables an engineer to track down the crash and fix it. Crash reports are uniquely identified by the stack trace. The same stack trace on multiple crash reports means all those users are seeing the same crash. The crash reporter backend sorts crash reports by matching the stack traces, and those that occur most often get the highest priority. Apple takes crash reports seriously and tries hard to fix them. As a result, Apple software crashes a lot less than it used to. Unfortunately, the crash reporter can't catch non-crashing bugs. It's blind to the photos that never upload to iCloud, the contact card that just won't sync from my Mac to my iPhone, the Time Capsule backups that get corrupted and have to be restarted every few months, and the setup app on my new iPhone 11 that got caught in a loop repeatedly asking me to sign in to my iCloud account, until I had to call Apple support. (These are all real problems I've experienced.) Shayer has offered several more possible explanations in the original post.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 78 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The release includes the CSS Properties and Values API, Native File System API, new Origin Trials, and dark mode improvements on Android and iOS. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome's built-in updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. With over 1 billion users, Chrome is both a browser and a major platform that web developers must consider. In fact, with Chrome's regular additions and changes, developers often have to stay on top of everything available -- as well as what has been deprecated or removed. Chrome 78, for example, removes the XSS Auditor due to privacy concerns. Chrome 78 implements the CSS Properties and Values API to let developers register variables as full custom properties. There's a new Native File System API that lets developers build web apps that interact with files on the user's local device. Chrome 78 adds to the Original Trials introduced in Chrome 77, such as Signed Exchanges and SMS Receiver API. "The former allow a distributor to provide content signed by a publisher," reports VentureBeat. "The latter allows websites to access SMS messages that are delivered to the user's phone."

Other features that are rolling out gradually include the ability to be able to highlight and right-click a phone number link in Chrome and forward the call to their Android device. "Some users might also see an option to share their clipboard content between their computers and Android devices," adds VentureBeat. "Chrome is also getting Google Drive integration. From Chrome's address bar, you will be able to search for Google Drive files that you have access to."

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 70 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. Firefox 70 includes social tracking protection, a Privacy Protections report, new Lockwise features, and performance improvements on Windows and macOS. Firefox 70 for desktop is available for download now on Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. The Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play and the iOS version is on Apple's App Store. According to Mozilla, Firefox has about 250 million active users, making it a major platform for web developers to consider. With Firefox 70, Mozilla now also includes social tracking protection under the Standard setting. It blocks cross-site tracking cookies from sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If Chrome for Android users visit a site where they enter passwords, Chrome will isolate that site from all the other tabs in a separate Android process, keeping the user's data safe from Spectre-like attacks, Google said today. From a report: Furthermore, Site Isolation, which has been available for desktop users since July 2018, has also been expanded for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS users, which now receive protection against more attacks than the original Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. Site Isolation is a Chrome security feature that Google started developing as a way to isolate each website from one another, so malicious code running on one site/tab couldn't steal data from other websites/tabs. Site Isolation was developed to act as a second layer of protection on top of Same Origin Policy (SOP), a browser feature that prevents websites from accessing each other's data. Google developed Site Isolation because browser bugs often allowed sites to jump the SOP barrier and steal user data stored in the browser, created by other sites.

Scientists have uncovered a glitch in a piece of code that could have yielded incorrect results in over 100 published studies that cited the original paper. From a report: The glitch caused results of a common chemistry computation to vary depending on the operating system used, causing discrepancies among Mac, Windows, and Linux systems. The researchers published the revelation and a debugged version of the script, which amounts to roughly 1,000 lines of code, last week in the journal Organic Letters. "This simple glitch in the original script calls into question the conclusions of a significant number of papers on a wide range of topics in a way that cannot be easily resolved from published information because the operating system is rarely mentioned," the new paper reads. "Authors who used these scripts should certainly double-check their results and any relevant conclusions using the modified scripts in the [supplementary information]." Yuheng Luo, a graduate student at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, discovered the glitch this summer when he was verifying the results of research conducted by chemistry professor Philip Williams on cyanobacteria. The aim of the project was to "try to find compounds that are effective against cancer," Williams said.

Over 100 published studies may have incorrect results thanks to a glitchy piece of Python code discovered by researchers at the University of Hawaii.

An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard: The glitch caused results of a common chemistry computation to vary depending on the operating system used, causing discrepancies among Mac, Windows, and Linux systems. The researchers published the revelation and a debugged version of the script, which amounts to roughly 1,000 lines of code, on Tuesday in the journal Organic Letters.

"This simple glitch in the original script calls into question the conclusions of a significant number of papers on a wide range of topics in a way that cannot be easily resolved from published information because the operating system is rarely mentioned," the new paper reads. "Authors who used these scripts should certainly double-check their results and any relevant conclusions using the modified scripts in the [supplementary information]."

Yuheng Luo, a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, discovered the glitch this summer when he was verifying the results of research conducted by chemistry professor Philip Williams on cyanobacteria... Under supervision of University of Hawaii at Manoa assistant chemistry professor Rui Sun, Luo used a script written in Python that was published as part of a 2014 paper by Patrick Willoughby, Matthew Jansma, and Thomas Hoye in the journal Nature Protocols . The code computes chemical shift values for NMR, or nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, a common technique used by chemists to determine the molecular make-up of a sample. Luo's results did not match up with the NMR values that Williams' group had previously calculated, and according to Sun, when his students ran the code on their computers, they realized that different operating systems were producing different results.

Sun then adjusted the code to fix the glitch, which had to do with how different operating systems sort files.
The researcher who wrote the flawed script told Motherboard that the new study was "a beautiful example of science working to advance the work we reported in 2014. They did a tremendous service to the community in figuring this out."

Sun described the original authors as "very gracious," saying they encouraged the publication of the findings.

Last year, Apple software chief Craig Federighi said developers would be able to easily bring their iPad apps to Mac computers, essentially letting coders write an app once and deploy it across millions more devices. So far, the reality has fallen short for some developers and is even leaving consumers paying twice for apps. From a report: Major app developers and service providers like Netflix are also demurring on taking part, at least at this early stage. Apple rolled out Catalyst, the technology to transition iPad apps into Mac versions, on Monday. It's the initial step toward a bigger goal: By 2021, developers should be able to build an app once and have it work on iPhones, iPads and Mac computers through a single, unified App Store. But the first iteration, which appears to still be quite raw and in a number of ways frustrating to developers, risks upsetting users who may have to pay again when they download the Mac version of an iPad app they've already bought.

"As a user, I don't want to pay again just to have the same app," said longtime Apple developer Steven Troughton-Smith. "As a developer, I don't want my users to have to make that decision." James Thompson has had to work harder than he expected to get his popular PCalc calculator iPad app running well on Mac computers. Getting paid a second time for that extra work makes sense for developers, but consumers may not immediately understand that after Apple made the porting process sound as easy as checking a box, he said. Kevin Reutter, who has brought his Planny app to Mac computers, called the situation "sad."

iTunes is officially dead with the release of macOS Catalina today. Apple decided to break apart the app into separate Apple Music, Podcasts and TV apps. "Each is better at its individuals task than it was as a section within iTunes, which was teetering on collapse like the Jenga tower of various functions it supports," writes Dieter Bohn via The Verge.

"In the early days, iTunes was simply a way to get music onto Apple's marquee product, the iPod music player," reports Snopes. "Users connected the iPod to a computer, and songs automatically synced -- simplicity unheard of at the time." It was the first service to make songs available for 99 cents apiece, and $9.99 for most albums -- convincing many people to buy music legally than seek out sketchy sites for pirated downloads. "But over time, iTunes software expanded to include podcasts, e-books, audiobooks, movies and TV shows," recalls Snopes. "In the iPhone era, iTunes also made backups and synced voice memos. As the software got bloated to support additional functions, iTunes lost the ease and simplicity that gave it its charm. And with online cloud storage and wireless syncing, it no longer became necessary to connect iPhones to a computer -- and iTunes -- with a cable."

What did you like or dislike about iTunes? When you look back at the media player, what are you reminded of?

It's happening a little later in the season than usual, but Apple's latest version of macOS is available to download today. From a report: Catalina arrives on the heels of iOS 13, which saw several back-to-back updates after an initially rough launch. For what it's worth, I've been using successive versions of the Catalina beta as my daily driver for months now and can assure you that the latest build is stable enough to safely install. [...] Speaking of games, today also marks the first time that Catalina beta users will have been able to play Apple Arcade games. If you're wondering how the heck you'll play those titles from your Mac, it's worth a reminder that many Arcade games support Xbox and PlayStation controllers.

Also new in this release: As you browse episodes in the podcast app, you'll see avatars for guests and hosts. Apple also says it's made some small usability tweaks to Sidecar, the feature that allows you to use an iPad as a secondary Mac display. You'll also notice more promotional Apple TV+ material in the new TV app, which makes sense -- the streaming service launches November 1st. It'll cost $4.99 a month, but Apple is offering a free year with the purchase of a new Mac, iPhone, iPad or Apple TV. Further reading: Apple's MacOS Catalina Opens Up To iPad Apps; Apple Will Permanently Remove Dashboard In macOS Catalina; Apple Replaces Bash With Zsh as the Default Shell in macOS Catalina; and Apple Finally Kills iTunes.

ugen (Slashdot reader #93,902) writes: Something I discovered today, while trying to change a MAC address on a new MacBook Air (as I did for years on other MacBooks): ifconfig en0 ether "new mac" no longer works. It appears that this is a change made sometime last year, applicable to all Apple newer MacBooks.

Implications of permanently fixed MAC addresses on privacy and security are hard to underestimate. Given that Windows now supports complete Wifi MAC address randomization — I am sad to admit that Microsoft looks like a champion of privacy here. What are your thoughts? Solutions anyone knows of (I'll take a reasonable technical hack).

Here are a few mentions of this elsewhere:
Mac Rumors forums
The GitHub repo for SpoofMAC
A discussion on Stack Overflow
I've seen other theories about what's going on, though the bigger question is still what's the solution? Leave your own thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

And did MacOS stop allowing changes to wifi MAC addresses?

An anonymous reader writes: "DDoS-for-hire services, also known as DDoS booters, or DDoS stressors, are abusing macOS systems to launch DDoS attacks," reports ZDNet. "These attacks are leveraging macOS systems where the Apple Remote Desktop feature has been enabled, and the computer is accessible from the internet, without being located inside a local network, or protected by a firewall. More specifically, the attackers are leveraging the Apple Remote Management Service (ARMS) that is a part of the Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) feature. When users enable the Remote Desktop capability on their macOS systems, the ARMS service starts on port 3283 and listens for incoming commands meant for the remote Mac." Hackers have figured out a way to bounce traffic off these ports and carry out DDoS attacks with the help of internet connected Macs. Nearly 40,000 macOS systems are currently connected online and can be used to send out DDoS attacks.

Microsoft today announced that Windows Virtual Desktop has hit worldwide general availability. As a result, you can deploy and scale your Windows desktops and apps on Azure "in minutes," the company said today. From a report: Think of Windows Virtual Desktop as a tool for deploying and scaling Windows desktops and apps on Azure with built-in security and compliance. The Azure-based service provides a virtualized multi-session Windows 10 experience and Office 365 ProPlus virtual desktop on any device. The Windows Virtual Desktop client is available on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and HTML 5. Windows Virtual Desktop also supports Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and apps in a shared public cloud. Microsoft announced Windows Virtual Desktop in September 2018, but only in private preview.