Category: Technology

Apple is suing leaker Jon Prosser and a codefendant for misappropriation of trade secrets related to YouTube videos from earlier this year that depicted mockups of iOS 26 (which was, at the time, expected to be called iOS 19). In the suit, which Apple filed at a district court in the Northern District of California, the company claims Prosser and Michael Ramacciotti “conspired to break into an Apple employee’s development iPhone to take Apple’s trade secrets.”

Per the filing, which was obtained by MacRumors, Prosser had promised to “find out a way for [Ramacciotti] to get payment” if his codefendant was able to access the development iPhone of his friend Ethan Lipnik, who worked on software designs at Apple. Apple claims Ramacciotti was staying with Lipnik and waited until he left for an extended period of time, using a location-tracking tool to make sure of that. Ramacciotti is said to have gained access to the iPhone and made a FaceTime call to Prosser to show features and designs from iOS 26.

Prosser allegedly used a screen capturing tool to record the video call and then shared the footage with others in order to create mockups he used in his videos (Prosser has said that Apple uses identifiers in in-development versions of its software to help it pinpoint leakers, and recreating the renders is intended to protect them). One of those people who saw the footage is said to have recognized Lipnik’s apartment and to have informed him of that.

In January, Prosser published a video on his Front Page Tech YouTube channel depicting a render of an iOS 26 Camera app redesign that looked relatively close to the real deal. He later showed off mockups of the redesigned Messages app and the Liquid Glass design language Apple is switching to this year.

Apple terminated Lipnik’s employment for failing to protect confidential information. Per the suit, Lipnik said that Ramacciotti “often spent time at his home, sometimes staying for the weekend, and observing his patterns and security protocols for his devices.” Apple says it discovered the alleged trade secret theft from an anonymous tip and that it also has a voice note that Ramacciotti sent to Lipnik to apologize and claim that Prosser was behind the scheme.

The company claims the development iPhone in question hosted a “significant amount of additional Apple trade secret information that has not yet been publicly disclosed. It added that it does not know how much of this information Prosser and Ramacciotti obtained.

Apple is seeking an injunction directing Prosser and Ramacciotti “not to make use of or disclose Apple’s confidential, proprietary and trade secret information to third parties without its written consent” and to destroy any such material they possess. The company is also seeking damages and is requesting a jury trial.

Prosser responded to the lawsuit on X, claiming that “This is not how things went down on my end. Looking forward to being able to speak to Apple about it.” Prosser followed up by saying, “For the record: I certainly did not ‘plot’ to access anyone’s phone and was unaware of the situation playing out.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-sues-leaker-jon-prosser-for-allegedly-stealing-ios-26-info-from-an-employee-123019259.html?src=rss 

Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming home for The Office and Love Island USA, is going to cost a good bit more starting on July 23, Variety reports. The streaming service’s two existing tiers will cost an additional $3 per month, and Peacock will also start testing a cheaper $7.99 “Select” tier that includes access to NBC and Bravo shows and a limited number of titles from the NBCUniversal back catalog.

With the new price hike, Peacock’s ad-supported “Premium” plan will go from costing $8 per month to $11 per month, and the “Premium Plus” plan, which features fewer ads, will go from costing $14 per month to $17 per month. The discounted annual subscription for the Premium plan is now $110 per year, while the Premium Plus plan is $170 per year. The updated subscription fees will go into affect for new and returning customers on July 23, and on August 22 for current customers.

While these fees are still on the low end of the $25-per-month that Netflix charges for its most premium tier, this is the third time Peacock has raised prices in the last three years. The streaming service’s cheapest plan went from $5 to $6 per month in 2023, and then from $6 to $8 per month in 2024. At this rate Peacock subscriptions will cost an additional $4 in 2026.

Peacock hasn’t achieved the same level of critical acclaim as competitors like HBO Max or Netflix, but the timing of its price hike does follow a recent hot streak. The most recent season of Love Island USA, which streams exclusively on Peacock, was hugely popular. Nielsen rated the show as “the No. 1 most-watched streaming reality series” multiple weeks in a row in June, according to NBCUniversal, and the show became Peacock’s “most-watched entertainment series on mobile devices, with nearly 30 percent of viewership happening on phones and tablets.”

Testing out the new Peacock Select plan seems like a further attempt to capitalize on that reality TV-focused audience. If you’re interested in Bravo and whatever shows are exclusive to Peacock, you can pay $8 and get a huge library of episodes to watch.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/like-clockwork-peacock-is-raising-subscription-prices-again-203644730.html?src=rss 

Vimeo, the business-focused video sharing and hosting platform, is bringing back its Apple TV app after ending support for all of its TV apps in 2023. While the company hasn’t been trying to be a YouTube competitor for a while, TV apps were always more convenient than Vimeo’s proposed solution of casting video from a smartphone or tablet.

The rebuilt Vimeo Apple TV app lets you access Vimeo’s curated library of Staff Picks, your personal library of uploaded videos and anything you’ve saved to your watchlist to watch later. Vimeo also says the app supports “enhanced playback with chapters, speed controls, and multi-language options.” The app is available to download and try now, provided your Apple TV is running tvOS 18 or later and you have a Free Vimeo account.

Vimeo originally pivoted away from being a direct YouTube competitor in 2017, several years before it dropped support for its apps. Since then the company has styled itself as more of a enterprise service, providing a way for businesses and professional creatives to host and sell videos, and even build their own streaming services.

Spinning up a new TV app doesn’t necessarily mean Vimeo is changing strategies, but if you’ve got some student films hanging out in an old Vimeo account, you now have a much easier way to watch them at home.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/it-only-took-two-years-for-vimeo-to-realize-deleting-all-of-its-tv-apps-was-dumb-212724092.html?src=rss 

The Unicode Consortium has announced that it’s adding what’s essentially a Bigfoot emoji to the open Unicode standard this fall. The famous cryptid will appear as “Hairy Creature” alongside a selection of other fun new emoji options in Unicode 17.0.

It might seem strange that a consortium of companies as powerful as Apple, Google and Microsoft would practically subtweet one of North America’s most famous semi-mythological creatures. But the global nature of Unicode makes avoiding region-specific nomenclature preferable whenever possible. To me, that’s Bigfoot, plain and simple, but elsewhere in the world it might scan as a yowie, yeti, nuk-luk, hibagon, orang pendekor or an almas.

Besides “Hairy Creature,” Unicode 17.0 also includes the following new emoji additions:

Trombone

Treasure chest

Distorted Face

Fight Cloud

Apple Core

Orca

Ballet Dancers

Unicode 17.0 is slated to be released on September 9, 2025, but these new emoji likely won’t be added to Android and iOS until a bit after the standard is updated. You’ll just have to make do with what you can create with Genmoji or Emoji Kitchen while you wait.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/unicodes-new-emoji-refuses-to-put-respect-on-bigfoots-name-184412935.html?src=rss 

Google has filed a lawsuit against the operators of a what is believed to be the largest smart TV botnet in the world — BadBox 2.0. 

The company said in its complaint that this China-based botnet had compromised more than 10 million uncertified devices — including TV streaming boxes, tablets and projectors. Google said that cybercriminals pre-installed malware or used malicious apps to download malware on hardware that was running open-source Android software. These compromised devices were then used to conduct “large-scale ad fraud and other digital crimes.” In addition to the lawsuit, which is an injunction against the botnet’s operators as well as unspecified damages, Google said it has updated Google Play Protect to automatically block known apps associated with BadBox 2.0.

The FBI is also working to dismantle BadBox 2.0, with an alert about the operation issued last month. The original BadBox botnet campaign, which also primarily infiltrated Android operating systems, was identified in 2023 and disrupted in 2024.

Google has been a target for this type of cybercriminal activity before. In 2021, it disrupted Glupteba, which at the time was one of the largest botnets with about one million Windows PCs impacted.

Read the full complaint below:

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/google-is-suing-the-badbox-20-botnet-group-185812719.html?src=rss 

After five years of development, one of Steam’s coziest games is leaving Steam early access and making the jump to consoles. Starting today, you can purchase The Wandering Village on PC, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5. On Steam, the game’s developer, Stray Fawn Studio, is offering a 35 percent discount until July 31. In the US, that means you can get the game for just under $20. Switch owners, meanwhile, can get a 10 percent launch discount until August 7.

I’ve been playing The Wandering Village on and off since it entered early access in 2022. It’s a lovely game that combines two very different influences. Most obviously, the game wears on its sleeve Stray Fawn’s love of Hayao Miyazaki’s seminal Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. The manga and later film is set in a desolate, post-apocalyptic world ravaged by nuclear war. 

The Wandering Village’s other major influence are the titles of Impressions Games. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, the now-defunct studio went on a hot streak releasing three games — Caesar III, Pharaoh and Zeus: Master of Olympus — that, to this day, define much of the city-building genre.

The Wandering Village marries those influences in a novel way. Rather than building your city on solid ground, you build it on the back of a giant creature called the Onbu. As you can probably guess, the Onbu doesn’t stay still. And while there are ways you can influence its behavior, sometimes it can have a mind of its own. All of that leads to some interesting gameplay interactions. For example, the Onbu might wander into a biome that is toxic to your villagers. As of the writing of this article, the game has a “very positive” rating on Steam on nearly 6,000 reviews, with recent reviews tilting toward “overwhelming positive.”

If you want to grab a physical copy of the game for Switch or PS5, Stray Fawn has partnered with Serenity Forge to offer collectors and premium editions of the game. Pre-orders will ship early next year. Despite the game leaving early access, Stray Fawn has promised to keep working The Wandering Village. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/one-of-my-favorite-steam-early-access-games-is-now-available-on-switch-and-ps5-174539016.html?src=rss 

There’s finally a full trailer for Tron: Ares, the third installment in the decades-long sci-fi franchise. This comes after a teaser dropped a few months back and over two years after the film was first announced.

The new footage is pretty cool, and gets into the meat of this threequel. It’s a riff on AI and big tech, as corporate entities look to weaponize the digital creations of The Grid and bring them to the real world. This does not go well, as evidenced by shots of iconic franchise Recognizer ships careening down city streets.

It also features Jeff Bridges, returning as computer programmer Kevin Flynn. Bridges is the only actor who will have appeared in all three Tron films. The star of this new one, however, is the scandal-plagued Jared Leto, who plays a soldier from The Grid who has traveled to the real world on some kind of mission. Hasan Minhaj, Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee and Evan Peters are also in the movie.

Tron: Ares is directed by Joachim Rønning, who is something of a Disney hired gun. He made Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, among other films for the company.

I really have no idea what to make of this movie, even if the footage looks pretty nifty. I love the original and like the sequel well enough. One thing I’m happy about is the continued dedication to atmosphere-soaked soundtracks. The first film featured an iconic score by Wendy Carlos and the folks behind Tron: Legacy hired Daft Punk to make the music. The new movie includes a soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails. The band released the first single today, likely to coincide with the trailer, and it definitely nails the vibe.

We don’t have that long to wait for this one. Tron: Ares opens in theaters on October 10.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/the-official-tron-ares-trailer-riffs-on-big-tech-and-features-a-returning-jeff-bridges-181232528.html?src=rss 

It’s likely that you predominantly associate Spotify with music and podcasts, but if you’re a Premium member, you also get 15 hours of audiobook access per month. For some members, though, that clearly isn’t enough, as Spotify has introduced a new add-on subscription that doubles that listening time.

Audiobooks+ was first trialled in Ireland and Canada, and is launching initially for Premium Individual and Plan members in a number of countries in Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand. Once you’ve added it to your existing subscription, you’ll get an additional 15 hours of listening to audiobooks included in Spotify’s catalog, on top of what’s already included in the base plan. For individuals, Spotify Premium on its own costs $12 per month.

For those on Premium Family ($20 per month) or Duo ($17 per month) plans, the plan manager has to purchase the add-on, and they’re also able to buy a one-time top-up of 10 hours if they run out before their entitlement resets each month.

Spotify does already offer an Audiobooks Access plan to customers in the US only, which is separate from the Premium offering and also includes access to music and podcasts with ads.

Pricing for Audiobooks+ varies by market, but will cost £9 per month in the UK (around $12), where an individual Premium plan costs £12 (about $16). We’ll find out what it costs here when it arrives in the US, which Spotify told Engadget will happen in the “coming weeks”.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/spotifys-audiobooks-add-on-is-now-available-to-some-premium-subscribers-165030551.html?src=rss