Enlarge / An image from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, where in 1874, the newest thing was not software or genetic compositions, but shutter fastenings from H.L. Norton. (credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider two bills Thursday that would effectively nullify the Supreme Court's rulings against patents on broad software processes and human genes. Open source and Internet freedom advocates are mobilizing and pushing back.

The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (or PERA, S. 2140), sponsored by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), would amend US Code such that "all judicial exceptions to patent eligibility are eliminated." That would include the 2014 ruling in which the Supreme Court held, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing, that simply performing an existing process on a computer does not make it a new, patentable invention. "The relevant question is whether the claims here do more than simply instruct the practitioner to implement the abstract idea of intermediated settlement on a generic computer," Thomas wrote. "They do not."

That case also drew on Bilski v. Kappos, a case in which a patent was proposed based solely on the concept of hedging against price fluctuations in commodity markets.

Enlarge / A promotional image for Amazon's 4-Series Fire TVs. (credit: Amazon)

A lawsuit is seeking to penalize Amazon for allegedly providing "fake list prices and purported discounts" to mislead people into buying Fire TVs.

As reported by Seattle news organization KIRO 7, a lawsuit seeking class-action certification and filed in US District Court for the Western District of Washington on September 12 [PDF] claims that Amazon has been listing Fire TV and Fire TV bundles with "List Prices" that are higher than what the TVs have recently sold for, thus creating "misleading representation that customers are getting a 'Limited time deal.'" The lawsuit accuses Amazon of violating Washington's Consumer Protection Act.

The plaintiff, David Ramirez, reportedly bought a 50-inch 4-Series Fire TV in February for $299.99. The lawsuit claims the price was listed as 33 percent off and a "Limited time deal" and that Amazon "advertised a List Price of $449.99, with the $449.99 in strikethrough text.” As of this writing, the 50-inch 4-Series 4K TV on Amazon is marked as having a "Limited time deal" of $299.98.

Enlarge / The iPhone 16. (credit: Apple)

If you've ever had an iPhone update go bad, you may have used recovery mode to resuscitate your device. A device booted into recovery mode can't do anything by itself, but it can be connected to a working Mac or PC with a cable, and that Mac or PC can download a fresh copy of iOS and all of your phone's related firmware to restore it to a factory-default state. You'll need a backup to recover your personal data, but it beats having to take a trip to an Apple Store or send your phone in for repairs.

The new iPhone 16 and 16 Pro models launching this week apparently add a new option for phones that are in recovery mode: rudimentary wireless communication, so phones that need to be recovered can be placed near another iPhone or an iPad and be restored without using a cable, a PC, or Mac.

The new system was tested by 9to5Mac, which says it uses "the same RecoveryOS that lets users restore Apple Watch and Apple TV firmware from an iPhone." When you place an iPhone 16 in recovery mode near another device, the functioning device will download the software and firmware files and then transfer them to the broken phone, where they can be installed.

Enlarge / iPads running iPadOS 18. (credit: Apple)

Apple has temporarily paused the rollout of the iPadOS 18 update for M4 iPad Pros. The company has stopped signing the update for these iPads, meaning it will no longer be offered to users when they check, and Apple's servers won't activate the update if it's installed some other way.

Apple confirmed to Ars that it had "temporarily removed" the update in order to "resolve an issue that is impacting a small number of devices."

The update has supposedly been "bricking" devices for some M4 iPad Pro users; anecdotal reports from Reddit and MacRumors forum users suggest that some users have installed the update without issue, and others have ended up with unresponsive devices. Apple is apparently offering hardware replacements to users who have been affected, which points to a pretty serious bug—usually devices can be put into recovery (or DFU) mode as a last resort in the event of a botched software update.

Enlarge / TCL's C655 Pro TV is advertised as a quantum dot Mini LED TV. (credit: TCL)

TCL has come under scrutiny this month after testing that claimed to examine three TCL TVs marketed as quantum dot TVs reportedly showed no trace of quantum dots.

Quantum dots are semiconductor particles that are several nanometers large and emit different color lights when struck with light of a certain frequency. The color of the light emitted by the quantum dot depends on the wavelength, which is impacted by the quantum dot's size. Some premium TVs (and computer monitors) use quantum dots so they can display a wider range of colors.

Quantum dots have become a large selling point for LCD-LED, Mini LED, and QD-OLED TVs, and quantum dot TVs command higher prices. A TV manufacturer pushing off standard TVs as quantum dot TVs would create a scandal significant enough to break consumer trust in China's biggest TV manufacturer and could also result in legal ramifications.

Enlarge / Amazon fulfillment center in Las Vegas, Nevada. (credit: Getty Images | 4kodiak)

Amazon has told staff they must return to the office five days a week from the start of next year, one of the strictest corporate crackdowns on remote working that has become commonplace since the pandemic.

“We’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” chief executive Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to employees globally on Monday. “We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective.

“Before the pandemic, it was not a given that folks could work remotely two days a week, and that will also be true moving forward,” Jassy said. He added exceptions would be made for employees with a sick child, family emergencies, or coding projects that needed a more isolated environment.

Enlarge / iOS 18's home screen color tinting and grid-based app icons in action. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apart from the much-ballyhooed (and delayed) Apple Intelligence, a big change to home screen customization and app icon placement is one of iOS 18’s flagship features, alongside an overhauled Control Center.

With the public launch of iOS 18 this week, we’ll be delving into those flagship features one by one, and I’m starting with the home screen because I have often criticized the iPhone’s home screen experience in the past. iOS 18 promises the biggest update to home screen customization since, well, ever.

Let’s walk through how to use the new features, explore how they work, and try to answer the most important question: does the iPhone finally offer the kind of home screen flexibility that users have been asking for?

Enlarge / Apple's M3 Max-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro. New Pro laptops and some desktops could be on tap for later this fall. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple's newest iPhones and Apple Watches don't come out until later this week, but the rumor mill is already indicating that Apple is planning a product announcement for October to refresh some of the products that didn't get a mention at the iPhone event. Apple scheduled its release calendar similarly last year, when it announced and released new iPhones in September and then launched the first wave of M3 Macs around Halloween.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman believes that the event will mainly focus on the first wave of Macs with M4 processors, following the standard M4's introduction in the iPad Pro earlier this year. As he has reported previously, he expects new MacBook Pro models with the M4 and "pro-level M4 chip options," presumably the M4 Pro and M4 Max. He also expects an M4 version of the 24-inch iMac.

But the most interesting of the new Macs will still be the redesigned Mac mini, which hasn't gotten an M3 update at all and has been using the same basic external design since 2010. This Mac mini is said to be closer in size to the Apple TV than the current mini, but still uses an internal power supply so that owners won't have to wrangle a power brick. At least some of the current device's ports will be replaced by USB-C and/or Thunderbolt ports, something that MacRumors apparently confirmed earlier today when they found a reference to an "Apple silicon Mac mini (5 ports)" in an Apple software update (some of those ports are reportedly on the front of the device, a nice Mac Studio design upgrade that I'd like to see on a new Mac mini).

Enlarge / Illustration of a person who refuses to check their iPhone's messages until RCS is enabled on their MVNO carrier, out of respect for their Android-toting friends and family. (credit: Getty Images)

The future of inter-OS mobile messaging is here, it's just unevenly distributed.

With iOS 18, Apple has made it possible for non-Apple phones to message with iPhones through Rich Communication Services (RCS). This grants upgrades from standard SMS text messages, like read receipts, easier and higher-quality media sending, typing indicators, and emoji/response compatibility. More than that, it allows for messaging while on Wi-Fi without cellular services and makes group messages far less painful to navigate and leave. Notably, RCS messages between iPhones and non-iPhones will not be encrypted, like Apple's private iMessage service available exclusively between Apple devices.

iOS 18 makes these RCS upgrades possible, but certainly not guaranteed, at least as of today. Lots of people have already been enjoying cross-platform RCS messaging when texting with iOS 18 beta users. And iPhones on the big carriers' plans can now trade RCS with Android users. But some iPhone users, particularly on mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs)—typically pre-paid services that do not own network hardware but resell major carrier access—do not have an RCS option available to them yet.

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Today is the official release date for the public versions of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, macOS 15 Sequoia, and a scad of other Apple software updates, the foundation that Apple will use for Apple Intelligence and whatever other features it wants to add between now and next year's Worldwide Developers Conference in June. But for those who value stability and reliability over new features, you may not be excited to update to a new operating system with a version number ending in "0."

For those of you who prefer to wait for a couple of bugfix updates before installing new stuff, Apple is also releasing security-only updates for a bunch of its (now) last-generation operating systems today. The iOS 17.7, iPadOS 17.7, and macOS 14.7 updates are either available now or should be shortly, along with a security update for 2022's macOS 13 Ventura. An updated version of Safari 18 that runs on both macOS 13 and 14 should be available soon, though as of this writing is doesn't appear to be available yet.

Apple has historically been pretty good about providing security updates to older macOS releases—you can expect them for about two years after the operating system is replaced by a newer version. But for iOS and iPadOS, the company used to stop updating older versions entirely after releasing a new one. This changed back in 2021, when Apple decided to start providing some security-only updates to older iOS versions to help people who were worried about installing an all-new potentially buggy OS upgrade.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

The macOS 15 Sequoia update will inevitably be known as "the AI one" in retrospect, introducing, as it does, the first wave of "Apple Intelligence" features.

That's funny because none of that stuff is actually ready for the 15.0 release that's coming out today. A lot of it is coming "later this fall" in the 15.1 update, which Apple has been testing entirely separately from the 15.0 betas for weeks now. Some of it won't be ready until after that—rumors say image generation won't be ready until the end of the year—but in any case, none of it is ready for public consumption yet.

But the AI-free 15.0 release does give us a chance to evaluate all of the non-AI additions to macOS this year. Apple Intelligence is sucking up a lot of the media oxygen, but in most other ways, this is a typical 2020s-era macOS release, with one or two headliners, several quality-of-life tweaks, and some sparsely documented under-the-hood stuff that will subtly change how you experience the operating system.