Month: September 2016

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SAN FRANCISCO—About a year and a half after releasing the first model, Apple has announced that it will release a second-generation model: the Apple Watch Series 2. The biggest new feature for the watch is its swim-proof design, which is water-resistant up to 50 meters.

Apple explained the hardest part of making a device like the Apple Watch water-resistant is the speaker, since it's just another entryway for water to get into the watch. The company designed the Apple Watch Series 2's speaker to eject water that comes into it, so it won't stay inside the watch and potentially damage the internals. In addition to specially designing the water-rejecting speaker, Apple also developed two custom swimming workouts for those who swim regularly as part of an exercise routine. It's quite hard to estimate calorie burn for any exercise, let alone swimming, but Apple seems confident that their research and testing of swimming workouts has helped it develop an algorithm that can accurately measure caloric burn from swimming strokes.

Aside from the swim-proof feature, the most significant internal upgrades are the “S2,” the catch-all term for everything from the watch’s CPU, GPU, and RAM to its wireless, storage, and motion controllers. Apple says the S2 should be 50 percent faster than the Apple S1 in the first Apple Watch and the GPU should be two times faster than the previous, which should hopefully cut down on the amount of time it can take for the watch to respond to input. The Apple Watch Series 2's display is also getting a bump in brightness and will be two times brighter than before, which Apple says will make a big difference when viewing it in sunlight.

SAN FRANCISCO—The Apple Watch may finally have gotten its killer app thanks to a special smartwatch build of Pokémon Go. Dubbed Pokémon Go Plus, the watch-specific version of the game will launch exclusively on Apple Watches "later this month." No pricing information was given for the game.

Niantic CEO John Hanke took the stage at Apple's Wednesday event to announce that Pokémon Go players had already collectively walked 4.6 billion km—and that's just when players had their phones out to track steps. Pokémon Go Plus will do players one better by tracking their steps when their phones are in their pockets, which will aid the game's "egg hatching" system (which requires walking no less than 5km per egg to hatch).

Pokémon Go Plus won't allow players to check a live map and throw Pokéballs; instead, it will alert walking players that certain Pokémon characters are nearby, at which point players can choose to turn their phones on and load the default app to try to catch the creature in question. The presentation didn't confirm whether or not players will be able to disable those alerts for lower-level creatures, so there's no telling whether players' wrists will buzz endlessly with alerts about piddly Pidgeys.

Miyamoto on stage at his first-ever Apple event to announce Super Mario Run. (credit: Ars Technica)

SAN FRANCISCO—Any question about Nintendo's bullishness about smartphone gaming evaporated on Wednesday with the announcement of Super Mario Run for iOS. The auto-running Super Mario game—and first Mario game for smartphones—will launch in time for "holiday 2016," and it was announced by none other than Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto at Apple's major September press event.

After demonstrating the game, Miyamoto told the crowd that the game will launch "at a set price so you won't have to worry about continuing to pay." Pricing was not announced just yet. Apple's Tim Cook confirmed that the game will launch first on iOS.

This story is developing.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

SAN FRANCISCO—As expected, Apple has taken the wraps off of its next-generation iPhones at today's September product event. Apple confirmed the devices on Twitter with a post about the waterproof nature of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The post came down quickly as today's event rolled on, but it is screenshotted below.

Whoops, this tweet seemed to mysteriously disappear after today's Apple event got rolling. (credit: https://twitter.com/Apple/status/773566883366711296)

Externally, the new phones are broadly similar to the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus that they’ll be replacing. The iPhone 7 has a 4.7-inch display and the larger 7 Plus has a 5.5-inch screen, and both phones retain the curved edges and camera bumps that helped define the iPhone 6 and 6S design. The antenna cutouts on the back of the phone have been tweaked to be less obvious, however, which gives the phone a somewhat cleaner look as long as you don’t have it in a case.

Both phones will come in a slightly wider range of color options than before. In addition to silver, gold, and rose gold, the phones will come in a “dark black” finish to replace the “space grey” color that Apple has been using (and changing) since 2013. There’s also a “piano black” finish that’s glossy rather than matte.

OPM officials did nearly everything wrong as far as security goes and then lied about it, House Oversight Committee Republicans said in a final report on the OPM breach. (credit: Photo illustration by Sean Gallagher, based on image by Colin)

A report from the Republican majority on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee published today places blame for the 2014 and 2015 data breaches at the Office of Personnel Management squarely on the OPM's leadership. The report finds that the long-time network infiltration that exposed sensitive personal information on about 21.5 million individuals could have been prevented but for "the longstanding failure of OPM's leadership to implement basic cyber hygiene."

"Tools were available that could have prevented the breaches, but OPM failed to leverage those tools to mitigate the agency's extensive responsibilities," the report concluded. And the committee's majority report also asserted that former OPM Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour lied repeatedly during her testimony, misstating how the agency responded to the breach and misleading Congress and the public about the damage done by the attack. Ars extensively covered the shortfalls in OPM's security last year.

The House Oversight report reveals that there were two separate extensive breaches—one beginning as early as November of 2013, which went undiscovered until March 2014 and was finally shut down completely two months later, allowed attackers to obtain manuals and technical information about the types of data stored in OPM systems. A second attack began shortly afterward, targeting background investigation data, personnel records, and fingerprint data. These breaches were determined to be likely conducted by the "Axiom Group" and "Deep Panda," respectively, two China-based hacking groups alleged to have ties to the Chinese government. The attacks used a series of domains—some with OPM-related names (opmsecurity.org and opmlearning.org) and registered under the names of Marvel superheroes Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Steve Rogers (Captain America)—to control malware and exfiltrate stolen data.

Questions regarding the safety of Tesla's electric vehicles—and their ability to drive semi-autonomously—are being raised once again, following reports of a fatal crash on Wednesday morning in the town of Baarn, in the Netherlands. However there's no evidence as yet that Autopilot was involved when a Model S left the road at high speed and hit a tree.

The impact was sufficient to damage the Model S' battery pack enough that part of it ended up alight on the road surface. There are some reports in Dutch media that rescue attempts by the emergency services were hampered by this blaze, although it may just have been due to the nature of the wreck.

Tesla sent a representative to the crash site. The carmaker has said it will launch an investigation and that "[o]nce the outcome is known, Tesla will share with the audience," something it has done for other high-profile crashes. Wednesday's crash isn't the first to make news in the Netherlands, and in July the Dutch vehicle approval authority was reportedly looking into differences between European and US implementations of Autopilot.