Month: January 2021

Enlarge / The Mac App Store—the only place you can easily get iOS and iPadOS apps for Mac.

Apple has plugged a hole that allowed users to sideload iOS and iPad applications to M1 Macs that were never intended to run on desktop, 9to5Mac reports. The server-side change ensures that only applications that app developers have flagged as optimized for Mac will run.

Late last year, Apple launched its first Macs running on its own ARM-based custom CPU called the M1, as opposed to the Intel chips that have been used in Macs for several years. These new machines included the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air, and the low-end Mac mini.

Since those machines now share an architecture with iPhones and iPads, which also have closely related ARM-based chips, it became possible to run iOS and iPadOS apps natively on Macs that were equipped with the M1 chip. Apple supported this by listing iPhone and iPad apps that passed an automated test on the Mac App Store, provided developers did not opt out of having the app listed.

Enlarge / Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman of Samsung, seen here leaving a court hearing in January 2017. (credit: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

It's back to jail for Samsung's leader, Lee Jae-yong (aka Jay Y. Lee). Lee has been embroiled in a legal battle for his role in "Choigate," a major 2016 South Korean political scandal that led to South Korean President Park Geun-hye being impeached and removed from office. The scandal is named for the president's top aid, Choi Soon-sil, a member of a shamanistic cult that was found to be masterminding South Korean government policy via her influence over the president. It's a long story, but Choi was sentenced to 20 years in prison for influence peddling, and Park was sentenced to 25 years.

Samsung's part in this mess involves accusations that Lee bribed Choi for favorable rulings related to the merger of two Samsung affiliates. In 2017, Lee was sentenced to five years in jail after being found guilty of bribery, embezzlement, capital flight, and perjury charges. Six months after his sentencing, an appeals court cut Lee's sentence in half and suspended the charges for bribery and embezzlement. Lee was released from prison while the appeals process continued. The case wound its way all the way up to the South Korean Supreme Court, which, in 2019, ordered a retrial.

Today's ruling sentences Lee to 30 months in prison, and after having already served one year, Samsung's leader should be spending the next year and a half behind bars.

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  After winning the last couple of Le Mans races with its TS050, Toyota Gazoo Racing returns in 2021 with an all-new car for an all-new category. It's called the GR010, and it will compete in the Le Mans Hypercar class. [credit: Toyota ]

The future of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is resolving into shape. On Friday, Toyota Gazoo Racing unveiled its new GR010 Hybrid, an all-wheel drive prototype that will compete in the overall win at the annual French race later this year (pandemic willing). It's the first competitor to break cover from the new Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) class, which replaces the old LMP1h category that shone so brightly for a few short years in the middle of the last decade.

LMP1h gave rise to some of the fastest and most technologically advanced racing cars the world has ever seen. But it wasn't cheap, and by 2018 Toyota was all that was left, its cars hobbled by ACO (the race organizers) to give the non-hybrid LMP1 privateer teams a fighting chance.

Car manufacturer interest in racing series waxes and wanes, and it doesn't require much imagination to see how a combination of global economic uncertainty and an expensive ruleset could negatively impact participation. The ACO's answer was a new category called the hypercar, which would open the doors to racing versions of those seven-figure slices of unobtainium-on-wheels like the Adrian Newey-designed Aston Martin Valkyrie—albeit running at much lower power levels than the unrestricted road cars.