Apple will soon start cracking down on Apps that collect data on users' devices in order to track them (aka "fingerprinting"), according to an article on its developer site spotted by 9to5Mac. Starting with the release of iOS 17, tvOS 17, watchOS 10 and macOS Sonoma, developers will be required to explain why they're using so-called required reason APIs. Apps failing to provide a valid reason will be rejected started in spring of 2024.  

"Some APIs... have the potential of being misused to access device signals to try to identify the device or user, also known as fingerprinting. Regardless of whether a user gives your app permission to track, fingerprinting is not allowed," Apple wrote. "To prevent the misuse of certain APIs that can be used to collect data about users’ devices through fingerprinting, you’ll need to declare the reasons for using these APIs in your app’s privacy manifest."

The new rules could increase the rate of app rejections, some developers told 9to5Mac. For instance, an API called UserDefaults falls into the "required reason" category, but since it stores user preferences, it's used by a lot of apps. At the same time, it sounds like Apple will basically need to take a developer's word for reason declarations. If those prove to be false, though, it would certainly have a paper trail for any potential penalties. 

Fingerprinting apps can use API calls to retrieve characteristics of your smartphone or PC, including the screen resolution, model, OS and more. It can then take all this information and create a unique "fingerprint," so it can identify you when you go to other apps or websites.

Apple effectively declared war on tracking when it released iOS 14.5 in 2021, requiring developers to ask users' permission before tracking them. Since that feature arrived, only 4 percent of US iPhone users have agreed to app tracking. Now, it's trying to stop fingerprinting (also called canvas fingerprinting), which first appeared in the digital zeitgeist a decade ago. Back in 2018, Apple said it would address fingerprinting on macOS by limiting the data that websites can access on its Safari browser, and now, it's addressing the issue with apps as well.

Researchers at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering and Grossman School of Medicine have created an app to help people with visual impairments navigate New York City’s subway system. Commute Booster uses a smartphone camera to recognize relevant signs along a transit route, guiding the user to their destination while ignoring nonessential signs and posters.

Commute Booster is designed for the “middle mile,” where passengers trawl through turnstiles, busy passageways and terminals to stay on the correct route. The app combines general transit feed specification (GTFS), a standardized and publicly available database about public transportation routes, with optical character recognition (OCR) to interpret signs and guide the user accordingly. “By integrating these two components, Commute Booster provides real-time feedback to users regarding the presence or absence of relevant navigation signs within the field of view of their phone camera during their journey,” an NYU press release published today reads.

A study that used the app on three NYC stations — Jay Street-Metrotech, Dekalb Avenue and Canal Street — had a 97 percent success rate in identifying the relevant signs needed to reach a mock destination. It managed to “read” the signs at a distance and from various angles expected from a typical commute.

“The ‘middle mile’ often involves negotiating a complex network of underground corridors, ticket booths and subway platforms. It can be treacherous for people who cannot rely on sight,” said John-Ross Rizzo, MD, an NYU professor (and co-author of the paper) known for his engineering work that helps people with disabilities. “Most GPS-enabled navigation apps address ‘first’ and ‘last’ miles only, so they fall short of meeting the needs of blind or low-vision commuters. Commute Booster is meant to fill that gap.”

Next is a planned human subject study to see how well the app holds up in real-world navigation scenarios. After that, the researchers hope to make it available for public use “in the near term.” Commute Booster is a simple smartphone app using a modern handset’s standard sensors, but that means users need to hold their phones’ cameras up as they navigate New York’s subway system — still well worth it, but less than an ideal setup. One can easily imagine this or a similar app running on AR smartglasses if or when they ever find broader consumer appeal. (Some companies have already tried.)

Generative AI in Photoshop is now useful for more than filling in gaps. Adobe has updated the Photoshop beta with a Generative Expand feature that grows an image using AI-made content. Drag the crop tool beyond the original picture size and you can add material with or without a text prompt. This can help when an image is simply too small, of course, but Adobe also believes it can help when you want to change aspect ratios, fix a cut-off subject or otherwise touch up artwork.

At the same time, generative AI text prompts in the beta now work in over 100 languages. You won't have to use a very common language like English to produce content.

Generative Expand and the wider text prompt support should be available once you've updated the Photoshop beta app. Adobe is teasing more generative AI features arriving this fall, so you'll have more creative tools before long.

As with Generative Fill, Expand is meant primarily for creators who are more interested in artistic expression than accuracy. The catch, of course, is that you can also distort or exaggerate images. You can create a dramatic panorama of a pristine beach when the reality is far uglier, for instance. While manipulating images in editors like Photoshop is nothing new, the AI makes it easier to spread misinformation or otherwise mislead viewers.

GoodRx, best known for its prescription drug price comparison tool, has launched a new free offering called “Medicine Cabinet.” The tool will allow GoodRx app users to manage their prescription medications on a single platform. This comes on the heels of the news that the company is working with CVS Health to develop the Caremark Cost Saver, which could lower pharmacy out-of-pocket drug costs for shoppers.

Medicine Cabinet will automatically integrate within the GoodRx app and will feature tools like a “prescriptions dashboard” where a consumer can set up refill reminders and find the best pharmacies to pick up their medications at the lowest price. At the heart of the app are daily pill reminders that are customizable to any treatment plan that is uploaded into the app. GoodRx Chief Product Officer Mark Hull said the reminders feature is huge because 50 percent of the time, Americans are struggling to take their medications as prescribed for reasons as simple as forgetfulness or cost.

The Medicine Cabinet also includes a dashboard for GoodRx’s rewards program which offers users monetary perks like e-gift cards for staying on top of medication refills. “Nobody's integrating or rewarding people for having those healthy habits,” Hull said.

“What we've found is that the winning model for us is to marry the discounts, the value and the rewards, with the basic healthy habits and reminder stuff,” he added. GoodRx claims it can save consumers up to 80 percent off the price of prescription drugs by partnering with pharmacy benefits managers to negotiate deals on drugs. Normally, the average consumer wouldn’t otherwise have access to these discounts without middlemen like GoodRx.

GoodRx

The Medicine Cabinet tool has only been in development for roughly six months and will be available on iOS, but not on Android just yet.

“GoodRx was able to develop Medicine Cabinet so quickly in part due to the data it has already amassed from users and providers over the last decade.” "If a startup were doing this, it would take a long time, they don't have the data, they don't have the relationships with retailers, they don't already have the customer base," Hull said. “We already have a half a billion prescriptions in federal records from the millions of people who have been using us for the last 12 plus years.”

Hull said he actually wishes Medicine Cabinet could have come sooner. He recalls when his stepfather had a heart attack a couple of years ago. "When he came home from the hospital, he had like a dozen medications he had to manage," Hull said, remembering it as a nerve wracking time for his family and specifically his mother. "For the average person who's managing a condition with multiple medications, it's a lot of work and so we're really trying to make it simple, clear and obvious what you need to do at any given point to help manage your condition."

GoodRx

Down the line, Hull hopes Medicine Cabinet will be easier for older people to use, with the inclusion of features that will let a user take a photo of a medication instead of having to look it up in the database.

Still, GoodRx's history of being caught up in legal trouble related to data privacy issues is worth noting. Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission fined the company for the unauthorized disclosure of customers' identifiable health information with third parties, such as Facebook and Google. “Our privacy policy applies to Medicine Cabinet, which sits within the GoodRx app. We are very transparent about what information we collect and how we use it to personalize and customize our products for consumers. Additionally, the feature is only available for users who have registered for a GoodRx account,” a representative said. The company’s recent focus on transparency and adherence to privacy policies suggest it's taking the issue seriously, though as with any telehealth company, data privacy will always be a front and center concern.

The Overture Maps Foundation, a group founded by Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and TomTom, has released an initial open dataset that will help developers build mapping apps and other location-based tools. The "alpha" set includes worldwide info for over 59 million places, 780 million unique buildings, road data from OpenStreetMap and borders.

The map layers are packaged in a recently-launched Overture map format that's meant to be standardized and interoperable between platforms. The group is mainly sharing the data at this stage to get public feedback, rather than to support complete products.

The foundation was formed in December last year by a range of companies that include geospatial and mapping firms in addition to tech giants. While open map data isn't a new concept, Overture believes the collective effort is necessary to deliver accurate, up-to-date info that's no longer practical for any one organization to provide. Ideally, a newcomer won't have to worry about supplying outdated or incomplete directions.

Overture is quick to warn that there's still a lot of work left before its material is truly ready. Upcoming releases will include more open data, greater interoperability and the use of a stable ID system that will help map builders consistently add content. You might not see apps relying much (if at all) on the alpha dataset, but it serves as a starting point that gives app creators an idea of what's possible.

Google has historically dominated the mobile navigation app market, with Google Maps and Waze together claiming a clear majority of use in recent years. Apple Maps, meanwhile, tends to get nearly all the remaining share. There's not much room for challengers, and they normally need massive resources just to be competitive. Overture's open data could make it much easier to produce viable alternatives, even if they're unlikely to unseat Apple or Google any time soon.

Seven years after Bumble launched Bumble BFF, the company is finally giving users their own app for making friends. Bumble has announced the release of Bumble For Friends, an app dedicated solely to finding friends in your area. The company started testing the app earlier this year in the United Kingdom and select regions of Asia, Mashable reported. 

Bumble For Friends will function almost exactly like Bumble BFF (which makes up 15 percent of Bumble's monthly active users, a Bumble spokesperson told TechCrunch). However, there will be no need to download a dating app — something coupled-up users will likely be happy about. Like a dating app, though, you create a profile with a mix of photos, information about yourself and responses to prompts. It can include things like if you drink, your political affiliation, your relationship status and why you're looking to make friends. Your Bumble For Friends profile will also have space to share some of your interests, like dogs or dancing — one of the things Bumble uses to help match you with potential friends.

There is one new feature on Bumble For Friends: the option to create a group chat. Basically, if you think any of your matches would also get along, you can add two or more of them to a group chat. To use this option, go into the conversations tab and pick a Bumble-suggested activity or add your own. You can also just give the group chat a name (which you can edit later on) if you don't want to pick what to do. From there, you can invite matches and get talking. Invitees will receive a notification about the chat showing them your chosen title or the potential activity.

Bumble For Friends is free to download on Apple's App Store or the Google Play Store. You can create a new account or log into your existing one and have your profile and matches transferred over. At that point, your Bumble BFF account will disappear from the original app, but you can still use Date or Bizz modes. Bumble doesn't seem to be forcing anyone to switch to the new app, so you can still keep all your accounts in one place if you prefer.

OpenAI was true to its word. As promised, the company has released a ChatGPT app for Android. Like the iOS version, you can talk to the generative AI to get advice, answers and other (hopefully) helpful responses. You can make voice requests using OpenAI's in-house speech recognition, sync your chat history across devices and export data — you'll mainly miss out on plugins.

ChatGPT Plus subscribers can also switch between standard (GPT-3.5) and GPT-4 language models at will. Regardless of the tier you're using, you'll need at least Android 6.0 to use the app.

The app could make ChatGPT more accessible, particularly in countries where Android dominates or PCs are less common. The software has been available for iPhone users since May, and was updated with iPad support afterward.

As with Bing Chat (based on GPT-4), Bard and other conversational AI systems, you won't want to completely rely on the results. The technology is prone to "hallucinations" that can lead to false claims, poor contextual logic and other output that isn't trustworthy. ChatGPT is sometimes more useful as a starting point than definitive answers. 

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

If you've wanted to customize (or simply deface) the websites you visit, you'll now have an easy time of it. The Browser Company has released its Arc 1.0 browser for the Mac, no waitlist required. The finished version includes a few features that have popped up in recent weeks, including an optional toolbar, a site "control center" and picture-in-picture support for Google Meet video calls. The software should be leaner and faster than previous versions, too.

As before, Arc rethinks some of the fundamentals of web browsers. You can personalize the look and layout of a website using Boosts that let you change colors, replace fonts and even "zap" sections you don't want to see. While this doesn't work perfectly for every website, you can share many customizations with other users. You can use coding and scripts to create Boosts, but they don't require that know-how.

Tabs are still present. However, you primarily organize browsing around switchable virtual spaces (effectively tab groups) that help you focus on a given task, such as work or your social media catch-up. You can pin sites you use often, and there's a command bar that courts power users.

A Windows version of Arc is coming "soon," the company says. This probably won't supplant Chrome, Edge or Safari if you're a fan of those browsers. They still cover common tasks well, and the familiar interfaces may well be enough. However, Arc may be what you're looking for if you wish you could reshape the web to your liking.

If Apple is going to make the Vision Pro a success, it's going to need compelling apps — and that means giving developers hardware ahead of time. Accordingly, the company is now making Vision Pro developer kits available. If you qualify, you'll get a loaned mixed reality headset as well as help with setup, expert "check-ins" and extra support requests beyond what developers normally get.

The operative term, as you might guess, is "if." You're submitting an application, not buying a product like the old Apple Silicon Developer Transition Kit. In addition to being part of the Apple Developer Program, you'll need to detail your existing apps and overall team talent. The company will favor creators whose app "takes advantage" of the Vision Pro's features. You can't just assume you'll get a headset, then, and you're less likely to get one if you're a newcomer or simply porting an iPad app. You'll have to be content with the visionOS beta software if you don't make the cut.

You also can't use the wearable for bragging rights. Apple requires that developers keep the Vision Pro in a secure workspace that only authorized team members can access. The company can also request a unit return at any time. Don't expect many leaked details, in other words.

The current kit may only end up in the hands of larger developers as a result. However, the launch shows how Apple intends to court app creators, and what titles you're likely to see when Vision Pro arrives early next year. The focus is on polished experiences that help sell the concept, rather than a huge catalog. That's not surprising when the Vision Pro is a $3,499 device aimed at professionals and enthusiasts, but you may have to wait a while before small studios release apps based on real-world testing.

Twitter’s rebrand to X is officially underway, and CEO Linda Yaccarino has offered some new clues about what it may mean for the company. In a memo reported byCNBC, Yaccarino suggested that payments and banking features could feature prominently in Elon Musk’s new vision.

“Our usage is at an all time high and we’ll continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in audio, video, messaging, payments, banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,” she wrote.

It’s long been rumored that Musk is keen to bring banking features to Twitter. In January, the Financial Timesreported that he wanted “to offer fintech services such as peer-to-peer transactions, savings accounts and debit cards” to users, as well as additional tipping and shopping features. The paper reported the company had applied for regulatory paperwork necessary to offer such features in the US, but the executive reportedly overseeing the project departed in February.

Yaccarino’s memo suggests those plans have been revived, though it’s light on specifics. Musk has previously talked about his desire to turn Twitter into an “everything app” akin to WeChat in China, where the messaging app is central to users’ daily activities.

Overall, Yaccarino’s memo is notably vague. She said that X would “go even further to transform the global town square” and cited recent updates the company has made around creator monetization and longform content. “Many companies say they want to move fast — but we enjoy moving at the speed of light, and when we do, that’s X,” she wrote. “With X, we serve our entire community of users and customers by working tirelessly to preserve free expression and choice, create limitless interactivity, and create a marketplace that enables the economic success of all its participants.”