AppleMagazine #588

The Cadillac growls, while the Porsche and BMW scream. The Acura sounds like an Indy car, and for fun, turn your back to the track and listen carefully as the cars roar around Daytona International Speedway in a new era of IMSA sports car racing. The top prototype class has switched to hybrid engines this year to make IMSA the first North American racing series to make the technology upgrade. It was the automakers that wanted to move to hybrid so that their motorsports programs would reflect the direction most have taken for their road cars. “We are in the transformation, or transition, into the electric world,” said Andreas Roos, head of BMW M Motorsport. “This is the perfect fit to be in parallel between our road car development and our racing.…

Ford is cutting prices on its Mustang Mach-E electric SUV by as much as $6,000 just weeks after market leader Tesla took similar steps. The Detroit automaker is increasing production of the Mach-E this year and said it is taking advantage of streamlined costs to reduce prices across the board, it said. The cut comes just over two weeks after Tesla Inc. dropped prices 6% to nearly 20% in the United States on most of its models in an effort to bolster demand and raise market share. Ford’s maneuver will almost certainly force other automakers to trim prices as well, touching off a bit of a price war for electric vehicles, said Jeff Schuster, president of global forecasting for LMC Automotive, a Detroit-area consulting firm. “To remain price competitive to consumers, it’s going to…

The Biden administration is taking aim at Apple and Google for operating mobile app stores that it says stifle competition. The finding is contained in a Commerce Department report being released by the administration as President Joe Biden convenes his competition council for an update on efforts to promote competition and lower prices. The report from the department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration says the current app store model — dominated by Cupertino, California-based Apple Inc. and Mountain View, California-based Google LLC — is “harmful to consumers and developers” by inflating prices and reducing innovation. The firms have a stranglehold on the market that squelches competition, it adds. “The policies that Apple and Google have in place in their own mobile app stores have created unnecessary barriers and costs for app developers, ranging…

Amazon is axing free grocery delivery for Prime members on orders less than $150. Customers who get their groceries delivered from Amazon Fresh -- and pay less than $150 — will be charged between $3.95 and $9.95, depending on the order size, the company said in an email to Prime members. “We will continue to offer convenient two-hour delivery windows for all orders, and customers in some areas will be able to select a longer, six-hour delivery window for a reduced fee,” Amazon said in the email. Launched in 2005, Prime has more than 200 million members worldwide who pay $139 a year, or $14.99 a month, for faster shipping and other perks, such as free delivery and returns. Currently, the company offers members free grocery deliveries on orders above $35, with the exception…

As Apple increasingly looks to find ways to boost its services revenue and encourage customers to move away from exploitative ad-backed platforms like Facebook, the firm is reportedly on the verge of announcing its own supercharged search engine to rival Google. A “SILENT WAR” WITH GOOGLE It’s no secret that Google and Apple aren’t best friends. Now, according to a new report, two former engineers at Apple have revealed the tech giant holds a grudge against Google due to the alleged copying of iOS by Android. The two tech giants have been competitors in the smartphone market since Google introduced and popularized the Android operating system in the 2000s. This led to an infamous declaration of “thermonuclear war” against Google by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who accused Android of being a “stolen…

The maker of ChatGPT is trying to curb its reputation as a freewheeling cheating machine with a new tool that can help teachers detect if a student or artificial intelligence wrote that homework. The new AI Text Classifier launched this week by OpenAI follows a weeks-long discussion at schools and colleges over fears that ChatGPT’s ability to write just about anything on command could fuel academic dishonesty and hinder learning. OpenAI cautions that its new tool – like others already available – is not foolproof. The method for detecting AI-written text “is imperfect and it will be wrong sometimes,” said Jan Leike, head of OpenAI’s alignment team tasked to make its systems safer. “Because of that, it shouldn’t be solely relied upon when making decisions,” Leike said. Teenagers and college students were among the…