Speaking of Rene Ritchie, I kind of hate how clever this idea for a video is:

This morning, Apple announced the Independent Repair Provider Program:

Apple today announced a new repair program, offering customers additional options for the most common out-of-warranty iPhone repairs. Apple will provide more independent repair businesses — large or small — with the same genuine parts, tools, training, repair manuals and diagnostics as its Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASPs). The program is launching in the US with plans to expand to other countries.

“To better meet our customers’ needs, we’re making it easier for independent providers across the US to tap into the same resources as our Apple Authorized Service Provider network,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer. “When a repair is needed, a customer should have confidence the repair is done right. We believe the safest and most reliable repair is one handled by a trained technician using genuine parts that have been properly engineered and rigorously tested.”

This new support page has more info:

The Independent Repair Provider program is designed for companies interested in offering out-of-warranty repair service for iPhones. Qualifying companies can gain access to Apple genuine parts, tools, training, service guides, diagnostics and resources to perform a variety out-of-warranty iPhone repairs, such as iPhone display and battery replacements.

As you may imagine, Rene Ritchie has posted a good explainer of the pros and cons of the new program:

I for one think this is a good move. Many, many people live in parts of the country without Apple Stores or AASPs, and having access to genuine Apple parts — and trained installers — is important as iPhones become more and more complex. The “Right to Repair” folks make good points, but Apple isn’t going to play ball with the idea that everyday people should be able to replace components inside their iPhones. In that reality, this may be as good as it gets for a while.

Earlier this month, Apple suspended its program that used collected audio samples from Siri interactions to improve the service. The service was made public when a story was broken by The Guardian back in July:

Apple contractors regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex, as part of their job providing quality control, or “grading”, the company’s Siri voice assistant, the Guardian has learned.

Although Apple does not explicitly disclose it in its consumer-facing privacy documentation, a small proportion of Siri recordings are passed on to contractors working for the company around the world. They are tasked with grading the responses on a variety of factors, including whether the activation of the voice assistant was deliberate or accidental, whether the query was something Siri could be expected to help with and whether Siri’s response was appropriate.

Apple says the data “is used to help Siri and dictation … understand you better and recognise what you say”.

Today, Apple is addressing the story directly, making several changes to this program:

First, by default, we will no longer retain audio recordings of Siri interactions. We will continue to use computer-generated transcripts to help Siri improve.

Second, users will be able to opt in to help Siri improve by learning from the audio samples of their requests. We hope that many people will choose to help Siri get better, knowing that Apple respects their data and has strong privacy controls in place. Those who choose to participate will be able to opt out at any time.

Third, when customers opt in, only Apple employees will be allowed to listen to audio samples of the Siri interactions. Our team will work to delete any recording which is determined to be an inadvertent trigger of Siri.

These are good changes, but it is how the program should have worked from the day is started. There’s no doubt that Apple failed to live up to its own standards here.

I think the company could go further in making Siri more private, though. As I read this, having your Siri requests turned into computer-generated transcripts for review is still the default. I understand Apple needs to make Siri better, but the human review of these transcripts should be opt-in as well.

(Being able to hire some of the contractors caught in the middle would have been good, too.)

Don’t miss the support article about Siri Grading.

Apple has released an update to macOS Mojave 10.14.6, with the following fixes:

• Resolves an issue that may cause certain Mac notebooks to shut down during sleep
• Fixes an issue that may degrade performance when working with very large files
• Addresses an issue that may prevent Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iMovie, and GarageBand from updating

The update isn’t listed (yet?) in Apple’s Mojave update page, but is available now in System Preferences.