An Apple a Day is a weekly roundup of the biggest Apple news this week. To see last week’s roundup, click here.
Apple’s decision to eliminate the headphone jack in its new iPhone 7 is still annoying some users.
In the past week, two separate unofficial workarounds have emerged for adding a 3.5mm headphone jack to the iPhone. The trouble is that only one of them actually works—and requires a phone case to implement—and the other permanently damages the device and fails to provide a wired alternative to listening to music using Bluetooth earbuds.
But that’s just one of many Apple (AAPL) topics this week. In the last several days, two new reports about Apple’s massive $14.5 billion tax fine in Europe and how the company failed to aggressively lobby for a better deal, and speculation kicked into high fear about when the company will next debut new products. Along the way, there’s been talk of iPhone hacking and an admission by Apple executives that they may have been overly ambitious in their roadmap for Apple Music.
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Read on to check out the latest edition of An Apple a Day:
- A recent YouTube video got a lot of attention showing someone drilling a 3.5mm hole into the bottom of the iPhone 7. Unfortunately, some iPhone 7 owners seem to have thought the video was legitimate and said in comments on YouTube that they had tried to copy the technique to make their phones compatible with wired headphones. The result? A bricked iPhone 7. The video is a joke, folks. Put…the drill…down.
- Hardware developer Diego Prince this week announced a new case that fits both the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and that comes with a headphone jack. Dubbed the Fuze, the case the comes with Lightning-to-3.5mm-headphone-jack adapter built in, allowing users to plug in their headphones and enjoy tethered audio listening. It’s available to back now on crowdfunding site Indiegogo.
- According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple spent about $1.1 million on lobbying the EU in 2015. Sources told the Journal said that Apple should have spent a lot more on lobbying to improve its chances of getting a smaller fine for allegedly shifting profits to Ireland. The anemic lobbying, those sources said, likely left Apple in the dark about the EU’s tax probe until the company was slapped with its $14.5 billion bill.
- According to a Bloomberg report, Apple plans to appeal the EU’s tax ruling and accuse investigators of failing to share details about their investigation with Apple, in violation of their rules. Ireland, which supports Apple in the case despite the possibility of netting billions of dollars in additional revenue from the penalty, will also appeal the case on the same grounds. The EU told Fortune, however, that Apple knew all along how the investigation and how it was progressing.
- Apple could be updating its MacBook Pro later this month. The company is reportedly working on a new MacBook Pro with a touchbar above the keyboard and a Touch ID sensor for additional security. The computer could be introduced as early as the end of October.
- Jimmy Iovine, head of Apple Music and a longtime music industry executive, said this week in an interview with BuzzFeed that Apple tried to do too much too soon with Apple Music. Since its launch last year, Apple has scaled back on its Apple Music plans, Iovine said, but he added that the company is working on new features that no one expects.
- Following a change in how it encrypts backups to its iOS 10 devices, Apple’s new mobile operating system is about 2,500 times easier to hack than iOS 9-based products. Apple acknowledged the problem in a statement to Fortune this week, and said that it would issue an update to fix the flaw in an upcoming security patch. Until then, it’s possible for hackers to obtain passwords, credit card data, and other information from backups completed via iTunes.
- Insurance giant Aetna said this week that it would start offering Apple Watches to some of its largest customers this fall. While it didn’t reveal the size of the Watch discounts, customers will be able to pay off what they do owe through monthly payroll deductions.
- Zerodium, a seller of security vulnerabilities, announced it would pay hackers $1.5 million for an exploit that would allow it to gain access to an iPhone or iPad user’s data, even if they’re running a fully patched version of iOS 10. Zerodium previously paid $500,000 for the same hack. Apple pays up to $200,000 for hackers to uncover weakness in its security so the company knows how to fix the problem.
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One more thing…A man was caught on video on Thursday destroying iPhones, Macs, and other Apple hardware in an Apple Store in Dijon, France. He was reportedly upset with a “repayment problem,” leaving him with no other choice, at least in his mind, but to destroy thousands of dollars of Apple hardware.
