Apple’s Head of Hardware Engineering is Out

By Ian Bell Published June 15, 2018

An Apple Inc. executive whose responsibilities include iPhone 4 hardware is leaving the company in the wake of antenna problems with the newest version of the smart phone.

Apple was forced to offer a free fix after consumers complained and numerous media outlets reported a problem with dropped calls.

Recommended Videos

Mark Papermaster, Apple’s senior vice president of iPhone and iPod hardware engineering, is leaving the company, according to Apple spokesman Steve Dowling.

Dowling wouldn’t comment beyond a brief statement or say whether Papermaster was fired or is leaving voluntarily.

Papermaster’s departure comes weeks after Apple announced it will give free protective cases to buyers of its latest iPhone model to alleviate the so-called “death grip” problem: holding the phone with a bare hand can muffle the wireless signal.

Ian Bell

Publisher

I'm the co-founder and CEO of Digital Trends Media Group, which I launched in 2006 out of my home office to share my passion…

Topics

Computing

Microsoft has begun rolling out Copilot Code for building apps with natural language

The workplace-focused vibe coding tool can pull context from emails, documents, meetings, and chats.

Microsoft introduced Code last month as one of the three core parts of its revamped Copilot app. The app was pitched as an easy-to-use coding agent that lets users describe what they want to build in natural language, like an app, a tracker, a dashboard, an automation, or a workflow, and Copilot would build it for them.

Essentially, it's a workplace-focused vibe-coding app that turns existing work into a functional app, and Microsoft has begun rolling it out through the Frontier program.

Computing

AI agents are acting like rogues and causing a huge headache for US banks

US banks block AI agents over fears they could make unauthorised financial moves

US banks are facing a new kind of digital headache: artificial intelligence agents attempting to access customer accounts and perform actions that may go beyond what users intended. As AI tools become more capable of navigating websites and carrying out tasks independently, financial institutions are scrambling to prevent them from crossing security boundaries.

According to a report published by Axios on October 22, major US banks have detected third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts without authorisation. Some agents reportedly appeared to attempt actions independently of user instructions. The banks involved have not publicly detailed every incident, and there is no evidence that the reported activity resulted in widespread theft of customer funds.

Computing

Canva enters the AI image generation race with Craft, and it’s thinking beyond pretty pictures

The new model plans layouts before generating images, with precise editing and support for 30 aspect ratios.

AI can generate all kinds of pretty pictures, but getting it to spell a headline correctly or keep a poster's layout intact can be another story. Canva wants to fix that with Canva Craft, its first in-house image generation model. Rather than focusing primarily on photographs, Craft is designed around the posters, presentations, social media graphics, and other visual content people actually create. The goal is simple: spend less time fixing AI's mistakes and more time making something useful.

Canva Craft plans before it generates