Author: Security – Computerworld

How Apple is in the race for workplace AI

January 17, 2025 / Security – Computerworld

In a few years, every new employee entering the workforce will already have become accustomed to using AI to solve problems and help with tasks – and they’re going to want the same tools at work as those they use at home. That’s the important take-away from new research that shows about a quarter of US teens have used ChatGPT for schoolwork.

We know, because we’ve seen it already; once powerful technologies take hold in the school room, they tend to proliferate across business markets later. We’ve seen it happen before with the Mac, the PC, iPad, and iPhone. We’ve seen it happen in the evolution of photo-sharing sites and social media.

We’re going to keep seeing this happen in the future. You don’t have to like it, but you have to accept that once a technology reaches critical mass in the schoolroom, it appears in business later.

Tomorrow’s world

Tomorrow’s employees have grown up with that tech, meaning Gen Z is also set to be Generation AI. This is going to become increasingly important to business users, who will need to make the right investments today to ensure they have appropriate tech (including experience and policy) in place.

This is something that’s evidently important to device, service, and operating system vendors, as each and every one of them is now engaged in a rapid sprint to deploy AI in their offerings. Apple, of course, is a little unique in that it is attempting to weave privacy into the systems it provides, including Apple Intelligence, something that will be seen as of increasing importance to business users as they seek to lock down their information, both in competitive terms and also to meet data protection requirements.

For digital natives, privacy is a currency they want to control

It’s interesting to see how Generation Z sees privacy. These digital natives want to control the digital narrative concerning their lives, have grown up with the internet, and are more likely to digest information in video than written form.

They also understand how things work. That means they know about the privacy settings on their devices and are more likely than older generations to use them. They are prepared to share personal information in exchange for personalized services, but are concerned about misuse, abuse, or tracking of them or their data — and don’t have much faith in the ability of companies to protect that information.

This implies that, when they begin their working lives, they will prefer workplace solutions that provide both convenience and privacy. But as the digital transformation experience accelerated by the iPhone-led smartphone revolution showed, they will still use AI — even if companies don’t approve the services they prefer.

This is why it is important today to test and rate existing AI systems against your own business security and privacy policies.

Invest in infrastructure

By the time your next generational employee intake takes place, you’ll want to ensure the use of AI across your organization has been tested, verified, and has become mature. Otherwise (and not for the first time), current generations will be leaving it to subsequent ones to figure out how to shave the corners off the wheel, giving those who’ve already figured out how to build better roads for those circular objects the edge when it comes to supporting any kind of customer journey.

It remains to be seen the extent to which AI will either unleash the creativity and innovation its proponents promise us, or confine human endeavor to an Overton window defined by the people who build the AI systems we use. But we already seem unable to leave the vehicle.

There is one more thing for business users planning their AI deployments to consider, and that’s Apple. You see, despite Siri, Apple already has a strong grip on Generation Z — its market share among US teens continues to grow. They like Apple and its services.

While they don’t see Apple Intelligence as a particularly big draw yet, in the fast-moving long game of AI deployment, so long as Apple focuses on things they care about — such as privacy — and delivers AI that does what it says it does, the company’s resurgence in enterprise markets will continue. That means demand for Apple in the workplace will continue to grow, and it will remain essential to open things up with employee choice schemes and consider Mac, iPad, and iPhone deployments across US business.

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Support for Microsoft 365 on Windows 10 ends in mid-October

January 17, 2025 / Security – Computerworld

Bildschirm mit Microsoft 365 — Support for Microsoft 365 ends along with Windows 10

PixieMe/Shutterstock

Although Microsoft announced some time ago that Windows 10 will only be supported (free of charge) until October 14, 2025, the switch to its successor Windows 11 is only taking place slowly.

According to calculations by security provider Eset, 32 million PCs in Germany are still running Windows 10. The situation is similar in other countries. One reason for this is that although the switch to Windows 11 is free, there are stricter hardware requirements which , according to studies by Lansweeper, around 50 percent of computers in Germany do not meet.

Functional, but not supported

To urge more users to upgrade to Windows 11, Microsoft recently announced in a blog post that Microsoft-365 apps will no longer be supported on Windows 10 devices after October 14, 2025. “To use Microsoft 365 apps on your device, you will need to upgrade to Windows 11,” it continued.

The blog post raised numerous questions, and has since been deleted by Microsoft. However, there was no correction or explanation.

What the software giant was actually getting at is shown by a support page on the subject that was updated in December. Here, too, Microsoft points out that Microsoft 365 apps will no longer be supported under Windows 10 after the end of support in mid-October. At the same time, however, the company explains that the applications will continue to work as before. However, to avoid performance and reliability problems over time, an upgrade to Windows 11 is strongly recommended.

The reasoning: “Microsoft 365 is subject to the Modern Lifecycle Policy, which requires that customers keep the product or service up to date according to maintenance and system requirements and use Microsoft 365 on a Windows operating system for which support is currently provided.”

License versions not affected

The situation is somewhat clearer for Office versions with a one-time license: Based on the Fixed Lifecycle Policy, “Office Home & Student”, “Office Home & Business” or “Office Professional Plus” will continue to be fully supported under Windows 10 — as long as they do not reach the end of support themselves. Support for Office 2016 and 2019 will also end at the same time as Windows 10.

Robots get their ‘ChatGPT moment’

January 17, 2025 / Security – Computerworld

Nvidia unveiled a new platform at CES called Cosmos. It’s a world foundation model (WFM) development platform designed to advance and accelerate Physical AI for robots and self-driving vehicles (which are also, in fact, robots).

Understanding digital twins and physical AI

I’ve written before about Physical AI in general and Nvidia’s initiatives in that space specifically.

The “Physical AI” concept involves creating complex virtual environments that simulate real-world physics, where digital replicas of robots and systems can learn and optimize their performance.

For factory robots, as an example, an Omniverse customer would create a “digital twin” of the factory in a virtual reality space. Every detail of the factory floor would be replicated, with the distances between objects exactly the same as in the real, physical factory. Internet of Things (IoT) sensors in the real factory feed data into the twin, keeping it in an identical state.

Crucially, the virtual twin in Omniverse is programmatically endowed with physics — gravity, inertia, friction, and other physical qualities that are applied to anything happening in the twin. Companies can design, simulate, operate, and maintain their factories virtually through twins. And they can train robots and robotic systems in Omniverse.

The newly announced Cosmos works in conjunction with — and dramatically amplifies — the ability of Omniverse robot training through the creation and use of World Foundation Models (WFMs).

What in the world are ‘World Foundation Models”?

If you’re unfamiliar with the phrase “World Foundation Models,” that makes sense, because it’s pretty new and most likely coined by Nvidia. It conjoins the existing (but also recent) concepts of “world models” (AI systems that create internal representations of their environment to simulate and predict complex scenarios) and “foundation models” (AI systems trained on vast datasets that can be adapted for a wide range of tasks).

According to Nvidia, WFMs are an easy way to generate massive amounts of photoreal, physics-based artificial data for training existing models or building custom models. Robot developers can add their own data, such as videos captured in their own factory, then let Cosmos multiply and expand the basic scenario with thousands more, giving robot programming the ability to choose the correct or best movements for the task at hand.

The Cosmos platform includes generative WFMs, advanced tokenizers, guardrails, and an accelerated video processing pipeline. Developers can use Nvidia’s Omniverse to create geospatially accurate scenarios that account for the laws of physics. Then, they can output these scenarios into Cosmos, creating photorealistic videos that provide the data for robotic reinforcement learning feedback.

Again, a great way to understand this is to compare it with the LLM-based ChatGPT.

I recently wrote about how Google’s LLM-based tool, NotebookLM, is fantastic for learning something complex. At the time, I described the following use case:

“Rather than reading advanced material, it’s far faster and more engaging to let NotebookLM’s ‘Audio Overviews’ feature create a life-like podcast for you to listen to. It will create a ‘study guide,’ a FAQ, a ‘briefing guide,’ and a timeline, enabling you to quickly look at dense content from multiple angles, perspectives, and levels. You can start by asking the chatbot to explain it to you like you’re a sixth-grader, then a high school senior, then an undergrad, and on up until you’ve mastered the material.”

In this scenario, you’re “training” your brain by taking an existing data set and telling the chatbot to give you that same data sliced, diced, and re-formatted in eight or more ways.

This is also how WFMs work, in outline. The developer takes existing training data and feeds it into Cosmos, which creates more training scenarios that are as usable as the original set. They can turn 30 scenarios into 30,000, which the robot uses as if actual trial-and-error learning had taken place.

Cosmos’s output looks like real-world training data, but it can rapidly train robots in thousands of scenarios.

Robotic’s ChatGPT moment

Nvidia implies that Cosmos will usher in a “ChatGPT moment” for robotics. The company means that, just as the basic technology of neural networks existed for many years, Google’s Transformer model enabled radically accelerated training that led to LLM chatbots like ChatGPT.

In the more familiar world of LLMs, we’ve come to understand the relationship between the size of the data sets used for training these models and the speed of that training and their resulting performance and accuracy.

Elon Musk pointed out recently that AI companies have exhausted human-generated data for training AI models. “We’ve now exhausted basically the cumulative sum of human knowledge…in AI training,” he said.

Data for training robots is also limited — but for a different reason. Training data in the real physical world is simply slow and expensive. Unlike human-generated text, which has already happened at scale over centuries, robot-training data has to be generated from scratch.

Likewise, robots and self-driving cars can essentially “learn” how to do their jobs and navigate complex and unfamiliar terrain. Cosmos (working with Omniverse) should dramatically increase the amount of training that can take place in a much shorter time frame.

Driving safety

The idea of testing autonomous vehicles with massive sets of physics-aware data is a vast improvement over how self-driving cars and trucks have historically been trained — which is that they drive around in the real world with a safety driver.

Driving in the real world with a person as backup is time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes dangerous — especially when you consider that autonomous vehicles need to be trained to respond to dangerous situations.

Using Cosmos to train autonomous vehicles would involve the rapid creation of huge numbers of simulated scenarios. For example, imagine the simulation of every kind of animal that could conceivably cross a road — bears, dear, dogs, cats, lizards, etc. — in tens of thousands of different weather and lighting conditions. By the end of all this training, the car’s digital twin in Omniverse would be able to recognize and navigate scenarios of animals on the road regardless of the animal and the weather or time of day. That learning would then be transferred to thousands of real cars, which would also know how to navigate those situations (with no animals harmed).

If Nvidia is right, and we have arrived at a “ChatGPT moment” for robotics, then the pace of robotics advances should start accelerating, driving major efficiencies and mainstreaming autonomous vehicles on public roads globally for many companies (not just Waymo in a few cities).

One fascinating aspect of the new generative AI world in which we live is that predictions are futile. Nobody knows how all this will develop.

And this appears to be true with predictions about how long it will take for everything to become extremely robotic. It’s probably all going to happen much faster than anyone thinks.

What everyone’s missing about Android upgrades in 2025

January 17, 2025 / Security – Computerworld

When we talk about Android upgrades, it’s all too easy to miss the forest for the trees.

It’s a familiar tale here in the land o’ Googley matters — and with some wacky-seeming changes on the way for Android upgrades in 2025, the myopic musings are only getting louder.

Surely you’ve seen these sentiments, right? One just popped up in my feed the other day, in fact, with a saucy-seeming headline stating that the current Android 15 update is “a waste of a software upgrade.”

In it, the author notes that Android 15 doesn’t introduce many obvious front-facing changes to a phone’s look and feel and is consequently, as he puts it, a “useless” update.

It’s a déjà-vu-inducing view — one we inevitably hear after virtually every Android update. Now, though, it includes a new variable as part of its argument: the fact that Google is shifting away from its annual cadence for new Android versions in 2025 and moving instead toward a twice-yearly pattern for official operating system rollouts. And thus, the thinking goes, each individual update is bound to become even less significant.

For anyone staring only at the surface and without the deeper context of everything happening in the Android software ocean, it sure sounds like an sensible conclusion. But my, oh my, you’d better believe there’s a lot more going on here — and Google, unfortunately, has never been great about making regular phone-owning folk aware of that bigger picture.

Specifically, we’ve got two pesky misconceptions we’re gonna hear plenty more of in the months to come. Let’s tackle ’em both and get to the bottom of why they’re misguided, shall we?

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Android upgrade misconception #1: Android updates don’t matter

Ah, yes — a classic complaint and one we’ve been hearing for ages: “This update barely changes anything! I guess I didn’t really need it after all.”

And look: I certainly get why it could seem that way. There’s a reason why each new generation of a physical product tends to look different from the last. We mealy-mouthed mammals need an obvious, front-facing visual that confirms to us something is new and exciting, lest it seem like more of the same.

But as I’ve been reminding folks for years now, an Android update is about much more than what you see on the surface.

Sure, the shiny new stuff is nice. Who doesn’t love exploring fun new features and interesting interface improvements? Those are the elements most of us relate to most readily.

But the most important parts of an Android update are typically what’s under the hood and often even invisible to us from the outside.

Each new Android update, y’see, includes an array of engine-room enhancements along with noteworthy privacy, security, and performance strengtheners — things that go beyond the little fixes provided in those separate monthly patches. Beyond that, each update introduces both expansions and restrictions to APIs, which are what permit third-party apps to interact with your phone and data and perform a variety of advanced functions. Frequently, the updates better control how and when apps are able to access different types of data and make it more difficult for them to take advantage of permissions.

You may not immediately see all that stuff, but — oh, yes — you’d better believe it matters.

That aside, even in terms of front-facing features, Android 15 actually includes a surprising amount of interesting stuff — everything from the introduction of a platform-level place for securely storing important files to an intelligent auto-adjusting vibration control, a new and more effective system volume panel setup, and a useful new charging-time home control screensaver. And that’s just the start.

Now, could Google do a better job of (a) showcasing this stuff and (b) educating everyone about the importance of all the less visible advantages each new update introduces? Absotively. That’s been a soapbox subject of mine for something like 737 years now.

But just because it isn’t in your face doesn’t mean it isn’t there — or that the update itself doesn’t matter. At this point, at least, it’s just up to you to do a little discovering (or, ahem, to read a pithy weekly newsletter that points you to all the pertinent info) and wrap your brain around the benefits both front-facing and unseen.

Android upgrade misconception #2: iPhones get more with their annual updates

Whoo, boy — is this ever a fun one.

From the earliest days of Android, there’s been a popular perception that Apple does way more for its iDevices and gives iPhone owners a major advantage over us Android-appreciating animals.

With no disrespect to the Apple adorers among us, this couldn’t be more off-base.

Again, Google doesn’t do a great job of highlighting this and helping average Android phone-owners appreciate the bigger picture — but, well, go go gadget self-quote summoner:

With Android, operating system updates are only half the story. For well over a decade now, Google’s been pulling what were once core operating system elements out of the operating system proper and treating them as standalone apps instead. That means those elements — all of which are still considered part of the single-bundle operating system in the land of iOS — get updated numerous times a month, all throughout the year. And those updates reach every single Android device within a matter of days, regardless of which company made it or how long ago it was released.

A perfect example of that principle in action is how Google recently made a quiet under-the-hood update to a system-level utility called Google Play Services that gave all Android phone-owners with 2019’s Android 10 or higher a trio of important new security features — instantly, universally, and without any manufacturer or carrier involvement.

Those types of underemphasized updates arrive on Android all the time — with random rollouts like that as well as with the now-standard quarterly feature drops and monthly security patches, too.

And all of that is still but one tiny example of the effect we’re talking about here.

Back to that self-quoting magic:

Time for the biggest and most rarely acknowledged reality check of all: At this point, nearly every single element that’s considered a significant part of an annual Apple iOS update is handled in an a la carte manner on Android — with multiple monthly updates that impact close to every still-functioning Android phone. In other words, even Android phones from eight years ago get updates numerous times a year that are all virtually equivalent to an entire iOS operating system rollout. Those updates just aren’t packaged neatly or presented cohesively, and most people don’t consider how all of the small-seeming pieces add up.

It’s no exaggeration: When you look at an average Apple iOS update, nearly every high-profile addition tends to be something that’s handled by a standalone app in Android and updated year-round — whether we’re talkin’ updates to messaging and video calling, voice-to-text translation, or system-level tools like the browser, maps app, notes app, and mobile payment applications.

Heck, the same even applies for updates to things like Gemini, which occur nearly constantly on Android but only as part of those annual bundled OS updates on the Apple side of the mobile divide, with its equivalent.

The main difference is just that Google just doesn’t do much to draw attention to it or emphasize how it all fits into the same broader picture. And — well…

What’s especially interesting is that with rare exception, there are virtually no limits to how and when those scattered Android updates apply. The nearly-nine-year-old Nexus 4 sitting in my desk drawer still gets every update to every one of those applications every month and receives the same sort of functionality Apple is delivering as part of its [latest] iOS update in small deliveries year-round. …

For as good as Apple’s support is, it typically stops entirely after a phone has passed the six-year mark since its release. And what’s almost always overlooked in the glowing headlines about iOS updates is the fact that even devices from a year or two ago frequently don’t get all of the features announced in a new iOS update. In fact, the vast majority of these latest additions and improvements have some manner of cutoff or restriction associated with ’em, even within that six-year window.

So while an older iPhone is still getting the latest update — and while that’s undeniably a very good thing! — it’s also very accurate to say that an equally dated Android device is ultimately getting more current features and updates even more regularly. It’s just framed in a very different and generally less attention-grabbing way.

Plain and simple, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. But all of that not-so-obvious nuance tends to get lost in the shuffle of most public discussions.

Here in 2025, the level of nuance is only gonna grow greater. We’ve got Android 16 on the horizon with its extra-early Q2 timeline, then a second smaller Android update set for the fourth quarter of the year (which may or may not sport its own new number).

But that expanding framework aside, y’know all the smaller stuff we just went over? Yup — all of that is also still present and pertinent as ever: the in-between-update quarterly feature drops, the separate monthly security patches, and perhaps most important, all the ongoing week-to-week updates of system-level apps both front-facing and under-the-hood, all year long.

So, yeah: Android updates matter, all right. And with more of ’em slated to show up in the year ahead, that perspective is more important than ever to wrap your head around and remember — even if the Apple marketing machine will do everything in its power to downplay that reality and make you forget.

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ChatGPT gets support for reminders and scheduled searches

January 16, 2025 / Security – Computerworld

OpenAI has started rolling out a number of new features to ChatGPT, according to Techcrunch.

The big news is support for reminders; the feature allows users, for example, to ask ChatGPT to remind them when it’s time to renew an ID or passport. Users can also ask ChatGPT to deliver a news summary or weather forecast at the same time every day — something OpenAI called Tasks.

Initially, the new abilities will only be available to paying customers of Chat GPT Plus, Team, and Pro.

ChatGPT gets support for reminders and scheduled searches

January 16, 2025 / Security – Computerworld

OpenAI has started rolling out a number of new features to ChatGPT, according to Techcrunch.

Initially, the new abilities will only be available to paying customers of Chat GPT Plus, Team, and Pro.

ChatGPT gets support for reminders and scheduled searches

January 16, 2025 / Security – Computerworld

OpenAI has started rolling out a number of new features to ChatGPT, according to Techcrunch.

Initially, the new abilities will only be available to paying customers of Chat GPT Plus, Team, and Pro.

ChatGPT gets support for reminders and scheduled searches

January 16, 2025 / Security – Computerworld

OpenAI has started rolling out a number of new features to ChatGPT, according to Techcrunch.

Initially, the new abilities will only be available to paying customers of Chat GPT Plus, Team, and Pro.

Execs are prioritizing skills over degrees — and hiring freelancers to fill gaps

January 16, 2025 / Security – Computerworld

When considering new hires, 80% of corporate executives will prioritize skills over degrees, with half planning to increase freelance hiring this year to fill in for a gap in AI and other skills, according to a new study from freelancing platform Upwork.

The study, released this week, showed “unprecedented growth” in specialized AI skills, which have surged 220% year-over-year.

At the same time, degrees continue to lose relevance when it comes to hiring freelancers, with 74% of execs focused more on proven expertise. Moreover, 78% of CEOs say top freelancers deliver more value than degree-holding employees, emphasizing skills over credentials to stay competitive. And 29% of C-suite executives consider freelancers essential to their operations, with 51% saying their business would be difficult to run without freelancer support.

Skills-based hiring has been on the rise for several years, as organizations seek to fill specific tech needs such as big data analytics, programing (such as Rust) and AI prompt engineering. In fact, demand for genAI courses is surging, passing all other tech skills courses and spanning fields from data science to cybersecurity, project management, and marketing.

The top 10 highest paid skills in tech can help workers earn up to 47% more — and the top skill among them is generative artificial intelligence (genAI), according to employment website Indeed and other sources.

Skills such as genAI modeling now earn freelancers up to 22% higher hourly rates than traditional AI and machine learning roles, according to Upwork.

Even as freelancers are reshaping workforce strategies, their rise doesn’t necessarily threaten full-time roles. “It complements them,” said Kelly Monahan, managing director of the Upwork Research Institute.

In a study released in October, Upwork found that 85% of top-performing companies — which it labels “work innovators” — view freelancers as vital, with 91% planning to expand their use over the next year. Only 71% of non top-performing companies see freelancers as critical to success, Monahan said.

While cost savings, such as not paying benefits, could sometimes be a factor in hiring freelancers, it is not the primary driver of freelance hiring, according to Monahan.“Businesses prioritize freelancers for their agility and specialized expertise, which enable them to scale resources up or down as needed and address skill gaps effectively,” she said.

According to Upwork, other reasons for the increase in freelance hiring include:

94% of top-performing companies say hiring freelancers gives them access to specialized skills
89% say freelancers make their business more innovative
84% say hiring a freelancer is faster than a hiring full-time employee

In addition to hard skills, soft, human-centric roles such as personal coaching have emerged among the fastest-growing skills on Upwork’s platform, with demand increasing by 74% year-over-year. “This underscores the growing importance of guidance and adaptability as businesses invest in reskilling their workforces to navigate technological change,” Monahan said. “Freelancers are enabling companies to innovate rapidly and adapt to changing market demands.”

Upwork is not alone in its findings. According to research firm Gartner, organizations are struggling to find skilled talent, and universities — once vital for workforce preparation — are lagging in updating curricula to match modern demands. As technology and work methods advance, graduates are left with outdated skills, making specific competencies more important than degrees in proving a candidate’s value.

According to Gartner, 74% of HR leaders believe organizations are shifting to skills-based talent management, but only 41% have implemented it, while 50% are still considering it.

“Approximately half of HR leaders say that a skills-based approach to talent management has the potential to solve many of the challenges their organizations face, though only one-third are actually investing in a skills-based approach to talent management, Gartner said in its report.

HR leaders, Gartner said, should prepare for a skills-focused future by:

Assessing: Review role requirements to reduce or remove degree mandates.
Fortifying: Ready the organization to onboard and support non-degreed talent.
Attracting: Target skilled non-degreed talent and adjust EVP messaging to appeal to them.
Evolving: Plan for talent management changes to adopt a skills-based approach.

New methods of assessing skills

Companies are adopting more advanced approaches to assessing potential and current employee skills, blending AI tools with hands-on evaluations, according to Monahan.

AI-powered platforms are being used to match candidates with roles based on their skills, certifications, and experience. “Our platform has done this for years, and our new UMA (Upwork’s Mindful AI) enhances this process,” she said.

Gartner, however, warned that “rapid skills evolutions can threaten quality of hire, as recruiters struggle to ensure their assessment processes are keeping pace with changing skills. Meanwhile, skills shortages place more weight on new hires being the right hires, as finding replacement talent becomes increasingly challenging. Robust appraisal of candidate skills is therefore imperative, but too many assessments can lead to candidate fatigue.”

In Upwork’s In-Demand Skills 2025 report, the skills that are growing in importance include:

AI Development: GenAI modeling and AI data annotation are among the fastest-growing skills, reflecting the need for technical expertise in building and managing AI solutions.
>Data Science & Analytics: >Skills such as data visualization and data extraction remain essential for making sense of complex information.
>Project Management: >Both in supply chain logistics and business operations, project managers are critical for keeping teams aligned and projects on track.
>Professional Development: >Skills such as personal coaching and training and development are increasingly sought as companies prioritize workforce reskilling.

The shift toward skills-based hiring is further driven by a readiness gap in today’s workforce. Upwork’s research found that only 25% of employees feel prepared to work effectively alongside AI, and even fewer (19%) can proactively leverage AI to solve problems.

“As companies navigate these challenges, they’re focusing on hiring based on practical, demonstrated capabilities, ensuring their workforce is agile and equipped to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving business landscape,” Monahan said.

According to Upwork, 47% of Gen Z professionals already engage in freelance or portfolio work, reflecting their preference for autonomy and skills diversification over traditional career paths.

“This aligns with modern businesses’ needs for agile talent who can deliver measurable results, driving the shift toward skills-based hiring,” Monahan said. “If you are just looking to fill job roles, you will miss out on the rising portfolio career talent.”

Apple satellite patent takes big step toward stable communication

January 16, 2025 / Security – Computerworld

Apple has big plans for satellite services, a new patent filing confirms. It’s the latest nugget of information to roll down Apple Confidential mountain, a plan to make it much easier for devices to maintain connectivity as they move between satellites.

If you’ve been able to use any of the company’s satellite services, you’ll already know that it takes a while to reach a connection with your nearest satellite. Apple has built a handy little visual guide to help you point your device at the best available satellite, but connection takes time —and as the satellite drifts over head on its orbit, you might eventually find you must reconnect to another station.

Space oddity

Wouldn’t it be better if your connection could automatically move between satellites once it is achieved? That kind of capability might support a more stable connection, and (conceivably) let you get more sophisticated tasks done — perhaps even calls or at least extensive two-way messaging.

What’s new is that Apple now appears to have achieved a way that could enable that.

As first spotted by Patently Apple, the new patent describes a handover procedure that means the connection a device has with one satellite will smoothly shift over to a second. The technology means that a satellite will generate a group configuration message for all the devices currently connected to it that, when sent, tells the connected devices to transfer their connection to the second satellite.

The idea is that each satellite then acts as a “transparent network relay mode,” according to the patent. That, the patent claims, would enable groups of smartphones to remain connected. Effectively, this turns those satellites into always moving mobile network masks above the sky.

Just as mobile networks will serve all the smartphones connected to them in a local area, the satellites will do the same thing. I imagine the aim is to create a seamless satellite connection users don’t have to think too deeply about, once the initial connection is made.

Sun machine

This kind of stable connection is of course essential to support voice calls and internet browsing, though Apple might not be thinking about a future satellite communications service in quite the same way. It could, for example, be simply searching for a global backbone to support its Find My services, or to deliver smart device connectivity off more traditional grids, or even be pondering a highly secure, network agnostic private and secure communications system as a premium service.

Apple isn’t alone.

Carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, are also now working with satellite services to provide messaging and other features to devices, and Apple will not be investing billions in its satellite partner, GlobalStar, simply to be a bystander in this race.

It is also interesting, given the quantity of data shared with mobile networks, that Apple’s filing makes particular mention of this: “It is well understood that the use of personally identifiable information should follow privacy policies and practices that are generally recognized as meeting or exceeding industry or governmental requirements for maintaining the privacy of users. In particular, personally identifiable information data should be managed and handled so as to minimize risks of unintentional or unauthorized access or use, and the nature of authorized use should be clearly indicated to users,.”

You can take a look at the new patent here.

Freecloud

All this investment isn’t just focused on voice and messaging. Operators also recognize that as demand for mobile connectivity increases, it becomes essential to find ways to offload some of this activity to alternative networks. That’s why carriers support Wi-Fi calls — because shunting relatively unprofitable voice calls off their network enables them to offer their capacity to support more profitable services.

Ultimately, it’s all about demand management, and satellite (particularly as 5G tech advances and 6G looms) has a part to play in the tapestry of solutions emerging to help handle the rapidly growing pressure on communications networks. Though there is something to be said for highly private communications and messaging services. Fifty-five years since the first human landing on the moon, if Neil Armstrong landed there today, perhaps he’d call Earth from his iPhone.

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