The funny thing about Apple is that you can wait weeks for a news story to appear and then all of a sudden, a whole stack of them show up at once. Today is such a day, so we make no apologies for rolling them all together into one lovely big Apple update.

Bug!

First things first. A new bug which can shut down the iMessage app on iPhones and slow down MacBooks has been found. ChaiOS, or the Text Bomb (if you read the mainstream press), is a piece of code which can cause an iPhone to crash – or reset – even if the user does not click on the attached link.

Software developer Abraham Masri, shared a link to his GitHub repository. Simply sending the code to someone was enough to trigger the bug, as the iPhone helpfully fetches the code all by itself, in order to provide a preview. Viewing the same message on a Mac reportedly causes Safari to crash and causes the machine to slow down.

The bug is annoying, but strangely enough for 2018, is not a huge security threat. Security researcher Graham Cluely reports that the code cannot be used to steal data or provide hackers with access to the phone.

After the link did the rounds on social media, Masri removed the code from GitHub, disabling the bug (until someone replicates the code elsewhere).

“I’m not going to re-upload it,” he said. “I made my point. Apple needs to take such bugs more seriously.”

Mr Masri said on Twitter he always reports bugs to the relevant company before sharing them. Apple has, however, remained, tight-lipped on the subject.

Battery Slowdown

At the end of 2017 Apple came under fire after the company admitted that it intentionally ‘throttled’ the performance of older iPhones. Many people around the world had claimed this was the case and it was widely assumed to be done to force users to upgrade to new phones.

Apple vehemently denied this and instead claimed that the slowdown was done intentionally to protect older batteries from shutting phones down unexpectedly. After ongoing brouhaha and widespread discontent, the company announced it would drop the price of a battery replacement to $29 (£25) for users with affected phones.

Now Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced that users will also be given the ability to switch off the battery throttling in a forthcoming iOS update – although the company strongly advises users not to do so.

Alongside the option to turn off the slowdown, Apple is also introducing more detailed battery monitoring. iOS currently warns users if their battery is seriously damaged or decayed, but won’t  provide general battery health data. Cook told ABC News: “We’re going to give people the visibility of the health of their battery so it’s very, very transparent … this hasn’t been done before.”

Before iOS update 10.2.1 (2016), certain iPhones could spontaneously shut down if battery voltage dropped below a certain point, which was more frequent for batteries which were old, cold, or low on charge.

Billions of Dollars

Following Donald Trump’s tax cuts, Apple has announced plans to invest more than $30 billion expanding it’s US operations, as well as making a one-off payment – estimated to be around $38 billion in taxes as it repatriates its overseas profits.

The investment will include a new US ‘campus’, data centres and an additional 20,000 new jobs, which will allow the company to make a direct $350 billion contribution to the US economy over the Next five years.

A tweet on Wednesday afternoon, Mr Trump claimed credit for what he called a “huge win for American workers and the USA”.

Bonus Round!

As part of the company’s repatriation of its cash mountain, Apple employees will to receive bonuses of $2,500 (£1,800) each. According to Bloomberg, the bonuses will go to nearly all of Apple’s 120,000 employees including retail staff. Only those at or above director level will not receive the reward.

The bonuses will be issued through stock grants to staff worldwide. In an email to employees, CEO Cook said the bonuses were evidence of his “confidence in Apple’s future”.

Bad Buses

And finally… In other Apple news, the Guardian reports that buses driving employees to Apple’s HQ outside San Francisco are being attacked with what appears to be a ‘pellet gun’.

California highway patrol public information officer Art Montiel confirmed the incidents: “We received several reports of charter buses being damaged while driving on the I-280, but we’re not sure what caused the damage. We’re not ruling anything out,” he told the Guardian.

The buses of all the major tech companies around the city, including Facebook and Google, have become symbols of gentrification and the perception that the tech sector is responsible for pushing up housing prices in the city, making it unaffordable for those without six-figure salaries. Apple has yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, to comment.

We’ll be back in February with another Apple roundup (in which hopefully, all the stories can be headlined with the letter ‘C’…)