I feel like it’s in the spirit of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to try to be as dispassionate and schematic as possible, so to begin with, let me outline that there are 17 missions in this campaign. Six of them are good. Five of them are what we might conversationally describe as “OK.” Three of them are bad. And the other three are some of the worst that the creators of Call of Duty, be they Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games, or others, have ever produced.
By this forensic appraisal, Modern Warfare 2’s campaign is generally, verifiably OK, in the sense of being neutral. If this were a set of Bluetooth headphones or an 18-button mouse, and I were advising you how to invest in a new and broadly competent electronic device, Modern Warfare 2 would be a “buy” recommendation. I could hereby confirm the product you receive from Activision is worth the exchange of your $70 — or $23, if you approximately slice Modern Warfare into thirds, and take the campaign solely as its own product.
Image: Infinity Ward/Activision
But writing in the spirit of Modern Warfare 2 — as in, schematically, dispassionately, edgelessly — means also writing about it in a way that, throughout many of its aforementioned 17 missions (at a rate of around $4.11 per mission, again excluding multiplayer) is to be hoodwinked or fooled; to play ball with developer Infinity Ward, which repeatedly tries to convince you its game is anodyne and convictionless and not trying to do anything provocative. It swears.
Its writers deploy a technique whereby every playable character, protagonist, or in-game comrade repetitively congratulates, praises, and encourages one another:
“How do we get him back?”
“By breaking in.”
“And that’s why I love the Ghost.”
Or, in the same cutscene, some 60 seconds later:
“While Rudy finds Al, I’ll use the cams to help Ghost plant charges in key areas.”
“Diversions and sabotage. Nice, Johnny.”
“I learned from the best, L.T.”
“Alejandro is the toughest dude in the regiment,” says Rudy during the rescue mission. And then Price appears and blows up a helicopter so Rudy, Alejandro, Ghost, and Soap can escape. “Who’s that?” Alejandro asks. “A friend,” replies Ghost. “I like him already,” says Alejandro. Combined with that tagline from all the teaser trailers — “The ultimate weapon is team” — it’s like all the characters in Modern Warfare 2 belong to some kind of modern man’s emotional support group, where they vow at the beginning of each meeting to always reinforce one another’s confidence and offer positive affirmations. It seems silly and facile and just like bad writing, but I think it’s actually a really shrewd technique on behalf of Infinity Ward: The shining light of the protagonists’ teamwork and comradeship becomes this kind of beard or smoke grenade to hide, or at least mitigate and make acceptable and innocent-seeming, anything the game does that might be considered controversial or distasteful.
Image: Infinity Ward/Activision
See, Modern Warfare 2 will do all this sportive, kindly teamwork stuff, but then it’ll go the other way, and seem to, as it were, stamp on these pedals labeled Meaning and Theme and Imagery, and suddenly you’re crossing the Trump wall over the U.S.-Mexico border, or playing as the actual missile that kills Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. But then there’s a reversal or a refraction, where everything you think you just experienced that may have been meaningful or thematic or pertaining to any kind of real-world image gets transfigured and undermined. It’s kind of genius.
The general, though he’s Iranian and has white hair, a white beard, and a death by missile strike, is not Soleimani but “Ghorbrani.” The mission where you just bombed a Mexican town, which each of the characters remark was full of civilians, is followed by a mission where if you accidentally shoot a civilian, you’re disciplined by the game and forced to restart. The greatest example of this kind of narrative sleight of hand, this fantastic trick of making you think you have seen something and then insisting that you haven’t, somehow without actually removing the thing you thought had seen, comes in that aforementioned border mission. As Mexican special forces, you cross into a U.S. in which people shout at you to get out of their yard, and you’re eventually apprehended by the American police, who then realize who you are and let you go, saying, “It’s hard to tell you boys apart from the cartel.” And for a moment, it’s as if Modern Warfare 2 is saying something — it would take a long time to articulate, but something — about race and prejudice. But then you go into another house, and there are people shouting and screaming at you to get out of their yard, and they’re Hispanic.
I mean, do you see the genius in that? Do you see how Modern Warfare 2 says something, and then unsays it, but in a way you might not notice, but also leaves the writers, developers, and the entity of Call of Duty an escape route from any accusations of intent or subjective belief? In a postmodern world of alternative facts and the end of the metanarrative, where it seems like there are no answers, truth, or anything you can fully believe in or trust, and everything shifts all the time, I think Modern Warfare 2 is a kind of masterpiece. And now I imagine them using that quote, “Modern Warfare 2 is a kind of masterpiece,” on a poster or something later on, and everything around it won’t matter.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released on Oct. 28 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PS4. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can findadditional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
A small retail business in North Africa, a North American telecommunications provider, and two separate religious organizations: What do they have in common? They’re all running poorly configured Microsoft servers that for months or years have been spraying the Internet with gigabytes-per-second of junk data in distributed-denial-of-service attacks designed to disrupt or completely take down websites and services.
In all, recently published research from Black Lotus Labs, the research arm of networking and application technology company Lumen, identified more than 12,000 servers—all running Microsoft domain controllers hosting the company’s Active Directory services—that were regularly used to magnify the size of distributed-denial-of-service attacks, or DDoSes.
A never-ending arms race
For decades, DDoSers have battled with defenders in a never-ending arms race. Early on, DDoSers simply corralled ever-larger numbers of Internet-connected devices into botnets and then used them to simultaneously send a target more data than it could handle. Targets—be they games, new sites, or even crucial pillars of Internet infrastructure—often buckled at the strain and either completely fell over or slowed to a trickle.
Companies like Lumen, Netscout, Cloudflare, and Akamai then countered with defenses that filtered out the junk traffic, allowing their customers to withstand the torrents. DDoSers responded by rolling out new types of attacks that temporarily stymied those defenses. The race continues to play out.
One of the chief methods DDoSers use to gain the upper hand is known as reflection. Rather than sending the torrent of junk traffic to the target directly, DDoSers send network requests to one or more third parties. By choosing third parties with known misconfigurations in their networks and spoofing the requests to give the appearance that they were sent by the target, the third parties end up reflecting the data at the target, often in sizes that are tens, hundreds, or even thousands of times bigger than the original payload.
Over the past year, a growing source of reflection attacks has been the Connectionless Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. A Microsoft derivation of the industry-standard Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, CLDAP uses User Datagram Protocol packets so Windows clients can discover services for authenticating users.
“Many versions of MS Server still in operation have a CLDAP service on by default,” Chad Davis, a researcher at Black Lotus Labs, wrote in an email. “When these domain controllers are not exposed to the open Internet (which is true for the vast majority of the deployments), this UDP service is harmless. But on the open Internet, all UDP services are vulnerable to reflection.”
DDoSers have been using the protocol since at least 2017 to magnify data torrents by a factor of 56 to 70, making it among the more powerful reflectors available. When CLDAP reflection was first discovered, the number of servers exposing the service to the Internet was in the tens of thousands. After coming to public attention, the number dropped. Since 2020, however, the number has once again climbed, with a 60-percent spike in the past 12 months alone, according to Black Lotus Labs.
The researcher went on to profile four of those servers. The most destructive one was affiliated with an unidentified religious organization and routinely generates torrents of unthinkable sizes of reflected DDoS traffic. As the following figure shows, this source was responsible for numerous bursts from July through September, with four of them exceeding 10Gbps and one approaching 17Gbps.
“This traffic is perhaps strong enough to DoS some less well provisioned servers all by itself,” Davis wrote in his report. “In theory, a hundred of these, working in unison, could generate a Terabit per second of attack traffic.”
Besides exposing CLDAP to the Internet at large, Davis said, the server also has an open DNS resolver that can be abused for reflection, and it has an exposed vulnerable SMB service. It also sends bi-directional communications with confirmed control servers for multiple malware families.
A second profiled Microsoft server was also affiliated with a religious organization, this one in North America. Over an 18-month period, it has delivered peak bit rates of more than 2Gbps. Like the other religious organization's server, it also had an open DNS resolver and served as a bot for multiple malware families.
Davis went on to discuss a CLDAP service hosted on an IP address associated with a telecommunications provider in North America that has been delivering potent DDoSes for more than a year. Some of the regularly changing targets are hosted on a single IP range. In other cases, the target is an entire network prefix.
Last was a server associated with a regional retail business in North Africa. For more than nine months, Black Lotus Labs has observed it repeatedly DDoSing an array of targets, with peaks of 7.8Gbps. Like the two religious organizations' servers, it exhibits signs of being exploited by malware. It’s also exposing vulnerable remote desktop and SMB services to the Internet.
“Trying to build a story out of these facts leads us to see this system as the MS Domain Controller in a small organization,” Davis wrote. “Small sites might only have a single data center, and they would also likely host SMB, DNS, and RDP. Additionally, it’s inherent that smaller organizations, on the whole, will have less sophisticated security practices, thus suggesting more likelihood of being infected with bot malware.”
Davis said that Black Lotus was able to further confirm all four servers were engaged in actual DDoS attacks by analyzing the targets on the receiving end of the data torrents. In an email, Black Lotus Labs said it was able to confirm all 12,142 servers identified as CLDAP reflectors as Microsoft domain controllers by analyzing their response to LDAP pings, which included communications through the expected port (389/UDP) and the expected number of bytes.
Reining in CLDAP
Active Directory is among the only Microsoft products to include CLDAP. Even then, the implementation is limited to a single command—the LDAP ping. Davis wrote:
This command is not a directory-related command; it’s used by Windows clients attempting to discover a service via which they may authenticate users. While it’s hard to imagine why someone would design their network topology such that a client would need to discover a local authentication service over the open Internet, it happens. The motivations of the deployment are less salient than the simple fact that, when exposed to the public Internet, the service is open to reflection.
One interesting observation is that anomalous spikes increased in frequency the longer a CLDAP reflector remained open. “This makes sense as we would expect that attackers would need some time to locate new reflectors and update their arsenal,” Davis wrote.
Black Lotus Labs provided the following advice for locking down servers running Directory:
Network administrators: Consider not exposing CLDAP service (389/UDP) to the open Internet.
If exposure of the CLDAP service to the open Internet is absolutely necessary, take pains to secure and defend the system:
On versions of MS Server supporting LDAP ping on the TCP LDAP service, turn off the UDP service and access LDAP ping via TCP.
If MS Server version doesn’t support LDAP ping on TCP, rate limit the traffic generated by the 389/UDP service to prevent use in DDoS.
If MS Server version doesn’t support LDAP ping on TCP, firewall access to the port so that only your legitimate clients can reach the service.
Network defenders: Implement some measures to prevent spoofed IP traffic, such as Reverse Path Forwarding (RPF), either loose or, if feasible, strict. For more guidance, the MANRS initiative offers in-depth discussion of anti-spoofing guidelines and real-world applications.
The post said Black Lotus Labs notified operators of the misconfigured CLDAP services in the IP space provided by Lumen. The company is working to notify other operators and possibly begin blocking long-lived CLDAP reflectors on the Lumen backbone. Microsoft had no immediate comment for this post.
Article From & Read More ( Meet the Windows servers that have been fueling massive DDoSes for months - Ars Technica )
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NVIDIA requests board partners to collect and send damaged RTX 4090 cards to HQ
Igor’sLAB reports that NVIDIA has notified all AICs (Add-in-Card) partners to collect RTX 4090 affected by ‘melted’ 16-pin power connectors and ship them directly to the HQ.
NVIDIA is stepping up its response to the new power adapter issues. A story blew up earlier this week after numerous users reportedly had issues with RTX 4090 cards dying after 16-pin/PCIe Gen5/12VHPWR power connectors and adapters melting, and in some cases destroying the cards in the process.
Naturally, this is not a good look for NVIDIA, whose logo is on every 4x 8-pin to 16-pin power adapter bundled with the cards. The issue of overheating and, in some cases, the melting power connector appears to impact all board partners, so the issue had to be escalated within NVIDIA.
Igor Wallossek confirmed with people familiar with the matter that NVIDIA has requested all affected cards to be shipped to the HQ for analysis. It is not clear whether this means NVIDIA HQ or AIC HQ, but it shouldn’t really matter because both parties are capable of finding out the root cause of this issue.
nVIDIA just notified all AIC this morning… All damaged cards need to be sent directly to HQ for failure analysis, this is first time… Even a few years ago when 2080 Ti got issue with Micron, they didn’t do this.
— Igor’sLAB
Igor believes that this issue is not caused by severe bending of the power cable, nor is it a result of exceeding recommended use cycles. The issue may be the power adapter itself, which is of poor quality.
It is said that the adapter may have fire-dangerous flaws in the design. Wobbly contacts and unsafe solder might be the reason so many adapters are seeing heat spikes. The main concern is on NVIDIA’s own power adapter, other brands may not be impacted by the issue.
Why NVIDIA’s 12VHPWR adapter is having issues:
The problem is not the 12VHPWR connection as such, nor the repeated plugging or unplugging.
Standard compliant power supply cables from brand manufacturers are NOT affected by this so far.
The current trigger is NVIDIA’s own adapter to 4x 8-pin in the accessories, whose inferior quality can lead to failures and has already caused damage in single cases.
Splitting each of the four 14AWG leads onto each of the 6 pins in the 12VHPWR connector of the adapter by soldering them onto bridges that are much too thin is dangerous because the ends of the leads can break off at the solder joint (e.g., when kinked or bent several times).
Bending or kinking the wires directly at the connector of the adapter puts too much pressure on the solder joints and bridges, so that they can break off.
The inner bridge between the pins is too thin (resulting cross section) to compensate the current flow on two or three instead of four connected 12V lines.
NVIDIA has already been informed in advance and the data and pictures were also provided by be quiet! directly to the R&D department.
NVIDIA has confirmed to The Verge it is actively investigating the problem. The company already promised to replace the first reported card. Other users should not worry about replacement, but it would be advised to pay closer attention to the cards when gaming.
Update October 26 3:31 p.m.: In a statement shared with MacRumors today, Apple said it has paused gambling ads in App Store app pages, with no further details provided:
We have paused ads related to gambling and a few other categories on App Store product pages.
Just hours later, several prominent developers have complained about distasteful ads for gambling apps appearing in their own App Store listings outside of their control, including Marco Arment, Simon Støvring, and others. The issue was also highlighted in a tweet shared by MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci.
Now my app’s product page shows gambling ads, which I’m really not OK with. Apple shouldn’t be OK with it, either. The App Store has corrupted such a great company so deeply. They make so much from gambling and manipulative IAPs that they don’t even see the problem anymore. https://t.co/MnNlf7k0kT — Marco Arment (@marcoarment) October 25, 2022
With Apple’s recent changes to ads on the App Store, your product pages may now show ads for gambling apps. One of my product pages just did that 😞 pic.twitter.com/CjbrXpajX0 — Simon B. Støvring (@simonbs) October 25, 2022
"Now my app's product page shows gambling ads, which I'm really not OK with," tweeted Arment. "Apple shouldn't be OK with it, either."
As noted by Arment, Apple provides advertisers with the choice to have their ad shown in app categories different than their own app's category, allowing ads for gambling ads to appear in listings for unrelated apps like the podcast app Overcast.
The presence of gambling ads in the App Store as a whole has prompted some criticism, with some accusing Apple of being greedy and moving away from policies that the company upheld under former CEO Steve Jobs. Apple earns revenue from both the ad placements and its 15% to 30% cut of in-app purchases in gambling apps.
It is really sad to me that Apple needs to start taking Casino Game Ad Money in order to make their line go up for the shareholders. When Steve introduced iAds and the whole pitch was, "These ads aren't garbage, you'll like these ads." This department shouldn't exist at all, imho https://t.co/VHOeryW5Ro — Cabel (@cabel) October 25, 2022
Can you imagine having $48.2 billion cash on hand and YET still thinking "ah yes, those House of Fun Casino ads will grow our bottom line, let's do it" pic.twitter.com/j1k6WT8i2H — Federico Viticci (@viticci) October 26, 2022
Beyond upsetting some developers, Apple allowing apps to run ads in other apps' listings has already led to the company facing accusations of anticompetitive behavior. In a tweet last week, legal expert Florian Mueller argued the ads are "another means of increasing the effective app tax rate, forcing developers to buy ads on their own app pages in order to avoid that others steer customers away from there."
Apple just sent all developers an email that "Today tab and product page campaigns start October 25." It's another means of increasing the effective app tax rate, forcing developers to buy ads on their own app pages in order to avoid that others steer customers away from there. — Florian Mueller (@FOSSpatents) October 21, 2022
In August, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple wanted to nearly triple its current advertising revenue to at least $10 billion per year in the future. Gurman said keyword-based search result ads are coming to the Apple Maps app starting next year.
We've reached out to Apple for comment and asked if the company will consider tightening its rules surrounding the ads. We'll update this story if we hear back.
Article From & Read More ( Apple Pauses Gambling Ads in App Store Pages After Developers Complain [Updated] - MacRumors )
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iCloud has been available on the web for a long time, but you might not have rushed to use it given a basic and sometimes clunky interface. You might have a reason to give it another look, though. Apple has introduced a beta iCloud web client that presents far more info at a glance, with a customizable tile layout that reflects your priorities. It's easier to switch between apps thanks to launchers on the home page and menu bar, and you can quickly start tasks (such as writing email or adding calendar events) thanks to another menu option.
The revamp also improves access to iCloud+ features like custom email domains and Hide My Email. And if you're panicking at the thought of lost info, a "Data Recovery" tool will help you reclaim bookmarks, calendars, contacts and iCloud Drive files deleted within the last 30 days. Except for iCloud Drive, you can restore from specific moments in time. Some features still need to be controlled through Apple hardware, including Family Sharing, HomeKit Secure Video and Private Relay.
Apple hasn't said when the new iCloud web interface might leave beta testing. We've asked the company for comment and will let you know if we hear back. However, the tech firm pitches this as an upgrade for customers whose only Apple product might be an iPhone — you can more readily access content and manage services through your Windows PC's browser.
This redesign probably won't persuade Android users to switch, and the individual web apps haven't changed much. The beta may encourage you to stick to the Apple ecosystem, though. Combined with web access to services like Music and TV+, it also shows that Apple is eager to court users who can't (or just don't want to) run dedicated apps on their platforms of choice.
All products recommended by Engadget are selected by our editorial team, independent of our parent company. Some of our stories include affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. All prices are correct at the time of publishing.
Apple has rejected Spotify’s new app three times from its App Store. It is the latest in a series of confrontations between the two companies.
Daniel Ek, the chief executive of Spotify, wants his company to be the premier outlet in the world of audio. But when he pushed the streaming-subscription service beyond music and podcasts into audiobooks, he ran into a familiar obstacle: Apple.
Over the past month, Apple, the App Store’s gatekeeper, has rejected Spotify’s app three times, saying that its new audiobooks offering broke Apple’s rules governing how developers can communicate with customers about online purchases.
The rejections are the latest skirmish in a long-running battle between Spotify and Apple. For nearly seven years, the companies have feuded over the rules Apple imposes on apps and its practice of collecting a 30 percent fee on the services and products that apps sell.
Apple’s role as a make-or-break arbiter for apps has long frustrated app developers, particularly companies like Spotify that compete against services such as Apple Music.
Spotify views the conflict over audiobooks as another example of how Apple impedes competition and hampers rivals. Since making an antitrust complaint against Apple in Europe in 2019, Spotify has urged regulators and lawmakers to give app developers the freedom to tell customers about ways to purchase products and services outside of Apple’s payment system, which many apps are required to use.
The audiobook fracas offers a glimpse into the challenges developers face as they try to introduce new features. To abide by Apple’s rules, Spotify included its legal team in the product development process and tapped a former start-up founder with a law degree, Nir Zicherman, to spearhead the effort.
Apple initially approved the new feature in Spotify’s existing app before later reversing course, sending Spotify into what it considered to be a Kafkaesque world where Apple simultaneously told the audio company that it could send customers emails about online purchases but couldn’t provide a button inside its app to request those emails. After a series of rejections, Spotify said that Apple on Tuesday approved a version of its app with the audiobook experience.
An Apple spokesman said that the company had no objections to Spotify adding audiobooks, but he added that Spotify couldn’t do so by circumventing rules against providing web addresses and language that encourages customers to make purchases outside its app.
Mr. Zicherman and three colleagues said in an interview with The New York Times that they worked hard to add audiobooks to their app according to the App Store’s guidelines.
“Those are effectively hurdles that we have to workaround,” Mr. Zicherman said.
The challenges with Apple, which also sells audiobooks, contrast with Spotify’s experience on Google Play, a store for apps on the company’s Android operating system. Google approved Spotify’s Android app, allowing listeners to click a button and receive an email about how to purchase audiobooks online.
Apple has made the App Store a centerpiece of its strategy to evolve from a business driven by device sales into one propelled by the sale of software and services. The store, which is estimated to generate about $24 billion in annual sales from the 30 percent fees it collects, has little overhead and generates profits of nearly 80 percent, according to testimony and documents discussed as part of an antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games.
Apple contends that the distribution it provides across billions of iPhones and iPads has helped Spotify and other apps succeed. It says routing app purchases through its payment system protects users from fraud and keeps the App Store safe for users. A spokesman noted that British antitrust authorities decided not to investigate competition issues in the music streaming business earlier this year.
Spotify on Tuesday reported a loss for the third quarter of about 194 million euros, or $193.3 million, as advertising sales increased less than expected. The company said total revenue rose by 21 percent to about €3.04 billion, or $3 billion, buoyed by the addition of seven million paid subscribers. It now has 195 million paid subscribers.
The company’s share price fell nearly 5 percent in after-hours trading to $92.35.
Spotify’s founder, Daniel Ek, has complained for several years about Apple’s management of its App Store.Sebastian Reuter/Getty Images For Spotify
Over the past few years, Spotify and other developers have brought complaints about Apple’s rules and fees to antitrust authorities and lawmakers in hopes that governments would intervene. European regulators are more than three years into an antitrust investigation, and Congress is still considering laws that could ban Apple from requiring apps to use its payment system.
“Almost four years. That’s how long it’s been since Spotify filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission, and we are still waiting on a decision,” Mr. Ek said in a statement.
Last year, developers earned their biggest wins against Apple in a U.S. court and in Japan. To settle separate cases, Apple agreed to relax its rules and permit developers to communicate with customers about making purchases outside its payment system.
Spotify viewed the new allowances as an opportunity to fulfill Mr. Ek’s audiobook ambitions. Rather than give Apple a 30 percent share of audiobook sales, which would make the business too costly, it developed a plan to direct its customers to buy the titles online and then listen to them in the app.
The company tapped Mr. Zicherman to lead the effort. Mr. Zicherman joined Spotify in 2019 through the acquisition of a podcasting company he co-founded called Anchor. He thought the audiobook format — which increased sales last year by 25 percent to $1.6 billion, according to Publishers Weekly — was poised for “massive growth.”
Mr. Zicherman said he and his team worked with Apple’s rules in mind. Two lawyers were in the room throughout the development process to help them stay within Apple’s boundaries.
They developed a nine-step process for buying an audiobook. When customers clicked on audiobooks, they would land on a screen with a lock icon over the audio play button. Pressing the play button led customers to a page where they could request an email to learn more about buying a book. The subsequent email included the book price and a link to purchase it.
Mr. Zicherman said that the experience resulted in more steps than his development team wanted but that the design abided by Apple’s rules. It didn’t include any information about prices, and it didn’t link users out to a website to complete its purchase.
In mid-September, Apple approved the audiobook update, Spotify said. Spotify launched the feature days later, advertising the 300,000 titles it was making available.
Mark Mahaney, a Wall Street analyst who tracks Spotify for the investment bank Evercore ISI, tested the new audiobook service. He found it to be cumbersome, requiring him to enter his payment information even though Spotify already had it. He complained to Paul Vogel, Spotify’s chief financial officer, in an email.
“Why is it so bad?” Mr. Mahaney wrote. “And can you fix it?”
When Spotify later submitted an app update with features unrelated to audiobooks, Apple rejected it. App Store reviewers told Spotify that the audiobooks offering, which had previously been approved, violated rules requiring apps to use Apple’s payment system to unlock new features, according to Spotify.
Mr. Zicherman’s team changed the email customers would receive, stripping out the purchase button they had previously included. They replaced it with an email that gave customers a link to browse Spotify’s audiobook titles.
Apple rejected Spotify’s change days later, saying that offering customers a button to receive an email about other purchase options broke App Store rules. An Apple spokesman said that Spotify also had a discrepancy in an external link in its app, which sent people to a different web address than one that Apple had approved. Spotify said the link was unrelated to audiobooks and that it has resolved that issue.
Mr. Zicherman said his team consulted with Spotify’s legal staff before deciding to strip out the email phase of the audiobook process. In its place, they told listeners to go to Spotify’s website to buy a book.
“What we have now is effectively a dead end,” Mr. Zicherman said.
On Monday, Spotify said that Apple had rejected Mr. Zicherman’s latest redesign. He and a team of product designers, engineers and attorneys worked until early Tuesday morning on four other options. They stripped away Spotify’s website and directions for more information about audiobooks, putting the onus on customers to go online and figure out how to complete a purchase. The changes won Apple’s approval, Spotify said.
“You can’t buy audiobooks in the app,” the landing page now says. “We know, it’s not ideal.”
The iMessage and FaceTime services available across Apple's platforms appear to be experiencing problems at the current time, with some users unable to send messages and make FaceTime calls.
There are a number of tweets about the issue on Twitter, and Apple's System Status page is listing an ongoing outage. The feature is not down for all users as of now, but Apple says that the service is unavailable for some and has been down since 11:48 a.m. Eastern Time.
Update 12:55 p.m Eastern Time: According to Apple's System Status page, the outage has been resolved.
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Exceptional hardware is still marred by incompatibilies
Video calling.
After several days of using the Qualcomm-powered Surface Pro 9 as my daily driver for every task in my daily process, video calling has been, hands down, the best experience I’ve had on it. This device has a good webcam with some great features. But most other tasks you might need to do in a workday were frustratingly slow.
That is due — at least in part, I’m sure — to the fact that most of the apps I use are not running natively on Arm. These are not obscure apps, however. I chat with people, I watch video, and I game, and I tend to use the same programs that lots of other people use to do those things.
I will not go so far as to say that this laptop will be as slow for everyone as it was for me. This is just to illustrate the gamble that one is taking when purchasing the Arm version of the Surface Pro 9 — how heavily dependent the payoff will be on the makeup of the constellation of apps that comprises your online life.
The Surface Pro 9 is nice-looking, nice-feeling, well-built, and portable, keeping all the traits that were excellent about the Surface Pro 8’s chassis. Unfortunately, it is also quite expensive. The cheapest SQ3 model is $1,579.98 including the keyboard and stylus (which, remember, are not included in the base price). My test unit (and it’s still not the most expensive Pro 9 you can get) is $1,879.98 with the keyboard and pen included. And for heavy users of many emulated apps, this device is too slow to be asking for well over $1,000 of your money.
Here’s the good news: the design department didn’t try to fix what wasn’t broken, and the Pro 9 is as portable, well-built, and nice-looking as the Pro 8 was. The keyboard deck is sturdy, the kickstand holds its shape, and the stylus is quite comfortable (with a very handy garage folded into the keyboard). The 2880 x 1920, 120Hz display is as smooth as ever. The Pro 9 is slightly lighter than the Pro 8, but it’s not noticeable.
The keyboard is sturdy and doesn’t slip around.
The little slot for the Surface Pen is quite convenient.
The keyboard pops off easily and snaps on effortlessly.
Remember, though, as you look at the prices: the keyboard is not included.
The only really visible change that’s been made to the chassis is the color scheme. Surface Pro 8 models only came in graphite (black) and platinum (silver) last year, and the only way to customize them further was to buy a funky-colored keyboard deck. The Pro 9 has added new colors to the full exterior, with options including Sapphire, Graphite, Forest (which is my personal favorite) and Platinum. (As of now, it looks like only Intel Core i7 models have this medley of color options; the SQ3 and Core i5 SKUs are platinum-only.)
There’s also a limited-edition floral design. I, however, was sent the plain-old platinum one, so that’s what you’ll see here. If you want to see the cuter colors, Verge editor Tom Warren got a look at them in Redmond earlier this month.
I am jealous of Tom.
In what’s likely to be a controversial move, Microsoft has also removed the headphone jack from the Pro 9. (There are otherwise two USB-C 3.2 ports, as well as the slot for the funky little Surface charger.) Power and volume buttons have been moved to the top. The design is now quite close to that of the once-niche Surface Pro X, with the latter a bit thinner and lighter.
Inside, the big news is 5G. This is a feature the Intel model doesn’t have and may partially explain why the Arm version is more expensive. I ended up purchasing a prepaid plan through Ubiqi, which runs on T-Mobile’s network in the US. (Getting this plan set up was a bit of a process that had me bouncing back and forth between Microsoft’s Mobile Plans app and Ubiqi’s website several times. The Mobile Plans app, speaking of which, was very slow and froze up at multiple points during the process.)
Once 5G was up and running, I was getting speeds of around 40mbps down and 55mbps up in The Verge’s Manhattan office. These would be fine LTE speeds, but it seems likely that Ubiqi is using T-Mobile’s low-band 5G network, at least where I’m located. Pages all loaded fine, but nothing was lightning-fast. (Also to note: 5G models appear to be capped at 16GB of RAM and come with LPDDR4x, while those without 5G can go up to 32GB and get LPDDR5).
Microsoft Surface Pro 9 (Arm) specs (as reviewed):
Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.2 x 0.37 inches (287 x 209 x 9.3mm)
Weight (not including Type Cover): 1.95lbs (883g)
Display: 13-inch touch display, 2880 x 1920 (267 PPI), up to 120Hz refresh rate, 3:2
Memory: 16GB LPDDR4x
Processor: Microsoft / Qualcomm SQ3
Removable SSD: 256GB
Battery life: claimed up to 19 hours of “typical device usage”
Ports: two USB-C 3.2, one Surface Connect port, one Surface Keyboard port, one nano SIM
Cameras: Front-facing Windows Hello camera with 1080p FHD video, 10MP rear-facing autofocus camera with 1080p HD and 4k video
Wireless: Wi-Fi 6E: 802. 11ax, Bluetooth 5.1, 5G, LTE, WCDMA
The other advantage Qualcomm has over the Intel model is its Neural Processing Unit (NPU). The idea behind this is that it handles some AI features directly, taking that load off of the Pro 9’s CPU. It powers some new camera features, including portrait background blur, automatic eye contact, and a Voice Focus feature that removes background sound.
These features did work, but their efficacy was slightly inconsistent. The one that worked well across the board was automatic eye contact; regardless of where my gaze was, co-workers consistently told me that it looked like I was staring directly at them. This actually seems like a very useful feature and something I’d have on all the time since my eyes tend to wander during calls, even when I’m paying attention. The blur effect was pretty good as well and did a fine job of differentiating me from my background. Automatic Framing generally followed me as the name promised, panning while I moved from side to side, but there were times here and there when it didn’t pick up that I was moving.
Voice Focus seemed to have some trouble. On a Zoom call with loud music playing behind me, my co-worker Umar Shakir told me that while he could consistently hear me, the tracks seemed to be fading in and out in the background. There were times when instrumental portions would be muted entirely, then lyrics would be clear when they came back in and then would fade out again. He could, however, consistently hear the same songs playing behind me on a Teams call and didn’t get the sense that anything at all was being done to suppress them (though he could still hear me).
Putting a super-smart camera on this device feels to me like putting fancy headlights on a car that can only go 15 miles an hour. I really wish that Microsoft had put these great features on the Intel models (or on the Surface Laptop 5) for reasons that will shortly become clear.
This is a video calling machine.
Agree to Continue: Microsoft Surface Pro 9
The mandatory policies, for which agreement is required to use the laptop, are:
Microsoft Software License terms (Windows Operating System) and Manufacturer’s Limited Hardware Warranty and Agreement
In addition, there are a bunch of optional things to agree to:
Privacy settings including location, Find My Device, diagnostic data, inking and typing, tailored experiences, advertising ID
Sign up for a Microsoft 365 free trial
Sign up for an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate free trial
That’s two mandatory agreements and eight optional ones.
The Pro 8, with an Intel Core i7 inside, was fast. It’s unsurprising to me that Microsoft is continuing to sell an Intel model of the Pro 9 alongside this Qualcomm model because shifting away from Intel entirely would likely have been a dangerous bet. While Windows on Arm is no longer in 2020 territory where compatibility was an absolute disaster, it is far from where it needs to be worth $1,800.
My frustration with this computer wasn’t a workload thing. It didn’t start out fast and gradually slow down as I opened more things and started more processes. It was peppered with glitches and freezes from start to finish.
I’d have only Slack open, and switching between channels would still take almost three seconds (yes, I timed it on my phone). Spotify, also with nothing in the background, would take 11 seconds to open, then be frozen for another four seconds before I could finally press play. When I typed in Chrome, I often saw significant lag, which led to all kinds of typos (because my words weren’t coming out until well after I’d written them). I’d try to watch YouTube videos, and the video would freeze while the audio continued. I’d use the Surface Pen to annotate a PDF, and my strokes would either be frustratingly late or not show up at all. I’d try to open Lightroom, and it would freeze multiple times and then crash.
It quickly became clear that I should try to stick to apps that were running natively on Arm. Trust me, I tried. I switched from Chrome to Edge, and the latter was certainly faster than Chrome (even while I was using Google’s apps), but it was still a notch slower than what you’ll see from other high-end computers — including other Arm-based devices, such as those that a certain company in Cupertino makes. While the actual experience of calling on Teams was fine, the app was still a bit unresponsive and slow to load. I literally had to force quit the Settings app one time because it completely froze. OneNote was the only Arm app I used that felt totally zippy, with no hiccups. I guess Paint was also fine. (I let Microsoft know about these issues but didn’t hear back in time for publication.)
Underscoring all of this, though, is the fact that I can fairly easily swap my whole workload over to these few Arm-optimized apps. Many people don’t have that luxury or desire, which is what makes buying the Pro 9 a risk.
It’s a very pretty risk, though.
Generally, the deal with these mobile SoCs (this one is called the SQ3, and it’s based on the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3) is that you’re giving up some power in exchange for long battery life. That’s a legitimate trade for many people, and the 10 hours of continuous use that I averaged from this device is more than I’ve seen from most Windows laptops this year. I was able to eke out 12 hours and 23 minutes by bumping the refresh rate down to 60Hz. Fine. I’m sure this is a longer lifespan than you’ll get out of the Intel model.
That lifespan and built-in cellular connectivity strengthen the SQ3 Pro’s case as a portable computer, but I don’t see it as quite enough to overcome the shortcomings in performance here. Charging was also on the slow side; as much as I like the Surface connector’s compact size and magnetic attachment, it only got the Pro up to 57 percent in an hour. 5G also wrecked the battery life — I only got six hours and 42 minutes of continuous 5G use.
Microsoft Surface Pro 9 accessibility (as reviewed)
The letter keys are 0.6 x 0.6 inches with 0.1 inches between them. All keys are backlit apart from the power button. Fn and Caps Lock have indicator lights. The power button is 0.6 x 0.1 inches. The volume keys are 1.6 x 0.4 inches. The keys are grayish-blue with white text and take a small amount of dedicated force to depress.
The speakers reached an average of 75 decibels in my testing, which is a bit quieter than a standard external speaker.
The laptop weighs 1.95 pounds without the keyboard attached. The keyboard adds an additional 0.68 pounds.
The lid can be opened with one hand.
There is a touchscreen with a 1200:1 contrast ratio.
The touchpad is 4 x 2.25 inches.
Setup involves turning the device on and clicking through several menus.
The Pro supports facial logins but not fingerprint logins.
Windows 11
Windows 11 includes a dedicated accessibility menu.
Windows 11 includes a built-in screen reader (Narrator). It supports third-party screen readers, including NVDA from NV Access and Jaws from Freedom Scientific. A full list of compatible software can be found on Microsoft’s website.
Windows 11 supports voice typing (accessed by Windows + H) and speech recognition (toggled with Windows + Ctrl + S).
Color Filters, including inverted, grayscale, red-green, and blue-yellow, can be toggled with Windows + Ctrl + C. Contrast themes are toggled with Alt + Left Shift + Print Screen. Standard Dark Mode and custom colors are also available under Personalization.
Caption color and size can be customized and appear close to the bottom of the screen.
The keyboard can be remapped with Microsoft’s PowerToys. Sticky Keys is supported. An on-screen keyboard is available.
The cursor’s size and speed can be adjusted, and gestures can be remapped in Touchpad Settings.
Windows 11 supports eye control with external eye trackers.
Windows 11 includes a Snap Layout feature, accessed by hovering over the Maximize button on any open window.
With an extremely lightweight build, 5G support, and good battery life, the Surface Pro 9 could be the perfect on-the-go device. And that’s a goal Microsoft has been pushing toward for years. A fanless, beautiful tablet with a fancy camera that happens to also run a full desktop operating system. An iPad alternative for those who love Apple’s hardware but are fed up with the limitations of iPadOS.
Microsoft has that hardware part down to a science. But it still hasn’t figured out how to make Windows on Arm viable for the high-end mainstream. In the past several years, Apple has created a specialized chip architecture that revolutionized its product platform, along with an emulation layer that worked almost seamlessly on its first day of release. Microsoft has not yet achieved that seamless experience with its Arm devices.
I can only speculate as to how much of that is Microsoft’s fault and how much is Qualcomm’s fault, and I’m not sure my speculation is worth more than anyone else’s. But I’m reminded of former Verge editor Dieter Bohn’s review of the original Surface Pro X, the 2019 Arm device that started it all. “Windows itself runs quite well on the Surface Pro X,” Bohn wrote. “But like previous attempts, Microsoft hasn’t done enough to offset the compromises this aspirational computer asks of customers.” While that experience has improved in the past three years, the story I find myself telling about the SQ3 Surface Pro 9 is fundamentally the same. Windows on Arm, while functional, is not ready for the $2,000 big leagues.
I’ll go a step further: AMD, whose current processor line excels in both power and efficiency, was right there. Microsoft has dropped AMD from the Surface line this year (the Surface Laptop 5 is Intel-only) but has kept Snapdragon in. That, to me, is a miss.
Look, I understand that nobody is buying a Qualcomm-powered device and expecting the power of a Threadripper. I don’t want to discount battery life and build quality as selling points, and I know the 5G is convenient. I am prepared for this comments section to be full of complaints that my performance issues are solvable and that people should just suck it up and use Microsoft’s software 24/7.
But I am fairly confident that if you are someone who uses any of the emulated apps I mentioned even once a day, most other computers, regardless of their price will give you a better experience, whether it’s an iPad Pro or a Dell XPS or, hell, even an AMD Surface Laptop from the last generation. Windows on Arm is not ubiquitously unusable — but it is ubiquitously limited.
Photography by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Correction: A previous version of this article included the Surface Pen twice in the review unit’s quoted price. We regret the error.
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