Customers of the US tech giant had complained to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) after an operating system update disabled their devices in a global issue known as “error 53”.

The users were told by Apple that they were not eligible for a remedy if the iPhone or iPad had been repaired by another company.

The ACCC took Apple to the Federal Court last year over allegedly false or misleading representations to customers with faulty iPhones and iPads about their rights under the law.

“If a product is faulty, customers are legally entitled to a repair or a replacement under the Australian Consumer Law, and sometimes even a refund,” ACCC Commissioner Sarah Court said in a statement.

“The court declared the mere fact that an iPhone or iPad had been repaired by someone other than Apple did not, and could not, result in the consumer guarantees ceasing to apply, or the consumer’s right to a remedy being extinguished.”

Apple admitted misleading at least 275 Australian customers over the issue between February 2015 to February 2016 on its US website, by its Australian store staff and on its customer service phone calls.

The consumer watchdog said Apple had also committed to providing new devices as replacements, after allegations that the company was giving customers refurbished goods instead after a device suffered a major failure.

Apple said Tuesday that it had “very productive conversations with the ACCC” over the issue and vowed to offer its Australian users “excellent service”.

It has previously described the error as appearing “when a device fails a security test” and released an operating system update to fix the issue.

1 MoonBot kit from MORPX is an artificial intelligence robot for kids that can be used to assemble modules into different forms and application scenarios. With the world’s leadฌing visual recognition technology, it can identify objects and interact with its users.

2 Kenzen, a pioneer in next-generation wearables for precision health, is now developing a health analytics platform that predicts and prevents avoidable injuries and illness using sweat analysis. It takes a noninvasive approach via the Kenzen Patch, a small, flexible wearable that adheres comfortably to the skin.

3 The first truly professional underwater robot, FIFISH P3 offers unparalleled performance for capturing underwater footage. It features a one-inch CMOS sensor capable of capturing 4K footage at a 162-degree field of view. It helps users discover the underฌwater world. The robot is developed by Shenzhen Qysea Technology.

4 The Dreamlight Sleep Mask from Dreamlight is more than a sleep mask, offering a sleep-aid system that uses lighting, sound and genetics to help people fall asleep faster and wake up with more energy.

5 Paperang Meow Meow developed by Xiamen Paperang Technology, is a handheld ink-free mobile printer that in addition to printing documents or photos, can also recognise and interpret text, or take and enlarge images with the Bluetooth-controlled app. It offers 200dpi resolution and the ability to print 40 metres of paper on a single charge. It is a truly mobile solution for those on the go.

6 Super Cruise intelligent-driving system from Cadillac is the industry’s first truly intelligent hands-free driving solution that can be used at highway speeds. It uses a unique system to keep the driver’s attention and high-precision map data to guarantee driver safety and vehicle operation. It is combined with onboard cameras and radar sensors.

7 PEGASI Smart Glasses from Shenzhen Qianhai Icecold IT uses both biometric and artificial intelligence technologies. Acting as a form of deep-sleep therapy, Pegasi glasses help improve the quality of sleep. A unique blue light emitted from the glasses affects the wearer’s secretion of melatonin and cortisol. During the day, the blue light decreases melatonin and increases cortisol. It helps improve sleep quality and reduces jet lag.

8 Zhejiang Detu Network hit the mark with DETU MAX, the world’s first AIpowered 12K professional-grade 3D VR panoramic camera, bringing revolutionary high-definition and true 3D VR panoramic images to elevate the user’s photos to a new level.

9 Lynx Routes Tmall Router developed by Alibaba AI Labs is a consumer-grade intelligent routing terminal powered by Alibaba’s years of enterprise-class network technology.

10 NeuroChat’s Neurocgat, is the first specialised social network in the world, working on the basis of a brain-computer interface. The unique technological breakthrough allows people with severe speech and movement disorders to communicate with each other, relatives, medical staff and the whole world.

Parent company Snap said people will be able to use Snapchat credentials to sign into apps the way they might do using Facebook or Google credentials, while strictly limiting access to personal data or activity tracking.

The software kit will also allow free Snapchat features such as filters, stories or “Bitmojis” to appear in other applications, according to the California-based firm.

The kit, aimed at making Snapchat more ubiquitous in the world of smartphone apps, was built with privacy as a priority, Snap vice president of product Jacob Andreou told AFP.

“We did not want to lower privacy expectations,” Andreou said.

The move comes as Facebook deals with aftershocks of a data privacy scandal that rocked the leading online social network.

Facebook admitted that up to 87 million users may have had their data hijacked by British consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica.

The firm, which was working for US President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, has since declared bankruptcy.

Snap committed to making the kit well before the scandal involving Cambridge Analytica getting data about users from a psychological research app.

Facebook has since been hammered with criticism for not guarding more carefully user data collected by apps synched to the social network.

‘Snappening’ lessons

Snapchat sign-ins to other apps will use nicknames and “Bitmoji” avatars instead of personal data from profiles, according to the company. Snap also vowed to carefully scrutinize what applications do with the new software tools.

Snap deputy general counsel Katherine Tassi said that the service learned from an incident nearly four years ago when a huge trove of evidently intercepted Snapchat images and videos were exposed online.

In what was referred to in late 2014 as “The Snappening,” people who used a third-party program instead of the official Snapchat application had copies of supposedly transient missives squirreled away by hackers who then posted them online.

Snap wanted to “make sure that we build security and privacy into the design” when creating the kit for outside developers, according to Tassi.

Snap has been modifying the app, sometimes to the chagrin of users, in the name of broadening the appeal of the youth-oriented service.

“We are now focused on optimizing the redesign based on our ongoing experimentation and learning,” Snap co-founder and chief executive Evan Spiegel said last month during an earnings call with analysts.

Users had complained about an abrupt overhaul of the service late last year.

Snapchat rocketed to popularity, especially among teens, after the initial app was released in September 2011. Created by then Stanford University students, the app allows the sending of messages that disappear shortly after being viewed.

The work is part of an ongoing upgrade to the $100 billion orbiting outpost, adapting it for the arrival of a new fleet of US vehicles built by private aerospace industries that will ferry astronauts back and forth.

Boeing and SpaceX are completing the final touches on their respective crew capsules, and are expected to begin regularly transporting astronauts to the ISS in 2019. The first test flights could happen later this year.

The new cameras are located near an international docking adapter on the station’s Harmony module.

“The two astronauts installed new high-definition cameras that will provide enhanced views during the final phase of approach and docking of the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner commercial crew spacecraft that will soon begin launching from American soil,” NASA said in a statement.

Astronauts have not launched from the United States since 2011, when the 30-year US space shuttle program came to an end.

In its absence, the world’s astronauts have paid Russia upwards of $70 million per seat for a ride to the ISS aboard the Soyuz spaceships.

During the six-hour, 49-minute outing, veteran NASA astronaut Drew Feustel rose to third place on the all-time cumulative spacewalking list.

Feustel, making his ninth career spacewalk, now has logged 61 hours and 48 minutes of spacewalk time. The world leader is Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev with 82 hours, 22 minutes, followed by NASA’s Michael Lopez-Alegria with 67 hours, 30 minutes.

The impoverished country and Huawei inked a deal in late 2016 to construct the fibre-optic cable from Australia to Honiara to improve its often unreliable internet and phone services.

But Solomon Islands Prime Minister Rick Houenipwela said last week there had been a change of heart following “some concerns raised with us by Australia”, without elaborating.

The move comes with Australia refocusing its foreign aid programmes to win hearts and minds in the island nations of the Pacific, as China flexes its muscle in the region.

It pledged more than Aus$1.3 billion (US$970 million) in its national budget last month to fund projects such as the communications cable, which will also link-up with Papua New Guinea.

Canberra and other regional capitals have become increasingly alarmed at Beijing’s push into the Pacific through “soft diplomacy”, which could potentially upset the strategic balance in the region.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop refused to detail what concerns Canberra had with telecom giant Huawei.

“I would not elaborate on security issues, that’s not appropriate,” she told reporters.

“What we have offered the Solomon Islands, and they have accepted, is an alternative to the offer, and ours is cheaper. It’s likely to be a faster result for them, and technically superior.”

Huawei was blocked from bidding for contracts on Australia’s ambitious national broadband project in 2012, reportedly due to concerns about cyber-security.

Huawei has long disputed claims of any links to the Chinese government.

According to broadcaster ABC, Australia’s spy boss Nick Warner and other senior officials visited the Solomons last year and returned with concerns about Huawei being permitted to plug into the country’s telecommunications infrastructure.

They reportedly believed that while Huawei was an independent company, it retained links to the Chinese government and could pose a threat to Australian infrastructure in the future.

After meeting Houenipwela in Canberra Wednesday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Australia will also jointly fund a domestic telecommunication cable network linking remote provinces in the Solomons to the capital Honiara.

“As we step up our engagement in the Pacific, we are working as partners with Solomon Islands more closely than ever to ensure stability, security and prosperity in the region,” he said.

The update will be rolled out over the next few days.

Two years ago, Google introduced neural machine translation (NMT) to Google Translate, significantly improving accuracy of online translations. The free multilingual machine translation service will bring NMT technology offline on device.

A comparison between Google Translate’s current phrase-based machine translation, new offline neural machine translation (on-device), and online neural machine translation.

This means that the technology will run in the Google Translate apps directly on your Android or iOS device, so that you can get high-quality translations even when you don’t have access to an Internet connection, it said in a press release on Wednesday.

It said the neural system translates whole sentences at a time, rather than piece by piece that will make translated paragraphs and articles a lot smoother and easier to read.

Offline translations can be useful when traveling to other countries without a local data plan.

Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony remained stars, with rival Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch gaming hardware respectively, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) show floor that opened in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

But the premier industry gathering was very much focused on games themselves, and the idea they can be played as a service hosted in the internet cloud using an array of devices from smartphones to personal computers.

The annual E3 event “occurs against a backdrop of disruption in the console market,” according to IHS Markit games technology research director Piers Harding-Rolls.

“As the market becomes more digitally enabled and service based, console companies and publishers are starting to map out their longer-term strategies including the building out of subscription cloud gaming services,” Harding-Rolls told AFP.

Companies interested in cloud gaming see it as a way to reach broader audiences, adding to console businesses instead of taking away from them, according to the analyst.

“I see consoles being around or the foreseeable future,” Harding-Rolls said.

Shifting terrain

But the competitive landscape will tilt away from console-market leading PlayStation to terrain more favorable to Xbox, he reasoned.

Microsoft has built a powerful platform for hosting computing in the internet cloud, making such service a thriving part of its business.

“We commit and harness the full breadth of our resources at Microsoft to deliver on the future of play,” Xbox team leader Phil Spencer said at an E3 briefing.

The Redmond, Washington-based technology veteran has also invested heavily in machine learning, naming its Cortana digital assistant after an artificial intelligence character in blockbuster Xbox video game “Halo.”

Spencer also said that Microsoft is working on a cloud service for streaming console-quality games to internet-linked devices.

“If you agree that the eventual future of games consumption is through cloud gaming services, then those companies with a strong position in cloud are likely to be best placed to benefit from the transition,” Harding-Rolls said.

“In this context, Microsoft’s cloud division gives the company a natural advantage when trying to build a profitable business.”

Sony and Microsoft have each put out word they are working on next-generation consoles, but planned capabilities have yet to be revealed.

PlayStation 4 has dominated the current console generation, briskly outselling Xbox One.

But if the video game world shifts to Microsoft’s strengths, its new competition in play could become cloud and AI titans such as Amazon, Google, Tencent, and Alibaba, according to Harding-Rolls.

Learning from mobile

The video game industry is seeing its biggest investment ever, with the three big consoles “very healthy,” according to Electronic Software Association chief executive Michael Gallagher.

The ESA trade group organizes E3, with 60,000 industry insiders and gamers from some 100 countries expected to attend the three-day gathering.

Video game industry revenue worldwide tallied about $116 billion last year, according to the ESA.

Console makers have been taking lessons from mobile games, building online communities of players who provide feedback; stream play; subscribe to services, and spend money on digital content such as dance moves or funky clothing for characters.

“Mobile has been a fantastic growth point for the industry,” Gallagher said.

Console video game titan Bethesda is unabashedly bridging the divide between console and mobile play with versions of blockbusters “Fallout” and Elder Scrolls” for play on smartphones or tablets.

“I can’t wait to play it,” Gallagher said of “Elder Scrolls: Blades” that will be available free for iPhones or Android-powered mobile devices when it is released later this year.

Another sign of console-quality play making its way to mobile devices came in the form of telecom giant AT&T showing off ultra high-speed 5G wireless data capabilities on the E3 show floor.

Super-fast internet service is seen as key to rich, seamless game play.

“Exponential increases in computing power, storage and speed will lead to the streaming of realistic, systemic, densely populated and persistent game worlds to any screen,” said Yves Guillemot, chief executive of French video game powerhouse Ubisoft.

Deadly conflicts played out with stunning arsenals in creative fictional settings remain at the heart of blockbuster action video games, with imagery getting richer and fight mechanics smoother due to improving technology.

There was no shortage of bloody battle in games spotlighted at media events hosted by video game industry titans in the days leading up to E3 showcase.

And a hot video game trend now is “Battle Royale” death-match games such as “Fortnite” and “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” in which players vie against one another to be the sole survivor.

Shooting and swordplay have long been staples in a global video game industry that the Entertainment Software Association said took in a total of $116 billion worldwide last year.

Violence in games has the trade group working to make sure politicians including US President Donald Trump understand that there is no link between that kind of play and what people do in the real world, ESA chief executive Michael Gallagher told AFP on Monday.

Trump and the ESA met earlier this year after a slaughter at a US high school.

Some blamed violence in media such as video games, not access to guns, for such shootings.

“One thing that has sunk in to a great degree is the truth that video game violence has nothing to do with real-world violence,” Gallagher said of meetings with politicians on federal and state levels.

“There are 2.6 billion gamers around the world, yet these outbreaks are uniquely American. It has got to be something else.”

A growing number of policy numbers are “rejecting the notion outright” that video games cause people to commit actual violence, according to Gallagher.

“The tide has turned significantly,” he added.

In the US, 22 states offer video game companies economic incentives to set up shops and create jobs, according to Gallagher.

Some 45,000 industry members are expected to attend E3, along with 15,000 gamers who bought tickets to get access to the show floor and its more than 200 exhibitors, the ESA said.