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Apple is closing its retail store in Parkland Mall, the first time it has shut a store in China, where iPhone sales have declined.

Apple has confirmed that its store in Parkland Mall, located in the Zhongshan District of Dalian City, will close on August 9. The company said in a statement to the press that the move is a reflection of bigger problems with retail sales in the country.

Apple has faced immense competition from local Chinese brands, causing a drop in iPhone sales. While the company has been trying to boost sales in the 1.44 billion people country, its second-largest market by revenue, this store closure doesn’t seem to indicate that Apple will close some of the other 56 retail stores it operates in the region.

Apple is closing a store in China’s Parkland Mall

“We’re always focused on providing an exceptional experience for all of our customers both online and at more than 50 Apple Store locations across Greater China,” said Apple in a statement. “Given the departure of several retailers at the Parkland Mall, we have made the decision to close our store there.”

Bloomberg explains that China is facing deflationary pressures due to waning consumption and global tariffs that hurt exports. “Retail sales growth has fallen short of forecasts, and home prices dropped at a faster pace in June,” it said.

“Apple isn’t the only major brand to back out of China’s Parkland Mall,” reads the article. “Earlier this year, the majority shareholder of the complex took full operational control, and retailers like Coach, Sandro and Hugo Boss haven’t renewed their leases in recent years.”

Earlier this year, Apple in a rare move slashed the prices of some of its most popular products in China, including iPhones, Mac laptops, AirPods and more, in an attempt to revive sales.

Apple also operates another store in Dalian City, located at the Olympia 66 shopping complex about 10 minutes from the Parkland Mall store. This isn’t the only store closure. Apple also said it will shutter a store in the United Kingdom’s Bristol, as well as its Partridge Creek store in Michigan and the Hornsby location near Sydney.

At the same time, Apple is scheduled to open a new retail store at Uniwalk Qianhai in Shenzhen on August 16, with additional stores in Beijing and Shanghai opening over the next year. More broadly, Apple is expanding its retail footprint around the world with new stores in Detroit, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and India.

Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/07/29/apple-store-china-parkland-mall-closure/

Microsoft has discovered a Spotlight-related exploit in macOS that could enable attackers to steal private metadata from Apple apps and third-party apps.

Don’t worry, Apple has already patched this vulnerability on the iPhone, iPad and Mac with iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4 and macOS Sequoia 15.4, released on March 31, 2025. Microsoft has now shared details explaining how the vulnerability works in a post on its Security blog.

This was a so-called zero-day vulnerability; that is, an exploit unknown to Apple at the time. But because Microsoft discovered it and warned Apple about it on time, and Apple fixed it swiftly before disclosing it on its support page, the vulnerability was never exploited in the wild.

Microsoft details a Spotlight-related exploit that Apple patched on time

Microsoft Threat Intelligence discovered a vulnerability in macOS that attackers may exploit to steal metadata from apps that Apple Intelligence caches. Normally protected by Apple’s Transparency, Consent, and Control (TCC) mechanism, stolen app data can be used to reveal, among other things:

• Your precise locations
• What you searched using Spotlight
• AI-powered summaries from the Mail app
• Photo and video metadata (including geolocation)
• Facial recognition data for the recognized faces in the built-in Photos app
• Your settings
• Files in the Downloads folder

None of this data is normally accessible without consent, thanks to TCC. The Spotlight search and indexing feature supports third-party plug-ins to make metadata from third-party apps searchable with Spotlight, like Procreate files.

You can manage Spotlight extensions yourself in System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions > Spotlight by clicking the small Info button on the right to open a list of the installed Spotlight extensions.

It looks like Microsoft researchers found a hole in TCC that can bypass sandboxing restrictions that macOS imposes on Spotlight plugins to leak private app data. This can be accomplished by making specific changes to the app bundles.

“These risks are further complicated and heightened by the remote linking capability between iCloud accounts, meaning an attacker with access to a user’s macOS device could also exploit the vulnerability to determine remote information of other devices linked to the same iCloud account,” Microsoft writes.

As mentioned, Apple has delivered a fix for the exploit in iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4 and macOS Sequoia 15.4. iPhone, iPad and Mac owners were not compromised because the fix was delivered before the vulnerability was detailed.

Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/07/28/an-exploit-involving-spotlight-plugins-could-let-attackers-steal-private-metadata/