In an email to all Apple employees, CEO Tim Cook decried the “tragic and repulsive” events in Charlottesville, saying “We must not witness or permit such hate and bigotry in our country, and we must be unequivocal about it. This is not about the left or the right, conservative or liberal. It is about human decency and morality.” He also announced that Apple would be making $1 million donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. As someone who grew up in the South and once confronted the Ku Klux Klan during a cross burning, Cook finds events like these deeply troubling, but he closed with, “These have been dark days, but I remain as optimistic as ever that the future is bright. Apple can and will play an important role in bringing about positive change.”

Variety reports that Apple has budgeted $1 billion to spend on 10 TV shows. That may sound like a lot of money, but in the next year, Netflix is expected to spend $7 billion on original content, Amazon $4.5 billion, and HBO $2 billion. Hopefully, Apple can produce something more compelling than “Planet of the Apps” and “Carpool Karaoke.”

Home automation can be great, but it’s not without downsides, as owners of the LockState RemoteLock 6i have discovered. An errant software update rendered the remote control aspects of their locks inoperable, although the locks can still be unlocked with a key. Airbnb hosts are particularly affected because RemoteLock locks can be integrated directly with Airbnb to manage and monitor Airbnb properties remotely. The worst part? To fix the problem, users must ship their locks to LockState to replace the firmware, which takes 5 to 7 days, or LockState can send a replacement lock, which will take 14 to 18 days. Either way, owners of these locks must physically remove them to address this digital problem.

Apple’s impressive ARKit developer framework has sparked speculation about the company developing a pair of smart glasses along the lines of Google Glass. In a post on Medium, augmented reality expert Matt Miesnieks explains why Apple-branded smart glasses are likely still several years away. There are numerous technical challenges to overcome, but the biggest obstacle is miniaturizing all the necessary technology into a pair of glasses people would want to wear all day. Miesnieks thinks Apple could introduce the first limited pair of smart glasses with a heads-up display (think of them as an Apple Watch on your face) as soon as late 2018, though he doesn’t see full ARKit-capable glasses appearing before 2021.

If you use the Gmail app for iOS, Google has added a new feature that warns you about phishing attempts. If you’re reading an email message and tap a link that Google thinks leads to a phishing site, a dialog pops up to alert you to the danger. You can still open the link if you wish. Google is rolling the feature out over the next 15 days, and you don’t need to update the app to get it.

Disney currently has an exclusive agreement with Netflix to stream its content, a deal that was made in 2012 but didn’t take full effect until last year. Now Disney is withdrawing. In 2019, its content will disappear from Netflix when Disney’s own streaming service joins another planned streaming service from Disney subsidiary ESPN. The announcement raises a few questions: How many of these streaming services are people willing to pay for? Will Netflix’s original TV shows and movies be sufficient to make up for the content it’s losing from competitors with ties to the major studios and networks?

AT&T's live TV service DirecTV Now has reached an agreement to live stream content from CBS Networks, including local CBS stations and The CW in several markets, as well as (on premium tiers or for additional fees) CBS Sports Network, Pop, and Showtime. CBS is notoriously reluctant to join streaming services, generally preferring its own solutions, like CBS All Access.

According to a report by OpenSignal, Verizon's and AT&T's 4G LTE download speeds have gotten slower in the months since the carriers brought back unlimited data plans. Between OpenSignal’s February 2017 and August 2017 reports, AT&T’s average speed fell 6.8 percent to 12.92 Mbps while Verizon’s fell a whopping 11.7 percent to 14.91 Mbps. OpenSignal doesn’t suggest that there's anything nefarious happening, only that increased demand is resulting in overall slower speeds. Interestingly, both Sprint (by far the slowest carrier) and T-Mobile (the faster carrier), which have offered unlimited data for years, saw an increase in their average speeds during this period: 8.6 percent for Sprint and 4.8 percent for T-Mobile.

Under pressure from the Chinese government, Apple has removed some virtual private network (VPN) apps from the App Store in China. Chinese users use VPNs to tunnel through the so-called “Great Firewall” that censors Internet traffic there. Apple says that the Chinese government now requires a license for all VPN software, so it had no choice but to comply with the law. Apple is in an awkward position in China because it’s torn between wanting to support user privacy and needing government approval to sell to the lucrative Chinese market.