Let’s Talk Apple — Ep. 77 (January 2020)

Panel:

Bart Busschots (host) – @bbusschots
Gazmaz from the My Mac Podcast – @gazmaz
Simon Parnell from the Essential Apple Podcast – @serenak

The show starts with a few followup stories, one notable number, a few legal stories, one acquisitions, and a quick overview of news related to Apple’s original content. The four main stories are round 2 of the Apple -v- US DOJ back-door battle, iCloud encryption, Apple’s Q1 2020 earnings, and two trade wars & a virus. The show ends with a quick rundown of some smaller Apple-related stories that made the news in January.

You’ll find detailed show notes below the fold, and if you enjoy this free show, please consider clicking on the donate button at the top of the left side bar – the show is free for you to listen to, but not for Bart to Produce!

Followup

Apple begins to sell Sonos as the speaker company accuses Google and Amazon of patent theft — www.imore.com/…
Rejoice! Apple Card customers can now export monthly transactions — www.imore.com/…
Adobe’s Creative Cloud now supports ‘Sign In with Apple’ — www.imore.com/…
iOS 13.3.1 has been released and contains the promised toggle to disable all location tracking, even for control of the U1 chip — arstechnica.com/…
Apple News launches ‘special coverage’ of the 2020 presidential election — www.imore.com/…
The Apple TV app is now available on 2019 LG Smart TVs — www.imore.com/…

Notable Numbers

🇺🇸 Smartwatches and fitness trackers are now worn by 1 in every 5 Americans — www.imore.com/…

Legal Latest

🇺🇸 Apple -v- Gerard Williams (Nuvia founder): Willians failed to have Apple’s suit dismissed in the Santa Clara County Superior Court — www.imore.com/…
- Williams claimed Apple’s action against him was illegal because of CA’s ban on non-complete clauses. The judge disagreed:
  
  “[the law doesn’t permit an employee] to plan and prepare to create a competitive enterprise prior to termination if the employee does so on their employer’s time and with the employer’s resources.”
- Williams also claimed Apple invaded his privacy by reading SMS messages on his Phone sent on his work phone. Since the phone in question was owned by Apple, the judge also disagree with this.
- Apple’s lawsuit against former chip lead could have implications for startups — www.imore.com/…
- Apple lawsuit tests if an employee can plan rival startup while on payroll — www.reuters.com/…
🇺🇸 Apple -v- WiLan: On re-trial, the damages Apple must pay WiLan have been reduced from $145M to $85M — www.imore.com/…
🇺🇸 CalTech -v- Apple & Broadcom: Apple and Broadcom ordered to pay over $1 billion for patent infringement — www.imore.com/…
- Related: Apple and Broadcom chip deals now worth a casual $15 billion — www.imore.com/…

Apple HR & Acquisition News

Apple Acquires AI Company Xnor.ai for Image Recognition Tools — www.macobserver.com/…
- Related Opinion: How Apple’s Xnor.ai acquisition could bring the Siri boost we’ve been waiting for — www.macworld.com/…

Apple Original Content Update

Main Stories

🇺🇸 DOJ -v- Apple: Round 2
- 🇺🇸 The dispute between Apple and parts of the US government over encryption that rekindled in December escalated massively in January:
- Apple privacy director says back doors to iPhone data can’t help solve crimes — www.imore.com/…
- FBI asks Apple to help it unlock iPhones of naval base shooter — nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
- We learn that the shooter had an iPhone 5 & an iPhone 7 (both of which they have the tools to crack): Justice Department announces the findings of the Florida base shooting — www.imore.com/…
- We learn that Apple actually co-operated as much as they could, and did so promptly, handing over gigabytes of data: Apple blasts FBI claim it was unhelpful in Pensacola shooter investigation — www.imore.com/… & The FBI doesn’t need Apple to unlock Pensacola gunman’s phones — www.imore.com/…
- Apple says no to unlocking shooter’s phone; AG and Trump lash back — nakedsecurity.sophos.com/…
- President Donald Trump says that Apple should ‘step up to the plate’ and unlock criminal’s phones — www.imore.com/…
- President Trump at Davos: Apple has keys to the criminal mind! — www.imore.com/…
- Apple is privately preparing for legal battle with DOJ over iPhone encryption — www.imore.com/…
- Related News
- Analysis
- Related Opinion
🇺🇸 Did Apple Kill End-to-End iCloud Encryption at the FBI’s Request?
Apple’s 2020 Q1 Earnings Call (new record for Q1) — www.apple.com/…
- Apple Reports Record Q1 Revenue of \$91.8 Billion and Record Q1 EPS of \$4.99 — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple reports a blowout Q1 2020, but names coronavirus as a worry for the next quarter — arstechnica.com/…
- Apple Q1 2020: $91.8 billion in revenue in record-setting first quarter — www.imore.com/…
- Transcript: Apple CEO Tim Cook on the company’s 2020 Q1 earnings — www.imore.com/…
- Apple’s wearables revenue overtakes Mac for the first time ever — www.imore.com/…
- iPhone 11 was the best seller each and every week of the holiday quarter — www.imore.com/…
- 📊 Analysis: Jason Snell’s superb charts: Apple reports a record $91.8 billion holiday quarter — sixcolors.com/…
- Opinion:
  - Regular panelist Lynda Gousha’s Analysis:
    1. Quarter was fantastic – the only two minor quibbles were that the Services revenues weren’t higher – in terms of % growth, and growth in Japan was down, due to some ’regulatory changes’.
    2. Forecast was good
    3. Stock has been performing exceptionally well – up until the corona virus hit.
    4. Corona virus could be a really big deal, maybe more from governments’ (both US & China) responses than from the virus itself. (I’m gleaning my thoughts from listening to Doctors & economists’ comments on Bloomberg Surveillance podcast). Dangers to Apple include people not going out to stores due to not going out, &, more serious – in some ways – supply chain issues. Apple does almost always have suppliers in more than one location in order not to be damaged too badly by issues like this, but given that so much assembly is done in China….. Hard to tell. Longer term – say 2 years, this won’t be a big deal, but in the interim, it will be.
    5. Apple itself, a long with some long term institutional investors, are likely to take this as an opportunity to buy the stock.
    6. A friend is putting together a spreadsheet showing number of shares outstanding over the years. Since Apple’s buyback program began, it looks like about 1/3 of the shares outstanding at that time have been repurchased. This, of course, impacts the EPS number of which financial types are so fond. Hard to tell if they take note of that, though the financial analysts we speak of so often, & on whom Ken reports so much damn well should be taking note of it. Of course the top line number, revenue, is not impacted.
    7. On the conference call itself, there were lots of new analysts, and some ‘old familiar’ ones missing. Most amusing of the articles I had a chance to look at, was this one, by Jason Snell. I agree w/his take, FWIW.
  - Things Apple Didn’t Want to Talk About in its Q1 Earnings Report — www.macobserver.com/…
- Related Stories:
Trade wars & Viruses
- 🇺🇸 🇪🇺 US -v- Europe:
  - 🇫🇷 At Davos President Trump negotiated a suspension of France’s plans to impose taxes on American tech giants in anticipation of an OECD report on taxing multinationals — appleinsider.com/…
  - 🇬🇧 Chancellor Sajid Javid Says UK Will Proceed With Digital Sales Tax, Despite U.S. Protest — www.macobserver.com/…
- 🇺🇸 🇨🇳 US -v- China:
  - New US-China trade deal will finally put the threat of tariffs to bed for Apple — www.imore.com/…
  - Apple’s supply chain continues to reduce dependence on China:
- 🇨🇳 The Chinese Coronavirus outbreak:

Quick Stories

Apple launches Smart Battery Case replacement program for iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR — www.imore.com/…
Microsoft Releases Edge Chromium Browser for macOS — www.macobserver.com/…
Apple Watch Connected gym partnership aims to turn activity into rewards — www.cnet.com/…
Apple Providing Free Replacement AirPods Pro Tips Under AppleCare+ — www.macrumors.com/…
FitBit & Withings add Blood Oxygen tracking (SPO2) before the Apple Watch:
- Fitbit beats Apple Watch to monitoring blood oxygen levels — www.imore.com/…
- Withings ScanWatch has the one feature everyone wishes the Apple Watch had — www.imore.com/… (Announced at CES but not due for release until autumn)
📌 🇪🇺 The European parliament have overwhelmingly voted in favour of moving forward with regulations to standardise smartphone chargers. The resolution calls on the European Commission to prepare legislation by July — www.macobserver.com/… & www.imore.com/…
- Apple is not in favour of this move: Apple hits back at EU charger proposals, says it would create “unprecedented volume” of waste — www.imore.com/…

Legend

Note: When the textual description of a link is part of the link it is the title of the page being linked to, when the text describing a link is not part of the link it is a description written by Bart.

Emoji	Meaning
🎧	A link to audio content, probably a podcast.
flag	The story is particularly relevant to people living in a specific country, or, the organisation the story is about is affiliated with the government of a specific country.
📊	A link to graphical content, probably a chart, graph, or diagram.
💵	A link to an article behind a pay-wall.
📌	A pinned story, i.e. one to keep an eye on that’s likely to develop into something significant in the future.

Let's Talk Apple & Let's Talk Photography