LTA 107: July 2022

Panel:

• Bart Busschots (host) – @bbusschots
• Jeff Gamet – @jgamet
• Chuck Joiner from MacVoices – @chuckjoiner

The show starts with the usual followups and updates on long-running stories. That’s followed by a few Apple-related legal stories, a few Apple HR stories, and some highlights from Apple’s services. The four main stories are Apple’s Q3 2022 earnings, the end of Jony Ive’s relationship with Apple, 15 games leaving Apple Arcade, and Apple’s new Lockdown Mode for iOS & macOS. The show ends with a quick rundown of some other Apple-related stories that made the news in July.

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!

Updates & Followup

Quick updates to long-running stories the show continues to track, and to stories covered in recent shows.

• 🇪🇺 The EU Parliament has approved the Digital Markets Act (DMA) & Digital Services Act (DSA), they now just need formal ratification by the council of ministers to become law, which is expected to happen before the end of the year — www.imore.com/…
• 🇷🇺 Apple’s relationship with Russia continues to deteriorate:
  • Apple Receives Fine From Russia over Alleged iCloud Storage Violation — www.macobserver.com/…
  • Russia Set to Fine Apple for App Store Policy’s Violation of Antitrust Laws — www.macobserver.com/…
• Netflix has finally taken advantage of Apple’s liberalised App Store policies and added an external subscription link — www.macobserver.com/…
  • The warning displayed to users:
    > “Any accounts or purchases made outside of this app will be managed by the developer “Netflix.” Your App Store account, stored payment methods, and related features, such as subscription management and refund requests, will not be available. Apple is not responsible for the privacy or security of transactions made with this developer.”
• Apple showcases Veterans Square, one of its investments to combat the housing crises — www.imore.com/…
• More trouble for Studio Display owners: Studio Display owners are frustrated with speaker, microphone problems — www.cultofmac.com/…

Legal Latest

• Apple -v- Ericsson: 🇨🇴 5G iPhones and iPads BANNED in Colombia by court in patent dispute — www.imore.com/…
• Three class-action suits over App Store pricing:
  • 🇬🇧 A panel of 3 judges has ruled that a £1.5Bn class action suit against Apple for anticompetitive pricing in its app store can proceed to trial in the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal — www.imore.com/…
  • 🇵🇹 Portugal Law School Professor Files Class Action Suit Against Apple for Excessive App Commission Rate — www.macobserver.com/…
  • 🇫🇷 Apple sued by French developers because of its App Store fees — www.imore.com/…
• 🇺🇸 Apple Gets Another Antitrust Lawsuit, This Time For Charging Apple Pay Fees to Card Issuers — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple HR & Acquisition News

• Apple is one of the companies benefiting from the recent wave of redundancies at Tesla — www.macobserver.com/…
  • Related: Apple poaches Lamborghini designer to work on Apple Car — www.imore.com/… (Luigi Taraborrelli)
• 🇮🇱 Apple has announced that it will open a chip development office in Jerusalem, and has started hiring engineers — www.imore.com/…
  • Related: 🇺🇸 Apple have bought a 7-building site in San Diego that belonged to HP until 2016 for $445M, apparently it will house Apple’s cellular modem team — www.imore.com/…

Apple Services & Original Content Highlights

• Apple TV & Apple TV+
  • You can now use the Apple TV app to pause and rewind live sports — www.imore.com/…
  • $50 Apple TV gift card promotion expands to international countries — www.cultofmac.com/… (Speculation that Apple are trying to get rid of inventory in preparation for launching new hardware soon)
  • 🇬🇧 Apple TV finally gets a native Sky Go app for live and on-demand streaming — www.imore.com/…
  • Awards season is starting up again:
    • Hollywood Critics Association Awards Recognizes Apple TV+ As Most Nominated Streaming Service With 53 Nominations — www.macobserver.com/…
    • Apple beats its own previous record with 52 Emmy nominations — www.imore.com/…
    • Apple lands its first ever News & Documentary Emmy nominations — www.imore.com/…
• Volvo will be pushing CarPlay support to over 200K vehicles via an OTA update (these cars run the Android Automotive OS) — www.imore.com/…
  • Related: Spotify’s weird ‘Car Thing’ CarPlay rival is now a discontinued thing — www.imore.com/…
• 🇬🇧 A report from the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority has found that the state of the Music Streaming market in the UK is healthy, with plenty of competition and no monopolies. The reports shows Apple with a 10–20% market share — www.imore.com/…
• 🇫🇷 🇲🇨 🇳🇿 The new Apple Maps experience rolls out to France, Monaco & New Zealand (now in 16 countries) — www.macobserver.com/…
• 🇨🇳 🇹🇼 🇭🇰 🇯🇵 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 As well as adding official support for Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, and Japanese, HomePod OS 15.6 also silently added Swedish and Norwegian — www.imore.com/…

Main Stories

1. Apple’s Q3 2022 Earnings — www.apple.com/…
   • Opinions are mixed
     • Apple reports only slight growth in Q3 2022 earnings report — arstechnica.com
     • Apple Outperforms in Q3 2022 Despite a Rocky Road — tidbits.com/…
     • Apple’s Q3 2022 Earnings Narrowly Beat Wall Street Expectations – MacStories — www.macstories.net/…
     • Apple announces record third-quarter 2022 revenue despite growing inflation — www.imore.com/…
     • An ounce of iPhone and no Macs makes a bitter Apple ‘cocktail’ — www.macworld.com/…
   • The usual excellent graphs from Jason Snell: Apple announces $83B fiscal third quarter – Six Colors — sixcolors.com/…
   • This is Tim: Complete Q3 2022 analyst call transcript – Six Colors — sixcolors.com/…
   • Tim Cook says Apple is making ‘deliberate decisions’ about hiring right now — www.imore.com/…
   • Apple could reach a billion paid subscribers by next year — www.imore.com/…
   • Analysis: Apple Q3 2022 Results — daringfireball.net/…
   • Related: According to a report from Strategy Analytics Apple recorded its best ever Q2 global smartphone shipments, managing to increase their shipments by 3% while the market contracted by 7% — www.macobserver.com/…
2. Jony Ive’s relationship with Apple appears to be over — daringfireball.net/… & arstechnica.com/…
   • The original NYT article — Apple Ends Consulting Agreement With Jony Ive, Its Former Design Leader — www.nytimes.com/…
3. Apple Arcade Loses 15 games in one go — www.macobserver.com/…
   • Apple Explains What Happens to Games Leaving Apple Arcade — www.macobserver.com/…
   • Related: New Oregon Trail Update Brings Apple Arcade and Apple Health Together — www.macobserver.com/…
   • Related: Apple Arcade gets new castle defense exclusive, other content updates this week — www.imore.com/…
4. Apple have announced that the next versions of iOS & macOS due out this autumn will support an optional Lockdown Mode for users under threat from state-level attackers. The mode will trade off functionality for security — tidbits.com/… & arstechnica.com/…
   • Apple’s Press Release: Apple expands industry-leading commitment to protect users from highly targeted mercenary spyware — www.apple.com/…
   • Apple are offering bug bounties of up to $2M for breaching Lockdown Mode — www.imore.com/…

Quick Stories

• Apple Expanding App Store Advertisements to ‘Today’ Tab and App Pages — www.macobserver.com/…
• More good deals for students
  • 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 US & UK students who sign up for Apple Music for the first time can get a free pair of Beats Flex earbuds — www.imore.com/…
  • 🇬🇧 Apple Back to School goes live in the UK, up to £120 gift cards on offer — www.imore.com/…
  • Apple Launches Back to School Promo in More Countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East — www.macobserver.com/…
• Latest VMWare Fusion tech preview brings Windows 11 to Apple Silicon Macs — appleinsider.com/…
• Apple have added coloured MagSafe 3 chargers to their lineup so owners of non-silver MacBook Pros can now get colour-matched charging cables — 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.