Panel:
- Bart Busschots (host) – @bbusschots
The show starts with some quick followup on a few recently covered and long-running stories before diving into the regulatory and legal stories, a little HR news, and some highlights from Apple’s services and original content. The three main stories are President Trump’s impact on Apple, the latest OS point-releases, and Apple’s Q1 2025 earnings call. The show finishes with a rundown of a few other quick 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!
Updates & Followup
Quick updates to long-running stories the show continues to track, and to stories covered in recent shows.
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Turns out Apple's Indonesia problems were not over after all. Last month I shared reports that the government were about to accept Apple's updated proposal, but it didn't work out like that:
- Indonesia says Apple's $1 billion investment isn't enough to lift iPhone 16 ban — appleinsider.com/…
- Later in the month relevant minister again said a deal was close — www.macobserver.com/… (no developments since)
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Belgium has appointed a magistrate to investigate the allegations against Apple alleging it uses conflict minerals filed by the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, initiating the formal legal process — www.macobserver.com/…
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Goldman Sachs long-running off-the-recored grumblings about Apple Card got on the record: Goldman Sachs CEO says Apple card partnership may end before 2030 — www.reuters.com/…
- Related Unconfirmed Report: Apple Card may get taken over by Barclays, Synchrony — appleinsider.com/…
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January 2025 was a mixed month for Apple's on-going supply-chain diversification efforts:
- TSMC's Arizona plant starts making a second Apple chip — appleinsider.com/… (Unconfirmed report, and the chip in question is a SiP for Apple Watch)
- Apple Chip Supplier TSMC’s US Plant To Not Get Latest Chip Before Taiwan — www.macobserver.com/… (CEO admitted there were delays in getting the US factories ready for producing the very latest chips for Apple)
- China hinders moving iPhone assembly to other countries — www.cultofmac.com/… (Unconfirmed report of bureaucratic hurdles being to slow things down)
Regulatory Rundown
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UK opens probe into Google’s and Apple’s mobile platforms — arstechnica.com/… (
- Competition and Markets Authority are investigating whether the two companies have strategic market status under the new CMA (Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act)
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More trouble for Apple in Brazil: Privacy nightmare FaceApp causes Apple & Google to be fined in Brazil — appleinsider.com/… (App was published to the local app stores without even a privacy policy in Portuguese!)
Legal Latest
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DOJ -v- Google: Apple becomes involved in the remedies phase of the trial (Google were found guilty of breaching the Sherman Act last year with their search engine)
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UK trial over Apple's App Store fees seeks $1.83B fine — appleinsider.com/… (4 year old class action has been allowed to proceed)
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Apple and Amazon get $600 million UK price fixing lawsuit dismissed — appleinsider.com/…
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Apple have settled another class action suit, this time over swelling batteries in early Apple Watches (up to and including the series 3), and for just $20M — www.macobserver.com/… (affected US Apple Watch owners can claim their slicer of the pie at WatchSettlement.com)
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M. Night Shyamalan beats $81 million plagiarism accusation over 'Servant' — appleinsider.com/…
Apple HR & Acquisition News
- Apple's attempts to block a class action suit alleging gender pay discrimination have failed, the case will go to trial — arstechnica.com/…
- Apple Intelligence & Siri team getting a boost from fixer Kim Vorrath — appleinsider.com/… (project manager with a long history of getting big projects delivered within Apple)
Apple Services & Original Content Highlights
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Apple TV+
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With the start of the 30th Major League Soccer season in the US, Apple roll out yet more soccer features — Apple PR & www.macobserver.com/…
- MLS Season Pass will be available in over 100 countries this time
- New Sunday Night Soccer featured game each week
- Soccer-loving T-Mobile customers get Apple’s MLS Season Pass as a free bonus — www.cultofmac.com/… (T-Mobile postpaid & Metro by T-Mobile subscribers)
- Apple adds Xfinity, DirecTV as MLS Season Pass distributors — sixcolors.com/… (by-passes Apple TV app!)
- Related: Apple brings TV broadcast info and more soccer coverage to Apple Sports — appleinsider.com/…
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More French-language programming coming to Apple TV+ in EU countries — appleinsider.com/… (deal signed with the French government)
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Oscar nominations completely snub Apple TV+ — www.cultofmac.com/…
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Synchrony Pay Later coming soon to Apple Pay — appleinsider.com/…
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Apple Arcade launches into 2025 with 10 new games, including PGA TOUR Pro Golf — Apple PR
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Apple Wallet:
- Illinois will implement digital IDs and driver's licenses for Apple Wallet in 2025 — appleinsider.com/…
- UK moves driver’s licenses into new wallet app — www.cultofmac.com/… (But not using the ISO standards Apple & Google are using the US — appleinsider.com/…)
Main Stories
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President Trump's Effect on Apple
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In the lead up to the inauguration, and on inauguration day itself the CEOs of major tech firms were unusually prominent:
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Tim Cook is donating $1 million to Trump’s inauguration […] — www.theverge.com/…
- Personal donation from Cook, no donation at all from Apple
- For comparison, for the Biden inauguration Cook donated nothing and Apple just $43,200) — daringfireball.net/…
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Tim Cook joins big tech leaders for Trump's inauguration — appleinsider.com/…
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US senators question big tech, including Apple, on the reason behind inauguration donations — appleinsider.com/… (Concerns about quid-pro-quos in terms of regulatory changes etc.)
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Editorial: My interpretation was that it was pandering to a notoriously transactional president with a history of feuding with CEOs that irked him
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At a pre-inauguration rally President-elect Trump made an un-substantiated boast involving Apple: Trump claims Tim Cook has committed Apple to massive US investment — appleinsider.com/…
- "'I spoke with Tim Cook of Apple,' said Trump. 'He said they're going to make a massive investment in the United States because of our big election win.'"
- There is no evidence to back up this assertion, and no comment from Apple.
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Despite a lot of campaign and transition time bluster, no Apple-affecting tariffs have materialised yet — appleinsider.com/…
- Editorial: the threat of sanctions may be more useful as leverage over both Apple and China than the political value of actually doing them, which will inevitably result in higher prices for US consumers
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Both Apple and President Trump are heavily involved in the bit-partisan TikTok divestment mandate signed into law by President Biden which came into effect the day before Trump's inauguration: Here’s Why You Still Cannot Download TikTok From App Store — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple Removes TikTok and Other ByteDance Apps from US App Store — www.macobserver.com/… (as did Google)
- After 1 day of outage: TikTok is back up in the US after Trump says he will extend deadline — www.bleepingcomputer.com/… (apps not restored to Apple or Google's stores)
- Later in the month one ByteDance-owned app (MarvelSnap) does come back into the stores after some ownership changes — appleinsider.com/…
- Opinion: A legal analysis of the legal effect of the executive order the new president issued to bring TikTok back online — www.lawfaremedia.org/… (TL;DR, president's can't overrule laws, and Trump's promise not to enforce the law has no legal standing, breaking the law would open companies up to massive potential exposure)
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President Trump signed many executive orders in his first days in power, and those around re-naming geographic features have impacted on Apple and other map-publishers:
- The president ordered the re-naming of Denali (tallest mountain in the US) back to Mount McKinley, since this is an entirely American feature, that change is likely to be adopted on most maps of the US once it flows through the bureaucratic process.
- The president also ordered that the international Gulf of Mexico be re-named to the 'Gulf of America', given this is international waters, and that multiple nations border this body of water, this is much more controversial.
- Apple did not instantly update Apple Maps, and within hours that became news: Apple Maps still calls it the Gulf of Mexico, and politicians are upset — appleinsider.com/…
- Later in the month Apple started to make changes: Apple Maps shows users the Gulf of Mexico when searching for 'Gulf of America' — appleinsider.com/…
- Related Analysis: An interesting look at how the open source community is handling the issue: OpenStreetMap Community Discussion on How to Handle the U.S. Federal Government's Imminent Designation of the Gulf of Mexico as the 'Gulf of America' — daringfireball.net/…
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Apple released the next round of OS point updates in January, mostly continuing the rollout of Apple Intelligence — www.macstories.net/… & appleinsider.com/…
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One notable common feature was a refinement of notification summaries triggered by high-profile failures to summarise notifications from news apps:
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Unusually, Apple previewed the changes — arstechnica.com/…
- As a stop-gap Apple promised to disable summaries for news apps in the short-to-medium term
- Apple promised UI tweaks to make summaries stand out more
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The delivered changes over-delivered on the preview a little — sixcolors.com/…
- The beta-nature of the feature is emphasised more in messages to users, and the settings screens show an explicit warning that summaries "may contain errors"
- The rendering of summaries was updated to make them stand out more from regular notifications, with a nice use of italics to make them feel less certain and authoritative
- UI was added to disable summaries for an app right from a summary (rather than needing to go to the settings app and navigate to the relevant setting)
- Apple delivered on the promise to disable summaries for news apps for the moment
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Analysis: LLMs aren’t always bad at writing news headlines — sixcolors.com/… (Examples of other AIs performing much better than Apple Intelligence)
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Opinion: Apple Intelligence summaries might get warning labels. That’s not enough. — sixcolors.com/…
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Related Analysis & Opinion: When Are Summaries Valuable? — tidbits.com/…
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Apple are now confident enough in their infrastructure and the maturity of the product to enable Apple Intelligence by default (users can still disable it globally, or by-feature) — tidbits.com/…
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Macs get fun custom Genmoji with macOS Sequoia 15.3 — www.cultofmac.com/…
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How Visual Intelligence gets more powerful on iPhone 16 in iOS 18.3 — appleinsider.com/…
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Note that even as the next WWDC gets closer than the previous, we're still waiting for many promised features, including improved Siri and personal context — www.macobserver.com/…
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Related: Apple joins AI hardware standards consortium to improve server performance — appleinsider.com/…
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Q1 2025 Earnings Call — Apple PR
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This is Tim (and Kevan!): Apple’s Q1 results call, transcribed — sixcolors.com/…
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The earnings in graphs and context: Apple’s reports record revenue for Q1 2025 — sixcolors.com/…
- Jason Snell & Dan Moren go through the graphs live on YouTube — [youtube.com/…](https://youtube.com/live/j6iczwW_-mc?si=mLabASHwRK7wjspe
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Best summary: Despite iPhone Decline, Apple’s Q1 2025 Sets Revenue Records — tidbits.com/…
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In Apple’s first-quarter earnings, the Mac leads the way in sales growth — arstechnica.com/…
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Services buoy slumping iPhone sales in record-breaking holiday quarter earnings — appleinsider.com/…
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Apple has more than 2.35 billion active devices, up 550 million since 2022 — appleinsider.com/…
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Apple highlighted that their numbers show better iPhone 16 upgrade rates in countries that do have Apple Intelligence compared to those that don't — appleinsider.com/…
- Related: Apple also reminded us that more languages are coming in April including "French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and simplified Chinese, as well as localised English to Singapore and India" — www.cultofmac.com/…
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Analysis:
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John Gruber — "Apple’s overall sales in China have been trending down for 3 years now. It looks to me like Apple has peaked there"
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Mind-melting stats from Apple’s profitable earnings call — www.cultofmac.com/…
- "Apple’s gross margins were 46% for the quarter. As a general rule, businesses aim for 10% to 15% gross margins … It’s helped hugely by Apple’s Services division, which reported $26 billion in revenues and 75% gross margins"
- "Phone revenues actually fell last quarter … to a measly $69.1 billion"
- "As Cook said during the call, 'iPad overall grew 15% for the quarter, and it was more driven by iPad Air and the entry-level iPad than it was the top level iPad.'"
- "revenue from Mac sales jumped an impressive 16% versus the same quarter of the previous year to just under $9 billion … 'The M4 based products are so compelling that it’s driving both upgrades at the double digit level, and it’s driving switchers at a double digit level,' said Apple’s CEO"
- "iPad and Apple Watch are attracting tons of new Apple users … Cook and co. said more than 50% of sales of both Apple Watch and iPad were to new customers, not upgraders"
- "Revenue from services like Apple Pay and Apple TV+ grew 14% year over year to set a new record … well over a billion paid subscriptions"
- "India is Apple’s next gigantic growth market"
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Related:
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Quick Stories
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Apple introduces the 2025 Black Unity Collection — Apple PR
- Wallpapers & new Black Unity Sport Loop Apple Watch Band
- Apple's Black Unity Apple Watch band uses a color-changing loop effect — appleinsider.com/…
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Apple moves to open-source, unify Swift component across platforms — appleinsider.com/…
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American T-Mobile iPhone users can now join the carrier's beta service providing SMS over satellite via StarLink — www.macobserver.com/… (Previously Android-only)
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Apple expands its India retail presence with Apple Store app — appleinsider.com/…
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NVIDIA Announces GeForce NOW Cloud Gaming for Apple Vision Pro — www.macobserver.com/…
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Game Porting Toolkit 2 exits beta to help developers move to macOS — appleinsider.com/…
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Apple's 2025 annual shareholder meeting is on February 25 — appleinsider.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 |
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A press release or official statement. | |
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. |