Updates & Followup

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

• 🇮🇳 Having backed down from demanding Apple and other smart phone vendors force-install a government app, India is now trying to demand the phone vendors, including Apple, hand over their source code, again, the companies are pushing back strongly — appleinsider.com/…
• 🇺🇸 We now know how long Google and Apple were prepared to break the law and expose themselves to potential future liability for billions of dollars in fines at the request of the US President, a year! TikTok have finally divested their US operations — appleinsider.com/…

Regulatory Rundown

• 🇮🇳 Apple’s battle with the Competition Commission of India seems to be approaching it’s culmination — the CCI found that Apple’s app store is anti-competitive back in 2024, but Apple have successfully stalled all enforcement by the regulator since
  • In January we learned that Apple had filed suit against the CCI for calculating the fine based on Apple’s global turnover (just like the EU!) in December, and that the CCI had rebutted those claims in its own filing , also in December — appleinsider.com/…
  • Later in January the CCI issued a final warning to Apple saying it was fed up waiting for Apple’s formal reply, and that it would go ahead without Apple’s reply if the company missed the current, already extended deadline — www.macobserver.com/…
  • Apple responded by asking the Delhi High Court to block the CCI’s request for the data they need to calculate the fine based on global revenue — www.macobserver.com/…
• 🇪🇺 No major developments in the EU, but there was one notable failure of the commission’s attempts to make room for third party app stores, and predictably, the commission and Apple blame each other — appleinsider.com/…

Legal Latest

• 🇺🇸 Apple hit with $150K fine after breaking decade-old agreement in NJ — appleinsider.com/… (NJ law requires clear pricing displays in physical stores, Apple got in trouble for breaching this law a decade ago and entered a consent agreement promising to obey the law, but now they’ve been caught breaching it again)
• 🇺🇸 A California court has narrowed the scope of an on-going case against Apple over how its own apps collect user data, the judge dismissed many of the suit’s claims, but some do remain, so the case will continue — www.macobserver.com/…
• 🇺🇸 AliveCore -v- Apple: The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court ruling dismissing AliveCor’s anti-trust case against Apple, ending the case — www.macobserver.com/…
• 🇺🇸 X/xAI’s legal action against Apple and OpenAI didn’t go well in January:
  • 🇰🇷 South Korea rejects xAI’s bizarre discovery request discussed last month — www.macobserver.com/…
  • 🇺🇸 Judge Blocks xAI Effort to Obtain OpenAI Source Code in Apple AI Lawsuit — www.macobserver.com/…
• 🇫🇷 A French court as blocked an attempt by an advertising group to block App Tracking Transparency in France — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple HR & Acquisition News

• Apple loses Safari designer Marco Triverio to The Browser Company — appleinsider.com/…
• Apple Design Team gains Halide co-founder, but the pro camera app isn’t going anywhere — appleinsider.com/…
• John Ternus has reportedly taken over the design team within Apple, though somewhat unofficially — Mark Gurman reports that officially the department still reports to Tim Cook, but Cook has delegated that role to Ternus — appleinsider.com/… (This is being interpreted as further evidence that Ternus is being groomed as Tim Cook’s heir-apparent)
• Apple acquires Israeli audio AI startup Q.ai — www.reuters.com/…
  • “Apple did not say how it will use Q.ai’s technology but said the startup has worked on new applications of machine learning to help devices understand whispered speech and to enhance audio in challenging environments.”

Apple Services & Original Content Highlights

• Apple took the opportunity to brag about how well services are doing: 2025 marked a record‑breaking year for Apple services — 📣 Apple PR
  • A nice overview of the key numbers — appleinsider.com/…
  • Opinion: John Gruber points out the PR post is a mix of real numbers and so-called Bezos Numbers — daringfireball.net/…
• Apple Confirms Chase Will Take Over Apple Card in 24 Months — www.macobserver.com/…
  • Related: JP Morgan took a profit hit to set aside money to run Apple Card — appleinsider.com/… (not a sign of problems with the card, but an illustration of the scale of the undertaking)
• January saw a noticeable push for more immersive content for the Vision Pro:
  • Immersive Basketball Games Come to Apple Vision Pro on January 9 — www.macstories.net/…
    • First game now out via the NBA app — appleinsider.com/…

  • Apple Vision Pro to Stream Crufts in New Immersive Video Series “Top Dogs” — www.macobserver.com/…

  • In February, Apple Arcade is getting the nostalgic Retrocade for Apple Vision Pro — appleinsider.com/…
• Shazam Reveals Its Fast Forward 2026 Artists to Watch — www.macobserver.com/…
• Apple Arcade Adds Four New Games on February 5, Led by Civilization VII — www.macobserver.com/… (📣 Apple PR)
  • ‘Civilization VII Arcade Edition’ coming to Apple Arcade with big caveats — appleinsider.com/… (Won’t receive downloadable content released for other platforms)
• January was a strong month for Apple TV with the various content industry awards:
  • Some earlier nominations bear fruit:
    • Apple had its best ever Annual Critics Choice Awards, winning a total of seven awards from three TV series (The Studio, Pluribus & Severance) and the F1 movie — www.macobserver.com/…
    • ‘The Studio’ and ‘Pluribus’ win at the Golden Globes awards — appleinsider.com/… (3 awards from 14 nominations, and none of the F1 nominations became awards)
  • Plenty more nominations announced, setting the company up for more good news in the coming months:
    • Apple corrals 12 nominations for 32nd Actor Awards, led by ‘The Studio’ — appleinsider.com/…
    • Apple secures seven nominations for 37th Producers Guild Awards — appleinsider.com/…
    • Six nominations in the American Cinema Editors awards for the F1 movie, Severance, Pluribus & Mr. Scorsese — appleinsider.com/…
    • 🇬🇧 ‘F1: the Movie’ and ‘The Lost Bus’ nominated for UK Bafta awards — appleinsider.com/…
    • ‘Pluribus’ leads Apple TV Writers Guild Awards with 4 of 9 nominations — appleinsider.com/… (9 nominations for Apple, not 9 in total for the ceremony, and the other five for apple where for The Studio & Severance)
    • Apple scores six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture for acclaimed feature F1 and Best Documentary Feature for Come See Me in the Good Light — 📣 Apple PR
      • Related: ‘F1: The Movie’ is officially the most-watched film Apple TV history — appleinsider.com/… (‘fun with numbers without numbers’ as Ken Ray would put it)
      • Related: Apple TV revs up Formula 1 content ahead of racing season — www.cultofmac.com/… (New section on Apple TV called Get Ready for Formula 1 on Apple TV with 10 videos at launch)

Main Stories

1. Editorial from Bart: Apple’s cowardice in the face of the Trump Administration was on full display in January (they are of course not alone):
   1. Making a complete mockery of the App Store rules Apple claims protect users, Apple failed to remove the X’s apps from their app store when the company chose to allow Grok be used for generating child abuse material and to harass women by allowing users to ask the bot to undress people in photos. US senators called Apple on their hypocrisy in an open letter — www.macrumors.com/…
      • Ignoring posts from Elon Musk blaming the users, X’s initial response was to limit the feature to paid users, effectively making child abuse and non-consensual nudity premium features, even this was not enough to get Apple to act — appleinsider.com/… 🤯
      • X’s final solution was to block the feature in every country that has laws against consensual nudity, using geo-blocking to limit the harassment of women to only certain countries — appleinsider.com/… (it takes more effort to selectively allow this abuse than to just universally block it!)
      • 🇪🇺 The EU has launched a formal investigation of X under the Digital Services Act which gives large online platforms a duty of care towards their users, but still no response from Apple — www.bleepingcomputer.com/…
      • Related: Moral low ground: App Store is rife with AI ‘nudify’ apps — appleinsider.com/…
      • Opinion: [Apple Cowardly Still has not Pulled X and Grok from the App Store — Dan Moren on sixcolors.com/…](https://sixcolors.com/link/2026/01/apple-cowardly-still-has-not-pulled-x-and-grok-from-the-app-store/
   2. Tim Cook came under strong scrutiny for attending a White House screening of a documentary about the first lady on the day US federal officers killed a second protestor in Minneapolis, after a few days of silence, Cook finally responded with a vague internal memo — appleinsider.com/…
      • Opinion: John Gruber perfectly explains everything that’s wrong with Cook’s ‘response’, first in an initial quick commentary, then in a deeper post: Politics and the English Language, January 2026 Edition — daringfireball.net/…
2. Apple Unveils Apple Creator Studio App Suite — www.macstories.net/… (📣 Apple PR)
   • The Apps:
     • Final Cut Pro for Mac and iPad (video editing)
     • Logic Pro for Mac and iPad (music creation)
     • Pixelmator Pro for Mac and iPad (photo editing and graphic design)
     • Motion for Mac (video effects)
     • Compressor for Mac (video encoding)
     • MainStage for Mac (music performance)
     • Advanced features for the iWork suite — mostly content libraries and AI (Pages, Keynote & Numbers)
   • Pricing:
     • Regular Price: $12.99/month or $129/year (one-month free trial & family sharing supported)
     • Education pricing (students & teachers): $2.99/month or $29.99/year
     • Apple are adding a three-month free trial with Mac & iPad purchases.
     • Note that the existing stand-alone versions remain available
   • The first significant changes to Pixelmator since Apple’s purchase of the company
     • The old and languishing classic Pixelmator app for iPad is now officially being wound down, it remains available, but will get no more updates — appleinsider.com/…
     • Pixelmator Pro is coming to the iPad — www.macobserver.com/…
   • The iWork apps are getting updated to Liquid Glass for everyone, and subscribers get the additional new features: All the new features of Keynote, Pages and Numbers — and how to get them — www.cultofmac.com/…
   • An excellent practical overview: Seven things to know about how Apple’s Creator Studio subscriptions work — arstechnica.com/…
   • A good breakdown for people in specific situations: Apple Creator Studio is a boon and a bargain — but is far from being for everyone — appleinsider.com/…
   • Because of the limitations of how the App Store works, existing iWork users have some faffing about to do — Apple’s Creator Studio has a rough App Store roll-out — sixcolors.com/…
   • Related:
     • Apple kills free 90-day Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro trial — www.cultofmac.com/…
     • Apple kills off Pro Apps for Education in favor of Creator Studio education subscription — appleinsider.com/…
     • Apple is hosting a three-day Creator Studio event — appleinsider.com/…
     • 🎦 Apple highlighted what the bundle can do: Behind Kyle Hanagami’s viral dance creations edited with Final Cut Pro — www.apple.com/…
3. With very little detail, especially initially, Apple have confirmed they have struck a deal with Google to use Gemini to power the updated Siri due out this Spring — daringfireball.net/…
   • The architecture is not changing, Gemini will run on Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, retaining all the current privacy guarantees, this was first confirmed by Google, then by Apple — appleinsider.com/… & www.bleepingcomputer.com/…
   • Tim Cook finally provided some more details about the deal during the Q1 earnings call, making it very clear Google are not getting any user data, and Apple are not lessening any of their protections — www.macobserver.com/…
   • Related: According to Mark Gurman Apple make heavy use of Claud from Anthropic internally within the company, running custom versions of the model on their own hardware, and Apple wanted to do the same for Siri, but Anthropic got greedy and Apple refused to pay what they were demanding — www.macobserver.com/…
4. Apple’s Q1 2026 Earnings — 📣 Apple PR
   • 📊 The usual amazing charts from Jason Snell: Apple announces all-time record in revenue, iPhone sales — sixcolors.com/…
   • This is Tim: Complete transcript of Apple’s Q1 2026 financial call — sixcolors.com/…
   • A good summary of the financials: Apple Q1 2026 Earnings Report Released: $143.8B Revenue and $2.84 EPS — www.macobserver.com/…
   • The parts Apple’s CEO & CFO chose to highlight in the press release: Apple’s Q1 2026 Earnings Explained by Tim Cook and CFO Kevan Parekh — www.macobserver.com/…
   • Interesting additional statements beyond the numbers:
     • Memory cost explosion won’t hurt Apple too badly in Q2, may sting in Q3 — appleinsider.com/…
     • Apple reaches 2.5 billion active devices after record-breaking quarter — appleinsider.com/…
     • AirPods Pro 3 Played a Bigger Role in Apple’s Q1 2026 Than Anyone Expected — www.macobserver.com/…
   • Analysis:
     • Apple blows away Wall Street expectations with record $143.8 billion quarter — appleinsider.com/…
     • Apple is resurgent in China with unexpected iPhone 17 sales domination — appleinsider.com/…
     • Amid record revenue, Apple’s Q1 2026 R&D spend reveals its AI ambitions — appleinsider.com/…
   • Related: Apple Reveals Tim Cook’s 2025 Earnings in New Proxy Filing— www.macobserver.com/… (his total package came to a shocking $74M, even though his base salary was ‘only’ $3M)

Quick Stories

• Apple introduces new AirTag with expanded connectivity range and improved findability — 📣 Apple PR (identical form factor, just some nice internal improvements)
  • AirTag 2 teardown shows Apple taking tampering seriously — www.cultofmac.com/…
• Apple unveils the new Black Unity Apple Watch band — 📣 Apple PR
• 🇦🇺 🇧🇷 🇨🇴 🇮🇩 🇲🇾 🇰🇷 🇹🇷 Apple Watch Adds Hypertension Alerts in Seven More Countries — www.macobserver.com/… (Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea & Turkey)
• 🇦🇺 🇳🇿 🇧🇷 🇰🇷 Apple’s Back to Uni 2026 Deal Is Now Available in Four Countries — appleinsider.com/… (Australia, New Zealand, Brazil & South Korea)
• 📆 Apple’s annual shareholder meeting will be held on the 24th of February — www.macobserver.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.