LTA 115: March 2023 1

Panel:

• Bart Busschots (host) – @bbusschots
• Allison Sheridan from the NosillaCast Podcast – @podfeet@chaos.social

The show starts with a few followups from previous shows, one quick regulation story, two short legal stories, three Apple HR stories, and a partridge … err … and some highlights from Apple’s services and original content divisions. The three main stories are Apple’s complicated relationships with China & India, Apple Pay Later, and Apple Music Classical. The show finishes with a quick rundown of some other Apple-related stories that made the news in March.

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.

• Compared to previous months March was quiet in terms of labor relations at Apple, but there was some news:
  • The CWA (Communication Workers of America) accused Apple of illegally firing staff for union organising — appleinsider.com/…
  • Apple is reportedly starting to use door access badge logs to enforce their return to work policy, with employees who are not complying facing possible termination — appleinsider.com/…
• Apple got everything it wanted at the annual shareholder meeting — appleinsider.com/…
• The changes to Apple’s App Store pricing model Apple announced a few months ago have gone live, allowing developers much more control over their app pricing around the world — appleinsider.com/…
• Wix & Stripe partner to take in-coming tap-to-pay payments on iOS out of beta and into the real world for US merchants — appleinsider.com/…
• Apple expands Emergency SOS via satellite to six more countries — appleinsider.com/… (Austria, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands & Portugal)
• ApplePay finally launches in South Korea — appleinsider.com/…
• Apple’s car project still seems to be bubbling away under the surface: Apple self-driving test program grows to over 200 drivers — appleinsider.com/… (Data from CA DMV)

Regulatory Rundown

• UK antitrust case versus Apple’s browser dominance dies on a technicality — appleinsider.com/…

Legal Latest

• Billion dollar Apple Watch patent fight goes to jury trial — appleinsider.com/… (Masimo, blood oxygen sensor)
• Apple -v- VirnetX: Apple has won an appeal to invalidate the two patents at the heart of VirnetX’s 2010 case against Apple over FaceTime & iMessage — appleinsider.com/…

Apple HR & Acquisition News

• Michael Abbott, Apple’s vice president of cloud engineering is leaving Apple in April — appleinsider.com/…
• Apple executive shuffle to emphasize India as a sales region — appleinsider.com/…
• According to reports from Bloomberg, Apple are extending their hiring freeze and changing how they do promotions and bonuses in order to cut costs — appleinsider.com/…

Apple Services & Original Content Highlights

• Apple TV+
  • The Nominations & Awards keep rolling in both sides of the Atlantic:
    • Apple and BBC win Oscar for ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse’ — appleinsider.com/…
    • Severance wins both the Best Drama and Best New Series awards at the Writers Guild Awards — www.cultofmac.com/…
    • Bad Sisters is the most-nominated show in the 20th Irish Film & TV Awards — appleinsider.com/…
    • Slow Horses & Bad Sisters get nominations from the Royal Television Society Awards — appleinsider.com/…
    • Apple TV+ gains 15 nominations at UK’s Bafta Television Awards — appleinsider.com/… (Slow Horses & Bad Sisters)
    • Selena Gomez Apple TV+ film nominated for MTV’s Best Music Documentary — appleinsider.com/…
  • Friday Night Baseball returns to Apple TV+ for the 2023 season, no longer free, but with some tweaks: Apple TV+ baseball fans will get live looks into bad call appeals — appleinsider.com/…
  • Related: tvOS 16.4 & iOS 16.4 have a new safety feature to protect epileptics — appleinsider.com/…
• Apple Fitness+ spotlights Miley Cyrus, Mariah Carey, Shania Twain — appleinsider.com/…
• PayPal adds Apple Pay support for small business payments — appleinsider.com/…

Main Stories

1. China, India & Apple — it’s complicated!
   • Apple, Foxconn convince Indian state to loosen labor laws — arstechnica.com & Apple & Foxconn amping up efforts for more labor reform in India — appleinsider.com/…
   • Foxconn wins first AirPods order & will make them in India — appleinsider.com/…
   • Even Foxconn says it’s looking to move away from China — appleinsider.com/…
   • Tim Cook among few US CEOs attending China business summit — appleinsider.com/… & Cook praises ‘symbiotic’ 30-year relationship with China — appleinsider.com/…
   • China tells Apple to beef up its data security practices — appleinsider.com/…
2. Apple Pay Later soft-launches in the US
   • Apple Pay Later gives you 6 weeks to pay off interest-free loans — www.cultofmac.com/…
   • Apple launches Apple Pay Later, but only for selected users — appleinsider.com/…
   • Apple Pay Later turns Apple into a full-on money lender — arstechnica.com
3. Apple Music Classical finally launches — www.apple.com/…
   • Apple Music Classical waltzes onto iPhone — appleinsider.com/…
   • Here’s your introduction to Apple Music Classical — www.cultofmac.com/…
   • Reviews/Opinion:
     • The overlap between Apple Music and Classical app is clunky — appleinsider.com/…
     • First Look: Apple Classical is tuned for the genre, but hits a few false notes – Six Colors — sixcolors.com/…

Quick Stories

• Some minor new hardware announcements from Apple:
  • iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus now available in yellow — appleinsider.com/…
  • iPhone 14 Silicone Cases & Apple Watch bands gain new spring colors — appleinsider.com/…
  • Beats by Dre is launching a ‘Girls Don’t Cry’ edition of Beats Flex — appleinsider.com/…
• Some software tweaks to Apple’s OSes:
  • iOS 16.4 brings a second attempt at launching the new Matter-based HomeKit architecture — 9to5mac.com/…
  • iOS 16.4 brings voice isolation to regular cellular calls — www.macobserver.com/…
  • iPadOS 16.4 bring new tilt & azimuth support to the Apple Pencil’s hover mode — appleinsider.com/…
  • Apple have updated the iWork suite with just a few nice little tweaks — tidbits.com/…
• Apple debuts iPhone purchasing via video call — www.cultofmac.com/… (US only, at least for now)
• Microsoft makes Outlook for Mac free for everyone — www.cultofmac.com/…
• Six 8BitDo Controllers Add Support for Apple Hardware — www.macstories.net/…
• Apple will publish it’s Q2 earnings on May the 4th — appleinsider.com/…
• Apple Announces WWDC 2023: June 5–9 with Special Event at Apple Park — www.macstories.net/…
  • Apple announces Swift Student Challenge for WWDC 2023 — appleinsider.com/… & Some Swift Student Challenge winners will go to WWDC23 — www.cultofmac.com/…
  • Join the NosillaCastaways text chat during the WWDC Keynote by going to podfeet.com/chat

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.