Let’s Talk Apple — Ep. 82 (June 2020)

Panel:

Bart Busschots (host) – @bbusschots
Charles Edge from the Mac Admins Podcast – @cedge318
Scott Willsey from the BubbleSort Podcast – @scottaw

The show starts with a few followup stories (including the virus-shaped elephant in every room these days), one notable number, a few Apple staffing changes and acquisitions, and a quick overview of news related to Apple’s original content. The four main stories are a turbulent month for the App Store, looming anti-trust on both sides of the pond, the Mac’s move to Apple Silicon, and this year’s OS updates. The show ends with a quick rundown of some smaller Apple-related stories that made the news in June.

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

As expected, Apple patched the vulnerability behind the Unc0ver jailbreak just a few days after we recorded LTA 81, and they stopped signing iOS 15.5 to stop people down-grading to jailbreak — tidbits.com/… & www.imore.com/…
Apple Card Improvements
- Apple have addressed a long-running criticism of Apple card by releasing a web portal for customers — www.imore.com/…
- Apple expands interest-free Apple Card financing to Macs, iPads, and more — www.imore.com/…
- Apple launches ‘Path to Apple Card’ program to approve more customers — www.imore.com/…
- New Apple Card customers can now get $50 when you pay for an Apple Service — www.imore.com/…
🇺🇸 The US government’s attack on encryption continues:
- Senate Judiciary Committee Passes Anti-Privacy ‘EARN IT Act’ — www.macobserver.com/…
- Senate Republicans Propose Law to Outlaw End-to-End Encryption — daringfireball.net/…
Apple Continued to respond to the Black Lives Matter protests into early June:
- Siri and Google Seek to Address ‘All Lives Matter’ Queries — www.macobserver.com/…
- Apple just announced a $100 million ‘Racial Equity and Justice Initiative’ — www.imore.com/…
- Apple offering free content including ‘The Banker’ to celebrate Juneteenth — www.imore.com/…
- 🇺🇸 See Washington’s Black Lives Matter Plaza from the sky in Apple Maps — www.cultofmac.com/…
- 🇬🇧 Apple renames store in Scotland in solidarity with racial justice efforts — www.imore.com/…
- 🎦 Apple released a video of Lisa Jackson (VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives) interviewing the first black Attorney General Eric Holder — developer.apple.com/…
COVID in June
- Apple Card’s COVID–19 Customer Assistance Program extended through July — www.imore.com/…
- A very mixed story in terms of store openings:
  - 🇦🇪 Apple to reopen UAE stores from June 8 — www.imore.com/…
  - 🇬🇧 UK Apple stores in England and NI to reopen Monday, June 15 — www.imore.com/…
  - 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 Over 70 more Apple Stores will reopen in the United States this week — www.imore.com/… (some of these stores are actually in Canada! — arstechnica.com/…)
  - 🇺🇸 Apple is re-closing some US retail stores in states where coronavirus cases have spiked — www.businessinsider.com/…
  - 🇸🇬 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 More Apple Stores reopening in Singapore, Canada, and the U.S. — www.imore.com/…
  - 🇺🇸 Apple is closing its retail stores in Texas again as COVID–19 cases rise — www.imore.com/…
  - 🇺🇸 Apple to close another 14 stores in Florida due to rise in COVID–19 cases — www.imore.com/…
- Apple updates COVID–19 app and website to include anonymous health information sharing — www.imore.com/…
- The roll-out of apps based on Apple & Google’s API continues:
- The failure of apps boycotting the API continues too:
  - 🇸🇬 Singapore’s contact tracing app isn’t mandatory because it doesn’t work on iOS — www.imore.com/…
  - 🇦🇺 Critical flaw discovered in Australia’s iOS COVIDSafe app — www.imore.com/…
  - 🇬🇧 The UK U-turn on not using Apple’s API, but do so with bad grace and throw some vague and difficult to interpret shade at Apple in the process. The app is now delayed until later in the year, but the project is being led by a former Apple exec — www.macobserver.com/…, www.imore.com/… & www.imore.com/…
  - Related: 🇺🇸 NY’s AG has written to Apple & Google asking that they place stronger restrictions on exposure notification/contact tracing apps that don’t use their API — www.imore.com/…
- Apple announces that this summer’s Apple Camp will come to the home — www.imore.com/… & Registration opens for Apple Camp at Home — www.imore.com/…
- Related Analysis: Apple’s Response to The COVID–19 Pandemic — www.macobserver.com/…

Notable Numbers

Apple is the first ever $1.5 trillion U.S. company — www.imore.com/…

Apple HR & Acquisition News

Apple Music promotes Ryan Newman to Head of Editorial UK & Ireland — www.imore.com/…
Apple’s VP of Inclusion and Diversity Christie Smith has left the company to spend more time with her family — www.imore.com/…
Fleetsmith announces it has been acquired by Apple — www.imore.com/…
Michelle Lee, the Apple TV+ exec who oversaw The Morning Show has been promoted to Director of Domestic Programming — www.macobserver.com/…

Apple Original Content Update

Main Stories

An Eventful Month for Apple’s App Store
- For Context: Apple says the App Store contributed to $500 billion in commerce in 2019 — www.imore.com/…
- More censorship controversies
- The new app for the new Hey email service causes controversy:
- Apple makes changes to the app store review process — arstechnica.com/…
  - Bug-fix and security updates won’t be blocked while an app is in dispute
  - Developers will be able to appeal the guidelines/rules themselves as well as specific decisions
- Apple is adding in-app purchases and subscriptions to Family Sharing — www.imore.com/…
- Apple rejects yoga app because it doesn’t auto-charge customers at the end of a free trial — www.imore.com/…
- Related: Apple Hit With Lawsuit for App Store Loot Boxes — www.macobserver.com/…
Anti-trust clouds gather
- 🇰🇷 South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission will allow Apple to draw up plans to fix anti-competitive behavior — www.imore.com/…
- 🇪🇺 Kobo (a subsidiary of Rakuten) has reportedly filed an an anti-trust complaint with the European Commission (Rakuten filed on in March about the 30% commission Apple charges on eBooks sold through apps) — www.imore.com/…
- 🇪🇺 The European Commission has has announced two formal investigations into possible anti-trust practices at Apple, one regarding in Apple Pay (only Apple Pay gets to use NFC on iPhones), and another regarding Apple’s App Store policies and their effects on streaming services, ebooks, gaming subscriptions, and other cloud services — www.imore.com/… & arstechnica.com/…
  - Spotify: ‘We welcome the European Commission’s decision to formally investigate Apple’ — www.imore.com/…
- 🇪🇺 ‘Apple does not have a dominant position in any market’, says EU exec — www.imore.com/…
- 🇺🇸 Microsoft Says Antitrust Bodies Need to Review Apple App Store — www.bloomberg.com/…
- 🇺🇸 House antitrust chair says Apple’s 30% cut is ‘highway robbery’ — www.imore.com/…
- 🇺🇸 The DOJ is reportedly preparing an anti-trust investigation into Apple — www.imore.com/…
- 🇺🇸 Tim Cook agrees to testify before House antitrust committee — www.imore.com/…
- 🇬🇧 UK regulators question Google’s default search engine payments to Apple — www.imore.com/…
Macs moving to Apple Silicon — arstechnica.com/…
iOS & iPad OS 14, macOS 11 Big Sur & watchOS 7 announced at WWDC
- All of Apple’s big announcements from WWDC 2020! — www.imore.com/…
- Apple Platforms State of the Union 2020: Important highlights from the event — www.imore.com/…
- Major focus on privacy across Apple’s OSes, in the WWDC Keynote, and in post-keynote interviews with Apple staff
- Many Cross-OS Features
  - Messages harmonised across OSes
    - How to use mentions and inline responses in Messages — www.imore.com/…
    - Messages to Get Major Upgrade in iOS 14 — www.macobserver.com/…
  - Maps harmonised across OSes
    - Related Maps News from before & after WWDC:
      - 🇬🇧 🇨🇦 🇸🇪 🇳🇱 🇨🇳 🇦🇺 Apple Maps adds real-time transit data to UK, Canada, and more — www.imore.com/…
      - 🇮🇳 Apple rolls out Nearby feature to Apple Maps in India — www.imore.com/…
      - 🇮🇸 Apple Maps Transit Directions go live in Iceland — www.imore.com/…
    - WWDC 2020: Maps to Include Cycling Routes — www.macobserver.com/…
    - Electric Vehicle Navigation
    - 🇬🇧 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 Apple’s new map is coming to the UK, Ireland, and Canada this year — www.imore.com/…
  - AirPods will be able to automatically switch between devices — www.imore.com/…
  - Apple adds support for third-party products in the Find My app — www.imore.com/…
- macOS 11 Big Sur
- iOS & iPadOS 14 — arstechnica.com/…
- WatchOS 7
  - watchOS 7: Everything you need to know — www.imore.com/…
  - How the Apple Watch tracks sleep, and why — www.cnet.com/…
  - How to use the handwashing monitor feature in watchOS 7 — www.imore.com/…
  - More powerful complications APIs for developers, and Watch Face Sharing
  - watchOS 7 now supports DRM audio streaming, opening the door for music apps — www.imore.com/…
  - You can run Shortcuts locally without your iPhone in watchOS 7 — www.imore.com/…
  - Apple is killing Force Touch on the Apple Watch with watchOS 7 — www.imore.com/…

Quick Stories

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