### Issue 1552 - Tuesday 22nd February, 2022

## In Today's Issue

- Dutch competition regulator still not happy with Apple's plans for 3rd party payments on the App Store
- The BYD Atto 3 is Australia's cheapest EV, depending where you live
- Atlassian bloke is trying to buy AGL so he can shut down coal plants sooner rather than later
- RIP Time Capsule, Apple's router and Time Machine backup target device
- Cheap Nvidia RTX 3060, AirPods Max, Bose QC45, Ryzen 5 5600X, Ryzen 7 5800X, 16" MacBook Pro

## The News

### Dutch competition regulator still not happy with Apple's plans for 3rd party payments on the App Store

The Dutch have fined Apple another 5 million euros for not complying with their ruling that dating apps on the App Store can use use third party payments. The Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) said that "we did not receive any new proposals from Apple with which they would comply with ACM's requirements", that "they have refused to put forward any serious proposals" and "Apple's so-called 'solutions' continue to create too many barriers for dating-app providers that wish to use their own payment systems". They're not wrong - having to send Apple monthly records of sales made and maintain a seperate binary app just for the Netherlands, only to receive a 3% reduction in Apple's commission is taking the piss and the Dutch aren't tolerating it.

### The BYD Atto 3 is Australia's cheapest EV, depending where you live

Australia's got a new "cheap" but not shit EV - the BYD Atto 3. It's a small-medium sized SUV that'll do 310km (standard battery) or 420km (extended battery) of driving and costs around $43,000 to $45,000 on the road based on where you live in Australia. The linked article has a list of all the prices in various states after incentives (NSW is cheapest at $42,778.35). $1,000 deposit now, get the car in July. Unlike previous BYD cars in, which were pretty basic units, the Atto 3 is based on BYD's very modern e-Platform 3.0 to be an electric car from the ground up. Here's a video review of the Atto 3, which is called the Yuan Plus in China. The interior styling is a bit wacky, but not ugly. Check out that rotating centre screen party trick. The Driven compares the BYD Atto 3 to the updated MG ZS EV, which is roughly the same price.

### Atlassian bloke is trying to buy AGL so he can shut down coal plants sooner rather than later

Not really "tech" news, but Mike Cannon-Brookes (co-founder of Atlassian, Australia's richest tech dude) has been making some noise lately by trying to buy energy company AGL in order to shut down all its coal power plants and transition it generate 100% renewable energy. Along with his wife's investment fund Grok Ventures and Brookfield, a Canadian company that buys and manages infrastructure, they put in a cheeky offer of $8b to buy all of AGL's shares (at $7.50/share) on the weekend. AGL rejected it today, saying they think the price is far too low and their plan to restructure the company will see it grow again. Some billionaires build rockets, some buy power companies. God speed to them all.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### RIP Time Capsule, Apple's router and Time Machine backup target device

Most laptops rarely plug in to an external HDD to do a Time Machine backup, so doing it over the network automatically makes so much sense - there's no "oops its been a week since I plugged in a HDD but the file I lost was made a few days ago!". Unfortunately, Apple killed off its solution for this problem, the Time Capsule, many years ago and never replaced it. Why they haven't released a successor is beyond me, but Ivan Drucker over at TidBITS has tried to re-recreate the venerable Time Capsule using NASes, Raspberry Pis and other devices. The sad news is nothing is that easy to setup for most people, or that easy to restore from should you lose/destroy your Mac. I guess Apple just wants you to dump everything on iCloud.

## Bargains

- Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 GAMING OC 12G - $772.20 + delivery from Shopping Express
- Apple AirPods Max - Pink or Green for $619, Silver or Blue for $629 from Harris Technology
- Bose QuietComfort 45 headphones - $424.95 from Myer
- AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU - $374 from Shopping Express eBay store (affiliate link)
- AMD Ryzen 7 5800X CPU - $447 from Scorptec's eBay store (affiliate link)
- Apple MacBook Pro 16" M1 Pro 16GB RAM 1TB SSD - $3,568.95 + delivery from Shopping Express

## The End

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