The News

Apple and Google are anti-competitive dogs, Aussie court finds

Apple and Google have misused their market dominance to be anti-competitive, an Australian court has found (Guardian Australia). In a mega-lawsuit that combined Epic Games’ two cases against the mobile makers and a class-action lawsuit, a Federal Court justice found that both company’s ban on external payment providers and Apple’s restriction on side-loading unfairly hurt competition, albeit not intentionally. It wasn’t a straight-sets win for Epic which tried unsuccessfully to argue that a ban on rival app stores was also anti-competitive. Both Google and Apple have flagged an appeal.

The Sizzle: The full 2,000-page judgment hasn’t been released, so it’s hard to say too much based but one thing jumped out to me: Apple and Google are facing anti-competition lawsuits around the world. What makes it such a thorny problem is that jurisdictions are finding different bits of their business are anti-competitive. That US case I wrote about last month? They found that the ban on rival apps stores was anti-competitive. But Australia didn’t. Anyway, like I said with the US case, I think we’re about to see some drastic changes to the way Apple and Google’s businesses work.

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Elon Musk whinges about Apple not giving Grok special treatment

The world’s richest man is yet again complaining that it should be illegal not to be nice to him. This time, Elon Musk says Apple is being anti-competitive by…. not selecting xAI’s app Grok to be on its top App Store lists (Apple Insider). This led to Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman having a tiff online, which escalated to the juvenile stage of using their competitor’s AI product to ““““prove”””” that they, in fact, were right.

The Sizzle: This embarrassing display of childishness from two of the world’s most powerful men aside, Musk is actually right. Apple does pick favourites. Except, it’s Musk who is often the favourite. An example: Last week, xAI released a “spicy” video setting on Grok to its millions of users that immediately made Taylor Swift nonconsensual adult images (The Verge). It says everything that at the same time as indie game platforms are being chased off the internet for having adult content, Musk is free to distribute this reckless technology to millions of people using Apple’s own services and never face any consequences.

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A court has ordered a man to send hourly selfies to police

A Sydney man accused of murder must send hourly selfies to the police as part of his house arrest conditions (Cyber Daily). Ayman Manly, who has pled not guilty to his charges, has been given unique bail conditions while he awaits trial. These include buying an iPhone, sending a photograph of himself to NSW Police every hour between 8am-8pm, and to sharing his location via Find My as part of his bail conditions.

The Sizzle: This is a pretty absurd story — I mean, no one should be forced to buy an iPhone when Samsung has some great new phones /s — but it’s a consequence of a bigger story. Earlier this year, ankle monitoring tech company BailSafe just shut up shop with no warning, leaving courts in the lurch and criminals unmonitored (ABC News). This is what happens when you outsource crucial technical parts of your legal system to private companies who list their head office at a door factory!

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Leftovers

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Oh, Also

Please remember to delete this email to save water

As the UK faces a drought, its top weather boffins have come up with a, um, unusual idea about how to save water: deleting old emails and photos (The Journal). The National Drought Group’s Helen Wakeham urged people to take individual steps to curb their water use “such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails”. Now, it’s not crazy to suggest that data centres are using a lot of water but it does feel a little bit like blaming climate change on people still using plastic straws.

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Bargains

Electrical & electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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