Benjamin Mayo

The EU commission today announced that it is fining Apple 1.8 billion euros, or about $2 billion USD, for abusing its dominant position in the market for distribution of music streaming services, with ‘abusive’ App Store rules. Specifically, the EU says Apple’s anti-steering provisions prevented Spotify and other Apple Music competitors from telling customers about alternative ways to subscribe.

Apple rejects the findings and will appeal the decision, as indicated by its just-published strongly worded press release. Apple says the EU has found no evidence of consumer harm, and “ignores the reality of a market that is thriving, competitive and growing fast”. In a statement, Spotify welcomed the judgement and its effective implementation.

You can now watch Napoleon on Apple TV+ today. Following an exclusive theatrical run and VOD window, the Ridley Scott epic is now streaming free with an Apple TV+ subscription.

In the film, Joaquin Phoenix stars as Napoleon Bonaparte and Vanessa Kirby plays his wife Josephine. The film charts Napoleon’s relationship and military career, from his big victories to his ultimate demise.

Apple TV+ has launched a limited time collection of movies to stream for free as part of your Apple TV+ subscription. The company has done this occasionally in the past to coincide with the themed release of new originals, but this is by far the biggest drop. Unfortunately, it is only available to subscribers in the US.

The collection includes big name titles like The Wolf of Wall Street, Saving Private Ryan, Mad Max: Fury Road and more.

Apple today expanded its Self Service Repair Program to include the latest Mac models, the M3 MacBook Pro and M3 iMac introduced in October 2023. This allows customers to order Apple-certified parts and conduct repairs on these machines themselves, without needing to go to an Apple Store or another repair shop.

Next month, Apple will also roll out Apple Diagnostics app support so users can assess performance of their machines, and an update to System Configuration will mean users can perform Mac repairs fully independently, without needing to contact the Self Service Repair support team to run the final steps.

Apple Pay Later, the feature where you can spread an Apple Pay purchase across four equal installments with zero interest, is leading the way when it comes to consumer credit transparency.

Experian and Apple announced today they are working together to include Apple Pay Later pay-in-4 loans in a consumer credit report. Apple is the first major BNPL provider to provide loan and payment history directly to a credit reporting agency.

Apple Music has launched a new personalized playlist feature today, with users noticing a new ‘Heavy Rotation’ mix in their Made for You section.

Heavy Rotation features the songs you are listening to a lot, and the mix is a great way to blast some of your recent favorites. The list of tracks is updated daily.

In today’s edition of Bloomberg’s Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman reports that Apple is working on redesigning iOS and macOS.

It sounds less drastic than the visual changes seen in the iOS 6 to iOS 7 transition, though. He writes “the company is indeed working to update the design of iOS as early as this year, but I don’t believe it will be a total overhaul that mirrors visionOS”. While Gurman says we can expect to see changes in iOS 18 this summer, the work on macOS has only just started and won’t be ready until 2025 or 2026.

In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman writes that Apple is exploring various form factors for future wearable products.

That includes smart glasses similar to the Amazon Echo Frames or the Meta Ray-Bans, which offer some smart audio and AI features (able to ship much earlier in than the goal of full augmented reality glasses that can supplant the Vision Pro). Apple is also investigating how to add cameras to the AirPods earbuds, potentially obviating the need for a separate smart glasses product altogether.

Apple Search Ads is launching soon in more countries, expanding into the Latin America region. Ads will soon start appearing in the App Store for Brazil, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama and Paraguay.

That means app developers will be able to market in more than 70 countries through Apple Search ads. With “Search Ads”, ads can be targeted to show up in the Today app, at the bottom of app product pages, at the top of search results and in the Search tab’s “Suggested” section.

The Major League Soccer season starts today, and once again Apple is your exclusive streaming home of all the games. Watch with an MLS Season Pass subscription priced at $99 for the whole season, or discounted to $79 for Apple TV+ subscribers.

MLS Season Pass includes live and VOD streams of all MLS 2024 regular season and playoff matches, broadcasted in English and Spanish. Watch on the Apple TV app on Apple devices and third-party platforms like Amazon Fire Stick, Roku, PlayStation, Xbox and more. You can also watch in a web browser at tv.apple.com.

Apple today launched a new free app for the iPhone, called Apple Sports. As the name suggests, it is a dedicated destination for users to keep up-to-date with scores and stats for their favorite teams.

Apple Sports is available to download now for iPhone users in the US, UK and Canada. At launch, it covers MLS, NBA, NCAA basketball, NHL, Premier League, and more …

Apple today updated the Apple Music Replay experience, available at replay.music.apple.com, with visualizations of your favorite music habits by month, rather than just by year. You can see how many minutes you listened to in each month, as well as top songs, albums and artists.

The yearly recap Apple Replay Mix playlist for 2024 is also available starting today for users to see everything they’ve been loving this calendar year.

The new limited series Masters of the Air, the highly-anticipated sequel to the Band of Brothers and The Pacific franchise, is setting records for Apple TV+.

The streamer told Variety that the show received more viewers in its debut weekend than any original premiere to date, beating previous heavyweights like The Morning Show and Hijack. And it’s having a halo effect on Apple’s programming worldwide.

Apple is about to be hit with its first-ever fine from the EU commission, according to a report this morning from the Financial Times. The fine will be in the region of 500 million euros (about $538 million dollars). The fine will be part of a conclusion of the case that began in 2019 after Spotify filed a formal complaint.

Specifically, the EU believes Apple acted illegally in blocking music streaming apps like Spotify from telling customers about other ways to subscribe to their services, and thereby evade Apple’s commission on in-app purchases. These are usually referred to as the App Store’s anti-steering provisions.

Update: The issue now appears to have been resolved and episodes are rolling out as intended once more. Original story below.

An Apple Podcasts bug is making listeners miss the newest released episodes of their favorite shows. Seemingly impacting some significant proportion of shows that released new episodes yesterday, the bug means that the Apple Podcasts app does not show the latest episode in the user’s library, nor will it automatically download it and appear in the Up Next queue.

There is a workaround that entails manually finding the exact episode in the search tab, but that requires the user to be aware that a new episode has been released in the first place …

Timely for Valentine’s Day, Apple Music has launched two new personalized radio stations, available now for Apple Music subscribers.

The ‘Love Station’ has a romantic theme featuring songs about falling in love, whereas ‘Heartbreak’ features tracks about heartbreaks and sad love. Apple says these stations are deeply personalized to select the best music for each user, drawing from Apple Music’s catalog of more than 100 million songs.

Apple is persevering with foldable iPhone designs, according to a new report by The Information. The publication says Apple has been exploring foldable iPhones as early as 2018, and currently has at least two active prototypes of models that fold like clamshell.

The new foldable iPhone is described as being in early development, so don’t expect it to launch anytime soon. Apple has also been developing a larger form-factor foldable iPad, having faced challenges with the foldable iPhone project, according to the report ..