Benjamin Mayo

A judge dismissed a case against Apple today, regarding a 2020 lawsuit from the makers of the ‘iDiversicons’ app who claimed Apple had violated their copyrights by ripping off the designs of diverse skin tone emojis.

In the decision, District Judge Vince Chhabria wryly said ‘there are only so many ways to draw a thumbs up’.

Following two years of going online only because of COVID-19, the SXSW film festival returns to an in-person event this year, running from March 11 through March 20. The headline schedule was announced today and Apple TV+ will have a presence, premiering three new shows.

Update: Apple TV+ has today expanded its SXSW showing with two additional titles; debut of Sundance favourite feature film ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ and ‘The Big Conn’, a docuseries from the creators of McMillion$.

As spotted by Consomac, Apple has registered three new Macs in the Eurasian regulatory database. The new model numbers are A2615, A2686, and A2681. One of these models is described as a laptop.

A couple of weeks ago, we also saw the Eurasian database register iPhone and iPad models, likely signalling the forthcoming unveiling of a new iPhone SE generation with 5G support, and a spec-bumped iPad Air.

For Valentines Day weekend, Apple TV+ today premieres The Sky is Everywhere. Based on the YA novel by Jandy Nelson, this is the latest film hailing from Apple’s partnership with A24. It is directed by Josephine Decker.

For years, Apple has had thousands of software and hardware engineers working on an AR and VR device. The first iteration of this project is believed to be a standalone headset, featuring high-resolution displays and M1 Pro comparable performance.

We are now seeing more references to “realityOS” – the operating system that the headset will run – leak out in Apple open source code, as the hardware gets closer… to being a reality.

Apple TV+ and Apple Original Films had its best outing at the Oscars so far, with six total nominations for the company.

Most notably, CODA nabbed the most prestigious Best Picture Oscar nomination. Incidentally, CODA is also the first movie with a predominantly deaf cast to land a Best Picture nomination.

Apple today provided some additional details about how it will allow dating apps in the Netherlands to offer alternative payment systems, in compliance with a legal decision (that Apple is simultaneously appealing).

The biggest tidbit from this is the reveal of the ‘reduced’ commission structure. Apple typically charges 30% commission on purchases made using its In-App Purchase system. The commission levied on alternative payment systems has been set at … 27%, net of tax.

In November, Apple sued NSO Group over its repeated use of zero-click iPhone exploits to help malicious actors spy on iPhone users. Since then, many political activists have said they have been notified by Apple that they were targeted by NSO Group’s ‘ForcedEntry’ attack.

However, it seems that more than just NSO Group had knowledge of the flaw. Today, Reuters reports that a similar exploit has also been discovered and exploited by another Israeli firm called QuaDream.

A few hours ago, previews for Twitter links in the Messages app on iPhone, iPad and Mac have stopped working. Rather than a nice rich link when pasting in a tweet URL, users are simply seeing the generic look for an unloaded link bubble.

This appears to be caused by a server issue on Twitter’s end. Presumably, they will be able to resolve the bug and tweet links inside of iMessage will start functioning correctly again.

In an interesting new promotional angle for Apple TV+, the company has uploaded the first episode of its new original series The Afterparty to YouTube, for anyone to watch in full for free.

This means Apple can take advantage of the natural discovery and virality aspects of YouTube platform to spread awareness of the show, which then hopefully convert into paid viewers of the remaining episodes on Apple’s streaming service.

As reported by Deadline, Apple has won out in the bidding war for Sundance favorite ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’. Apple Original Films division has nabbed worldwide rights to stream the film on Apple TV+ later this year, in a deal said to be worth around $15m.

By the numbers, that’s the biggest Sundance 2022 deal but it doesn’t beat out Apple’s record-setting acquisition of CODA (which has a lot of buzz heading into awards season) at last year’s festival.

Apple has pushed back the enforcement of some rules that were previously set to come into effect on January 31st.

Firstly, during the first 2020 lockdowns, Apple allowed apps offering realtime group services to use payment methods other than In-App Purchase. This exception was introduced to help businesses trying to adapt to pandemic life. Citing the recent resurgence of COVID, this exception is now being extended to June. Apple has also deferred previously-announced rules that would require apps to offer simple in-app account deletion.