Amazon

Amazon is ringing in 2024 by bringing ads to Prime Video. The company has announced this week that movies and TV shows will both start showing ads on January 29 unless you’re willing to pay them an extra $2.99 per month.

The Amazon Alexa app isn’t just for configuring Echo speakers and managing service integrations. It’s also a smart home controller akin to Apple’s Home app. Amazon is putting that front and center with the redesigned Alexa app launching today. There’s also a new smart home mapping feature that’s exclusive to iOS devices.

Apple and Amazon are once again facing scrutiny for their 2018 agreement that saw Apple finally establish an official Amazon storefront. A report from Insider today goes in-depth on the details of this agreement, with one source saying that Apple is getting “massive preferential treatment” from Amazon.

The password is one step closer to becoming a thing of the past now that Amazon has adopted passkey technology. The online shopping giant is introducing support for passkey starting today with iOS and the web.

Amazon launched an official Kindle app for macOS more than eight years ago, allowing Mac users to download and read their ebooks from Amazon’s platform on their computer. However, it seems that Amazon has plans to discontinue the current Kindle app for the Mac while it works on a new, revamped version.

The controversial Apple–Amazon deal struck back in 2018 has been found to be illegal by Spanish antitrust regulators, who have fined the company a total of $218M.

The investigation into alleged price-fixing took two years to complete, and follows similar ones in Germany and Italy – with concerns also expressed in the US …

Apple is facing a new antitrust class-action lawsuit, and this time it’s being accused of colluding with Amazon to raise prices. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, accuses Apple and Amazon of working together to “stifle competition” by eliminating third-party Apple resellers on Amazon Marketplace.

Amazon is adding a new way for shoppers to pay for their purchases, and it’s not Apple Pay. Despite being one of the largest online retailers to resist Apple’s payment platform, Amazon is opting for Venmo instead. Here’s how the new Venmo integration will work via Amazon…

CNN has pointed to upcoming tech earnings reports from Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter – and suggested that they aren’t going to be pretty.

The site argues that this may be the quarter in which tech giants reveal that their seeming immunity to the broader economic climate is at an end …

An Apple and Amazon antitrust investigation in Italy last year found both companies guilty of price-fixing, fining them $225M. Both companies appealed, and a court has now cancelled the fines.

The basis of the decision has not yet been announced, and Apple had not commented at the time of writing …

Amazon Prime Video will soon receive its biggest update in years, with a very Apple TV app-like with carousel and sports tab. While the iPhone and iPad version will land later this year, Apple TV users will be able to experience this redesign later this week alongside Fire TV and Android app users.

As regular readers know, I’m a huge fan of smart home tech. But there’s a trend we’re increasingly seeing with this and other technology where we never fully own the product.

That’s true in a couple of ways, and there’s both an upside and downside to that – each illustrated by a different story I spotted this morning …

The popular comics and manga app Comixology was updated this week with multiple new features and a major change in functionality as it merged into Amazon’s platform. Users of the app, which was acquired by Amazon in 2014, don’t seem to have liked the update.