You own your own hard drive. That copy of an iTunes song is yours. No DRM, no remotely removing your ability to use it.

One of the more obvious use cases for the Apple Vision Pro is watching videos on a plane, which means you need to be able to download to the app first to watch offline. Netflix's iPad app already works perfectly fine on Apple Vision Pro so supporting it required literally no effort at all. They went out of their way to disable availability.

My understanding is that it’s the reverse of this. The iPad app is available by default. They’re putting in the (minimal) effort required to proactively disable availability of the iPad app.

Why are they just outright stripping this feature instead of just paying the patent fee? (As in literally removing the chips, actually stripping it.)

They're not. Despite some misleading press coverage, Apple never remotely suggested they were removing any hardware. They're just going to start importing them without the "functionality." They're disabling it in the US via software while they go through the legal process. When it's all done, they can activate it for everyone.

As for why they're not paying, Apple's position is that their product does not infringe any patents, and this is not an outlandish position. Apple has already had most of Masimo's patent claims from a dozen total patents invalidated. The ITC ban is a result of a single patent still currently left standing that Apple believes should never have been issued and is working to have invalidated.

I think there's a very good chance Apple succeeds and Masimo is left with no relevant patents. If they go through everything and Masimo is still left with something, at that point Apple can negotiate with them on a reasonable fee, and they'll be doing so from a position of relative strength. Masimo was obviously hoping an ITC ban would cause Apple to blink and pay whatever Masimo wanted. Clearly that didn't happen and Apple would prefer go for total vindication.

Customers pay; consumers use. Sometimes they're the same, often they are not.

Ad-supported services: If you search for something on Google, you are a consumer. Google's customers are the companies paying for sponsored links at the top of your search results.

Kids toys (and other gifts): The kid in the sandbox playing with a Tonka truck is the consumer of the product but their parents (grandparents, etc.) are the customers.

"Enterprise" solutions: Corporate IT departments are usually the customer, though they may never use the product. Other employees are the consumer, but they had no choice in buying it so they're not the customer.

I hate writing defenses of big tech companies but I also late lazy journalism that treats them as an easy punching bag. Anyway, here goes:

The thing about governments is that they’re supposed to last basically forever, and their budgets are enormous, so if they have to wait a while to get some money, is it really that big of a problem? There’s a power imbalance between the parties so it makes sense that the company should be able to avail itself of the full rights of the legal system. In many of the cases cited in the article the money has already been placed in escrow or is subject to interest payments so if the government ultimately prevails, it’s not really out anything and there’s no risk it won’t get the money. Would we prefer governments to just seize assets immediately when, under their own laws, there are legal disputes remaining?

To pick an example from the article: "Apple has fought for years against a French antitrust fine of 1.1 billion euros and an order to pay 13 billion euros of tax to Ireland.” Apple has actually already mostly won that fight against the antitrust fine. The legal system agreed that it was excessive and reduced it to roughly one-third the original. Apple still disputes the remaining third. I honestly have no idea if they’re right or wrong on that, but the fact that they were fairly quickly able to get several hundred million dollars of fines erase by the court indicates to me that we shouldn’t just automatically accept that all of these fines are legitimate; some may indeed be regulatory overreach. The tax bill to Ireland is an interesting matter. The government of Ireland is steadfastly opposed to it. They intentionally created a low-tax system to court foreign investment. Apple took advantage of the program and has employed thousands of Irish people for decades. The EU says Apple owes the tax to Ireland; Apple and Ireland say Apple doesn’t. Again, clearly a legitimate, ongoing legal dispute and not simply a case of someone not paying a fine, as the headline makes it sound.

Most of Meta’s fine (€1.2 billion) is from just this May and (we’ve got a theme here) the government of Ireland didn’t think that Meta’s violation warranted a fine at all, but they were overruled by some other members of the European Data Protection Board. If Ireland’s own Data Protection Commission didn’t think Meta should pay them a fine, surely Meta should be able to avail itself of the legal system to dispute the ruling?

Anyway, it comes down to this: I believe that we should be a society governed by laws, and those laws include the right to appeal or otherwise contest an initial ruling. Given the fact that there’s no real downside for the governments to wait, I believe it’s reasonable that companies want to wait to pay until after exhausting their legal rights to appeal.

They're going to implement the open standard ... which isn't what most Android users are actually using. Does Google's Messages app gracefully transition to the RCS standard if that's what the other person is using?

Google wants Apple to use Google’s proprietary extension of RCS, which runs on Google’s own servers as is precisely as open as iMessage. Effectively nobody uses the industry-standard version of it.

If you read this patent, it explicitly says that it's a continuation of an application that was granted as 9,965,157. If you look at '157, you can see that it was granted in May 2018. It has the same line drawing of the headset and the same quotes on how it could be used. 9to5Mac somehow missed this five years ago. The corresponding published application, 2014/0129938, was made public in 2014, with the same drawing and example uses. Actually, we can go back to the 2008 published application 2008/0276178, with the same drawing and examples.

Just to make it clear, this isn't a new revelation at all. These were all public patent applications going back at least 15 years. Patently Apple first noticed it in 2014, so they were only six years late.

Edit: Electronista was first to notice in 2008, the same day it was initially published , picked up by The Unofficial Apple Weblog later that day and then by MacRumors a day later.

US: Credit card only, almost exclusively using Apple Pay. If I somehow obtain cash, I deposit it so that I can spend it using a card instead and earn the rewards. I actively use about half a dozen cards, choosing the right one for each transaction to maximize rewards.

I trust the little guy.

The editor of Gizmodo knows very well that "Apple" gets clicks and in this case he's trying to generate free press for his obscure book. His suit doesn't quite meet the standard of "frivolous," so I don't think anybody is getting sanction for it, but it's certainly not filed in good faith. It's not even an issue of "trust." What he claims is inherently ridiculous. You can't copyright historical events, and presenting it as a Cold War thriller isn't some radical creative choice of "tone." The dry facts are pretty thrilling on their own, and the extra-thrilling parts (car chase) are inventions of the film.

How many other people are they doing this to?

Not stealing from? Literally billions of other people are being treated the same way by Apple every day.

Why would you allow a virtual assistance to spy on you constantly?

Because it’s not? A low-power process on my phone is listening for the wake word. When it hears other stuff, it ignores it. When it hears the wake word, it processes my request, tied to a separate anonymous identifier used only for Siri itself. I’m not really losing any privacy at all.

And as a side note, is there a way to kill Siri completely on IOS (not just go trough all app settings and disable siri there)?

It’s just the first two toggles (Listen for “Hey Siri” and Press Side Button for Siri) in the Siri & Search menu that you’d need to turn off. There’s not much to it.