News on the margin the week of February 11-18

Facebook threatens Australia, Google retracts, Apple releases products it might make, Volkswagen is not afraid of Apple, and the Apple Nissan negotiations have failed and other news on the sidelines

Facebook threatens Australia, Google backs and pushes

Australia is currently discussing a law called Media Bargaining Law in which any platform such as Facebook and Google will have to pay Australian publishers to publish and use their news; Initially, Google rejected the law and threatened to stop the search engine in Australia, but it came back and decided to approve the law and pledged to pay $ 30 million to 9 major Australian publishing houses.

On the other side, Facebook decided to resort to the other option, which is the threat and announced that if the law was issued, it would not pay anything to anyone, and a decision would be issued that would prevent any Australian company from publishing any news from Australian newspapers on its site, and thus it would not have violated the law. But Facebook made it clear that the companies and the user are affected because they will not find news content and they will not be able to market it on its site.

American semiconductor companies seek Biden support

The leaders of American companies operating in the semiconductor field called on US President Joe Biden to provide them with significant financial support to avoid the current crises. The companies, including Qualcomm, Intel, AMD and IBM, said that the US administration should help them to face great challenges, starting with the support of foreign governments for their companies, which made the share of American companies now 12% compared to 37% in 1990 of the global semiconductor market, as well as a decline in sales to Microsoft and Sony and the suspension of production lines. For companies like Ford and General Motors, they are major consumers of American companies' products.

Amazon launches 3 products as part of the Day 1 program

Amazon announced a new program called Day 1 within a project called Built it, in which the company displays new products and ideas, and if you like the product, you can book it. If any product completes a certain number of reservations, it will be manufactured. Otherwise, the project will be canceled and you will not pay anything. The three products are a classic wall clock like the one that spouts a bird to hiss at a specific time. It works with Alexa, meaning it has become a smart bird, and it comes at a price of $ 80. The second product is a scale that calculates the calories and nutritional components of products and has a price of $ 35. The third for printing Sticky Note is $ 90.

Apple pays the biggest fee in music history for MLC

Apple agreed to pay $ 162.3 million to the MLC Foundation, or Mechanical Licensing Complex. This amount comes as fees or royalty on Apple Music for using music that it could not determine the owners of according to a law passed in 2018 that makes this party the owner of all the unknown music. The license paid by Apple is the highest in history. When looking at competitors, Google paid $ 32.8 million, Spotify $ 152.2 million, and Amazon $ 42.7 million, which means that Apple is the most popular player for this type of music.

Report: 79% of app subscriptions come from Apple devices

The Sensor Tower Center revealed that in-app subscriptions will continue to grow in 2020, with more than 100 applications generating a total of $ 13 billion, of which 10.3 billion in Apple, with a 79.2% share and 2.7 billion in Android. In the Apple Store, Google topped the list on YouTube, followed by the Tender app, then Disney Plus ... and in Google, the Google One app tops the list, followed by Disney Plus. Google generated nearly $ 2020 billion in revenue from YouTube subscriptions alone in 445, while Google Wan's app generated $ 45 million in revenue. The US market represented XNUMX% of total global spending on subscriptions from within applications.

Apple: Dakota law will destroy the iPhone industry

Senator Kyle Davison of North Dakota has submitted Bill 2333 to the US Senate. The law prohibits companies such as Apple and Google from forcing developers to use private application stores to be able to access phones, that is, they can view the application anywhere and any user can download it. The law also prohibits Apple and Google from punishing any company that performs this action, and here it is intended that Google, for example, deny the developer access to its various services such as maps and others. The law also prohibits companies from forcing the developer to use their payment system exclusively.

For its part, Apple commented on the bill that it is catastrophic and will destroy the iPhone that we know and that the current method must be preserved because it is the best for users.

Apple launches a free watch repair program and update for watchOS 7.3.1

Apple announced the launch of a free update program for the Apple Watch the fifth generation and SE, who faced a problem after upgrading to the 7.2 and 7.3 systems that caused the watch to stop charging after entering energy saving mode, and the company said that whoever had this problem with him should immediately go to the maintenance centers to fix it Him for free. Meanwhile, Apple released the update 7.3.1 per hour and required all users to upgrade to it to avoid this problem happening to them.

Volkswagen is not afraid of Apple and Ford turning completely electric in Europe

Herbert Diess, president of the German Volkswagen Group, said that they are not worried and afraid of Apple entering the field of self-driving and electric cars, and he explained that the automotive field is not a technical field, and your success in the field of technology does not mean that you will easily repeat the same thing in cars. He added that Apple will not be able to manage the matter easily overnight. Meanwhile, the Volkswagen chief said that Apple is planning well and has extensive experience in the field of batteries, programming and design, but the matter is greater than that and that they are not afraid. It is noteworthy that the Volkswagen Group is a car alliance that includes companies such as Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Skoda and Seat, in addition to Volkswagen as well.

On the other hand, Ford announced that it had decided to stop manufacturing and producing any fuel-powered cars from 2030 and that all its cars from this date would be electric only. The decision on Ford is in Europe only so far and this means that the American factories and the American market may continue with conventional cars for several more years.

Apple updates its basic and experimental systems

Apple has updated its experimental systems for developers, and the update is as follows:

◉ iOS 14.5, the second beta, supports more than 217 new emojis, including AirPods Max. It is reported that the version of iOS 14.5 came to provide support for FaceID while wearing the mask, improvements in Siri, support for the Xbox game arm and the latest Playstation, 5G dual-network, Fitness + and many improvements in the maps.

WatchOS 7.4, the second trial version, and brought many minor improvements in features and performance, and solutions to podcast and design problems.

TvOS 14.5, the second beta version, and was like the first, which focused on performance improvements in addition to support for the latest Microsoft and Sony game arm.

Report: Apple failed to negotiate with Nissan to manufacture its car

Reports revealed that Apple tried to enter into negotiations with Nissan in order for the latter to manufacture an electric Apple car; Reports said that the agreement faltered from the beginning and did not go beyond the stage of the first meetings and did not reach the top leaderships, as Nissan rejected the idea of ​​being just a car manufacturer for others and puts the car logo of others on a product from its factories. The director of Nissan's operations said that there is no doubt that they will change the way in which cars are manufactured, in which they are designed, and even in which the company is run, but this will be done through partnerships in which Nissan products will be developed and not others. This means that Nissan may have asked Apple to share special technologies in exchange for manufacturing, so that Nissan itself takes advantage of these technologies in its cars, and Apple refused, hence Nissan refused to manufacture for Apple. On the other hand, reports said that Apple has stopped negotiations with the Kia-Hyundai alliance due to the latter's statements that it is in talks with Apple, which is similar to Apple's punishment of Hyundai in order to preserve the secrecy of the car project, which the company has not disclosed but has become known to the whole planet.

Facebook is working on a smartwatch to rival Apple

Sources revealed to The Information that Facebook is currently testing and developing a smartwatch in order to compete with the Apple Watch. The sources indicated that the watch is expected to be launched in 2022 and will mainly focus on facilitating communication with your friends through various Facebook services, in addition to some advantages in the field of health and fitness. It is reported that Facebook has been seeking for years to provide products other than the social networking site, and is already providing Oculus glasses and its own visual communication devices, and plans to become the next area is watches and smart frames.

Miscellaneous news

◉ Amazon America is now providing a discount on Apple's MagSafe charger, at $ 34 instead of $ 39.

◉ Apple announced the amendment of the prices of applications in the software store in several countries such as Cameroon, the application of an added value of 19.25% and Zimbabwe 14.5%, the change of the added value in Germany to 19% instead of 16%, and the amendment of the price categories tiers in South Korea.

◉ Above Avalon's Neil Center said that Apple watches are now available on more than 100 million wristbands worldwide.

◉ Apple notified developers that, starting next month, a new root certificate must be included in order to access its APNS notification servers.

◉ Security researcher Patrick Wardle discovers first malware malware that fully supports Mac M1 devices

◉ Apple has created a dedicated page to help customers disable Activation Lock.

◉ Microsoft launched the Microsoft Office application for the iPad, an application that combines Word, Excel and PowerPoint together and has been updated to support the iPad after it was only for the iPhone.

Microsoft 365 (Office)

Free⁺

Developer	Microsoft Corporation

Apple announced that it will not accept any Health Pass applications except that are developed in partnership with local and official authorities in the country.

◉ Epic has announced a lawsuit against Apple in Europe accusing it of monopoly.

YouTube announced that it will update its TV service to support 4K broadcasting and the ability to download clips for offline viewing.

Bloomberg revealed that Apple has started hiring telecom engineers to work on developing 6G networks

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