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The Politically-Active Edition Friday, July 22, 2022

Apple CEO Cook Uses His Star Power To Fend Off Antitrust Threat, by Emily Birnbaum, Bloomberg

Cook has become one of the country’s most politically active tech CEOs in recent years as Apple struggles to fend off antitrust legislation gaining traction in Congress. The company is ramping up its lobbying spending and hiring well-connected former congressional aides. And it’s cozying up to powerful Washington figures, often deploying Cook to make Apple’s arguments directly to lawmakers.

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Still, the company’s approach is working to some degree. The latest version of the Senate antitrust measure, the American Choice and Innovation Act, would make it easier for companies to defend any allegedly anti-competitive practice by arguing that it was “reasonably tailored” to protect user privacy. Apple lobbyists pushed hard for that change with the support of senators including Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff. A spokesperson for Ossoff confirmed that the senator and Cook have talked.

Stuff

HomePod And HomePod Mini Gain Support For Swedish And Norwegian, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

Apple on Wednesday released software version 15.6 for the HomePod and HomePod mini. While not mentioned in the release notes, the update adds support for Siri in Swedish and Norwegian on the HomePod and HomePod mini.

Studio Display Shipping Estimates Have Significantly Improved, by Joe Rossignol, MacRumors

While the Studio Display was estimated for delivery in 8-10 weeks as of May, and in 6-8 weeks as of June, Apple’s online store now shows a much shorter 1-2 week delivery estimate for new orders in the United States.

Paste Review: Get A Deep, Visual History Of Everything You've Copied To The Clipboard, by Glenn Fleishman, Macworld

For an infinite clipboard history with graphical previews and custom stored groups, Paste is an excellent iteration on the most prominent missing feature from Apple’s operating systems. Paste can be the clipboard star around which your devices orbit.

Keychron Q5 Review: A Full-sized Mechanical Keyboard In A Compact Shell, by Mike Peterson, AppleInsider

The Keychron Q5 is the company's newest wired mechanical keyboard, and is a full-sized keyboard in a compact shell that will appeal to not just gamers, but regular users as well.

Notes

Apple Settles Suit Against Chicago Over City’s Tax On Streaming Services, by Winston Cho, Hollywood Reporter

Apple and Chicago have come to terms on a deal to drop the tech giant’s lawsuit challenging the city’s first-of-its-kind tax on users of streaming services.

The Future Of TV Is Chaos And Confusion, by Janko Roettgers and Nick Statt, Protocol

It’s been seven years since Tim Cook famously declared that “the future of TV is apps.” Since then, almost everyone in the industry, including Apple, has come to the conclusion that Cook was wrong. Turns out that people don’t want to spend their evenings jumping from one app to another just to find something to watch.

Bottom of the Page

There are many queues of stuff on my iPhone and iPad. Besides streaming television shows, there are also queues of audiobooks, podcasts, e-books, news articles, BBC radio programmes, and albums.

Makes you wish that there is one company that can unify all these different media together into one single thing, don't you?

(Some EU regulator somewhere suddenly senses job security. :-))

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Thanks for reading.