MyAppleMenu

The Rivals-and-Partners Edition Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Apple Poised To Get OpenAI Board Observer Role As Part Of AI Pact, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

Phil Schiller, the head of Apple’s App Store and its former marketing chief, was chosen for the position, according to people familiar with the situation. As a board observer, he won’t be serving as a full-fledged director, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter isn’t public.

[...]

Having Microsoft and Apple sit in on board meetings could create complications for the tech giants, which have been rivals and partners over the decades. Some OpenAI board meetings will likely discuss future AI initiatives between OpenAI and Microsoft — deliberations that the latter company may want Schiller excluded from. Board observers often do oblige and exit meetings during discussions that are seen as sensitive.

Figma Disables AI App Design Tool After It Copied Apple’s Weather App, by Emanuel Maiberg, 404 Media

Figma disabled the feature, named Make Design, after CEO and cofounder of Not Boring Software Andy Allen tweeted images showing that asking it to make a “weather app” produced several variations of apps that looked almost identical to Apple’s default weather app.

Design Deserves Better Than Figma AI, by Sebastiaan de With

Some career designers were ambiguous about the impact on careers, but many went as far as to assert that designers had nothing to fear: AI, after all, could never replace your job. Unless you were terrible at it.

The problem with that, however, is that in our creative fields by definition, we are all terrible at our work at some point.

Coming Soon?

Apple Leak Confirms Four iPhone 16 Models With Same A18 Chip, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Code discovered in Apple's backend by Nicolás Alvarez and shared with MacRumors confirms Apple's plans to release four iPhone 16 models this year, and it indicates that the devices will all have the same A-series chip. There are mentions of new model numbers that are not associated with existing iPhones, and that have the numbering scheme Apple uses for its flagship devices.

Stuff

This App Alerts You As Soon As Your Mac Loses Internet, by Justin Pot, Lifehacker

It is a menu bar icon that turns red when you're offline. You can also ask it to send you notifications when your online status status changes. It's a simple program, but life saving if you're somewhere with an unstable connection.

Clicks Keyboard Case: Surprisingly Great Or Gimmicky Gadget?, by Fernando Silva, 9to5Mac

One of the biggest selling points is that when you are using this Clicks case, it completely opens up the iPhone display. If you really think about it, the virtual keyboard takes up almost half of your entire iPhone screen in any situation. So now, if I am sending messages, I can see more of a conversation in one glance, or I can edit a YouTube short with the content taking up the entire screen. I think this is where the value really starts to come in.

Notes

Apple Seeks To Scrub ‘Dominance’ From China Antitrust App Ruling, by Pei Li, Bloomberg

Apple Inc. is seeking to get a Chinese court to alter its written ruling in a lawsuit the iPhone maker won, an unusual move that underscores the sensitivity of the US company’s position in the world’s largest smartphone arena.

Apple has filed a petition asking the Supreme People’s Court to make tweaks to select sentences in a ruling that ended a dispute over the cut of app revenue it takes from most developers, according to an excerpt of the filing seen by Bloomberg News. The iPhone maker wants the nation’s highest court to strike references to Apple’s “dominant position” from a decision written by a lower court, which in May tossed out the lawsuit due to a lack of evidence. It’s also objecting to a phrase suggesting “unfair pricing may hurt consumers.”

Apple Ex-lawyer Ordered To Pay $1.15 Million SEC Fine For Insider Trading, by Jonathan Stempel, Reuters

Levoff had been senior director of corporate law at Apple before the iPhone maker fired him in September 2018.

Prosecutors charged him five months later with making stock trades based on advance nonpublic information about Cupertino, California-based Apple's earnings announcements.

Bottom of the Page

Surely with the whole affair of Eric Schmidt (then CEO of Google) on the Apple Board and the Android pivot to become iPhone-like, Apple will not want to have someone sitting on OpenAI's board if it already know it will be competing more directly with OpenAI soon?

Or has Apple determined it doesn't have the ambition to compete directly with all these AI companies?

~

Thanks for reading.