From Business Insider: Apple is in the early stages of looking into making home robots, a move that appears to be an effort to create its “next big thing” after it killed its self-driving car project earlier this year, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Engineers are looking into developing a robot that could follow users … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: The Chinese Communist Party has already crushed freedom in Hong Kong. Now it’s beating a dead horse. As directors of Next Digital, we saw three years ago the jackboot effect of the security laws Beijing has imposed on Hong Kong. The company published Apple Daily, a lively independent newspaper founded … Read more
From The New Publishing Standard: Apple has been slow to jump on the AI bandwagon in any meaningful way, which has given rivals a head-start, but also let them make the mistakes and the public-relations fails so Apple can jump in now looking like the good guy. “Apple has reached out to news entities like … Read more
From Today Online: From low-quality computer-written books flooding the market to potential copyright violations, publishing is the latest industry to feel the threat from rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI). Since the launch last year of ChatGPT, an easy-to-use AI chatbot that can deliver an essay upon request within seconds, there have been growing worries … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: It sounded like a dream partnership when Apple Inc. reached out to Joe Kiani, the founder of a company that makes blood-oxygen measurement devices. He figured his technology was a perfect fit for the Apple Watch. Soon after meeting him, Apple began hiring employees from his company, Masimo Corp., MASI … Read more
From Writer Unboxed: If you’re considering self-publishing and wanting to maximize potential income, do yourself a favor and take a peek at Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. If you haven’t already heard about Kindle Vella, it’s a place where you can serialize your novel over an extended period, instead of publishing one whole story all at … Read more
Not necessarily to do with books and writing, but PG has grown to hate passwords because he has such a huge collection of them. He uses a password manager to keep track of his many long randomly-generated passwords. However, if PG is trying to access a website from a machine that doesn’t have his password … Read more
Apple doesn’t need to maximize book sales. It simply needs to keep publishers happy enough to maintain an impressive-sounding inventory of titles while waiting for entirely new forms of publishing to develop. Virginia Postrel
From Business Insider: An Amazon shopper who for five years bought expensive items — including a top-of-the-line iMac Pro — and then mailed cheaper items as returns faces up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud, prosecutors said. Hudson Hamrick, of Charlotte, North Carolina, on Tuesday pleaded guilty in the US District Court for … Read more
From Publishers Weekly: I wasn’t surprised to discover that Barnes & Noble had created a BookTok page, encouraging readers to “discover the most popular books on TikTok.” If anything, I was surprised that more book retailers (and publishers and authors, for that matter) hadn’t yet tapped into one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. I … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Big tech companies— Microsoft Corp. , Adobe Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google among them—are adding new twists to their work tools to fight Zoom fatigue and general burnout as working from home stretches into a second year for millions of people. Microsoft, for example, has introduced a setting in its … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Apple Inc. is halving the commission it charges smaller developers that sell software through its App Store, a partial concession in its battle with critics over how it wields power in its digital ecosystem. The iPhone maker said that starting next year it will collect 15% rather than 30% of … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Politicians and social critics who worry about “the curse of bigness”—and vow to rewrite antitrust law to break up Facebook and Google—forget what happened the last time the government used the law against a Silicon Valley company. In 2012 the government successfully sued Apple for daring to compete with Amazon … Read more
From Forbes: [T]he son and estate of Broadway composer Harold Arlen [have] filed a lawsuit against Apple and other businesses for selling over 6,000 unauthorized recordings of his music. Described as a “massive music piracy operation,” the lawyers claim that “Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Pandora and their distributors have joined with notorious music pirates … Read more
When it rains, From The Wall Street Journal: A U.S. trade judge recommended that some iPhones be barred from import on Tuesday after finding that Apple Inc. violated a patent held by Qualcomm Inc., handing the mobile-phone chip giant a victory in its long-running feud with its erstwhile business partner. The decision from the U.S. … Read more
From CNBC: Analysts were left with more questions than answers about Apple’s new services that were unveiled at a press event. . . . . “Apple’s services reveal was materially different than we had anticipated,” said Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall. “With small calculated impacts from these, ‘other services’, we expect the focus to return … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Apple ’s extravagant unveiling on Monday of AppleTV+, its new video content streaming service, unveiled very little. Celebrities talked about their must-see shows without showing any clips. Apple executives trumpeted their plan to offer a bundle of content from different content partners without offering any details on pricing. So what … Read more
From Fast Company: While I sat inside the Steve Jobs Theater watching Big Bird talk to a hand puppet on the stage, I realized Apple was not the same company I knew not long ago. No new devices were announced. There were no slides filled with impressive specs or performance metrics. No oohs and ahhs. … Read more
From Stratechery: Yesterday the Supreme Court held a hearing in the case Apple Inc. v. Pepper. “Pepper” is Robert Pepper, an Apple customer who, along with three other plaintiffs, filed a class action lawsuit alleging that App Store customers have been overcharged for iOS apps, thanks to Apple’s 30% commission that Pepper alleges derives from Apple’s … Read more
From Seeking Alpha: Amazon is aggressively pursuing market share growth in mobile payments. WSJ reports that Amazon is asking gas stations and restaurants to offer Amazon Pay options to customers. Amazon also will be increasing the presence in brick and mortar stores with whom it does not directly compete for retail sales. On the other hand, Apple … Read more
From Fortune: Finding Apple products on Amazon isn’t easy. Most are either unavailable or only sold through third-parties, a result of the rivalry between the two companies. But that should change soon now that Apple has agreed with Amazon to directly list more of its products in its online marketplace. In the coming weeks, Apple will start selling the new iPad … Read more
From Gizmodo: The world’s most valuable company and a business run by the richest man in modern history have been engaged in an irritating cold war for years, and they need to knock it off. When I say that Amazon and Apple are engaged in tech’s most annoying feud, I don’t mean it’s the most important battle … Read more
From Fortune: Apple and Samsung are the leading companies in the shrinking tablet market. That’s according to the International Data Corporation’s report published Thursday on worldwide tablet shipments for the second quarter of 2018. The research firm said that overall shipments plunged 13.5% year-over-year in the second quarter to 33 million, underscoring the tough tablet market that has … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Apple Inc. sought to head off customer complaints about defective keyboards on its latest MacBook models, saying it will offer free repairs for qualifying devices in the latest overture to users concerned about the performance of one of the company’s signature products. The company on Friday said it would replace the keyboard or … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Gravity has suddenly become a hot topic in science. In the past few years, gravitational waves have been detected for the first time: ripples in the fabric of space, coming from colliding black holes and neutron stars. Both Marcus Chown’s “The Ascent of Gravity” and A. Zee’s “On Gravity” mention those … Read more
From Wireless Week: As Apple continued to dominate the tablet market in the final quarter of 2017, a new study finds that Amazon ousted Samsung to claim the second-largest share of the segment during the latest holiday shopping season. The latest analysis from research firm IDC found that Apple shipped 13.2 million tablets in the final three … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Contrary to popular belief, Apple isn’t a hardware company. Nor is it a software company. Apple is, fundamentally, an ecosystem company—one that, with the help of millions of developers world-wide, has created a vast web of software and services that run on its 1.3 billion active devices. Apple revenue has been dominated by … Read more
From Digital Book World: The news of Apple rebranding the iBooks Store to Apple Books, and preparing a fresh new entry in the digital publishing landscape, is welcome. Apple’s bookstore, much like many other parts of the company these days, has suffered from neglect. The store, as it is currently, evokes a vision of tumbleweed … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: Standard Oil and Co. and American Telephone and Telegraph Co. were the technological titans of their day, commanding more than 80% of their markets. Today’s tech giants are just as dominant: In the U.S., Alphabet Inc.’s Google drives 89% of internet search; 95% of young adults on the internet use a Facebook Inc. product; and Amazon.com Inc. now … Read more
PG received the following this morning. He suspects he’s not the only one: Your Credit from the Apple eBooks Antitrust Settlement is ready to use You now have a credit of $4.00 in your Amazon account. Apple Inc. (Apple) funded this credit to settle antitrust lawsuits brought by State Attorneys General and Class Plaintiffs about … Read more
From The Hollywood Reporter: Every now and then, a technology comes along that is disruptive, legally provocative and has the entertainment industry screaming and kicking and foretelling of impending doom. A million years ago, or at least that’s what 2013 now feels like in the digital era, a federal judge put the breaks [PG: sic] … Read more
From Fast Company: Devices like Amazon Echo could someday turn into a treasure trove for developers that make voice assistant skills, but first companies have to figure out where they draw the line when it comes to weighing data sharing against consumer privacy. Now that dilemma is heating up: Citing three unnamed sources, The Information reported this week … Read more
From The Mac Observer: Here are some ideas I have to improve iBooks in iOS 11, because I want to see it succeed. As an avid reader, I was disappointed that there was nary a mention of iBooks at WWDC 2017. I’m not just talking about the app, I’m referring to Apple’s eBook ecosystem as … Read more
From PC Magazine: Apple made its long-awaited debut into the smart home space at WWDC this week, announcing its $349 Apple HomePod connected speaker with Siri. At the Wired Business Conference today in New York City, the exec behind Alexa—Amazon’s SVP of Devices David Limp—explained how he thinks Apple’s connected speaker fits into the landscape. … Read more
From The Atlantic: Without once saying the words “artificial intelligence,” a stream of Apple executives described a vision of the near future in which Siri, the company’s AI avatar, stitches together the company’s many hardware products. And they introduced a new—and widely anticipated—entry into their lineup: a $349 cylindrical voice-controlled speaker they call HomePod. After … Read more
From Bloomberg: Apple Inc. is already in your pocket, on your desk and underneath your television. Soon, a device embossed with “Designed by Apple in California” may be on your nightstand or kitchen counter as well. The iPhone-maker has started manufacturing a long-in-the-works Siri-controlled smart speaker, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple could debut … Read more
From TechCrunch: Apple just sent an email to members of the App Store affiliate program saying that App Store commissions will be reduced from 7 percent to 2.5 percent on May 1st — that’s a 64 percent cut. While this change will have no effect on App Store users, it has some implications on the … Read more
From Author Earnings: Print bookselling remains artificially silo’d by country even today, for variety of legacy historical and logistical reasons. But by contrast, the global ebook marketplace is a seamlessly international one. For authors, selling an ebook to a reader in a different country is just as easy as selling to a reader in your home country. … Read more
From Patently Apple: While Apple toppled iPad expectations for 2016, the fact remains that for the year iPad sales dropped 14.1%, more than double the industry as a whole which fell 6.6%, according to the latest TrendForce report covering the tablet market. Apple’s total shipment for 2016 came in at 42.55 million units. Strong demand … Read more
From DimSumThinking: There’s an old joke, “how do you know when your friend is a Vegan.” “Don’t worry,” the answer goes, “they’ll tell you.” The same is true about Apple and projects they are passionate about. Listen to Jony Ive describe the Apple Watch and you know he loves traditional time pieces and was passionate … Read more
From The BBC: Apple and Amazon have ended a deal that tied them into an exclusive contract for the supply and sale of audio books. The deal was signed before 2008 when Amazon bought audio book supplier Audible, which had the Apple iBooks contract. Pressure from anti-trust regulators in Germany and the European Commission led … Read more
From Paid Content: New York, the District of Columbia and fifteen other states have joined the e-book pricing class action suit against Apple, Macmillan and Penguin, bringing the total number of states involved so far to 31 (if you include DC and Puerto Rico). The amended complaint reveals details that were previously redacted, including an … Read more
From Forbes: Back in 1997, Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple when its back was against the wall. Today, Microsoft announced it would invest twice that amount in Barnes & Noble to make a Windows 8 version of its Nook e-book reader. Before analyzing Microsoft’s latest investment, it’s worth remembering why it took a piece … Read more
Amazon is not alone in working to avoid taxes. From the New York Times: RENO, Nev. — Apple, the world’s most profitable technology company, doesn’t design iPhones here. It doesn’t run AppleCare customer service from this city. And it doesn’t manufacture MacBooks or iPads anywhere nearby. Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office … Read more
From Wired magazine: Apple and five of the “Big Six” trade publishers are reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice for antitrust violations. The point of concern is the five publishers’ staggered but identical move to an agency rather than a wholesale pricing model, not just for Apple, but for all e-book retailers — a … Read more
Women are dominating eReader ownership while they have been slow to adopt tablets, according to recent data by Nielsen. Women are now 61% of eReader owners, up from 46% last year, while they have climbed up by only four percentage points in tablet adoption for the same period. Link to the rest at Business Insider
Recently, Random House announced that it would join the five other big publishers in implementing agency pricing. What is agency pricing? It’s a reaction by publishers to what was happening to their pricing, particularly for best-sellers, on Amazon. Amazon was aggressively pushing pricing down on big books by selling hardcopy New York Times bestsellers for … Read more
From The New York Times: The biggest U.S. challenge so far to the vast power of today’s tech giants is nearing its conclusion. Starting Thursday, lawyers for the Justice Department, state attorneys general and Google delivered their final arguments in a yearslong case — U.S. et al. v. Google — over whether the tech giant … Read more
From The Wall Street Journal: In the coming weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue eagerly awaited decisions on abortion, firearms and the extent of Donald Trump’s executive privilege. Another decision will also be eagerly anticipated by Stuart Harrow. The Department of Defense employee is waiting to find out whether a missed email … Read more
From Women Writers,Women’s Books: Who remembers 2012? Major news that year: the shooting death of a Black teenager named Trayvon Martin, a hurricane named Sandy that flooded the East Coast, and a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that took the lives of 18 schoolchildren and 9 adults. It was the literary year of Gone … Read more