👨‍⚖️ Apple fights €1.8 billion EU antitrust fine for curbs on Spotify

Spotify has filed a complaint against Apple back in 2019, because the company has to give Apple 30% of their profits. Spotify claims it's not fair, because they weren't even allowed to leave a link to the website to subscribe.

It took the EU a long time to decide, but the court agreed with Spotify that Apple's behavior was anti-competitive and fined the company €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion).

 company filed suit at EU’s General Court to topple the penalty, because antitrust law exists to protect consumers, and there is no evidence that it is them, and not competitors, who have been harmed.

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#finance

Yesterday's quiz was easily handled by many people! For sure it was Steve Wozniak!

🔧 Apple has its origins in Job's garage in California where two Steves started out building their first devices. Jobs and Wozniak became friends when Jobs worked for the summer at HP, where Wozniak, too, was employed, working on a mainframe computer.

🤝 Their first business partnership began later that year when Wozniak read an article titled "Secrets of the Little Blue Box" from the October 1971 issue of Esquire, and started to build his own "blue boxes" that enabled one to make long-distance phone calls at no cost. Jobs later told his biographer that if it had not been for Wozniak's blue boxes, "there wouldn't have been an Apple."

🕹 In 1973, Jobs was working for arcade game company Atari, Inc. He was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. Jobs had little knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could help. Jobs told Wozniak that Atari gave them only $700 and that Wozniak's share was thus $350 (equivalent to $2,400 in 2023). However, the actual bonus was $5,000 (equivalent to $34,300 in 2023) and Wozniak did not learn about it until ten years later. While dismayed, he said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.

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#QuizoftheMonth

🖥 Apple's M4 iMac: what to expect

 is planning to refresh the 24-inch iMac before the end of the year. It's working to overhaul the entire Mac line with AI-focused M4 chips, ‌iMac‌ included.

What's known:

M4 chip
iMacs right now have the M3 chip, so the M4 will be a direct update. 24-inch ‌iMac‌ and MacBook Air will be offered the M4 chip. Other Macs will get upgraded M4 Pro, M4 Max, and M4 Ultra chips.

Design
Last redesign of iMac‌ dates back to 2021, and there are no signs that a new look is coming. The 2024 refresh will more likely focus on the internals rather than any design changes.

Release date
Back in April, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that the 24-inch ‌iMac‌ would likely see an M4 chip update "around the end of the year."
 sometimes holds events in October or November. The ‌iMac‌ was last updated in October 2023, so an October 2024 launch would come right.

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#iMac #Mac #chip

📱 You wanted a cheaper iPhone? The iPhone SE 4 is the answer

The new iPhone SE 4 could prove to be a much more attractive proposition than the current generation, and it's all thanks to the price.

The expected low-cost iPhone SE new features:

Design and size
A similar look to the iPhone 14, featuring a notch with ‌Face ID‌ biometric authentication instead of a ‌Touch ID‌ Home button, with a 6.1'' OLED display.

Notch
A notch, which is the design that Apple has used for iPhones since the 2017 ‌iPhone‌ XR or a ‌Dynamic Island‌ instead of a notch, but that is not in line with other rumors of an ‌iPhone‌ 14-style design.

Camera
A single-lens camera, but upgraded to a 48-megapixel camera. The current ‌iPhone SE‌ has a 12-megapixel camera.

A-Series Chip
A17 or A18 chip. The current ‌iPhone SE‌ is equipped with the same A15 chip that was in the iPhone 13 models.

5G
An upgraded 5G chip with support for more bands.

Battery
The ‌iPhone SE‌ 4 will use the same 3279 mAh battery as the ‌iPhone 14‌.

Cost
It could be priced starting at $429, the same as the current ‌iPhone SE‌, or increase 10 percent. But anyway Apple plans to keep the pricing below $500.

Release Date
Spring 2025, no refresh expected in fall 2024.

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#iPhone #rumors