The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal by Apple, leaving intact a federal appeals court ruling favoring the U.S. Justice Department and more than 30 states that sued.
The rebuff means Apple must comply with a settlement it reached with the states in 2014. The accord calls for Apple to pay $400 million to e-book consumers, $20 million to the states, and $30 million in legal fees.
The major publishers have been reporting slipping revenue from e-book sales, even as physical book sales rise. There are various reasons for this shift, from the popularity of adult coloring books, which don't work so well on Kindles, to the lack of blockbuster young adult novels this year. But also, charging more for something reduces its appeal in the market.
If you bought an e-book from a major publisher between April 2010 and May 2012 and you live in America, you may automatically receive a small credit (up to $6.54 per title) as part of Apple's settlement.
The largest of the platform and social media companies, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and even second order companies such as Twitter, Snapchat and emerging messaging app companies, have become extremely powerful in terms of controlling who publishes what to whom, and how that publication is monetized.
There is a far greater concentration of power in this respect than there ever has been in the past. Networks favor economies of scale, so our careful curation of plurality in media markets such as the UK, disappears at a stroke, and the market dynamics and anti-trust laws the Americans rely on to sort out such anomalies are failing.
The mobile revolution is behind much of this.
Apps, toys and games designed to improve children's programming skills have flooded the market — some targeted to tots who can't even tie their own shoes. While the jury is still out on whether these toys give kids an edge later in computer science courses, they do seem to get kids excited about the power of coding, experts say.
From light-up bees to pocket-sized computers, here are some of tools experts use to teach kids the basics of programming.
These days, you can share statuses, pictures and videos online. Well, future hip-hop legends, listen up: Now you can create your own rap, with a sweet beat behind it, and share it with the world. From your phone.
But perhaps the most stunning addition is its roof, which Apple believes is the largest freestanding carbon-fiber roof ever made. Created by Dubai-based Premier Composite Technologies, it’s a massive statement piece, in addition to a design feat. But please, Apple doesn’t want you to call it a UFO. The roof was added to the Theatre last month.
Offline Pages Pro wants to be your go-to web browser on the road – especially if you'll be without Internet access. But in order to prepare yourself, it's critical to put time into the app before you are away from WiFi.
On each release, Workflow adds features that allow me to work faster and automate as much as I can so I can focus on more important and fun aspects of my job. Workflow 1.4.4 has some great improvements for image processing and Markdown.
FlexBright, an app that allows the user to manually adjust the display temperature of an iOS device, was recently approved by Apple, marking one of the first third-party apps that's able to function in a manner similar to the company's own Night Shift mode, set to be released in iOS 9.3. The only catch is it must be triggered somewhat manually in response to a notification, rather than continuously, like Night Shift or f.lux.
Assuming you live in a geographical region with good reception, TabletTV is an inexpensive, subscription-free way to bring local TV stations to your iPad.
It generated controversy and criticism when word of it first broke back in October, even though Peeple, a people-rating mobile app that's been described as like "Yelp for people," hadn't launched yet. Now, after a number of tweaks to the concept, the people-rating app finally launched today.
[...] The idea of people posting "reviews" of their neighbors, coworkers, dates and others prompted outrage from critics who saw its potential for abuse as an outlet for bullying or cyber revenge.
Following a refresh to the Payments and Financial Reports pages a fortnight ago, Apple is now letting developers opt-in to a weekly summary report email of their apps. The email will summarize important business metrics for the developer’s apps, including information on App Store views, unit sales, sessions and crash rates. The email will also show the comparisons of these statistics to the previous seven-day period.
As expected, federal prosecutors in an iPhone unlocking case in New York have now asked a more senior judge, known as a district judge, to countermand a magistrate judge who ruled in Apple’s favor last week.
European Union competition chief Margrethe Vestagertempered expectations of a speedy ruling on Apple Inc.’s tax affairs in Ireland. [...] “No, we wait for the job being done thoroughly and with the quality that we want it to be done with,” she told reporters. “That is what decides the timeline.”
Because of a Trappist monk, Apple computer displays look the way they do today.
The monk was the Rev. Robert Palladino, who died on Feb. 26 at 83. A Roman Catholic priest who began his vocation in a monastic order, Father Palladino was also a world-renowned master of calligraphy.
I reached out to a dozen statisticians about the project and almost all of them said it was simply too complicated to calculate. But the heroic Hachem Sadikki, a Ph.D. candidate in statistics at University of Massachusetts, was willing to take a stab at modeling a projection. He crunched the numbers and found that dead users on Facebook will surpass the number of living users sooner than you might think—in the year 2098.
Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute's annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering. The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
[...] At one point, Cotton and Apple's Cook fiercely debated cell phone encryption, a source familiar with the exchange told HuffPost. "Cotton was pretty harsh on Cook," the source said, and "everyone was a little uncomfortable about how hostile Cotton was."
Scientists should hurry up and repalce every single job out there with robots, at one go. Everyone goes out of job at the same time, and everyone can have all the free time (and free food) that they want.
The reality: a slow-and-surely replacment by robots job by job by industry is really painful.
~
Thanks for reading.