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Understanding the DOJ’s Antitrust Complaint Against Apple

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice, 15 states, and the District of Columbia sued Apple for alleged federal and state antitrust violations. Apple issued an immediate response, and before anyone had time to read the DOJ’s 88-page complaint, the Internet was overrun with hot takes.

However, the thing about lawsuits – and especially big, sprawling, high-stakes ones like the DOJ’s – is that they’re the proverbial tortoise to the Internet’s hare. Barring a settlement among the parties, the case against Apple isn’t likely to go to trial anytime soon. Add to that appeals, and this process is going to take years, not months.

So, since we have plenty of time, I thought I’d kick off our coverage at MacStories with a look at the DOJ’s complaint and its legal underpinnings, along with some observations on what’s going on and what you can expect to happen next.

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Struggling to Afford Cybersecurity Insurance? Here’s Why. [Sponsor]

When MGM Resorts suffered a $100 million hack in September, CEO Bill Hornbuckle wasn’t too worried about the lost revenue, because cyber insurance would cover the tab. “I can only imagine what next year’s bill will be,” he joked.

Weeks later, on a call with analysts, Hornbuckle complained about the “staggering” rise of insurance costs in the past few years.

This story neatly illustrates the crisis in cyber liability coverage. For years, companies have invested more in security insurance than in actual security. The result has been a tidal wave of data breaches that have driven up the cost of premiums to the point that they are rapidly becoming unaffordable.

Some large enterprises are responding to the increased costs by creating their own “captive carriers,” insurance providers that exist only to serve them. But that’s clearly not an option for small businesses, which are more likely to go without insurance altogether.

According to Andrew Bucci, VP of Sales at Amplified Insurance Partners, “It’s going to come to a point where some people may have to self-insure, which means that they don’t take a cyber policy out and they just cross their fingers they don’t have some sort of breach.” That’s a huge gamble for SMBs, since they could be driven to bankruptcy by a single security incident.

At Kolide, we’ve seen our cyber insurance premiums go up by 40% in just the last two years, and we got curious about:

  • What’s driving the increases?
  • Who really needs cybersecurity insurance?
  • How can the average company reduce their premiums?

What we found was that insurance companies themselves can help get us out of this crisis, by mandating some (pretty basic) security requirements for their customers–things like MFA, endpoint security, and retiring end-of-life software. 

Read the full blog to learn more about our findings.

Our thanks to Kolide for sponsoring MacStories this week.


Making a Macintosh Studio

I’ve lost track of how many MacStories readers have sent me this over the past few days (thank you; you know me well), and, unsurprisingly, the latest project by Scott Yu-Jan is extremely my kind of thing. Scott 3D-printed a Macintosh-like shell to host a Mac Studio with an iPad mini used as its display thanks to wired Sidecar. It’s magnificent:

Obviously, as someone who relies on Sidecar on a daily basis now, I find this project a masterpiece in creativity and taking advantage of Apple’s ecosystem. I would pay serious money to have a version of this for my Mac mini and 11” iPad Pro.

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Demystifying Digital Wallets and Apple Pay

One of the many allegations in the Department of Justice’s antitrust complaint against Apple is that Apple stifles competition by:

effectively block[ing] third-party developers from creating digital wallets on the iPhone with tap-to-pay functionality, which is an important feature of a digital wallet for smartphones. As a result, Apple maintains complete control over how users make tap-to-pay payments with their iPhone. Apple also deprives users of the benefits and innovations third-party wallets would provide so that it can protect “Apple’s most important and successful business, iPhone.”

(DOJ Complaint at ¶ 104).

In a post a couple of days ago, John Gruber suggested that the DOJ is off-base because he doubted banks or other credit card companies would obfuscate credit card numbers the way Apple does. In fact, as Matt Birchler, who works in the payments industry, explains, many U.S. banks and other companies do (or did) the same thing, using something called a DPAN:

It’s notable that it’s called a DPAN and not “the Apple Pay number” – it’s a generic term, and that’s because this is a standard feature of digital wallets everywhere, not just Apple Pay. Google Pay and Samsung Pay are the biggest other digital wallets in the U.S. and they both do exactly the same thing. While it’s not technically using a DPAN since the payment runs through different companies, Amazon Pay and Shop Pay buttons also obscure the actual FPAN (full card number) from merchants.

And it’s not just tech companies using DPANs – U.S. banks do too:

Numerous banks from Walls Fargo to Chase to Bank of America have (or had) digital wallets, all of which used DPANs to protect your plain text account number. Paze is what a few big U.S. banks use today and it of course uses DPANs as well.

It’s not surprising that there is confusion about Apple Pay. Apple doesn’t tell customers about DPANs. Instead, the company uses its unique mix of hardware, software, and excellent marketing to make its payment system feel like magic.

In addition to DPANs, Birchler covers:

  • The differences between FPANs and DPANs
  • The extent to which you can be tracked using your Apple Pay purchase history
  • How much personal data Apple Pay transmits to merchants

The post is an excellent read that dispels common myths and confusion about Apple Pay clearly and concisely. It’s the exact kind of explanation of the industries Apple is accused of monopolizing that I hope we see more of as the DOJ’s lawsuit proceeds.

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MacStories Unwind: Okay, I Have a Whole Thing

This week on MacStories Unwind, Federico watched Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and has a request for listeners, and my favorite new TV show is The Gentlemen.



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Apple Frames 3.2 Brings iPhone 15 Pro Frames, Files Picker, and Adjustable Spacing

Apple Frames 3.2.

Apple Frames 3.2.

Today, I’m releasing version 3.2 of Apple Frames, my shortcut to put screenshots taken on Apple devices into physical device templates. If you want to skip ahead, you can download Apple Frames 3.2 at the end of this story or find it in the MacStories Shortcuts Archive.

Version 3.2 is a major update that introduces brand new frames for the iPhone 15 Pro line, improves the reliability of framing screenshots from devices with the Dynamic Island, and, perhaps most importantly, extends the Frames API with new configuration options to give you even more control over framed images.

Let’s dive in.

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US Department of Justice and States Sue Apple Under Federal and State Antitrust Laws

The US Department of Justice and 16 states have sued Apple for antitrust violations in an 88-page complaint filed in New Jersey federal court. At the time of publication, the DOJ’s press release, which has been shared with some media outlets, has not been published on the DOJ website, although I expect it will be before long. In response, Apple says:

At Apple, we innovate every day to make technology people love—designing products that work seamlessly together, protect people’s privacy and security, and create a magical experience for our users. This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets. If successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple—where hardware, software, and services intersect. It would also set a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology. We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it.

We’ll have a more detailed breakdown of the plaintiffs’ allegations against Apple soon, but the allegations are broad, claiming that:

  • Apple has monopolized or attempted to monopolize the smartphone market under the federal Sherman Act;
  • Apple has monopolized or attempted to monopolize the performance smartphone market under the federal Sherman Act and Wisconsin and New Jersey antitrust laws

(emphasis added).

The DOJ and states argue that Apple’s alleged anticompetitive behavior extends beyond its effect on users and developers to touch a wide swath of the economy:

Critically, Apple’s anticompetitive conduct not only limits competition in the smartphone market, but also reverberates through the industries that are affected by these restrictions, including financial services, fitness, gaming, social media, news media, entertainment, and more. Unless Apple’s anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct is stopped, it will likely extend and entrench its iPhone monopoly to other markets and parts of the economy. For example, Apple is rapidly expanding its influence and growing its power in the automotive, content creation and entertainment, and financial services industries–and often by doing so in exclusionary ways that further reinforce and deepen the competitive moat around the iPhone.

The DOJ and states seek a number of different remedies, including:

a. preventing Apple from using its control of app distribution to undermine cross-platform technologies such as super apps and cloud streaming apps, among others;

b. preventing Apple from using private APIs to undermine cross- platform technologies like messaging, smartwatches, and digital wallets, among others; and

c. preventing Apple from using the terms and conditions of its contracts with developers, accessory makers, consumers, or others to obtain, maintain, extend, or entrench a monopoly.

There’s a lot to digest in the complaint, which you can read for yourself here. I highly recommend reading at least the introduction to get a better sense of what Apple is being accused of. Keep in mind that this is just one side of the story, but Apple will tell its side in more detail soon enough. And, of course, I will be back soon with a more detailed look at what this lawsuit is all about and what’s at stake.


Job Simulator Devs Say They Feel ‘Vindicated’ By Apple Vision Pro’s Approach To VR

Henry Stockdale, of UploadVR is at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this week and interviewed Andrew Eiche, the CEO of Owlchemy Labs, creators of Job Simulator and other VR games:

Asked about the studio’s hand tracking focus and how Apple Vision Pro uses hand tracking as its primary control method, Eiche believes Apple’s system feels like “huge vindication” for Owlchemy’s strategy.

Eiche told Stockdale:

We had this similar pinch gesture in our previous hand tracking demo without knowing what Apple was going to do at all, so it’s great to see that we’ve all coalesced around this one interaction.

When we first tried the Apple Vision Pro, we were like, ‘yes!’ This is like what we have been hoping for in many cases. Making an app on a headset is difficult right now on every headset because you have to start from scratch. With Apple, you can use Swift UI. You can use all of these different tools to build an app to get the base layer. And then you add everything on top of it and it’s interesting. So yeah, it felt like a huge vindication.

Job Simulator first launched on Sony’s PlayStation VR in 2016, so it’s interesting to hear that its veteran VR development team independently arrived at a similar interaction scheme as Apple’s Vision Pro designers and engineers.

In addition to Job Simulator, Owlchemy Labs announced last month that it is also working on bringing Vacation Simulator to the Vision Pro.

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Apple Has Built a New Home for ‘Manuals, Specs, and Downloads’

Apple has consolidated documentation for its products, including manuals, technical specifications, and downloads on a new webpage that was first discovered by the Japanese-language website Mac Otakara and reported on this morning by MacRumors.

Most of what you’ll find on Apple’s new page was previously published elsewhere, but the new structure of the page is an improvement. It’s simple to drill down by product category to find information on the device for which you need information or use the prominent search field below the product icons. As you may spot from the screenshot above, I’ve not only bookmarked the site, I’ve also addd it to my Safari Favorites bar.

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