Tech Roundup: Apple E.U. Fine, China Smartphone Sales Slump & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Apple gets fined €1.8 billion in the E.U. for abusing its dominant position to stifle competition from rival music streaming services; the European Commission says "Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app," as Apple states the decision "was reached despite the Commission's failure to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm, and ignores the realities of a market that is thriving, competitive, and growing fast," and that "the primary advocate for this decision — and the biggest beneficiary — is Spotify."
• Google outlines updates to comply with the E.U. Digital Markets Act (DMA), including changes to search results to "send more traffic to large intermediaries and aggregators, and less traffic to direct suppliers like hotels, airlines, merchants and restaurants."
• Apple releases iOS 17.4 with new default browser prompts in the E.U., support for altenative app stores (which will only for devices that are physically located in the region and users don't leave it for more than 30 days at a stretch), third-party browser engines, transcripts for Podcasts, 118 new emojis, and a new clock widget; music streamer Spotify submits an app update for the E.U. to provide pricing info within its iOS app and link users to its subscription options following new rules. (Apple has also removed a previous requirement that mandated a stand-by letter of credit for €1 million in order to start an alternative app marketplace. In addition, the company plans to let E.U.-based iPhone users uninstall Safari by 2024's end and is working on a more "user-friendly" way to let them switch to Android by fall 2025.)
• ByteDance-owned TikTok moves its Creativity Program out of beta, rebranding it as Creator Rewards Program; allows videos longer than a minute to be monetised.
• Microsoft plans to end support for its Android subsystem in Windows 11 on March 5, 2025, and discontinue the Amazon Appstore on Windows.
• Google rolls out updates to its Search ranking, including downranking content that summarises others' work, to counter the spread of AI content and low-quality content in results; officially stops showing recommendations on YouTube when signed out or using the service in private browsing mode.
• Linux hits 4.03% desktop OS market share in February 2024, after taking 30 years to hit 3% in June 2023.
• Nothing debuts the 6.7" Phone (2a), its first budget phone, with a 5,000mAh battery, MediaTek chip, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage for £319.
• Web infrastructure company Cloudflare announces Firewall for AI, a protection layer that companies can deploy in front of large language models (LLMs) to find abuses and prompt injection attacks before they can reach the models.
• Chinese smartphone sales decline 7% YoY in the first six weeks of 2024; Huawei rises 64% YoY, while Apple, OPPO and vivo drop 24%, 29% and 15% YoY, respectively.
• X's audio and video calls, which are enabled by default, are peer-to-peer and disclose users' IP addresses to each other, unless "Enhanced call privacy" is enabled, the company reveals; unveils Articles, a feature for writing and sharing long-form content in a basic text-editing interface, for verified organizations and Premium+ subscribers, and plans to open-source its Grok AI chatbot this week as well as allow users to watch long-form videos on the platform via a dedicated app for smart TVs.
• Google releases Pixel updates with a Hello button to let Google Assistant screen calls, Circle to Search on Pixel 7, and 10-bit HDR video uploads to Instagram;
• Meta's Instagram adds options to edit direct messages up to 15 minutes after sending them, pin three messaging threads to the top of inbox, and save favorite stickers; says it's working on an AI system to power video recommendations across its entire ecosystem.
• Anthropic announces Claude 3 (comes in three flavours Haiku, Sonnet and Opus), which it says outperforms its peers on most of the common evaluation benchmarks for AI systems and exhibits near-human levels of comprehension and fluency on complex tasks.
• OpenAI updates ChatGPT with a "read aloud" feature supporting 37 languages, letting ChatGPT read its responses out loud across desktop and mobile; responds to Elon Musk's lawsuit against the company by claiming that it's making its "technology broadly usable in ways that empower people."
• Wix debuts a new AI site builder that allows users to create websites using text prompts; comes with options to adjust the theme, layout, images and text.
• Apple announces a new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air with M3, offering an 8-core CPU and up to a 10-core GPU, starting at US$ 1,099 or US$ 1,299.
• Accenture announces plans to acquire Udacity as part of an effort to build a learning platform focused on the growing interest in AI.
• Apple briefly terminates Epic Games' developer account worldwide due to the game developer's pattern of untrustworthy behaviour, effectively stifling its third-party app store ambitions in the E.U., but reinstates its developer account after the company "committed to follow the rules"; adds new iOS API that allows third-party budgeting apps to access Apple Card transactions in real-time.
• Music streaming service TIDAL consolidates its premium plans to a single subscription tier called TIDAL for US$ 10.99/month; to get rid of the free tier starting April 10, 2024.
• Spain's data protection watchdog blocks cryptocurrency project Worldcoin over privacy concerns and possible GDPR violations, asking the company to immediately cease collecting personal information in the country via eyeball-scanning orbs scans (in return for cryptocurrency) and that it stops using data it has already gathered; Worldcoin says its business is fully compliant with all E.U. laws pertaining to biometrics, data transfer, data processing and data protection.
• Meta faces a new complaint from the U.S. state attorneys general over its failure to assist Facebook and Instagram users whose accounts have been hacked by scammers; say they "have experienced a dramatic and persistent spike in complaints in recent years concerning account takeovers."
• Music streamer Spotify reveals plans to raise its prices in France due to a new tax law that adds a 1.2% tax on streaming companies' revenue to help finance local music creation.
• Telegram introduces new option that lets users on the chat app with personal accounts convert them into business accounts by paying a monthly fee, as it hits 900 million active users.
• Reddit begins piloting Reddit Pro, a free suite of tools to let businesses improve their engagement, including the ability to see which subreddits are mentioning a brand.
• Meta-owned Instagram's total app downloads grows 20% YoY in 2023 to 768 million, making it the most downloaded app worldwide, surpassing TikTok's 733 million downloads.
• Microsoft implements new guardrails to Copilot following concerns that the artificial intelligence tool could be used to create violent, sexual images as well as produce images that violate copyright laws.
• Short-term rental platform Airbnb bans the use of indoor security cameras in all of its listings globally as part of its efforts to "to prioritise the privacy of our community."