Amazon.com Inc on Friday defeated an appeal by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in what the online retailer has called a $1.5 billion dispute over its tax treatment of transactions with a Luxembourg subsidiary.

Tax laws are so bloody confusing.

The patent largely describes a camera that can “capture, compress, and store video image data in a memory of the video camera, but really it pertains more to Rawcode, Red’s format for holding RAW footage, unprocessed imaging data from the sensor. Apple believes that some of the claims of the patent are “unpatentable,” and that the patent itself should be invalidated.

Apple’s arguments start with how the patent does not provide “written description support” for some claims, such as the disclosure of “outputting the raw mosaiced image data at a resolution of at least 2k and at a frame rate of at least about 23 frames per second.” While the patent describes decompression and demosaicing algorithms, it “does not disclose image resolution or frame rate parameters, let alone a camera system capable of meeting such parameters.”

I don’t know about this patent in particular, but other patents have been intentionally vague so they cover as much as possible.

Apple today filed a lawsuit against Corellium, a mobile device virtualization company that supports iOS. Corellium describes itself as the “first and only platform” that offers iOS, Android, and Linux virtualization on ARM.

In the lawsuit, filed today in the Southern District of Florida, Apple accuses Corellium of copyright infringement for illegally replicating the operating system and applications that run on the iPhone and the iPad.

I would think companies would know better than to do things like this, no matter the reason.

Thirty-three years ago, five friends sat down at a kitchen table in Tulsa, Oklahoma and decided to start a company. Among them: president of Maccor Andy MacKay and his wife Helen, who runs personnel. Today, less than a mile from that spot, Maccor now occupies 80,000 square feet of space and has earned itself a reputation as the top manufacturer of battery testing systems in the world.

Maccor is one of 9,000 American suppliers that Apple spent a collective $60 billion dollars with in 2018, which supports 450,000 jobs. Altogether, Apple is responsible for creating and supporting 2.4 million US jobs across all 50 states, four times the number of American jobs attributable to the company eight years ago. Apple is on pace to directly contribute $350 billion to the US economy by 2023, which the company announced in January of 2018.

This is absolutely incredible. Apple has a huge workforce across the U.S. (and the world), but we often forget how many jobs Apple is creating outside of the company.

Apple on Thursday said it is suspending a program called grading that helps the company improve Siri for its users. The process uses snippets of audio files to determine whether Siri heard the command correctly or whether it was invoked by mistake.

During its third quarter earnings call earlier this week, Apple delivered good news as it beat estimates and saw revenue reach a new June quarter record. Chief among the reasons it did so was its services category which continues to grow exponentially. In fact, the services category is now bigger than Apple was as a whole ten years ago according to Horace Dediu.

What an incredible rise for services. Apple is still bullish on what services will make for the company over the next few years, which says a lot about what they expect to happen.

The Federal Trade Commission is probing Facebook Inc to check if the social media company’s acquisitions were aimed at snapping up potential rivals before they could become a threat, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.

That’s one way to look at it. I see Facebook buying up companies they think will be the next popular social media thing allowing to continue expanding into “what’s cool.”

Apple is hosting a new Music Lab that will allow attendees to create their own unique remix of Billie Eilish’s song “you should see me in a crown.” The sessions will be held in every Apple Store worldwide, starting tomorrow, according to Apple.

“In terms of exclusions, we’ve been making the Mac Pro in the U.S.,” Cook said. “We want to continue to do that. So we’re working and investing currently in capacity to do so, because we want to continue to be here. And so that’s what’s behind the exclusions. So we’re explaining that and hope for a positive outcome.”

It’s reassuring that Apple is going to continue Mac Pro production in the U.S. It makes perfect sense considering they have been making the current model here.

Apple on Tuesday reported quarterly revenue of $53.8 billion, which is up 1 percent from the year-ago quarter.

Jim and Dan talk about 5G, secret Siri recordings, Apple’s acquisition of Intel’s smartphone modem business, laptops new and old, Audio Hijack, UA Apollo and Arrow, and more.

It’s been a long time since Dan and I did an Amplified podcast, but when he called I jumped at the chance to record it again. I hope you enjoy it!

Companies that embed Facebook’s “Like” button on their websites allowing users’ personal data to be transferred to the U.S. social network can be held liable for collecting the data, Europe’s top court said on Monday.

This puts a new twist on the Facebook “Like” button. Sure, it helps companies get exposure, but if you can be held liable for the information collected, I don’t see many companies taking the risk in the future.

The German automaker currently charges a one-time $300 to add Apple CarPlay capability to navigation-equipped BMW models. Going forward, though, navigation-equipped BMWs will come with CarPlay at no charge for one year. Following that first year, customers will need to pay an annual fee of $80 to maintain the relationship between their Apple device and their BMW’s infotainment system.

I’m searching for the right words to describe what I want to say to BMW… Fuck you sums it up.

Bare Bones Software, makers of BBEdit, is one of my favorite software companies — in fact, I’ve been using BBEdit for more than 20 years. BBEdit has just been updated to 12.6.3, and is available in the Mac App Store as a subscription! Same great features. Same user experience. You can subscribe in the Mac App Store or purchase perpetual licenses directly from Bare Bones Software. Also, you can still get great merch, including Classic and Rebus T-shirts, enamel pins, and more in their merch store!

What a great video!

Apple has released a silent update for Mac users removing a vulnerable component in Zoom, the popular video conferencing app, which allowed websites to automatically add a user to a video call without their permission.

Apple said the update does not require any user interaction and is deployed automatically.

Thank you, Apple!

Take advantage of transcripts to quickly discover and share information presented in WWDC19 videos. You can search by keyword, see all instances where the keyword is mentioned in the video, go straight to the time it was mentioned, and even share a link to that specific time.

Great news for developers.

“Libra raises many serious concerns regarding privacy, money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability,” Powell said during his semi-annual testimony on monetary policy before the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.

“I don’t think the project can go forward” without addressing those concerns, he added later in the hearing.

Everything Facebook does should raise serious concerns.

They look like the blinders people put on horses, except they’re for people. I wonder if they really help you focus.

Google Translate allows you to explore unfamiliar lands, communicate in different languages, and make connections that would be otherwise impossible. One of my favorite features on the Google Translate mobile app is instant camera translation, which allows you to see the world in your language by just pointing your camera lens at the foreign text. Similar to the real-time translation feature we recently launched in Google Lens, this is an intuitive way to understand your surroundings, and it’s especially helpful when you’re traveling abroad as it works even when you’re not connected to Wi-Fi or using cellular data.

This is really cool. Although, Google will probably start showing you ads about whatever you translate.

Jason Snell on the MacBook:

At some point in the life of the MacBook, Apple seems to have gotten the message that it wasn’t the solution. (My guess is that Mac buyers sent the message by continuing to buy MacBook Airs—complete with MagSafe and familiar USB-A ports—despite Apple’s attempts to sell them fancy USB-C Retina Macs that cost hundreds more.)

Whatever the reason, the MacBook is gone and that’s not a bad thing. Apple did what it does best in most situations like this—it cleaned up the product line so it’s easy to understand, allowing people to buy the product they need.