Business

Google accused of enabling photography piracy

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Time:

Photography company Getty Images is accusing Google of scraping images from third party websites and encouraging piracy, adding a new wrinkle to the Mountain View, Calif.’s ongoing legal battles in Europe.

Tim Cook, optimism, and the “G” word

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Jason Snell digs into the transcript of yesterday’s earnings call:

If I had to describe Tim Cook’s attitude during the call, it would be “optimistic.” But only because he referred to his optimism eight different times over the span of an hour. (Maestri added another three on his own.) Then again, when your company just broke a 13-year streak of year-over-year revenue growth, expressing your optimism about the future is probably a smart move.

Growth is the currency of a small company and the curse of a large one.

The increasing hackability of your car

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Jean-Louis Gassée, writing for Monday Note, on the hackability of your car and the increasing vulnerability that comes with some recent rule changes.

Steam’s move into Netflix territory

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Steam inks deal with Lionsgate to bring film to their game heavy site. Will they add some custom content to compete with Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.?

Sources: Apple buying more IBM products, relationship growing

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Kevin McLaughlin, writing for CRN:

Apple is buying and deploying an increasing amount of IBM technology for internal use, in a sign of how the vendors’ mobile enterprise partnership is spreading to new areas, sources familiar with the matter told CRN this week.

Apple is using IBM software and hardware in its retail platform and in its corporate data centers, according to the sources.

Read the original headline and my comments to that.

Apple’s Watch outpaced the iPhone in first year sales

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Daisuke Wakabayashi, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

As the Watch marks its first anniversary on Sunday — two days before Apple’s quarterly earnings announcement — the product’s fate is critical to the company. It is Apple’s first all-new product since the iPad and a test of its ability to innovate under Chief Executive Tim Cook, when sales of iPhones are slowing.

So far, the numbers appear solid. Apple doesn’t disclose sales, but analysts estimate about 12 million Watches were sold in year one. At an estimated average price of $500, that is a $6 billion business — three times the annual revenue of activity tracker Fitbit Inc.

A remarkable achievement. I use mine every day…

Apple Watch gaming: State of the union

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With the potential release of a second generation of Apple Watch and the requirement that Apple Watch apps be able to run independent of their paired iPhone overlords, this is an interesting time for Apple Watch game developers. New opportunities are definitely on the horizon.

Apple’s organizational crossroads

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Ben Thompson, writing for Stratechery:

I do believe that Apple’s products — their devices anyways — are superior, particularly if you value the finer details of industrial design, build quality, and little UI details like scrolling and responsiveness that seem so simple but are so hard to get right. And, frankly, it’s not surprising that Apple is good at this stuff for the exact reasons laid out above: everything about the company is designed to produce integrated devices that don’t sacrifice perfection for the sake of modularity.

But…

The problem is that everything that goes into creating these jewel-like devices works against being good at services.

As you make your way through the post, ask yourself whether Apple is an integrated product company or a services company. Interesting post.

5,000 developers talk about their salaries

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Perhaps the most important takeaway:

Even when you control for location, title, and years of experience, women still get $5,000 less per year than men.

Magic Leap, the world’s most secretive startup

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This is a massive peek inside the current state of Virtual Reality and Magic Leap’s so-called Mixed Reality. I found the whole thing fascinating, especially the insider info on how VR tricks your brain into believing what you are seeing is really happening.

European Commission charges Google with antitrust violations

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From the European Commission fact sheet (Emphasis theirs):

The Commission’s investigation showed that Google obliges manufacturers, who wish to pre-install Google’s app store for Android, Play Store, on their devices, to also pre-install Google Search, and set it as the default search provider on those devices.

That’s the heart of it, but the post contains more details.

Apple’s mysterious rollout of tvOS app web links/previews

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Federico Viticci, writing for MacStories:

Apple has begun rolling out web links and iTunes web previews for Apple TV apps. The change, first noticed by Jeff Scott and which we were able to confirm via Safari on OS X, allows users to link to tvOS apps in a web browser, which will show an iTunes Preview with screenshots, app description, and other information.

Why is this self-discovery for tvOS developers? Puzzling rollout.