AppleMagazine #600

An appeals court upheld Apple’s exclusive control over the distribution of iPhone apps, rejecting the latest attempt to force one of the world’s most powerful companies to dismantle the digital walls protecting its most lucrative product. The 92-page decision issued by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals largely affirmed the findings of a lower-court judge who presided over a 2021 trial that revolved around an antitrust lawsuit filed by Epic Games, the maker of the popular Fortnite video game. Epic Games’ lawsuit alleged Apple’s app store — which was launched in 2008, a year after the first iPhone went on sale — had turned into an illegal monopoly that stifles innovation and competition while generating billions of dollars in profit for Apple. Epic tried to offer an alternative way to get its…

Celebrities, professional athletes and other high-profile Twitter users are once again being verified by the social media platform and they don’t know why their blue check marks reappeared — nor do they seem too happy about it. Twitter removed the blue marks last week from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee. But the check marks mysteriously returned for many highly followed accounts over the weekend, leading some prominent users to disavow what’s become a divisive symbol of Twitter owner Elon Musk’s erratic changes to the platform. The account belonging to the Auschwitz Memorial, which has 1.5 million followers and regularly tweets out photos and names of Holocaust victims, tweeted on Sunday (23) that after two days of no blue check mark, its account was reverified. The Memorial said it was “obliged…

Microsoft reported a 9% increase in profit for the January-March quarter, as growth in cloud computing sales helped bolster its plans to expand its use of artificial intelligence. The company reported quarterly profit of $18.3 billion, or $2.45 per share, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings of $2.24 a share. The software maker posted revenue of $52.9 billion in the period, its third fiscal quarter, up 7% from the same period a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Microsoft to post revenue of $51.02 billion for the quarter. The quarter marked an ambitious push by Microsoft to capitalize on its investments in artificial intelligence and close partnership with San Francisco-based startup OpenAI with the February release of a new AI chatbot feature on its search engine Bing. Microsoft is also integrating similar AI…

OpenAI was building a reputation in the artificial intelligence field but wasn’t a household name when Mira Murati joined the nonprofit research lab in 2018. Soon after, the San Francisco lab started a major transformation. It turned itself into a business that’s attracted worldwide attention as the maker of ChatGPT. Now its chief technology officer, Murati leads OpenAI’s research, product and safety teams. She’s led the development and launch of its AI models including ChatGPT, the image-generator DALL-E and the newest, GPT-4. She spoke about AI safeguards and the company’s vision for the futuristic concept of artificial general intelligence, known as AGI. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. Q: WHAT DOES ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE MEAN FOR OPENAI? A: By artificial general intelligence, we usually mean highly autonomous systems that are capable of…

The world of AI is evolving rapidly, and as tech giants compete to evolve and keep users on their side, we’re seeing an unprecedented rate of innovation. AI-powered personal assistants have been on our iPhones for years, but their reincarnation could change our lives forever. PERSONAL ASSISTANT 2.0 Integrating AI into our everyday lives has already become a reality. The next step is the development of AI-powered personal assistants that can provide us with an entirely new level of support and guidance. One company already leading the way in this area is Apple, with rumors suggesting that the tech giant is preparing to launch a revolutionary new personal assistant designed to take Siri to the next level. This AI-powered assistant could be designed to provide users with a seamless and personalized experience,…

Google’s advertising malaise persisted during the first quarter while the internet company also grapples with advancements in artificial intelligence technology that threaten to undercut its dominant search engine. An unprecedented downturn in Google’s digital ad revenue – the company’s main moneymaker for more than 20 years – came into sharper focus with the release of the January-March results for owner Alphabet Inc. Although Alphabet’s total revenue for the period rose from a year earlier, Google’s first-quarter ad sales of $54.5 billion marked a slight decrease from a year ago. That dip followed a nearly 4% decline during the final three months of last year, making this the first time Google has sustained back-to-back drops in year-over-year ad revenue since becoming a publicly traded company in 2004. Google’s YouTube video site, a marketing magnet…