By Nick Godt Hertz is selling used Teslas for under $20,000 and Chevrolet Bolt EVs for under $14,000.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Deepti Pathak Tired of adding the same email addresses every time you want to send a message to…
The post How to Create a Distribution List in Gmail? appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Deepti Pathak Understanding the different check marks on WhatsApp makes it much easier to track whether a person…
The post What Does One Check Mark Mean on WhatsApp? appeared first on Fossbytes.

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Microsoft’s November Patch Tuesday release addresses 89 vulnerabilities in Windows, SQL Server, .NET and Microsoft Office — and three zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-43451, CVE-2024-49019 and CVE-2024-49039) that mean a patch now recommendation for Windows platforms. Unusually, there are a significant number of patch “re-releases” that might also require administrator attention. 

The team at Readiness has provided this infographic outlining the risks associated with each of the updates for this cycle.  (For a rundown of recent Patch Tuesday updates, see Computerworld‘s round-up here.

Known issues 

There were a few reported issues for the September update that have been addressed now, including:

Enterprise customers are reporting issues with the SSH service failing to start on updated Windows 11 24H2 machines. Microsoft recommended updating the file/directory level permissions on the SSH program directories (remember to include the log files). You can read more about this official workaround here. 

It looks like we are entering a new age of ARM compatibility challenges for Microsoft. However, before we get ahead of ourselves, we really need to sort out the (three-month old) Roblox issue.

Major revisions 

This Patch Tuesday includes the following major revisions: 

CVE-2013-390: WinVerifyTrust Signature Validation Vulnerability. This update was originally published in 2013 via TechNet. This update is now made available and is applicable to Windows 10 and 11 users due to a recent change in the EnableCertPaddingCheck Windows API call. We highly recommend a review of this CVE and its associated Q&A documentation. Remember: if you must set your values in the registry, ensure that they are type DWORD not Reg SZ.

CVE-2024-49040: Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability. When Microsoft updates a CVE (twice) in the same week, and the vulnerability has been publicly disclosed, it’s time to pay attention. Before you apply this Exchange Server update, we highly recommend a review of the reportedheader detection issues and mitigating factors.

And unusually, we have three kernel mode updates (CVE-2024-43511, CVE-2024-43516 and CVE-2024-43528 that were re-released in October and updated this month.  These security vulnerabilities exploit a race condition in Microsoft’s Virtualization Based Security (VBS). It’s worth a review of the mitigating strategies while you thoroughly test these low-level kernel patches. 

Testing guidance

Each month, the Readiness team analyzes the latest Patch Tuesday updates and provides detailed, actionable testing guidance based on a large application portfolio and a detailed analysis of the patches and their potential impact on Windows platforms and application installations.

For this release cycle, we have grouped the critical updates and required testing efforts into separate product and functional areas including:

Networking: 

Test end-to-end VPN, Wi-Fi, sharing and Bluetooth scenarios. 

Test out HTTP clients over SSL.

Ensure internet shortcut files (ICS) display correctly

Security/crypto: 

After installing the November update on your Certificate Authority (CA) servers, ensure that enrollment and renewal of certificates perform as expected.

Test Windows Defender Application Control (WDAC) and ensure that line-of-business apps are not blocked. Ensure that WDAC functions as expected on your Virtual Machines (VM).

Filesystem and logging:

The NTFileCopyChunk API was updated and will require internal application testing if directly employed. Test the validity of your parameters and issues relating to directory notification.

I cannot claim to have any nostalgia for dial-up internet access (though I do have a certain Pavlovian response to the dial-up handshake sound). For those who are still using this approach to access the internet, the November update to the TAPI API has you in mind. A “quick” (haha) test is required to ensure you can still connect to the internet via dial-up once you update your system.

Windows lifecycle and enforcement updates

There were no product or security enforcements this cycle. However, we do have the following Microsoft products reaching their respective end of servicing terms:

Oct. 8, 2024: Windows 11 Enterprise and Education, Version 21H2, Windows 11 Home and Pro, Version 22H2, Windows 11 IoT Enterprise, Version 21H2.

Oct. 9, 2024: Microsoft Project 2024 (LTSC)

Mitigations and workarounds 

Microsoft published the following mitigations applicable to this Patch Tuesday.

CVE-2024-49019: Active Directory Certificate Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability. As this vulnerability has been publicly disclosed, we need to take it seriously. Microsoft has offered some mitigation strategies during the update/testing/deployment for most enterprises that include:

Remove overly broad enroll or auto-enroll permissions.

Remove unused templates from certification authorities.

Secure templates that allow you to specify the subject in the request.

As most enterprises employ Microsoft Active Directory, we highly recommend a review of this knowledge note from Microsoft. 

Each month, we break down the update cycle into product families (as defined by Microsoft) with the following basic groupings: 

Browsers (Microsoft IE and Edge);

Microsoft Windows (both desktop and server); 

Microsoft Office;

Microsoft Exchange Server;

Microsoft Development platforms (ASP.NET Core, .NET Core and Chakra Core);

Adobe (if you get this far).

Browsers 

Microsoft released a single update specific to Microsoft Edge (CVE-2024-49025), and two updates for the Chromium engine that underpins the browser (CVE-2024-10826 and CVE-2024-10827). There’s a brief note on the browser update here. We recommend adding these low-profile browser updates to your standard release schedule.

Windows 

Microsoft released two (CVE-2024-43625 and CVE-2024-43639) patches with a critical rating and another 35 patches rated as important by Microsoft. This month the following key Windows features have been updated:

Windows Update Stack (note: installer rollbacks may be an issue);

NT OS, Secure Kernel and GDI;

Microsoft Hyper-V;

Networking, SMB and DNS;

Windows Kerberos.

Unfortunately, these Windows updates have been publicly disclosed or reported as exploited in the wild, making them zero-day problems:

CVE-2024-43451: NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability.

CVE-2024-49019: Active Directory Certificate Services Elevation of Privilege.

CVE-2024-49039: Windows Task Scheduler Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability.

Add these Windows updates to your Patch Now release cadence. 

Microsoft Office 

Microsoft pushed out six Microsoft Office updates (all rated important) that affect SharePoint, Word and Excel. None of these reported vulnerabilities involve remote access or preview pane issues and have not been publicly disclosed or exploited in the wild. Add these updates to your standard release schedule.

Microsoft SQL (nee Exchange) Server 

You want updates to Microsoft SQL Server? We got ‘em: 31 patches to the SQL Server Native client this month. That’s a lot of patches, even for a complex product like Microsoft SQL Server. These updates appear to be the result of a major clean-up effort from Microsoft addressing the following reported security vulnerabilities:

CWE-122: Heap-based Buffer Overflow

CWE-416: Use After Free

The vast majority of these SQL Server Native Client updates address the CWE-122 related buffer overflow issues. Note: these patches update the SQL Native client, so this is a desktop, not a server, update. Crafting a testing profile for this one is a tough call. No new features have been added, and no high-risk areas have been patched. However, many internal line-of-business applications rely on these SQL client features. We recommend that your core business applications be tested before this SQL update, otherwise add it to your standard release schedule. 

Boot note: Remember that there is a major revision to CVE-2024-49040 — this could affect the SQL Server “server” side of things.

Microsoft development platforms

Microsoft released one critical-rated update (CVE-2024-43498) and three updates rated as important for Microsoft .NET 9 and Visual Studio 2022. These are pretty low-risk security vulnerabilities and very specific to these versions of the development platforms. They should present a reduced testing profile. Add these updates to your standard developer schedule this month.

Adobe Reader (and other third-party updates)

Microsoft did not publish any Adobe Reader-related updates this month. The company  released three non-Microsoft CVEs covering Google Chrome and SSH (CVE-2024-5535). Given the update to Windows Defender (as a result of the SSH issue), Microsoft also published a list of Defender vulnerabilities and weaknesses that might assist with your deployments.  

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt London-based startup Gendo has secured €5.1mn amid booming demand for its generative AI software built for architects.  British architectural designer George Proud and software engineer Will Jones founded Gendo in 2022. The platform transforms simple inputs like sketches, 2D drawings, or text descriptions into hypereal building designs.  It works a bit like Midjourney or DALL-E, except it’s built by architects for architects. The tool allows you to precisely edit specific details of your design, such as colours, lighting, structural elements, or furniture. The model produces more life-like results than more general AI algorithms.    What’s more, Gendo claims it can…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Nick Godt The incoming Trump administration plans to end the federal $7,500 tax incentive on EVs.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Hisan Kidwai WhatsApp is by far the biggest communications app on the planet, thanks to its features and…
The post How to Add Someone on WhatsApp on Android & iOS appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Hisan Kidwai Gmail is the most popular email client on the planet, with billions of users. By default,…
The post How to Find Archived Emails in Gmail: 2024 Guide appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Siôn Geschwindt Zurich-based venture capital firm Founderful has raised $140mn in its second fund — $20mn more than its target and a strong sign of investor confidence in Switzerland’s flourishing tech ecosystem.   First announced back in February, the fund has already invested in 15 early-stage startups. These include Chiral Nano, which develops nanomaterials for silicon chips, and 8inks, which is rejigging the lithium-ion battery. Founderful — formerly Wingman Ventures — was launched in 2019 by Pascal Mathis, the co-founder of local travel marketplace unicorn GetYourGuide, Eat.ch co-founder Lukas Weder and Alex Stöckl, former exec at Creathor Ventures. The founder-led VC exclusively backs…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

In a sign of the times, Apple’s key manufacturing partners are ready to ramp up production in the US should the incoming Trump administration keep its promise to levy painful surcharges on Chinese imports. 

But, of course, these new factories won’t necessarily create vast quantities of jobs, as they are likely to be focused on strategically important, high-value goods made in heavily automated plants. 

All the same, the news is that Apple’s big Taiwanese partners — Foxconn, Pegatron, and Quanta Computer — are ready to rapidly ramp up US manufacturing investment in response to any changes in national policy, explained Foxconn Chairman Young Liu. His company already has production centers in Texas, Wisconsin, and Ohio, and is ready for additional expansion, he said.

Dealing with uncertainty

This may be shrewd preparation, given that President-Elect Donald J. Trump has threatened to put a 60% levy on Chinese-made products once he re-takes power. “Trump has just been elected. It’s uncertain what policies he will implement…. We’ll be watching to see what changes there will be from the new U.S government,” Liu said, according to Reuters.

Liu was speaking during the company’s stronger-than-anticipated quarterly results call. The company revealed that net income for the quarter was $1.5 billion, with demand for server chips boosting performance. He expects Foxconn to take at least 40% of the global server market in future.

That demand for server chips means the company can see even more value in US production, with Alphabet, Meta and Amazon set to spend billions on server infrastructure to drive AI this year. If you combine that demand with the growing recognition of the need to protect data sovereignty, you can surmise that making servers in this kind of quantity near or in the regions that are demanding them is a sensible business move for the company. (Liu actually uses the term “sovereign server” to articulate this.)

Similarly, as tensions with China could increase under Trump’s management, the Taiwanese firms may feel that manufacturing consumer products in the US is a price they can pay in exchange for some protection around their own national security. (And the strategic need to encourage companies to make chips in the US makes achieving that a matter of national security.)

What about the iPhone

Liu was light with detail on the company’s biggest client, though Apple critics seeking a little mood music might note his warning that the smart consumer products business will show a decline this year. This could either suggest iPhone sales are lower than anticipated or could hint that iPhones are eating the industry’s lunch, with other smartphones Foxconn also makes for other brands not selling terribly well.

Decoding the shadows surrounding the data, it is perhaps telling (and probably related) that Foxconn’s sales hit a record high in October, when the iPhone 16 was introduced. 

I’m inclined to imagine the Apple smartphone is doing just fine.

The new tech, US and India?

The need to diversify manufacturing bases is generating international investments. Apple, Foxconn, and other Apple partners are also deeply immersed in building business in India, with Foxconn already putting $10 billion into that attempt. 

The company intends to make even bigger investments there, even as a local report claims Apple and its suppliers aim to make just under a third (32%) of all iPhones made globally in India by fiscal 2027. 

But even in India, the labor force is a cost, and Foxconn (and Apple) already have plans to reduce the number of workers involved in iPhone assembly, perhaps by as much as 50%.

They hope to achieve this through automation and artificial intelligence, though there is a lot of work to do before robots can match human manufacturing success — still, Apple has said its manufacturing headcount dropped from 1.6 million workers globally to 1.4 million in 2023.

An iPod, a phone, a tool for international politics

Jobs, international tension, money, the march of AI, trade wars and surveillance as a service…., we’re through the smartphone looking glass, people, and no mistake.

In the US, and elsewhere, we’ve quite clearly taken a long, long journey since the optimism and promise voiced by then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs when he described the first iPhone in 2007. He did not say an “iPod, a phone, and a device that challenges economic and national security.”

It is only today, as the march of digital transformation continues, that this is what it turned out to be. 

You can follow me on social media! You’ll find me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, Mastodon, and MeWe. 

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt American wearables firm Realwear has acquired Swiss augmented reality (AR) startup Almer Technologies.  Almer’s AR headset — the Arc-2 — overlays digital information onto the wearer’s field of view, allowing them to access real-time data, instructions, or assistance from an engineer seated anywhere in the world. The glasses are targeted specifically at industrial companies looking to help their staff maintain and repair equipment and machinery remotely. “Almer’s innovative approach for frontline workers has enabled us to deliver industrial AR solutions that are intuitive and effortless to use,” said Sebastian Beetschen, Almer’s co-founder and CEO. Beetschen founded Almer alongside Timon Binder…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Nick Godt Hyundai teased the interior of the much-anticipated Ioniq 9 ahead of its launch next week.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Hisan Kidwai Traveling around the world is a dream for many, as it enables us to experience new…
The post Nomad eSIM Review: Best eSIM for Travellers appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

VMware this week announced that the virtualization company’s hypervisor products, VMware Workstation and Fusion, will be completely free for both personal and commercial users, as well as for educational purposes. The move follows a decision last May, when VMware made both Workstation and Fusion free for personal use; those who wanted to use the software for commercial purposes still had to sign up for a paid subscription.

The free versions will have the same functionality as the paid products, but VMware owner Broadcom will not offer troubleshooting support. The old paid versions Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro are no longer available.

“If you currently have a commercial contract, you can rest assured knowing that your contract will continue to apply until the end of your contract term,” Himanshu Singh, Broadcom product marketing director, said in a blog post. “You will continue to receive full service and enterprise-grade support as per your agreement.”

Broadcom bought VMware in 2023 and then decided to make major changes to the product portfolio. Among other things, by removing all perpetual licenses, which received a lot of criticism from several quarters.

Source:: Computer World

Apple is allegedly preparing to introduce an iPad-like Control Center for smart homes. Equipped with a display and some form of homeOS, it is expected to be some kind of wall-mounted device that lets you access some Apple services, control smart home devices, handle security camera feeds, and the like. 

This sounds like a good idea. After all, we know there’s a market for sophisticated alarm systems, and Apple’s HomeKit Secure video system will no doubt play a part in what’s introduced.  As long as Siri really does improve, the company might have a hope of introducing something that works for a while. But will it?

Smart homes? It’s complicated…

I recently spent another fruitless hour trying to make my printer connect to my new Wi-Fi network, which it still won’t do. While doing that, I was also attempting to return an old HomePod to factory fresh (and make it stop making weird belching sounds) when it really hit me how utterly frustrating most “smart home” experiences still are.

Things that promise huge leaps in convenience can become hugely frustrating exercises, with a user experience that becomes characterized in folk memory by myopic attempts at stabbing tiny, awkwardly-placed holes with bent paperclips, or endlessly pressing software reset buttons that don’t seem to make anything happen.

That’s just the hardware user experience. The software adds another dimension. 

Who hasn’t found it quite creepy when ads for products they’ve just been talking to their family about appear online shortly after installing a new smart TV? Who else dislikes it when Alexa or Siri or any other smart assistant raises its little voice to remind you it’s there? Don’t even get me started on the privacy policy statements manufacturers provide, and how so many seem to think these give them carte blanche to gather data about you and sell that information (“anonymized” they say) to people you know nothing about. 

All in all, smart home tech seems to end up meaning you put quite costly devices in your home that stop working pretty soon, don’t work particularly well together, and turn you into a profit center for people you’ve got no relationship with. That’s smart for the manufacturers, I suppose, but not for the rest of us. But so many years into the evolution of the space, it really seems like the faults in some attempts at home automation are a feature, not a bug.

Is it smarter to be cynical?

That’s not to say every manufacturer in the space can be accused of the same thing.

 I’m sure many have introduced smart home products that are easy to switch to new networks and ship with clear and actionable instructions for returning the gadget to factory fresh, rather than sending them via your local electronics recycling center to be cannibalized for conflict minerals with the carcass sent to landfill.

With so many problems, no wonder consumers don’t seem to be racing to invest in smart home devices. 

Sure, billions of dollars are being spent on these things, but over half of that spend goes on devices for video playback, and market growth seems anaemic overall — and growth predictions seem to defy historical reality. Look at this Statista graph for some sense of this. That big column at the right looks really promising until you realize it’s an estimated figure for 2027, which requires the market to enter a period of accelerated growth that exceeds any historical growth trends.

It is also fair to point to other surveys that suggest once they do get their smart homes together, consumers believe the devices improve their quality of life.

Though there is the issue of trust. 

A matter of trust

While governments eager for growth seem to think tech will save us, consumers trust the sector less and less. There’s lots of data that reflects this decline. Arguably this could well represent a reaction against everything from huge security problems such as the recent Crowdstrike disaster to election interference, mass deception, concerns about fake news, privacy erosion, security, and even frustration at the never-ending nature of digital transformation. It’s not just tech leaders who feel like they are under constant pressure to adopt new digitized working practices. Those on the front line are also struggling to keep up with endless digital change. 

Perhaps, once people do make it home, (dodging self-driving vehicles, smartphone zombies, and electronic scooters on their domestic commute), they just want their home kit to work without needing to read a manual. Assuming there even is a manual.

Can Apple change this? Maybe. Perhaps it can introduce an iPad-like smart home device with a privacy-first OS and decent integration with peripheral devices from a range of manufacturers thanks to Matter and Thread. Perhaps it can make Siri simply clever and deploy artificial intelligence to make your smart home actually smart.  Perhaps Apple can breathe life into the whole category. But maybe consumers are tired of promises and want to see an ecosystem that delivers on those promises before they slap too many dollars down. With that in mind, I’m going to kick my frustrating printer and go for a bracing stroll.

You can follow me on social media! You’ll find me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, Mastodon, and MeWe. 

Source:: Computer World

By Nick Godt Rivian and VW’s joint venture will be used to develop a common manufacturing and tech platform for Rivian R2 and VW Scout EVs.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Hisan Kidwai Screen mirroring has been around for ages, whether for sharing a presentation at work or watching…
The post AnyMiro Review: Best Screen Mirroring app for Android & iOS appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Siôn Geschwindt Amsterdam-based startup Sympower has secured €21mn as it looks to scale its grid-balancing technology. Sympower partners with businesses that use a large amount of electricity. It gains access to some of their energy assets and can turn them on and off when the grid requires balancing — a process called demand response. Sympower’s software platform uses AI to analyse data and optimise when and how much power businesses can sell at any given time, making energy use adjustments more effective and profitable for all parties.  Grid operators pay Sympower to stabilise the energy supply. The company passes most of that…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Baidu has introduced a text-to-image generator dubbed I-RAG and a no-code developer platform called Miaoda as part of its growing portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI) products that, like US-based AI companies, it eventually aims to offer its user base as part of a wide array of commercial AI offerings.

CEO Robin Li introduced the new technology in a presentation at the company’s Baidu World Conference Tuesday. I-RAG uses Baidu’s search capabilities to generate images from speech and has been designed to address the “hallucinations” issue, according to a report on Reuters. The hallucinations referred to are images generated via large language model (LLM)-based AI that deviate from what was specified in the input prompt or contain non-existent elements.

Baidu also launched Miaoda, a developer platform that uses the capabilities of LLMs to generate code, and is aimed at allowing users without extensive coding expertise to develop applications. AI companies in the US also are providing similar tools to develop applications through a visual interface, with reusable components and advanced developer assistance, noted Manukrishnan SR, practice director for Everest Group.

Indeed, like those of leading US companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, Baidu’s AI moves demonstrate its march toward the commercialization phase of the technology. The company, like others before it, has been adding AI to existing products or creating new ones that enterprise and other business users can integrate into their applications.

Follow the leader

Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft already have products similar to the ones Baidu revealed Tuesday, and the Chinese company has some catching up to do, analysts noted. The release of an AI-enhanced no-code platform in particular demonstrates Baidu’s aim to keep up with a software development trend that may one day leverage AI to replace traditional coding with software configuration.

“The pace of innovation and research in generative AI technologies and software is moving at a breakneck pace in the US,” Dave Schubmehl, research VP, AI & automation at IDC, observed. “To compete effectively on the world stage, other countries will need to adopt this same pace of innovation and research.”

He added, “many vendors are offering low code/no code/code generation capabilities in their products. Baidu’s product Miaoda is doing what other vendors like Microsoft and OpenAI have already done, which is using LLM capabilities to generate code.”

So far, however, Baidu’s AI tools do not seem to be as advanced as the ones released by OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google, Everest Group’s SR told CIO, “since these players have large existing datasets on which they can train their AI models.”

However, with “all major cloud platform players now offering some form of genAI-based programming augmentation facility,” AI-based software development may be the way forward for the enterprise, noted Bradley Shimmin, chief analyst, AI and data analytics, at Omdia.

“This is a very important area of research in that it points to an eventual state where both domain experts inside an organization and professional ISV practitioners can both use the same tooling to create full-stack apps and/or workflow automations in a declarative, no-code, conversational manner,” Shimmin said.

Still, this evolution is not without its challenges, and may not be something CIOs need to worry about quite yet, Everest Group’s SR noted.

“These tools are facing a host of challenges, including maintaining code quality, adherence to regulatory standards, and questions on ROI,” he told CIO. “Thus, while AI is set to revolutionize software development in the medium to long term, there are a lot of challenges that need to be ironed out before its potential can be fully realized.”

Don’t underestimate China

Though Baidu is still playing catch-up to US-based companies, China as a major global AI player should not be underestimated, Shimmins noted. In fact, “China and the US are really not that far apart from one another in terms of expertise and investment [in AI],” he observed.

“Already, China has produced some very strong models, particularly open source models such as Qwen2.5-Coder, which rivals some of the larger frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI (at least in terms of published benchmarks),” he said.

The US has been doing everything it can to stymie overall technological development in China in various ways, and AI is no exception. A mere two weeks ago, the US government announced new rules restricting investments in China’s AI and other tech sectors deemed threats to national security, expanding existing technology restrictions that were so far limited to exports. China, for its part, has banned the use of OpenAI in the country.

However, despite the current friction between the US and China in terms of their technological arms race, the two countries have similar goals when it comes to AI, and may end up collaborating in some areas, Shimmin noted.

“In terms of academic research, the two nations are starting to work more closely with one another in seeking out a common ground concerning the existential threat posed by AI itself,” he said.

Source:: Computer World

As it seemingly remains focused on increasing the cost of doing business in the region, the European Commission’s (trade) war with Big Tech/America by proxy continues with a demand for Apple to stop “geo-blocking practices” on Apple Media Services, including the App Store, Apple Music, TV+, and others. 

It’s a new European front in a battle dominated so far by Apple’s struggles to bring its business in line with the Digital Markets Act in the region. However, to some degree it reflects efforts to give consumers free access to markets across all EU states. But when combined with the myriad challenges Apple already faces in the region, the demand will impose yet  another set of legal headaches and require the company to invest in yet more expensive developer time.  

What’s this all about?

Europe argues that the geo-blocking restrictions Apple employs on its media platforms unlawfully discriminate against European customers based on their place of residence. In Europe, people should be able to purchase goods and services from any EU state.

Further, Europe’s Services Directive requires that general conditions of access to a service don’t “contain discriminatory provisions relating to the nationality or place of residence of the service recipient, unless directly justified by objective criteria.”

So far, so good. But I have a sense that some of the territorial licensing restrictions some copyright holders still keep in place might act as a brake on what Apple can achieve. There was a day not so long ago when music streaming services had to reach a separate distribution deal for each EU member state, and while that has relaxed significantly, it may also be why Apple’s media services evolved that kind of licensing model. But that was then, this is now. (I do suspect Europe and Apple will find these problems aren’t completely within their own control.)

What does Europe want?

What regulators want is for Apple to make a series of changes to how it offers up media services in the EU. “The discrimination of consumers based on their nationality or place of residence is against Union law, therefore unacceptable,” said Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders.

“Consumers must be able to reap the full benefits of the Single Market and should not face any obstacles while using a specific service and traveling around the EU,” he explained. “The Commission urges Apple to bring its practices in line with EU rules against the unjustified geo-blocking of consumers.”

Europe wants Apple to:

Make it possible to access its media services via any country interface a consumer wants to use. 

Allow consumers to pay for things using any means of payment from any country they have available to them. For example, if you have bank accounts in France and in Germany but are registered for your Apple Account in France, you can use either bank to pay your bill. At present you can only use a French bank, as that is where your account is registered.

The bloc also wants consumers to be able to download the version of an app offered in another EU/EEA country. “Consumers should be able to download apps offered in other EU/EEA countries when they travel to or temporarily stay in that country,” the EU states.

Google has already done it

Apple may be in the Commission’s sights (again) now, but the bloc reached a deal with Google for similar practises last year. Under those arrangements, Google “committed to clarify” how to browse different country versions of the Google Play Store.

It also reminded Android developers that they should make their apps accessible EU-wide and accept means of payment from any EU country on the Google store.

That Google could only remind developers suggests that even when Apple finds some way to bring itself in line with these demands, some developers might still decline to join the ball game. Even the act in question (passed in 2018), notes in Article 3 section 5 some circumstances in which some categories of goods — books — are sold at different prices in certain territories. 

What happens next?

Apple now gets a month to look at what is being asked of it, develop a response, and come up with a set of proposals and commitments to address these criticisms.

The way the Commission phrases how it will respond to Apple’s reply is interesting, “Depending on Apple’s reply, the CPC Network may enter into a dialogue with the company,” it says.

The use of conditionals in that sentence suggests that even if Apple does attempt to being itself into compliance, the CPC Network (Consumer Protection Cooperation Network) might decide to move to enforcement all the same.

If Apple fails to address the concerns or is found to have failed to address them, national authorities can take enforcement measures to ensure compliance, the Commission explains.

You can follow me on social media! You’ll find me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, Mastodon, and MeWe. 

Source:: Computer World