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Received — 16 September 2026 ⏭
Received — 11 September 2026 ⏭

25 ans, une bascule : Steve Jobs a lancé en 2007 une révolution qui a débordé bien au-delà du téléphone

✇Futura
By: Edward Back · Journaliste hi-tech
10 September 2026 at 20:08
Pour fêter les 25 ans de Futura, chaque journaliste partage les images et évènements qui les ont le plus marqués au cours de ces décennies. Difficile de ne pas évoquer la sortie de l’iPhone, un véritable tournant dans l’évolution des smartphones.

Received — 9 September 2026 ⏭

Relax, everyone: Elon Musk has a mantra to make the climate crisis go away | Emma Brockes

✇The Guardian - Technology
By: Emma Brockes
20 August 2026 at 08:00

It’s simple, says the SpaceX boss – according to something called the ‘Kardashev scale’, we just have to move energy production ‘off-planet’

Next time the weather gives the UK 61 days without rain and we wonder idly if this is the end, there is a term we may whistle up to soothe us. Like murmuring the rosary, or putting our fingers in our ears and humming, this phrase is to be mumbled on repeat – “the Kardashev scale, the Kardashev scale” – a buzzy concept in tech, much favoured by Elon Musk, and precisely the thing we’ve been waiting for. The Kardashev scale is the answer both to our impending doom and our anxiety around it – and if we decide to believe in it, we won’t have to give the climate crisis a single thought until the last drip falls from the tap.

This is the idea and it’s a familiar one to anyone who has watched tech billionaires take intractable, commonplace crises and decide that, among the measures and proposals in play, the vital missing ingredient so far has been them. Do you remember when Jeff Bezos, rather than doing something quotidian and loserish like funding public education by ensuring Amazon pays the same tax rate as regular Americans, decided instead to reinvent preschools?

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Reuters

© Photograph: Reuters

© Photograph: Reuters

Apple Proposes 15% External Purchase Fee

✇Michael Tsai
By: Michael Tsai
17 August 2026 at 18:42

Juli Clover (AppleInsider):

Apple has again failed to earn a stay for fee calculations in its ongoing legal fight with Epic Games. Apple's case will be heard by the Supreme Court in the term that begins in October, and Apple asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to pause proceedings until then, but the court said no [PDF].

Juli Clover:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan today granted Apple a one-day stay in its legal fight with Epic Games, giving Apple more time to outline the fees it wants to charge developers for linking out to purchase options on the web.

M.G. Siegler:

Apple tried to freeze the entire thing while they appealed to the Supreme Court – and the Supreme Court denied the freeze. But they didn’t deny hearing the case – yet. That’s why they’re pausing the proceedings for now (after Judge Gonzalez Rogers denied the same request), while they weigh Apple’s appeal. But before they do that, they’re basically likely to decide today – again, it was just a 24-hour delay – whether they should grant a longer stay. Presumably if the court thinks they’re unlikely to hear Apple’s appeal, they may not grant that longer stay. Or if they think Apple filing their number won’t harm their business, they’ll let it proceed. But Apple will argue that if the longer stay isn’t granted, it will cause major harm to their business because again, it will effectively end the App Store cut as we know it.

Juli Clover (Engadget, The Verge):

Apple today submitted a court-ordered proposal outlining the commission it believes is reasonable to collect from U.S. apps that link to purchase options outside of the App Store.

Apple is asking for half of its commission on standard apps, so apps that would pay 30 percent for an in-app purchase would pay 15 percent when linking to a web purchase option. Small Business Program participants that would normally pay 15 percent would pay 5 percent.

[…]

The appeals court suggested the commission could be limited to the direct costs of facilitating link-outs, and under that approach, the fee would be zero. Apple says a zero commission would not reflect the value that it provides developers, and its suggested commission gives it fair compensation for the App Store platform.

[…]

The district court will now evaluate Apple’s fee proposal and hear a response from Epic Games , and Apple will need to implement the fee the court sets.

Apple:

Unlike cost-only based commissions, Apple’s revenue-based commissions incentivize continued investment. Apple charges developers a $99 annual fee for the Apple Developer Program. May 17, 2021 Trial Tr. at 2762:21–2763:13. This modest fee—designed to prevent fraud and expressly not intended to compensate Apple for the use of its IP-protected tools, technologies, and services (id.)—allows developers to build apps using Apple’s offerings and deliver experiences to iOS and iPadOS users worldwide.

The annual developer fee is nominal. Apple relies on percentage-based commissions to recoup and profit from its investments. See id. ¶¶ 87–93. Apple is incentivized to invest in IP- protected tools, technologies, and services that generate revenue for developers (and benefit users).

[…]

Dr. Carlton explains that “reduc[ing] Apple’s incentive to invest and provide the technology and services that benefit users and developers” would harm users and developers, as well as Apple.

I like the part where Apple’s expert argues that its normal commission rates are so high that it would still be profitable for developers to pay the proposed linking commissions on top of what they would pay to Stripe or Paddle. In other words, paying Apple for “IP” almost twice what it admits the other companies charge for “full-service, turnkey payment processing.”

Jeff Johnson:

If the point [of the $99] is just to prevent fraud, why do we need to keep paying $99 yearly FOREVER? Is 10 years not enough to prove I’m not a fraud?!?

If the fee doesn’t help pay for Apple IP, then it’s even more blatantly unfair that a minority of apps have to pay for ALL apps to access Apple IP. Free apps, no matter how big or how much $ they make via ads, get access to Apple IP from OUR REVENUE CUT, and not even their $99 counts.

Matt Garber:

That’s what that enormous hardware margin from customers is already supposed to be paying for — Apple IP! In the early 00’s, I gladly paid the “Apple tax” (PowerBook G4) to get access to the Mac OS X software/ecosystem, including all the Unix and dev tools. I’m not sure why anyone thinks that double-dipping is fine on all the non-Mac platforms, App Store or not.

Jeff Johnson (2):

Schiller’s [previous] testimony about the previous program is extremely misleading, because the new program began in 2008 at the same time as the App Store, so there was no previous iOS developer program, and Mac Developer ID did not begin until 2012, so Apple Developer Program membership was not actually required to distribute Mac apps!

Jeff Johnson:

Fourth, it appears that Steve Jobs was wrong: the $99 fee didn’t prevent developers from flooding the App Store with a lot of junk.

I want to quote another remarkable passage from Schiller’s testimony, again with questions from Apple’s own lawyer.

Q. And Mr. Jobs says, “And also just to make it a little clearer, we don’t intend to make money off the App Store. I mean, we don’t make a lot of money off iTunes, and the split with the music companies is about the same, so in the case of the iTunes Music Store, we give all the money to the content owners, and we are basically giving all the money to the developers here. And if that 30 percent of it pays for running the store, well, that will be great, but we just want to create a very efficient channel for these developers to reach every single iPhone user.” Is that a statement that Mr. Jobs made back in March 2008?

A. He did.

[…]

I won’t quote the following passage in which Schiller testifies about his internal email suggesting that Apple limit itself to $1 billion per year in profit from the App Store, hand-waving away the suggestion as merely “spurring conversation.” Of course the email also seems to contradict Schiller’s (absurd) testimony that Apple does not specifically calculate profit from the App Store, only company-wide profit. Apple’s public financial statements also appear to contradict Schiller’s claims.

Previously:

Update (2026-08-20): Marcus Mendes:

On the same day, Apple submitted another motion, asking Judge Gonzalez Rogers to order the parties to attend a settlement conference.

[…]

Epic has now responded to Apple’s motion, stating that although the company “has been, and remains today, willing to entertain any direct approach from Apple with a serious settlement proposal that would introduce competition and benefit all developers,” it “does not believe the prospects of such settlement would be meaningfully advanced through referral to a settlement conference at this juncture.”

Update (2026-09-03): Marcus Mendes:

In addition to the proposal itself, Apple submitted supporting expert reports, alongside a request to seal portions of those filings containing financial data, link-out adoption estimates, developer survey results, and other information Apple considers commercially sensitive.

Epic has now filed an opposition to Apple’s request, arguing “Apple again seeks to conceal information from the public and unnecessarily hamper proceedings.”

Received — 9 August 2026 ⏭

Can new CEO John Ternus bring back Apple’s design mojo?

✇MacDailyNews
By: MacDailyNews
5 August 2026 at 22:00
Apple's incoming CEO John Ternus
Apple’s incoming CEO John Ternus

As Tim Cook hands the reins to hardware engineering chief John Ternus in September 2026, the company faces its biggest leadership transition in 15 years. While Cook’s tenure delivered massive revenue growth and operational excellence, many former employees and analysts say Apple has lost the product-first, risk-taking design culture that defined the Jobs years. Fortune explores whether Ternus can shift the company from steady iteration back to true innovation.

Sebastian Herrera for Fortune:
‎

Matthew Rogers remembers Apple’s scrappy days when, as an engineer fresh out of college, he could debate ideas directly with Steve Jobs… “I was 23, 24 years old, and I interacted with Steve Jobs. That’s crazy, right? But that’s the organization he ran,” Rogers told Fortune from his Silicon Valley office (he now runs food-recycling startup Mill).

Back then, Apple’s hierarchy was much flatter. What made Apple special, he said, is that Jobs surrounded himself with consumer-minded product leaders who were expected to argue. The mandate was to build “the best thing out there” and take real risks. Some of Apple’s most iconic products came out of a skunkworks team across the street from the main office.

That much-mythologized era continues to shape — and perhaps burden — Apple as it navigates its biggest leadership transition in 15 years. Somewhere along the way, Apple lost a part of its design and product magic, Rogers and several former design and hardware employees, investors, and analysts said. The September handoff from Tim Cook to incoming chief executive John Ternus, who currently leads hardware engineering, has Rogers and other longtime Apple watchers wondering: Can the company reclaim its product-first soul?

Rogers, who also cocreated smart home company Nest with former Apple executive Tony Fadell, said Ternus now faces a defining test. “I’ll put it this way,” he said. “He has a tall task, but a big opportunity.”

‎
MacDailyNews Take: As we posted on X just yesterday:

Under Tim Cook, Apple systematically strayed from Steve Jobs’ core vision. Product Design, the very soul of the company Jobs rebuilt, was demoted, sidelined, and subordinated to operations, supply-chain efficiency, and services revenue. The result? Fifteen long years of polished, but profoundly boring iteration: thinner bezels, faster chips, incremental camera bumps, and endless “Pro” variants that rarely moved the industry forward the way the original iPhone, iPad, or even the aluminum unibody MacBooks once did.

Jobs put Design at the absolute top of the food chain. Jony Ive’s group wasn’t a service department; it was the engine. Cook flipped the hierarchy. Hardware engineering, operations, and finance called the shots (poorly; witness Luca Maestri famously rejecting calls to invest in AI early on which is why he’s now sidelined). Design became reactive instead of directive. The Vision Pro launched as an impressive, but overpriced, underbaked curiosity. After billions spent, the Apple Car evaporated. True category-defining leaps simply did not happen.

Now comes John Ternus, a product person, a hardware guy who has spent his career shipping actual devices rather than optimizing margins. Early signals are encouraging: bringing trusted hardware lieutenants back into the fold and already embedding himself with the industrial design group. That is exactly the right instinct.

If Ternus moves quickly to restore Design to its rightful place at the apex of Apple’s decision-making, the company might finally escape the long, comfortable, lucrative mediocrity of the Cook era. Apple doesn’t need another fifteen years of safer, prettier, or just different iterations. It needs the return of products that make people stop, stare, and rethink what a computer in their pocket, on their wrist, or on their face can be.

The hardware engineer is about to become CEO. The question is whether he has the will — and the authority with Cook looming as Executive Chairman — to put Design back on top where Jobs left it. The next few years will tell us if Apple can innovate again… or if the iteration treadmill simply continues under a new CEO.

Fingers crossed!

‎
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The post Can new CEO John Ternus bring back Apple’s design mojo? appeared first on MacDailyNews.

Received — 2 August 2026 ⏭
Received — 25 July 2026 ⏭
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