Dennis Sellers

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Apple plans to challenge the European Commission’s order to pay 13 billion euros (about $14.4 billion) in Irish back taxes in a case in the European Union’s crackdown on tax avoidance by multinational companies, reports <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-apple-stateaid/apple-takes-fight-against-13-billion-euro-eu-tax-order-to-court-idUSKBN1W1195" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Reuters</em></a>.</p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Outlier Air is Creative's new, $79.99 wireless earbuds. I don’t find their audio quality quite as good as Apple’s AirPods, but they their battery life is better (30 hours compared to 24) as is their price ($79.99 compared to $159).</p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Apple has filed for yet granted another patent (number 10,410,434) for avatar creation and editing. It involves the company’s Animoji and Memoji features.</p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Apple has developed Overton, a framework intended to automate artificial intelligence (AI) system lifecycles by providing a set of novel high-level abstractions, according to <a href="https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/13/apple-details-overton-ai-development-tool-whose-models-have-processed-billions-of-queries/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">VentureBeat.</a> </p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Robert Rodriguez and Diego Boneta are teaming up for <em>El Gato Negro</em>, an adaptation of a Mexican comic book being set up at Apple TV+ as a series, according to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>The Hollywood Reporter.</em></a></p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><em>CNN </em>reports that Disney CEO Bob Iger has resigned from Apple’s Board of Directors as the two companies will be competing in the video streaming business.</p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">A new forecast from the International Data Corporation (<a href="https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.idc.com&esheet=52089659&newsitemid=20190909005154&lan=en-US&anchor=IDC&index=1&md5=930892e29999e77a344bb71d090d5b5e" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">IDC</a>) <a href="https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.idc.com%2Ftracker%2Fshowproductinfo.jsp%3Fprod_id%3D37&esheet=52089659&newsitemid=20190909005154&lan=en-US&anchor=Worldwide+Quarterly+Mobile+Phone+Tracker&index=2&md5=3901f09d01ead28310a1bb3f62ce5970" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker</a> shows signs of market recovery in the second half of 2019 and into 2020, pushing smartphone shipment growth back into positive territory.</p>

On a regular basis, Apple World Today posts a list of notable new apps or app updates that have been released. They...

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">The <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=2579349-1&h=2847767840&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aswf.io%2F&a=Academy+Software+Foundation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Academy Software Foundation</a>, a collaborative effort to advance open source software development in the motion picture and media industries, has announced that Apple has joined the Foundation as a Premier member.</p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/house-committee-requests-tech-executives-emails-in-antitrust-probe-11568377800?emailToken=0887bfef6965e5c1bf0683a66992f799k7RFJsSs0YzEn6OuxJNJlp%2FqEd85Mhf3%20AhPgNLSrWUwGVDlo26NbwGf2GTYgPAWFBpEQKudlAHBsldK5sRPzNJGrbBLjGn%2FY9rj0TbIZj4nn1l7XzcnTzvt%2FxKMbrJK&reflink=article_copyURL_share" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>The Wall Street Journal</em> </a>says U.S. House lawmakers are demanding emails and executive communications from four technology giants (Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Alphabet/Google) as they look for evidence of anticompetitive behavior.</p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/jj-abrams-bad-robot-warnermedia-deal-analysis-1239406" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Hollywood Reporter</a> says writer/producer/director J.J. Abrams turned down a $500 million offer from Apple for his Bad Robot production company because he didn’t want to be limited to movies and TV shows that were Apple-only.</p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Apple TV+, Apple’s movie streaming service, will launch in India at a reduced price point of INR 99 (US$1.40) per month, in order to compete with a growing raft of local and international video streaming services, according to <a href="https://www.rapidtvnews.com/2019091257283/apple-tv-to-undercut-netflix-amazon-in-india.html?utm_campaign=apple-tv-to-undercut-netflix-amazon-in-india&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_2240#axzz5zPOfsfzH" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">RapidTV News</a>.</p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">There’s TouchID and FaceID. How about “Palm ID” on future iPhones and iPads?</p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Today is Friday the 13th, so I’m serving up a list of three iOS apps and one Mac app to “celebrate” the big day. First, let’s look at the iOS apps.</p>

<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Apple has announced a billing grace period for subscriptions. The tech giant says it has “worked closely with leading developers to create a solution for reducing customer churn while improving the experience for auto-renewable subscriptions.”</p>