The hottest Apple-related news for the week of Jan. 8-13

There’s a lot happening in the world of Apple news this week. Following are the hottest articles for the week of Jan. 8-13.

Apple has released macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 and iOS 11.2.2 with, among other things, security fixes for the recently reported Spectre vulnerability. 

A couple of Apple shareholders have issued an open letter asking the company to study the impact of heavy smartphone use by children and teenagers, as well as offer more parental restrictions on iPhones. In response, the tech giant says it plans new features to help parents control how children use its smartphones.

Amalgam Insights, a consulting and strategy firm, predicts that Apple stands to lose as much as $10 billion in 2018 from delayed revenues associated with “Batterygate” — its disclosure about batteries in older iPhones.

Apple has to fork over $184 million to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for additional taxes. The payment from Apple Europe came after HMRC conducted an “extensive audit” of the company’s pre-2015 tax filings.

The latest smartphone operating system data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech reveals a mixed performance for iOS in the three months ending November 2017. 

Apple will hand its China cloud operations over to a state-owned partner Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Co. (GCBD) on Feb. 28.

When U.S. adults were asked which consumer technology company is the most innovative, Apple was the clear winner among a list of 12 businesses, chosen by 26% of the 2,201 participants in a recent Morning Consult survey. Samsung came in second, at 14%.

A bug report reveals a security vulnerability in the current version of macOS High Sierra that allows the App Store menu in System Preferences to be unlocked with any password.