By John Moltz
December 22, 2023 12:45 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Year-end closeouts
Hope you already got an Apple Watch 9 if you were in the market. Laughing at GM seems like it’s going to be a sport for a long time but the Beeper Mini saga seems to be ending. Or is it?
Number 9? Number 9?
The big news this week is that an Apple product is now banned in the U.S…. For being too real? Can the U.S. just not handle the realness of the Apple Watch 9?
No, actually, it’s for patent violations.
This long-brewing case against the fancy flop-maker has had its midseason twist, with the import ban forcing Apple to take Watches off the virtual shelves and, after Christmas, the real ones.
“Apple pulls online sales of Apple Watches as US ban nears”
If Apple was playing chicken with the ITC, it appears to have lost.
“ITC Denies Apple’s Request for a Stay on Looming Apple Watch Import Ban”
We will have to wait for January to see how the rest of this season of Apple Legal is going to play out. The company hopes to be able to issue a software update to get around the patent, but the CEO of Masimo, the company suing Apple, says good luck with that.
“I don’t think that could work — it shouldn’t — because our patents are not about the software,” Kiani said. “They are about the hardware with the software.”
Hmm. Software that’s integral to the hardware. What other company does that sound like? Maybe Apple didn’t steal the technology so much as it just assumed it was its own.
Hey, just trying to be helpful.
CarPlayin’ around
GM’s decision to eschew CarPlay in favor of its own system is the decision that keeps paying hilarious dividends.
“GM’s CarPlay replacement software is off to a disastrous start”:
Both Edmunds and InsideEVs have published stories this week highlighting some major problems with their 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EVs.
Problems pointed out by the car publications include windows refusing to work, constant reboots, blank screens, and missing icons.
This is hilarious because, as you may recall, one of the reasons GM said it was ditching CarPlay and Android Auto was because their instability was so very, very distracting.
According to [GM head of product infotainment Tim] Babbitt, CarPlay and Android Auto have stability issues …. And when CarPlay and Android Auto have issues, drivers pick up their phones again, taking their eyes off the road and totally defeating the purpose of these phone-mirroring programs.
Interesting. Interesting. Let’s just see what InsideEV’s Kevin Williams had to resort to during his test of GM’s new “infotainment” system, which he called “one of the most catastrophic road trips I’ve had in recent memory”:
I hastily plugged the address into my phone, and perched the phone near the vents, navigating to the DC fast charging stations via the tiny screen of my old iPhone.
Nailed it, GM.
Sisyphus is getting tired
The ongoing game of large cat and small mouse between Apple and Beeper seems to be drawing to a close. Beeper seems to transitioning from denial to acceptance with a dash of bargaining thrown in.
“Beeper Mini Resorts to Jailbreaking iPhones to Rescue Blue Bubbles”:
If users don’t have access to an old iPhone for jailbreaking in order to complete the registration process, that’s okay – Beeper will rent them one for a small monthly fee.
That is not likely to gain widespread interest.
In a blog post on the company’s website, CEO Eric Migicovsky said, “With our latest software release, we believe we’ve created something that Apple can tolerate existing.”
Sure, because Apple loves jailbreaking.
Still, this show may not be canceled yet.
“Department of Justice and FTC Looking Into Beeper iMessage Controversy”
This seems a little to me like expecting Coke to sell Pepsi in its vending machines, but I am not an antitrust expert nor do I play one on TV.
On TV, I play a good cop on the edge. On the edge of retirement. Also the edge of an examining room table. And bankruptcy.
It’s not a very popular show.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]