Gambling Industry News:

Apple faces a new $5m class action lawsuit filed by a group of over 100 social casino game players, many whom are fans of Canada sports betting apps. This is the second lawsuit of its kind filed against Apple so far this year, however, this particular lawsuit is focused on Zynga’s poker and casino apps.

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Northern District of Columbia and alleges that Apple is making a profit from illicit gambling apps that have in-game purchases.

Lots of lawsuits filed against Apple. This one struck me as particularly interesting in that it attempts to pierce Apple’s App Store protections, protections that shield Apple as a vendor of goods, not a creator of those goods.

If they lose this lawsuit, will that open a liability crack for those scam subscription apps that make their way into the App Store?

YouTube blog:

Every year, increasing numbers of people come to YouTube to launch their own channel. But we know there’s still a huge amount of people who find the bar for creation too high. That’s why we’re working on Shorts, our new short-form video tool that lets creators and artists shoot snappy videos with nothing but their mobile phones.

Here’s a link to the Shorts blog announcement from last September.

Back to the YouTube blog:

Currently, Shorts is available in beta in India. Since the beginning of December, the number of Indian channels using Shorts creation tools has more than tripled, and the YouTube Shorts player is now receiving more than 3.5 billion daily views globally. In the coming weeks, we’ll begin expanding the beta to the US, unlocking our tools to even more creators so they can get started with Shorts.

3.5 billion daily views. That’s no small competitor for TikTok. Especially considering Shorts is an India-only beta.

Follow the headline link for the full list, or this link to get right to the decade old Apple front page.

Just me, or did Apple use to have much more focus on beautifully manicured hands?

This is fun. In the latest iOS beta, fire up Music and bring up a song’s lyrics. You can tap to select multiple chunks (here’s a tweet with a couple of screen grabs from my explorations), then use the share interface to send the lyrics on your favorite social media.

Even better, check this out:

If you share on Messages/Insta, a playable version of the song centered on those lyrics will appear on the receiving end, assuming the recipient has the latest beta.

Love this.

Gruber:

I’d like to think that no one has made more hay over Ed Colligan’s infamous “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in” quote — just a few weeks before the unveiling of the iPhone — than yours truly.

Absolutely fair.

So I feel like I’m in a position to declare that these remarks by Herbert Diess are not an Ed Colligan moment. Ed Colligan, as the CEO of Palm, should have known that in 2006, the future of phones was gadget-like computers, not the computer-like gadgets the industry (including Palm) had been making until then.

And:

Apple hasn’t shown anything that suggests they’ll be good at designing and producing cars. The dashboard interface? Sure. But the car part of the car? Nothing Apple has ever done is like that. I’m not betting against them, but I don’t think Diess’s remarks are the least bit clueless.

Also fair. To me, complex as the car market is, if Apple does dive in, I’d suggest that all these years of rumored behind the scenes learning will emerge as a brand new take, unlike anything that already exists.

If you are interested in a potential Apple car, take a few minutes to read Gruber’s post. My favorite bit is his quote of this Robert Cassidy tweet:

Apple doesn’t do overnight. They walk into your market, and a few years in you realize they’ve quietly redefined your market and now you’re years behind.

That’s the part that VW should be afraid of.