Alioto Law Firm:

> California Crane School, Inc. filed a class action antitrust case on 12/27/21 against Google and Apple and the Chief Executive Officers of both companies alleging violations of the Antitrust Laws of the United States.

And:

> The complaint charges that Google and Apple agreed that Apple would not compete in the internet search business against Google.

And these allegations at the core of the non-compete approach:

1. Google would share it’s search profits with Apple
2. Apple would give preferential treatment to Google for all Apple devices
3. Regular secret meetings between the executives of both companies
4. Annual multi-billion-dollar payments by Google to Apple not to compete in the search business
5. Suppression of the competition of smaller competitors and foreclosing competitors from the search market
6. Acquiring actual and potential competitors.

What the complaint seeks to accomplish:

> The complaint asks for an injunction prohibiting the non-compete agreement between Google and Apple; the profit-sharing agreement; the preferential treatment for Google on Apple devices; and the payment of billions of dollars by Google to Apple.
>
> According to NorthStar Law Group, P.S. the complaint also calls for the breakup of Google into separate and independent companies and the breakup of Apple into separate and independent companies in accordance with the precedent of the breakup of Standard Oil company into Exxon, Mobile, Conoco, Amoco, Sohio, Chevron, and others.

Massive consequences, if successful.

Could Apple develop its own search engine on a scale of Google’s? They’d either have to eat the massive cost of staffing and supporting such an engine, or offset the cost with an advertising business of their own. And adding a search engine would certainly draw even more antitrust scrutiny.

Apple could also exit any proprietary search agreement with Google but, of course, that would be costly as well.

From this New York Times exposé:

> Apple now receives an estimated $8 billion to $12 billion in annual payments — up from $1 billion a year in 2014 — in exchange for building Google’s search engine into its products. It is probably the single biggest payment that Google makes to anyone and accounts for 14 to 21 percent of Apple’s annual profits. That’s not money Apple would be eager to walk away from.

Indeed.

Ankur Thakur, iDownloadBlog:

> Wondering how you can send a big video, graphics-heavy document, or other large files to someone from your iPhone? Look at ten ways to send big files from your iPhone to someone on another iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows PC, or Android phone. Most methods here are wireless, while others will require a Lightning cable.

This is worth bookmarking, for that moment when you find yourself having to move a massive file from one device to another. Nice walkthrough of each technique, with detail and links to more detail.

This is just one person’s take and, just as with any list of favorites/pans, your opinion is the one that matters. But I did enjoy the walkthrough and the reminder of just how committed Apple is to this venture, how far they’ve come.

While some of these shows are legitimately not great, I’ve found a good number of them to be top quality, worthy of Netflix or HBO. Remember, Apple TV+ launched November 1st, 2019, just a bit more than 2 years ago. With Apple’s deep pockets, I’d expect viewership to continue to climb as content continues to expand.

Apple’s market cap popped its head above the $3 trillion mark yesterday, for a brief shining moment. As of this writing, Apple’s share price dropped back down to $181.72 per share, which translates to a market cap of $2.98 trillion.

Having lived through the days when company CEOs suggested Apple pack up their stuff, sell their inventory, and recoup as much of their losses as possible, this is a head shaking, gobsmacked turnaround of epic proportions, doomed to market dominator, all started by the decision to buy NeXT and bring back Steve Jobs. That deal was finalized in February 1997, almost 25 years ago.

When Apple first went public, Steve had about 11 percent of Apple’s stock. A simplistic valuation would have that chunk worth about .11 x $3T = $330 billion. Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, is worth $304 billion.