Apple:

Apple today announced Self Service Repair, which will allow customers who are comfortable with completing their own repairs access to Apple genuine parts and tools. Available first for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 lineups, and soon to be followed by Mac computers featuring M1 chips, Self Service Repair will be available early next year in the US and expand to additional countries throughout 2022. Customers join more than 5,000 Apple Authorized Service Providers (AASPs) and 2,800 Independent Repair Providers who have access to these parts, tools, and manuals.

And:

The initial phase of the program will focus on the most commonly serviced modules, such as the iPhone display, battery, and camera. The ability for additional repairs will be available later next year.

Big news for the right-to-repair movement and for folks (like me) who like fixing their own stuff.

And, on Apple’s just announced Self Service Repair Online Store:

To ensure a customer can safely perform a repair, it’s important they first review the Repair Manual. Then a customer will place an order for the Apple genuine parts and tools using the Apple Self Service Repair Online Store. Following the repair, customers who return their used part for recycling will receive credit toward their purchase.

The new store will offer more than 200 individual parts and tools, enabling customers to complete the most common repairs on iPhone 12 and iPhone 13.

You order a replacement part from Apple, return the used part for credit. The only thing missing is the ability to use parts from 3rd parties for repairs.

As the announcement says, Self Service Repair will open up early 2022 in the US. I’ll definitely be giving it a try.

Sarah Scire, Nieman Lab:

Discovering they had to get on the phone to cancel a subscription they signed up for online rankled several respondents in our survey looking at why people canceled their news subscriptions. The reaction to the call-to-cancel policy ranged from “an annoyance” and “ridiculous” to “shady” and “oppressive.”

And:

A study of 526 news organizations in the United States found that only 41% make it easy for people to cancel subscriptions online, and more than half trained customer service reps in tactics to dissuade customers who call to unsubscribe.

There are many examples of this heinous practice, something the FTC refers to as “Negative option marketing”.

From the official FTC enforcement policy:

ROSCA requires negative option sellers to provide a simple, reasonable means for consumers to cancel their contracts. To meet this standard, negative option sellers should provide cancellation mechanisms that are at least as easy to use as the method the consumer used to initiate the negative option feature.

And:

In addition, negative option sellers should provide their cancellation mechanisms at least through the same medium (such as website or mobile application) the consumer used to consent to the negative option feature.

That last bit is critical. If, say, a service lets me sign up on a web site, they can’t make me use a different medium to cancel. So if I sign up on the web, they can’t make me cancel on the phone, they have to allow me to cancel on the web.

Google Maps blog:

Whether you’re heading to your hometown or exploring a new city, you can use Area Busyness, a new feature that combines live busyness trends to help you instantly spot when a neighborhood or part of town is near or at its busiest.

And:

Want more info? Tap on a neighborhood to see how busy it is at different times of day, along with the restaurants, shops and recreational places (like a museum) within it, so you can decide if you want to visit.

And for malls, airports, train stations, etc.:

To help you find your way around large buildings fast, we’re expanding the Directory tab globally on Android and iOS for all airports, malls and transit stations around the world. Now, when we have this data available, you can quickly see what types of stores are in a building (like toy stores or jewelry boutiques), airport lounges, car rentals, parking lots and more. And within each category, you can see a list of the relevant businesses, in addition to helpful information about whether it’s open, its rating and what floor it’s on.

And “pickup with Google Maps”:

Once you place your order from the retailer, pickup with Google Maps lets you track your order status, share your ETA and let the store know you’ve arrived, all from the app.

And:

As of today, it’s now available in over 2,000 store locations in more than 30 states across the U.S. People who use pickup with Google Maps typically wait less than five minutes for their groceries, meaning you can grab exactly what you need and get right back to your day.

This all feels like a challenge for Apple Maps, especially the funneling of store order pickup relationships to Google Maps.

Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac:

It’s no secret at this point that Apple is becoming more interested in the sports segment, as the company has been investing and hiring related professionals to work in its TV division. 9to5Mac has now found evidence to support these rumors, including a new “SportsKit” framework for iOS and tvOS apps.

And:

The “SportsKit” home screen widget includes the ability to receive real-time updates of sports matches. Right now, Siri can already show sports scores, so Apple probably wants to expand this interaction to other parts of iOS and tvOS.

And:

Apple has been reportedly building its own sports platform to be part of the company’s Apple TV+ streaming service.

I’ve noticed a fair number of notifications (for quite some time now, not new) about live sporting events on Apple TV. Watching a show, and we’ll see something like “Close game, 76ers vs Bucks, tied, 4th quarter”, with the ability to click for more info, or to watch the game.

I can imagine a customizable dashboard, tracking all my favorite teams, with live scores and links to channels carrying the games, maybe even supporting picture-in-picture so I could flip between the tracked games and keep the scores and highlights on the screen.

I suspect fans would pay for a better sports experience, too, much in the way they pay for the NFL Red Zone channel. Feels like an opportunity for Apple.

Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge:

Qualcomm is looking to seriously beef up its PC processors, with the company announcing plans for a next-generation Arm-based SoC “designed to set the performance benchmark for Windows PCs” that would be able to go head to head with Apple’s M-series processors.

And:

The new chip will be designed by the Nuvia team, which Qualcomm had bought earlier this year in a massive $1.4 billion acquisition. Nuvia, notably, was founded in 2019 by a trio of former Apple employees who had previously worked on the company’s A-series chips.

Taking this with a grain of salt.

Qualcomm doesn’t expect their first of the new generation of chips in consumer machines before 2023, and I’d expect Apple to be at least one generation further along by then (with the M2 rumored to drop in 2022).