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Apple Must Ease App Store Rules, US Judge Orders

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Apple Must Ease App Store Rules, US Judge Orders
A US federal judge struck down some of Apple’s App Store rules on Friday, forcing the company to allow developers to send their users to other payment systems in a partial win for “Fortnite” creator Epic Games and other app makers.

But the judge did not require Apple to let app makers use their own in-app payment systems, one of Epic’s top requests, and allowed Apple to continue to charge commissions of 15 percent to 30 percent for its own in-app payment system.

Epic said it would appeal the ruling, with CEO Tim Sweeney tweeting that the ruling “isn’t a win for developers or for consumers.”

The outcome left Apple’s critics and rivals saying they are more likely to turn to legislators, rather than courts, to pursue the changes they seek.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers described her ruling as requiring a “measured” change to Apple’s rules. Analysts said the impact may depend heavily on how the iPhone maker chooses to implement the decision.

Apple shares were down 3.2 percent late on Friday afternoon, but many Wall Street analysts maintained their long-term favorable outlooks on the iPhone maker.

“We suspect the eventual impact from this will be manageable,” Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani wrote in a note to investors.

The ruling vastly expands a concession made to streaming video companies last week allowing them to direct users to outside payment methods. The decision expands that exemption to all developers, including the game developers who are the biggest cash generators for Apple’s App Store, which itself is the foundation of its $53.8 billion services segment.

The judge ruled that Apple can no longer bar developers from providing buttons or links in their apps that direct customers to other ways to pay outside of Apple’s own in-app purchase system. The ruling also said Apple cannot ban developers from communicating with customers via contact information obtained by the developers when customers signed up within the app.

The ruling comes after a three-week trial in May before Gonzalez Rogers of the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Gonzalez Rogers stopped short of granting Epic some of its other wishes, such as forcing Apple to open the iPhone up to third-party app stores.

Apple said in a statement: “As the Court recognized ‘success is not illegal. Apple faces rigorous competition in every segment in which we do business, and we believe customers and developers choose us because our products and services are the best in the world.”

In a media briefing, Apple’s legal team said it does not believe the ruling forces it to allow developers to implement their own in-app purchase systems. Apple officials said the company is still debating how it will implement the requirements of the ruling and whether it will appeal.

The judge sided with Apple on key questions such as defining the relevant antitrust market as gaming transactions, rejecting Epic’s argument that the iPhone is its own app market over which Apple is a monopolist.

“Epic is fighting for fair competition among in-app payment methods and app stores for a billion consumers,” Epic’s CEO, Sweeney, said on Twitter. “We will fight on.”

The Epic lawsuit began after the game maker inserted its own in-app payments system in “Fortnite.

More Chalenges Likely

Challenges to Apple’s App Store rules are far from over. The ruling on Friday suggests they are more likely to play out in statehouses and capitals than in courtrooms.

Lawmakers in the United States and Europe are considering bills that would force Apple to allow third-party in-app payment systems, and South Korea’s parliament has already passed such a law.

“What today’s ruling also makes clear is that antiquated antitrust laws cannot solely be fixed by the courts,” Match Group, which has challenged Apple’s practices in Europe and owns the popular dating app Tinder, said in a statement. “Apple and Google’s monopolistic practices will only end when we bring our laws into the digital age, as South Korea did last week.”

Lawmakers in the US Congress said the ruling showed that courts alone will not address their concerns.

While Gonzalez Rogers did not find that Apple is a monopolist, she found that the trial showed Apple was violating California state competition and showed some “incipient antitrust violations” that required a nationwide remedy.

John Newman, a law professor at the University of Miami, said the ruling leaves open avenues for U.S. regulators to challenge Apple in court. Reuters has previously reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is probing the iPhone maker.

The orders follow Apple’s agreement last week with the Japan Fair Trade Commission, under which it eases rules for “reader” apps like Netflix Inc to provide a link to customers to sign up for a paid account outside of the app. Games are a larger portion of Apple’s sales.

But whether the ruling eats into that revenue depends on how Apple implements the changes.

“To some degree, Apple could make it so that its in-app payments are still the easiest to use,” said Ben Bajarin, head of consumer technologies at Creative Strategies.

Shares of Alphabet Inc, whose Google unit operates an app store for Android smartphones and which Epic is also suing on antitrust charges, were down 1.7 percent late on Friday.

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox

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Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox


Microsoft is teaming up with Inworld AI to create game development tools for Xbox, enabling developers to create characters, generate entire scripts and quests, and more. The multi-year deal brings an AI design copilot and an AI character runtime engine to the forefront, both of them being totally optional to use and to varying degrees. Of course, the use of AI in art has been criticised by many for simply lacking originality, in addition to running the risk of fewer jobs for artists — a growing fear among many considering the alarming number of layoffs seen at game studios this year in an attempt to cut costs.

“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”

The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.

Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.

Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.


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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It

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BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It


BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) is a state-owned telecommunication company in India. Earlier this year in May, the government said that the firm started rolling out 4G services in the country. By December, the networks were said to be upgraded to 5G. However, at the India Mobile Congress, BSNL chairman P K Purwar said that the company will launch 4G services in December and then roll it across the country by June 2024. The chairman added that the 5G upgrades will take place after June next year.

In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.

To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.

Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.

The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.


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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed

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Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed


Realme GT 5 Pro’s launch date is not far away. The Chinese smartphone brand on Tuesday (November 7) confirmed the arrival of the new GT series smartphone in its home country. The Realme GT 5 Pro is teased to come with a display with over 3000 nits of peak brightness. It is also confirmed to pack a larger heat dissipation area for thermal management. The handset will ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come as a successor to the Realme GT 5 that debuted in China in August.

Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.

The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.

For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.

The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.


The Motorola Edge 40 recently made its debut in the country as the successor to the Edge 30 that was launched last year. Should you buy this phone instead of the Nothing Phone 1 or the Realme Pro+? We discuss this and more on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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