Roger Fingas
Apple this week made surprise announcements of new iMacs, Mac accessories and iWork updates, but also found itself in the spotlight for less enjoyable reasons, including lawsuits and problems with its online services.
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Court frees Apple from e-book antitrust monitor
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote ruled that she would not extend the term of Michael Bromwich, who was appointed to monitor Apple's antitrust compliance in 2013. Apple and Bromwich have often clashed, but ultimately even Bromwich and the Department of Justice expressed satisfaction with the company's compliance program.
Bromwich was installed after Apple lost a case accusing it of conspiring to fix the price of iBooks titles in 2010. The company was revealed to have persuaded publishers to switch to an agency model, and adopt "most favored nation" clauses, forcing Amazon and other rival e-book vendors to raise their prices.
Apple debuts 21.5-inch 4K iMac, new 27-inch 5K models
All but abandoning non-Retina displays, Apple launched a 4K model of the 21.5-inch iMac, starting at $1,499. By default the system comes with a 3.1-gigahertz quad-core Core i5 prcoessor, 8 gigabytes of RAM, and a 1-terabyte hard drive.
All 27-inch iMacs, meanwhile, now use 5K displays, as well as Intel's latest Skylake processors. Prices start at $1,799 for a system with a 3.2-gigahertz Core i5, 8 gigabytes of RAM, a 1-terabyte hard drive, and a 2-gigabyte AMD Radeon R9 M380 graphics card.
Apple ships Magic Trackpad 2, Magic Mouse 2 & Magic Keyboard
To complement the new Macs, Apple also released three new "Magic" accessories, each featuring Bluetooth, Lightning ports, and rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. The highlight may be the $129 Magic Trackpad 2, which brings Force Touch to the desktop.
Though the Magic Mouse 2 is mostly unchanged apart from Lightning and the new battery, the Magic Keyboard borrows the layout of the 12-inch Retina MacBook, and uses a redesigned scissor mechanism to improve key stability and travel.
Apple found in infringement of University of Wisconsin CPU patent
After a federal jury found Apple in infringement of a University of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation patent covering chip architecture this week. Apple's A7, A8, and A8X processors are all said to be in violation, as were the iPhone and iPad products they powered.
After three and a half hours of deliberation on Friday, the jury returned a damages number of $234 million. Apple is expected to appeal.
iTunes & App Stores hit by multiple outages
A portion of Apple's online services went down four times this week, with each incident lasting hours at a time. The iTunes Store and iOS App Store were consistent victims, but a Thursday outage also briefly took out other services like the Mac App Store and Apple TV services.
Apple occasionally suffers service disruptions, but the recent cluster of outages is unusual.
iWork gets Mac, iOS & Web updates
On Thursday Apple pushed out new versions of the iWork suite for iOS and OS X. iOS users gained access to features like 3D Touch and enhanced iPad multitasking, while OS X users received Split View, Force Touch enhancements, and more.
iWork for iCloud finally emerged from beta, picking up improvements like mobile document previews and a commenting interface.
AppleInsider podcast
Our editors had plenty to talk about this week, including not just the latest Apple products but Elon Musk and the Apple Car, ResearchKit partnerships, and the death of ifoAppleStore creator Gary Allen.
AppleInsider Staff
Malcolm Owen
Oliver Haslam
Andrew O'Hara
Wesley Hilliard
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
8 Comments
All those improvements and still they didn't bring back linked text boxes to Pages, still no layers or time line for Keynote. I love my Apple gear but sometimes they really frustrate me.
[quote name="neutrino23" url="/t/189573/this-week-on-appleinsider-new-imacs-iwork-updates-magic-accessories-more#post_2792569"]All those improvements and still they didn't bring back linked text boxes to Pages, still no layers or time line for Keynote. I love my Apple gear but sometimes they really frustrate me.[/quote] It seems like they are [I]mostly[/I] adding iWork suite apps features that they can include on the Mac, iOS, and iCloud at the same time… but I haven't verified that to be absolutely be the case so take my speculation with a grain of salt.
Head's up on the new keyboard and mouse, El Capitan is a requirement.
Guess I'll be returning them tomorrow..
[quote name="iBill" url="/t/189573/this-week-on-appleinsider-new-imacs-iwork-updates-magic-accessories-more#post_2792590"]Head's up on the new keyboard and mouse, El Capitan is a requirement. Guess I'll be returning them tomorrow.. [/quote] What about the trackpad? Of the three devices the trackpad seems like it would be the one that might require specific frameworks in El Cap to get all the functions, but I'd think the basic functions would still work for all three devices. Could this be a BT protocol stack issue?
I could definitely see the trackpad requiring El Capitan due to the force touch functionality. I didn't buy that however, just the mouse and keyboard. It seems weird to me that they wouldn't work with Yosemite, but I'm just a lowly customer.
It's hard for me not to think that it's just control freakery, but maybe there is a sound reason for it. I'm trying not to be too aggravated, and hopefully they will give me a full refund. I don't intend to update to El Capitan until after WWDC next year.