Apple is gonna stop selling the Apple Watch S9 and Ultra 2 in the USA as of December 24th. This is due to a decision by the USA International Trade Commission from earlier in the year that found Apple infringed on Masimo's patent for blood oxygen monitoring capabilities. The Apple Watch SE, which doesn't do blood oxygen monitoring, will still be for sale. Unlike most of Apple's patent problems, Masimo is not a patent troll and Apple even wanted to purchase them at one point before deciding to rip them off instead. A bit hypocritical from the company that had a big whinge and sued Samsung for "stealing" their design language. In the meantime, Apple is working on a software update to change how the blood oxygen feature works and satisfy the commission and resume sales.
Adobe's given up trying to purchase popular design app Figma. Adobe said that there's "no clear path to receive necessary regulatory approvals" as the UK and EU both considered Adobe's purchase of Figma will significantly reduce competition and "lead to higher prices, reduced quality or less choice for customers". Adobe now has to pay Figma US$1b as a result of the failed acquisition, which is nice, I guess, but Figma's CEO really wanted to deal to go ahead, telling the Financial Times last week "it is important that those paths of acquisition remain available because very few companies make it all the way to IPO. So many companies fail on the way", obviously thinking that Figma wouldn't do too well if did decided to go public - aka, our investors want an exit and besides an acquisition, there's not much else we can do.
Flipboard (remember them?!) still exists and is going to "switch its user accounts to ActivityPub", "which means that everyone curating stuff on Flipboard is now doing so in a way that apps like Mastodon can see and interact with". It's currently a limited test - only 25 accounts are in it (The Verge, Medium, Semafor, Pitchfork, The Conversation & others) right now - but it means you can follow The Verge's Flipboard posts on Mastodon, or even Meta's Threads once they get ActivityPub support going. Flipboard's CEO said that "we're in the process of replacing our whole social back-end with ActivityPub", which is nice and all, but honestly, how is this any different to an RSS feed? Is it the ability to see favourites/boosts/comments, etc as well as the original content? Either way, this is great progress. Maybe this is the silver lining of Twitter's death.
Charge sensitive pre-amplifier (IC) with bonding wires attached, 31x magnification. William Marin Jr. Brookhaven National Laboratory. (1994 Nikon Photomicrography Competition)
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