EsquireCats

It's a funny piece of myopia, when the author's personal anecdote is projected out as if it's the experience and reality for everyone. It's not, and that's evidenced by the utterly significant surge in ApplePay transactions over the last year. Certainly the USA is a slower adopter, but that is due to the weaker penetration of wireless payment terminals - a slowness that is unique to the USA.

This is actually significant news - especially for treating the iPad as a more general purpose computing device. App extensions are great for single-minded interactions (apply this filter from this app), but they're not a replacement for scripted events which are essential for tying up the loose ends in a business' IT environment. iOS automation apps are inherently limited, an Apple-supplied solution is going to be significantly more useful, while having the attractive security features of the iOS ecosystem.

There should be an intermediate court. Where plaintiffs need to prove the relevance and validity of any patent older than 5 years old, at their own cost if they fail, prior to being able to use it in a suit. Currently the patent system is distracting companies that are actually doing stuff, and the court rooms are busy hearing suits on rubbish patents when they should be busy hearing suits about legitimate concerns.
It's not an idea that harms small patent holders because 1. patents are already expensive to acquire, 2. filing suit is also expensive.

It probably didn't help that the Withings products were poorly received by the public, usually scoring in the medium range because video footage couldn't be downloaded, there was no scheduling and the blocking feature (which turns off the camera), didn't turn off the microphone.

A very patchy product indeed considering the price of it versus competitors.

If Apple are being targeted with compromised firmware - then super micro would have likely been complicit in the development of such firmware on some level.