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dysamoria said:

lkrupp said:

Wouldn't be surprised to find out this is a coordinated attack on Apple’s reputation for privacy and security by competitors. The way the world works now is you're guilty until you prove yourself innocent. An accusation alone is enough to ruin reputations and careers. It could be a fishing trip to find out how Apple works during the discovery process. Of course, it could be true too. That would be a big deal indeed.

In some minds here Apple is already guilty and I’m sure we’ll be hearing from those people any minute now. Apple had better itr jump on this hard and quick or the accusation will confirm guilt in the media.

So, in your preferred world, a conspiracy against a favorite corporation, without evidence to demonstrate it as fact, is a more likely scenario than that corporation actually doing something you don’t believe (or care) that they actually do, and the unnamed shady conspirators are guilty until proven nonexistent, because “the way it is these days”...?

Call me crazy, but yeah.  It's not that I don't think a corporation would sell information on the side and not really tell you about it, or like Google make claims that privacy matters but sell your stuff anyway.  But I don't believe Apple would brazenly advertise privacy as a core commitment and an advantage over their competitors while selling my info on the sly.  Plus, it doesn't really make sense for Apple.  It doesn't help their business model at all and in fact would kill their reputation.  They couldn't make enough money from it to put all that at risk.

My guess is that some apps that users have allowed access to their iTunes libraries and have signed up for an account that includes full name and email has been cross referenced with publicly available information.  Unless they can prove Apple was giving this info away without the user consenting to it, this suit is dead in the water.

I also agree that it likely could be a stunt by Android competitors to just throw FUD out there for a few headlines to undermine Apple's privacy advantage.  Doesn't matter whether it has merit or is ultimately successful.  The headlines are enough to do what they need.  Anything else is gravy.

My guess is, Qualcomm finally put an offer on the table that dropped the "percentage of phone price" as the determinant of the cost of the chip.  But perhaps the price was higher than Apple would have insisted on had they won at trial, but it was lower than what they had been paying by enough to just end it.

The details will be interesting though as I believe an in-house chip by Apple was coming within the next year or two.  Does this put that initiative on hold for six years, or does Apple retain the right to put its own chip in a certain percentage of iPhones just like they put Intel modems in a certain amount of them before?

Lord that's hideous.

color said:

My take: Huawei is years ahead of US manufacturers in 5G backbone equipment.  See Intel’s recent “by 2022 the USA will be ahead of Asia in 5G”.  Implication: until then Asia (Huawei, Samsung) is ahead.  

Remember the Broadcom attempted takeover of Qualcomm?   Didn’t happen:  govt didn’t want Qualcomm’s  5G IP getting into foreign hands. 

To me the govt is fighting a rearguard action in order to give time to US manufacturers to catch up.  Will it work?  Do we want it to work?  

Is this purely a battle between making the world safe for the NSA to spy on everyone vs making the world safe for the PLA to spy on everyone?

They aren't actually ahead in terms of technology.  They're just good enough and significantly cheaper.  Partly because they steal IP from non-Chinese firms to get up to speed.