Apps like Kindle are already taking advantage of court-mandated iOS App Store changes

Epic v. Apple litigation ushers in minor but user-friendly changes.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that Apple was in "willful violation" of a court injunction that required the company to refrain from "anticompetitive conduct and anticompetitive pricing" in its tightly controlled iOS App Store. Part of the ongoing litigation between Epic Games and Apple, the injunction specifically forbade Apple from "denying developers the ability to communicate with, and direct purchasers to, other purchasing mechanisms."

Following the ruling, Apple said it would comply with the court's injunction while the company continued to appeal the decision. The day after the ruling was handed down, Apple altered several of its App Review Guidelines to grant developers permission to do things they hadn't been allowed to do before. As summarized in an email to developers, reported by MacRumors:

3.1.1: Apps on the United States storefront are not prohibited from including buttons, external links, or other calls to action when allowing users to browse NFT collections owned by others.

3.1.1(a): On the United States storefront, there is no prohibition on an app including buttons, external links, or other calls to action, and no entitlement is required to do so.

3.1.3: The prohibition on encouraging users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase does not apply on the United States storefront.

3.1.3(a): The External Link Account entitlement is not required for apps on the United States storefront to include buttons, external links, or other calls to action.

We're already beginning to see new versions of apps that take advantage of these changes. Case in point: Amazon's Kindle app for iPhones and iPads, which from its original launch in 2009 up until yesterday wouldn't actually let anyone buy books in the app. Users instead needed to navigate on their own to Amazon's store in Safari or on their PC and Mac and buy the books they wanted, at which point the books would be available in the Kindle app.

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UPERFECT Omega is a portable monitor concept with a foldable OLED display (that could launch in 2026 for $2500)

Portable display company UPERFECT offers a wide range of products including portable monitors for gamers and artists, touchscreen displays, big-screen models, and dual-screen displays. Now the company is teasing something different… and of questi…

Portable display company UPERFECT offers a wide range of products including portable monitors for gamers and artists, touchscreen displays, big-screen models, and dual-screen displays. Now the company is teasing something different… and of questionable utility. The UPERFECT Omega is a portable monitor with a flexible OLED display that can fold in half, making it easier […]

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2025 Alfa Romeo Tonale Turbo review: Italian charm that cuts both ways

Lighter and cheaper than the PHEV, engaging to drive—some rough edges, though.

They say that with age comes wisdom, so it should come as no surprise that on the eve of Alfa Romeo’s 115th anniversary, the company that originally made its name competing in endurance races like the Targa Florio and Mille Miglia with flame-spitting sportscars is currently looking to increase its market share with a sensible, high-riding crossover.

Produced in Stellantis’ Pomigliano d'Arco assembly plant near Naples, Italy, alongside its mechanical twin, the Dodge Hornet, the Tonale plug-in hybrid introduced last year helped the Italian automaker find a foothold at a time when many of the auto conglomerate’s brands have been struggling. Now, a non-hybrid version of Alfa’s answer to models like the BMW X1 and Audi Q3 has joined the fray, sporting turbocharged power, standard all-wheel drive, and the same sharp styling at a significantly lower base price. But old habits die hard, and as I discovered over the course of a few days with the latest iteration of the Tonale, even Alfa Romeo’s most pragmatic offerings have their fair share of quirks.

The new base model comes with a double overhead-cam 2.0 L inline four-cylinder engine producing 268 hp (200 kW) and 295 lb-ft (400 Nm) of torque. The turbocharged mill is paired with a nine-speed automatic transmission and an all-wheel drive system that can send up to 50 percent of the available torque to the rear wheels. While those numbers are down a bit compared to the Tonale Hybrid, at 3,715 lbs (1,685 kg), the 2.0 L Turbo is more than 400 lbs (181 kg) lighter than the PHEV model.

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Nvidia GeForce xx60 series is PC gaming’s default GPU, and a new one is out May 19

New mainstream card has hardware upgrades but is still stuck with 8GB of RAM.

Nvidia will release the GeForce RTX 5060 on May 19 starting at $299, the company announced via press release today. The new card, a successor to popular past GPUs like the GTX 1060 and RTX 3060, will bring Nvidia's DLSS 4 and Multi Frame-Generation technology to budget-to-mainstream gaming builds—at least, it would if every single GPU launched by any company at any price wasn't instantly selling out these days.

Nvidia announced a May release for the 5060 last month when it released the RTX 5060 Ti for $379 (8GB) and $429 (16GB). Prices for that card so far haven't been as inflated as they have been for the RTX 5070 on up, but the cheapest ones you can currently get are still between $50 and $100 over that MSRP. Unless Nvidia and its partners have made dramatically more RTX 5060 cards than they've made of any other model so far, expect this card to carry a similar pricing premium for a while.

RTX 5060 Ti RTX 4060 Ti RTX 5060 RTX 4060 RTX 5050 (leaked) RTX 3050
CUDA Cores 4,608 4,352 3,840 3,072 2,560 2,560
Boost Clock 2,572 MHz 2,535 MHz 2,497 MHz 2,460 MHz Unknown 1,777 MHz
Memory Bus Width 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit
Memory bandwidth 448GB/s 288GB/s 448GB/s 272GB/s Unknown 224GB/s
Memory size 8GB or 16GB GDDR7 8GB or 16GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR7 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6
TGP 180 W 160 W 145 W 115 W 130 W 130 W

Compared to the RTX 4060, the RTX 5060 adds a few hundred extra CUDA cores and gets a big memory bandwidth increase thanks to the move from GDDR6 to GDDR7. But its utility at higher resolutions will continue to be limited by its 8GB of RAM, which is already becoming a problem for a handful of high-end games at 1440p and 4K.

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How long will Switch 2’s Game Key Cards keep working?

Nintendo’s history suggests we can look forward to decades of support.

Last month, Nintendo and its third-party partners revealed that many of the "physical" games on the Switch 2 would be made available only as "Digital Key Cards." Unlike traditional physical Switch games—which contain flash memory with the necessary data to play the game on the card itself—these key cards will simply enable the holder to download a copy of the game to their system and play that copy if and when the transferable key card is inserted in the system.

Already, many players are thinking ahead to what this means for their ability to play Game Key Card releases well into the future. It's not hard to find potential Switch 2 owners publicly worrying about games "disappear[ing] into the void" or becoming "effectively a worthless piece of plastic/e-waste" when Nintendo eventually disables its Switch 2 game download servers. Some go even farther, calling a Game Key Card an "eighty dollar rental" rather than a real game purchase.

While these are valid long-term concerns, I think some players are underestimating the likely timeline for when Game Key Cards will become "useless e-waste." As it stands, we already have an example of Nintendo supporting continued downloads of games purchased nearly two decades ago and counting.

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Trump administration cuts off all future federal funding to Harvard

Odd letter ostensibly about funding asks Harvard “why is there so much HATE?”

The ongoing war between the Trump administration and Harvard University has taken a new twist, with the government sending Harvard a letter that, amid what appears to be a stream-of-consciousness culture war rant, announces that the university will not be receiving any further research grants. The letter potentially suggests that Harvard could see funding restored by "complying with long-settled Federal Law," but earlier demands from the administration included conditions that went well beyond those required by law.

The letter, sent by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, makes it somewhat difficult to tell exactly what the government wants, because most of the text is a borderline deranged rant written in florid MAGA-ese. You don't have to go beyond the first paragraph to get a sense that this is less a setting of funding conditions than an airing of grievances:

Instead of using these funds to advance the education of its students, Harvard is engaging in a systemic pattern of violating federal law. Where do many of these "students" come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country—and why is there so much HATE? These are questions that must be answered, among many more, but the biggest question of all is, why will Harvard not give straightforward answers to the American public?

Does Harvard have to answer these questions to get funding restored? It's unclear.

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Anzeige: KI-Beauftragte nach ISO 42001 – so geht’s

Mit dem Einsatz von KI steigen die Anforderungen an Governance und Nachvollziehbarkeit. Dieser Workshop zeigt, wie das KI-Managementsystem nach ISO 42001 Transparenz, Sicherheit und Compliance gewährleistet. Mit Prüfung. (Golem Karrierewelt, KI)

Mit dem Einsatz von KI steigen die Anforderungen an Governance und Nachvollziehbarkeit. Dieser Workshop zeigt, wie das KI-Managementsystem nach ISO 42001 Transparenz, Sicherheit und Compliance gewährleistet. Mit Prüfung. (Golem Karrierewelt, KI)

The newest Surface Laptop and Surface Pro tablet are a little smaller, not much cheaper (starts at $800)

Microsoft is updating its PC lineup with a new Surface Laptop featuring a 13 inch display and a new Surface Pro tablet with a 12 inch screen. And, as expected, not only are the new PCs a bit smaller than the company’s existing models, they’…

Microsoft is updating its PC lineup with a new Surface Laptop featuring a 13 inch display and a new Surface Pro tablet with a 12 inch screen. And, as expected, not only are the new PCs a bit smaller than the company’s existing models, they’re also a little less powerful thanks to their 8-core Qualcomm […]

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