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Foreign welcome to the TechMe Bright home for Thursday, December 19th, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough. Today Apple says Meta is getting annoying. You can now call 1-800-CHATGPT to, you know, talk to ChatGPT. Apple scraps plans for a hardware subscription package. Aura's big new raise also indicates how well its smart ring business is going and has Bengaluru grown too quickly for its own good? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Apple says Meta has made 15 interoperability requests under the EU's Digital Markets act, more than any other company, and that these could affect users privacy and security. Quoting Reuters, Apple on Wednesday hit out at Meta platforms, saying its numerous requests to access the iPhone maker software tools for its devices could impact users privacy and security. Underscoring the intense rivalry between the two tech giants under the European Union's landmark Digital Markets act that took effect last year, Apple must allow rivals and app developers to interoperate with its own services or risk a fine of as much as 10% of its global annual turnover. Meta has made 15 interoperability requests thus far, far more than any other company for potentially far reaching access to Apple's technology stack, the latter said in a report. In many cases, Meta is seeking to alter functionality in a way that raises concerns about the privacy and security of users, and that appears to be completely unrelated to the actual use of Meta's external devices, such as Meta Smart Glasses and Meta Quest, Apple said. Meta Quest is Meta's virtual reality headset, part of the company's ambition to own the computational platform that powers virtual reality and mixed reality devices. Quote if Apple were to have to grant all of these requests, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp could enable meta to read on a user's device all of their messages and emails, see every phone call they make or receive, track every app that they use, scan all of their photos, look at their files and calendar events, log all of their passwords and more. Apple said it pointed to Meta's privacy fines in Europe in recent years as a cause of concern. What Apple is actually saying is they don't believe in interoperability. They met, a spokesperson said in a statement. Every time Apple is called out for its anti competitive behavior, they defend themselves on privacy grounds that have no basis in reality. Separately, the European Commission, which in September said it would spell out how Apple must open up to rivals, published its preliminary findings on the issue late Wednesday, giving individuals, companies and organizations until January 9th to provide feedback on its proposed measures. For Apple, the measures would require Apple to provide a clear description of the different phases, deadlines, and the criteria and considerations that it would apply or consider in assessing interoperability requests from app developers. Apple should also provide regular updates and give and receive feedback regarding the effectiveness of its proposed interoperability solution. While there would be a fair and impartial conciliation mechanism to address technical disagreements with Apple, the commission also set out the steps for Apple to provide interoperability with all functionalities of the iOS notifications feature available to Apple Watch, Apple Vision Pro, and any future Apple Connected physical devices to its rivals as well, End quote Bit of a gimmick for sure, but OpenAI has debuted a way to talk to ChatGPT by dialing 1-800-ChatGPT for 15 minutes of free access per month in the US or messaging the number via WhatsApp globally. Quoting CNBC by dialing the US number 1-800-242-8478 or messaging it via WhatsApp, users can access a quote, easy, convenient and low cost way to try ChatGPT out through familiar channels, OpenAI said Wednesday. At first, the company said callers will get 15 minutes free per month. The news follows a barrage of updates from OpenAI as part of a 12 day release event. The most notable announcement was the official rollout of Sora, OpenAI's buzzy AI video generation tool for the 1-800-number. Users can call without an account, but the company said in a live stream that it's working on ways to be able to integrate WhatsApp messages with a person's ChatGPT credentials. The team built the tool just a few weeks ago, an employee said on the live stream. End quote Mark Gurman says that Apple has halted work on something I didn't know they were working on, but which I probably would have been a fan of if it had come out. It was reportedly a project to build an iPhone hardware subscription service, which had been in development since 2022, quoting Bloomberg. The idea was to make owning an iPhone like subscribing to an app, with consumers paying monthly fees and getting new phones each year. But Apple recently wound down the effort, according to people familiar with the matter. The team was disbanded and reassigned to other projects, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work was confidential. The move is part of a broader shift in how Apple approaches payment services. The subscription effort was overseen by the company's Apple Pay Group, which also shuttered a Buy Now, Pay later program earlier this year. That service let shoppers pay off purchases over multiple installments but Apple is now steering consumers towards third party programs instead. Bloomberg News first reported on the iPhone subscription service in 2022, when the program was due to launch by the end of that year. It was ultimately delayed until 2023 and beyond after suffering numerous setbacks, including software bugs and regulatory concerns. Top company executives had sent the work back to the drawing board before the project was finally scrapped. When Apple began work on the hardware subscription service a few years ago, it was aiming to sell more iPhones and generate a amount of recurring revenue. The device is Apple's biggest moneymaker, accounting for just over half of annual sales. The company also wanted to further lock users into the Apple product ecosystem. It would work like this. Instead of paying for an iPhone outright or signing up for an installment plan, consumers would have a monthly fee billed to the same Apple account they use for downloading apps and subscribing to services. They'd then be able to swap out their iPhone for a new model each year. The service would have competed with and likely upset Apple's wireless carrier partners, which increasingly rely on installment programs and promotions to sell iPhones and retain customers. When the company cancelled Apple Pay Later, a major factor in the decision was stricter rules by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The agency said this year that Pay later style services would have to follow the same regulations as credit card companies. That's a headache Apple didn't want to deal with, especially since the size of the business is relatively small. Given that the iPhone subscription service would use a similar structure and technology as Apple Pay later, the company became concerned that it too would face scrutiny. Smart ring maker Aura has raised a $200 million Series D round led by Fidelity at a $5.2 billion valuation and says sales of its smart rings have doubled this year to $500 million, with around 2.5 million total rings sold to date. Quoting times Founded in Finland in 2013, Aura's latest deal is one of the largest for a private European tech company outside of the artificial intelligence sector, which has absorbed a disproportionate share of venture capital funding this year. Celebrity aficionados of Aura's rings include Prince Harry, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston, executives at IBM and Delta, as well as Silicon Valley founders such as Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Salesforce's Marc Benioff and Airbnb's Joe Gebbia. Its growing popularity has seen sales than double this year to about $500 million, with total rings sold surpassing 2.5 million. Tom Hale, ORA's chief executive has said the company is profitable, end quote and quoting TechCrunch, Aura says the new capital will allow it to expand its product offerings and further invest in product science, AI and more. The funding will also enable Aura to explore additional acquisitions, the company says. The news comes a month after Aura announced it was partnering with Dexcom to pave the way for the two companies, devices and apps to be used together. The partners means Oura rings will eventually help users monitor their blood sugar and that the two companies will co market and cross sell each other's products. Oura said at the time that Dexcom would be investing $75 million in its Series D round in 2024. The company expanded its retail presence by bringing its products to Amazon and Target. It also partnered with Naval Health Research center, the Air Force and the Defense Innovation Unit to put its smart rings on the fingers of service members. In October, Aura acquired Sparta Science, a Bay Area health tracking startup. In September, Aura acquired Veri, the Helsinki based startup behind the metabolic health product of the same name. End quote and quoting cnet the smart ring market is growing increasingly competitive. Oura just launched the Oura Ring 4 in October and the Consumer Electronics show is just around the corner where we're bound to see even more health tracking rings debut. The International Data Corporation predicted in September that the smart ring category could grow by 88.4% in 2024, which would be a massive leap compared to other types of wearable such as smartwatches. End quote.