News

A jury on Tuesday unanimously found Apple not guilty in the decade old antitrust suit that accused Apple of creating a monopoly through iTunes updates that disallowed music purchased from competitors.

At issue were iPods issued from 2006 through 2009, which the plaintiffs argued would only play music purchased on iTunes or downloaded from CDs, not music purchased from competing services. Apple argued that its updated iTunes version found on the devices aimed to increase security and create a better experience for iPod users.

On Tuesday Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) reported that dozens of companies have signed up for Apple Pay over the past several weeks. The list of companies accepting Apple's e-wallet, which started with financial giants Visa, Mastercard and American Express among others, has grown continuously since the project began in early 2013. When it went live in October, over a million credit cards were registered within the first three days, which rocketed its status to the largest mobile payment system in existence.

According to The New York Times, recent sign-ups including Barclaycard, SunTrust, USAA and ten banks, including TD Bank, all support the payment system as of today. Other new additions include Staples, which now accepts Apple Pay at 1,400 of its locations, grocers Winn-Dixie and Albertsons, and the AmWay center, home of the Orlando Magic. A list of financial institutions that already support Apple Pay can be found here.

Large swings in the value of Russian currency have prompted Apple to stop sales on its online store in the country. An Apple spokesman told Bloomberg the company was going to "review pricing" after the ruble plummeted almost 20 percent yesterday.

While there are still no retail stores in the country, the Russian Apple Online Store has been in business since June 2013. The suspension of sales is not the first time Apple has taken currency-related action. In November Apple increased iPhone prices in Russia after monitoring changes in the ruble.

Apple shares (NASDAQ: AAPL) continued to slip last week, closing at $109.73, almost ten dollars below the all time high close of $119 on the day before Thanksgiving. In fact, the share price has dropped about 8% since then. There is no clear reason as to why this is happening, as profits have certainly not slowed, holiday sales are in full swing, and the Apple Watch is just around the corner. Perhaps some investors just want to cash in on some of the big earnings Apple has seen in 2014. Analysts aren't panicking and neither should you.

One of Apple's new products that could be a boon for business is its joint venture with IBM, MobileFirst for iOS. The two companies announced the first generation of MobileFirst apps last Wednesday. The project aims to attract enterprise clients with industry specific applications specifically made for iOS devices. As part of the agreement, IBM will sell both iPhones and iPads to clients.

No major news came out of Cupertino last week, but there were several noteworthy items. Topping the list was the release of iOS 8.1.2 on Tuesday, which fixed a bug that caused purchased ringtones to disappear from people's devices. Although Apple has not divulged the update's security content (if there was any), it apparently did not patch the TaiG jailbreak.

A day after the 8.1.2 update, Apple released the iOS 8.2 beta 2 to developers. The update mainly pertains to the WatchKit SDK, including some new features for the API and some bug fixes.