EU Hearing 'Many Concerns' About Potential Anticompetitive Issues With Apple Pay

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European Union Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager today acknowledged that her department has received "many concerns" over Apple Pay and potential anticompetitive issues, noting that "people see it becomes increasingly difficult to compete in the market for easy payments," reports Reuters.


Vestager's comments come after the European Commission sent a questionnaire to a number of companies in August seeking information on whether Apple was restricting online payment options.

The questionnaire asked if companies were under a contractual obligation to enable a certain payment method and also if such contracts included conditions for integrating ‌Apple Pay‌ in their apps and websites.

Regulators wanted to know if Apple has rejected merchant apps as incompatible with the terms and conditions for integrating ‌Apple Pay‌ in their apps.

Apple touts the safety and security of ‌Apple Pay‌, but critics have claimed that Apple stifles competition by locking down the NFC chip in iOS devices to only work with ‌Apple Pay‌, making it difficult for other payment services to compete.

Antitrust concerns over ‌Apple Pay‌ are not the only issue for Apple and the EU at the moment, as the European Commission is also still dealing with Spotify's complaint that Apple's App Store unfairly disadvantages third-party app developers in favor of its own apps and services.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay

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Deals: Amazon Discounts 2019 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air to New Low Prices (Starting at $900)

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Amazon today opened up new sales on the latest models of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, with discounts starting as low as $899.99 for the MacBook Air and $1,099.99 for the MacBook Pro.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Amazon. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Across the board, all models listed below are the lowest price that we have ever tracked among the major Apple resellers online. Be sure to head to Amazon to check out the discounts before they expire.

13-Inch MacBook Pro

For the MacBook Pro sale, Amazon is discounting the new models from Mid 2019, all focused on 13-inch sizes. Best Buy is matching the prices of these models, and offers a few discounts on alternate color options as well.

• 1.4GHz, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, Space Gray - $1,099.99, down from $1,299.00 ($199 off)
  
• 1.4GHz, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Space Gray - $1,299.99, down from $1,499.00 ($199 off)
  
• 2.4GHz, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Silver - $1,699.99, down from $1,999.00 ($299 off)

13-Inch MacBook Air

You can also save on a few models of the latest MacBook Air, starting as low as $899.99 for the 128GB configuration.

• 1.6GHz, 8GB RAM, 128GB, Gold - $899.99, down from $1,099.00 ($199 off)
  
• 1.6GHz, 8GB RAM, 128GB, Space Gray - $899.99, down from $1,099.00 ($199 off)
  
• 1.6GHz, 8GB RAM, 256GB, Silver - $1,099.99, down from $1,299.00 ($199 off)

Visit our full Deals Roundup to stay up to date with all of the latest Apple-related sales.

Related Roundup: Apple Deals

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DuckDuckGo's Safari Privacy Browser Extension Now Available for macOS Catalina

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Privacy oriented search engine DuckDuckGo today released an updated version of its browser extension for desktop Safari users running macOS Catalina.


The launch comes after DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials had to be removed from the Safari extensions gallery following major changes introduced in Safari 12 that made the extension incompatible. From the DuckDuckGo website:

As you may be aware, major structural changes in Safari 12 meant that we had to remove DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials from the Safari extensions gallery. With Safari 13, new functionality was thankfully added that enabled us to put it back. Consequently, you'll need Safari 13+ on macOS 10.15 (Catalina) or newer to install the updated version.

DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials blocks hidden third-party trackers on websites and features a Privacy Dashboard, which generates a Privacy Grade rating (A-F) information card whenever a user visits a site. The rating aims to let them see at a glance how protected they are, while providing additional options to dig deeper into the details of blocked tracking attempts.

While the extension doesn't include private search, DuckDuckGo Search is built into Safari as a default search option, and they work together to help users search and browse privately.

DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials is only available for desktop browsers, however DuckDuckGo Privacy Browser is available for iOS and uses the same privacy protection technology.

Tags: Safari, privacy, DuckDuckGo

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