CNBC:

Apple chip leader Johny Srouji addressed rumors of his impending exit in a memo to staff on Monday, saying he doesn’t plan on leaving the company anytime soon. “I love my team, and I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon,” he wrote.

Bloomberg reported on Saturday that Srouji had told CEO Tim Cook that he was considering leaving, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

It wasn’t rumors, plural. It was one report, on Saturday, from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, and Srouji just called bullshit on it.

What a colossal fuck-up for Gurman and Bloomberg. There’s no possible scenario where Srouji was threatening to leave Apple for a competitor on Saturday and telling his staff (in a memo meant to leak to the press) “I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon” Monday morning.

The most gracious interpretation for Gurman and Bloomberg is that Srouji had expressed this to Cook, at some point in the recent past, and Cook addressed whatever it took to keep Srouji on board. But even in that scenario, they ran a story Saturday that was wrong at the time it was published.

The more likely scenario is the one suggested by Neil Cybart:

If someone wanted to sow seeds of doubt among Apple employees in an effort to help their own poaching efforts, there are at least three publications who would have no problem offering an anonymous microphone to that person.

I.e., the source for this story about Srouji being unhappy at Apple and considering leaving for a competitor was aligned with one of those competitors, and Gurman and his editors at Bloomberg said “Sure, we’ll print that.” Meta, of course, is the competitor that comes to mind.

It speaks to Gurman’s personal and Bloomberg’s institutional influence that Srouji and Apple saw the need to shoot the bogus narrative down in public like this. I can’t remember the last time an Apple executive saw the need to send an intended-to-leak memo like this to shoot down one bogus story. After last week, though, this one couldn’t be ignored.

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Juli Clover, writing at MacRumors (regarding a report at Reuters):

Apple could ultimately have to pay up to an estimated 637 million euros to address the damage suffered by 14 million iPhone and iPad users in the Netherlands.

That’s about €45/user.

The lawsuit dates back to 2022, when two Dutch consumer foundations (Right to Consumer Justice and App Store Claims) accused Apple of abusing its dominant market position and charging developers excessive fees. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Dutch iPhone and iPad users, and it claimed that Apple’s 30 percent commission inflated prices for apps and in-app purchases.

I’m curious what these consumer foundations would consider a “fair” (and thus legal) commission rate.

This all comes back to the argument that Apple’s App Store commission inflates prices. A recent Apple-funded (and Apple-promoted) study suggests this is not true — that with lower commissions mandated by the DMA, prices paid by consumers stayed the same and the difference went to the developers. That’s good if you’re a developer, but it’s not the argument being made by these consumer advocate groups.

That said, I pointed out just the other day that Tiimo, a to-do app that Apple just named as the iPhone app of the year in the 2025 App Awards, charges about 20 percent less for subscriptions on its website compared to its in-app subscriptions. An Apple-funded, Apple-promoted study showing that the App Store’s commissions don’t raise prices ought to be taken with a few grains of salt.

Apple argued that the Dutch court did not have jurisdiction to hear the case because the EU App Store is run from Ireland, and therefore the claims should be litigated in Ireland. Apple said that if the Dutch court was able to hear the case, it could lead to fragmentation with multiple similar cases across the EU, plus it argued that customers in the Netherlands could have downloaded apps while in other EU member states.

I know Apple wants this litigated in Ireland because the Irish government sees Apple as an ally, not an adversary, but it does seem contrary to the idea of a single market if a company doing business in the EU is subject to different antitrust laws from each of the EU’s 27 member states.

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