Apple kills its car, is snubbed by Goldman, backtracks on iPhone apps, and is fined

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Image for article titled Apple killed its car, got snubbed by Goldman, backtracked on iPhone apps, and was fined $2 billion — Graphic: Images: Eric Thayer, Tingshu Wang, DAVID SWANSON/AFP, Andrej Sokolow/dpa

The hits keep coming for Apple. In the span of less than a week, it shut down its long-troubled project to build an electric car, got dropped from a Goldman Sachs list of top stocks, backtracked on the issue of web apps on its iPhones and Europe — and then started this week with a $2 billion fine in Europe for “abusing” its power against Spotify and other music streaming platforms.

And that’s not all. Check out the slideshow above for those and more stories on a rough stretch for Apple.

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Apple is shutting down its EV project after spending billions of dollars over a decade

Apple has ended its push into the auto industry after about a decade of work on an electric car.

Roughly a decade after Apple launched Project Titan, the technology giant’s plans to build and sell its own electric car have been terminated. The project will begin winding down, and many employees allocated to the team — known as the Special Projects Group — will be moved to Apple’s artificial intelligence division.

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The Apple car is dead. But Chinese rival Huawei is charging ahead

A decade and billions of dollars later, Apple is axing its electric car project. Meanwhile, its Chinese smartphone rival, Huawei, has been pushing ahead with its automotive endeavors. The company develops and supplies a range of technologies for the car industry—but is steering well clear of physically manufacturing a car by itself.

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A lot of Apple Vision Pro returns are because customers just don’t get it, analyst says

Tech bros were vocal with stories about why they were returning their Apple Vision Pros earlier in February. However, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo found that nearly a third of returns were because users couldn’t figure out how to set up the $3,500 newfangled technology.

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The Apple Car is dead — and it was doomed from the start

An Apple test car converted into a self-driving vehicle can be seen in Silicon Valley. — Photo: Andrej Sokolow/dpa (Getty Images)

Apple announced to its employees that the long-running Apple Car project — Project Titan — is no more. The news isn’t exactly a surprise, given that the last few years have been filled with story after story after story about the project’s struggles, but a new postmortem shows that Titan floundered from the start.

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Apple backtracked on removing iPhone web apps after EU scrutiny

Existing functionality of Home Screen web apps will be available following the iOS 17.4 update in March.

Apple plans to continue to support web apps in the European Union, the tech giant said in an update on its developer support page. The turnaround comes after EU regulators said they had taken initial steps to investigate why Apple was considering discontinuing its support for web apps in the E.U.

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Apple got snubbed by Goldman Sachs and fell behind Microsoft after a turbulent week

Apple was removed from Goldman Sachs’ list of top stocks after a turbulent week. Goldman’s “Conviction List” focuses on stocks that analysts expect to deliver strong returns. Goldman swapped Apple and pharmaceutical companies Merck and Vertex for biotech giant Amgen, crushed-stone producer Vulcan Materials, and software firm Monday.com.

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Apple’s odd moment

It’s been a stop-start decade for Apple’s electric car dream: swirling rumors, hires and layoffs, acquisitions, and doubt. Finally, though, this past week, it emerged that Apple will put the project out of its misery.

By itself, this would be important but not existential. Tech companies venture into and then retreat from new fields all the time. And while Apple sunk billions into its EV project, it is certainly a company that has the money to spare. Last summer, Apple reported sitting on a pile of almost $167 billion in cash — one of the largest such stashes around. But it’s an odd moment for Apple. The cancellation of its EV is the third prong in a trifecta of — well, not failure perhaps, but certainly not the roaring success it has become accustomed to.

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Apple got hit with a $2 billion fine for ‘abusing’ its power over Spotify and other music streaming apps

European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager championed the regulator’s antitrust actions against Apple.

Apple has been hit with a €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) antitrust fine by European Union regulators for abusing its dominant position on the market for the distribution of music streaming apps, such as Spotify or Apple Music.

Apple killed its car, got snubbed by Goldman, backtracked on iPhone apps, and was fined $2 billion

It's been a rough stretch for Apple on both sides of the Atlantic