#WeeklyRecap: Apple bans Epic, Zoom's outage, TikTok's crisis, and more
This week, a number of developments were reported in the world of technology, including a few interesting hardware launches and some rather concerning security issues, outages, and data leaks. On top of that, the showdown between Apple and Epic on one hand, and TikTok and the Trump administration on the other continued, with several notable updates. Let's take a look at everything.
TikTok sued Trump administration; its CEO also resigned
First, in response to the US government's transaction ban and sell-or-close orders on TikTok's parent company ByteDance, the Chinese video app sued the Trump administration. As the lawsuit progressed, Kevin Mayer, the CEO of the company, resigned, saying that he signed up for a global role, not a segmented one, which the sale of TikTok US (as demanded by the US) would result in.
Then, Walmart joined the bid to buy TikTok US
Next, retail giant Walmart joined Microsoft in the bid to buy TikTok US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Oracle and Netflix are also reportedly racing to buy TikTok's businesses, and a deal could be announced in the coming days, valued at about $20-30 billion.
Epic won restraining order, but got banned
After a court hearing earlier this week, Epic Games won a temporary restraining order against Apple to protect Epic's Unreal Engine, but not Fortnite. As a result, Apple banned Epic's developer account for the violation of its policies (as it previously said). Unreal Engine is managed through another account so it's safe but all Epic Games, including Fortnite, are now banned on iPhones, iPads.
Bugs in Apple, Google, Microsoft products
In addition to the action against Epic, Apple also drew flak for delaying the patch of a critical bug, which could leak user data through Safari, until 2021. Microsoft and Google also witnessed criticism, after the former pushed updates affecting Windows 10's performance and causing BSOD errors and the latter allowed a loophole that could be used to trick people into downloading malware, ransomware.
Elon Musk confirmed thwarted cyber attack, unveiled Neuralink's implant
Tesla boss Elon Musk confirmed that his company was the target of a serious ransomware attack but the attempt was successfully foiled with the help of one employee. The billionaire tech mogul also unveiled the upgraded brain implant developed by his company Neuralink and gave a live demonstration of its functioning on pigs. The tech could ultimately solve neurological problems, including hearing, vision loss.
Other major developments from this week
Among other things, Zoom suffered a three-hour-long outage this week, while RailYatri, a renowned ticketing platform in India, leaked the data of as many as 700,000 passengers through an unsecured server. Separately, a security report revealed Iranian hackers used WhatsApp, LinkedIn to target academia, journalists, and activists with malware and phishing sites, while IIT-Hyderabad launched the world's most affordable respirator mask for COVID-19 protection.
Finally, some tempting hardware launches
In the hardware category, a number of devices were unveiled, including Moto G9, Sony Xperia 8 Lite, Infinix Zero 8, LG Q92 5G, Samsung Galaxy Tab S7-series, Vivo Y20, Y20i, OPPO A53, Gionee K3 Pro and Max, Nokia 5.3 and C3, and ASUS ZenFone 7 series. Amazon, meanwhile, launched a screen-less smart-band that listens to your tone as part of its Halo fitness service.
