Apple agrees to $53 million settlement for some iPhones, iPods denied warranty coverage

Documents have been filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California for a $53 million settlement between Apple and customers denied warranty coverage on their iPods and iPhones due to water damage. The case is due to Apple's policy not to extend warranty coverage on devices where the indicator tape inside them showed exposure to liquids, however plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit argued the indicator could change color due to moisture or humidity. Apple does not acknowledge any wrongdoing in the settlement, which is still awaiting approval from the court, however customers with warranty claims denied prior to June 2010 (iPod touch) or December 31st, 2009 could be eligible for as much as $300 depending on the device owned and how many claims are filed. The scenario the plaintiffs cite is just the kind of thing we worried about back in 2006, and will probably remain in the back of our minds if we need to have any of our hardware serviced in the future no matter how much Apple and others work on more advanced detection systems.

Spotify Discover launches for all with integration from Songkick, Pitchfork and more

Spotify is making another push to help its users find more music they're interested in listening to, and find out more about the artists they like by making its "Discover" feature available to all. Initially shown off late last year, this page combines several elements that have already been a part of the music service, including apps like Pitchfork, Songkick and Tunigo with its song recommendations and followed artist pages. There's also an audio preview feature to let you easily dip into a song that seems interesting, without pulling the focus away from whatever you were listening to before.
The new page is available today on Spotify's web player for all users, and is expected to come to its desktop and mobile clients "gradually." With the launch of Twitter Music and Google Play Music's All Access Spotify is facing renewed competition on multiple fronts, we'll see if this kind of one stop shopping for info is key to keeping its users tied to their subscriptions. Check after the break for a few more details in the press release, or hit the website to give it a try yourself.

Tim Cook: Apple will open up its APIs

Tim Cook's had a lot to say today at D11, from talking about wearables to the next versions of iOS and OS X, and he just gave devs for those software platforms a bit of good news. That's right, folks, Tim Cook has pledged that Apple will open up its APIs more, but "not to the degree that we put the customer at risk of having a bad experience." When pressed about giving developers the ability to build better experiences and present customers with more choice -- like say, having access to Swype or SwiftKey -- Cook defended Apple's current, more restrictive policies saying that "the customer pays us to make some of these choices on their behalf." So there you have it, the folks at Apple only let you use the stock software keyboard on your iPhone because you paid them to do so.

Tim Cook: Apple has no issue porting its apps to Android

While it may seem far-fetched that Apple would consider following BlackBerry Messenger's footsteps and bring some of its apps to Android, it turns out that such a move isn't out of the question. "We have no religious issue with porting an Apple app to Android," said Cook in response to whether iCloud should branch out to other platforms. "If it made sense for us to do that, we would do that. You could apply that to every area of Apple." That's far from a guarantee that apps coded by Cupertino will turn up on Google's mobile OS, but the fact that we could see iMessage make a Google+ Hangouts-like pilgrimage to rival territory is tantalizing.