Tech Headlines for Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Tech News

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Zoom Service Disruption

Many Zoom users experienced major disruptions on Monday, August 24, 2020, after the service went down. Given that many people are still working from home or remotely, a disruption of this type surely made plenty of people upset.

According to an email sent to customers, Velchamy Sankarlingam, President of Product and Engineering said, “We always take very seriously our responsibility to keep you connected, and we know that you are relying on us during this particularly challenging time. We deeply regret this incident and sincerely apologize. I’m personally disappointed that we have let you down and I am sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Microsoft 365 Update Causes Problems for the Admin Portal

Zoom wasn’t alone when it came to outages on Monday. Microsoft 365 also reported that users were unable to access their Admin Portal after having applied an update. According to a Twitter post from the company, “We’ve identified a recently-applied update that may be the source of the issue. We’re reverting the update in an effort to mitigate impact.”

App Developers Go to War with Apple

Two prominent app developers have gone to war with Apple over its in-app payment requirements. Currently, Apple takes 15-30% of all in-app purchases. Some developers are balking at the take.

Apple did back down and apologized to WordPress after trying to force WordPress to add in-app payments into its free app, actually blocking the developer from pushing out updates.

The makers of Fortnite, Epic Games, has entered into a very public battle with Apple. It’s a battle that has actually ended up in court. A judge has ruled that Apple can’t block Epic Games from supporting its key software for game developers.

TikTok Sues the Trump Administration

In an on-going battle with the Trump administration, TikTok has (unsurprisingly) filed suit against the president’s executive order which will effectively ban the popular app in the near future if the company doesn’t sell to a U.S. company.

According to the suit, TikTok claims that the executive order infringes on their Fifth Amendment rights to due process. The company has been working with government officials for the last year trying to clear up any problems with the Chinese-owned company.

Happy Birthday, Windows 95!

The iconic Windows 95 operating system from Microsoft just turned 25. While it wasn’t the first version of Windows, it was the first version of Windows that was super easy to use for consumers. Windows 95 officially launched on August 24, 1995.